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+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61263", "uid": "3ca15c335843477eaa38ed31980680be", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "\n\n\n\nProduced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\nCULTURAL EXCHANGE\nBY KEITH LAUMER\nIt was a simple student exchange—but\n   \n  Retief gave them more of\n   \n  an education than they expected!\n \n  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n   \n  Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962.\n   \n  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n   \n  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI\n \n  Second Secretary Magnan took his green-lined cape and orange-feathered\nberet from the clothes tree. \"I'm off now, Retief,\" he said. \"I hope\nyou'll manage the administrative routine during my absence without any\nunfortunate incidents.\"\n \n  \"That seems a modest enough hope,\" Retief said. \"I'll try to live up to\nit.\"\n \n  \"I don't appreciate frivolity with reference to this Division,\" Magnan\nsaid testily. \"When I first came here, the Manpower Utilization\nDirectorate, Division of Libraries and Education was a shambles. I\nfancy I've made MUDDLE what it is today. Frankly, I question the\nwisdom of placing you in charge of such a sensitive desk, even for two\nweeks. But remember. Yours is purely a rubber-stamp function.\"\n \n  \"In that case, let's leave it to Miss Furkle. I'll take a couple of\nweeks off myself. With her poundage, she could bring plenty of pressure\nto bear.\"\n \n  \"I assume you jest, Retief,\" Magnan said sadly. \"I should expect even\nyou to appreciate that Bogan participation in the Exchange Program may\nbe the first step toward sublimation of their aggressions into more\ncultivated channels.\"\n \n  \"I see they're sending two thousand students to d'Land,\" Retief said,\nglancing at the Memo for Record. \"That's a sizable sublimation.\"\n \n  Magnan nodded. \"The Bogans have launched no less than four military\ncampaigns in the last two decades. They're known as the Hoodlums of\nthe Nicodemean Cluster. Now, perhaps, we shall see them breaking that\nprecedent and entering into the cultural life of the Galaxy.\"\n \n  \"Breaking and entering,\" Retief said. \"You may have something there.\nBut I'm wondering what they'll study on d'Land. That's an industrial\nworld of the poor but honest variety.\"\n \n  \"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\nMagnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\nthat you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\nbe an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\nrestraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n \n  A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n \n  \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\nscreen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n \n  \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\nMagnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\nat Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n \n  \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.\n \n  Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\nbutton.\n \n  \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\nof heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\nstepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\nsight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\nout his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\nto face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n \n  Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n \n  \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\nhand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\nstarted it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n \n  \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.\n \n  \"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\nall ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\nWhat I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\nout on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\nabout ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\nknow if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n \n  \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\nArapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\npuffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\nthe vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\nWe like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\nApples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"\n \n  \"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\nEducation Division come in?\"\n \n  Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\ncan't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\nland area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\nforest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\nRetief.\"\n \n  \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n \n  \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\nyear's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\norbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\npainting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\nLots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\nwoodworkers. Our furniture—\"\n \n  \"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n \n  Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\nand those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\ncomes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\ncloser. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\nThat's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\ninside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\non Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\nThe theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\nthe music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\ncenter of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n \n  \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"\n \n  \"That's right. Autumn's our harvest season. Most years we have just the\nordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing; getting it in doesn't\ntake long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new\nplaces ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a\nlot of time in our houses. We like to have them comfortable. But this\nyear's different. This is Wine Year.\"\nArapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine\ncrop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going.\nBut this year....\"\n \n  \"The crop isn't panning out?\"\n \n  \"Oh, the crop's fine. One of the best I can remember. Course, I'm only\ntwenty-eight; I can't remember but two other harvests. The problem's\nnot the crop.\"\n \n  \"Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the\nCommercial—\"\n \n  \"Lost our markets? Mister, nobody that ever tasted our wines ever\nsettled for anything else!\"\n \n  \"It sounds like I've been missing something,\" said Retief. \"I'll have\nto try them some time.\"\n \n  Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. \"No\ntime like the present,\" he said.\n \n  Retief looked at the two squat bottles, one green, one amber, both\ndusty, with faded labels, and blackened corks secured by wire.\n \n  \"Drinking on duty is frowned on in the Corps, Mr. Arapoulous,\" he said.\n \n  \"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\nretainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\nair. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n\"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n \n  Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\nto think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\nnative customs.\"\n \n  Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\nrust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\nat Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n \n  \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\nport.\"\n \n  \"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a\nmouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. \"It's Bacchus\nwine, that's all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.\" He pushed the second\nbottle toward Retief. \"The custom back home is to alternate red wine\nand black.\"\nRetief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork,\ncaught it as it popped up.\n \n  \"Bad luck if you miss the cork,\" Arapoulous said, nodding. \"You\nprobably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years\nback?\"\n \n  \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two\nfresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\"\n \n  \"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\nswallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\nWe like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\nforce. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\nwe did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\nBut it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n \n  \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\nbeef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n \n  \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\nmoney from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\nexporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\nyou're doing it for strangers.\"\n \n  \"Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,\" Retief\nsaid. \"What's the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?\"\n \n  \"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\nwe need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\nturn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\nseason is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\nFirst, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\ncovering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\nhere and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\ngrass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\nto the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\nwho can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,\nand it's just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall,\nthe tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on:\nroast turkeys, beef, hams, all kinds of fowl. Big salads. Plenty of\nfruit. Fresh-baked bread ... and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking's\ndone by a different crew each night in each garden, and there's prizes\nfor the best crews.\n \n  \"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\nfor the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\nget loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\nborn after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\ntoes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\nof grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\na vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n \n  \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n \n  \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\nsaid.\n \n  \"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\nWe've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\nvintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\nnext vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n \n  \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n \n  \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n \n  \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\nis hard to beat....\"\n \n  \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\nto see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\nrepay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"\n \n  \"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling\nside-shows, that kind of thing. Now, if you needed a troop of Groaci\nnose-flute players—\"\n \n  \"Can they pick grapes?\"\n \n  \"Nope. Anyway, they can't stand the daylight. Have you talked this over\nwith the Labor Office?\"\n \n  \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics\nspecialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands.\nSaid it was what they classified as menial drudgery; you'd have thought\nI was trying to buy slaves.\"\n \n  The buzzer sounded. Miss Furkle's features appeared on the desk screen.\n \n  \"You're due at the Intergroup Council in five minutes,\" she said. \"Then\nafterwards, there are the Bogan students to meet.\"\n \n  \"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\nsaid. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\nCheck with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\nhere. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n \n  As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\nacross the table.\n \n  \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\nWhat are they getting?\"\n \n  Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\nat MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\nsole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\nExchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\ntelling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n \n  \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"\n \n  \"Strip mining gear.\" Whaffle took a slip of paper from a breast pocket,\nblinked at it. \"Bolo Model WV/1 tractors, to be specific. Why is MUDDLE\ninterested in MEDDLE's activities?\"\n \n  \"Forgive my curiosity, Mr. Whaffle. It's just that Croanie cropped up\nearlier today. It seems she holds a mortgage on some vineyards over\non—\"\n \n  \"That's not MEDDLE's affair, sir,\" Whaffle cut in. \"I have sufficient\nproblems as Chief of MEDDLE without probing into MUDDLE'S business.\"\n \n  \"Speaking of tractors,\" another man put in, \"we over at the Special\nCommittee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Under-developed Nations'\nGeneral Economies have been trying for months to get a request for\nmining equipment for d'Land through MEDDLE—\"\n \n  \"SCROUNGE was late on the scene,\" Whaffle said. \"First come, first\nserved. That's our policy at MEDDLE. Good day, gentlemen.\" He strode\noff, briefcase under his arm.\n \n  \"That's the trouble with peaceful worlds,\" the SCROUNGE committeeman\nsaid. \"Boge is a troublemaker, so every agency in the Corps is out\nto pacify her. While my chance to make a record—that is, assist\npeace-loving d'Land—comes to naught.\" He shook his head.\n \n  \"What kind of university do they have on d'Land?\" asked Retief. \"We're\nsending them two thousand exchange students. It must be quite an\ninstitution.\"\n \n  \"University? D'Land has one under-endowed technical college.\"\n \n  \"Will all the exchange students be studying at the Technical College?\"\n \n  \"Two thousand students? Hah! Two\nhundred\nstudents would overtax the\nfacilities of the college.\"\n \n  \"I wonder if the Bogans know that?\"\n \n  \"The Bogans? Why, most of d'Land's difficulties are due to the unwise\ntrade agreement she entered into with Boge. Two thousand students\nindeed!\" He snorted and walked away.\nRetief stopped by the office to pick up a short cape, then rode the\nelevator to the roof of the 230-story Corps HQ building and hailed a\ncab to the port. The Bogan students had arrived early. Retief saw them\nlined up on the ramp waiting to go through customs. It would be half\nan hour before they were cleared through. He turned into the bar and\nordered a beer.\n \n  A tall young fellow on the next stool raised his glass.\n \n  \"Happy days,\" he said.\n \n  \"And nights to match.\"\n \n  \"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\nYep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\nwaiting....\"\n \n  \"You meeting somebody?\"\n \n  \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\nme.\"\n \n  \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n \n  \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\nto Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n\"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n \n  \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n \n  The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"\n \n  \"I represent MUDDLE.\"\n \n  Karsh finished his beer, ordered another. \"I came on ahead. Sort of\nan advance guard for the kids. I trained 'em myself. Treated it like\na game, but they can handle a CSU. Don't know how they'll act under\npressure. If I had my old platoon—\"\n \n  He looked at his beer glass, pushed it back. \"Had enough,\" he said. \"So\nlong, friend. Or are you coming along?\"\n \n  Retief nodded. \"Might as well.\"\nAt the exit to the Customs enclosure, Retief watched as the first of\nthe Bogan students came through, caught sight of Karsh and snapped to\nattention, his chest out.\n \n  \"Drop that, mister,\" Karsh snapped. \"Is that any way for a student to\nact?\"\n \n  The youth, a round-faced lad with broad shoulders, grinned.\n \n  \"Heck, no,\" he said. \"Say, uh, Mr. Karsh, are we gonna get to go to\ntown? We fellas were thinking—\"\n \n  \"You were, hah? You act like a bunch of school kids! I mean ... no! Now\nline up!\"\n \n  \"We have quarters ready for the students,\" Retief said. \"If you'd like\nto bring them around to the west side, I have a couple of copters laid\non.\"\n \n  \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't\nhave the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about\ngoing over the hill.\" He hiccupped. \"I mean they might play hookey.\"\n \n  \"We've scheduled your re-embarkation for noon tomorrow. That's a long\nwait. MUDDLE's arranged theater tickets and a dinner.\"\n \n  \"Sorry,\" Karsh said. \"As soon as the baggage gets here, we're off.\" He\nhiccupped again. \"Can't travel without our baggage, y'know.\"\n \n  \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\"\n \n  \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\"\n \n  \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\"\n \n  \"Sure,\" Karsh said. \"That's a good idea. Why don't you join us?\" Karsh\nwinked. \"And bring a few beers.\"\n \n  \"Not this time,\" Retief said. He watched the students, still emerging\nfrom Customs. \"They seem to be all boys,\" he commented. \"No female\nstudents?\"\n \n  \"Maybe later,\" Karsh said. \"You know, after we see how the first bunch\nis received.\"\n \n  Back at the MUDDLE office, Retief buzzed Miss Furkle.\n \n  \"Do you know the name of the institution these Bogan students are bound\nfor?\"\n \n  \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\"\n \n  \"Would that be the Technical College?\"\n \n  Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these\ndetails.\"\n \n  \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief\nsaid. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are\ntravelling so far to study—at Corps expense.\"\n \n  \"Mr. Magnan never—\"\n \n  \"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\nme with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\na world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\nBut the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\nto Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\nLovenbroy.\"\n \n  \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n\"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n \n  \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\nnever mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\nwill Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n \n  \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\nalways—\"\n \n  \"I'm sure he did. Let me know about the tractors as soon as you can.\"\nMiss Furkle sniffed and disappeared from the screen. Retief left the\noffice, descended forty-one stories, followed a corridor to the Corps\nLibrary. In the stacks he thumbed through catalogues, pored over\nindices.\n \n  \"Can I help you?\" someone chirped. A tiny librarian stood at his elbow.\n \n  \"Thank you, ma'am,\" Retief said. \"I'm looking for information on a\nmining rig. A Bolo model WV tractor.\"\n \n  \"You won't find it in the industrial section,\" the librarian said.\n\"Come along.\" Retief followed her along the stacks to a well-lit\nsection lettered ARMAMENTS. She took a tape from the shelf, plugged\nit into the viewer, flipped through and stopped at a squat armored\nvehicle.\n \n  \"That's the model WV,\" she said. \"It's what is known as a continental\nsiege unit. It carries four men, with a half-megaton/second firepower.\"\n \n  \"There must be an error somewhere,\" Retief said. \"The Bolo model I want\nis a tractor. Model WV M-1—\"\n\"Oh, the modification was the addition of a bulldozer blade for\ndemolition work. That must be what confused you.\"\n \n  \"Probably—among other things. Thank you.\"\n \n  Miss Furkle was waiting at the office. \"I have the information you\nwanted,\" she said. \"I've had it for over ten minutes. I was under the\nimpression you needed it urgently, and I went to great lengths—\"\n \n  \"Sure,\" Retief said. \"Shoot. How many tractors?\"\n \n  \"Five hundred.\"\n \n  \"Are you sure?\"\n \n  Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n \n  \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\nhundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n \n  \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n \n  \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n \n  Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\nhip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n \n  Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\nBacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\nsipped the black wine meditatively.\n \n  It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\nproduction of such vintages....\n \n  Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\nthrough a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\nAttache.\n \n  \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\nthe tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\nwe're shipping five hundred units....\"\n \n  \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n \n  Retief waited.\n \n  \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n \n  \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\ntractors.\"\n \n  \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"\n \n  \"One unit would require a good-sized plant to handle its output,\"\nRetief said. \"Now Croanie subsists on her fisheries. She has perhaps\nhalf a dozen pint-sized processing plants. Maybe, in a bind, they\ncould handle the ore ten WV's could scrape up ... if Croanie had any\nore. It doesn't. By the way, isn't a WV a poor choice as a mining\noutfit? I should think—\"\n \n  \"See here, Retief! Why all this interest in a few surplus tractors?\nAnd in any event, what business is it of yours how we plan to use the\nequipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\"\n \n  \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four\nhundred and ninety tractors?\"\n \n  \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\"\n \n  \"I know it's bad manners to ask questions. It's an old diplomatic\ntradition that any time you can get anybody to accept anything as a\ngift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme\ncooking—\"\n\"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\"\n \n  \"What kind of business do you do with a Bolo WV? With or without a\nblade attached, it's what's known as a continental siege unit.\"\n \n  \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us\nbranded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\"\n \n  \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\"\n \n  \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a\ndifficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation\nto a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\"\n \n  \"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\nRetief said. \"Any connection?\"\n \n  \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n \n  \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n \n  \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n \n  \"Who gets them?\"\n \n  \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n \n  \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\ntransshipment of grant material?\"\n \n  \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\nrepresentative.\"\n \n  \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n \n  \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\nlook here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"\n \n  \"How do you know what I'm thinking? I don't know myself.\" Retief rang\noff, buzzed the secretary.\n \n  \"Miss Furkle, I'd like to be notified immediately of any new\napplications that might come in from the Bogan Consulate for placement\nof students.\"\n \n  \"Well, it happens, by coincidence, that I have an application here now.\nMr. Gulver of the Consulate brought it in.\"\n \n  \"Is Mr. Gulver in the office? I'd like to see him.\"\n \n  \"I'll ask him if he has time.\"\n \n  \"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\nman in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\nshirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\nthe other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\nirritating conferences.\"\n \n  \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\nmany this time?\"\n \n  \"Two thousand.\"\n \n  \"And where will they be going?\"\n \n  \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\nto provide transportation.\"\n \n  \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"\n \n  \"Why ... perhaps. That's Boge's business.\" Gulver looked at Retief with\npursed lips. \"As a matter of fact, we had in mind dispatching another\ntwo thousand to Featherweight.\"\n \n  \"Another under-populated world—and in the same cluster, I believe,\"\nRetief said. \"Your people must be unusually interested in that region\nof space.\"\n \n  \"If that's all you wanted to know, I'll be on my way. I have matters of\nimportance to see to.\"\n \n  After Gulver left, Retief called Miss Furkle in. \"I'd like to have a\nbreak-out of all the student movements that have been planned under the\npresent program,\" he said. \"And see if you can get a summary of what\nMEDDLE has been shipping lately.\"\n \n  Miss Furkle compressed her lips. \"If Mr. Magnan were here, I'm sure\nhe wouldn't dream of interfering in the work of other departments.\nI ... overheard your conversation with the gentleman from the Croanie\nLegation—\"\n \n  \"The lists, Miss Furkle.\"\n \n  \"I'm not accustomed,\" Miss Furkle said, \"to intruding in matters\noutside our interest cluster.\"\n \n  \"That's worse than listening in on phone conversations, eh? But never\nmind. I need the information, Miss Furkle.\"\n \n  \"Loyalty to my Chief—\"\n \n  \"Loyalty to your pay-check should send you scuttling for the material\nI've asked for,\" Retief said. \"I'm taking full responsibility. Now\nscat.\"\n \n  The buzzer sounded. Retief flipped a key. \"MUDDLE, Retief speaking....\"\n \n  Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen.\n \n  \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\"\n \n  \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\"\n \n  In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you,\nRetief,\" he said. \"But have you got anything for me?\"\n \n  Retief waved at the wine bottles. \"What do you know about Croanie?\"\n \n  \"Croanie? Not much of a place. Mostly ocean. All right if you like\nfish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon\ntime. Over a foot long.\"\n \n  \"You on good terms with them?\"\n \n  \"Sure, I guess so. Course, they're pretty thick with Boge.\"\n \n  \"So?\"\n \n  \"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\na dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\nbad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\ngame.\"\n \n  Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n \n  \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\nand grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n \n  \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\nobserved. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\nto time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n \n  \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n \n  Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.\n \n  \"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\"\n \n  \"What would you say to two thousand?\"\n \n  \"Two thousand? Retief, you're not fooling?\"\n \n  \"I hope not.\" He picked up the phone, called the Port Authority, asked\nfor the dispatch clerk.\n \n  \"Hello, Jim. Say, I have a favor to ask of you. You know that\ncontingent of Bogan students. They're traveling aboard the two CDT\ntransports. I'm interested in the baggage that goes with the students.\nHas it arrived yet? Okay, I'll wait.\"\n \n  Jim came back to the phone. \"Yeah, Retief, it's here. Just arrived.\nBut there's a funny thing. It's not consigned to d'Land. It's ticketed\nclear through to Lovenbroy.\"\n \n  \"Listen, Jim,\" Retief said. \"I want you to go over to the warehouse and\ntake a look at that baggage for me.\"\n \n  Retief waited while the dispatch clerk carried out the errand. The\nlevel in the two bottles had gone down an inch when Jim returned to\nthe phone.\n \n  \"Hey, I took a look at that baggage, Retief. Something funny going on.\nGuns. 2mm needlers, Mark XII hand blasters, power pistols—\"\n \n  \"It's okay, Jim. Nothing to worry about. Just a mix-up. Now, Jim,\nI'm going to ask you to do something more for me. I'm covering for a\nfriend. It seems he slipped up. I wouldn't want word to get out, you\nunderstand. I'll send along a written change order in the morning that\nwill cover you officially. Meanwhile, here's what I want you to do....\"\n \n  Retief gave instructions, then rang off and turned to Arapoulous.\n \n  \"As soon as I get off a couple of TWX's, I think we'd better get down\nto the port, Hank. I think I'd like to see the students off personally.\"\nIV\n \n  Karsh met Retief as he entered the Departures enclosure at the port.\n \n  \"What's going on here?\" he demanded. \"There's some funny business with\nmy baggage consignment. They won't let me see it! I've got a feeling\nit's not being loaded.\"\n \n  \"You'd better hurry, Mr. Karsh,\" Retief said. \"You're scheduled to\nblast off in less than an hour. Are the students all loaded?\"\n \n  \"Yes, blast you! What about my baggage? Those vessels aren't moving\nwithout it!\"\n \n  \"No need to get so upset about a few toothbrushes, is there, Mr.\nKarsh?\" Retief said blandly. \"Still, if you're worried—\" He turned to\nArapoulous.\n \n  \"Hank, why don't you walk Mr. Karsh over to the warehouse and ...\nah ... take care of him?\"\n \n  \"I know just how to handle it,\" Arapoulous said.\n \n  The dispatch clerk came up to Retief. \"I caught the tractor equipment,\"\nhe said. \"Funny kind of mistake, but it's okay now. They're being\noff-loaded at d'Land. I talked to the traffic controller there. He said\nthey weren't looking for any students.\"\n \n  \"The labels got switched, Jim. The students go where the baggage was\nconsigned. Too bad about the mistake, but the Armaments Office will\nhave a man along in a little while to dispose of the guns. Keep an eye\nout for the luggage. No telling where it's gotten to.\"\n \n  \"Here!\" a hoarse voice yelled. Retief turned. A disheveled figure in a\ntight hat was crossing the enclosure, arms waving.\n \n  \"Hi there, Mr. Gulver,\" Retief called. \"How's Boge's business coming\nalong?\"\n \n  \"Piracy!\" Gulver blurted as he came up to Retief, puffing hard. \"You've\ngot a hand in this, I don't doubt! Where's that Magnan fellow?\"\n \n  \"What seems to be the problem?\" Retief said.\n \n  \"Hold those transports! I've just been notified that the baggage\nshipment has been impounded. I'll remind you, that shipment enjoys\ndiplomatic free entry!\"\n \n  \"Who told you it was impounded?\"\n \n  \"Never mind! I have my sources!\"\n \n  Two tall men buttoned into gray tunics came up. \"Are you Mr. Retief of\nCDT?\" one said.\n \n  \"That's right.\"\n \n  \"What about my baggage!\" Gulver cut in. \"And I'm warning you, if those\nships lift without—\"\n \n  \"These gentlemen are from the Armaments Control Commission,\" Retief\nsaid. \"Would you like to come along and claim your baggage, Mr. Gulver?\"\n \n  \"From where? I—\" Gulver turned two shades redder about the ears.\n\"Armaments?\"\n \n  \"The only shipment I've held up seems to be somebody's arsenal,\" Retief\nsaid. \"Now if you claim this is your baggage....\"\n \n  \"Why, impossible,\" Gulver said in a strained voice. \"Armaments?\nRidiculous. There's been an error....\"\nAt the baggage warehouse Gulver looked glumly at the opened cases of\nguns. \"No, of course not,\" he said dully. \"Not my baggage. Not my\nbaggage at all.\"\n \n  Arapoulous appeared, supporting the stumbling figure of Mr. Karsh.\n \n  \"What—what's this?\" Gulver spluttered. \"Karsh? What's happened?\"\n \n  \"He had a little fall. He'll be okay,\" Arapoulous said.\n \n  \"You'd better help him to the ship,\" Retief said. \"It's ready to lift.\nWe wouldn't want him to miss it.\"\n \n  \"Leave him to me!\" Gulver snapped, his eyes slashing at Karsh. \"I'll\nsee he's dealt with.\"\n \n  \"I couldn't think of it,\" Retief said. \"He's a guest of the Corps, you\nknow. We'll see him safely aboard.\"\n \n  Gulver turned, signaled frantically. Three heavy-set men in identical\ndrab suits detached themselves from the wall, crossed to the group.\n \n  \"Take this man,\" Gulver snapped, indicating Karsh, who looked at him\ndazedly, reached up to rub his head.\n \n  \"We take our hospitality seriously,\" Retief said. \"We'll see him aboard\nthe vessel.\"\n \n  Gulver opened his mouth.\n \n  \"I know you feel bad about finding guns instead of school books in\nyour luggage,\" Retief said, looking Gulver in the eye. \"You'll be busy\nstraightening out the details of the mix-up. You'll want to avoid\nfurther complications.\"\n \n  \"Ah. Ulp. Yes,\" Gulver said. He appeared unhappy.\n \n  Arapoulous went on to the passenger conveyor, turned to wave.\n \n  \"Your man—he's going too?\" Gulver blurted.\n \n  \"He's not our man, properly speaking,\" Retief said. \"He lives on\nLovenbroy.\"\n \n  \"Lovenbroy?\" Gulver choked. \"But ... the ... I....\"\n \n  \"I know you said the students were bound for d'Land,\" Retief said. \"But\nI guess that was just another aspect of the general confusion. The\ncourse plugged into the navigators was to Lovenbroy. You'll be glad to\nknow they're still headed there—even without the baggage.\"\n \n  \"Perhaps,\" Gulver said grimly, \"perhaps they'll manage without it.\"\n \n  \"By the way,\" Retief said. \"There was another funny mix-up. There\nwere some tractors—for industrial use, you'll recall. I believe you\nco-operated with Croanie in arranging the grant through MEDDLE. They\nwere erroneously consigned to Lovenbroy, a purely agricultural world. I\nsaved you some embarrassment, I trust, Mr. Gulver, by arranging to have\nthem off-loaded at d'Land.\"\n \n  \"D'Land! You've put the CSU's in the hands of Boge's bitterest enemies!\"\n \n  \"But they're only tractors, Mr. Gulver. Peaceful devices. Isn't that\ncorrect?\"\n \n  \"That's ... correct.\" Gulver sagged. Then he snapped erect. \"Hold the\nships!\" he yelled. \"I'm canceling the student exchange—\"\n \n  His voice was drowned by the rumble as the first of the monster\ntransports rose from the launch pit, followed a moment later by the\nsecond, Retief watched them out of sight, then turned to Gulver.\n \n  \"They're off,\" he said. \"Let's hope they get a liberal education.\"\nV\n \n  Retief lay on his back in deep grass by a stream, eating grapes. A tall\nfigure appeared on the knoll above him and waved.\n \n  \"Retief!\" Hank Arapoulous bounded down the slope and embraced Retief,\nslapping him on the back. \"I heard you were here—and I've got news\nfor you. You won the final day's picking competition. Over two hundred\nbushels! That's a record!\"\n \n  \"Let's get on over to the garden. Sounds like the celebration's about\nto start.\"\n \n  In the flower-crowded park among the stripped vines, Retief and\nArapoulous made their way to a laden table under the lanterns. A tall\ngirl dressed in loose white, and with long golden hair, came up to\nArapoulous.\n \n  \"Delinda, this is Retief—today's winner. And he's also the fellow that\ngot those workers for us.\"\n \n  Delinda smiled at Retief. \"I've heard about you, Mr. Retief. We\nweren't sure about the boys at first. Two thousand Bogans, and all\nconfused about their baggage that went astray. But they seemed to like\nthe picking.\" She smiled again.\n \n  \"That's not all. Our gals liked the boys,\" Hank said. \"Even Bogans\naren't so bad, minus their irons. A lot of 'em will be staying on. But\nhow come you didn't tell me you were coming, Retief? I'd have laid on\nsome kind of big welcome.\"\n \n  \"I liked the welcome I got. And I didn't have much notice. Mr. Magnan\nwas a little upset when he got back. It seems I exceeded my authority.\"\n \n  Arapoulous laughed. \"I had a feeling you were wheeling pretty free,\nRetief. I hope you didn't get into any trouble over it.\"\n \n  \"No trouble,\" Retief said. \"A few people were a little unhappy with\nme. It seems I'm not ready for important assignments at Departmental\nlevel. I was shipped off here to the boondocks to get a little more\nexperience.\"\n \n  \"Delinda, look after Retief,\" said Arapoulous. \"I'll see you later.\nI've got to see to the wine judging.\" He disappeared in the crowd.\n \n  \"Congratulations on winning the day,\" said Delinda. \"I noticed you at\nwork. You were wonderful. I'm glad you're going to have the prize.\"\n \n  \"Thanks. I noticed you too, flitting around in that white nightie of\nyours. But why weren't you picking grapes with the rest of us?\"\n \n  \"I had a special assignment.\"\n \n  \"Too bad. You should have had a chance at the prize.\"\n \n  Delinda took Retief's hand. \"I wouldn't have anyway,\" she said. \"I'm\nthe prize.\"\n", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "18c9c61e7ecc4132b9ef185ffceda36f", "response_text": "Second Secretary Magnan will be away from the Manpower Utilization Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education (MUDDLE) for two weeks, leaving Retief in charge. Magnan reminds Retief that his role is to act as a rubber stamp, continuing Magnan’s actions. Magnan points out that Retief should appreciate that Bogan is participating in the Exchange Program. Its participation might be a step toward sublimating their aggression into more cultivated channels. The Bogans are sending two thousand students to d’Land as exchange students, and Magnan thinks this might end their aggression and bring them into the cultural life of the Galaxy. Retief wonders aloud what the students will study in such a poor, industrial land. Magnan points out that this is none of Retief’s concern and that his role is simply to facilitate bringing the two groups together. When Miss Furkle, the secretary, buzzes Magnan that the bucolic person from Lovenbroy is there again, Magnan pushes the meeting off onto Retief.\n\nThe person from Lovenbroy is named Hank Arapoulous. He is a farmer and tells Retief that the Bacchus vines that they use to make their wine mature every twelve years and that this year is a harvest year, but they are short on workers to harvest the grapes. They have a shortage of workers for the harvest due to their conflict over strip mining and the loss of several of their young men in the battles to prevent it. Also, Lovenbroy had to borrow money from Croanie, and the loan was due. The wine crop will put them in the clear if they can harvest it. The biggest concern is what Croanie will do with the land if they can’t pay the loan; Lovenbroy has offered half its grape acreage as security for the loan it received. Hank asks Retief for a loan, but Retief tells him that MEDDLE’s role is only for transportation. Hank says he also checked with the Labor Office, but it only offered to set them up with machinery. \n\nRetief attends a council meeting and learns that Croanie will receive a shipment of strip mining equipment. A spokesman for the Special Committee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Under-developed Nations’ General Economies (SCROUNGE) indicates he has been trying to get mining equipment for d’Land. He tells Retief that Boge is a troublemaker, so all the agencies in the Corps are trying to appease her. Upon further discussion, Retief learns that d’Land doesn’t have a university for the exchange students to attend, just a technical college that would be overwhelmed to receive 200, much less 2,000, students. \n\nRetief also learns that all the exchange students are males, and their “luggage” is full of weapons. He diverts their luggage and sends the exchange students to Lovenbroy, where they help harvest the grapes. Retief is also sent to Lovenbroy for exceeding his authority. Hank tells Retief that he has won the prize for the picking competition. The prize is a girl named Delinda.\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "5eecd525b99b4c098873d1b84d8594ef", "response_text": "Retief is left in charge of his division while his superior, Magnan, is out of the office. After a farmer from the planet Lovenbroy tries to enlist his help with a labor shortage, Retief realizes a complex plot has been set into motion by the government of the planet Boge. The Bogans are sending two-thousand students to the planet D’Land, except there’s no school to accommodate them there and they’re not actually students but soldiers. They’ve also arranged to have weapons and war vehicles shipped under the guise of student baggage and tractors. Boge is using the financial leverage they have with the planet Croanie to get them to help with these shipments, and to ultimately allow the Bogans to take over Lovenbroy (a planet in debt to Lovenbroy that Boge has tried and failed to conquer in the past), D’Land, and potentially another planet. After Retief uncovers how all of these plans and planets are connected, he moves to disrupt them. He reroutes the “students” to Lovenbroy to help with their grape harvest and allow them to get out of their debt to Croanie, and the war machines to D’Land where they’ll be out of Bogan hands. The end of the story finds Retief on Lovenbroy, where he has been sent because his superiors aren’t happy that he meddled with the Bogan situation. Retief doesn’t seem to mind his exile to Lovenbroy at all, as he has just won the grape harvest competition and met the beautiful woman who claims to be his prize. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "89f91bacbaa542399d95ad7cd50f72ef", "response_text": "\tAfter Second Secretary Magnan took his temporary leave of the Manpower Utilization Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education (AKA MUDDLE), Retief, his subordinate, is put in charge. Retief’s first order of business is dealing with Hank Arapoulous who came to MUDDLE to ask for some help harvesting the Bacchus grapes. He shares that they are indebted to Croanie, who loaned them funds after a failed invasion from the Bogans. Arapoulous is worried that the Croanie’s will be able to come in and harvest the grapes (as well as take the land) for themselves if they can’t pay the debt since they hold the mortgage on some of the acreage. After sharing some wine (alternating between red and black), Retief agrees to try and see if he can send some helping hands to Lovenbroy, Arapoulous’ home planet. \n\tRetief soon discovers that MEDDLE, another division at the Manpower Utilization Director, has authorized a shipment of 500 tractors that will be sent to Croanie. Retief questions Mr. Whaffle about it, and he explains that they are in need of heavy mining equipment. However, Croanie is mostly made up of fisheries, so there’s nothing to mine there. Retief questions other shipments as well, including the authorized transport of 2,000 Bogan students to d’Land. He discovers that there is only one technical college on d’Land and that it would be overwhelmed with just 200 transfer students. As well, Boge and d’Land have a very tense relationship; such a trade would be very rare. Sensing something fishy, Retief continues his search. \n\tOn his way to greet the incoming students, Retief stops at a bar and meets their teacher, Mr. Karsh. He describes training them as if they were in the military, not as if they were students. They leave together to meet the students. Retief arranged for a variety of fun events for the students, but Mr. Karsh shuts it all down. He simply wants to know when their luggage, flying in on a Croanie ship, will get in and when they will leave. \n\tQuickly, their plot falls apart as Retief researches these tractors and discovers they are machines built for war. After interrogating Mr. Whaffle about the shipment, he discovers that the tractors are going to Lovenbroy. He speaks to Mr. Gulver, a Bogan representative, who reveals that he just submitted an application for transportation for another 2,000 students. Retief then discovers the student’s luggage was bound for Lovenbroy and filled with army-grade weaponry. Putting it all together, Retief sends the students to Lovenbroy without their weapons, hands Mr. Karsh off to Arapoulous for a frank talking to, and sends the tractors to d’Land. The plan now thwarted, the students help harvest the Bacchus grapes. \n\tRetief was sent to Lovenbroy as punishment. He joins the harvest and ends up picking the most grapes of them all. His prize is a beautiful blonde woman. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "ce65bca558e94733a2a713d042040902", "response_text": "Corps HQ is a diplomatic entity that houses a number of intergalactic departments, including the Manpower Utilization Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education (MUDDLE), which employs the story’s protagonist, Retief. Retief reports to Second Secretary Magnan, who is taking some time off and asks Retief to manage affairs in his absence. He reminds Retief of a group of students from the planet Boge who will be traveling to the planet d’Land as part of an Exchange Program. Magnan’s hope is this program will help the warring Bogans better assimilate into the Galaxy’s culture. While he is gone, Retief meets with a man named Hank Arapoulous, who represents a planet called Lovenbroy, known for its plentiful grape harvests. Over wine, Hank requests labor to harvest the crop essential to their livelihood on Lovenbroy, and Retief learns of their connection to a planet called Croanie. Several years ago, the farmers of Lovenbroy had to defend their mineral resources against their neighbors, and they lost a lot of money and men in the process. Therefore, they had to borrow money from Croanie, and Hank is afraid they won’t be able to pay their debt on time without enough hands to harvest their grape crop. In addition, in their desperation, the farmers of Lovenbroy pawned the mortgage of their vineyards to Croanie thinking the twelve-year crop rotation would buy them enough time to pay back their debts. Retief says he will try to find a solution to his problem, and he sets about to attend the Intergroup Council and meet with the Bogan students set to depart for d’Land. At the Council meeting, he learns Croanie is set to receive a shipment of mining equipment from the Corps, and the school on d’Land set to receive the 2,000 Bogan students could hardly accommodate 200. At a bar later, Retief meets a man named Karsh, who drunkenly reveals he is training the students for something other than studying. At the library later, Retief learns that the tractors being sent to Croanie are not mining equipment, but are heavily armored with firepower. When Retief questions why so many tractors are being sent to a planet without the capacity to process them, he learns the excess will be sent to Boge. Retief deduces the entire situation is a Bogan plot to send troops to d’Land and have Croanie provide the military equipment sourced from Corps grants. Instead, Retief has representatives from Armaments confiscate the students’ luggage (which are actually filled with guns) and sends the “students” to Lovenbroy instead, where they help the farmers harvest their grape crop. Later, on Lovenbroy, Retief wins the grape-picking competition and celebrates with a local woman named Delinda, his prize for winning."}]}, {"question_text": "Who are the Bogans, and what happens to their plan?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "18c9c61e7ecc4132b9ef185ffceda36f", "response_text": "The Bogans are people who have a history of aggression within the Nicodemean Cluster. In the last twenty years, they have launched four military campaigns against other Galaxy members; because of this, they are known as the Hoodlums of the Nicodemean Cluster. They have agreed to send 2,000 of their students to participate in the Exchange Program in d’Land that the Manpower Utilization Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education is facilitating. This agreement is a curiosity to Retief because d’Land is a poor, industrial society, so he wonders what the Bogans will study there. His superior, Second Secretary Magnan, tells him that is none of his business and to be sure not to antagonize the Bogan representative. According to the Special Committee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Underdeveloped Nations’ General Economies (SCROUNGE) committeeman, every agency in the Corps is trying to appease Boge since Boge is a well-known troublemaker. He also informs Retief that d’Land has no universities, just an under-endowed technical college that could not handle 200, much less 2,000, exchange students. He also tells Retief that most of d’Land’s problems result from an unwise trade agreement that it made with Boge.\n\n Retief meets Karsh, a Scoutmaster who trained the Bogan students; he made it like a game but says they know how to handle a CSU. As the Bogan students come through Customs and see Mr. Karsh, they snap to attention. Mr. Karsh refuses to let the students leave the airport. Retief notices that all the exchange students are males, and Karsh tells him they wanted to see how the first group of students was received before sending any females. Retief realizes that Bogan students are headed to a place that has no classrooms for the students. In the meantime, the tractors are being sent to Croanie, a world under obligation to Boge, and Croanie holds the mortgage to the best vineyards in Lovenbroy. Retief looks up the tractors that are being sent to Croanie and discovers they are armored vehicles with a half-megaton per second firepower. Retief learns that these continental siege units are ultimately being sent to Lovenbroy, which is rich in minerals, on behalf of Boge. Retief also learns that Boge has an application to send another 2,000 students to Croanie and is considering sending 2,000 more to Featherweight. Retief learns that Boge tried to take over Lovenbroy several years earlier and would have succeeded if not for bad luck. Retief calls a friend who works in transport and learns that the Bogan students’ luggage is all being sent to Lovenbroy, and when he looked in the luggage, it was all weapons. Retief diverts the luggage and sends the students on to Lovenbroy to help with the grape harvest for the vineyards. He impounds the luggage full of weapons.\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "5eecd525b99b4c098873d1b84d8594ef", "response_text": "The Bogans are the people from the planet Boge. According to Retief’s superior, they are known as the “hoodlums” of the nearby universe and have launched multiple military campaigns in the recent past. Despite this, no one seems to suspect the Bogans when they claim to be participating in a “cultural exchange”.  They plan to send “students” who are really intended to be soldiers and guns to D’Land, a planet that loves peace but isn’t on good terms with Boge. Another planet, Croanie, has fallen into debt to Boge and is facilitating a transshipment of “tractors” that are actually devices only useful for war or mining, making it seem like they might also be looking to take over Lovenbroy (which they tried, unsuccessfully, to do in the past, as well as another small nearby planet referenced in the story, Featherweight. Their plans are thwarted by Retief when he figures out what they are up to and reroutes the weaponry to D’Land and the students to Lovenbroy. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "89f91bacbaa542399d95ad7cd50f72ef", "response_text": "\tThe Bogans are the people of Boge, a planet that lies in the same cluster as Lovenbroy and Croanie. The Bogans attempted to invade Lovenbroy ten years back, and, though they managed to fight for one year, they were eventually defeated. Their goal was to mine the land for the rich minerals that lay below the surface. \n\tAfter scheming with Croanie (who loaned money and resources to Lovenbroy post-war), the Bogans were able to develop a plan to finally invade Lovenbroy successfully. By using grants and a ploy of educating 2,000 of their students, the Bogans were almost able to ship 2,000 male soldiers to Lovenbroy with an array of weaponry in their duffel bags. The Bogans lied and said that they were sending these “students” to d’Land to study there at the university. As well, Croanie aided them in acquiring 500 death tractors. These Bolo WV M-1s are incredibly dangerous tanks that can travel extremely fast and are outfitted with a bulldozer blade. Thanks to this added blade, they were able to market them as simply tractors, not the weapons of war they truly are. The tractors were on their way to Lovenbroy when Retief caught wind of their plan and stopped their shipment. He sent them to d’Land instead, an enemy of the Bogans. \n\tRetief further destroyed their plan by sending the trained boys to Lovenbroy without their weaponry. He sent them to this beautiful planet so they could help Arapoulous in harvesting the Bacchus grapes. Fully thwarted and upset, Mr. Gulver, the Bogan representative, admits defeat and somehow escapes any true diplomatic punishment. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "ce65bca558e94733a2a713d042040902", "response_text": "The Bogans are a warring people from the planet Boge who have started four wars in the past twenty years throughout the galaxy. Because of their warlike tendencies, the Corps bends over backward to work with them to restore diplomacy to the galaxy. Boge has a trade agreement with the small, underpopulated planet of d’Land, which they use to their advantage in hatching their plan to overtake them. They also have a hold over the planet of Croanie, which controls the vineyard mortgages on the planet of Lovenbroy. The Bogan representative, Mr. Gulver, manipulates the incompetent functions of the Corps to procure grants for 500 armored tractors to be sent to Croanie, which cannot process that amount. The plan is to send the excess to Boge. In addition, he has worked out an agreement with Second Secretary Magnan to send 2,000 students to d’Land’s technical college, which cannot accommodate that many students. Retief discovers that the students’ luggage contains guns, and so he puts all the pieces together and discovers the Bogans’ plan to overtake d’Land rather than sublimate themselves. Retief sends the students to Lovenbroy to help harvest the grapes, and the guns are confiscated by representatives from the Armaments department."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Hank Arapoulous, and what does he do in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "18c9c61e7ecc4132b9ef185ffceda36f", "response_text": "Hank Arapoulousis is first described as a “bucolic person from Lovenbroy.” He is a farmer, tall with bronze skin and gray hair, who comes to MUDDLE’s office to discuss the harvest problems in Lovenbroy. They grow Bacchus vines, which only mature once every twelve years. This year is a harvest year, but they don’t have enough people to harvest the grapes. Arapoulousis explains to Retief that a few years ago, Boge landed a force on Lovenbroy to try to mine their minerals by strip-mining. Lovenbroy fought back for a year but lost a lot of its men. This created financial problems, so Lovenbroy borrowed money from Croanie, mortgaging its crops. The loan is due, and the wine crop will cover the loan amount, but they don’t have enough people to harvest the grapes. He is worried that if they don’t have a great harvest, Croanie will come in and start mining. Also, if they default on the loan, Croanie will hold half of the grape acreage that they used to secure the loan. Arapoulousis has also asked for help from the Labor Office, but they only offered to send them machinery, and machines cannot harvest the grapes. He returns to see Retief the following day to find out if Retief has discovered a way to help. When Mr. Karsh makes a scene about the missing luggage for the exchange students, Retief has Arapoulousis take Karsh away and “take care of him.” When they return, Karsh is stumbling and needs support to stand up. Arapoulousis explains that Karsh fell. \nRetief sends the exchange students to Lovenbroy with Arapoulousis to help with the harvest. As the harvest is winding down, Arapoulousis tells Retief that Retief has won the award for the picking competition. Arapoulousis is also the person who judges the wine contest.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "5eecd525b99b4c098873d1b84d8594ef", "response_text": "Hank Arapolous is a farmer from the planet Lovenbroy, who beseeches Retief to send laborers to help with their grape harvest. He is described as tall and broad with gray hair and tanned skin, and he says he is 28 in Lovenbroy years, or 42 in terrestrial years. He is friendly, honest, and informal, though he is worried throughout most of the story about his people and his planet. He asks Retief for help getting labor to assist with Lovenbroy’s grape harvest so they don’t default on their debt to another planet, Croanie. He also informs Retief about Lovenbroy’s relationships and history with other planets, which helps Retief put the pieces together regarding what the Bogans are trying to do. He assists Retief with his plans and introduces him to Lovenbroy wine. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "89f91bacbaa542399d95ad7cd50f72ef", "response_text": "Hank Arapoulous is a farmer from Lovenbroy. He tends to the land and is very invested in the arts and architecture part of his culture as well. Although he hybridizes fruit as well for his job (apples the size of melons!), his love for his home planet comes first. He is a very stocky and sturdy man, around Retief’s height. He is middle-aged, in his early 40s in Terrestrial years but only 28 in Lovenbroy years. He’s a silver fox with gray hair and tan skin. \n\tArapoulous arrives at MUDDLE in need of help and assistance. The Bacchus wine, which he cultivates, has two varieties, red and black. The crop is only harvested every 12 years, but this year they have a shortage of harvesters. He asks Retief to send over some pickers since the other departments had already turned him down. \n\tArapoulous plays a very important role in this story as he introduces Retief to the diplomatic relations between Lovenbroy, Croanie, and the Borge. After explaining that the Lovenbroy are in debt to the Croanie (who came to their aid after a one-year war with the Boge), Retief soon realizes that a great plot is at hand. When all is discovered and Retief manages to thwart the Borge takeover of Lovenbroy, Arapoulous helps him interrogate and punish Karsh, the militaristic leader of the Borge boys. \n\tVictorious and proud, Arapoulous returns to Lovenbroy with 2,000 mighty helping hands. The Borge boys who were trained to take over Lovenbroy are now being used to harvest its mighty crop. Arapoulous is thrilled at the turn of events, especially since only hoped for 100 men, and is even more excited when he learns that Retief might be staying on Lovenbroy for a while. With his home safe from prying eyes and greedy hands, Arapoulous ends the story on a high note. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "ce65bca558e94733a2a713d042040902", "response_text": "Hank Arapoulous is a representative from the planet Lovenbroy. He is a farmer who is very passionate about the Bacchus vines they grow. These vines produce a crop on a twelve-year rotation, and he comes to Retief seeking labor to help harvest the crop. Without the labor, they will not be able to pay back their debt to Croanie, the planet that owns the mortgage on Lovenbroy’s vineyards. Hank tells Retief he is 28 years old, but later he learns Hank is closer to 42 because of the variation in the Terry years they use to track time on his planet. Hank is gregarious and passionate about the wine they produce, and he shares the red and black variations with Retief, who enjoys both. Retief agrees to help Hank, and during his inquiries, he discovers the Bogan plot to incite military action against d’Land. Later, Hank helps Retief in bamboozling the Bogan representative, Mr. Gulver, by joining Karsh and the students on the ship bound for Lovenbroy. After Retief returns to Lovenbroy and wins the grape-picking competition, Hank rewards him with a visit from a local woman named Delinda."}]}, {"question_text": "What is Lovenbroy, and why is it important?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "18c9c61e7ecc4132b9ef185ffceda36f", "response_text": "Lovenbroy is one of the members of the Nicodemean Cluster and part of the cultural life of the Galaxy. Lovenbroy is known for its exquisite wines produced from the Bacchus vines, which only mature once every twelve years. Lovenbroy is important for the Galaxy culture because, during the time when it is not raising and harvesting grapes and other crops, it makes important cultural contributions. They have created parks and farms and left sizable forests for hunting. They offer skiing, bob-sledding, and ice skating in the spring while it is still cold. They also create fine furniture, sculpture, and art. During the summer, they offer beach parties, drama, and symphonies. The land is full of minerals, which led Boge to land a force to strip-mine some of the resources. Lovenbroy fought back, but it took a year, and it lost many men. This has left Lovenbroy short-handed for this year’s grape harvest. It also took a financial toll on Lovenbroy, and it had to borrow money from Croanie, mortgage its crops, and export its artwork. The loan is due during the harvest year, and without enough men to pick the grapes, Croanie will come in and take over half the vineyard land and mine it. Croanie is under obligation to Boge, and Boge is behind the scheme of sending “exchange students” supposedly to d’Land but really to Lovenbroy to take its minerals. "}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "5eecd525b99b4c098873d1b84d8594ef", "response_text": "Lovenbroy is a small planet that depends on its grape crop and winemaking to sustain its economy. It is important to the story because a man from Lovenbroy asks Retief for help getting labor to harvest their grapes so they can pay their debts to Croanie. This interaction leads Retief to further investigate a series of events that has been set into motion wherein soldiers, weapons, and drilling equipment are being transported in disguise. In trying to right the wrongs that he discovers, Retief is also able to send two-thousand men to help with the harvest. Lovenbroy is also significant because it is where Retief is sent as punishment for his actions, though he doesn’t seem to mind being stationed on the agreeable planet. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "89f91bacbaa542399d95ad7cd50f72ef", "response_text": "Lovenbroy is a beautiful, lush, and rich planet mostly made up of islands. It is the only place where Bacchus grapes can be grown, and its resources are highly coveted. Lovenbroy has five seasons throughout one Lovenbroy year (which is six months longer than a Terrestrial year). Their winters are long and harsh, with little to no sunlight all day long. This forced indoor time led to a very artistic culture springing up. Many spend the winters painting and sculpting. This necessary indoor time has made the Lovenbroy very keen on architecture. Spring is also pretty cold, but warm and light enough to woodwork and play a few sports. Then comes the season of music, where it rains all day but the sun constantly shines. The summer is incredibly hot, which forces people indoors again during the day, but able to play come the evening! Then it’s autumn, which is harvest time for all crops, including the Bacchus grapes every 12 years. \n\tLovenbroy has many rich resources, most likely thanks to its mostly untouched landscape and erratic seasons. The land is ingrained with many minerals that have, so far, remained un-mined. Thanks to these minerals and metals in the soil, the trees (and then harvested timber) that are produced are colored differently. \n\tLovenbroy, being the home of so many invaluable resources, is fought for. A decade before the story began, Lovenbroy was invaded by the Boge who wanted to mine for minerals. After one year of war, the Lovenbroy managed to defeat the Boge, but it left them with a crippled economy and a depleted workforce. Croanie stepped in to help and gave them several loans. However, 10 years later, Lovenbroy is still in debt to Croanie. Harvesting the Bacchus grapes will give them enough revenue to pay off their loans, but they need more harvesters. \n\tLovenbroy is the main source of conflict in this story. Croanie and Boge work together to try and take over Lovenbroy and deplete the land of its resources. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "ce65bca558e94733a2a713d042040902", "response_text": "Lovenbroy is a planet known for its vast vineyards of Bacchus vines used to produce delicious red and black wines. The vineyards cover mountains, stretch along riversides, and snake through beautiful gardens. Fertile grass springs up throughout the vineyards, and every twelve years, the entire population comes together to celebrate the crop and harvest the fruit together. Lovenbroy also has a rich source of minerals use to enrich their wine, and a few years ago one of their neighbors came to fight for control of these minerals. Lovenbroy ultimately won the battle, but they lost a lot of money and men in the fight, and they had to turn to the planet Croanie for financial assistance. Ultimately, they sold control of the mortgage on their vineyards to Croanie as well, thinking the twelve-year gap between harvests would be enough time to repay the debt. They were wrong, and they send a representative—Hank Arapoulous—to Corps HQ to seek additional labor to help pick the new harvest in time. This visit to Retief’s office kickstarts the chain of events that lead to Retief’s discovery of the Bogan plan to take military action against d’Land."}]}, {"question_text": "What is Croanie, and why is it important in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "18c9c61e7ecc4132b9ef185ffceda36f", "response_text": "Croanie is a member of the Nicodemean Cluster of the Galaxy and is an associate of Boge, a member known to be a troublemaker. They tried to steal minerals from Lovenbroy earlier by attacking them. Croanie is under obligation to Boge. Croanie is the world that gave Lovenbroy a loan when it needed money to help tide it over until its next grape harvest. Croanie gave Lovenbroy a mortgage on its crops and holds a security interest in half of the grape acreage that it will acquire if Lovenbroy cannot meet the loan payment that is coming due. This is the reason that Hank Arapoulous goes to MEDDLE and asks for help obtaining workers to go to Lovenbroy and harvest the crop. It also turns out that Croanie is involved in Boge’s efforts to attack Lovenbroy and gain access to its minerals. Mr. Whaffle reveals to Retief that Croanie is set to receive a shipment of heavy mining equipment, but Croanie is best known for its oceans and fishing and has no ore. In addition, when the Bogan exchange students arrive without their luggage, Mr. Karsh says their luggage is coming from Croanie. When their luggage does arrive, it is full of weapons. The “tractors” that are being shipped to Croanie are really armored vehicles that are continental siege units that carry four men and have a half-megaton/second firepower. Mr. Whaffle reveals that the tractors are for transshipment and that Croanie is in a difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise, with Boge. There is also an application for 2,000 more “exchange students” to be sent to Croanie.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "5eecd525b99b4c098873d1b84d8594ef", "response_text": "Croanie is a planet that consists mostly of fisheries and is known for their seafood. They loaned another planet, Lovenbroy, some money when they were struggling, and the people of Croanie have also found themselves in debt to Boge, a nearby planet known as a local bully. Because of this, Croanie finds itself deeply entwined in Boge’s web of interplanetary plots by transshipping siege units and/or mining equipment and letting Boge take advantage of their mortgage on Lovenbroy’s best land. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "89f91bacbaa542399d95ad7cd50f72ef", "response_text": "Croanie is another planet that neighbors Lovenbroy and Boge. It is the home of many fisheries and seamen. Croanie has developed an alliance with the Bogans, who attempted to invade Lovenbroy ten years ago. When they failed, the Croanie swooped in and offered loans and assistance to the depleted and wounded Lovenbroy. \n\tLater on down the line, Croanie and the Bogans hatched a plot to take over Lovenbroy and mine their resources. The Croanie use grants and diplomatic immunity to acquire 500 Bolos, model WV M-1. These are essentially outfitted superpowered tanks that have a bulldozer blade attached (hence the ability to label them as tractors) to make demolition easier. Once Croanie acquired the “tractors,” Boge would send over 4,000 young Bogan boys to Lovenbroy who were trained and ready to invade. Together, their siege would completely overwhelm the Lovenbroy and destroy their home. \nThanks to Arapoulous coming to MUDDLE for help, Retief was able to piece together the random bits of the puzzle and thwart their plan. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "ce65bca558e94733a2a713d042040902", "response_text": "Croanie is a mostly-aquatic planet known for its exports of seafood. They provide foot-long prawn to Lovenbroy. They also have close ties to the planet of Boge, whose inhabitants are nicknamed the “Hoodlums of the Nicodemean Cluster.” Croanie owns the mortgage on Lovenbroy’s vast vineyards after a battle over their minerals left them financially wrecked. A Croanie ship brings the luggage bearing the Bogans’ weapons to meet the group of Bogan students who are set to fly to d’Land to attend the Exchange Program. The students are actually soldiers, who will supposedly use the weapons to overtake d’Land. They also are the recipients of a grant from the MEDDLE program that will supply them with 500 tractors—an amount they cannot process with the facilities they have on their planet. They will send the excess tractors to Boge, which will use them in turn to attack d’Land."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61204", "uid": "14b4516244994712850343266cbe42b7", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE RECRUIT\n \n\n BY BRYCE WALTON\n \n\n It was dirty work, but it would make him a man. And kids had a right to grow up—some of them!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs.\n \n The old man with his thick neck, thick cigar, evening highball, potgut and bald head without a brain in it. His slim mother with nervously polite smiles and voice fluttering, assuring the old man by her frailty that he was big in the world. They were squareheads one and all, marking moron time in a gray dream. Man, was he glad to break out.\n \n The old man said, \"He'll be okay. Let him alone.\"\n \n \"But he won't eat. Just lies there all the time.\"\n \n \"Hell,\" the old man said. \"Sixteen's a bad time. School over, waiting for the draft and all. He's in between. It's rough.\"\n \n Mother clasped her forearms and shook her head once slowly.\n \n \"We got to let him go, Eva. It's a dangerous time. You got to remember about all these dangerous repressed impulses piling up with nowhere to go, like they say. You read the books.\"\n \n \"But he's unhappy.\"\n \n \"Are we specialists? That's the Youth Board's headache, ain't it? What do we know about adolescent trauma and like that? Now get dressed or we'll be late.\"\n \n Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. Blab-blab about the same old bones, and end up chewing them in the same old ways. Then they begin all over again. A freak sideshow all the way to nowhere. Squareheads going around either unconscious or with eyes looking dead from the millennium in the office waiting to retire into limbo.\n \n How come he'd been stuck with parental images like that? One thing—when he was jockeying a rocket to Mars or maybe firing the pants off Asiatic reds in some steamy gone jungle paradise, he'd forget his punkie origins in teeveeland.\n \n But the old man was right on for once about the dangerous repressed impulses. Wayne had heard about it often enough. Anyway there was no doubt about it when every move he made was a restrained explosion. So he'd waited in his room, and it wasn't easy sweating it out alone waiting for the breakout call from HQ.\n \n \"Well, dear, if you say so,\" Mother said, with the old resigned sigh that must make the old man feel like Superman with a beerbelly.\n \n They heard Wayne slouching loosely down the stairs and looked up.\n \n \"Relax,\" Wayne said. \"You're not going anywhere tonight.\"\n \n \"What, son?\" his old man said uneasily. \"Sure we are. We're going to the movies.\"\n \n He could feel them watching him, waiting; and yet still he didn't answer. Somewhere out in suburban grayness a dog barked, then was silent.\n \n \"Okay, go,\" Wayne said. \"If you wanta walk. I'm taking the family boltbucket.\"\n \n \"But we promised the Clemons, dear,\" his mother said.\n \n \"Hell,\" Wayne said, grinning straight into the old man. \"I just got my draft call.\"\n \n He saw the old man's Adam's apple move. \"Oh, my dear boy,\" Mother cried out.\n \n \"So gimme the keys,\" Wayne said. The old man handed the keys over. His understanding smile was strained, and fear flicked in his sagging eyes.\n \n \"Do be careful, dear,\" his mother said. She ran toward him as he laughed and shut the door on her. He was still laughing as he whoomed the Olds between the pale dead glow of houses and roared up the ramp onto the Freeway. Ahead was the promising glitter of adventure-calling neon, and he looked up at the high skies of night and his eyes sailed the glaring wonders of escape.\n \n \n\n \n He burned off some rubber finding a slot in the park-lot. He strode under a sign reading Public Youth Center No. 947 and walked casually to the reception desk, where a thin man with sergeant's stripes and a pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork.\n \n \"Where you think you're going, my pretty lad?\"\n \n Wayne grinned down. \"Higher I hope than a typewriter jockey.\"\n \n \"Well,\" the sergeant said. \"How tough we are this evening. You have a pass, killer?\"\n \n \"Wayne Seton. Draft call.\"\n \n \"Oh.\" The sergeant checked his name off a roster and nodded. He wrote on a slip of paper, handed the pass to Wayne. \"Go to the Armory and check out whatever your lusting little heart desires. Then report to Captain Jack, room 307.\"\n \n \"Thanks, sarge dear,\" Wayne said and took the elevator up to the Armory.\n \n A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, \"So make up your mind, bud. Think you're the only kid breaking out tonight?\"\n \n \"Hold your teeth, pop,\" Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. \"I've decided.\"\n \n The corporal's little eyes studied Wayne with malicious amusement.\n\"Take it from a vet, bud. Sooner you go the better. It's a big city and you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes are clever hellcats in a dark alley.\"\n \n \"You must be a genius,\" Wayne said. \"A corporal with no hair and still a counterboy. I'm impressed. I'm all ears, Dad.\"\n \n The corporal sighed wearily. \"You can get that balloon head ventilated, bud, and good.\"\n \n Wayne's mouth twitched. He leaned across the counter toward the shelves and racks of weapons. \"I'll remember that crack when I get my commission.\" He blew smoke in the corporal's face. \"Bring me a Smith and Wesson .38, shoulder holster with spring-clip. And throw in a Skelly switchblade for kicks—the six-inch disguised job with the double springs.\"\n \n The corporal waddled back with the revolver and the switchblade disguised in a leather comb case. He checked them on a receipt ledger, while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the cylinder and pushed cartridges into the waiting chamber. He slipped the knife from the comb case, flicked open the blade and stared at its gleam in the buttery light as his mouth went dry and the refracted incandescence of it trickled on his brain like melted ice, exciting and scary.\n \n He removed his leather jacket. He slung the holster under his left armpit and tested the spring clip release several times, feeling the way the serrated butt dropped into his wet palm. He put his jacket back on and the switchblade case in his pocket. He walked toward the elevator and didn't look back as the corporal said, \"Good luck, tiger.\"\n \n Captain Jack moved massively. The big stone-walled office, alive with stuffed lion and tiger and gunracks, seemed to grow smaller. Captain Jack crossed black-booted legs and whacked a cane at the floor. It had a head shaped like a grinning bear.\n \n Wayne felt the assured smile die on his face. Something seemed to shrink him. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls.\n \n Contemptuously amused little eyes glittered at Wayne from a shaggy head. Shoulders hunched like stuffed sea-bags.\n \n \"Wayne Seton,\" said Captain Jack as if he were discussing something in a bug collection. \"Well, well, you're really fired up aren't you? Really going out to eat 'em. Right, punk?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Wayne said. He ran wet hands down the sides of his chinos. His legs seemed sheathed in lead as he bit inwardly at shrinking fear the way a dog snaps at a wound. You big overblown son, he thought, I'll show you but good who is a punk. They made a guy wait and sweat until he screamed. They kept a guy on the fire until desire leaped in him, ran and billowed and roared until his brain was filled with it. But that wasn't enough. If this muscle-bound creep was such a big boy, what was he doing holding down a desk?\n \n \"Well, this is it, punk. You go the distance or start a butterfly collection.\"\n \n The cane darted up. A blade snicked from the end and stopped an inch from Wayne's nose. He jerked up a shaky hand involuntarily and clamped a knuckle-ridged gag to his gasping mouth.\n \n Captain Jack chuckled. \"All right, superboy.\" He handed Wayne his passcard. \"Curfew's off, punk, for 6 hours. You got 6 hours to make out.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n \"Your beast is primed and waiting at the Four Aces Club on the West Side. Know where that is, punk?\"\n \n \"No, sir, but I'll find it fast.\"\n \n \"Sure you will, punk,\" smiled Captain Jack. \"She'll be wearing yellow slacks and a red shirt. Black hair, a cute trick. She's with a hefty psycho who eats punks for breakfast. He's butchered five people. They're both on top of the Undesirable list, Seton. They got to go and they're your key to the stars.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Wayne said.\n \n \"So run along and make out, punk,\" grinned Captain Jack.\n \n \n\n \n A copcar stopped Wayne as he started over the bridge, out of bright respectable neon into the murky westside slum over the river.\n \n Wayne waved the pass card, signed by Captain Jack, under the cop's quivering nose. The cop shivered and stepped back and waved him on. The Olds roared over the bridge as the night's rain blew away.\n \n The air through the open window was chill and damp coming from Slumville, but Wayne felt a cold that wasn't of the night or the wind. He turned off into a rat's warren of the inferiors. Lights turned pale, secretive and sparse, the uncared-for streets became rough with pitted potholes, narrow and winding and humid with wet unpleasant smells. Wayne's fearful exhilaration increased as he cruised with bated breath through the dark mazes of streets and rickety tenements crawling with the shadows of mysterious promise.\n \n He found the alley, dark, a gloom-dripping tunnel. He drove cautiously into it and rolled along, watching. His belly ached with expectancy as he spotted the sick-looking dab of neon wanly sparkling.\n \n  FOUR ACES CLUB\n \n \n He parked across the alley. He got out and stood in shadows, digging the sultry beat of a combo, the wild pulse of drums and spinning brass filtering through windows painted black.\n \n He breathed deep, started over, ducked back. A stewbum weaved out of a bank of garbage cans, humming to himself, pulling at a rainsoaked shirt clinging to a pale stick body. He reminded Wayne of a slim grub balanced on one end.\n \n The stewbum stumbled. His bearded face in dim breaking moonlight had a dirty, greenish tinge as he sensed Wayne there. He turned in a grotesque uncoordinated jiggling and his eyes were wide with terror and doom.\n \n \"I gotta hide, kid. They're on me.\"\n \n Wayne's chest rose and his hands curled.\n \n The bum's fingers drew at the air like white talons.\n \n \"Help me, kid.\"\n \n He turned with a scratchy cry and retreated before the sudden blast of headlights from a Cad bulleting into the alley. The Cad rushed past Wayne and he felt the engine-hot fumes against his legs. Tires squealed. The Cad stopped and a teener in black jacket jumped out and crouched as he began stalking the old rummy.\n \n \"This is him! This is him all right,\" the teener yelled, and one hand came up swinging a baseball bat.\n \n A head bobbed out of the Cad window and giggled.\n \n The fumble-footed rummy tried to run and plopped on wet pavement. The teener moved in, while a faint odor of burnt rubber hovered in the air as the Cad cruised in a slow follow-up.\n \n Wayne's breath quickened as he watched, feeling somehow blank wonder at finding himself there, free and breaking out at last with no curfew and no law but his own. He felt as though he couldn't stop anything. Living seemed directionless, but he still would go with it regardless, until something dropped off or blew to hell like a hot light-bulb. He held his breath, waiting. His body was tensed and rigid as he moved in spirit with the hunting teener, an omniscient shadow with a hunting license and a ghetto jungle twenty miles deep.\n \n The crawling stewbum screamed as the baseball bat whacked. The teener laughed. Wayne wanted to shout. He opened his mouth, but the yell clogged up somewhere, so that he remained soundless yet with his mouth still open as he heard the payoff thuds where the useless wino curled up with stick arms over his rheumy face.\n \n The teener laughed, tossed the bat away and began jumping up and down with his hobnailed, mail-order air force boots. Then he ran into the Cad. A hootch bottle soared out, made a brittle tink-tink of falling glass.\n \n \"Go, man!\"\n \n The Cad wooshed by. It made a sort of hollow sucking noise as it bounced over the old man twice. Then the finlights diminished like bright wind-blown sparks.\n \n Wayne walked over and sneered down at the human garbage lying in scummed rain pools. The smell of raw violence, the scent of blood, made his heart thump like a trapped rubber ball in a cage.\n \n He hurried into the Four Aces, drawn by an exhilarating vision ... and pursued by the hollow haunting fears of his own desires.\n \n \n\n \n He walked through the wavering haze of smoke and liquored dizziness and stood until his eyes learned the dark. He spotted her red shirt and yellow legs over in the corner above a murky lighted table.\n \n He walked toward her, watching her little subhuman pixie face lift. The eyes widened with exciting terror, turned even paler behind a red slash of sensuous mouth. Briefed and waiting, primed and eager for running, she recognized her pursuer at once. He sat at a table near her, watching and grinning and seeing her squirm.\n \n She sat in that slightly baffled, fearful and uncomprehending attitude of being motionless, as though they were all actors performing in a weirdo drama being staged in that smoky thick-aired dive.\n \n Wayne smiled with wry superiority at the redheaded psycho in a dirty T-shirt, a big bruiser with a gorilla face. He was tussling his mouse heavy.\n \n \"What's yours, teener?\" the slug-faced waiter asked.\n \n \"Bring me a Crusher, buddyroo,\" Wayne said, and flashed his pass card.\n \n \"Sure, teener.\"\n \n Red nuzzled the mouse's neck and made drooly noises. Wayne watched and fed on the promising terror and helplessness of her hunted face. She sat rigid, eyes fixed on Wayne like balls of frozen glass.\n \n Red looked up and stared straight at Wayne with eyes like black buttons imbedded in the waxlike skin of his face. Then he grinned all on one side. One huge hand scratched across the wet table top like a furious cat's.\n \n Wayne returned the challenging move but felt a nervous twitch jerk at his lips. A numbness covered his brain like a film as he concentrated on staring down Red the psycho. But Red kept looking, his eyes bright but dead. Then he began struggling it up again with the scared little mouse.\n \n The waiter sat the Crusher down. Wayne signed a chit; tonight he was in the pay of the state.\n \n \"What else, teener?\"\n \n \"One thing. Fade.\"\n \n \"Sure, teener,\" the waiter said, his breathy words dripping like syrup.\n \n Wayne drank. Liquored heat dripped into his stomach. Fire tickled his veins, became hot wire twisting in his head.\n \n He drank again and forced out a shaky breath. The jazz beat thumped fast and muted brass moaned. Drumpulse, stabbing trumpet raped the air. Tension mounted as Wayne watched her pale throat convulsing, the white eyelids fluttering. Red fingered at her legs and salivated at her throat, glancing now and then at Wayne, baiting him good.\n \n \"Okay, you creep,\" Wayne said.\n \n He stood up and started through the haze. The psycho leaped and a table crashed. Wayne's .38 dropped from its spring-clip holster and the blast filled the room. The psycho screamed and stumbled toward the door holding something in. The mouse darted by, eluded Wayne's grasp and was out the door.\n \n Wayne went out after her in a laughing frenzy of release. He felt the cold strange breath of moist air on his sweating skin as he sprinted down the alley into a wind full of blowing wet.\n \n He ran laughing under the crazy starlight and glimpsed her now and then, fading in and out of shadows, jumping, crawling, running with the life-or-death animation of a wild deer.\n \n Up and down alleys, a rat's maze. A rabbit run. Across vacant lots. Through shattered tenement ruins. Over a fence. There she was, falling, sliding down a brick shute.\n \n He gained. He moved up. His labored breath pumped more fire. And her scream was a rejuvenation hypo in his blood.\n \n \n\n \n She quivered above him on the stoop, panting, her eyes afire with terror.\n \n \"You, baby,\" Wayne gasped. \"I gotcha.\"\n \n She backed into darkness, up there against the sagging tenement wall, her arms out and poised like crippled wings. Wayne crept up. She gave a squeaking sob, turned, ran. Wayne leaped into gloom. Wood cracked. He clambered over rotten lumber. The doorway sagged and he hesitated in the musty dark. A few feet away was the sound of loose trickling plaster, a whimpering whine.\n \n \"No use running,\" Wayne said. \"Go loose. Give, baby. Give now.\"\n \n She scurried up sagging stairs. Wayne laughed and dug up after her, feeling his way through debris. Dim moonlight filtered through a sagging stairway from a shattered skylight three floors up. The mouse's shadow floated ahead.\n \n He started up. The entire stair structure canted sickeningly. A railing ripped and he nearly went with it back down to the first floor. He heard a scream as rotten boards crumbled and dust exploded from cracks. A rat ran past Wayne and fell into space. He burst into the third-floor hallway and saw her half-falling through a door under the jagged skylight.\n \n Wayne took his time. He knew how she felt waiting in there, listening to his creeping, implacable footfalls.\n \n Then he yelled and slammed open the door.\n \n Dust and stench, filth so awful it made nothing of the dust. In the corner he saw something hardly to be called a bed. More like a nest. A dirty, lumpy pile of torn mattress, felt, excelsior, shredded newspapers and rags. It seemed to crawl a little under the moon-streaming skylight.\n \n She crouched in the corner panting. He took his time moving in. He snickered as he flashed the switchblade and circled it like a serpent's tongue. He watched what was left of her nerves go to pieces like rotten cloth.\n \n \n\n \n \"Do it quick, hunter,\" she whispered. \"Please do it quick.\"\n \n \"What's that, baby?\"\n \n \"I'm tired running. Kill me first. Beat me after. They won't know the difference.\"\n \n \"I'm gonna bruise and beat you,\" he said.\n \n \"Kill me first,\" she begged. \"I don't want—\" She began to cry. She cried right up in his face, her wide eyes unblinking, and her mouth open.\n \n \"You got bad blood, baby,\" he snarled. He laughed but it didn't sound like him and something was wrong with his belly. It was knotting up.\n \n \"Bad, I know! So get it over with, please. Hurry, hurry.\"\n \n She was small and white and quivering. She moaned but kept staring up at him.\n \n He ripped off his rivet-studded belt and swung once, then groaned and shuffled away from her.\n \n He kept backing toward the door. She crawled after him, begging and clutching with both arms as she wriggled forward on her knees.\n \n \"Don't run. Please. Kill me! It'll be someone else if you don't. Oh, God, I'm so tired waiting and running!\"\n \n \"I can't,\" he said, and sickness soured in his throat.\n \n \"Please.\"\n \n \"I can't, I can't!\"\n \n He turned and ran blindly, half-fell down the cracking stairs.\n \n \n\n \n Doctor Burns, head of the readjustment staff at the Youth Center, studied Wayne with abstract interest.\n \n \"You enjoyed the hunt, Seton? You got your kicks?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n \"But you couldn't execute them?\"\n \n \"No, sir.\"\n \n \"They're undesirables. Incurables. You know that, Seton?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n \"The psycho you only wounded. He's a five-times murderer. And that girl killed her father when she was twelve. You realize there's nothing can be done for them? That they have to be executed?\"\n \n \"I know.\"\n \n \"Too bad,\" the doctor said. \"We all have aggressive impulses, primitive needs that must be expressed early, purged. There's murder in all of us, Seton. The impulse shouldn't be denied or suppressed, but educated . The state used to kill them. Isn't it better all around, Seton, for us to do it, as part of growing up? What was the matter, Seton?\"\n \n \"I—felt sorry for her.\"\n \n \"Is that all you can say about it?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n The doctor pressed a buzzer. Two men in white coats entered.\n \n \"You should have got it out of your system, Seton, but now it's still in there. I can't turn you out and have it erupt later—and maybe shed clean innocent blood, can I?\"\n \n \"No, sir,\" Wayne mumbled. He didn't look up. \"I'm sorry I punked out.\"\n \n \"Give him the treatment,\" the doctor said wearily. \"And send him back to his mother.\"\n \n Wayne nodded and they led him away. His mind screamed still to split open some prison of bone and lay bare and breathing wide. But there was no way out for the trapped. Now he knew about the old man and his poker-playing pals.\n \n They had all punked out.\n \n Like him.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "220b7d4245314ae1bc5be811e3aeff6a", "response_text": "The story opens on a discussion at home between a husband and wife being overheard by their sixteen-year-old son, Wayne. They are distraught over their son’s attitude and attribute it to his age and the buildup of repressed impulses. Wayne views is parents with contempt. He reveals that he has been called to be drafted and leaves them to go to the authorities taking the family automobile.\n\nArriving at the Youth Center, Wayne navigates the bureaucracy of being drafted which involves registering and being issued with a firearm and a switchblade. He bristles against the military authority figures at the youth center, deriding their appearance and position. Wayne is cocky and confident even as he is warned about the dangers of his mission. Wayne is assigned a mission that involves killing a known murderer and his girl. He has six hours of autonomy where he is privileged to operate outside of the normal rule of law.\n\nWayne makes his way to a rougher neighborhood and witnesses another teenager hunt down and brutally murder a vagrant with a baseball bat. Wayne enters the bar which contains his target. He locates and engages them, shooting the man and chasing the woman out of the bar into a crumbling apartment building. When he eventually corners her, she begs him to kill her quickly. Wayne however is overcome with a physical aversion to the violence he was intending to commit.\n\nWayne is later being evaluated back at the Youth Center. It is revealed that society engages teenagers to execute criminals as a preferred outlet for their aggressive impulses. Those that go through with an execution are initiated into the military. Wayne mournfully contemplates that “punking out” in failing to execute his targets relegates him to a shameful, nondescript life much like that of his own father."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "6cbe02858e1e451baab36f057a331c1f", "response_text": "Wayne Seton is a young man with an irrepressible urge. At 16 years old, he’s impatient, hormonal, and waiting for the draft, especially not that school is over. His mothers worries over him, but his father assures her that the draft is the right move. \nSeton receives his draft and quickly runs downstairs, grabs the keys to the car, and leaves, ignoring the fear in his father’s eyes. \nHe arrives at the 947th Youth Center. After checking in at the reception, he makes his way to the armory. He picks out a revolver, a shoulder hoster, and a switchblade disguised as a comb. His arrogance shows through his interactions with the many adults working at the Youth Center. They warn him of the trails he’ll face, and he simply laughs them off. \nFinally, he heads to the elevator that will take him to Captain Jack, the commander of this facility. Seton’s nervousness finally shows in his clammy palms and racing thoughts. Captain Jack intimidates him and questions his nerve and willingness to complete the mission. Captain Jack raises his bear-shaped cane to Seton, a blade sticking out the end of it. He tells Seton he has only six hours before the curfew sets back in. His target is at the Four Aces Club; a pretty woman with brightly colored clothes as well as a larger man, who’d killed five people. \nSeton begins his hunt, driving around town and searching for them. He’s pulled over by a cop trying to enforce the curfew, but one look at his pass card sends shivers down the officer’s spine, and Seton is sent on his way. \nOnce he’s arrived at the club, a bum grabs onto him and asks Seton to protect him. A car rushes in, and a young man jumps out. He beats the bum with a baseball bat, then runs him over with his car. Seton watches in awe. \nFinally, he walks into the bar and stalks his prey. After the man put his hands on the girl, he pulled out his revolver and shot him. The girl escapes and he runs after her. \nShe leads him on an epic chase, eventually stopping at what is assumedly her home.\nShe begs him to shoot her first and then beat her once she’s dead. Seton talks and talks, but his confidence fades. He realizes he feels bad for this girl and runs out, leaving her alive. \nSeton is examined by Doctor Burns back at the Youth Center, who questions him about his inability to complete the mission. He reveals that this system was set in place to rid the world of dangerous criminals and to expel the murderous impulses all people are born with. Since Seton failed, two men came in to take him away and treat him. He realizes that the others were like him; they had also refused to kill and had been given the same treatment.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "a8e62c037525496a80f4fcca4611c6c0", "response_text": "Wayne is a teenage boy who lives with his parents, but doesn’t respect them very much. Because he is 16, he is waiting for a draft call. His parents are worried about him, and suspect he has repressed some impulses to be violent, so they are a mix of relieved and concerned when Wayne tells them that he has received his call. Wayne takes the car that his parents were going to take for their night out, and heads toward the neon lights on the freeway. When he arrives at the Public Youth Center to check in for his draft call, he acts arrogantly to the sergeant at the reception desk. He heads to the armory to pick up two weapons: a Smith & Wesson .38, and a six-inch, spring-loaded Skelly switchblade. Afterwards, he heads to Captain Jack’s office. Captain Jack is the first person Wayne encounters in the story who makes him nervous. The Captain gives Wayne permission to go without curfew or law for six hours, and assigns him a task: a “beast” of a woman on the west side of town, at Four Aces Club, along with the man she is with. Wayne uses his signed pass to get past copy on his way there, driving through darker and darker streets, and  eventually makes it to the club. He ran into a drunk man who tried to ask Wayne for help, but some other teenagers pulled up a car, beat the man to death with a baseball bat, and split. Wayne disappeared into the club and caught eye of his targets. He was able to match the woman’s description to the outfit Captain Jack said she would be wearing, and Wayne sits at a nearby table, watching the woman get nervous. He orders a drink; after he downs it, he gets up, and his targets try to run. He shoots the man before they all run out of the club, chasing each other through alleys and a building that was falling apart. He eventually cornered the woman in a pieced-together bedroom, and she begged him to kill her quickly. She is so tired of running from people sent to kill her that she would like it to be over as quickly as possible. Wayne pulls out his belt to whip her with, but after he swings it once, he starts to retreat. The woman still begs for him to kill her, but his attitude has completely shifted and he insists that he cannot, and runs away. When Wayne goes back to the Youth Center, the doctor in charge of “readjustment” of teenagers scolds Wayne for not killing the woman, both because he believes the two targeted people are terrible people, but also because that means Wayne did not get the violent energy out of his system. The team is sent to receive treatment and be sent back home, and Wayne realizes that these nights end like this more often than he had realized. "}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "eb62c63c6a794ecf83f22d34f85b3a22", "response_text": "Wayne listens at the top of the stairs as his parents discuss their concerns about him. Eva, his mother, worries that Wayne doesn’t eat, and his father explains that he’s only sixteen years old and he’s waiting on his draft card. His father reminds Eva that Wayne’s repressed impulses are not something they should be worrying about because the Youth Board takes care of those.\n\nWayne tells his parents that he just got his draft call, and he demands the car keys and leaves the house. He travels to the Youth Center. When he arrives, he chooses a gun and a knife for his weapons, and he meets up with Captain Jack. Captain Jack tells Wayne that he has one chance to prove himself, and he has six hours to complete his mission. Wayne needs to go to the Four Aces Club and murder two people who top the undesireable list. \n\nOutside of the club, he watches as a homeless person is beaten to death by a teenager. The bum calls out for help, but Wayne ignores his pleas.\n\nOnce he goes inside, he immediately recognizes his two targets, Red the psycho and a mousy girl. His gun fires accidentally, and the girl runs outside. Wayne chases her through dilapidated buildings and into her home where he sees the disgusting nest she sleeps in. Although he knows he is on a mission to bruise her and then kill her, and he has been asked to fulfill this duty, he cannot do it. He feels too badly for her. Even when she begs to be murdered so that she no longer has to live in fear of death, he refuses.\n\nWayne goes back to the Youth Center where Doctor Burns, the head of the readjustment staff at the Youth Center, tells him that he needed to get his impulses out of the way in a controlled environment. Now, he can’t be trusted not to hurt someone else since everyone has those impulses inside of themselves. Wayne is sent for treatment, and he realizes he is just like his father whom he despises. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "220b7d4245314ae1bc5be811e3aeff6a", "response_text": "The story is set in an urban environment in an unspecified time in the future. The story begins in a conventional domestic setting but quickly transitions to a Youth Center and then gritty underbelly of the city. The Youth Center is bureaucratic and clinical with Wayne making his way from registration to the Armory to his assignment. Later he returns to this center for psychological treatment. The inner-city area is known as Slumville and is filled with crumbling infrastructure and violent dealings. It is described as dark and mazelike with semi-abandoned buildings that are on the verge of collapse. The Four Aces Club where the main conflict of the story takes place is a seedy bar in Slumville where undesirables congregate. Smoky and filled with jazzy music, the club becomes a scene of tension and violence as Wayne confronts his targets there."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "6cbe02858e1e451baab36f057a331c1f", "response_text": "The Recruit by Bryce Walton takes place in a modern society, similar to the one we exist in now. The story starts in a normal suburban household. A mother, father, and one son coexist without too much tension. \nHowever, as the story progresses, this world continues to differ from ours. A curfew is set in place, keeping in the acceptable people and allowing the undesirables to be hunted. As the main character continues to explore the city, we see more and more of its darkness. It is grimy and gritty, filled with crime and scared citizens. \nSquatters have taken over abandoned buildings, and the feeling is truly man vs. man, citizen vs. citizen.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "a8e62c037525496a80f4fcca4611c6c0", "response_text": "The story starts in the home of Wayne and his parents, which has at least two stories and is in the suburbs of some city. After a short drive on the freeway, Wayne arrives at the Public Youth Center where he navigates a series of rooms, first an armory with a wide variety of weapons, and then Captain Jack’s office, which had its own sets of weapons, taxidermied animals, and menacing stone walls. After some more driving into town, Wayne heads into darker and darker streets that twist their way towards the club he was told his targets would be at. He parked his car in the alley across from the club, next to a large collection of garbage cans, where he encountered a homeless man. When he made it into the club, he found it to be very hazy and dark, even though it had been night outside already. He sat at his own table in the smoky environment for a while, until it was time to chase his targets. Once outside, the alley turned into a maze of other alleys, parking lots, ruined buildings, and other infrastructure that seems to be falling apart. He followed her up a crumbling staircase in a building that was barely standing, and eventually cornered her in a small room where she had made a makeshift bed to sleep on, created entirely from scraps of anything she could find, including paper and rags. After he left this building after not successfully killing his target, he finds himself back at the Youth Center where the story ends. "}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "eb62c63c6a794ecf83f22d34f85b3a22", "response_text": "Wayne must leave the Youth Center and go out on a mission on a dark night in the city. There are rats, crumbling buildings, potholes, and dangerous happenings around every corner. Outside of the Four Aces Club, Wayne witnesses a deadly assault of a seemingly innocent homeless man. Once inside, he is served an alcoholic beverage even though he is only sixteen. \n\nIn his society, teenagers like Wayne are sent out into the streets to murder people who have committed crimes. The prevailing belief is that all humans have violent impulses inside of them, so allowing teenagers to murder legitimately terrible people will get rid of those impulses and allow for a peaceful society. In the past, the state was responsible for taking care of criminals, but at some point their way of dealing with violent offenders changed. Now, every child that turns sixteen is presented with a draft card. They must report to the local Youth Center, choose a weapon or two, and receive a target to eliminate. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "How is slang used in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "220b7d4245314ae1bc5be811e3aeff6a", "response_text": "Distinctive teenage or “teener” vernacular language is used extensively throughout the story. Wayne uses slang to communicate his dismissiveness of those in authority. People who live commonplace lives are “squareheads” and “punks”. Some typical proper nouns are shortened “Olds” for Oldsmobile, “Cad” for Cadillac. The effect is to cement the story in a future where language has evolved from its current state with teens communicating in a way that distinguishes them from other more conventional member of society. Wayne’s interaction with the waiter is emblematic of this effect. By saying, “Bring me a Crusher,” and then “Fade,” it is signaled to the reader that Wayne views himself as a member of a select group with its own cant."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "6cbe02858e1e451baab36f057a331c1f", "response_text": "The author uses slang throughout the story as a way to designate actions/events that are unfamiliar and to fully immerse the reader. Although no clear definitions are given, the true meaning of the slang is discovered as the story unfolds. At first, the draft and make out are absolutely foreign terms. As the story continues, the reader learns that to make out is to take on the mission assigned to the youth by the Public Youth Center. These terms thrust the reader into the story and show how different this world is from ours."}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "a8e62c037525496a80f4fcca4611c6c0", "response_text": "Slang is the means by which the author denotes various categories of people throughout the story. In this world, people are categorized in large age groups. Wayne refers to people his parents’ age as the Olds, and Wayne himself is referred to multiple times as a teener. This use of slang separates the world in the story from the world of the reader. It seems that Wayne likes to refer to things in casual ways, referring to the family car as a bolt bucket, and really takes the label of punk to heart when he is called that by Captain Jack. When Wayne arrives at the club where his targets are, the car that the other teenagers show up in is referred to as a Cad, presumably short for Cadillac. Another way language is used to delineate groups of people is in calling the hunted people beasts, and using animal imagery to describe them. The targets Wayne was after referred to as beasts, the woman as a mouse, and the man is a cat. This is one way these people are portrayed as less than human. Even during the chase, the woman is regularly referred to as a mouse, even as actual rats are running by as well. However, others are not entirely exempt from this use of animal imagery at the point of comparison, as Wayne is also compared to wild deer when he is chasing after the woman in the alley."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "eb62c63c6a794ecf83f22d34f85b3a22", "response_text": "Slang words are used throughout the story, not only when Wayne is talking, but also when the narrator is explaining characters’ actions. The specific word choices work to make the setting appear unique and mostly dreadful. \n\nWayne refers to his parents as “squareheads” as an insult. Wayne can’t wait to distinguish himself from his parents. He finds them to be monotonous, overbearing, and lame. The slang term is meant to portray them in the light that Wayne sees them. They are not bad people, and they are deeply for their son. They’re just normal, everyday parents, and Wayne wants a more adventurous life. \n\nIn a later scene, the narrator refers to a homeless person on the street as a “stewbum”. The word is definitely not a euphemism for alcoholic, and it doesn’t make the character appear sympathetic. Instead, the use of the term stewbum suggests that he is inferior and is almost deserving of the violence he faces from a seemingly random teenager. \n\nIn the text, teenagers are referred to as “teeners”. Since teenagers have a very important role in this society, and it’s definitely a rite of passage to fulfill the violent mission and purge the criminal that they’ve been assigned to, this slang term makes teenagers seem like a separate class of people. Their ability or inability to make good on their draft card will change the course of their lives, so it’s fitting that they are given a different name.\n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does Wayne interact with the story’s other characters?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "220b7d4245314ae1bc5be811e3aeff6a", "response_text": "Wayne is a cocky, arrogant sixteen-year-old defined by his lack of respect for authority. His main goal in life is to be drafted into the military and lead an adventuring life.\n\nHis unnamed parents care for their son but are nonplussed by his attitude and general demeanor of rebelliousness. They seem to live commonplace lives with domestic trips to the movie theatre or a neighborhood poker game. Wayne views this type of life as detestable. His interaction with his parents is crude and condescending.\n\nThe military officials that Wayne meets in the Youth Center also elicit Wayne’s contempt. He views their desk jobs as an analog to his parents’ “punkie” existence. To Wayne, the only admirable way of life is one of high adventure. He disrespects most of the desk workers, but the commanding officer, Captain Jack, deflates his self-assurance.\n\nWayne is keenly intent on hunting his targets. He stares them down tensely before violently engaging them. female target, nicknamed the “mouse”, is revealed to be a woman without hope. She’s tired of running and just wants to be put out of her misery. Surprisingly, at the moment of truth, Wayne cannot bring himself to execute the woman in cold blood, in his own words, “punking out”. He admits to the doctor analyzing him after his assignment that he felt sorry for her.     \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "6cbe02858e1e451baab36f057a331c1f", "response_text": "In the beginning, Wayne Seton’s interactions are marked by his arrogance, ego, and desire to hunt. He treats his parents as one would children. He over-analyzes their behavior, and, instead of feeling pity for them, he finds them annoying and useless. He’s desperate to break free of this house and this planet. He views himself highly and dreams about his future on Mars or other such grand adventures. \nHis behavior doesn’t change when Seton finally arrives at the Youth Center. He continues to treat the officers with disrespect, although, as he meets with Captain Jack, he begins to become scared. \nHis desire to hunt and break free of his family drives him, as well as his belief that he is beyond all of this. He watches the other men kill the bum with awe and glee. It doesn’t disgust him, rather it interests him. \nHowever, when it comes time to kill his own undesirable, he finds himself unable. He begins to feel pity, empathy, and sympathy. These emotions make it impossible for him to complete his mission. Although he tries to use his arrogance to hype himself up, he ends up admitting that he doesn’t want to kill the woman and runs away. All bark, but no bite.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "a8e62c037525496a80f4fcca4611c6c0", "response_text": "In the first half of the story, Wayne is very cocky in his interactions with other people. He clearly has no respect for his parents, thinks they lack intelligence, and is annoyed with their routines. He felt he could explode at any moment, so being cold and short with them when they had to interact with them is his way of keeping them out of the line of fire of his impulses. He insists on taking the family car, and is still high and mighty when he gets to the Public Youth Center, throwing sass at the sergeant at the reception desk as well as the corporal in the armory. It is only when he meets Captain Jack that he starts to show some humility and nervousness. His hands start to sweat, and the captain calls him a punk a number of times and then startles him, almost whacking Wayne with his cane. Once he gets to the club, Wayne is nervous interacting with the homeless alcoholic who encountering the alley, and is terrified by the other teenagers who arrived to kill this man. After he retreats into the club, Wayne finds a sense of superiority again as he flashes his official documents to be able to order a drink, after he spots his targets. His goal is to make them as uncomfortable as possible, so he sits right near them, and enjoys the opportunity to have a drink on the government’s dime. After he decides to pursue his targets, he shoots the man once before both targets and Wayne make their way outside. Wayne taunts the woman as he chases her through the alley and the dilapidated buildings, and threatens her with what he intends to do to her once he has her cornered. Once he actually strikes her with his belt though, he retreats into himself and is very nervous all of a sudden, and runs away from the woman. He felt sorry for her, and told this to the doctor at the Youth Center as he is scolded. Wayne seems ashamed, apologizes for punking out, and quietly does what he is told by the doctor for the rest of the session."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "eb62c63c6a794ecf83f22d34f85b3a22", "response_text": "Wayne looks down on the other characters in the story, including his own mother and father. He refers to them as squareheads, and he actually finds his mother’s distress and her arguments with his father to be funny. In a brief scene where Wayne demands the car keys from his parents, it’s clear that they are fearful of him. Instead of thanking them for allowing him to use the car, he repays them for their generosity by laughing at them and slamming the door in his mother’s face. Wayne is fully aware that his mother is terrified of his draft call, and he does not allow her to hug him or give him words of encouragement or advice before he leaves the house. \n\nWhen he arrives at the Youth Center, he treats the man at the front desk poorly, and then proceeds to make fun of the corporal who tries to give him advice. Wayne has a bad attitude, and it affects his interactions with everyone. \n\nThe only person that Wayne does not feel like he can treat badly is Captain Jack. Captain Jack is in a serious position of authority, and that makes Wayne nervous. He answers his questions politely. \n\nIt is truly shocking when Wayne is unable to kill the mousy woman that he was assigned to purge. He has her cornered in an abandoned and run-down building, but he can’t go through with the violence, no matter how much he wants to. In the meeting that takes place afterwards, he tells the doctor that he felt bad for the woman. Therefore, Wayne does have a conscience, even if he likes to pretend that he does not. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does this society seek to deal with violence?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "220b7d4245314ae1bc5be811e3aeff6a", "response_text": "The expository dialogue by Doctor Burns at the end of the story provides some insight into how this society views the tendency toward violence in its citizens and retributive criminal justice. The prevailing understanding is that adolescents (presumably adolescent men) are subjected to aggressive and violent impulses. The society seeks to provide these teens a preferred outlet for these impulses in the form of a violent act in service of the state. Typical this seems to be the execution of an undesirable member of society who is viewed as beyond redemption. This permitted brutality is thought to get it out of a teen’s system and prepare him for a life as a contributing member in the state’s military apparatus. The result of this situation is a dramatically violent society where untrained youths are recruited to act as vicious vigilantes who terrorize anyone labelled as undesirable. "}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "6cbe02858e1e451baab36f057a331c1f", "response_text": " In the final passages of the story, Wayne Seton, the protagonist, sees a doctor after his failed attempt to eliminate two alleged criminals. Despite feeling the spark and need to hunt and kill earlier, when faced with a scared young woman, he was unable to complete his task. \nDoctor Burns, a member of the readjustment staff at the center where Seton was drafted, takes a look over Seton after he returned. Although Seton enjoyed the thrill of the chase, his empathy and sympathy got the better of him. \nAfter examining him, Dr. Burns reveals the reason why Seton was sent on this mission in the first place. In this abstract reality, those who have committed heinous crimes (in this case, paternal murder and multiple homicides) are labeled as unwanted and unable to change. Instead of sending them to prison for their crimes where they may spend the rest of their lives or receive the death penalty, they send young adults out to hunt them down. \nAt 16 years old, school ends for the teenagers in this society. Once school is over, all the young adults must wait for their draft to come in. \nThey believe that each person is born with a dangerous impulse to kill. If it can be expelled at a young age and used on a person who deserves it, then there’s no risk of a violent crime later on. \nThe justice system is executed by everyday people, instead of a team of soldiers or the government. \nAs well, if the 16-year-olds complete their mission, they will be shot off to space and continue their work in the galaxy.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "a8e62c037525496a80f4fcca4611c6c0", "response_text": "In this society, instead of imposing penalties like death row, the government uses teenagers to end the lives of the people the society has deemed the biggest criminals. Part of this is an attempt to acknowledge the violent impulses that they expect teenagers to have, so this program is meant to give teenagers an outlet to expend this energy in hopes of getting rid of it entirely. Violent tendencies are clearly expected of everyone, as part of a more primitive instinct of sorts. The two people that Wayne was given as targets both killed people outside of this designated time, and so society decided they had to die. There is this tension between government sanctioned murder and other murder. This opportunity for teenagers to address their aggression also serves as a sort of test, and their ability to successfully eliminate their targets determines their future in some way. Formally, this means that the teenagers are given their own choice of weapons, and a six-hour pass to do whatever they want, including breaking curfew and any other laws. However, what happens to them going forward depends on the success of killing their targets in the six hours."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "eb62c63c6a794ecf83f22d34f85b3a22", "response_text": "When the children in this society turn sixteen, they are forced to take a draft call. They must go to a local Youth Center and take orders from an established captain. The kids choose the weapons they would like to use, and they head out to take down a dangerous individual or multiple individuals. When Wayne is stopped by a cop at the beginning of his mission, all he has to do is show the police officer the card he has, and he’s free to continue on into the darkness. This means that his mission is sanctioned by the state. \n\nAfter Wayne fails to commit the beatings and murders that he’s been assigned, he must receive some sort of treatment from a doctor. The thinking is that all people are born with impulses to commit violence, and those that cannot bring themselves to do it in a state sanctioned way are now in danger of hurting people that do not deserve it. The society asks the teenagers to kill the criminals because they believe it fulfills two necessities at once. Dangerous people are expelled from society, and adolescents can be trusted not to turn into violent individuals because they have already gotten it out of their systems.  \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "62569", "uid": "f901edb5df454c6b84a1360123e50605", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "\n\n\n\nProduced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\nThe Monster Maker\nBy RAY BRADBURY\n\"Get Gunther,\" the official orders read. It\n   \n  was to laugh! For Click and Irish were\n   \n  marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only\n   \n  weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.\n \n  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n   \n  Planet Stories Spring 1944.\n   \n  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n   \n  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nSuddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get\nscared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening\nto it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a\ndamned sweet picture of everything that was happening.\n \n  The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,\nwrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the\ndark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this\nmeteor coming like blazing fury.\n \n  Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's\nskin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the\nrear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.\n \n  There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was\npicked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't\nlong in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to\nhis camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had\nbeen of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of\nthe controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.\n \n  It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\nrushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\ntom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n \n  Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\nnearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\nended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\nmetal death. What a fade-out!\n \n  \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n \n  \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n \n  \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n \n  Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\nready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"\n \n  They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of\ngravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.\n \n  The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over\nand stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled\naround—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,\nair and energy flung out.\n \n  Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking\nquick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach\nfilm, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like\nthis\none! His\nbrain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his\ncamera.\nSilence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.\nHathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked\nto his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold\nthat pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the\nwreckage into that silence.\n \n  He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his\nfingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,\nthinking \"Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—\"\n \n  A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven\nfeet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.\n \n  \"Hold it!\" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera\nwhirred. \"Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed\nfrom asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!\"\n \n  \"From the toe of me boot!\" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders\nflexed inside his vac-suit. \"I might've died in there, and you nursin'\nthat film-contraption!\"\n \n  Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that.\nMarnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always\nhave. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to.\" Hathaway\nstared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he\ncouldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,\npale. \"Where are we?\"\n \n  \"A million miles from nobody.\"\n \n  They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that\nstretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.\nOverhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look\nsick.\n \n  \"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking\nhands the other side of this rock in two hours.\" Marnagan shook his mop\nof dusty red hair. \"And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd\ncapture that Gunther lad!\"\n \n  His voice stopped and the silence spoke.\n \n  Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. \"I checked\nmy oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left.\"\n \n  The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric\nrocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply\nmashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or\nwas\nsuffocation a better death...?\nSixty minutes.\nThey stood and looked at one another.\n \n  \"Damn that meteor!\" said Marnagan, hotly.\n \n  Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:\n\"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked\nit right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.\nSpace-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've\ngot it here, on film.\"\n \n  Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. \"It's not proof we need\nnow, Click. Oxygen. And then\nfood\n. And then some way back to Earth.\"\n \n  Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\nhere somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\nOh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\nto Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\nwhose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\nthrough to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\nyours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\nbony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\nmuch to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.\n \n  Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\nwith except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\nfifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\nbe Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\nyou like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\nwords, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\nit. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\nhobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n \n  Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\nIt's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\nthe crash this way.\"\n \n  Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\ndown, and the green eyes blazed.\n \n  They stopped, together.\n \n  \"Oops!\" Click said.\n \n  \"Hey!\" Marnagan blinked. \"Did you feel\nthat\n?\"\n \n  Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and\nlimbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\"\n \n  They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\"\n \n  They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.\n\"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\"\n \n  \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No\nwonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!\nGunther'd do anything to—did I say\nanything\n?\"\n \n  Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\ncame up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\nhorrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\nnumerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\ntubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\nin the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n \n  Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\ncold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\nafter him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\nClick's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\nthe creatures at all.\n \n  \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\ntoward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"\n \n  Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. \"They're\ntoo big; they can't get us in here!\" Click's voice gasped it out,\nas Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.\nInstinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a\nscene!\"\n \n  \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\"\n \n  \"Use your gun.\"\n \n  \"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,\neh, Click?\"\n \n  \"Yeah. Sure.\nYou\nenjoyed it, every moment of it.\"\n \n  \"I did that.\" Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. \"Now, what\nwill we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\"\n \n  \"Let me think—\"\n \n  \"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\nfunny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\nand Gunther and—\n \n  \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\nblue one?\"\n \n  Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\nnow you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n \n  \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n \n  That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\nout.\n \n  Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\nsitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\nme a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n \n  Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\nthis swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n \n  \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\nwaitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\nrescue!\"\n \n  Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n \n  Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\nsaid. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\nmy capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\nnegotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"\n \n  Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\nfor nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\naround in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\nhis mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\nMarnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n \n  Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\nfor the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\nmuch effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\nwall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\nanything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\nhad sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n \n  When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\nup arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:\n \n  \"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt\nback on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,\nwhat's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space\nwar isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory\nis lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which\ndispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?\nSuper-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.\nIt's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes\nunseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces.\"\n \n  Marnagan rumbled. \"Where is the dirty son, then!\"\n \n  \"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at\nthe beasts. \"People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from\nwounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals\ntend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle\nhis attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the\nPatrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,\nthen.\"\n \n  \"I don't see no Base around.\"\nClick shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and\na spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped\nit out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it\ndeveloped, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing\nfilm. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,\nleaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the\nimpressions. Quick stuff.\n \n  Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,\nClick handed the whole thing over. \"Look.\"\n \n  Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. \"Ah,\nClick. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented.\"\n \n  \"Huh?\"\n \n  \"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid\nmonsters complete.\"\n \n  \"What!\"\n \n  Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:\nPictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally\nwith\nnothing\n; Marnagan shooting his gun at\nnothing\n; Marnagan\npretending to be happy in front of\nnothing\n.\n \n  Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!\n \n  The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair\nlike a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.\nMaybe—\n \n  Hathaway said it, loud: \"Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this\nmess! Here—\"\n \n  He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,\nthe beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the\nmonsters weren't there, they weren't there.\n \n  \"Yeah,\" said Marnagan. \"But step outside this cave—\"\n \n  \"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid,\" said Click.\n \n  Marnagan scowled. \"You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or\ninfra-red or something that won't come out on film?\"\n \n  \"Nuts! Any color\nwe\nsee, the camera sees. We've been fooled.\"\n \n  \"Hey, where\nyou\ngoing?\" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man\ntried pushing past him.\n \n  \"Get out of the way,\" said Hathaway.\n \n  Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. \"If anyone is going anywhere,\nit'll be me does the going.\"\n \n  \"I can't let you do that, Irish.\"\n \n  \"Why not?\"\n \n  \"You'd be going on my say-so.\"\n \n  \"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?\"\n \n  \"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—\"\n \n  \"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\naside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\nbones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\nexcept under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\nthis voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\nfor teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\neducation. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\nprofile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\nLion's Den.\"\n \n  \"Irish, I—\"\n \n  \"Shut up and load up.\"\n \n  Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n \n  \"Ready, Click?\"\n \n  \"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\nThink it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n \n  \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n \n  \"All the way, Irish.\"\n \n  \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n \n  Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\ntwo, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\nwaiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n \n  Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\nmonsters!\n \n  Only now it was only Marnagan.\n \n  No more monsters.\n \n  Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\nat me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\nran away!\"\n \n  \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\nanimated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\nfigments!\"\n \n  \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\ncoward!\"\n \n  \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n \n  \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\nyour sweet grey eyes?\"\n \n  \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\nwindow-wipers in these helmets?\"\n \n  \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"\n \n  \"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\nhunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\nof his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\ninto their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\nsuspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\nkill them.\"\n \n  \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n \n  \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\nhave frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\nthat isn't being dangerous—\"\n \n  The Irishman whistled.\n \n  \"But, we've got to\nmove\n, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.\nIn that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,\nGunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click\nattached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're\ndead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never\nhad a chance to disbelieve them.\"\n \n  \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\"\n \n  \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click\nstopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and\nfelt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady\nhimself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.\nThis excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\"\n \n  Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\nguy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n \n  \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\ncame from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\nback!\"\n \n  \"Come back? How?\"\n \n  \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\nbelieve in them again, they'll return.\"\n \n  Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\nwe believe in 'em?\"\n \n  Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\nin them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\nfelt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"\n \n  \"\nDo\nwe, now?\"\n \n  \"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—\"\n \n  \"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?\"\n \n  Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. \"Just think—I will see\nthe monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.\nThink it over and over.\"\n \n  Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. \"And—what if I forget to remember\nall that? What if I get excited...?\"\n \n  Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at\nIrish.\n \n  Marnagan cursed. \"All right, lad. Let's have at it!\"\n \n  The monsters returned.\nA soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming\nin malevolent anticipation about the two men.\n \n  \"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a\nsending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!\"\n \n  Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted\nfaces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.\nMarnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and\nraised his gun and made quick moves with it. \"Click! This one here!\nIt's real!\" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense\nframe slammed against rock, noiselessly.\n \n  Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the\nhelmet glass with his hands, shouting:\n \n  \"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into\nyour mind! It's not real, I tell you!\"\n \n  \"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n\"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n\"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n \n  \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n \n  Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\nirritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n \n  Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\nlittle bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\nLet me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\nforget.\"\n \n  Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\nbesides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"\n \n  The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.\nEvidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.\n \n  \"We'll be taking our chances on guard,\" hissed Irish. \"I'll go ahead,\ndraw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,\nyou\nshow up with\nyour\ngun....\"\n \n  \"I haven't got one.\"\n \n  \"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They\nprobably got scanners out. Let them see me—\"\n \n  And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about\nfive hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved\nup, and there was a door opening in the rock.\n \n  His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. \"A\ndoor, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!\"\n \n  Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the\nthud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.\n \n  Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.\n \n  \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different\nradio. One of Gunther's guards.\n \n  Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.\n \n  The strange harsh voice said, \"That's better. Don't try and pick that\ngun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.\nHow'd you get past the animals?\"\n \n  Click started running. He switched off his\nsending\naudio, kept his\nreceiving\non. Marnagan, weaponless.\nOne\nguard. Click gasped. Things\nwere getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running\nand listening to Marnagan's lying voice:\n \n  \"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles\nand stacked them up to dry, ya louse!\" Marnagan said. \"But, damn you,\nthey killed my partner before he had a chance!\"\n \n  The guard laughed.\nThe air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head\nswimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He\nlet himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't\nhave a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!\n \n  A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that\nyellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,\nair hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a\nproton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard\nhad his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: \"I think I'll let\nyou stand right there and die,\" he said quietly. \"That what Gunther\nwanted, anway. A nice sordid death.\"\n \n  Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.\n \n  \"Don't move!\" he snapped. \"I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One\ntwitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind\nyou! Freeze!\"\n \n  The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped\nhis gun to the floor.\n \n  \"Get his gun, Irish.\"\n \n  Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.\n \n  Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. \"Thanks for\nposing,\" he said. \"That shot will go down in film history for candid\nacting.\"\n \n  \"What!\"\n \n  \"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door\nleading into the Base?\"\n \n  The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.\n \n  Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.\n\"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double\ntime! Double!\"\n \n  Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on\ntheir backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,\nhid him in a huge trash receptacle. \"Where he belongs,\" observed Irish\ntersely.\n \n  They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing\nmore than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.\nPerfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was\nshort-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to\nrocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for\ncargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the\nswarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't\nwanted. They were scared off.\n \n  The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of\nintricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film\nwith images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them\ninto thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.\n \n  \"So here we are, still not much better off than we were,\" growled\nIrish. \"We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn\nup any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the\nmonsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?\"\n \n  \"What good would that do?\" Hathaway gnawed his lip. \"They wouldn't fool\nthe engineers who created them, you nut.\"\n \n  Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come\nriding over the hill—\"\n\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S.\nCavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me.\nWe'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\"\n \n  Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\"\n \n  \"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture\nof Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face\nwhen you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an\nactor are you?\"\n \n  \"That's a silly question.\"\n \n  \"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of\nyou, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart\nand fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down\nand twitch on the ground. Is that clear?\"\n \n  \"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula....\"\n \n  An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a\nsort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,\nlined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a\nwide, green-lawned Plaza.\n \n  Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked\nacross the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that\nwas pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.\n \n  He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.\n \n  He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and\npushed him into a room where Gunther sat.\n \n  Hathaway looked at him. \"So you're Gunther?\" he said, calmly. The\npirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,\nquestioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of\nmetal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he\ncould speak, Hathaway said:\n \n  \"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and\nwe're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men\nagainst your eighty-five.\"\n \n  Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\ntwitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\ndirectness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\nlast. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\npursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n \n  \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n \n  \"Impossible!\"\n \n  \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n \n  A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\non carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\nstarted yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\nof his office. He stared, hard.\n \n  The Patrol was coming!\n \n  Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.\nFive hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis\nguns with them in their tight hands.\n \n  Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.\n\"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!\"\n \n  Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway\nhad to credit them on that. They took it, standing.\n \n  Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.\nHis camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him\nfrom filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was\nthrowing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his\nfragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.\n \n  Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\nof the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\ntwitch. God, what photography!\n \n  Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\nfired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\nThen Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\ntaking place immediately outside his window.\n \n  The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\nout of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"\nOne of the Patrolmen stopped firing, and ran toward Click and the\nBuilding. He got inside. \"Did you see them run, Click boy? What an\nidea. How did we do?\"\n \n  \"Fine, Irish. Fine!\"\n \n  \"So here's Gunther, the spalpeen! Gunther, the little dried up pirate,\neh?\" Marnagan whacked Hathaway on the back. \"I'll have to hand it to\nyou, this is the best plan o' battle ever laid out. And proud I was to\nfight with such splendid men as these—\" He gestured toward the Plaza.\n \n  Click laughed with him. \"You should be proud. Five hundred Patrolmen\nwith hair like red banners flying, with thick Irish brogues and broad\nshoulders and freckles and blue eyes and a body as tall as your\nstories!\"\n \n  Marnagan roared. \"I always said, I said—if ever there could be an\narmy of Marnagans, we could lick the whole damn uneeverse! Did you\nphotograph it, Click?\"\n \n  \"I did.\" Hathaway tapped his camera happily.\n \n  \"Ah, then, won't that be a scoop for you, boy? Money from the Patrol so\nthey can use the film as instruction in Classes and money from Cosmic\nFilms for the news-reel headlines! And what a scene, and what acting!\nFive hundred duplicates of Steve Marnagan, broadcast telepathically\ninto the minds of the pirates, walking across a Plaza, capturing the\nwhole she-bang! How did you like my death-scenes?\"\n \n  \"You're a ham. And anyway—five hundred duplicates, nothing!\" said\nClick. He ripped the film-spool from the camera, spread it in the air\nto develop, inserted it in the micro-viewer. \"Have a look—\"\n \n  Marnagan looked. \"Ah, now. Ah, now,\" he said over and over. \"There's\nthe Plaza, and there's Gunther's men fighting and then they're turning\nand running. And what are they running from? One man! Me. Irish\nMarnagan! Walking all by myself across the lawn, paralyzing them. One\nagainst a hundred, and the cowards running from me!\n \n  \"Sure, Click, this is better than I thought. I forgot that the film\nwouldn't register telepathic emanations, them other Marnagans. It\nmakes it look like I'm a mighty brave man, does it not? It does. Ah,\nlook—look at me, Hathaway, I'm enjoying every minute of it, I am.\"\nHathaway swatted him on his back-side. \"Look here, you egocentric son\nof Erin, there's more work to be done. More pirates to be captured. The\nPatrol is still marching around and someone might be suspicious if they\nlooked too close and saw all that red hair.\"\n \n  \"All right, Click, we'll clean up the rest of them now. We're a\ncombination, we two, we are. I take it all back about your pictures,\nClick, if you hadn't thought of taking pictures of me and inserting\nit into those telepath machines we'd be dead ducks now. Well—here I\ngo....\"\n \n  Hathaway stopped him. \"Hold it. Until I load my camera again.\"\n \n  Irish grinned. \"Hurry it up. Here come three guards. They're unarmed.\nI think I'll handle them with me fists for a change. The gentle art of\nuppercuts. Are you ready, Hathaway?\"\n \n  \"Ready.\"\n \n  Marnagan lifted his big ham-fists.\n \n  The camera whirred. Hathaway chuckled, to himself.\n \n  What a sweet fade-out this was!\n", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "7", "uid": "2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1", "response_text": "“Click” Hathaway, a photographer, is on a spaceship with “Irish” Marnagan, the ship’s pilot, as the ship is hit by a meteor and crashes\n\nAfter the crash, Hathaway jokes about getting a shot of Marnagan emerging from the wreckage, which Marnagan takes offense to, pointing out he could have been dead; Hathaway says he took it for granted that Marnagan would survive.  Marnagan states that they could walk the entire diameter of the planet they are on in four hours, but Hathaway points out that he has only an hour of oxygen.  Hathaway states that he has photo evidence that the meteor that hit their ship was thrown at them, probably by Gunther, the person Marnagan is trying to capture, but Marnagan redirects their priorities to oxygen, food, and a way back to earth.\n\nAs they walk in search of help, they notice that there is human-made gravity on the planet.  Immediately after making that discovery, they encounter an enormous herd of dangerous beasts.  When Marnagan discovers his gun is ineffective as a weapon, they flee to a nearby cave for protection, as the cave is too small for the beasts to enter.\n\nMarnagan asks Hathaway to take a picture of him with the beasts.  Hathaway snaps several pictures of Marnagan posing at a safe distance.  Hathaway then says that between the “natural” meteors, gravity, and beasts, their crash will look accidental rather than like murder.  He shows Marnagan the pictures he shot, intending to use the beasts as part of his argument, but Marnagan protests that his film is “lousy” as only Marnagan, appears in the shots and not the beasts.  When Hathaway confirms this is so, he is insistent that the film cannot lie.  If the beasts do not appear in the photos, they don’t exist.\n\nWhen they emerge from the cave and the animals are gone, the men are at first elated.  Hathaway quickly realizes, though, that with their oxygen running low and limiting the time they have to find Gunther’s base and fresh oxygen, they must get the beasts to return so that they can follow the beasts to their source--Gunther’s base.\n\nThe men concentrate on the beasts and the beasts reappear; Hathaway and Marnagan locate a source point and head toward it.  Marnagan believes he is being attacked by a beast, but when Hathaway reminds him the monsters are fake, Marnagan is able to resist the telepathic message.  Marnagan enters the cave where it appears the animals are coming from and finds an air-lock door and a tunnel before he is captured by a guard.  He tells the guard his partner is dead.\n\nHathaway creeps in through the air-lock door to see Marnagan held at gunpoint.  Hathaway fools the guard into believing he is armed, takes his gun, and gets the guard to guide him and Marnagan to oxygen.  They then use photos of Marnagan, inserted in the telepath machines, to take over Gunther’s fortress and capture him.  The story ends with Hathaway taking a triumphant posed picture of Marnagan."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d", "response_text": "Click Hathaway and Irish Marnagan are on patrol, looking for the space pirate Gunther that no one has ever seen before. Marnagan is an Interplanetary Patrolman from Luna Base who hired Hathaway to travel with him and film the pirate's capture. He wants to use the film footage to teach Junior Patrolmen how to get out of difficult situations. While Hathaway is filming, a meteor strikes their spaceship, knocking it down to an asteroid. The ship splits open, so there is no way for them to leave the asteroid. They both have 60 minutes of oxygen remaining. At first, they think the meteor was an accident, but then Hathaway remembers that it was red-hot and glowing before it struck them, and he knows that meteors in space are never glowing hot. Hathaway is convinced that Gunther lobbed the meteor at them to make them crash. As they begin walking on the surface of the meteor, they notice a change in the gravity in one place and realize that they have stumbled upon Gunther’s hideout. Then a horde of monsters comes charging at them, making Hathaway and Marnagan run for their lives and hide in a small cave. Marnagan fires his gun at the beasts, but it does not affect them.\n\nMarnagan has Hathaway film him facing the beasts. Hathaway has invented a film that develops itself when exposed to light. He pulls the film out of his camera for them to view, and both are surprised to find that the monsters are not on it. Hathaway thinks that the monsters are not real since they do not show up on the film. He believes they have just been tricked into thinking they are real. Marnagan agrees and decides to walk out among the monsters. When he does, the monsters disappear. Hathaway says that the monsters are still dangerous because as long as people think they are real, they might be frightened to death or commit suicide to avoid being caught by them. He also concludes that if they believe the monsters are real, they will return. \n\nBoth men say they believe in the monsters to draw them out again so that they can see where they come from. They find the opening to the hideout, and Marnagan goes in first since he has a gun, but a guard catches him. Hathaway hears the guard over the audio system and sneaks up on the guard and threatens him to make him throw down his weapon. Marnagan and Hathaway find the telepathic station from which the images of the monsters are sent. Hathaway feeds his film into the telepathic station. When he confronts Gunther, the telepathic station shows an image of 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen marching toward them, but it’s really just Marnagan and 499 images of him. The guards run away as Hathaway films them. Since the film won’t record the telepathic images, it will look like Marnagan singlehandedly fought off all of Gunther’s guards.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d", "response_text": "Click Hathaway has been hired to document the journey that “Irish” Marnagan has embarked upon to kill Gunther, a space pirate. Their ship is struck by meteors and lands on an asteroid, where they begin to realize they are being manipulated by someone, most likely Gunther himself. They notice that someone has created a “super-gravity” setup that pulled their ship down, and after being chased into a cave by monstrous beasts they realize via Hathaway’s self-developing film that the creatures only exist in their minds. Once they figure this out they are able to follow the monsters to their source: Gunther’s fortress inside the asteroid. \n\nMarnagan enters first and is caught by a guard, and tells the guard that his partner is already dead while Hathaway sneaks in. They capture and truss up the guard and replace their oxygen tanks before heading into the fortress proper. They piece together how Gunther has been pulling in ships (including their own) to steal their cargo, and using the telepathic creatures to scare off tourists and inadvertent travelers. They find the machine used to create the creatures and concoct a plan. \n\nHathaway walks toward what he presumes to be Gunther’s residence and allows himself to be captured. He is brought to Gunther, who calls his bluff when Hathaway tells him that patrols have arrived. They hear screams from the plaza and look out to see a line of five-hundred patrolmen. Gunther orders his troops to hold the patrolmen back and they stay to fight, but are vastly outnumbered and easily defeated by the patrolmen. During the battle, Gunther starts shooting a pistol wildly and Hathaway knocks him out with a paperweight before Marnagan enters the building. \n\nWe learn that the line of patrolmen was made up of duplicates of Marnagan created by the telepathic sending station that created the monsters. As the story closes, Marnagan is tracking down the remaining pirates while Hathaway follows him to get some great footage. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885", "response_text": "Interplanetary Patrolman Irish Marnagan and photographer Click Hathaway are on a mission to apprehend a space pirate named Gunther, when a meteor hits their ship, and they crash-land. Marnagan had hired Click to document his capture of Gunther as an educational video for Junior Patrolmen. Click realizes they have an hour left in their oxygen supplies, so they set about to find food, air, and a way to return to Earth. Click suspects the crash was engineered by Gunther himself. As they walk along the meteor, they begin to realize gravity behaves strangely there, and Click wonders if that, too, has been engineered by Gunther. Before he can think on this too deeply, they encounter a horde of monsters of all shapes and sizes coming for them over a hill. Marnagan shoots at them, but they are immune to his shots. Marnagan and Click hide in a nearby cave to hatch a plan. Marnagan poses for some pictures pretending to battle the monsters. Click posits a theory that the strange gravity and meteor attack they’d encountered earlier was Gunther’s way of crashing ships on his asteroid—an effective weapon in an age with primitive space-battle weaponry and a good way to gather supplies while being short on crew. The monsters had been sent to finish the job. When they sit down to examine Click’s footage, they see that there are no monsters in any of the shots. This leads Click to develop another theory—if the monsters weren’t really there, then neither were they! Marnagan tests his theory by walking out of the cave into the middle of the monsters. Because he believes they do not exist, they vanish completely, and the two men realize Gunther’s plan to scare to death anyone who might happen upon his asteroid. At the same time, they are running out of oxygen, and Click says they must bring the monsters back in order to follow them back to Gunther’s base. They bring them back by believing in them, but protect themselves by not being afraid of them. They fight their way through the fake monsters until Marnagan discovers a door leading to a tunnel, and he drops into it. A guard stops Marnagan, and Click uses his camera as a fake weapon to trick the guard into dropping his weapon. After procuring oxygen tanks, Click and Marnagan discover the telepathic sending station from which Gunther transmitted the monster images to ward off visitors. Click has the idea to use this technology to their advantage and trick Gunther and his men into believing the entire Patrol has come to the asteroid. Marnagan stays behind to imitate the 500-man Patrol, while Click goes to Gunther’s hideout to film the fake Patrol’s attack. Marnagan’s fake Patrol defeats Gunther’s men, Click disables Gunther, and Marnagan realizes that Click’s film portrays him as a hero (the film did not capture the telepathically-induced Patrol—only Marnagan storming their ranks). Marnagan gets his educational video, and Click gets his news headline."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of Hathaway’s profession in the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "7", "uid": "2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1", "response_text": "Hathaway’s photography is the reason he is initially selected to go along on the mission to capture the outlaw Gunther.  Unlike the character Marnagan, who is repeatedly described as physically very large and strong, Hathaway is not on the mission for his physical prowess, but is there to document Marnagan’s capture of Gunther for training of Junior Patrolmen in the future  Hathaway has also invented self-developing film which seems like a cross between Polaroid pictures and a digital camera, as it has to be put into a micro-viewer at the camera’s base to be seen.  This film allows Hathaway and Marnagan, the active partner on the mission, to view Hathaway’s pictures immediately and notice the absence of beasts from Hathaway’s pictures.  This allows for the revelation that the beasts are telepathic projections into the men’s minds and sets up the final “battle” in the story, in which telepathic projections of Marnagan, created by the same projectors that created the beasts, along with photos from Hathaway’s film, defeat Gunther’s guards and enable Hathaway and Marnagan to capture Gunther.  While nothing could have been accomplished without Marnagan, Hathaway’s photography is essential to the successful completion of the mission.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d", "response_text": "Hathaway is a filmmaker and has been hired by Marnagan to accompany him on his trip to try to track down the pirate Gunther. Marnagan wants the encounter on film so that it can be used to train Junior Patrolmen. Throughout the story, Hathaway films several incidents that prove to be useful later. He is filming the meteor when it strikes their spaceship, and by reviewing the footage, he realizes that the meteor is glowing hot, which is never the case with meteors in space, and concludes that it must have been aimed at them. After he films the monsters and reviews his film, he realizes that the monsters are not real, which enables Marnagan and Hathaway to exit the cave where they are hiding. Later, when a guard has Marnagan, Hathaway holds his camera out like a weapon to make the guard drop his gun. Hathaway’s profession also helps him think of a way to use the telepathic station against Gunther’s guards when he films Marnagan in various movements and then feeds his film into the machine to become thought emanations. The images make the guards believe that 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen are on the asteroid and marching toward them. The guards panic and run because they think they are outnumbered."}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d", "response_text": "Click Hathaway is a photographer, which is very significant to the story for several reasons. First, it is the reason he is on the voyage, having been hired by Marnagan to document his takedown of Gunther. Even more importantly, however, it is Hathaway’s constant photo taking combined with his use of the self-developing film he invented that reverses the fortunes of Click and Irish and allows them to succeed. After they try to distract themselves from their terror by taking a fun photo montage of Marnagan and the monsters hunting them, Hathaway realizes that the monsters don’t show up on the photos and surmises that they aren’t real, which allows them to enact their plan. After they trick Gunther and his forces, Hathaway continues to document Marnagan as he gleefully takes out the pirates. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885", "response_text": "Click Hathaway is a photography and filmmaker with Cosmic Films, responsible for making news reels. He is commissioned by Marnagan to accompany him on his mission to apprehend the space pirate Gunther. Click takes a variety of shots of Marnagan at key points throughout their journey—from the time they are hit by Gunther’s rogue meteor to when they take refuge from the pursuant monsters in a cave and making their plan. Click’s purpose is to help Marnagan make an educational video he can use to train those in the Junior Patrol on how to handle difficult situations. For his own purposes, Click would like an exciting news reel to show Cosmic Films and hopefully boost his career. After Click deduces the monsters are a telepathic construction of some device of Gunther’s creation, he and Marnagan are able to use this knowledge to penetrate Gunther’s hideout and use the technology against his men by making them believe Marnagan is the 500-men Patrol coming to defeat them. Click uses this great battle to make an exciting news reel, which in turn gives Marnagan the footage he needs to make his educational video."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Hathaway and Marnagan in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "7", "uid": "2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1", "response_text": "Despite their clear differences, Hathaway and Marnagan are a solid team who work well together and depend on each other.  We first see this in the opening scene of the story where Hathaway is physically clinging to Marnagan in his distress during the crash sequence.  After the crash, Hathaway is more concerned with taking photos of Marnagan emerging from the crash than helping him emerge from the rubble, not because he doesn’t care about his companion, but because he sees his companion as so strong, it doesn’t occur to him to be concerned for his physical safety.  This points to one of their key differences--while Marnagan is immediately concerned for Hathaway’s safety and assumes Hathaway would reciprocate, Hathaway sees Marnagan as much stronger than himself, nearly invulnerable.\n\nWe see Hathaway and Marnagan’s collaborative relationship continue when they are faced with the beasts.  They are both afraid; Hathaway is the first to spot the secure hiding place of the cave and hails Marnagan to run there.  Marnagan then proposes that he pose “with” the beasts--standing at a safe distance with them in the background--and Hathaway agrees.  They continue to argue about what to do while Hathaway develops the film as part of his argument.  When Hathaway presents the developed film as evidence, Marnagan teases him about his invention being “lousy”, as only he (Marnagan) shows in the photos, but the monsters do not.  This joke sets up Hathaway’s realization that the beasts are telepathic projections rather than physical beings, leading the men to debate which of them will lead the hunt for oxygen.  While Hathaway knows his partner is physically stronger and he is already suffering from oxygen deprivation, he doesn’t want to risk Marnagan’s safety if his deduction proves wrong.  Marnagan, however, shows his trust in Hathaway by insisting that he (Marnagan) lead, confident that if Hathaway says the monsters aren’t there, they are indeed not.\n\nWhen Marnagan briefly succumbs to the telepathic illusion of the beasts, Hathaway is able to talk him down.  Just by listening to Hathaway’s words, Marnagan is able to convince himself again that the beasts are not real.  Marnagan then convinces the guard he encounters that Hathaway died in the ship crash, allowing Hathaway to sneak in, capture the guard, and get both the men oxygen.  They use their teamwork in a last instance to defeat the principal antagonist of the story, Gunther.  Hathaway is captured by more of Gunther’s guards and taken to him, but is already prepared.  He shows Gunther that Gunther’s men are being overwhelmed and defeated by five hundred armed Patrol men, causing Gunther to pull out a weapon and fire wildly until Hathaway knocks him unconscious.  We then are told that the “five hundred Patrol men” are telepathic illusions of Marnagan projected by the same projectors that created the images of the beasts, supplied with photos of Marnagan shot by Hathaway.  Once again their teamwork proves crucial to the success of the mission.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d", "response_text": "Marnagan hired Hathaway to film his search for the elusive pirate Gunther. Marnagan plans to use the film to train Junior Patrolmen how to get out of a difficult situation. The two men are also friends who joke with each other. When Marnagan points out that he could have been killed in the crash, Hathaway frowns and turns pale. When Hathaway first speculates that Gunther caused the meteor to hit their spaceship, Marnagan isn’t convinced that is true, but as they begin making discoveries about the asteroid’s gravity and monsters, Marnagan trusts Hathaway’s theories enough to leave the cave and walk among the monsters. When Marnagan returns unscathed, Hathaway breaks down in tears of relief to see that he is safe. Later, when a guard is holding Marnagan at gunpoint, Hathaway risks his life to save Marnagan by using his camera as a pretend weapon to take the guard’s weapon. He then forces the guard to drag Marnagan, unconscious from lack of oxygen, to get a replacement oxygen tank. The two men also compliment each other when they defeat Gunther and his men."}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d", "response_text": "At the beginning of the story, Hathaway and Marnagan are colleagues; Marnagan has hired Hathaway to document his mission to hunt down Gunther. As the story goes on, they become very dependent on one another in order to survive. They both try to put themselves in harm’s way in order to protect the other (Hathaway wanting to leave the cave first in case the monsters are real, Marnagan telling the guard that the monsters already killed his partner, etc.) multiple times and value the contributions the other makes to their plans. The events of the story bring them much closer, and they effectively save each other’s lives. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885", "response_text": "Marnagan has contracted Click Hathaway’s talents as a photographer and filmmaker to help him produce a video he can use to train the Junior Patrolmen how to handle difficult situations they may face. Together, they seek out Gunther the space pirate and Click documents the journey. Their relationship is mutually beneficial—Marnagan is the brawn, and Click is the brain. They work together to escape the monsters, and, ultimately, to defeat Gunther and his men and procure the footage both of them want for their individual purposes. Throughout the story, both characters engage in witty retorts to one another, but they always show each other respect and a commitment to get through the trying ordeal to survive."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the crash of Hathaway and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene for the rest of the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "7", "uid": "2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1", "response_text": "The crash of Hathaway and Marnagan’s ship is the precipitating event for the events that follow, but it is also more than that.  Hathaway states shortly after the crash that the meteor that hit their ship was deliberately aimed at them with force, based on it being “hot and glowing” at the time of the collision.  Hathaway hypothesizes at that time that Gunther, the man Marnagan is trying to capture on their mission, had engineered the crash.  A short time later, when walking along the surface of the planet, Hathaway notices sudden weight loss.  After he and Marnagan test it and confirm that it really happened, they conclude that their ship was not only hit by a meteor, it was dragged down to the planet by an unnatural amount of gravity, more than the planet is generating.  They then meet horrifying, dangerous monsters, but these are revealed in short order to be telepathic projections.  They are able to dispel the images of the monsters by their own belief that the monsters are not really there, then summon them back by imagining that they are there, but that the monsters cannot harm them.  In this way, the monsters lead them to Gunther, who is captured when Marnagan and Hathaway use the telepathic projectors that generated the “monster” images to generate hundreds of images of Marnagan, making it appear that there is an army ready to take over Gunther’s base and capture or kill all his men.  All of this flows from the initial crash engineered by Gunther with the propelled meteor and the area of super-gravity that pulled the ship down to the planet.  Gunther hoped to make the ship disappear and Marnagan and Hathaway along with it.  Instead, they crashed on the single planet where they could find him and had to take on an immediate quest to search for him in order to survive, as they had limited oxygen and needed to find the only other humans on the planet in order to replenish their supply."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d", "response_text": "The crash in the opening scene sets up the conflict with Gunther in the climax of the story. Gunther is responsible for the meteor that strikes the spaceship and makes it crash on the asteroid. He is also responsible for the monsters that first terrify Hathaway and Marnagan and that later lead the men to his hideout inside the asteroid. Hathaway speculates that Gunther crashes or pulls ships onto his asteroid. Gunther is short on men, and space weapons are inaccurate, so he uses super-gravity to crash the ships. The people die from a lack of air or food or their injuries from the crash. Since there are no signs of weapons, if the Patrol ever shows up, it looks like the people died of accidental deaths rather than murder. The crash makes it possible for Marnagan to finally reach Gunter, a space pirate that no one has ever seen before."}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d", "response_text": "The crash of Hathaway’s and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene of the story is significant both because it brings them to the asteroid where Gunther is hiding, and because it helps them figure out how Gunther is stealing cargo. Their ship is brought down at great speed by meteorites that Gunther and his troops launch at it, and then pulled in by a super-gravity situation they have set up. Hathaway and Marnagan realize the gravity is at play when they seem to lose weight as they get further from the ship. Their own ship wreck experience points them toward discovering how to get to Gunther. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885", "response_text": "The crash at the beginning of the story is perpetuated by a meteor that Click later determines was sent as a projectile by Gunther himself. He presumes this was done in conjunction with the artificial gravity of the asteroid base in order to fell cargo ships to gather supplies for Gunther and his limited crew of fellow pirates. This crash sets in motion the action that forces Marnagan and Click to confront the monsters, whom Click soon realizes are telepathically imposed and not real at all. Because of this encounter with the monsters, Click discovers a way to defeat Gunther and his forces while dealing with limited resources and using his own technology against him. The crash also provides a dramatic moment in Click’s film."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the telepathic projectors in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "7", "uid": "2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1", "response_text": "Telepathy plays an interesting role in this story.  Rather than telepathy being used by one character to discern the thoughts of another character, as is often the case, we instead have machines creating telepathic projections.  It is fitting, then, that since machines are creating the telepathic projections, a machine can also defeat them.  The camera does not \"see\" through interpreting images or trying to understand them.  It only records light and shadow.  For this reason, it remains unaffected by telepathy--it can only record what is there, not what is projected into the mind.\n\nHathaway and Marnagan become trapped in a small cave by what they believe are dangerous wild beasts.  Marnagan asks Hathaway to take his pictures as Marnagan poses against the backdrop of the beasts.  When Marnagan looks at the photos and complains that the beasts do not appear, Hathaway realizes that the beasts are not physically real, but only telepathic projections in the men's minds.  He and Marnagan are then able to dismiss the beasts and bring them back at will in order to let the projections lead them to their source.\n\nTelepathy plays a significant role again when Hathaway and Marnagan formulate a plan to capture Gunther, the person Marnagan is on a mission to capture and the man that caused their crash.  While the two of them could easily overpower Gunther if he were alone, there are at least fifty guards with him at his base.  Hathaway realizes they can photograph Marnagan in poses as though he's taking over the base and use those images in the telepathic projector against the guards and Gunther.  The telepathic projector turns one Marnagan into five hundred, allowing the two men to easily capture the base and Gunther while the guards flee.  The guards are likely aware of the telepathic projectors, but do not suspect that Hathaway and Marnagan have managed to turn the projectors to their own ends.  By using the projectors, Hathaway and Marnagan are able to turn a very dangerous situation into an easy victory. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d", "response_text": "The telepathic projectors create the illusion that the asteroid is populated with a horde of hideous monsters. This impression frightens people whose spaceships crash onto the asteroid so that they will be too afraid to search for the hideout of Gunther and his guards. Hathaway realizes that the monsters are simply images that disappear when people no longer believe they are real when he examines his film of Marnagan with the monsters in the background. When he reviews his film, only Marnagan is visible, so Hathaway realizes that the monsters are not real. Gunther’s telepathic projectors protect him and his men; he needs this added protection because he only has a few men, and Gunther himself is old and crippled, unable to defend himself or move on his own. Just as the telepathic projectors give him protection, they are also his undoing at the end of the story when Hathaway and Marnagan use the projectors against him. They feed in a film that makes it look like 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen are marching toward Gunter’s headquarters, but in reality, it’s only Marnagan with his image reproduced 499 times. Also, Hathaway and Marnagan are able to trick the projector into producing the monsters again to discover where they are coming from. This leads them to find Gunther’s lair where they defeat him."}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d", "response_text": "The crash of Hathaway’s and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene of the story is significant both because it brings them to the asteroid where Gunther is hiding, and because it helps them figure out how Gunther is stealing cargo. Their ship is brought down at great speed by meteorites that Gunther and his troops launch at it, and then pulled in by a super-gravity situation they have set up. Hathaway and Marnagan realize the gravity is at play when they seem to lose weight as they get further from the ship. Their own ship wreck experience points them toward discovering how to get to Gunther. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885", "response_text": "The telepathic projectors are Marnagan’s and Click’s most important discovery in the story. They are the source of the monsters that had previously pursued the two after crash-landing on the asteroid. After realizing the monsters are fake, Click proposes that they can push through their ranks by simply disbelieving in their ability to harm them. This turns out to be true, and they are able to make their way to Gunther’s hideaway, where they find oxygen tanks to support them in their next steps. By commandeering use of the projectors for their own purposes, Marnagan and Click are able to trick Gunther’s men into believing Marnagan is the 500-men Patrol come to capture Gunther and defeat his ranks. Marnagan does his best acting like the men, and their images are projected telepathically into the minds of Gunther’s men, who are subsequently defeated. In turn, this provides the footage that both Marnagan and Click desired when they initially began their quest."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63109", "uid": "ce6fb39b089c4099886ca26adf127335", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "\n\n\n\nProduced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\nDoctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n   \n  under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n   \n  had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n   \n  hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n   \n  And the danger from the villain of the piece\n   \n  didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n \n  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n   \n  Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n   \n  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n   \n  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\nshoulder.\n \n  \"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\nthee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n \n  A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\nin-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\nvoyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\nenforced.\n \n  I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\nlounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n \n  Grannie Annie!\n \n  There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\non her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\nvoluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\ntied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\nplanted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\ncalm defiance.\n \n  I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\nhaven't seen you in two years.\"\n \n  \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\nfish-face to shut up.\"\n \n  The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\nfriend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\nagainth the ruleth....\"\n \n  \"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\none there at this hour.\"\n \n  In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\nand Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\nthe drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n \n  \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\nallowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\nwriting?\"\n \n  \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\nthis place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\nthey are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"\n \n  She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\nAnnabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\nBut to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\nhat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\nin the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n \n  But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\nmore. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\nsat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n \n  One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\nnovels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\nnovel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\nand hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\nexpeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.\n \n  She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.\n \n  \"What happened to\nGuns for Ganymede\n?\" I asked. \"That was the title of\nyour last, wasn't it?\"\nGrannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly\nrolled herself a cigarette.\n \n  \"It wasn't\nGuns\n, it was\nPistols\n; and it wasn't\nGanymede\n, it was\nPluto\n.\"\n \n  I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe\nand beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\"\n \n  \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have\nyour hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\"\n \n  Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her\nfeet.\n \n  \"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\nminutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n \n  Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\nthe jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\ndrew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n \n  They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\ncolonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\nmuck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\npacked with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\nthat made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n \n  In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n   \n  DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS\n   \n  NINE GENIUSES\n   \n  THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF\n   \n  THE SYSTEM\n \n  As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a\ntinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the\nfront row.\n \n  \"Sit here,\" she said. \"I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of\nthe players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go\nsomewhere and talk.\" She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the\nstage steps and disappeared in the wings.\n \n  \"That damned fossilized dynamo,\" I muttered. \"She'll be the death of me\nyet.\"\n \n  The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the\nstage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian\nsat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The\nMercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably\nuncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new\nimproved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an\nEarthman operator.\nA tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and\nadvanced to the footlights.\n \n  \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce\nmyself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\"\n \n  There was a roar of applause from the\nSatellite\naudience. When it had\nsubsided, the man continued:\n \n  \"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\nto give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\nnine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\nsets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\nThese questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\nquestion missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n \n  \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\nher wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\nscience fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n \n  From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\non the dais.\n \n  The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his\ndials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to\ncoalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his\nvoice echoed through the theater:\n \n  \"\nWho was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?\n\"\n \n  Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her\nhand. She said quietly:\n \n  \"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed\ntracto-car.\"\n \n  And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\nthe visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\ncafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\nbantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\nor when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\nthe winner.\n \n  It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\nbrought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n \n  The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\noriginal fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\nsignal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n \n  Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\ngeneral surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\nwere turned in a smile of satisfaction.\n \n  When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving\ncrowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident\noccurred.\n \n  A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,\ndragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an\nunpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of\nthe Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to\nan earlier era.\n \n  Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one\nman the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor\nwas seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,\nsnipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned\ninto his mouth.\n \n  Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\nrushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\nshout derisive epithets.\n \n  Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\nand led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\nTHE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\nwas all but deserted.\n \n  In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\neyes.\n \n  \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n \n  I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\nought to clamp down.\"\n \n  \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"\n \n  She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh\nline about her usually smiling lips.\n \n  \"What do you mean?\"\nFor a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,\nclosed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.\n \n  \"My last book,\nDeath In The Atom\n, hit the stands last January,\"\nshe began. \"When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'\nvacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.\nWell, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so\nfor this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six\nweeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra\nKarn....\"\n \n  \"Who?\" I interrupted.\n \n  \"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of\nVarsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about\nhis adventures, and he told me plenty.\"\n \n  The old woman paused. \"Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?\" she\nasked abruptly.\n \n  I shook my head. \"Some new kind of ...\"\n \n  \"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active\nrock once found on Mercury. The\nAlpha\nrays of this rock are similar\nto radium in that they consist of streams of material particles\nprojected at high speed. But the character of the\nGamma\nrays has\nnever been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are\nelectromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of\nBeta\nor cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.\n \n  \"When any form of life is exposed to these\nGamma\nrays from the Green\nFlame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude\nand lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition\ndevelops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or\nguidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of\nintolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,\na thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\"\n \n  I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.\n \n  \"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three\nplanets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The\ncruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long\nenough to endanger all civilized life.\n \n  \"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing\ngovernment was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had\nordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was\nimmediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom\nfollowed.\"\n \n  Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.\n \n  \"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an\nold prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his\ntravels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of\nan old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green\nFlames!\"\n \n  If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.\nI said, \"So what?\"\n \n  \"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\nif it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\nafter the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\nexistence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n \n  \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\ncorking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\nit was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\nEarth.\"\n \n  \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\nconclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\nattempting to put your plot into action.\"\n \n  Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"\n \n  I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl\nand laughed heartily. \"The same old Flowers,\" I said. \"Tell me, who's\nyour thief ... Doctor Universe?\"\n \n  She regarded me evenly. \"What makes you say that?\"\n \n  I shrugged.\n \n  \"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in.\"\n \n  The old woman shook her head. \"No, this is a lot bigger than a simple\nquiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is\nhappening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,\npolice officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by\nrepresentation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military\ndictator to step in.\n \n  \"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\nsingle shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\nmy opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\ntimes more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n \n  If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\nhave called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\napproaching danger.\n \n  \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n \n  On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\nappeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\nfresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n \n  A heat ray!\n \n  Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\ndoor. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\nwoman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\nthrew over the starting stud.\n \n  An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\noutpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\nthe eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\nwater. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\nsky like puffs of cotton.\n \n  We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\nanimal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\nhad its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\nbelt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\nboatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n \n  It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\nconfidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n \n  \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\nEzra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\nthe lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\nsee, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\nship.\"\n \n  Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours\ntossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned\nsteadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi\njust before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer\nthat broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an\nisolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had\ngiven me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly\ncoming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that\nrepresentative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held\nto find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.\n \n  Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my\ntent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe\nGrannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots\nwhich she had skilfully blended into a novel?\n \n  Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its\nplace a ringing silence blanketed everything.\n \n  And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in\nundulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched\nit advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.\nIt charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.\nThere was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp\ntalons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,\nmissing the thing by the narrowest of margins.\n \n  From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress\nappeared. Grannie gave a single warning:\n \n  \"Stand still!\"\n \n  The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\nagain. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\npurple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\nair. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\nground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n \n  \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n \n  \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\nin the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\ntrained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\nand follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n \n  \"Then that would mean...?\"\n \n  \"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\ncafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\ntent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\nbeing watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\nresembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\nribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\nsurface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\nthe swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\nmulti-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\nThe Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\nhand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\na matter of seconds.\n \n  At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\nof the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\njetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n \n  He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\nunkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\ndressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\nhead was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n \n  \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\nFlowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\nhut.\n \n  The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\ntype of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\ncivilization entirely.\n \n  Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\nobject of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n \n  \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\nfind that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n \n  \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\ncigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n \n  \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\nVarsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n \n  \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n \n  Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\nEarthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n \n  \"Dangerous?\"\n \n  \"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside\nof myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away\nbecause I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped\nbecause he made 'em laugh.\"\n \n  \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.\n \n  \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction\nthat's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them\nlaugh, I don't know.\"\n \n  Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.\nSeveral mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the\nVenusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.\n \n  \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months.\nYou gotta wait 'til I hear it.\"\n \n  Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\nflipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\nchair, listening with avid interest.\n \n  It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I\nheard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once\nagain I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back\nand forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi\nscreen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead\nmy thoughts far away.\nHalf an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen\nwere ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We\ncamped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed\nabout us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and\ndespondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the\nfutility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me\nfrom turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,\nthat all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.\n \n  After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of\nsteaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our\nadvance on foot.\n \n  It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he\nsuddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.\nThere it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened\narelium\nsteel,\nhalf buried in the swamp soil.\n \n  \"What's that thing on top?\" Karn demanded, puzzled.\n \n  A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern\nquarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And\nsuspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white\ninsulators.\n \n  Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\nVenusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\ncircle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n \n  But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\nMoments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n \n  A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\nMid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n \n  \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\nclimb slowly.\n \n  The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\nThere was no sign of life.\n \n  \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.\n \n  Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\nleft side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\nbare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\nclarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\nlooked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\nswing slowly to and fro.\n \n  Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\nthe lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\nradiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n \n  Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\nglass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.\n \n  \"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\natomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\nguards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\nGreen Flames are more accessible.\"\n \n  In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\nthe feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\nvessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\nSuspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\nplate.\n \n  But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n \n  Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\nthe crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\nmove.\"\nOutside the day was beginning to wane. The Venusians, apparently\nunawed by the presence of the space ship, had already started a fire\nand erected the tents. We left the vessel to find a spell of brooding\ndesolation heavy over the improvised camp. And the evening meal this\ntime was a gloomy affair. When it was finished, Ezra Karn lit his pipe\nand switched on the portable visi set. A moment later the silence of\nthe march was broken by the opening fanfare of the Doctor Universe\nprogram.\n \n  \"Great stuff,\" Karn commented. \"I sent in a couple of questions once,\nbut I never did win nothin'. This Doctor Universe is a great guy. Ought\nto make him king or somethin'.\"\n \n  For a moment none of us made reply. Then suddenly Grannie Annie leaped\nto her feet.\n \n  \"Say that again!\" she cried.\n \n  The old prospector looked startled. \"Why, I only said they ought to\nmake this Doctor Universe the big boss and....\"\n \n  \"That's it!\" Grannie paced ten yards off into the gathering darkness\nand returned quickly. \"Billy-boy, you were right. The man behind this\nis\nDoctor Universe. It was he who stole my manuscript and devised a\nmethod to amplify the radiations of the Green Flames in the freighter's\nhold. He lit on a sure-fire plan to broadcast those radiations in such\na way that millions of persons would be exposed to them simultaneously.\nDon't you see?\"\n \n  I didn't see, but Grannie hurried on.\n \n  \"What better way to expose civilized life to the Green Flames\nradiations than when the people are in a state of relaxation. The\nDoctor Universe quiz program. The whole System tuned in on them, but\nthey were only a blind to cover up the transmission of the radiations\nfrom the ore. Their power must have been amplified a thousandfold, and\ntheir wave-length must lie somewhere between light and the supersonic\nscale in that transition band which so far has defied exploration....\"\n \n  \"But with what motive?\" I demanded. \"Why should...?\"\n \n  \"Power!\" the old woman answered. \"The old thirst for dictatorial\ncontrol of the masses. By presenting himself as an intellectual genius,\nDoctor Universe utilized a bizarre method to intrench himself in the\nminds of the people. Oh, don't you see, Billy-boy? The Green Flames'\nradiations spell doom to freedom, individual liberty.\"\n \n  I sat there stupidly, wondering if this all were some wild dream.\n \n  And then, as I looked across at Grannie Annie, the vague light over the\ntents seemed to shift a little, as if one layer of the atmosphere had\ndropped away to be replaced by another.\n \n  There it was again, a definite movement in the air. Somehow I got the\nimpression I was looking around that space rather than through it. And\nsimultaneously Ezra Karn uttered a howl of pain. An instant later the\nold prospector was rolling over and over, threshing his arms wildly.\n \n  An invisible sledge hammer descended on my shoulder. The blow was\nfollowed by another and another. Heavy unseen hands held me down.\nOpposite me Grannie Annie and the Venusians were suffering similar\npunishment, the latter screaming in pain and bewilderment.\n \n  \"It's the Varsoom!\" Ezra Karn yelled. \"We've got to make 'em laugh. Our\nonly escape is to make 'em laugh!\"\n \n  He struggled to his feet and began leaping wildly around the camp fire.\nAbruptly his foot caught on a log protruding from the fire; he tripped\nand fell headlong into a mass of hot coals and ashes. Like a jumping\njack he was on his feet again, clawing dirt and soot from his eyes.\n \n  Out of the empty space about us there came a sudden hush. The unseen\nblows ceased in mid-career. And then the silence was rent by wild\nlaughter. Peal after peal of mirthful yells pounded against our ears.\nFor many moments it continued; then it died away, and everything was\npeaceful once more.\n \n  Grannie Annie picked herself up slowly. \"That was close,\" she said. \"I\nwouldn't want to go through that again.\"\n \n  Ezra Karn nursed an ugly welt under one eye. \"Those Varsoom got a funny\nsense of humor,\" he growled.\nInside the freighter's narrow corridor Grannie faced me with eyes\nfilled with excitement.\n \n  \"Billy-boy,\" she said, \"we've got two problems now. We've got to stop\nDoctor Universe, and we've got to find a way of getting out of here.\nRight now we're nicely bottled up.\"\n \n  As if in answer to her words the visi set revealed the face of the quiz\nmaster on the screen. He was saying:\n \n  \"\nRemember tomorrow at this same hour I will have a message of\nunparalleled importance for the people of the nine planets. Tomorrow\nnight I urge you, I command you, to tune in.\n\"\n \n  With a whistling intake of breath the old woman turned to one of the\nVenusians.\n \n  \"Bring all our equipment in here,\" she ordered. \"Hurry!\"\n \n  She untied the ribbon under her chin and took off her cap. She rolled\nup her sleeves, and as the Venusians came marching into the space ship\nwith bundles of equipment, she fell to work.\n \n  Silently Ezra Karn and I watched her. First she completely dismantled\nthe visi set, put it together again with an entirely altered hookup.\nNext she unrolled a coil of flexible copper mesh which we had brought\nalong as a protective electrical screening against the marsh insects.\nShe fastened rubberite suction cups to this mesh at intervals of every\ntwelve inches or more, carried it down to the freighter's hold and\nfastened it securely against the stepto glass wall.\n \n  Trailing a three-ply conduit up from the hold to the corridor she\nselected an induction coil, several Micro-Wellman tubes and a quantity\nof wire from a box of spare parts. Dexterously her fingers moved in and\nout, fashioning a complicated and curious piece of apparatus.\n \n  At length she finished.\n \n  \"It's pretty hay-wire,\" she said, \"but I think it will work. Now I'll\ntell you what I'm going to do. When Doctor Universe broadcasts tomorrow\nnight, he's going to announce that he has set himself up as supreme\ndictator. He'll have the Green Flame radiations coming from this ship\nunder full power. I'm going to insert into his broadcast—the laughing\nof the Varsoom!\"\n \n  \"You're going to what?\"\n \n  \"Broadcast the mass laughter from those invisible creatures out there.\nVisualize it, Billy-boy! At the dramatic moment when Doctor Universe\nmakes his plea for System-wide power, he will be accompanied by wild\npeals of laughter. The whole broadcast will be turned into a burlesque.\"\n \n  \"How you going to make 'em laugh?\" interrupted Karn.\n \n  \"We must think of a way,\" Grannie replied soberly.\n \n  I, for one, am glad that no representative of the Interstellar\nPsychiatry Society witnessed our antics during the early hours of that\nmorning and on into the long reaches of the afternoon, as we vainly\ntried to provoke the laughter of the Varsoom. All to no avail. Utter\nsilence greeted our efforts. And the time was growing close to the\nscheduled Doctor Universe program.\n \n  Ezra Karn wiped a bead of perspiration from his brow. \"Maybe we've got\nto attract their attention first,\" he suggested. \"Miss Flowers, why\ndon't you go up on the roof and read to 'em? Read 'em something from\none of your books, if you've got one along. That ought to make 'em sit\nup and take notice.\"\n \n  For a moment the old woman gazed at him in silence. Then she got to her\nfeet quickly.\n \n  \"I'll do it,\" she said. \"I'll read them the attack scene from\nMurder\nOn A Space Liner\n.\"\nIt didn't make sense, of course. But nothing made sense in this mad\nventure. Grannie Annie opened her duffel bag and drew out a copy of\nher most popular book. With the volume under her arm, she mounted the\nladder to the top of the envelope. Ezra Karn rigged up a radite search\nlamp, and a moment later the old woman stood in the center of a circle\nof white radiance.\n \n  Karn gripped my arm. \"This is it,\" he said tensely. \"If this fails ...\"\n \n  His voice clipped off as Grannie began to read. She read slowly\nat first, then intoned the words and sentences faster and more\ndramatically.\n \n  And out in the swamp a vast hush fell as if unseen ears were listening.\n \n  \"...\nthe space liner was over on her beam ends now as another shot\nfrom the raider's vessel crashed into the stern hold. In the control\ncabin Cuthbert Strong twisted vainly at his bonds as he sought to free\nhimself. Opposite him, lashed by strong Martian vinta ropes to the\ngravascope, Louise Belmont sobbed softly, wringing her hands in mute\nappeal.\n\"\n \n  A restless rustling sounded out in the marsh, as if hundreds of bodies\nwere surging closer. Karn nodded in awe.\n \n  \"She's got 'em!\" he whispered. \"Listen. They're eatin' up every word.\"\n \n  I heard it then, and I thought I must be dreaming. From somewhere out\nin the swamp a sound rose into the thick air. A high-pitched chuckle,\nit was. The chuckle came again. Now it was followed by another and\nanother. An instant later a wave of low subdued laughter rose into the\nair.\n \n  Ezra Karn gulped. \"Gripes!\" he said. \"They're laughing already.\nThey're laughing at her book!\nAnd look, the old lady's gettin' sore.\"\n \n  Up on the roof of the envelope Grannie Annie halted her reading to\nglare savagely out into the darkness.\n \n  The laughter was a roar now. It rose louder and louder, peal after peal\nof mirthful yells and hysterical shouts. And for the first time in my\nlife, I saw Annabella C. Flowers mad. She stamped her foot; she shook\nher fist at the unseen hordes out before her.\n \n  \"Ignorant slap-happy fools!\" she screamed. \"You don't know good science\nfiction when you hear it.\"\n \n  I turned to Karn and said quietly, \"Turn on the visi set. Doctor\nUniverse should be broadcasting now. Tune your microphone to pull in\nas much of that laughter as you can.\"\nIt took three weeks to make the return trip to Swamp City. The Varsoom\nfollowed us far beyond the frontier of their country like an unseen\narmy in the throes of laughing gas. Not until we reached Level Five did\nthe last chuckle fade into the distance.\n \n  All during that trek back, Grannie sat in the dugout, staring silently\nout before her.\n \n  But when we reached Swamp City, the news was flung at us from all\nsides. One newspaper headline accurately told the story: DOCTOR\nUNIVERSE BID FOR SYSTEM DICTATORSHIP SQUELCHED BY RIDICULE OF UNSEEN\nAUDIENCE. QUIZ MASTER NOW IN HANDS OF I.P. COUP FAILURE.\n \n  \"Grannie,\" I said that night as we sat again in a rear booth of THE\nJET, \"what are you going to do now? Give up writing science fiction?\"\n \n  She looked at me soberly, then broke into a smile.\n \n  \"Just because some silly form of life that can't even be seen doesn't\nappreciate it? I should say not. Right now I've got an idea for a swell\nyarn about Mars. Want to come along while I dig up some background\nmaterial?\"\n \n  I shook my head. \"Not me,\" I said.\n \n  But I knew I would.\n", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2743b2a32c124317af7ddaf7350b9d72", "response_text": "Grannie Annie,  a prolific science fiction novelist, goes to see Billy at a men’s club. The two sit down to have a drink in an empty portion of the club, but they only have a minute to chat before Grannie Annie remembers she has an appointment at the Satellite Theater. She insists that Billy come with her. \n\nGrannie Annie forces Billy to take a seat in the audience, and she takes her place backstage. The show is called “Doctor Universe and His Nine Geniuses,” and it’s a type of gameshow. People and creatures on nine different planets tune into the program, and they ask the geniuses questions. If the show’s experts cannot answer the question, the listener gets a sum of money. Grannie Annie is there to serve as the guest star. \n\nThe show goes off without a hitch. The only remarkable thing that Billy notices is that the audience appears to be mesmerized by Dr. Universe. \n\nGrannie Annie tells Billy that while she was writing a sequel to her latest novel, she met Ezra Karn, and he told her about the Green Flames. The Green Flame is a radioactive rock originally found on Mercury, and the rock’s Gamma Rays have the power to make people and creatures have a strong desire for a leader. Grannie Annie included these fantastical ideas in her recent novel, but her manuscript was stolen. Now, she’s concerned that the rocks and rays will be used by an authoritarian leader. \n\nIn the middle of their conversation, Grannie Annie and Billy are attacked by someone with a heat ray. The pair leaves Swamp City, followed by the enemy. They travel and find Ezra Karn in his home. \n\nKarn takes his friends to the spaceship where the Green Flames are stored. The precious resource is behind impenetrable glass, and it’s clear that whoever controls it made sure it was safe. \n\nKarn is an avid Doctor Universe fan, and he off-handedly tells Grannie Annie and Billy that they ought to make the man the king. Grannie Annie realizes that Doctor Universe is in fact the person hoarding the Green Flames, and he’s using his quiz show to control the minds of the masses so that he can take over as dictator. \n\nWithout warning, Billy and his friends feel an invisible force pushing them and holding down their bodies. They recognize force as the Varsoom, and the only way to stop it is to make them laugh. Grannie Annie builds a machine that allows the group to interrupt Doctor Universe’s broadcast. \n\nWhen Doctor Universe comes on the radio again, Grannie Annie reads one of her science fiction books to the invisible creatures. The plan works, and the Varsoom laugh wildly, which ruins the Doctor’s plans to take over the universe. Grannie Annie says it won’t deter her from writing her novels, and she invites Billy to come along for the research portion of her next project. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "73946daa3ad84be3852a1093179465fd", "response_text": "The story starts in a club on Venus, in Swamp City. The narrator is surprised to hear from a member of the staff that there is a woman here to see him--his friend Grannie Annie, who is known by lovers of science fiction novels by her pen name, Annabella C. Flowers. As they catch up over drinks, she interrupts to lead them to a Doctor Universe quiz show at the Satellite Theater. In this game show, she acts as an expert in the history of the solar system alongside members of various interplanetary races. After the seemingly innocuous show, there is a racist attack on a Martian outside of the theater. Grannie Annie finds a location to fill Billy (the narrator) in on a theory. She tells him about Ezra Karn, a prospector she met while doing research for one of her books. He found a large supply of Green Flame, a radioactive Mercurian rock that has opiate-like effects on those who are exposed to it. It had been used under some dictatorships to control populations. Grannie Annie had written a novel about Green Flame, but she thought someone had stolen the manuscript and was going through with the plot, using the rocks to affect people’s mindsets. Billy suspects Doctor Universe is the one with the evil plan, but Grannie is less convinced. The two had to run after they were shot at and headed out to find Ezra and the Green Flame. Traveling on pack animals and then in canoes through the swampland with some Venetian guides, Billy was increasingly stressed by the state of the world. They found Ezra after being attacked by a hunter-bird that had been sent after them. His two-room hut was equipped with the latest visi set, allowing him to watch the Doctor Universe program. He agreed to take them to the ship where he had seen the Green Flame after the show. When they arrived, they found the ship outfitted with a self-operating broadcasting unit which was well-protected behind unbreakable glass. The group had already started to feel the effects of the radiation, feeling despondent, but they knew they had to do something. Grannie realizes that Billy was right, and Doctor Universe was the one with the evil plan. After the camp was attacked by the Varsoom, an energy being native to the area of Venus they were in, Grannie had an idea. The only way to escape the Varsoom attack was to make them laugh, so she rigged Ezra’s visi set to be able to insert the sound of them laughing into the broadcast of the game show. The group could not find a way to make them laugh, until Grannie read them her book. Their laughter made it into the broadcast, thwarting Doctor Universe’s plans for becoming dictator of the solar system. In the end, Grannie decides she wants to keep writing novels and invites Billy on a trip to Mars for background research for her next book."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "88e7a699178f4507a38db1de90396ab1", "response_text": "Billy is playing pool when his grandmother attempts to enter the male-only Spacemen’s Club in Venus. He runs out to meet her in the lobby then takes her up to the grille where she won’t be seen. They share a drink, while he asks her what she’s doing in town. Grannie Annie, better known as Annabella C. Flowers, is a popular science fiction writer. Before she can explain her arrival, she rushes to the Satellite Theater, taking Billy with her. She’s a participant in the Doctor Universe game show, and she wants Billy to watch. \nAfter the show is over, a racist interaction takes place. The I.P. comes around to break it up, but not before one Kagor was seriously hurt. \nGrannie Annie takes Billy into another restaurant and finally explains herself. She was writing a sequel for her last book and was doing research on Venus. There she met Ezra Karn, an older man with plenty of stories to tell. He told her of the Green Flames, an ore that released gamma rays stronger than any drug known to man. They made people receptive and easily manipulated. \nShe wrote a book about it and included many facts that Karn told her, including the location of the remaining Green Flames. The manuscript was stolen, and now she believes that this person is using the Geren Flame to control people. \nBilly immediately thinks the suspect is Doctor Universe, but Grannie blows him off. She thinks that someone has figured out a way to broadcast the emissions. A heat ray blasts toward them, almost killing Grannie Annie. They rush to the hydrocar and get out of there. \nFinally, they reach Level Five close to Vansoom territory, where Karn lives. The Vansooms are energy creatures, extremely dangerous, and volatile. They take a boat, where a trained hunter-bird attacks them. They survive thanks to Grannie’s shooting skills. They meet Karn at last and he agrees to show them to the shipwreck after they listen to the latest Doctor Universe gameshow. \nThey reach the ship and see that someone has added to it. A network of wires ran across the shipwreck, protected by impenetrable glass. As was the Green Flames. Since they weren’t able to destroy it, the team sets up camp and hatches a new plan. \nAfter being attacked by the Vansooms, they realize that laughter is the only way to fend them off. Grannie Annie decides to broadcast the Vansooms’ laughter over the next Doctor Universe gameshow, where he is to announce his incoming dictatorship. They spend the next day attempting to make the Vansoom’s laugh but only succeed when Grannie Annie reads a chapter from her most popular novel. They broadcast their laughter over Doctor Universe and override his cry for power. \nThey make their way back home, a longer journey thanks to the Vansoom, and are greeted by the news that Doctor Universe failed. Grannie invites Billy to Mars where she will research her next novel.\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "b2183418e18748fcbc275ef27b0c1136", "response_text": "In a future where all planets of the solar system have been colonized, the narrative tells the story of an adventure with science fiction novelist Grannie Annie and her acquaintance Billy Boy.\n\nAnnie has begun to notice that populations in the solar system are displaying curious tendencies. Overall intellectual lethargy and a clear preference to be led by a despot or dictator. Theorizing that this behavior is the result of exposure to a unique radiation of the Green Flame rock, Annie and Billy investigate in the back country of Venus. As they hunt for an answer they are threatened by would-be assassins who are intent on stopping them. \n\nEventually they uncover that quiz show host, Doctor Universe, is amplifying radiation from a cache of Green Flame and broadcasting it throughout the solar system through his visi program. Annie foils his scheme by broadcasting the laughter of the Varsoom as Doctor Universe tries to announce himself as System Dictator. The story ends as Grannie Annie heads off to Mars with Billy Boy understanding that he was fated to join her in her next adventure."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the character of Grannie Annie", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2743b2a32c124317af7ddaf7350b9d72", "response_text": "Grannie Annie is a small elderly woman who wears a bonnet and dresses in black. She smokes tobacco and her choice of beverage is whiskey. She is a very well-known science fiction writer, and her work is highly sought after by publishers. Her pen name is Annabella C. Flowers. Her writing includes some repetition. Each novel includes a beautiful woman for the protagonist to fall in love with. Still, Grannie Annie always does her research. If she’s writing about a colony on Venus, she spends weeks there to truly get to know the place before she portrays the setting in her book. \n\nGrannie Annie is bold and intelligent. Although she does not first suspect that Doctor Universe is the wannabe dictator, as soon as Karn mentions that he thinks the Doctor should be king, everything clicks, and Annie recognizes him as the villain. She is a quick thinker and a tinkerer as well. She is able to build a contraption that interrupts Doctor Universe’s broadcast in very little time. \n\nWhen the Varsoom laugh at her novel, she gets angry. She clearly takes pride in her work and doesn’t like feeling like a laughingstock. Annie is not a quitter. When Billy asks her if she will continue writing, she already has the idea for her next piece ready to go. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "73946daa3ad84be3852a1093179465fd", "response_text": "Grannie Annie is a science fiction author who writes under the pen name Annabella C. Flowers. She is very prolific, and also quite well-known. She is dedicated to doing the right research to make her stories as accurately detailed as possible, and often travels to visit the locations she is writing about so that she has lived in those places before she tries to represent them. Because she is a popular figure, she also participates in other public-facing events, such as the Doctor Universe broadcast at the beginning of the story. She is fond of Billy, the narrator, and they clearly trust each other. Physically, she is very slight, but very expressive, and wears very distinctive clothing. Those who know her personally know she is a fireball in terms of her personality, and her readers are constantly hungry for her adventuresome writing. It’s possible that she has written the most science fiction of anyone in her day, and this left her quite well-off, financially. She is also a creative thinker outside of her writing and was the one to come up with the plan to disrupt the Doctor Universe broadcast near the end of the story. Not only did she set up the equipment to be able to include the laughing sounds from the Varsoom, but it was she that eventually got the Varsoom to laugh. Although at first she was insulted that they would laugh at her story, she quickly dusted herself off and knew she would continue writing, and exploring the world while she did it."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "88e7a699178f4507a38db1de90396ab1", "response_text": "Grannie Annie is not what she seems. Although her appearance reflects her age, at heart she is wild, adventurous, and a tad bit crazy. \nWriting under the pseudonym Annabella C. Flowers, Grannie Annie became one of the most popular science fiction writers. But her books aren’t tomfoolery. She researches each setting before she writes it, traveling to far-off planets to ensure accuracy and attention to detail. \nShe leads Billy and their expeditious team on a great journey. She’s skilled with a gun, killing a highly-trained hunter-bird along the way, and she’s incredibly persistent. When the Vansooms’ laugh at her writing, she, at first, is angry and hurt. But as the story continues, she laughs at the situation, claiming that these creatures wouldn’t know good writing if it hit them in the face. \nHer courage, wildness, and bravery make for a spectacular tale.\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "b2183418e18748fcbc275ef27b0c1136", "response_text": "Grannie Annie is a successful science fiction author who writes under the name Annabel C. Flowers. She ensures authenticity in her writing by visiting the various planets that are to be the settings of her novels. She is a clever, tough and streetwise individual.  \n\nWhen she uncovers a plot to set up quiz show host Doctor Universe as dictator of the solar system. She enlists the help of her companions to dismantle the plot using her ingenuity and her less than stellar written material. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the significance of the Green Flames.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2743b2a32c124317af7ddaf7350b9d72", "response_text": "The Green Flames are highly important to the narrative because without them, Doctor Universe would not be able to try and take over the universe. The Green Flames originally come from planet Mercury. When earthlings or other creatures come in contract with the rock’s Gamma rays, their brains instantly desire control from leadership. The element’s power is immense but also subtle. \n\nThe Green Flames have already been used to institute a dictatorship, as with the cautionary tail of Vennox. Vennox forced each creature to keep two of the rocks in each house, and he used their powers to make them servile. When the government was overthrown, the Green Flames were destroyed. \n\nEzra Karn finds the Green Flames hidden away in a spaceship in the Varsoom district of Venus. Doctor Universe has secured the resource and its power when he broadcasts his weekly quiz show, “Doctor Universe and His Nine Geniuses.” The show is a hit on multiple planets, and the quiz master urges his followers to tune in to each broadcast. The Green Flames lead listeners to believe that he is a supreme being and deserves to be in a position of power. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "73946daa3ad84be3852a1093179465fd", "response_text": "Green Flame is not well understood by the scientific community in the story, but it plays an important role in the history of political power in the system, as well as the contemporary political situation that Grannie Annie is navigating. The rock was originally found on Mercury, and its composition is only partially understood, but it is clear that all types of life forms are affected by the drug-like effects of its radiation. Initially, it appears to just drain some energy, but with increased exposure, the beings search for more direction and guidance, a desire that can be fulfilled by political power of dictators. In fact, it had been used specifically for this purpose on Earth, Venus, and Mars by a dictator named Vennox I. He required that two pieces of Green Flame were in every household, which ensure that the people wanted to look to him for guidance. The stash of this rock that was found in an abandoned ship on the surface of Venus is the last remaining supply, as it was mostly destroyed after the dictatorship ended. When Grannie Annie found out about the supply, through a prospector named Ezra Karn, she decided to use it as part of the plot for her newest novel. However, Doctor Universe used the details of the story to devise his own plot to use the Green Flame to try to start his own dictatorship. He used broadcast technology to extend the effects of the radioactive rock, so that it affected anyone who watched his quiz show. In the end, the plan is not successful, because Billy and Grannie Annie and their team were able to thwart his efforts."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "88e7a699178f4507a38db1de90396ab1", "response_text": "The Green Flames are a radioactive ore that can and have been used to cause great harm. They emit gamma rays that are incredibly suggestive and powerful when consumed. Vennox I, a dictatorship that ruled over three planets in 2710, used the Green Flames to control their people. \nBy placing the ores in every house, they were able to manipulate and oppress their people. The Green Flames’ power can erase all freedom and individual liberty from a planet. \nWith this kind of power, it’s no wonder that they were all destroyed after Vennox I was overthrown. However, a ship containing a tank full of them crashed, leaving some untouched. Their discovery led to Doctor Universe’s attempt at dictatorship. Luckily, he was foiled along the way.\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "b2183418e18748fcbc275ef27b0c1136", "response_text": "Green Flame is a type of rock with a specific type of radiation. When a lifeform is exposed to this radiation, its brain begins to deteriorate and display an acute lack of energy that increases with exposure. \n\nThe rocks were outlawed as part of a push for democratized government and supposedly destroyed centuries ago but a large quantity of the rocks were discovered on Venus.\n\nNow as populations are agitating for dictatorial government, it is suspected that it is due to the influence of Green Flame.\n\nIt was revealed that augmented Green Flame radiation was being broadcast through Doctor Universe's quiz show."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the relationship between Billy and Grannie Annie.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2743b2a32c124317af7ddaf7350b9d72", "response_text": "When Grannie Annie shows up at the men’s club to see Billy, the two friends have not seen each other in two years. It is immediately clear that Grannie Annie runs the show in their relationship, in part because Billy is willing to risk his reputation at the men’s club in order to make his elderly friends happy. Within minutes, Billy is whisked away to the theater to watch Annie guest star on Doctor Universe’s show, even though she does not explain the plan to him and he has little interest in being an audience member.\n\nAlthough the rest of the world knows Grannie Annie as Annabella C. Flowers, the name she uses to publish her science fiction novels, Billy would never address her so formally. There is an obvious feeling of trust between the two characters. When Grannie Annie gets her novel stolen and worries that there’s a dictator about to take over the universe, she finds Billy to help her solve the case. Similarly, when Grannie Annie spills her guts about her far-fetched theory about her novel inspiring an evil villain to use the Green Flames to control millions of beings, Billy believes her right off the bat. \n\nThe pair get along very well, and it’s clear that’s the case when Grannie Annie asks Billy to accompany her on her next trip to research her upcoming novel. Billy simply can’t say no to his friend, whom he deeply admires. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "73946daa3ad84be3852a1093179465fd", "response_text": "At the time that the story takes place, Billy and Grannie Annie had not seen each other in two years. Even so, they trust one another confidently. At the beginning of the story, we see that Grannie Annie has approached Billy to talk about her concerns for the political climate based on the manuscript of one of her novels. Billy admits to the reader that her story of what was happening, told by anyone else, would be hard to believe, but from her he knows there has to be some truth to it. He also trusts her enough to go along on her expedition to find Ezra, the abandoned ship, and the Green Flame. They know each other well enough ability to know that Grannie’s usual drink is a whiskey sour. At the end of the story, although Billy says he does not want to join on a trip to Mars, he admits to the reader that he knows he will join on another adventure, following Grannie wherever she goes."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "88e7a699178f4507a38db1de90396ab1", "response_text": "Grannie Annie is Billy’s grandma and confidante. Billy is a little shyer than she is, however they play off of each other and he gains confidence on the journey. This is best shown at the end when she asks if he will come to Mars with her, and he initially says no. Then, he thinks to himself, Of course, I’ll go. \nGrannie Annie shows up at the exclusive, men-only club Billy was playing at and knew he would come with her. Billy acts as her sidekick and trusted partner throughout the story. Despite their age gap, it’s fair to say that their friendship and camaraderie will last a long time.\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "b2183418e18748fcbc275ef27b0c1136", "response_text": "Billy and Annie are old friends who have had multiple past adventures throughout the solar system. They relate to each other easily and have a sense of mutual respect. Grannie often travels throughout the solar system to gather material for her novels. Billy has often joined her as a partner in her adventures. Billy admires Annie's no-nonsense attitude and commitment to realism. He is brought into the plot to foil Doctor Universe's scheme and aids Annie in accomplishing her plan."}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to Ezra Karn throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2743b2a32c124317af7ddaf7350b9d72", "response_text": "\nGrannie Annie first meets Ezra Karn when she goes to Venus City to research the setting for her novel. Ezra Karn is a prospector who lives in a deep marsh in Varsoom country. Grannie Annie learns that the Green Flames were not all destroyed after the last dictatorship when he tells her that he stumbled upon the resource in an abandoned spaceship. \n\nGrannie Annie and Billy find Karn at his hut in the marsh. They ask Karn to take them to the Green Flames, and after some hesitation, he agrees. He knows that the only way to defeat the Varsoom is to make them laugh, but he does not know what exactly they think is funny. He is a huge fan of Doctor Universe, and he never misses a show. \n\nEzra Karn successfully takes Grannie Annie and Billy to the spaceship he previously found. Within moments of laying eyes on it, Karl yells out in pain. He rolls around on the ground, trying to stand but failing. He informs his companions that the force he is dealing with is the Varsoom, and the only way to end the madness is to make them laugh. \n\nWhen it’s time to interrupt Doctor Universe’s broadcast to stop him from taking over the universe, it is Karn’s idea to have Grannie Annie read her book to the Varsoom. He does not realize that they will find it funny, but he does think it’s a good way to get the invisible creatures’ attention. He essentially saves everyone, since Grannie Annie’s book makes the Varsoom laugh and laugh and make it impossible for Doctor Universe to control the minds of the masses. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "73946daa3ad84be3852a1093179465fd", "response_text": "Ezra is only present for a small part of the story, but he already knew Grannie Annie as they had met in Venus City. Ezra is a prospector, and he finds his home in the swamps where the Varsoom live. When Grannie Annie and Billy make it to the swamplands and marshes, they find Ezra, and Grannie Annie asks him to guide the group to the spaceship that held the Green Flames he had told her about. He agrees, though he warns the group about the Varsoom, an energy life form that could potentially be dangerous. He refuses to miss a showing of Doctor Universe’s quiz show, but guides the group after the show is over. Ezra was the first person to see the ship they were looking for, and asked about the broadcasting apparatus that was built on top of it. He circled the ship with Grannie as the group split up to survey the area, and once they entered the ship, Ezra tried using his pistol to break the glass that was protecting the equipment. Eventually, after camp was set up, he watched Doctor Universe again as he smoked his pipe. When Ezra suggests that Doctor Universe is a wonderful person to be made a leader, Grannie realizes that Billy was right about Doctor Universe wanting to take over. Ezra, along with the rest of the group, experienced extreme pain as the Varsoom showed up. Ezra reminded the group that they needed to make these beings laugh, and as he did a silly dance, he tripped and fell, which did the trick. Ezra and Billy watch Grannie set up the altered visi set to disrupt the broadcast following day. He set up a lamp for Grannie when she started to read her book to the Varsoom, and once they have the laughter they needed, he turned on the equipment so that the microphone could add the laughter of the Varsoom to the Doctor Universe broadcast."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "88e7a699178f4507a38db1de90396ab1", "response_text": "Ezra Karn is an elderly explorer, filled to the brim with stories and adventures galore. He first met Grannie Annie while she was researching the sequel to her latest novel. She visited Venus and Karn to fully immerse herself in the culture. His stories were so ludicrous and wonderful that she decided to turn them into her next novel. Once her manuscript was stolen and the secret stash of Golden Flame revealed, Ezra Karn was thrust into the adventure alongside Billy-Boy, her grandson. \nKarn is a devoted fan of Doctor Universe’s gameshow and never missed a single broadcast. He leads their crew into the Vansoom territory, despite his anxiety. Only he and one other man had ever escaped their territory alive. \nHis guidance leaves them safe and sound, and, though he is attacked by the Vansoom, he’s able to stop them by making them laugh. \nWithout Karn, they would have never discovered how to draw the Vansooms’ attention and make them laugh. If they hadn’t known how to make them laugh, they wouldn’t have been able to defeat Doctor Universe and his evil plan.\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "b2183418e18748fcbc275ef27b0c1136", "response_text": "Ezra Karn is an old prospector who lives on Venus. In the past, he had come upon an old ship that was loaded with Green Flame ore--a rock that was outlawed ages ago for its unique radiative properties. Karn is a religious viewer of the Doctor Universe quiz program, and it's his reaction that hints at the influence of Green Flame on all of the program's viewers.\n\nKarn is the one who leads Annie and Billy back to the ship in order to destroy the Green Flames. He informs the duo of the Varsoom who are beings of pure energy that can only be defeated if one can get them to laugh. During an attack of the Varsoom he stumbles into the campfire which triggers enormously laughter from the Varsoom."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63477", "uid": "370b4c9b2e044f40a3e4bda6b1c0864f", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "IMAGE OF SPLENDOR\n \n\n By LU KELLA\n \n From Venus to Earth, and all the way between, it was a hell of a world for men ... and Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. \"Burner Four!\"\n \n \"On my way, sir!\"\n \n At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The throbbing rumble changed tone.\n \n Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.\n\"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?\"\n \n \"Fusion control two points low, sir.\"\n \n O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, \"Didn't you lock them controls before blast-off?\"\n \n \"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting,\" O'Rielly answered from his own angry bewilderment, \"the error would have registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?\"\n \n \"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?\"\n \n \"I don't know yet, sir.\"\n \n \"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!\"\n \n The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all aboard gone in a churning cloud.\n \n Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it. By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.\n \n Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt that way.\n \n She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!\n \n \"I was in your burner room.\" Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. \"I couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door. So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there, naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned resetting the control.\"\n \n \n\n \n O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard himself saying in sympathetic outrage, \"A shame you had to go to all that bother to get out here!\"\n \n \"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in there.\"\n \n \"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get.\"\n \n \"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?\"\n \n \"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!\"\n \n \"You're so sweet.\" Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for her.\n \n Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.\n \n A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.\n \n When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. \"Well, what about that control?\"\n \n \"What control?\"\n \n \"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!\"\n \n \"Oh, that little thing.\"\n \n Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly sharply. \"Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again? Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner.\"\n \n \"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir,\" O'Rielly said while bowing gracefully.\n \n \"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again,\" Callahan muttered, then snapped back over his shoulder, \"Use your shower!\"\n \n O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's, would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now. Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary. Oh, very quite!\n \n \"You rockhead!\" Only Callahan back from the burner. \"Didn't I tell you to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway about your fusion control!\"\n \n \"Burner Chief Callahan, sir,\" O'Rielly responded courteously, \"I have been thinking.\"\n \n \"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for myself here.\" Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower door.\n \n \"Venus dames,\" O'Rielly said dreamily, \"don't boss anything, do they?\"\n \n Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.\n\"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?\" Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the devil was behind him with the fork ready. \"O'Rielly, open your big ears whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.\n \n \"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or family—everything.\n \n \"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an electron microscope.\n \n \n\n \n \"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys. Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a deal.\n \n \"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything at bargain basement prices.\"\n \n \"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight,\" O'Rielly said, still dreamily. \"But not a peek of any Venus dame.\"\n \n \"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven angels flying on vino.\" Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. \"Holy hollering saints!\"\n \n \"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir,\" O'Rielly responded with an airy laugh. \"No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and lived to tell it, has he?\"\n \n \"So the whispers run,\" Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing into his eyes. \"So the old whispers still run.\"\n \n \"Never a name, though. Never how it was done.\" O'Rielly snorted.\n\"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum.\"\n \n \"Oh?\" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.\n\"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags, even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of\n'em.\n \n \"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation. Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving. Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys.\"\n \n With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. \"Hey, how come you know so much?\"\n \n \"Hah? What?\" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned to himself, something that sounded like, \"Blabbering like I'd had a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby.\" Then Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. \"Look! I was a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more, you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we feed the Old Woman?\"\n \n \"Search me,\" Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.\n \n \"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for! Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at least!\"\n \n Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee. Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her lovely neck and his own forever.\n \n O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!\n \n At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old head. \"Berta!\"\n \n \"Oh, I'm Trillium,\" she assured Callahan sweetly. \"But Grandmamma's name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and twenty-five years ago.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Hah? What?\" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and was being slapped together again. \"O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up, you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we don't flimflam the Old Woman!\" With which ominous remark, rendered in a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into O'Rielly's shower.\n \n O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a spiral nebula. \"My locker!\" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.\n \n \"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,\" Trillium explained. \"I knew the burner room would be warm.\"\n \n Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. \"Now don't you worry about another thing!\"\n \n \"Oh, I'm not,\" she assured him happily. \"Everything is going just the way Grandmamma knew it would!\"\n \n O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko, bounced onto the bunk. \"Well, did you hide her good this time? No, don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her.\"\n \n \"If what old woman finds whom?\" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted to know.\n \n The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure. Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.\n \n Her voice was an iceberg exploding. \"At attention!\"\n \n Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.\n \n She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. \"Mr. Callahan, I asked you a question, did I not?\"\n \n \"Believe you did, ma'am,\" Callahan responded cheerfully. \"And the answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly here is considering it, ma'am.\"\n \n Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life. Yes, ma'am!\n \n \"Wasting your time talking nonsense!\" Old Woman's look was fit to freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. \"I sent you down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!\"\n \n \"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!\" Callahan assured her heartily. \"The subject of nonsense—I mean, women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why,\" Callahan said with a jaunty laugh, \"dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world! Present company excepted, of course,\" Callahan hastened to say with a courtly bow.\n \n \"Stay at attention!\" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face, then in O'Rielly's vicinity. \"Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,\" she muttered through her teeth, \"if it is that vino.\" Something horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there again. \"Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for? Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this burner!\" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. \"Care to join me, Your Excellency?\"\n \n \"May as well.\" His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female ever told any Venus man what to do.\n \n The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with sweat.\n \n Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. \"You first, Your Excellency.\"\n \n \"My dear Captain,\" His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,\n\"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence.\"\n \n No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge onto her own words. \"Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more satisfactory.\"\n \n \"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite.\"\n \n \n\n \n Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting out laughing for joy.\n \n Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be happy forever.\n \n A fine loud \"thump,\" however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.\n \n \"Of all the sappy hiding places!\" Callahan yelped, in surprise of course.\n \n \"Trillium?\" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. \"Trillium!\"\n \n \"Trillium,\" O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, \"why do you have to keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?\"\n \n Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly drowned himself if he could.\n \n \n\n \n \"There are rewards,\" the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of outer space, \"for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for her leaving her planet.\"\n \n \"Shut up!\" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out sideways. \"I'll handle this!\"\n \n \"May I remind His Excellency,\" the Old Woman snapped, \"that I represent Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!\"\n \n \"May I remind the Captain,\" His Excellency declared fit to be heard back to his planet, \"that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President of Venus and this thing can mean war!\"\n \n \"Yes! War in which people will actually die!\" As His Excellency paled at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. \"All right, come along!\"\n \n O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and protect it to his last breath of life.\n \n Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk. Panels on opposite walls lit up.\n \n \"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please,\" the Old Woman stated evenly.\n\"Interplanetary emergency.\"\n \n Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally pleasant.\n \n \"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting.\"\n \n \"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war efforts.\"\n \n Old Woman sighed through her teeth. \"Venus woman aboard this ship. Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries.\"\n \n The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.\n \n Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. \"The facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody.\"\n \n The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features, that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. \"Trillium! My own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly,\" Mr. President roared at his Excellency, \"what's this nonsense?\"\n \n \"Some loud creature is interfering,\" Madame President snapped with annoyance.\n \n \"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed,\" Mr. President swore.\n\"Some silly female cackling now!\"\n \n The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.\n \n \"So,\" Mr. President said evenly. \"Another violation by your Earthmen.\"\n \n \"By your granddaughter, at least,\" Madame President replied coolly.\n \n \"An innocent child,\" Mr. President snapped, \"obviously kidnapped by those two idiotic Earthmen there!\"\n \n \"Oh, no, Grandpapa,\" Trillium said swiftly; \"I stole away all by myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful.\"\n \n \"Impossible!\" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up as he roared, \"You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium, tell the truth!\"\n \n \"Very well. Grandmamma told me how.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged,\" His Excellency Dimdooly declared. \"Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first thing about such things!\"\n \n \"Impossible!\" Grandpapa President agreed. \"I've been married to her for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest rattle-brain I ever knew!\"\n \n \"She learned,\" Trillium stated emphatically, \"a hundred and twenty-five years ago.\"\n \n \"Hundred twenty-five,\" Grandpapa president growled like a boiling volcano. \"The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil.... Berta? Impossible!\"\n \n Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a thousand years. \"I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now,\" Madame President stated coolly. \"Your granddaughter's actions have every mark of an invasion tactic by your government.\"\n \n \"What do you mean, her actions?\" Grandpapa President's finger now lay poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow Earth out of the universe. \"My grandchild was kidnapped by men under your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?\"\n \n \"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!\"\n \n \"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But nobody on Venus dies from the things any more.\"\n \n \"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home doing useful work!\"\n \n \"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement.\"\n \n \"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and be lonely!\"\n \n \"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!\" Grandpapa President was all Venus manhood laying down the law. \"That's the way things have been on Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't change it!\"\n \n \"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these conversations,\" Madame President said crisply. \"Earth is terminating all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant.\"\n \n \"What?\" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. \"It's not legal! You can't get away with this!\"\n \n \"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!\" a heavenly voice similar to Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.\n \n Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. \"Berta! What are you doing here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!\"\n \n \"Were.\" Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto the panel too. \"From now on I'm doing the deciding.\"\n \n \"Nonsense! You're only my wife!\"\n \n \"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women.\"\n \n \"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!\"\n \n \"Take him away, girls,\" Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was yanked from view.\n \n His bellows, however, could be heard yet. \"Unhand me, you fool creatures! Guards! Guards!\"\n \n \"Save your breath,\" Berta advised him. \"And while you're in the cooler, enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in control everywhere now.\"\n \n \"Dimmy,\" Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, \"you have beat around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!\"\n \n \n\n \n Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets, then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. \"Yes, Trillium dear. I love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience.\"\n \n \"Well, Grandmamma,\" Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, \"it works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we Venus women had our own men in our power.\"\n \n \"Those crewmen there,\" Grandmamma President said, \"seem to be proof enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's tranquility.\"\n \n Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden. Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest headache in history.\n \n \"Hmmmm, yes,\" Madame President of Earth observed. \"Reactions agree perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!\n \n \"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest convenience.\"\n \n \"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological moment,\" Grandmamma President said cordially. \"What with the communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take over Dimmy's credentials.\"\n \n \"The Ambassadorial Suite, too,\" Madame President of Earth said graciously. \"Anything else now, Berta?\"\n \n \"I should like,\" Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, \"that Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our revolution better than they knew.\"\n \n \"Of course,\" Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. \"No doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs best.\"\n \n The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan. Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his old conniving brain. \"I award the pair of you five minutes leisure before returning to your stations.\"\n \n \"Oh, well,\" O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond earshot, \"could have been rewarded worse, I suppose.\"\n \n \"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the crows for breakfast.\" Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.\n \n \"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago,\" O'Rielly said in sudden thought. \"If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?\"\n \n \"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time,\" Callahan mumbled, like to himself, \"they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep, guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live. Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing to take over Venus, I guess.\"\n \n O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium before her revolution. \"All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave Grandmamma?\"\n \n \"Yes, ma'am,\" Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly said, \"you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n Billy-be-damned. And that's all.\"\n \n \"I'm not sure,\" O'Rielly said, \"what you mean by, 'that's all.'\"\n \n \"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards? Course not.\"\n \n \"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever.\"\n \n \"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am. Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears.\"\n \n \"So what?\"\n \n \"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5d3bde27efb84c909397d15ea035bcd0", "response_text": "O’Rielly is an apprentice maintaining Burner Four during his first flight on a spaceship traveling between Venus and Earth. The story begins when his supervisor, Burner Chief Callahan, alerts O’Rielly that one of the controls on his burner has slipped, so he sets about resetting the controls to prevent the ship from crashing when it starts its descent toward Earth. He searches his watch room and around the burner looking for a mouse or anyone who might have moved the control. He thinks about Captain Millicent Hatwoody, the ship’s commander nicknamed “Old Woman”, and worries she will exile him to a distant moon if she discovers the issue. During his search, he discovers a stowaway Venusian woman named Trillium on his bunk bed, and she tells him she had moved the control in order to escape the burner room where she was hiding. O’Rielly is struck by her beauty and allows her to shower in his bathroom. While she is showering, Callahan to interrogate O’Rielly and instructs him to take a shower because Captain Hatwoody is bringing a guest to tour the facilities. He reminds O’Rielly of the history of the Earth women’s supremacy over men, which began as a response to the Earth men’s infatuation with Venusian women. When they established dominance, the Earth women returned the Venusian women to their planet. Consequently, the Venusian men warned of war if any Earth men attempted to contact Venusian women. For their part, Venusian women would be killed if they tried to leave. To soften the threat, Venus agreed to let Earth purchase products at a lower cost. O’Rielly reminds Callahan that no Earth man has seen a Venusian woman in 125 years, and Callahan tells the story—an Earth man disguised himself as a Venusian in order to visit his love, a Venusian woman named Berta. When Trillium returns, she reveals that she is Berta’s granddaughter. She hides again before Captain Hatwoody arrives. The captain and her guest, a Venusian ambassador named Dimdooly, investigate the burner, and their interactions reveal conflicting attitudes towards gender superiority on Earth versus Venus. As they leave, Trillium reveals herself, and Dimdooly recognizes her as the Venusian president’s granddaughter. Captain Hatwoody then calls the presidents of both planets, who begin to blame each other and threaten war. Trillium explains that it was Berta, the president’s wife, who taught her how to stowaway, as she had done so herself 125 years prior. She reveals her purpose for stowing away was to draw attention to her revolutionary vision—to convince Earth to stop purchasing products from Venus, thus stopping their cash flow to fund wars. She explains the wars distract Venusian men, and that is why the women are attracted to Earth men. While the president balks, his wife orders him to step aside as she has been elected new President of Venus, and the Venusian women are taking over. Trillium is rewarded with Dimdooly’s ambassadorship, and Callahan and O’Rielly are sent back to work. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6a93bfad19fc47c0b3be67cc7dd530fc", "response_text": "O’Rielly is an Apprentice Burnerman in charge of the burners of the craft. He is surprised when one of them has a fusion control two points low in flight since he thought he had set everything correctly prior to takeoff.\n\nHe discovers a female from Venus stowing away on the ship. O’Rielly does not view women of power with respect, but he treats this woman differently and is attracted to her. There is a gender-based arrangement where women from Venus are no longer allowed on Earth, so her presence is highly illegal.\n\nCallahan (O’Rielly’s superior) comes into the room and discovers the woman from Venus, thinking she is named Berta. Berta was the grandmother of the stowaway, who is actually named Trillium. She hides under the bed in the room, just as the Captain and Ambassador step in to see what is the problem with the burner. They look at the burner personally, and then discover Trillium before leaving the room.\n\nCaptain calls an interplanetary emergency and both the President of Earth and of Venus are brought into conference call. Trillium is the granddaughter of the President of Venus. The President of Venus has been married to Trillium’s grandmother (Berta) for 124.5 years. The President of Venus tries to convince Trillium that people from Earth stole her away, but Trillium is clear that she learned from Berta (his wife) how to execute her plan. Trillium was raising awareness to Earth to stop trade with Venus to stop funding their wars.\n\nThe President of Earth cancels all trade with Venus. Berta becomes the new President of Venus through a unanimous vote. There are only females on the planet to vote, as all Venus men are at war for 10 months at a time with only 2 weeks home inbetween. Her husband is furious and does not believe women should hold power.\n\nAmbassador Dimdooly proposes marriage to Trillium aboard the spaceship. The President of Earth welcomes the idea of a female ambassador travelling Earth to create a new trade treaty. Trillium is given the role of the new Personal Ambassador in Dimdooly’s place.\n\nThe Captain is tasked with giving O’Rielly and Callahan a suitable reward for “aiding in the revolution”. She chooses five minutes of leisure before they must return to their duties.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "97db776f57a04d6b84147d5141024a23", "response_text": "The story takes place aboard a spaceship, at a distant point in the future when women rule Earth, men rule Venus, and the two planets have a tenuous relationship based on old economic treaties, restrictions, and fears they have about one another. Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly can’t figure out how one of the burners he was in charge of on a spaceship had a control slip, until he discovers that it was caused by a stowaway: a beautiful woman from Venus, who has a strange and powerful effect on O’Rielly. \n\nHe tries to keep her hidden but she is discovered by his superior, Callahan, who seems to know a lot about the last Earth man to stow away to Venus 125 years ago, and who mistakes the stowaway, Trillium, for her own grandmother, Berta. Trillium seems to want to be found, and is soon revealed to the ship’s Captain, Millicent Hatwoody, and an ambassador from Venus, Dimdooly. Hatwoody alerts the presidents of both Earth and Venus to the situation, and they disagree about what has happened and whose fault it is. The president of Earth thinks Trillium stowing away on an Earth vessel is tantamount to an act of war, while the president of Venus (Trillium’s grandfather) thinks she must have been kidnapped by the Earth men on the ship.\n\nTrillium clarifies that she intentionally stowed away, with help from her grandmother, Berta, in order to ask the president of Earth to stop buying anything from Venus. The women of Venus want the men to stop leaving to fight in wars that the male-dominated government make up reasons to start just to keep the men occupied, and they want Earth to stop funding the wars. As her grandfather is telling Trillium that things are going to stay as they are, the Earth president says she has dissolved all trade with Venus, and Berta enters her husband’s office and announces that the women of Venus have unanimously voted for Berta to take over the presidency and women to unseat the men from power. She has her female enforcers remove her husband. \n\nOn the spaceship, Dimdooly tells Trillium that he loves her and proposes. She is then given his ambassadorship. O’Rielly and Callahan, heavily implied to be the man who stowed away to Venus 125 years ago and met Berta, are no longer under the Venus woman trance, and now the men of Venus are. As the presidents of Venus and Earth congratulate and thank each other, Berta asks that O’Rielly and Callahan be rewarded for accidentally helping with their plan. Captain Hatwoody awards them each five minutes of leisure time, and Callahan thinks they’re lucky to be alive. \n\nAs the story ends, O’Rielly gets Callahan to tell him why the women of Venus didn’t keep him there if they were lonely, and Callahan reveals that because he didn’t have the “earth beards” that men of Venus have to clutch and tickle the women’s ears, he wasn’t of much use to them. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d8b5da85f26d4a0b8b78baa6a108dc9a", "response_text": "Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly discovers that one of the burners he is responsible for has been reset, but he can’t figure out how that happened since no one has passed through his room outside the burner room to get to it. When he returns to his watch room, a beautiful woman from Venus is on his bunk. She explains that she changed the setting because she was in the burner room and couldn’t open the door when it grew too warm for her. \n\nO’Rielly’s superior, Chief Callahan, arrives to see what caused the problem. Callahan discovers the woman from Venus. He reminds O’Rielly that the first flight from Earth to Venus was made one thousand years ago, and the men from Earth immediately fell in love with the women from Venus and brought some of them back to Earth. Women on Earth were angered by the Earthmen’s behaviors and took over the control of Earth. They took the Venus women back to Venus and warned that there would be a war if any of them came back to Earth. The last time an Earthman was near a Venus woman was 125 years ago when he stuffed himself into a luggage bag and made himself a pair of fake ear beards with worms in them to make them move so he could pass himself off as a Venus man. \n\nThe girl from Venus steps out of the shower, and Callahan calls her “Berta,” but she says her name is “Trillium” and that her grandmother’s name is Berta. Trillium is said to look just as Berta did 125 years ago. O’Rielly hides Trillium under his cot just before Captain Hatwoody enters to check on the burner problem. She is also escorting the Dimdooly, the Personal Assistant of the President of Venus, on a ship tour. Just as the Ambassador and Hatwoody are leaving, Trillium makes a loud bump, and they discover her. The Ambassador is certain she has been kidnapped, but Trillium explains that she stowed away.\n\nHatwoody takes everyone to her office where she calls the presidents of both Earth and Venus. The president of Venus is Trillium’s grandfather. He says she couldn’t have stolen away on her own and demands the truth, so she explains that her grandmother, his wife, told her how to do it. Trillium explains she stowed away to bring the cause of the Venus women to Earth’s attention. She wants Earth to stop trading with Venus so that Venus won’t have the money to keep sending its men to wars for all but two weeks every year. The Venus president’s wife interrupts and declares she’s taking over the presidency; she orders her women to take her husband away and appoints Trillium her new ambassador. O’Rielly realizes Callahan was the last Earthman to meet a Venus woman in person and was the one who tried to stow away to Venus. He was caught because his fake ear beards didn’t grab hold of Berta’s ears like real ones do.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5d3bde27efb84c909397d15ea035bcd0", "response_text": "The story takes place on a spaceship that shuttles between Earth and Venus. The ship is commanded by Captain Hatwoody, a stern woman who represents the matriarchy that has taken over Earth. The majority of the story’s narrative happens in Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly’s watch room. This is a simple room equipped with a bunk bed and bathing facilities, which includes a shower. From this room, he is able to maintain careful stewardship of Burner Four, which helps power the ship. When Callahan notifies O’Rielly that one of his controls has slipped, O’Rielly investigates the burner to find the culprit of the situation. After he discovers Trillium, she uses his bathing facilities to wash herself of the stink from the burner room where she was stowing away. After Callahan enters the watch room and learns of Trillium’s presence, he encourages her to hide again because of Captain Hatwoody’s impending visit. She hides beneath O’Rielly’s bunk. After Captain Hatwoody and her guest, Ambassador Dimdooly, stumble upon Trillium, the captain demands that they all follow her to her office. In her office, she convenes a conference with the presidents of Earth and Venus. After Berta—Trillium’s grandmother, the wife of the current Venusian president, and Callahan’s former love interest—reveals herself as the new ruler of Venus, O’Rielly and Callahan are given a five-minute break and sent back to their former duties managing the burners below."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6a93bfad19fc47c0b3be67cc7dd530fc", "response_text": "The story takes place on a spacecraft led by the female Captain Hatwoody. The main settings are in O’Rielly’s bunk room, shower, burner room four, and the command center of the craft. It is described as quite a large ship with many rooms and crew. The craft is on a mission to deliver the Personal Ambassador to the President of Venus to Earth from the planet of Venus. The spacecraft is in transit during the story, and there are no settings on either of the planets themselves, only the ship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "97db776f57a04d6b84147d5141024a23", "response_text": "The setting of the story includes multiple areas of a spaceship, including one of its burner rooms, the watch room, bunk, locker, and shower of O’Rielly, and Captain Hatwoody’s office. The ship is in outer space, approaching but not yet within Earth’s orbit. Several other locations are described, either involving characters who are communicating remotely (the presidents of Earth and Venus talking to Captain Hatwoody from their offices on their respective planets via video panels), or describing past events (Callahan describing his adventures stowing away while on vacation and traveling to Venus). Several past events are also discussed that include Earth, Venus, and/or spacecrafts. The story is set over 1,000 years in the future. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d8b5da85f26d4a0b8b78baa6a108dc9a", "response_text": "The story is set on an Earth spaceship in the future one thousand years after Earth completed its first successful flight to Venus. It specifically starts in Burnerman O’Rielly’s watch room outside burner room number four for which he is responsible. The ship is returning to Earth, and burner number four has a fusion control reading that is two points low. This can cause the ship to crash on landing. The ship has futuristic features including an electronic shower that can cleanse a person and his clothes in a matter of minutes and video conference calls. On the initial flight from Earth to Venus, the Earthmen discovered the beauty of the Venus women and immediately fell in love with them. They took some Venus women back to Earth, and men there abandoned everything, even their wives and families, to try to be with the Venus women. Earth women were angry at how the men acted and took control of the planet; they also sent all the Venus women back to their home planet. Now Earth and Venus trade with each other, but Earthmen and Venus women are not allowed to be together because doing so can spark a war between the two planets. Earth has a female president, and women hold all the positions of authority over men. Venus has a male president who is very traditional and does not agree with the women of Venus that their men need to be home for more than two weeks every year and spend the rest of their time fighting in wars. Venus men look down on Earthmen for being subservient to women."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Callahan and Berta throughout the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5d3bde27efb84c909397d15ea035bcd0", "response_text": "Callahan is Burner Chief on the ship and has been flying as a professional Burnerman for 125 years. Berta is the first lady of Venus, and the grandmother of Trillium. When O’Rielly is trying to hide Trillium in his shower, Callahan tells the story of when women first took control of Earth: They were not pleased that Earth men were so entranced by Venusian women, and so they took over leadership of the planet and sent all Venusian women back to their own planet. Likewise, Venusian men banned Earth men from interacting with Venusian women under threat of war. This led to an agreement where Earth and Venus could conduct trade together for cheaper prices. Callahan suggests that he was the last man to touch a Venusian woman, and he did so by hiding himself inside a large bag and sneaking through customs disguised as a Venusian man with a long, fake beard. The woman he was sneaking in to see turned out to be Berta, and Callahan says she ultimately rejected him because she could tell his beard was fake, and Venusian women loved to be tickled by real beards. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6a93bfad19fc47c0b3be67cc7dd530fc", "response_text": "Callahan is a Burner Chief mechanic on the spaceship and has been working in space for 125 years. Berta is the grandmother of Trillium, the female stowaway from Venus. Berta stowed away on a spaceship 125 years ago.\n\nCallahan thinks that Trillium is Berta when he first catches her in O’Rielly’s bunk room. Callahan appears to have had a history with Berta 125 years ago when she stowed away aboard a spaceship. \n\nCallahan and Berta do not interact often in the story, but Callahan is eager to be present when she is discovered by the Captain and to know how the situation will play out given that women from Venus are not allowed to travel to Earth.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "97db776f57a04d6b84147d5141024a23", "response_text": "Callahan is an older officer aboard the ship, and Berta is an older woman of Venus, married to its longtime ruler. As Callahan references the tale of the Earth man who stowed away to Venus 125 years ago, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is likely the man in question. When he first sees Trillium, he mistakes her for Berta, and she says that she is her granddaughter but looks like Berta did 125 years earlier. It later turns out that Berta coached Trillium to use Callahan’s stowaway method (hiding in a ditty bag) for their plan. Though Callahan was as taken with Berta as O’Rielly is with Trillium, at the conclusion of the story we learn that Callahan was sent away from Venus due to his lack of ear beards, and resultant inability to tickle women’s ears. However, he always remembers Berta and assists her granddaughter, and after Berta is elected president she asks that he be rewarded for this. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d8b5da85f26d4a0b8b78baa6a108dc9a", "response_text": "Callahan is the Earthman who is the last known man to interact with a Venus woman 125 years ago, and Berta is the Venus woman he fell for. He tells O’Rielly that the last Earth guy who tried to stay with a Venus woman hid in a large luggage bag to be shipped to Venus and attached to himself a pair of fake ear beards with Jupiter wiggle worms in them to make the beards move. At the time of the story, Callahan is O’Rielly’s commanding officer who catches O’Rielly with a Venus woman on the ship. When he sees the Venus woman, he calls her Berta, but Trillium explains that her grandmother is named Berta, and everyone says she looks just like her grandmother did 125 years ago. Callahan tries to prevent Captain Hatwoody from discovering Trillium is there; when she does make the discovery and contacts the presidents of Earth and Venus, the president of Venus confirms that Trillium is his granddaughter. Trillium reveals that her grandmother, Berta, explained to her how to stow away on the ship and that her grandmother was the Venus woman that the Earthman 125 years ago was trying to see. As the video conference continues, Berta enters the room where the president of Venus is and announces that she has been elected president of Venus by all the women on Venus and is replacing him. She also says that Callahan and O’Rielly are proof that Venus women are no longer a threat to Earth’s peace, and she asks the Earth president to reward them for their assistance in Venus’s revolution. Callahan reveals to O’Rielly that his disguise was discovered because his ear beards didn’t reach out and grab Berta around the ears when he kissed her."}]}, {"question_text": "What was Trillium’s plan as a stowaway on the ship?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5d3bde27efb84c909397d15ea035bcd0", "response_text": "Trillium is the granddaughter of the President of Venus and his wife, Berta. One-hundred twenty-five years ago, Berta learned from Callahan’s example how to stowaway and break the rules devised between the two planets. She taught her granddaughter how to do the same, so Trillium took this knowledge to implement her own plan. Trillium represents the women of Venus, who are tired of the lack of attention they receive from Venusian men; the men are far more interested in war and harbor misogynistic attitudes towards women. Likewise, the women rulers of Earth treat men as their inferiors as a result of their lust for Venusian women. When Trillium is discovered, this triggers a meeting between the two presidents of Earth and Venus, and the president of Earth announces that her presence on the ship signifies a breach in their rules. Therefore, the special arrangement between the two planets is ended, and Earth no longer recognizes Dimdooly’s ambassadorship. As the Venusian president resists, he also learns that his wife Berta has been elected the new President of Venus, and that women will now take over just as they did on Earth. She orders her husband to be taken away. After Dimdooly loses his position, he announces his love for Trillium, which confirms her plan to regain the amorous attentions of Venusian men has worked. As a reward for her role in the revolution, Trillium receives Dimdooly’s ambassadorship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6a93bfad19fc47c0b3be67cc7dd530fc", "response_text": "She wanted to bring attention to her cause as a revolutionary and explain that if Earth would stop buying things from Venus, then they would stop funding Venus’ wars like they have been for the past 10,000 years. Trillium explains that women of Venus would like the men of Venus to instead remain on the planet and do useful work. \nHowever, it turns out that Trillium is part of a larger plan for her grandmother to overthrow her grandfather as President of Venus, which they succeed in doing.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "97db776f57a04d6b84147d5141024a23", "response_text": "Trillium’s plan, which she undertook at her grandmother’s behest and with her assistance, was to stow away on the Earth ship to draw the Earth president’s attention to her cause. Berta and Trillium want to beseech Earth’s government to stop supporting Venus’s economy and funding their constant warfare. The women of Venus want the men of Venus to spend time with them rather than constantly going into battle, and Berta and Trillium have devised a way to get Earth to cooperate in their efforts to switch control of Venus from men to women. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d8b5da85f26d4a0b8b78baa6a108dc9a", "response_text": "Trillium plans to follow her grandmother’s plan and stow away on the ship and travel to Earth. She stows away because that is the only way that the women of Venus can get the attention of Earth’s president. She wants Earth to agree to stop trade with Venus so that Venus will no longer have the money to keep its men in wars all the time. She claims that Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war that they don’t have time for the Venus women. It is the Venus women’s desire to be loved that makes them so irresistible to Earthmen. Although the Venus government allows its men two weeks at home from war each year, the Venus women want their men for longer than that so that the men can do useful work. As a result of the stowaway incident, the president of Earth cancels all trade agreements with Venus. Once Venus women have the Venus men under their power, they no longer have any interest in Earthmen. When Trillium’s grandmother becomes president of Venus, she makes Trillium the new Ambassador to Earth."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Captain Hatwoody and Ambassador Dimdooly throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5d3bde27efb84c909397d15ea035bcd0", "response_text": "Captain Hatwoody is the commander of the ship that ferries between Earth and Venus. She is a stern, efficient Earth woman with a vocal disdain for men. Behind her back, the men of her crew refer to her as “the Old Woman.” Ambassador Dimdooly is a Venusian who works as the right-hand man of the President of Venus. Similar to Hatwoody’s disgust for men, Ambassador Dimdooly harbors a deep-seated misogyny. Both characters’ innate sexism is reflected in the social orders of their individual planets and are the result of over one-hundred years of conflict. Captain Hatwoody plays gracious host to Ambassador Dimdooly when he visits the ship, even referring to him as “Excellency.” However, their tensions are revealed when together they inspect Burner Four after visiting O’Rielly in his watch room. They each make snarky comments to each other about the inferiority of the others’ respective gender. Their attitudes are reflected later during the confrontational meeting between the presidents of Earth and Venus in Captain Hatwoody’s office. These two characters’ interactions are essential in highlighting the gender conflict that explodes at the story’s end when both Earth and Venusian women solidify their rule over their respective planets.\n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6a93bfad19fc47c0b3be67cc7dd530fc", "response_text": "The male staff on the ship call Captain Hatwoody “Old Woman” and she is described in language that suggests she is cold and unfeeling. This appears to be a product of their failing to recognize her power as a superior and their discomfort with having a woman in charge. \nAmbassador Dimdooly is the Personal Ambassador to the President of Venus. He speaks down to the Captain as a “lesser gender”. After the discovery of Trillium he bades to handle it himself, because he knows that she is the granddaughter of the President and that her stowing away could be cause for war.\nThe Captain and the Ambassador have tense interactions. The Ambassador does not think the Captain should be in a position of power as a woman and looks down upon the male staff on the ship that stand at her command. \n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "97db776f57a04d6b84147d5141024a23", "response_text": "The relationship between Captain Hatwoody and Ambassador Dimdooly is a tense professional relationship between two high-ranking officials from societies with disparate cultural values and gender norms. Dimdooly is from Venus, where men are in control of the government and considered the dominant sex, and Hatwoody is from Earth, where the opposite is true. Dimdooly is an Ambassador being shown around the ship of which Hatwoody is the captain. Dimdooly appears to be disgusted at the male crew members taking orders from a woman, and he and the captain disagree about who should get “precedence” in terms of who will shower first and where based on which of them has the superior status. Their interactions are characterized by an icy civility throughout the story. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d8b5da85f26d4a0b8b78baa6a108dc9a", "response_text": "Captain Hatwoody is giving Ambassador Dimdooly a tour of Earth’s ship. When Hatwoody orders Callahan and O’Rielly to attention, Dimdooly sneers at the sight of the two men being subservient to a woman. He acts as if he would never allow a woman to tell him what to do. He also refers to Hatwoody as “the lesser gender,” which shows that he considers himself superior to women. When Trillium is discovered on board, and Hatwoody starts to handle the situation, he tells Hatwoody to “shut up” and states that he will take care of the matter since he is the “Personal Ambassador of the President of Venus” and that the incident can lead to war between the two planets. When Berta takes over the presidency for Venus, Trillium orders Dimdooly to stop beating around the bush with her and say what he means, so Dimdooly confesses he loves Trillium and asks her to marry him at her earliest convenience. Trillium then states that Earthmen have no power over Venus women when Venus women have control over their Venus men."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "62198", "uid": "c9a0ca8952b64bd6a83f7e4ccf8673b9", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "QUEST OF THIG\n \n\n By BASIL WELLS\n \n \n Thig of Ortha was the vanguard of the conquering \"HORDE.\" He had blasted across trackless space to subdue a defenseless world—only to meet on Earth emotions that were more deadly than weapons.\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Thig carefully smoothed the dark sand and seaweed of the lonely beach over the metal lid of the flexible ringed tunnel that linked the grubby ship from another planet with the upper air. He looked out across the heaving waters of the Sound toward Connecticut. He stared appraisingly around at the luxuriant green growth of foliage further inland; and started toward the little stretch of trees and brush, walking carefully because of the lesser gravitation.\n \n Thig was shorter than the average Earthman—although on Ortha he was well above the average in height—but his body was thick and powerfully muscled. His skull was well-shaped and large; his features were regular, perhaps a trifle oversize, and his hair and eyes were a curiously matching blend of reddish brown. Oddest of all, he wore no garments, other than the necessary belt and straps to support his rod-like weapon of white metal and his pouches for food and specimens.\n \n The Orthan entered the narrow strip of trees and crossed to the little-used highway on the other side. Here he patiently sat down to wait for an Earthman or an Earthwoman to pass. His task now was to bring a native, intact if possible, back to the carefully buried space cruiser where his two fellows and himself would drain the creature's mentality of all its knowledge. In this way they could learn whether a planet was suited for colonization by later swarms of Orthans.\n \n Already they had charted over a hundred celestial bodies but of them all only three had proven worthy of consideration. This latest planet, however, 72-P-3 on the chart, appeared to be an ideal world in every respect. Sunlight, plenty of water and a dense atmospheric envelope made of 72-P-3 a paradise among planets.\n \n The explorer from another world crouched into the concealment of a leafy shrub. A creature was approaching. Its squat body was covered with baggy strips of bluish cloth and it carried a jointed rod of metal and wood in its paw. It walked upright as did the men of Ortha.\n \n Thig's cold eyes opened a trifle wider as he stared into the thing's stupid face. It was as though he was looking into a bit of polished metal at the reflection of himself!\n \n The Earthman was opposite now and he must waste no more precious time. The mighty muscles of the Orthan sent him hurtling across the intervening space in two prodigious bounds, and his hands clamped across the mouth and neck of the stranger....\n \n \n\n \n Lewis Terry was going fishing. For a week the typewriter mill that had ground out a thousand assorted yarns of the untamed West and the frigid desolation of the Northwoods had been silent. Lewis wondered if he was going stale. He had sat every day for eight hours in front of that shiny-buttoned bane of the typist, but there were no results. Feebly he had punched a key two days ago and a $ sign had appeared. He hadn't dared touch the machine since.\n \n For Mr. Terry, that hard-hitting writer of two-gun action, had never been further west of Long Island than Elizabeth, and he had promised his wife, Ellen, that he would take the three children and herself on a trailer tour of the West that very summer. Since that promise, he could not write a word. Visions of whooping red-skinned Apaches and be-chapped outlaws raiding his little trailer home kept rolling up out of his subconscious. Yet he had to write at least three novelets and a fistful of short stories in the next two weeks to finance the great adventure—or the trip was off.\n \n So Lewis left the weathered old cottage in the early dawn and headed for his tubby old boat at the landing in an attempt to work out a salable yarn....\n \n \"Hey!\" he shouted as a naked man sprang out of the bushes beside the road. \"What's the trouble?\"\n \n Then he had no time for further speech, the massive arms of the stranger had wound around him and two hamlike hands shut off his speech and his wind. He fought futilely against trained muscles. The hand clamping his throat relaxed for a moment and hacked along the side of his head. Blackness flooded the brain of Lewis, and he knew no more.\n \n \n\n \n \"There it is,\" announced Thig, dropping the limp body of the captured Earthman to the metal deck-plates. \"It is a male of the species that must have built the cities we saw as we landed.\"\n \n \"He resembles Thig,\" announced Kam. \"But for the strange covering he wears he might be Thig.\"\n \n \"Thig will be this creature!\" announced Torp. \"With a psychic relay we will transfer the Earthman's memories and meager store of knowledge to the brain of Thig! He can then go out and scout this world without arousing suspicion. While he is gone, I will take Kam and explore the two inner planets.\"\n \n \"You are the commander,\" said Thig. \"But I wish this beast did not wear these clumsy sheathing upon his body. On Ortha we do not hamper the use of our limbs so.\"\n \n \"Do not question the word of your commander,\" growled Torp, swelling out his thick chest menacingly. \"It is for the good of our people that you disguise yourself as an Earthman.\"\n \n \"For the good of the Horde,\" Thig intoned almost piously as he lifted Terry's body and headed for the laboratory.\n \n Service for the Horde was all that the men of Ortha knew. Carefully cultured and brought to life in the laboratories of their Horde, they knew neither father nor mother. Affection and love were entirely lacking in their early training and later life. They were trained antlike from childhood that only the growth and power of the Horde were of any moment. Men and women alike toiled and died like unfeeling robots of flesh and bone for the Horde. The Horde was their religion, their love-life, their everything!\n \n So it was that the bodies of the Earthman and the Orthan were strapped on two parallel tables of chill metal and the twin helmets, linked to one another by the intricacies of the psychic relay, put upon their heads.\n \n For ten hours or more the droning hum of the relay sucked Terry's brain dry of knowledge. The shock upon the nervous system of the Earthman proved too violent and his heart faltered after a time and stopped completely. Twice, with subtle drugs they restored pseudo-life to his body and kept the electrical impulses throbbing from his tortured brain, but after the third suspension of life Thig removed his helmet.\n \n \"There is nothing more to learn,\" he informed his impassive comrades.\n\"Now, let us get on with the plastic surgery that is required. My new body must return to its barbaric household before undue attention is aroused. And when I return I will take along some of the gleaming baubles we found on the red planet—these people value them highly.\"\n \n An hour later, his scars and altered cartilage already healed and painless, Thig again scraped sand over the entrance to the space ship and set out along the moonlit beach toward the nearest path running inland to his home.\n \n Memory was laying the country bare about him, Terry's own childhood memories of this particular section of Long Island. Here was the place where Jake and Ted had helped him dig for the buried treasure that old 'Notch-ear' Beggs had told them so exactly about. Remembrance of that episode gave Thig an idea about the little lump of jewels in his pocket. He had found them in a chest along the beach!\n \n He was coming up on the porch now and at the sound of his foot on the sagging boards the screen door burst open and three little Earth-creatures were hugging at his legs. An odd sensation, that his acquired memories labeled as pleasure, sent a warm glow upward from around his heart.\n \n Then he saw the slender red-haired shape of a woman, the mate of the dead man he knew, and confusion struck his well-trained brain. Men had no mates on Ortha, sex had been overthrown with all the other primitive impulses of barbarism; so he was incapable of understanding the emotions that swept through his acquired memory.\n \n Unsteadily he took her in his arms and felt her warm lips pressed, trembling, against his own. That same hot wave of pulsing blood choked achingly up into his throat.\n \n \"Lew, dear,\" Ellen was asking, \"where have you been all day? I called up at the landing but you were not there. I wanted to let you know that Saddlebag Publications sent a check for $50 for \"Reversed Revolvers\" and three other editors asked for shorts soon.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Shoulda got a hundred bucks for that yarn,\" grunted Thig, and gasped.\n \n For the moment he had been Lewis Terry and not Thig! So thoroughly had he acquired the knowledge of Terry that he found himself unconsciously adopting the thinking and mannerism of the other. All the better this way, he realized—more natural.\n \n \"Sorry I was late,\" he said, digging into his pocket for the glittering baubles, \"but I was poking around on the beach where we used to hunt treasure and I found an old chest. Inside it I found nothing but a handful of these.\"\n \n He flashed the jewels in front of Ellen's startled eyes and she clung, unbelieving, to his arm.\n \n \"Why, Lew,\" she gasped, \"they're worth a fortune! We can buy that new trailer now and have a rebuilt motor in the car. We can go west right away.... Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, cowboys!\"\n \n \"Uh huh,\" agreed the pseudo Lewis, memories of the ferocious savages and gunmen of his stories rendering him acutely unhappy. Sincerely he hoped that the west had reformed.\n \n \"I saved some kraut and weiners,\" Ellen said. \"Get washed up while I'm warming them up. Kids ate all the bread so I had to borrow some from the Eskoes. Want coffee, too?\"\n \n \"Mmmmmm,\" came from the depths of the chipped white wash-basin.\n \n \n\n \n \"Home again,\" whispered Ellen as she stood beside Thig twelve weeks later and gazed tearfully at the weathered little gray house. She knelt beside the front stoop and reached for the key hidden beneath it.\n \n \"The west was wonderful; tremendous, vast and beautiful,\" she went on as they climbed the steps, \"but nowhere was there any place as beautiful as our own little strip of sky and water.\"\n \n Thig sank into a dusty old swing that hung on creaking chains from the exposed rafters of the porch roof. He looked down at the dusty gray car and the bulbous silvery bulk of the trailer that had been their living quarters for almost three months. Strange thoughts were afloat in the chaos of his cool Orthan brain.\n \n Tonight or tomorrow night at the latest he must contact his two fellows and report that Earth was a planetary paradise. No other world, including Ortha, was so well-favored and rich. An expeditionary force to wipe the grotesque civilizations of Earth out of existence would, of course, be necessary before the first units of new Hordes could be landed. And there Thig balked. Why must they destroy these people, imperfect though their civilization might be, to make room for the Hordes?\n \n Thig tried to tell himself that it was the transmitted thoughts of the dead Earthman that made him feel so, but he was not too sure. For three months he had lived with people who loved, hated, wept and sacrificed for reasons that he had never known existed. He had learned the heady glory of thinking for himself and making his own decisions. He had experienced the primitive joy of matching his wits and tongue against the wits of other unpredictable human beings. There was no abrupt division of men and women into definite classes of endeavor. A laborer thought the same thoughts that a governor might think. Uncertainty added zest to every day's life.\n \n The Orthan had come to question the sole devotion of the individual to the Horde to the exclusion of all other interests. What, he wondered, would one new world—or a hundred—populated by the Hordes add to the progress of humanity? For a hundred thousand years the Orthan civilization had remained static, its energies directed into certain well-defined channels. They were mindless bees maintaining their vast mechanical hives.\n \n There was that moment on the brink of the Grand Canyon when Ellen had caught his arm breathlessly at all the beauty spread away there beneath them. There were mornings in the desert when the sun painted in lurid red the peaks above the harsh black-and-whites of the sagebrush and cactus slopes. There was the little boy, his body burning with fever, who nestled trustingly against his tense man's body and slept—the son of Ellen and the man he had destroyed.\n \n Thig groaned. He was a weakling to let sentimentality so get the better of his judgment. He would go now to the space ship and urge them to blast off for Ortha. He sprang off the porch and strode away down the road toward the beach.\n \n The children ran to him; wanted to go along. He sent them away harshly but they smiled and waved their brown little hands. Ellen came to the door and called after him.\n \n \"Hurry home, dear,\" she said. \"I'll have a bite ready in about an hour.\"\n \n He dared not say anything, for his voice would have broken and she would have known something was wrong. She was a very wise sort of person when something was troubling him. He waved his stubby paw of a hand to show that he had heard, and blindly hurried toward the Sound.\n \n Oddly enough, as he hurried away along the narrow path through the autumn woods, his mind busied itself with a new epic of the west that lived no longer. He mentally titled it: \"Rustlers' Riot\" and blocked in the outlines of his plot. One section of his brain was that of the careless author of gunslinging yarns, a section that seemed to be sapping the life from his own brain. He knew that the story would never be written, but he toyed with the idea.\n \n So far had Thig the emotionless, robot-being from Ortha drifted from the unquestioning worship of the Horde!\n \n \n\n \n \"You have done well,\" announced Torp when Thig had completed his report on the resources and temperatures of various sections of Terra. \"We now have located three worlds fit for colonization and so we will return to Ortha at once.\n \n \"I will recommend the conquest of this planet, 72-P-3 at once and the complete destruction of all biped life upon it. The mental aberrations of the barbaric natives might lead to endless complications if they were permitted to exist outside our ordered way of life. I imagine that three circuits of the planet about its primary should prove sufficient for the purposes of complete liquidation.\"\n \n \"But why,\" asked Thig slowly, \"could we not disarm all the natives and exile them on one of the less desirable continents, Antarctica for example or Siberia? They are primitive humans even as our race was once a race of primitives. It is not our duty to help to attain our own degree of knowledge and comfort?\"\n \n \"Only the good of the Horde matters!\" shouted Torp angrily. \"Shall a race of feeble-witted beasts, such as these Earthmen, stand in the way of a superior race? We want their world, and so we will take it. The Law of the Horde states that all the universe is ours for the taking.\"\n \n \"Let us get back to Ortha at once, then,\" gritted out Thig savagely.\n\"Never again do I wish to set foot upon the soil of this mad planet. There are forces at work upon Earth that we of Ortha have long forgotten.\"\n \n \"Check the blood of Thig for disease, Kam,\" ordered Torp shortly. \"His words are highly irrational. Some form of fever perhaps native to this world. While you examine him I will blast off for Ortha.\"\n \n Thig followed Kam into the tiny laboratory and found a seat beside the squat scientist's desk. His eyes roamed over the familiar instruments and gauges, each in its own precise position in the cases along the walls. His gaze lingered longest on the stubby black ugliness of a decomposition blaster in its rack close to the deck. A blast of the invisible radiations from that weapon's hot throat and flesh or vegetable fiber rotted into flaky ashes.\n \n The ship trembled beneath their feet; it tore free from the feeble clutch of the sand about it, and they were rocketing skyward. Thig's broad fingers bit deep into the unyielding metal of his chair. Suddenly he knew that he must go back to Earth, back to Ellen and the children of the man he had helped destroy. He loved Ellen, and nothing must stand between them! The Hordes of Ortha must find some other world, an empty world—this planet was not for them.\n \n \"Turn back!\" he cried wildly. \"I must go back to Earth. There is a woman there, helpless and alone, who needs me! The Horde does not need this planet.\"\n \n Kam eyed him coldly and lifted a shining hypodermic syringe from its case. He approached Thig warily, aware that disease often made a maniac of the finest members of the Horde.\n \n \"No human being is more important than the Horde,\" he stated baldly.\n\"This woman of whom you speak is merely one unit of the millions we must eliminate for the good of the Horde.\"\n \n Then it was that Thig went berserk. His fists slashed into the thick jaw of the scientist and his fingers ripped at the hard cords overlying the Orthan's vital throat tubes. His fingers and thumb gouged deep into Kam's startled throat and choked off any cry for assistance before it could be uttered.\n \n Kam's hand swept down to the holster swung from his intricate harness and dragged his blaster from it. Thig's other hand clamped over his and for long moments they swayed there, locked together in silent deadly struggle. The fate of a world hung in the balance as Kam's other hand fought against that lone arm of Thig.\n \n \n\n \n The scales swung in favor of Kam. Slowly the flaring snout of his weapon tilted upward until it reached the level of Thig's waist. Thig suddenly released his grip and dragged his enemy toward him. A sudden reversal of pressure on Kam's gun hand sent the weapon swivelling about full upon its owner's thick torso. Thig's fingers pressed down upon Kam's button finger, down upon the stud set into the grip of the decomposition blaster, and Kam's muscles turned to water. He shrieked.\n \n Before Thig's eyes half of his comrade's body sloughed away into foul corruption that swiftly gave way to hardened blobs of dessicated matter. Horror for what he had done—that he had slain one of his own Horde—made his limbs move woodenly. All of his thoughts were dulled for the moment. Painfully slow, he turned his body around toward the control blister, turned around on leaden feet, to look full into the narrowed icy eyes of his commander.\n \n He saw the heavy barrel of the blaster slashing down against his skull but he could not swing a fraction of an inch out of the way. His body seemed paralyzed. This was the end, he thought as he waited stupidly for the blow to fall, the end for Ellen and the kids and all the struggling races of Earth. He would never write another cowboy yarn—they would all be dead anyhow soon.\n \n Then a thunderclap exploded against his head and he dropped endlessly toward the deck. Blows rained against his skull. He wondered if Torp would ever cease to hammer at him and turn the deadly ray of the weapon upon him. Blood throbbed and pounded with every blow....\n \n \n\n \n Bam, Bam, Bam, the blood pounded in his ears. Like repeated blows of a hammer they shook his booming head. No longer was Torp above him. He was in the corner of the laboratory, a crumpled blood-smeared heap of bruised flesh and bone. He was unfettered and the blood was caked upon his skull and in his matted hair. Torp must have thought he had killed him with those savage blows upon the head.\n \n Even Torp, thought Thig ruefully, gave way to the primitive rage of his ancestors at times; but to that very bit of unconscious atavism he now owed his life. A cool-headed robot of an Orthan would have efficiently used the blaster to destroy any possibility of remaining life in his unconscious body.\n \n Thig rolled slowly over so that his eye found the door into the control room. Torp would be coming back again to dispose of their bodies through the refuse lock. Already the body of Kam was gone. He wondered why he had been left until last. Perhaps Torp wished to take cultures of his blood and tissues to determine whether a disease was responsible for his sudden madness.\n \n The cases of fragile instruments were just above his head. Association of memories brought him the flash of the heavy blaster in its rack beneath them. His hand went up and felt the welcome hardness of the weapon. He tugged it free.\n \n In a moment he was on his knees crawling across the plates of the deck toward the door. Halfway across the floor he collapsed on his face, the metal of the gun making a harsh clang. He heard the feet of Torp scuffle out of silence and a choked cry in the man's throat squalled out into a senseless whinny.\n \n Thig raised himself up on a quivering elbow and slid the black length of the blaster in front of him. His eyes sought the doorway and stared full into the glaring vacant orbs of his commander. Torp leaned there watching him, his breath gurgling brokenly through his deep-bitten lips. The clawing marks of nails, fingernails, furrowed his face and chest. He was a madman!\n \n The deadly attack of Thig; his own violent avenging of Kam's death, and now the apparent return of the man he had killed come to life had all served to jolt his rigidly trained brain from its accustomed groove. The shock had been too much for the established thought-processes of the Orthan.\n \n So Thig shot him where he stood, mercifully, before that vacant mad stare set him, too, to gibbering and shrieking. Then he stepped over the skeleton-thing that had been Torp, using the new strength that victory had given him to drive him along.\n \n He had saved a world's civilization from extinction! The thought sobered him; yet, somehow, he was pleased that he had done so. After all, it had been the Earthwoman and the children he had been thinking of while he battled Kam, a selfish desire to protect them all.\n \n He went to the desk where Torp had been writing in the ship's log and read the last few nervously scrawled lines:\n  Planet 72-P-3 unfit for colonization. Some pernicious disease that strikes at the brain centers and causes violent insanity is existent there. Thig, just returned from a survey of the planet, went mad and destroyed Kam. In turn I was forced to slay him. But it is not ended. Already I feel the insidious virus of....\n \n \n And there his writing ended abruptly.\n \n Thig nodded. That would do it. He set the automatic pilot for the planet Ortha. Unless a rogue asteroid or a comet crossed the ship's path she would return safely to Ortha with that mute warning of danger on 72-P-3. The body of Torp would help to confirm his final message.\n \n Then Thig crossed the cabin to the auxiliary life boat there, one of a half-dozen space ships in miniature nested within the great ship's hull, and cut free from the mother vessel.\n \n He flipped the drive lever, felt the thrumming of the rockets driving him from the parent ship. The sensation of free flight against his new body was strangely exhilerating and heady. It was the newest of the emotions he had experienced on Earth since that day, so many months before, when he had felt the warmness of Ellen's lips tight against his.\n \n \n Thig flipped the drive lever, felt the thrumming of the rockets driving him from the parent ship.\n \n\n \n He swung about to the port, watched the flaming drive-rockets of the great exploratory ship hurl it toward far-away Ortha, and there was no regret in his mind that he was not returning to the planet of his first existence.\n \n He thought of the dull greys and blacks of his planet, of the monotonous routine of existence that had once been his—and his heart thrilled to the memories of the starry nights and perfect exciting days he had spent on his three month trip over Earth.\n \n He made a brief salute to the existence he had known, turned with a tiny sigh, and his fingers made brief adjustments in the controls. The rocket-thrum deepened, and the thin whistle of tenuous air clutching the ship echoed through the hull-plates.\n \n He thought of many things in those few moments. He watched the roundness of Earth flatten out, then take on the cup-like illusion that all planets had for an incoming ship. He reduced the drive of his rockets to a mere whisper, striving to control the impatience that crowded his mind.\n \n He shivered suddenly, remembering his utter callousness the first time he had sent a space ship whipping down toward the hills and valleys below. And there was a sickness within him when he fully realized that, despite his acquired memory and traits, he was an alien from outer space.\n \n He fingered the tiny scars that had completely obliterated the slight differences in his appearance from an Earthman's, and his fingers trembled a bit, as he bent and stared through the vision port. He said a brief prayer in his heart to a God whose presence he now felt very deeply. There were tears in the depths of his eyes, then, and memories were hot, bitter pains.\n \n \n\n \n Earth was not far below him. As he let gravity suck him earthward, he heaved a gasp of relief. He was no longer Thig, a creature of a Horde's creation, but Lewis Terry, writer of lurid gun-smoking tales of the West. He must remember that always. He had destroyed the real Terry and now, for the rest of his life, he must make up to the dead man's family.\n \n The knowledge that Ellen's love was not really meant for him would be a knife twisting in his heart but for her sake he must endure it. Her dreams and happiness must never be shattered.\n \n The bulge of Earth was flattening out now and he could see the outlines of Long Island in the growing twilight.\n \n A new plot was growing in the brain of Lewis Terry, a yarn about a cowboy suddenly transported to another world. He smiled ironically. He had seen those other worlds. Perhaps some day he would write about them....\n \n He was Lewis Terry! He must remember that!", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "9", "uid": "6c42c4ec7ed94153a7a021f9253d2bd0", "response_text": "Three aliens from the planet Ortha, Thig, Kam and their Commander, Torp, have landed on Long Island to see if Earth is viable for the Orthans to take over. Thig captures a passing man, an author named Lewis Terry, and brings him back to the spaceship, where Torp decides that Thig should impersonate Terry to learn more about Earth. Terry’s knowledge is transferred to Thig, a process that kills Terry and arms Thig with with all of his memories. He is given plastic surgery to look like Terry, and he goes to live with Terry’s family. \n\nHe is greeted by Terry’s three young children and his wife, Ellen; the children’s affection and Ellen’s kiss lead to sensations that confuse but excite Thig. The story then jumps ahead 12 weeks to when they return from their vacation, Thig having experienced many new emotions and sensations and having become very attached to Terry’s family. He knows that he must report to his Orthan colleagues, but has misgivings about doing so. Upon his arrival back to the ship, he tells Torp that Earth is ideal for their purposes, and Torp commends him and says he’ll recommend that Ortha take it over and eradicate the humans. Thig suggests that they instead disarm and exile the humans, and train them in the ways of Ortha. Torp responds angrily that they don’t need to waste their time with anyone outside the Orthan ��Horde”. He asks Kam to check his blood for disease. \n\nThig realizes that he loves Ellen and wants to protect her and the earthlings and says as much to Kam, who attempts to subdue him. After a struggle over Kam’s blaster, Thig kills him. Torp sees what he has done and flies into the type of rage Orthans don’t ascribe to, bludgeoning Thig until he thinks he is dead. Thig takes a blaster from a case above him and kills Torp. He reads in the ship log that Torp has written that Earth is not viable, because it infected Thig with a disease that led to him killing Kam and made it necessary for Torp to kill him. Thig puts the ship on autopilot toward Ortha, takes one of the small auxiliary ships, and heads back to Earth. \n\nHe experiences many emotions, and regrets how callous he was when he first arrived on Earth and captured Lewis Terry. He vows to live as Terry in repayment to his family, and thinks knowing that Ellen doesn’t really love him, Thig, will be his punishment while he strives to make her happy. As he heads toward Long Island, the idea for a story develops in his mind. This one is about a cowboy that visits other worlds, worlds like the ones Thig has seen. He thinks maybe he could write this, and then reminds himself to remember that he is Lewis Terry now. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "bd30ab4f5afe47f3ac3eadeeb32329fc", "response_text": "The story begins with the protagonist Thig, who is an alien from the planet Ortha, on a mission to investigate Earth’s suitability to be colonized by the conquering Horde he represents. Thig is a bit shorter than the average human with a thick, muscular body and reddish hair. His spaceship is hidden below the sand at a Long Island beach, and after he emerges, he hides behind the brush along a nearby road. He sees a human that looks remarkably like himself. This human turns out to be a Western writer named Lewis Terry, who lives nearby with his wife and children. Lew, as his wife calls him, had been out fishing as he tried to plot out new stories to fund his proposed trip out West, where he could gather research to make his writing more believable. Thig knocks him out and takes him back to his ship, where he and his fellow Orthans Kam and Torp begin the process of transferring Lew’s memories, thoughts, and emotions into Thig’s mind. This allows him to disguise himself as he researches Earth’s environment and the humans that populate it. After undergoing plastic surgery to better mimic Lew’s appearance, Thig returns to Lew’s home, guided by his memories of the past and human emotions. Thig meets Lew’s children and experiences emotions of love for the first time. These feelings are further complicated when he meets Ellen, Lew’s wife, who kisses him and floods Thig’s new Lew-mind with romantic emotions. Thig shows Ellen the treasures he has brought with him from Mars, and Ellen says they can now afford to pay for their trip out West. They spend the next three months exploring the West, during which time Thig plunges deeper into human emotion and is overwhelmed by the beauty of Earth. Upon his return to the ship, Thig attempts to convince Kam and Torp to change their plans about destroying humankind, and they think Thig has contracted some kind of disease. When Kam goes to test Thig, Thig kills him with a decomposition blaster; in turn, Torp beats Thig until he thinks he has killed him. Torp then returns to his desk and makes a note that Earth is probably not suitable for the Horde due to a mysterious disease that had overtaken Thig. Thig kills Torp and returns to Earth in an escape vessel, sending the ship back to Ortha with Torp’s message. Torp goes back to Ellen and the children, intending to spend the rest of his life living as Lewis Terry.\n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "d7342d28b97f4f29a4be52847bb124da", "response_text": "Thig appears naked on Long Island and waits for an Earthman to come near. Lewis Terry, a writer of Westerns, walks by Thig. He went out on his boat to fish, and Thig jumps out at Terry and kills him.\nThig is excited to help his people, the Orthans, discover a new place to inhabit. On planet Ortha, everything is done to serve the Horde. The creatures have no families. They instead devote their lives to society. \nOn the spaceship, Thig takes over Terry’s body and gains all of his knowledge. He then undergoes surgery to correct the scars that Terry sustained during the attack. When he exits the spaceship, Thig is surprised to learn that he now holds all of Terry’s childhood memories and understandings about the world around him. \n\nHe approaches Terry’s home and is greeted by his children and his wife. Thig feels pleasure from this interaction, something he has never experienced before. When Ellen talks to Thig, he naturally responds like Terry would without even thinking about it. The family heads out on a vacation in the West.\n\nAfter several weeks, Thig’s family arrives back at home. He loved building relationships with his wife and children, and soon he will need to talk to his fellow Orthans and let them know that Earth is a perfect place for them to take over. He worries about what will become of Terry’s family. Thig enjoys being an Earthman because he is allowed to feel and express emotions and experience the uncertainty of life that does not exist on Ortha. \n\nWhen Thig leaves the house to go to the spaceship, his mind keeps coming up with ideas for new Western novels. He can’t help it since he still has many of Terry’s old thoughts. Torp decides it’s time to head back to Ortha. He will recommend killing all humans. Thig disagrees, and Torp becomes angry. He assumes that Thig has contracted a disease, and he tells Kam to test him. The ship blasts off, and in a fit of rage, Thig chokes Kam. They wrestle over Kam’s weapon, and Thig makes Kam shoot himself in the torso. Torp comes into the room and hits Thig over the head with a gun. \n\nTorp leaves Thig bleeding and alone in the laboratory. When he wakes up, he is injured, but he manages to grab a weapon. When Torp comes back in the room, he begins shrieking. Thig shoots the commander. \n\nThig finds Torp’s note that says that Earth holds some disease that causes insanity, and therefore it is not appropriate for colonization. He sets the spaceship for Ortha and takes an auxiliary ship back to Earth. Happiness overtakes him as he heads back to his new home. He has zero regrets about leaving Ortha forever. Thig now believes in God, and realizes that his duty is to take care of Terry’s family for the rest of his life. He thinks up a Western plot about a cowboy who visits another planet.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d78fc65b687e4755b39ca056bb20445e", "response_text": "\nThig and two other Orthans, Torp and Kam, are traveling the galaxy looking for another planet that the Orthans can populate. When they reach Earth, Thig goes out to look for a human specimen that he can capture and take back to the space cruiser to drain the person’s memory and knowledge to help them determine whether Earth will be a suitable planet for Orthan colonization. Thig captures Lewis Terry, a fiction writer with writer’s block and taking the day off to go fishing. Terry bears an uncanny likeness to Thig, and Torp decides to transfer Terry’s knowledge to Thig and have Thig explore Earth to determine whether it will be appropriate for the Orthans. They make the transfer, but Terry dies. They perform plastic surgery to make Thig look even more like Terry; then Thig returns to Terry’s home.\n\nTerry’s children and wife greet him, and Thig realizes he has a warm response to them even though Orthans have no emotions or sentimentality. When Terry’s wife, Ellen, tells him he received a check for $50 for one of her stories, Thig immediately comments that the story was worth $100—and is stunned to realize he is thinking like Terry, not himself. He shows Ellen the stones he dug up from an old wooden box that he remembered learning about in Terry’s childhood, and she exclaims they are worth a fortune and will finance a travel trailer and their trip out West.\n\nAfter returning from their western trip, Thig realizes he needs to report back to Torp about whether Earth is an appropriate planet for the Orthans. He knows it is perfect and that the Orthans will destroy every Earth person, and he begins to wonder why they would have to destroy them. As he makes his way to the space cruiser, he comes up with a new Western story to write.\n\nWhen Thig makes his report to Torp, Torp agrees that Earth is perfect for the Orthans and grows angry when Thig asks if they couldn’t just disarm the Earth people rather than destroying all of them. Torp orders Kam to check Thig’s blood for disease. The space cruiser blasts off, and Thig thinks about Ellen and her children with Lewis Terry and realizes he loves them and must protect them. He tells Torp and Kam to turn back—that there is a woman who needs him and the Horde from Ortha doesn’t need Earth. Thig fights and kills Kam, but Torp realizes what is happening and catches Thig off-guard. Torp beats Thig almost to death, and when Thig regains consciousness, he kills Torp and returns to Earth via a lifeboat. Thig decides that he must be Lewis Terry, not Thig, from now on, and he begins to develop another story about the old West."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Thig and what happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "9", "uid": "6c42c4ec7ed94153a7a021f9253d2bd0", "response_text": "Thig is the protagonist of the story, a native of the planet Ortha. He is described as shorter than an average human man (though tall for an Orthan man), and thick-bodied with well-developed muscles, average-to-large facial features, and reddish brown eyes. At the beginning of the story, he and two other Orthans, Kam and Torp, are on a mission to find planets considered viable for the Orthans to take over. Thig kidnaps a human man, Lewis Terry, and the Orthans transfer his memories to Thig and surgically alter him to look like Terry. Thig assumes his identity and joins his family posing as Terry. He begins to feel new sensations and emotions around Terry’s wife, Ellen, and their kids, and travels with them on a three-month vacation during which he learns what it feels like to be human and to care for a family. When they return and he must make his report to the other Orthans, he truthfully reports that Earth would be ideal to take over but has second thoughts when Torp says he’ll recommend that they conquer Earth and decimate the population. When his pleas to consider just disarming and exiling the humans are met with scorn, Thig becomes angry and ultimately realizes that he loves Ellen and wants to go back to save Earth. He kills both of his Orthan colleagues and sends the ship back toward Ortha as he takes an auxiliary ship back to Long Island. Along the way, he experiences many emotions including regret for his former callousness and taking Lewis Terry away from his family. Instead of the robotic being who initially exhibited coldness and indifference at the beginning of the story, he now experiences remorse and selflessness as he decides to give Ellen and the kids the life they deserve even though he’ll always know who he is and what he has done. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "bd30ab4f5afe47f3ac3eadeeb32329fc", "response_text": "Thig is an Orthan from the planet Ortha, who visits Earth on a research mission with fellow Horde members Kam and Torp. Thig looks very similar to his research victim, a Western fiction writer named Lewis Terry, except he is a bit shorter, has a thick, muscular body, and has unusual reddish-brown hair on his head that matches his eyebrow hair. He wears no clothes, except some straps and pockets used for carrying his weapons and food; he is disturbed by Lew’s human clothes, which he considers impractical. Thig captures Lew and Kam and Torp help him transfer his memories, thoughts, and human emotions to better disguise himself as he researches Earth’s suitability for Horde habitation. Throughout the story, Thig struggles with processing his newly-acquired human emotions as they conflict with the mind programming of the Horde, which tells him that all of life is to be lived exclusively for the benefit and maintenance of the Horde. Thig goes on a three-month excursion with Lew’s family, during which time he falls in love with Ellen and discovers the beauty of Earth. He tries to convince Kam and Torp to abandon their mission, and when they try to test Thig for disease, he kills them both and returns to Earth to spend his existence as Lewis Terry."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "d7342d28b97f4f29a4be52847bb124da", "response_text": "Thig is an Orthan who has spent his entire life devoted to the Horde. He has no family or friends, and he has never experienced love or real emotions. He is essentially part of an ant colony, and he spends every day working for the good of society and neglecting his own individuality. \n\nThig is sent to Earth to investigate whether the planet will be a good place to relocate the Orthans. He must find a human and kill him in order to take over his mind and body . Thig quickly finds his victim in Lewis Terry, chokes him, takes him back to the ship, and gains all of his knowledge and his appearance.\nThig is originally on Earth strictly for the mission, but once he joins Terry’s family, he immediately begins to have feelings for Terry’s wife, Ellen, and his three children. As Terry, Thig is affectionate, he takes part in real conversations, and he thinks about plots for Western novels. \n\nHe truly discovers the joy of living on Earth on his three month vacation with Terry’s family. They take in the landscape and enjoy their time together. \n\nWhen he returns, he knows he has to tell Torp and Kam, two other Orthans on the mission, that Earth is a paradise and the other Orthans would love it. However, he wants nothing to do with the mass killing of humans. Although he originally follows through with his plan and returns to the spaceship, he almost immediately regrets his decision. He does not want to see Earth taken over by the Orthans. He finds the strength to fight off Kam and Torp and heads back to Earth, his new home. \nThig realizes that his entire outlook on life has changed, and he can’t go back to being a cog in a machine. He feels real guilt for killing Terry, and he knows the only way to make it up to him is to take care of Ellen and the children for the rest of his life. He will leave the Orthans to colonize another planet, but he feels positive that they will stay away from Earth when the spaceship with two dead bodies returns to his home planet with a note that says that Earth carries a deadly disease. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d78fc65b687e4755b39ca056bb20445e", "response_text": "Thig is a man from Ortha who travels around the galaxy with two other men, looking for another planet that the Orthans can occupy. He lands on Earth and captures a human, Lewis Terry, to take to the space cruiser. Thig looks so much like the human that the Orthans decide to transfer the human’s knowledge and memories to Thig and let him explore the planet in the guise of the man. When Thig encounters the human’s family, he begins to have warm feelings for them, although all feelings and emotions have been removed from the Orthans for hundreds of thousands of years. After the family spends three months on a trip out West, Thig has changed. Instead of thinking only of the good of the Horde of Orthans, he now questions that single-minded devotion and considers the Orthans mindless bees who don’t know the pleasure of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions as the Earthmen do. When the family returns home from the trip out West, he reports what he has learned to Torp, who declares that the planet is suitable and the humans must be destroyed. Thig asks if the Orthans couldn’t just disarm the humans and exile them to a less desirable continent, and Torp thinks he must be sick and orders Kam to check Thig’s blood for disease. As they launch into space, Thig is overwhelmed with the desire to protect Ellen; he realizes he loves her. After defeating Kam and Torp and heading back to Earth, he realizes that he thinks like Lewis Terry and must BE Lewis Terry. His Orthan values and identity no longer matter."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "9", "uid": "6c42c4ec7ed94153a7a021f9253d2bd0", "response_text": "The story is set in multiple locations, including Long Island, New York, an Orthan spaceship and smaller auxiliary ship, parts of the American West, and outer space. The ship from Ortha lands on Long Island in New York, and this is where Thig captures Lewis Terry and takes him to the Orthans’ spaceship, before settling in with his family, posing as Terry. This area of Long Island is near the beach and the sound, and is described as lush and green. The Terry family lives in a small grey house that is somewhat run down. While we don’t travel out west on the Terry family vacation, we do experience bits of it in Thig’s memory, including the Grand Canyon in Arizona and unspecified desert terrain. The story then takes us back to the ship, and a small laboratory aboard the ship, and then inside a smaller ship as it heads back to Long Island. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "bd30ab4f5afe47f3ac3eadeeb32329fc", "response_text": "Lew’s family lives near a beach on Long Island. When the story begins, Thig emerges from his spaceship, which is buried below this beach. He sees dense, green brush beyond the beach running along a highway with little traffic. This is where he chooses to hide and waits to overtake Lew. Thig’s interactions with Kam and Torp take place on the spaceship below the beach surface; this is also where they kill Lew during the brain transfer with Thig. Thig reunites as Lew with Ellen and their children at their beach home and joins them on an epic, three-month journey out West where he sees the Grand Canyon and is overwhelmed by the beauty of the desert with its sagebrush and cacti and variety of colors. Later, Torp charts a path back to Ortha, where they will report their findings. Thig kills Torp and Kam aboard the spaceship, and then he commandeers an escape vessel to make his way back to Earth and back to Ellen and the children."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "d7342d28b97f4f29a4be52847bb124da", "response_text": "Most of the story, The Quest of Thig, takes place on Long Island. When Thig first appears on Earth, he is standing in the seaweed and sand, looking out at the Long Island Sound. There are trees and lots of greenery along the shoreline. He notes that this planet appears to be perfect for the Orthans because it has sunlight, lots of water, and a dense atmosphere. \n\nTerry’s little gray house has a dilapidated front porch and a screen door. There is an old swing that creaks when it’s used. The family owns a gray car and a trailer.  Ellen makes simple meals for her family in their kitchen. \nDuring the family’s trip out West, they visit the Grand Canyon where they see red dunes in the desert and sagebrush and cacti. \n\nThe other setting in the story is the Orthans’ spaceship. When Thig takes Terry’s body back to his spaceship to take over his body and mind, there are two parallel metal tables in the operation room. Both Thig and Terry’s body wear helmets to transfer the information from one to the other. Later in the story, Thig is taken to the laboratory on the ship to get his blood checked for a disease. The lab is neatly set up with instruments hanging from the wall and weapons hanging from the ceiling. There is also a control room on board. The space ship also has six auxiliary miniature spaceships nested inside the larger vessel. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d78fc65b687e4755b39ca056bb20445e", "response_text": "There are three settings in the story, two of which are present in the story and the third is remembered. The first setting is the space cruiser that brings the Orthans to Earth. The space cruiser lands on a beach across the Sound from Connecticut. It is buried in the sand to prevent it from being seen by the Earthmen. It contains a laboratory with instruments and gauges that enable the Orthans to capture the memories and knowledge of another species. It is also outfitted with their decomposition blasters that reduce living organisms to flaky ashes. There is also a control room where Torp guides the space cruiser on its travels through the galaxy and keeps the ship’s log detailing its journeys and findings. Wastes are disposed of with a refuse lock. The ship carries auxiliary lifeboats, which are basically miniatures of the larger ship, for emergencies.\n\nThe setting on Earth is based in Connecticut where the space cruiser lands on a beach. There is sand at the beach, trees and shrubs, highways, and other manmade features. It also features Lewis Terry’s cottage where he lives with his family. It is a weathered small gray house with sagging boards, a front porch, and a porch swing. When the family visits the West, they stop at the Grand Canyon, and Thig is breathless when he sees its beauty. He also notes the sun-painted red peaks in the desert and beautiful starry nights.\n\nThig remembers Ortha as dull, gray, and black and associates it with a monotonous routine.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "How do the ways of Ortha differ from those Thig discovers on Earth?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "9", "uid": "6c42c4ec7ed94153a7a021f9253d2bd0", "response_text": "The society on Ortha has discarded what they consider to be primal or barbaric tendencies and customs. Their children are raised in laboratories never knowing their parents and are not shown love or affection. They are taught to value loyalty to the Orthan “Hordes” over everything, and to believe that they are entitled to anything in the universe that they desire, with no regard to those outside the Hordes. They don’t have mates or have sex, though they do walk around naked. Free thought and primal urges are discouraged, and Orthan society has attempted to filter out any behavior they consider to be barbaric in favor of a robotic, obedient populace. By contrast, Thig discovers that humans feel the full gamut of emotions, think for themselves, and feel empathy rather than the dispassionate callousness Ortha demands. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "bd30ab4f5afe47f3ac3eadeeb32329fc", "response_text": "The Orthans are a race totally committed to the advancement of the Horde, which travels around the universe seeking to find new planets to overthrow and inhabit. Over the years, their minds have been programmed to think only of the good of the Horde, with no thought to sentimental emotions or feelings. When Thig receives Lewis Terry’s mind, he also receives his mentality, his thoughts, his memories, and his emotions. He experiences for the first time how humans feel. He describes the warmth of hugging Lew’s children, and the choking-warm sensation of kissing his wife, Ellen. He feels awe when standing before the Grand Canyon and learns to feel excitement about the unpredictability of human behavior and emotion. He feels love, hate, and sadness. All of these emotions stand in stark contrast to the Orthan way of life, which is carefully regimented and devoid of any of these kinds of feelings."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "d7342d28b97f4f29a4be52847bb124da", "response_text": "On Ortha, the aliens are raised in the laboratories of their Horde. The Orthans function in a collective society. They do not believe in the individual. There are no families, no romantic relationships or sex, and no friends. Everything that is done must be done for the greater society, much like an ant farm. The Orthans are looking for a new planet to colonize, and they send out Torp, Kam, and Thig on the mission.\n\nOrthans are incapable of feeling emotions and all of their primitive impulses have been done away with. The aliens are part of a strict caste system where they are only allowed to have certain thoughts according to their position in the Horde. They have acted this way for over one hundred thousand years. \n\nOrthans believe they are superior to Earthmen, whom they see as feeble and weak. They believe they have the right to take whatever planet is best for them, and killing billions of Earthmen means nothing to them. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d78fc65b687e4755b39ca056bb20445e", "response_text": "On Ortha, men are loyal to the Horde, and that is all they care about. They are cultured and brought to life in laboratories, so there are no fathers or mothers and no affection and love. From childhood on, males and females in Ortha are taught that the only important thing is the growth and power of the Horde. Men and women have no feelings outside of their devotion to the Horde. Men have no mates and children, which prevents Thig from first understanding the warm feeling that sweeps over him when Lewis Terry’s children greet him and Ellen kisses him on the first night he goes to their home. On Ortha, men have no independent ideas or interests; everything they think and do is to maintain the Horde. For this reason, their civilization has remained static for a hundred thousand years.\n\nOn Earth, men and women love each other and marry and have children. Men are focused on the well-being of their families and their own lives rather than on the well-being of their population as a whole. Earthmen have independent thoughts and make their own decisions. People are unpredictable, and uncertainty adds interest to everyday life.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Ellen and how does she affect Thig and his choices?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "9", "uid": "6c42c4ec7ed94153a7a021f9253d2bd0", "response_text": "Ellen is the wife of Lewis Terry, and she is described as slender with red hair. When Thig assumes Terry’s identity, some of the first sensations he experiences result from Ellen kissing him. On their travels throughout the American West, Thig bonds with her and with her children. He learns to understand new experiences and emotions throughout his time with Ellen, and he observes that she seems to know how he’s feeling without him telling her. When Thig ultimately realizes that he wants to go back to Earth, it is because he loves Ellen and wants to save her and humanity. It is Ellen he thinks about as he returns to Earth and feels the sting of regret that he killed her husband, and decides to spend the rest of her life making it up to her. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "bd30ab4f5afe47f3ac3eadeeb32329fc", "response_text": "Ellen is Lewis Terry’s wife, whom Thig meets after receiving Lew’s memories, thoughts, and emotions. From the moment he feels Ellen’s embrace and her kiss, he experiences emotions he has never felt before. He travels with her and the children out West, where she demonstrates the feeling of breathless wonder at the beauty of nature when they visit the Grand Canyon. He feels love for Ellen, and that feeling changes everything Thig thought he knew. When he returns to the ship after spending three months with Ellen, he feels the strong urge to return to her and spend the rest of his life with her. He abandons the call of the Horde and completely rejects his old way of living. He would rather spend his life feeling things that are new and with purpose as opposed to the pointless conquering of his old life."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "d7342d28b97f4f29a4be52847bb124da", "response_text": "Ellen is Lewis Terry’s red-headed wife, and she has a major impact on Thig and his way of thinking. In the beginning, Thig is only interested in finding a new home for his people, the Orthans. However, from their first hug alone, Thig begins to have feelings for Ellen. He likes the way that she offers him food and coffee and knows when something is bothering him. He is pleased with her excitement when he shows her the treasure he found at the beach. Thig loves spending the three months with Ellen and her children in their trailer exploring the West. She appreciates the beautiful landscape of the Grand Canyon, but she also acknowledges that there isn’t anything more beautiful in the world than their little piece of land and sky at home. \n\nThig realizes he has to kill Kam and Torp, his fellow Orthans, when he can’t stand the thought of leaving Ellen behind for good. He has experienced love and fun and curiosity with her, and he can’t go back to his old life as a member of the Horde. He loves Ellen, and he is willing to risk it all to be with her and take care of her, especially because he is the reason she is alone without a partner to look out for her. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "d78fc65b687e4755b39ca056bb20445e", "response_text": "Ellen is Lewis Terry’s wife who unknowingly makes Thig fall in love. Ellen is a supportive wife who celebrates her husband’s accomplishments when he sells a story. She is excited when Thig shows her the gems they can use to finance their trip out West. Ellen thinks of her husband’s needs, and rather than fussing at him when he comes home late, she asks where he has been but immediately shifts to caring for his needs. Thig enjoys sharing the beautiful views of the West with Ellen, and he likes matching wits with her. From her, he learns what he and other Orthans are missing by not having meaningful relationships with members of the opposite sex. Thig is touched by her sensitivity to his moods and her understanding when something is troubling him. When Torp announces that Earth is a perfect planet for the Orthans to take over, Thig knows this means they will kill all the humans. He thinks of Ellen as helpless and alone and cannot bear to be separated from her; he wants to return to her and protect her. He realizes he loves her and that he will sacrifice his Orthan identity to be with her and support her dreams and happiness."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "62324", "uid": "208ff03739df490dac3926ffd34d8b78", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "\n\n\n\nProduced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\nGRIFTERS' ASTEROID\nBy H. L. GOLD\nHarvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever\n   \n  to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!\n   \n  Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them\n   \n  five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!\n \n  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n   \n  Planet Stories May 1943.\n   \n  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n   \n  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nCharacteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,\nthough his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with\nno dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land\nthat had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically\ninto the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his\ntall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something\nincoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.\n \n  \"We're delirious!\" Joe cried. \"It's a mirage!\"\n \n  \"What is?\" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.\n \n  Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,\nspeechless for once.\n \n  In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea\npurveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had\nthey seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.\n \n  Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two\nhands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the\nremaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish\nHarvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this\nimpossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit\njuice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.\n \n  \"Nonsense,\" Harvey croaked uncertainly. \"We have seen enough queer\nthings to know there are always more.\"\n \n  He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:\n\"Water—quick!\"\n \n  Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out\ntwo glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked\nfor more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender\nhad taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.\n \n  Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so\nfast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's\nimpersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.\n \n  \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last.\n \n  \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual\nlush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,\nLa-anago\nYergis\n, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in\nthe ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in\nproclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history\nof therapeutics.\"\n \n  \"Yeah?\" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser\nglasses without washing them. \"Where you heading?\"\n \n  \"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone\nwithout water for five ghastly days.\"\n \n  \"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?\" Joe asked.\n \n  \"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land\nhere unless they're in trouble.\"\n \n  \"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off.\"\n \n  \"Mayor takes care of that,\" replied the saloon owner. \"If you gents're\nfinished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos.\"\n \n  Harvey grinned puzzledly. \"We didn't take any whiskey.\"\n \n  \"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every\nchaser.\"\n \n  Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man\nmanaged to get out in a thin quaver.\n \n  The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta\nmake more on each one. Besides—\"\n \n  \"Besides nothing!\" Joe roared, finding his voice again. \"You dirty\ncrook—robbing poor spacemen! You—\"\n\"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\"\nHarvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the\nbartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are\nsometimes overactive. You were going to say—?\"\nThe round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.\n \n  \"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said,\nshaking his head. \"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter\nas some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with\nbuckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I\nwas chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge\nbecause I gotta.\"\n \n  \"Friend,\" said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight\nfive-bucko bills, \"here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you\nhave put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an\nunconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's\nthirst.\"\n \n  The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.\n \n  \"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\nyour tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\nrecorder, fire chief....\"\n \n  \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n \n  \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\ncall me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\nyou need?\"\n \n  Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\nrations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n \n  \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\nquantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\nmore to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\nthat's all.\"\n \n  The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with\nthem. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently\nwatched the crude level-gauge, crying \"Stop!\" when it registered the\nproper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and\nwetted his lips expectantly.\n \n  Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: \"But what are we to\ndo about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be\npreposterous. We simply can't afford it.\"\n \n  Johnson's response almost floored them. \"Who said anything about\ncharging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.\nIt's just the purified stuff that comes so high.\"\n \n  After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water\npool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed\nback to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.\n \n  \"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\npicked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\nis the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n \n  \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\nget used to in ten minutes.\"\n \n  In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\nthe igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\naccording to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\nbuckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\na bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\nin front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\na faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\ninvestigate.\n \n  Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound\nthat was unmistakably a buried pipe.\n \n  \"What's this doing here?\" Harvey asked, puzzled. \"I thought Johnson had\nto transport water in pails.\"\n \n  \"Wonder where it leads to,\" Joe said uneasily.\n \n  \"It leads\nto\nthe saloon,\" said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the\npipe back toward the spaceport. \"What I am concerned with is where it\nleads\nfrom\n.\"\n \n  Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of\nscrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst\ninto the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.\n \n  Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.\n \n  \"I am growing suspicious,\" he said in a rigidly controlled voice.\n \n  But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\ntasting it.\n \n  \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n \n  They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\nHis mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\nonly thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\nconscience.\"\n \n  \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\nHarvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\nme has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\nhave had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\npoint hence.\"\n \n  Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\nstopped and their fists unclenched.\n \n  \"Thought you gents were leaving,\" the mayor called out, seeing them\nfrozen in the doorway. \"Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.\nHim and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City.\"\n \n  \"You don't need any more,\" said Harvey, dismayed.\n \n  Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair\nand held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been\nborn and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have\nkept him down near the general dimensions of a man.\n \n  He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own\nhand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when\nhis fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed\none.\n \n  \"Pleased to meet you,\" piped a voice that had never known a dense\natmosphere.\n \n  The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and\nunpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....\n \n  \"Joseph!\" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. \"Don't you\nfeel well?\"\n \n  Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were\ngently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features\ndrooping like a bloodhound's.\n \n  \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming\ndown with asteroid fever!\"\n \n  \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms\nof the disease that once scourged the universe.\"\n \n  \"What do you mean,\nonce\n?\" demanded Johnson. \"I come down with it\nevery year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him\nout of here!\"\n \n  \"In good time. He can't be moved immediately.\"\n \n  \"Then he'll be here for months!\"\n \n  Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and\nhis gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe\nin tiny, uncontaminating gasps.\n \n  \"You'll find everything you want in the back room,\" Johnson said\nfrantically, \"sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction\ncups—\"\n \n  \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man\nrequires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\"\n \n  \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction.\n \n  Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\nrocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\nfew minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\ncrossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\nput the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\nWhen Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\ndrink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\nwaited for the inevitable result.\n \n  Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\nmoments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\nto perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\nstraightened out.\n \n  \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n \n  \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.\n \n  \"Maybe you need another dose,\" Harvey suggested.\n \n  Joe recoiled. \"I'm fine now!\" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove\nit.\n \n  Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,\nand then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.\n \n  \"Well, I'll be hanged!\" Johnson ejaculated.\n \n  \"\nLa-anago Yergis\nnever fails, my friend,\" Harvey explained. \"By\nactual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three\nminutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught\nthis one before it grew formidable.\"\n \n  The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. \"If you\ndon't charge too much,\" he said warily, \"I might think of buying some.\"\n \n  \"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n\"It sells itself.\"\n \n  \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\ncase,\" said Johnson.\n \n  \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\nthe vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n \n  \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n \n  \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\nbuckos.\"\n \n  Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\ndoing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n \n  \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n \n  \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n \n  \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.\n \n  The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and\nfifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: \"And we will include,\ngratis\n, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian\nhandicraftsmanship.\"\n \n  Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. \"No tricks now. I want a taste of\nthat stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me.\"\n \n  Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The\nmayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing\nminute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which\nthe man gradually won.\n \n  \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to\ntalk again.\n \n  \"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\nsaid: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\nwhich we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n \n  With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\nclearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\nhis murderous silence and cried:\n \n  \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\nsnake oil?\"\n \n  \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\nYergis\nextract, plus.\"\n \n  \"Plus what—arsenic?\"\n \n  \"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\nour specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\nyonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\nmind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\nswindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\nbeen, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n \n  \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n \n  Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\ntaste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\nthe same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\nguinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n \n  \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"\n \n  \"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which\nthat swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he\npossesses. We could not be content with less.\"\n \n  \"Well, we're starting all right,\" admitted Joe. \"How about that thing\nwith six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?\"\n \n  Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.\n \n  \"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\nApparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\nAt first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\nstreamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\nsuckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\naudio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\nfigure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\nthe case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\nplace of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\ndown carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\nhim, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\nleast as good as the first; he gagged.\n \n  \"That's the stuff, all right,\" he said, swallowing hard. He counted\nout the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously\nbalanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain\nat paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,\nand asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\"\n \n  Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about\nfood at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.\n \n  \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've\ngot rations back at the ship.\"\n \n  \"\nH-mph!\n\" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.\nSuit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome\nto our hospitality.\"\n \n  \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\"\n \n  \"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\nthe mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\ncan't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n \n  Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\nnone.\n \n  \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n \n  Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n \n  \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n \n  He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\nless private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\nchance of company.\n \n  Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with\ntwo menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,\nsilverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,\nwhich were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.\n \n  Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were\nphenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he\ngrinned, bowed and asked: \"Everything satisfactory, gents?\"\n \n  \"Quite,\" said Harvey. \"We shall order.\"\n \n  For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the\nculinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service\nwas as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played\ndeftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian\nviotars\n, using his other two\nhands for waiting on the table.\n \n  \"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\nwhispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\nkitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\nhostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\nto women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n \n  \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n \n  \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\ncomplained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\nmerchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\nour check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n \n  The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n \n  \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\nvisitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"\n \n  As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\nHarvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\na yelp of horror.\n \n  \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\nfantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\nnot a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\nfingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n \n  Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\nrage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\nredsents.\"\n \n  \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"\n \n  Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\nwith regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\nhis vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\nask the sheriff to take over.\"\n \n  Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n\"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\nremain calm.\n \n  \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\nschoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\nmade you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\nfolk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\nto kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\nfoolish.'\"\n \n  \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.\n \n  \"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put\nout of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial\ndeal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for\nthe peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the\nway you have—\"\n \n  \"Who said I wanted to sell him?\" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his\nfingers together and asked disinterestedly: \"What were you going to\noffer, anyhow?\"\n \n  \"It doesn't matter any longer,\" Harvey said with elaborate\ncarelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\"\n \n  \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your\noffer have been which I would have turned down?\"\n \n  \"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?\"\n \n  \"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to\nsell.\"\n \n  \"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would\ntempt you!\"\n \n  \"Nope. But how much did you say?\"\n \n  \"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!\"\n \n  \"Well, I'll tell you something,\" said the mayor confidentially. \"When\nyou've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,\nit's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,\nyou can buy this and that and this and that and—\"\n \n  \"This and that,\" concluded Joe. \"We'll give you five hundred buckos.\"\n \n  \"Now, gents!\" Johnson remonstrated. \"Why, six hundred would hardly—\"\n \n  \"You haven't left us much money,\" Harvey put in.\n \n  The mayor frowned. \"All right, we'll split the difference. Make it\nfive-fifty.\"\n \n  Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he\nstood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively\nacquired.\n \n  \"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature,\" he said to\nJohnson. \"I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your\nfilial mammoth to keep you company.\"\n \n  \"I sure will,\" Johnson confessed glumly. \"I got pretty attached to\nGenius, and I'm going to miss him something awful.\"\n \n  Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off\nthe table almost all at once.\n \n  \"My friend,\" he said, \"we take your only solace, it is true, but in his\nplace we can offer something no less amazing and instructive.\"\n \n  The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. \"What is it?\" he\nasked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its\nworst and expects nothing better.\n \n  \"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of\nthe ship,\" Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: \"You must see\nthe wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner\nwill soon have it here for your astonishment.\"\n \n  Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. \"Aw, Harv,\" he\nprotested, \"do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were\ngetting the key!\"\n \n  \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our\nchance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might\nhave more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here.\"\n \n  Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\nwould probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\nquestions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\nhis part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\nuntil Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n \n  \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\nyou think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\npolitical speech-makers.\"\n \n  \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\nand I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\nwith the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\nof this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n \n  \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.\n \n  Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\nHe has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\nstudy, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\nenormous fortune.\"\n \n  \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\nturn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\nyears.\"\n \n  He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n \n  \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\nis it I'm turning down?\"\n \n  Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\nsorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.\n \n  \"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson,\" he said, \"Joseph and I were among\nthe chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before\nhis tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane.\" He\nbanged his fist on the bar. \"I have said it before, and I repeat again,\nthat was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit\nhis greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!\"\n \n  \"This what?\" Johnson blurted out.\n \n  \"In simple terms,\" clarified Harvey, \"the ingenious doctor discovered\nthat the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by\nenergy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the\ninhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than\nourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would\nfind himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!\"\n \n  The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.\n \n  \"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?\"\n \n  \"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor\nDean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact.\"\n \n  The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared\nthoughtfully at the battered cabinet.\n \n  \"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts,\" he\nconceded. \"But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up\nthere wouldn't talk our language.\"\n \n  Again Harvey smashed his fist down. \"Do you dare to repeat the scurvy\nlie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?\"\n \n  Johnson recoiled. \"No—no,\nof course not\n. I mean, being up here, I\nnaturally couldn't get all the details.\"\n \n  \"Naturally,\" Harvey agreed, mollified. \"I'm sorry I lost my temper.\nBut it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts\nemanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be\nso difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was\ncommunication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired\nour language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own\nhyper-scientific trimmings?\"\n \n  \"Why, I don't know,\" Johnson said in confusion.\n \n  \"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect\nthe simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed\nbroadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor\nfailed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could\nstand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to\nsolve the mystery caused him to take his own life.\"\n \n  Johnson winced. \"Is that what you want to unload on me?\"\n \n  \"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be\nrewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who\ncould devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a\nperson with unusual patience.\"\n \n  \"Yeah,\" the mayor said grudgingly, \"I ain't exactly flighty.\"\n \n  \"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!\"\n \n  Johnson asked skeptically: \"How about a sample first?\"\nHarvey turned a knob on the face of the scarred radio. After several\nsqueals of spatial figures, a smooth voice began:\n \n  \"There are omnious pleajes of moby-hailegs in sonmirand which,\nhowgraismon, are notch to be donfured miss ellasellabell in either or\nboth hagasanipaj, by all means. This does not refly, on the brother\nman, nat or mizzafil saces are denuded by this ossifaligo....\"\n \n  Harvey switched off the set determinedly.\n \n  \"Wait a minute!\" Johnson begged. \"I almost got it then!\"\n \n  \"I dislike being commercial,\" said Harvey, \"but this astounding device\nstill belongs to us. Would we not be foolish to let you discover the\nclue before purchasing the right to do so?\"\n \n  The mayor nodded indecisively, looking at the radio with agonized\nlonging. \"How much do you want?\" he asked unhappily.\n \n  \"One thousand buckos, and no haggling. I am not in the mood.\"\n \n  Johnson opened his mouth to argue; then, seeing Harvey's set features,\npaid with the worst possible grace.\n \n  \"Don't you think we ought to tell him about the batteries, Harv?\" Joe\nasked.\n \n  \"What about the batteries?\" demanded Johnson with deadly calm.\n \n  \"A very small matter,\" Harvey said airily. \"You see, we have been\nanalyzing these broadcasts for three years. In that time, of course,\nthe batteries are bound to weaken. I estimate these should last not\nless than one Terrestrial month, at the very least.\"\n \n  \"What do I do then?\"\n \n  Harvey shrugged. \"Special batteries are required, which I see Joseph\nhas by chance brought along. For the batteries, the only ones of their\nkind left in the system, I ask only what they cost—one hundred and\nninety-nine buckos, no more and, on the other hand, no less.\"\n \n  Johnson was breathing hard, and his hand hovered dangerously near his\ngun. But he paid the amount Harvey wanted.\n \n  Moreover, he actually shook hands when the two panacea purveyors\ncollected their six-armed prize and said goodbye. Before they were\noutside, however, he had turned on the radio and was listening tensely\nto a woman's highly cultured, though rather angry voice, saying:\n \n  \"Oh, you hannaforge are all beasa-taga-sanimort. If you rue amount it,\nhow do you respench a pure woman to ansver go-samak—\"\n \n  \"I'll get it!\" they heard Johnson mutter.\n \n  Then the sound of giant feet crossing the barroom floor reached their\nears, and a shrill question: \"What's that, Papa?\"\n \n  \"A fortune, Jed! Those fakers are damned fools, selling us a thing\nlike—\"\n \n  Joe gazed at Harvey admiringly. \"Another one sold? Harv, that spiel\npulls them in like an ether storm!\"\n \n  Together with the remarkable planetoid man, they reached the ship.\nAbove them, dark, tumbling shapes blotted out the stars and silently\nmoved on. Joe opened the gangway door.\n \n  \"Come on in, pal,\" he said to Genius. \"We're shoving off.\"\n \n  The planetoid man grinned foolishly. \"Can't go arong with you,\" he said\nwith an apologetic manner. \"I rike to, but pressure fratten me out if I\ngo.\"\n \n  \"What in solar blazes are you talking about?\" Harvey asked.\n \n  \"I grow up on pranetoid,\" Genius explained. \"On big pranet, too much\npressure for me.\"\n \n  The two salesmen looked narrowly at each other.\n \n  \"Did Johnson know that when he sold you?\" Joe snarled.\n \n  \"Oh, sure.\" The silly grin became wider than ever. \"Peopre from Earth\nbuy me rots of times. I never reave pranetoid, though.\"\n \n  \"Joseph,\" Harvey said ominously, \"that slick colonist has put one over\nupon us. What is our customary procedure in that event?\"\n \n  \"We tear him apart,\" Joe replied between his teeth.\n \n  \"Not Mister Johnson,\" advised Genius. \"Have gun and badge. He shoot you\nfirst and then rock you up in prison.\"\n \n  Harvey paused, his ominous air vanishing. \"True. There is also the\nfact, Joseph, that when he discovers the scrambled rectifier in\nthe radio we sold him, he will have been paid back in full for his\nregrettable dishonesty.\"\nUnwillingly, Joe agreed. While Genius retreated to a safe distance,\nthey entered the ship and blasted off. Within a few minutes the\nautomatic steering pilot had maneuvered them above the plane of the\nasteroid belt.\n \n  \"I got kind of dizzy,\" Joe said, \"there were so many deals back and\nforth. How much did we make on the sucker?\"\n \n  \"A goodly amount, I wager,\" Harvey responded. He took out a pencil and\npaper. \"Medicine, 469.50; radio, 1,000; batteries, 199. Total—let's\nsee—1668 buckos and 50 redsents. A goodly sum, as I told you.\"\n \n  He emptied his pockets of money, spread it out on the astrogation table\nand began counting. Finished, he looked up, troubled.\n \n  \"How much did we have when we landed, Joseph?\"\n \n  \"Exactly 1668 buckos,\" Joe answered promptly.\n \n  \"I can't understand it,\" said Harvey. \"Instead of double our capital,\nwe now have only 1668 buckos and 50 redsents!\"\n \n  Feverishly, he returned to his pencil and paper.\n \n  \"Drinking water, 790; battery water, free; meal, 328; planetoid man,\n550. Total: 1668 buckos!\" He stared at the figures. \"We paid out almost\nas much as we took in,\" he said bitterly. \"Despite our intensive\nefforts, we made the absurd sum of fifty redsents.\"\n \n  \"Why, the dirty crook!\" Joe growled.\n \n  But after a few moments of sad reflection, Harvey became philosophical.\n\"Perhaps, Joseph, we are more fortunate than we realize. We were,\nafter all, completely in Johnson's power. The more I ponder, the more\nI believe we were lucky to escape. And, anyhow, we did make fifty\nredsents on the swindler. A moral victory, my boy.\"\n \n  Joe, who had been sunk desparingly into a chair, now stood up slowly\nand asked: \"Remember that bottle-opener we gave him?\"\n \n  \"Certainly,\" Harvey explained. \"What about it?\"\n \n  \"How much did it cost us?\"\n \n  Harvey's eyebrows puckered. Suddenly he started laughing. \"You're\nright, Joseph. We paid forty-six redsents for it on Venus. So, after\nall that transacting of business, we made four redsents!\"\n \n  \"Four redsents, hell!\" Joe snapped. \"That was the sales tax!\"\n \n  He glared; then a smile lifted his mouth. \"You remember those yokels on\nMars' Flatlands, and the way they worshipped gold?\"\n \n  \"\nGoldbricks!\n\" Harvey said succinctly.\n \n  Grinning, Joe set the robot-controls for Mars.\n", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "8e4f16bfbb2d4463b4f7ad22c6b96883", "response_text": "Joe and Harvey land on Planetoid 42 and enter a bar. They see Genius, an incredible looking creature with six limbs, and immediately become interested in him. They tell the bartender, Johnson, that they’re very thirsty, so he sells them each eight glasses of water, and they guzzle them down. Harvey and Joe are horrified to find out that the water is highly expensive. Johnson explains that the water must be purified. When the pair leaves, they find a pipe in a small pond and realize that Johnson has undoubtedly swindled them. The sweet water is readily available and it is transported directly to the saloon via this pipe. \n\nHarvey and Joe head back to the bar. Joe comes down with a sudden illness, and it’s clear that this is a con the men use all the time. Johnson recognizes that Joe has asteroid fever and becomes frightened. Harvey explains that the only medication that will provide an instant cure is the one they happen to be selling: La-anago Yergis.\n\nJoe is instantly cured once Harvey pours the special liquid into his mouth. Johnson is flabbergasted and wants to purchase an entire case. While in the privacy of their ship, Joe and Harvey discuss their joint desire to purchase Genius. They believe they could make a fortune off of him if they featured him in an exhibit. \n\nJohnson accepts the fake solution and informs Harvey and Joe that his restaurant is open. After looking at the menu, the men are astounded at the low prices. However, they soon find out that they have been taken advantage of when they receive a bill for a very large sum of money. They learn that the fine print they missed on the menu explains the charge. When Joe tells Johnson they won’t pay the bill, Johnson reminds them that he is in fact the Sheriff as well as the saloon owner and the mayor. \n\nHarvey requests to purchase Genius, and Johnson agrees. In a last ditch effort to recoup some more money, Harvey brings up an invention they have on their ship that Johnson must see. Joe brings back a radio that was supposedly created by a famous doctor. It is special because it broadcasts from the fourth dimension. They convince Johnson that he is the perfect person to make sense of the garbled transmissions. Johnson pays extra for the special batteries it takes.\n\nJust as Harvey and Joe make it back to the ship with Genius, the creature informs them that he cannot leave the planet because another planet’s pressure would squish him to death. And yes, he admits, Johnson was fully aware of this fact when he sold him. \n\nWhen Harvey does the math involved in the various exchanges of goods, he realizes that after all that time and the several cons they engaged in, he and Joe made a measly four cents. The men take off on their ship and head to Mars. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "05e6af6977974ad3b4be0ec690115545", "response_text": "Harvey and Joe are interplanetary conmen. They sell fraudulent snake-oil to unsuspecting marks. They arrive on Planetoid 42, a nearly uninhabited asteroid, with a desperate need for water. They come upon the only habitation on the planet and receive water that they are grossly overcharged for. They deal with Johnson, the lone authority on the planet, who is a grifter himself. They duo and Johnson proceed to swindle each other out of money using various schemes and deceptions. As they leave the planet Harvey and Joe realize that they have broke completely even, losing as much money as they gained."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "3a5b316c58d14ad3bad6ed30a89429b9", "response_text": "Harvey Ellswroth and Joe Mallon land on this Planetoid 42 in search of water. These solar salesmen travel the galaxy selling their miraculous elixir, which isn’t so miraculous after all. They find water and are served by Johnson, the barmen, sheriff, and general chief of the land. After drinking eight glasses, their thirst is quenched and they’re ready to pay. At the sight of the large check, they are rightfully appalled, until Johnson explains the reason behind it. The water on this planet is so bitter that it must undergo a rigorous purification process to make it drinkable. Harvey and Joe believe him and pay their sum. They ask if they can fill up the water tank for their spaceship as well, and Johnson points them to the pond. The water there is bitter, but they haul it back and forth. Joe notices a reflection not too far from them and discovers another pond with sweet drinkable water. They realize that they’ve been conned by Johnson. \nThey rush back to the bar to confront him when they meet his son, Jed. Jed is huge, and Harvey and Joe abandon their plan. Quickly, Harvey changes course and asks Jed if he’s feeling ill. Jed feigns illness and collapses, while Johnson assumes it’s the notorious asteroid fever. Harvey rushes to the ship to grab their miraculous cure and forces Joe to drink it. He rises, convincing Johnson of its powers. Johnson quickly asks to buy cases of it, and Harvey agrees, supplying it at a great price. The men run back to the ship to prepare the vials. Harvey is supplementing them with the bitter water, so they save more snake oil. \nJohnson invites them to eat at his restaurant when they return with the medicine. He cons them yet again here by including a hefty fee at the bottom of the paycheck for the entertainment that Genius provided. \nHarvey and Joe still decide to barter further and arrange a monetary transaction in exchange for Genius. Johnson agrees though he admits he will miss him. At this, Harvey decides on one last con and sends Joe to pick up their most prized possession. A radio that can reach the fourth dimension. Johnson buys into it and sits down to attempt to translate garbled English. Harvey, Joe, and Genius leave quickly before Johnson realizes the radio is nothing more than tomfoolery. \nHowever, the last con is played on Harvey and Joe, as Genius reveals he is unable to leave this planet due to atmospheric pressure differences. Harvey and Joe leave him behind. \nThey count their money and realize they haven’t made any real profit. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "efcb434e9363466092f221030ab91140", "response_text": "Harvey Ellsworth and Joe Mallon have landed on Planetoid 42, somewhere between Mars and Ganymede, out of water and in need of supplies. They find a saloon manned by a six-armed life-form and a bartender named Johnson. Harvey and Joe ask for water, which they get, but are charged forty buckos, presumably because there is a high price to get water filtered in this area. The men are astounded but Harvey tries to be understanding of the unusual situation, and pays Johnson the money he asks for. It turns out that Johnson is not just the bartender, but also the mayor, among other jobs. He works out a deal for the men to fill their tanks with purified water, claims to give them a bargain price, and sends his assistant out to the pumps to help the men. Although purified water is expensive, unpurified water used as battery fluid is free, and Johnson points the men to the body of water where they can find what they need. As Joe and Harvey are collecting battery water, they find pipes that carry purified water to the saloon from a clean pool—Johnson had lied about the purification system, and thus charged them way more than the water was worth (twice), so Harvey decides they need revenge. Joe pretends to get asteroid fever, which terrifies Johnson, and Harvey concocts a fake medicine using some of the bitter water to convince Johnson to buy a case from him. The back-and-forth of cons continues: Johnson lures them into a meal with inexpensive food but an expensive hidden surcharge for service and entertainment. Then, Harvey “convinces” Johnson to sell him Genius, his assistant, and Joe and Harvey convince Johnson to buy a radio that they inserted a scrambler into, claiming it had hidden knowledge from the fourth dimension. This whole time, Johnson acts as though he doesn’t have any interest in things he wants to buy, for as long as he can maintain that appearance. However, Joe and Harvey will often get him interested by the end, with Johnson becoming upset when he can’t have what he wants. In the end, it turns out Genius can’t actually leave Planetoid 42, because he would be crushed by a larger planet’s gravity, and Joe and Harvey leave somewhat dejected, hoping that they managed to make some amount of money from the whole ordeal. It turns out they broke exactly even, so they had a good laugh of frustration and went on to Mars to try another plan.\n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the relationship between Harvey and Joe.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "8e4f16bfbb2d4463b4f7ad22c6b96883", "response_text": "Harvey and Joe are business partners and conmen. Although they are both important players in their various ruses, Harvey is definitely the brains behind the operation. Joe is willing to listen to Harvey’s instructions and play along in order to get money out of their victims. However, he is also a bit more hot-headed than his partner, and it’s up to Harvey to calm Joe down when he gets flustered because they are taken advantage of. When Joe finds out about the sweet water that Johnson lied about, he is instantly irate. Later, when Johnson tricks them into ordering loads of food at his restaurant, Joe is furious and threatens not to pay the bill. In both instances, Harvey recognizes that the pair was fooled fair and square and all they can do is accept the loss. \n\nIt is obvious that the two have been working together for a long time because they are able to communicate using very few words and gestures. They both know their playbook of tricks, and it is easy for each of the men to tip the other off to their thoughts. After meeting Genius, Harvey and Joe immediately agree that they should try and acquire the creature. Both men are money-minded and they see dollar signs when they lay their eyes on an alien as peculiar as him. When the duo wants to sell their medicine, Joe pretends to come down with symptoms of asteroid fever, and Harvey doesn’t miss a beat. Within moments he asks Joe if he’s feeling okay and goes to fetch the fake panacea that they peddle. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "05e6af6977974ad3b4be0ec690115545", "response_text": "Harvey and Joe are conmen and partners. They work together to deceive and swindle people out of their money using various schemes. Harvey is a fast-talker and smooth operator. Joe is more emotionally charged and tends to complain to Harvey often about the state of affairs they find themselves in. Joe often questions Harvey's approach but falls in line in order to execute his plan.  Even though they work well together, they also fall prey to the deceptions that are set up by Johnson."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "3a5b316c58d14ad3bad6ed30a89429b9", "response_text": "Harvey and Joe are colleagues and friends. They work together as solar salesmen, who con people by selling them their fake cure for all ailments. Their experience together makes them very effective conmen. \n\tIt’s clear through their rapport and previously devised tricks that they have been working together for a long time. When Joe feigned being sick to sell the medicine, Harvey guided Johnson along with them and convinced him entirely of the medicine’s success.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "efcb434e9363466092f221030ab91140", "response_text": "Harvey Ellsworth and Joe Mallon have very complementary personalities: when we meet them, they show us that Harvey is the levelheaded one who tries to see the best in people, but Joe is much more reactive and has less of a performative air to his demeanor. They know each other quite well, enough that they are able to communicate with each other discreetly to give each other direction while trying to run a con. Harvey is the one who holds on to hope in an interesting sense: he is able to take previous experiences to formulate plans for current predicaments, in a way that means he is not easily rattled. This presents itself in Harvey acting as sort of a leader of the duo, and Harvey comes up with plans and directs Joe as needed. Harvey steers a lot of the conversations they have with others, and when it’s just the two of them, Harry spends a lot of time scolding Joe for his attitude. Even though Harvey tries to see the best in Johnson at the beginning of the story, he eventually agrees with Joe’s anger once they realize that Johnson did not need to purify the water that he had sold them. However, whereas Joe was angry at the treatment they were receiving, Harvey more directly wanted revenge. In the end, when they leave Planetoid 42, we see them connect about their history again, excited to run another con together."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of Genius?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "8e4f16bfbb2d4463b4f7ad22c6b96883", "response_text": "Genius is an important character because he is used to illustrate just how brilliant Johnson is. The man is clearly intelligent because he has positioned himself as the sheriff, the barman, and the mayor of Planetoid 42. He also makes money by fooling gullible outsiders into paying high prices for water and food. However, his idea to sell Genius over and over again is perhaps the most shrewd. His asking price for the remarkable creature is in the 600s, much more than he’s able to charge for water or dishes at his restaurant. Johnson pretends that he’s attached to Genius and would hate to see him go, yet he cannot turn down the incredible sum of money. \n\nEach time Genius is sold to naive buyers, he ends up making his way right back to Johnson’s bar, and Johnson profits all of the money. Genius cannot leave the planet because the pressure in other habitats is too much for his unique body to handle. If one of the buyers insisted on bringing him aboard their ship, he would turn up dead and useless to them anyway. Therefore, they always send the poor creature back to Johnson and lose out on their plans to make loads of money off of him. \n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "05e6af6977974ad3b4be0ec690115545", "response_text": "Genius is an alien being with 6 arms. He serves Johnson on Planetoid 42 as an all-around servant. He is coveted by and eventually purchased by Harvey and Joe to be exploited for profit off world. Unfortunately for the pair, after his purchase Genius explains that he cannot leave the planet because the higher atmospheric pressure of an off world environment would kill him. Johnson continually \"sells\" genius to unsuspecting visitors to the planet as a source of income only to have him return."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "3a5b316c58d14ad3bad6ed30a89429b9", "response_text": "Genius is the many-armed native that works for Johnson and his son. His 30 fingers and dexterous abilities make him a hot commodity to Harvey and Joe. After they watch him bartend, using some hands to pour glasses, other to sweep the floor, and even more to complete other duties, they start brainstorming all the ways he could be helpful onboard their ship. Or, on the other hand, how much they could get for him once he’s sold. \nEventually, Harvey and Joe decide to make an offer on Genius. Johnson sells his worker for a little over half a thousand buckos. Despite selling him to Harvey and Joe, Johnson forgot to include one minute detail. Genius is unable to leave their small planet, due to the gravity he grew up on. Any bigger atmospheric pressure would crush him. \nGenius is yet another example of the many cons Johnson pulled on Harvey and Joe.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "efcb434e9363466092f221030ab91140", "response_text": "The character of Genius acts as a symbol of the things that visitors do not understand about Planetoid 42, and how Johnson uses this to his advantage when he tries to make money off of visitors. When humans first encounter him, Genius seems like an incredible and one-of-a-kind creature who fascinates the visitors, sometimes prompting them to want to take him to zoo. Johnson uses this to his advantage to set a trap, and allows visitors to buy Genius off of him before they realize that Genius can’t actually leave the planetoid. Not only does he look interesting, but he is also very talented and uses his six hands to accomplish many tasks at once. He is able to carry boxes while cleaning, and makes for an incredible waiter as he is able to play instruments while serving food. Johnson has to rely on the idea that the visitors will not think about Genius’ inability to adapt to other planets’ environments, and focus only on his uniqueness. Genius also represents how Johnson leaves out small pieces of information in strategic places. For instance, there is no reason to assume that Genius is able to speak based on the majority of the story, but once he arrived at Joe and Harvey’s ship he explains to them that he cannot go with them. It seems he is a piece of Johnson’s plot, as his assistant, as opposed to being more of an independent character who makes his own decisions, but there is not enough information to say for sure."}]}, {"question_text": "How does Johnson demonstrate that he's a formidable opponent to Joe and Harvey?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "8e4f16bfbb2d4463b4f7ad22c6b96883", "response_text": "Joe and Harvey are professional conmen, so they are quite good at swindling innocent victims. They make their money by peddling a fake panacea called La-anago Yergis. The men regularly partake in an act where Joe falls ill and Harvey has to come to his rescue with the extract. Although Johnson falls for this trick and purchases an entire case of the medicine, he also does a great job of getting Harvey and Joe back. At the end of the story, the opposing sides come out basically even in terms of financial gains. \n\nJohnson first demonstrates that he can take advantage of Harvey and Joe when he gives them each eight glasses of water before letting them know that he charges a lot for each glass. The men say they’re thirsty, so he is happy to give them as much as they’d like to drink. Although Johnson says that the water costs so much because it must be specially purified, the truth is that he has access to an entire body of water and there really isn’t any reason to charge so much.\n\nLater, Johnson convinces Harvey and Joe that they’re hungry enough to sit down at his restaurant even though neither one had even mentioned food. He allows them to order their food and believe that they’re getting an incredible deal until he tells them about the fine print on the menu. Harvey and Joe are forced to fork over hundreds of dollars for their meal, and when they threaten to walk out, Johnson reminds them that he is the sheriff on Planetoid 42, and he has the power to arrest them. \n"}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "05e6af6977974ad3b4be0ec690115545", "response_text": "Johnson has a number of schemes that he uses to swindle Harvey and Joe. He initially charges them for water that he claims is expensively purified when in fact it is naturally drinkable. He overcharges them for a meal using a menu with ludicrously fine print. Finally he sells them Genius even though they can't take him off world. In the end Johnson proves that he is just a good a grifter as Harvey and Joe because he manages to extract exactly as much money out of the pair as they do out of him."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "3a5b316c58d14ad3bad6ed30a89429b9", "response_text": "Joe and Harvey arrive on this planet in need of water for their ship and in the hopes that they will be able to make a profit off of it. From the get-go, we know that these men are scheming cons, but Johnson is the first to make a move. He cons them into paying more for the water than was necessary and from there the battle only grows. \nWith every con Joe and Harvey pull, Johnson is right back with them. Although they may stump him in the end with the ingenious radio that picks up the fourth dimension, he got the last laugh what with Genius being unable to leave. \nAs well, when Joe and Harvey count their money in the end, they realize they’re leaving with the same amount they arrived with. Johnson was not only a formidable foe but possibly their equal in terms of scheming qualities.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "efcb434e9363466092f221030ab91140", "response_text": "Throughout the story, the two groups of people (Joe and Harvey, the travelers, and Johnson and Genius, the locals) are constantly trying to trick one another in ways that the others do not see coming. Joe and Harvey think that they are excellent conmen; they say they are salesman who are traveling, but show throughout the story that they are the type to find the best deal for themselves in any way possible. Johnson, the man who runs the bar and the legal system on Planetoid 42, is ready to rise to the occasion. In fact, at the end of the story, they break even and neither side has actually gained any money. Whenever Joe and Harvey are trying to pull one of their scams, Johnson maintains an uninterested air and tries to not give away any interest in anything the visitors may have to sell him. He always acts as if he needs to be convinced by something, and does not let on what he is trying to pull something over on Joe and Harvey. He also finds very sneaky ways of getting money from them, playing on the visitors’ limited knowledge of the planetoid and its environment. This is how he originally sells them on the idea that he has to charge for water, but it is not his only tactic. He presents them with a menu that has very inexpensive prices for food, but does not mention the extremely small print on the bottom of the menu that shows an exorbitant service charge for the entertainment. These types of ploys have something in common: he tries to set up a situation to make it look very normal for his environment on the planetoid, but hides the information necessary for visitors to make an informed decision. This includes selling Genius near the end of the story, which is a con he has apparently run many times. Because he expects visitors to not think about the biology of the creatures who live on the planetoid, he is able to sell the flashy exterior, in this case his assistant’s capabilities, while there is always a hidden piece of information underneath."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "8e4f16bfbb2d4463b4f7ad22c6b96883", "response_text": "Planetoid 42 is a place without much to offer besides a port. It is heavily polluted, covered in plants that are similar to vines, and boasts only one saloon. It is home to only two humans, Johnson and his son Jeb, and Genius, a fantastic creature with six limbs that is unlike anything Joe and Harvey have ever seen before. The planet has gravity, which made it possible for Jed to grow to eight feet tall. Genius is also able to thrive on Planetoid 42 while he would perish on other planets with more gravity. \n\nAlthough Johnson says that the water must be purified so it doesn’t taste bitter, the truth is that there’s a large pool with sweet water on the planet. Johnson insists that he has to charge a lot of money for water in part because he has very few customers. The planet is mostly deserted and people only show up to his bar if they’re in trouble.Johnson makes the rules because he is in charge of everything. He is the sheriff, fire chief, mayor, justice of the peace, and restaurateur. "}, {"worker_id": "5", "uid": "05e6af6977974ad3b4be0ec690115545", "response_text": "The story is set on Planetoid 42. It is a small and extremely sparsely populated asteroid. It has nearly no infrastructure. Most of the narrative takes place in the spaceport/saloon/restaurant operated by Johnson. The world is technologically simple and has very few resources.\n\nThe story takes place in an unspecified future where space travel is commonplace and alien races have been discovered. Joe and Harvey remark that they have traveled from planet to planet and seen numerous strange life forms."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "3a5b316c58d14ad3bad6ed30a89429b9", "response_text": "Grifter’s Asteroid by H.L. Gold takes place on a small planetoid somewhere in the universe. Because of its small size, there are only two Earthmen on it, Johnson and his large son. There are the Native peoples as well, one of which is Genius, Johnson’s employee. \nThis small planet does not have many resources to its name. Due to its small size and remote location, there are no radios or satellites that Johnson can use to catch up on political battles or other earthly drama. \nThere are two water sources, one which is bitter and must be purified to drink, and the other which is sweet and fresh. \nThere’s no mechanic or any other repairman on this planet. Even the spaceport is nothing more than a small stretch of land. This planet has a similar feel to that of a Midwestern rural town.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "efcb434e9363466092f221030ab91140", "response_text": "The story takes place on Planetoid 42, a small and mostly deserted location that lies somewhere between Mars and Ganymede. Because it is small, the gravitational pull is much lower than the larger planets that humans are used to. It is not very well developed in the sense of infrastructure, and there are not many buildings—in fact, only two humans live there, Johnson and his son, although Genius grew up on the planetoid. The saloon is where we encounter our protagonists for the first time, and it is located on a poorly kept stretch of land covered in trash. Outside of the saloon are the water tanks where Johnson keeps his filtered water to sell the people passing through. There are at least two bodies of water outside, one with bitter water that is used for battery fluid, and one that has clean water that Johnson keeps a secret. These locations are connected through sets of pipes that allow Johnson to keep his freshwater tanks full. Most of the story takes place inside the saloon itself. It is at the bar where Joe and Harvey found water to drink at the beginning of the story, this is the bar that Joe lies on when he pretends to have asteroid fever, and this was the area that served as the restaurant where they ate. A few scenes take place inside of Joe and Harvey’s ship, as they eventually leave Planetoid 42, but also when Harvey pulled the medicine con."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61007", "uid": "26978d33590c4f7187331a3cc21e1861", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS\n \n \n IN THE GARDEN\n \n\n BY R. A. LAFFERTY\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So they skipped several steps in the procedure.\n \n The chordata discerner read Positive over most of the surface. There was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought on the body?\n \n Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.\n \n \"Limited,\" said Steiner, \"as though within a pale. As though there were but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours before it's back in our ken if we let it go now.\"\n \n \"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of the world to make sure we've missed nothing,\" said Stark.\n \n There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.\n \n The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator had refused to read Positive when turned on the inventor himself, bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He told the machine so heatedly.\n \n The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that Glaser did not have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a difference , the machine insisted.\n \n It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.\n \n And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read Positive on a number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not even read music. But it had also read Positive on ninety per cent of the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi it had read Positive on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all was shown by the test.\n \n So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.\n \n Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug of the shoulders in a man. They called it the \"You tell me light.\"\n \n So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be forewarned.\n \n \n\n \n \"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner,\" said Stark, \"and the rest of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about twelve hours.\"\n \n \"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away from the thoughtful creature?\"\n \n \"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go down boldly and visit this.\"\n \n So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig, the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist and checker champion of the craft.\n \n Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe went down to visit whatever was there.\n \n \"There's no town,\" said Steiner. \"Not a building. Yet we're on the track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it.\"\n \n \"Keep on towards the minds,\" said Stark. \"They're our target.\"\n \n \"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion, I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming from?\"\n \n \"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool with us.\"\n \n Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very bright light.\n \n \"Talk to them, Father Briton,\" said Stark. \"You are the linguist.\"\n \n \"Howdy,\" said the priest.\n \n He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at him, so he went on.\n \n \"Father Briton from Philadelphia,\" he said, \"on detached service. And you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?\"\n \n \"Ha-Adamah,\" said the man.\n \n \"And your daughter, or niece?\"\n \n It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the woman smiled, proving that she was human.\n \n \"The woman is named Hawwah,\" said the man. \"The sheep is named sheep, the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is named hoolock.\"\n \n \"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it that you use the English tongue?\"\n \n \"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all; by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English.\"\n \n \"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would you?\"\n \n \"The fountain.\"\n \n \"Ah—I see.\"\n \n \n\n \n But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water, but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like the first water ever made.\n \n \"What do you make of them?\" asked Stark.\n \n \"Human,\" said Steiner. \"It may even be that they are a little more than human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem to be clothed, as it were, in dignity.\"\n \n \"And very little else,\" said Father Briton, \"though that light trick does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia.\"\n \n \"Talk to them again,\" said Stark. \"You're the linguist.\"\n \n \"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself.\"\n \n \"Are there any other people here?\" Stark asked the man.\n \n \"The two of us. Man and woman.\"\n \n \"But are there any others?\"\n \n \"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there be than man and woman?\"\n \n \"But is there more than one man or woman?\"\n \n \"How could there be more than one of anything?\"\n \n The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:\n\"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?\"\n \n \"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named Engineer. He is named Flunky.\"\n \n \"Thanks a lot,\" said Steiner.\n \n \"But are we not people?\" persisted Captain Stark.\n \n \"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be other people?\"\n \n \"And the damnest thing about it,\" muttered Langweilig, \"is, how are you going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling.\"\n \n \"Can we have something to eat?\" asked the Captain.\n \n \"Pick from the trees,\" said Ha-Adamah, \"and then it may be that you will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits.\"\n \n \"We will,\" said Captain Stark.\n \n They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.\n \n \"If there are only two people here,\" said Casper Craig, \"then it may be that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And those rocks would bear examining.\"\n \n \"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else,\" said Stark. \"A very promising site.\"\n \n \"And everything grows here,\" added Steiner. \"Those are Earth-fruits and I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be, the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I haven't yet tried the—\" and he stopped.\n \n \"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think,\" said Gilbert, \"then it will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one.\"\n \n \"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat.\"\n \n \"Ask him first. You ask him.\"\n \n \"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?\"\n \n \"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Well, the analogy breaks down there,\" said Stark. \"I was almost beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what. Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah and Hawwah mean—?\"\n \n \"Of course they do. You know that as well as I.\"\n \n \"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same proposition to maintain here as on Earth?\"\n \n \"All things are possible.\"\n \n And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: \"No, no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!\"\n \n It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.\n \n \"Once more, Father,\" said Stark, \"you should be the authority; but does not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a medieval painting?\"\n \n \"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated.\"\n \n \"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too incredible.\"\n \n \"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?\"\n \n \"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never did understand the answer, however.\"\n \n \"And have you gotten no older in all that time?\"\n \n \"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the beginning.\"\n \n \"And do you think that you will ever die?\"\n \n \"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine.\"\n \n \"And are you completely happy here?\"\n \n \"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost.\"\n \n \"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?\"\n \n \"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect.\"\n \n Then Stark cut in once more: \"There must be some one question you could ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced.\"\n \n \"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about a game of checkers?\"\n \n \"This is hardly the time for clowning,\" said Stark.\n \n \"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of colors and first move.\"\n \n \"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect.\"\n \n \"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam, and have a go at it.\"\n \n \"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you.\"\n \n \n\n \n They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place. It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.\n \n \"What is there, Adam?\" asked Captain Stark.\n \n \"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we persevere, it will come by him.\"\n \n They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they left. And they talked of it as they took off.\n \n \"A crowd would laugh if told of it,\" said Stark, \"but not many would laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds. Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone disturbed that happiness.\"\n \n \"I too am convinced,\" said Steiner. \"It is Paradise itself, where the lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed. It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part of the serpent, and intrude and spoil.\"\n \n \"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world,\" said Casper Craig the tycoon, \"but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it. It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that perfection.\n \n \"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming, Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver, Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited.\"\n \n \n\n \n Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose names were \"Snake-Oil Sam,\" spoke to his underlings:\n \n \"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of.\"\n \n \"I think you'd better write me some new lines,\" said Adam. \"I feel like a goof saying those same ones to each bunch.\"\n \n \"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming better researched, and they insist on authenticity.\n \n \"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you have to acquire your equipment as you can.\"\n \n He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and power packs to run a world.\n \n He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.\n \n \"We will have to have another lion,\" said Eve. \"Bowser is getting old, and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb.\"\n \n \"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the crackpot settlers will bring a new lion.\"\n \n \"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's hell.\"\n \n \"I'm working on it.\"\n \n \n\n \n Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:\n \n \"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—\"\n \n \"And you had better have an armed escort when you return,\" said Father Briton.\n \n \"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?\"\n \n \"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!\"\n \n \"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by our senses? Why do you doubt?\"\n \n \"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds. Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible, zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers.\"\n \n \"What?\"\n \n \"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally.\"\n \n \"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.\n \n \"But it was Paradise in one way,\" said Steiner at last.\n \n \"How?\"\n \n \"All the time we were there the woman did not speak.\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "d93ece0f6739491a81d5bd669adff45e", "response_text": "The story describes the crew of a probe spaceship as it investigates an extraterrestrial world. The crew is made up of Stark, Gilbert, Steiner, Langweilig, Craig, and Briton—the captain, executive officer, crewmember, engineer, part-owner of the probe, and a Catholic priest respectively.\nFrom orbit, the crew scans the moon using various technological instruments. They discover abundant highly developed life forms including a small location of sentient life, possibly of extraordinary magnitude. \n\nThey descend to the moon’s surface near the location of the sentient life. They discover a multitude of plants and animals that are found on Earth, also finding two individuals that appear to be human, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah.\n\nTheir investigation of the surroundings bears a startling resemblance to the biblical story of Genesis. The crew is bewildered to consider that this may indeed be a new Garden of Eden which never fell into sin and was preserved as a perfect paradise.\n\nAfter remaining for a few days, the crew returns to their probe. They remark how immoral it would be to meddle such an unspoiled paradise, but nevertheless begin the process of advertising the world to potential colonizers who would indeed exploit the moon for profit.\n\nSurprisingly, it is revealed that back on the planet that the individuals that were merely posing as Ha-Adamah and Hawwah working with their boss, Snake-oil Sam, to deceive potential colonists, ambushing them upon arrival and confiscating their valuable supplies and equipment.\n\nBack on the probe Father Briton chides the rest of the crew that they had been taken in by an obvious ruse and to inform any potential colonists to prepare for armed resistance. The incredulous crew demands to know the reasoning behind his conclusion.  He casually says that besides what he contended were glaring inaccuracies, the fact that Ha-Adamah refused to play him in checkers despite claiming to have a preternaturally perfect intellect was all the proof he needed."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "04863686a732485b9d5ac52f857d1dd8", "response_text": "Steiner uses several tools to determine if there is any life on a little moon that his craft hovers over. After getting some positive feedback, Steiner agrees to scan the rest of the world while his colleagues get some rest. The findings are good, so the crew decides to land.\n\nA man introduces himself as Ha-Adamah (Adam) and his female partner is named Hawwah (Eve). The man explains that he is able to speak whatever language his listener needs to hear in order to understand, and this includes animals like eagles and squirrels. \n\nStark then asks the mostly naked man if there are other humans on the moon. Adam says there cannot be more than one of anything. He then names each member of the crew something different and explains that they cannot be people because the man and woman themselves are people.\n\nThe crew members consume fruit from the garden and are incredibly surprised at their quality. The produce tastes better than anything they have ever eaten on earth. They begin to make the connections between this place and the Garden of Eden, and they wonder if they are dreaming. The man tells Langweilig he is not allowed to eat from the pomegranate tree, and the priest explains that in other languages, it is not the apple that is forbidden in the Garden of Eden, but the pomegranate. \n\nThe crew members continue to silently make comparisons to the Biblical story. Adam tells the men that he has heard about another world in which the people have fallen. He also explains that he has a preternatural intellect. In order to check his claims, the priest asks Adam to play checkers, but he refuses.\n\nThe crew members learn about the large serpent that lives in a nearby cave. Adam claims that if evil is to come to him, it will happen via the serpent. \n\nAfter leaving on their ship, all of the crew members are convinced that they have found an actual paradise, a place that has yet to be touched and has not yet fallen. They are eager to take advantage of the land’s resources and exploit the perfect conditions by selling off the land to settlers. \n\nThe only person who disagrees that this Garden of Eden is real is the priest. He points out several inconsistencies and argues that Adam refused to play checkers because in reality he could not win. His skepticism convinces his colleagues that their shared experience was in fact fake. \n\nMeanwhile, Adam and Eve take off their costumes and the paint on their bodies that causes them to glow. Snake-Oil Sam comes out of his cave and the trio begins to prepare for the return of the settlers. They have done this many times before, and each time they fool a group of people, those settlers come back and Snake-Oil Sam takes everything they have and stockpiles it for himself. His motivation is to gain enough equipment and goods to start his own civilization there. "}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "1e348a091120481da21c024655fcfc77", "response_text": "A crew of humans in a spaceship encounter a small moon that has a promising amount of life that they wish to investigate. The crew of the Little Probe is made up of a typical captain, engineer, and executive officer, but also includes a tycoon and a priest, among others. Stark, the captain, orders his man Steiner to continue running scans overnight so that the crew can land on the moon the next day. When they approach the surface, they recognize various animals that look familiar from life on Earth, including sheep and lions, but there is a bright light they don’t understand the source of. Briton, the priest, is also a linguist so he approaches the two people that they find, and is surprised when he is easily understood. The man, Ha Adamah, speaks English perfectly, and says it is due to a special character of his own language that anyone can understand him. The woman on the surface, Hawwah, does not speak while the crew is there. These two are the only humanoids that the crew notices, and they find that the bright light seems to be coming from the people themselves. The main features on the surface are a large garden and a fountain, and the crew is struck by the resemblance to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. They test the boundaries of the similarities by asking to eat apples, which they are told is fine, but then find that pomegranates are not allowed to be consumed. This does not discount the similarity, as some versions of the story say that pomegranates were the forbidden fruit, and the crew is even more baffled when they hear that there is a serpent there that is the source of evil: they do not meet him, as he is in a cave. After three days on the surface, with Father Briton asking questions all the while, the crew goes back to the Little Prob where they discuss what they had witnessed. Stark was astounded at the purity of the world, and thought it needed to be protected, as did Steiner. Craig, the tycoon who owns 51% of the probe, admitted it was beautiful and would be terrible to ruin, but immediately works on dictating a message to Gilbert, the executive officer, advertising the moon to those who might want to buy or lease land there. On the surface, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah are meeting with the Old Serpent—it turns out that the entire situation was a ploy to draw the humans in, and they regularly kill incoming settlers to take their supplies. Father Briton is the only one who is suspicious, and convinces the rest of the crew that they have to doubt what they had just experienced—besides flaws in logic, he was surprised that his offer of a checkers game had been denied, as it would have been a chance for Ha-Adamah to show off."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "f77fecfc1cc6490f8aa8f2beade9b307", "response_text": "\tA crew of six find themselves in outer space, searching for their next mission. Steiner, one man on board, uses a machine to read the planet below, searching for life. The reader comes back positive, so they move on to the next test. The eppel reports an orange light, meaning the possibility of something extraordinary, but perhaps not.The eppel (the Extraordinary Perception Locator) was created with the intention to find the most extraordinary people, brains, or trains of thought.  \n\tStark, the captain, takes charge and demands they scan the rest of the planet for traces of infrastructure. He sends the rest of the crew to bed, and when they wake up the next morning, the report is back. Negative. They target the possibility of something extraordinary, as reported by the eppel, and make their way to the surface. \n\tAs they land, they take note of their surroundings. No shelters, buildings, or lean-tos. Just land with a lion and a lamb. They spot two people, neither naked nor clothed but bathed in light, and ask Father Briton, the Jesuit priest and resident linguist, to communicate with them. \n\tHe approaches them, talking in English, and the man, Ha-Adamah, replies. He introduces himself and the woman, named Hawwah. Father Briton asks him a few questions about their surroundings and names, and the Man responds with convoluted answers. He points the crew towards the fountain, so they may quench their thirst. Although hesitant at first, the men soon realize this water is the best they’ve ever had: the freshest, bubbliest, and clearest. Their suspicions about this place and the Man and Woman only grow. \n\tThe Captain attempts to question Ha-Adamah, and his answers confirm their suspicions. This place might be Paradise or Eden, the place where humanity was born and disgraced. Ha-Adamah welcomes them and offers the fruit on the trees to eat, except for the pomegranates. Ha-Adamah reveals that he is happy here, but that he has been warned that he may lose this happiness and lead the rest of his life desperately trying to find it again. The Man also shies away from the cave where he says the great and evil serpent lives. The crew, now convinced, leave this land and call it in. Selling it as paradise perfect for ranching, farming, camping, or other industrial uses, they plot their return with settlers to take over the land. Only Father Briton believes paradise is not paradise at all, simply a trick. \n\tThe story flashes back to the surface, where Hawwah and Ha-Adamah are huddling with the Serpent, Snake-Oil Sam. It is revealed that they pretend to be Adam and Eve to draw in settlers, only to steal their equipment and kill them. The Serpent congratulates them on their work, but reminds them that more is to be done in order to farm this new world and get all the equipment they need. \n\tOn the spaceship, Father Briton asks for an armed escort to accompany them. The others laugh him off. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the story's characters and how they interact.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "d93ece0f6739491a81d5bd669adff45e", "response_text": "There are two main groups of characters: the crew of the Little Probe and the inhabitants of the “Garden” world.\n\nThe crew of the Little Probe consist of Stark, the captain; Gilbert, the executive officer; Steiner, a generall crewmember “flunky”; Langweilig, the engineer; Craig, a businessman and part-owner of the ship; and Fr. Briton, priest, linguist, and checkers afficionado. Stark is the leader of the group, commanding the others to their various tasks. Craig is shown to be a shrewd entrepreneur who is most intent on reaping potential profit from the situation they find themselves in.\n\nOn the moon lives Ha-Adamah and Hawwah who present themselves as archetypes of the biblical Adam and Eve. In reality, they are settlers, attempting to gather supplies to farm this world by stealing supplies from other settlers that they entice to world and then ambush. They are commanded by Snake-Oil Sam, a cynical, former showbusiness professional who runs the con.\n\nThe two groups interact when the crew descends to the surface of the moon. Ha-Adamah describes his environment in casual but bewildering terms to his visitors. Briton, as a Catholic priest, is designated by the crew to be Ha-Adamah’s main interlocutor. Hawwah, notedly does not speak at all—a flourish to attempt to further depict the attractiveness of the world to their all-male visitors. The crew beside Briton are enamored by the environment of the moon and are totally taken in by the performance of their hosts. The story concludes with Briton chiding his crewmates for their gullibility. Although Briton perhaps had the most reason to believe the moon was divinely ordained, he saw through the charade without much difficulty."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "04863686a732485b9d5ac52f857d1dd8", "response_text": "There are two different groups of characters at play in the story. The crew members who land on the new world represent one group, and Adam, Eve, and Snake-Oil Sam represent the other. The second group is nearly able to convince the first group that the moon is an untouched world, almost identical to the Garden of Eden. The crew members spend several days with Adam and Eve, and their elaborate ruse convinces them that Adam and Eve know nothing of death or suffering or ageing. It is only the priest that recognizes that the entire interaction was a con. \n\nAs soon as the crew members leave, Snake-Oil Sam comes out of his cave to give Adam and Eve more directions. He is in charge of the entire sham, and he gives out orders. Sam recognizes that people simply can’t resist ruining something that appears to be perfect. He has played this game before, and he knows that the crew members will be back with others to try and take over what they see as a paradise. Instead, he will murder them and take their goods to use for his own advantage. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "1e348a091120481da21c024655fcfc77", "response_text": "The story’s characters fall into two groups: the crew of the Little Probe, and those who live on the surface of the small moon that the Little Probe goes to investigate. The crew consists of six Americans: Stark is the ship’s captain, so he calls all of shots onboard and asks a lot of questions on the surface. Steiner is his right-hand man, who tends to follow what Stark says and runs a lot of scans. Gilbert is the executive officer, who points out that they have to eat an apple to truly test if this reality is indeed the biblical paradise it appears to be, and Langweilig is the ship’s engineer. Craig is the tycoon who owns most of the ship, and wants to rent out land on the moon, and Briton is the priest and linguist who initiates contact on the surface and remains a skeptic throughout the story, eventually convincing the rest of the crew that the whole thing is a trap. On the surface, there are three characters of interest: the Old Serpent, who the reader finds out at the end of the story is in charge of the deception, and the two people known as Ha-Adamah and Hawwah. Ha-Adamah, or Adam, is the one who interacts with the ship’s crew when they visit the surface, and Hawwah, or Eve, does not talk to them while they are there—she does talk, though, and works on the plan with the serpent at the end. It is the serpent who creates the paint that makes Adam and Eve glow as if they are sources of light themselves, and writes the script for the deception."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "f77fecfc1cc6490f8aa8f2beade9b307", "response_text": "\tThe crew of the spaceship visiting “Paradise” is made up of six men: Captain Stark, Steiner, Father Briton, Casper Craig, Wolfgang Langweilig, and Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer. Each man serves his own purpose on board their ship. Based on their friendliness and camaraderie, these men have worked together before. Finding paradise was not their first mission. Although Stark is the captain, he often asks favors from Father Briton, the advanced linguist. In commanding him and letting him work, Stark is showing his complete trust in his crew. \n\tHowever, the group of creatures on Paradise interact a little differently. As Father Briton mentions later in the story, it’s clear that there was a powerful Thought (mind or being) on the planet, it just didn’t reveal itself to them. The Serpent, or Snake-Oil Sam, hides out in a cave with the equipment, money, ships, and bone meal that they have stolen from previous settlers. He is the true brains behind the operation. He has Ha-Adamah and Hawwah under his command, and, though they complain about the itchy costume, they are on board with his plan. He is clearly in charge and more manipulative than Captain Stark. \n\tAs the Serpent and his crew act out paradise, Captain Stark and his crew fall for it. All except for Father Briton. But the others don’t listen to him. They only laugh off his ideas and request for an armed escort. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "d93ece0f6739491a81d5bd669adff45e", "response_text": "The story takes place on an unnamed extraterrestrial moon and a small probe that is visiting the moon to investigate its suitability for development. The moon is an earthlike environment that appears to be a perfect paradise in every respect. The land is fertile, the wild animals are domesticated, and there is an abundance of fruit to eat and minerals to potentially harvest. The description of the world that the crew receives depicts it as a true Eden—a perfect paradise. Also on the moon is a massive cave, from where the inhabitants of the moon store their stolen goods and prepare to ambush unsuspecting potential settlers. "}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "04863686a732485b9d5ac52f857d1dd8", "response_text": "The crew members come across a new moon they have never visited before. Once they land, they find a mostly naked man and woman who are glowing in light. There are no cities or buildings, no civilization at all. Instead, they discover a lamb that lays with a lion and bears that do not fight the other animals. The magnificent water and fruit that the land bears, along with many other clues, convince them that they have stumbled upon the Garden of Eden.\n\nWhen the visitors learn about the nearby serpent who lives in a cave and has the power to bring about evil to the land, they are downright convinced that this place is just like Earth, except it is still pure. \n\nAfter staying several days, the men take off in their spaceship and Adam and Eve are revealed to be con artists. Snake-Oil Sam, their boss, is hiding in a cave, and he has stockpiled dozens of spaceships, piles of bonemeal, and lots of equipment to use to create his own civilization. Sam knows that the land is perfect for farming and it is beautiful and untouched. He wants to destroy it in his own way, by creating his own society. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "1e348a091120481da21c024655fcfc77", "response_text": "The majority of this story takes place on the surface of a small moon, in an area with a gorgeous garden and large variety of flora and fauna that are familiar from Earth. The crew of the Little Probe visits for three days, looking to investigate the signs of life and intelligence that their scans had reported. There are two people covered in very bright light, and meadows, forests, and a fountain, but no buildings. The water in the fountain is cool and clean, and the trees have any number of fresh fruits to pick from. The animals there, including lions, sheep, and monkeys, seem to enjoy the soft grass. The one area the crew of the Little Probe did not visit was a large cave that they were told was the home of the great serpent. When Ha-Adamah goes to talk to the serpent we see that this cave is filled with various types of supplies, military and practical, including power equipment, food, and dozens of space ships."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "f77fecfc1cc6490f8aa8f2beade9b307", "response_text": "\tIn the Garden by R.A. Lafferty takes place on a planet somewhere in the universe. The three inhabitants (animals not included) have kept it isolated and deserted. There aren’t any structures, buildings, or infrastructure that would be recognizable from space. Even on land, you can’t tell this planet has been touched by human hands. Trees grow abundantly with the most delicious fruits, a fountain spouts water that is clear and clean, and lush green grass rests on the ground. Gold speckles shine on the rocks, a promise of greater treasures to be found underground.\n\tThe only real mystery is the cave, which the crew of the visiting spaceship are not allowed to see. Within is the evidence of humanity: spaceships, farming equipment, and tools. However, with all this tucked away, this land can truly pass off as Paradise: untouched, unblemished, and unseen by humans. "}]}, {"question_text": "How do religion and religious faith contribute to the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "d93ece0f6739491a81d5bd669adff45e", "response_text": "Christianity is a central component of the story. The heart of the narrative revolves around the description of the world as a replica of the biblical Garden of Eden. The author goes into extensive detail regarding the aspects of the garden and its inhabitants and how they conform to aspects of the Genesis narrative and how it was understood by religious analysis. It is heavily suggested that here, the Serpent did not succeed in convincing man to sin and fall from grace as was the case in the biblical narrative. As a result, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah (the Hebrew names for Adam and Eve) remain clothed in light and still enjoy the preternatural gifts of creation including a highly advanced intellect, immortality and even an illuminated appearance.\n\nIt is revealed that this depiction is a deception on the part of the moon’s inhabitants. Interestingly, the 4 non-believers on the crew are the most ready to believe that the state of affairs on the planet is indeed supernatural. It is only the clever priest who possesses faith, but employs the skepticism necessary to see through the fraud.\n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "04863686a732485b9d5ac52f857d1dd8", "response_text": "Snake-Oil Sam, the mastermind behind the ruse, realizes that the visitors who come to the new world will immediately make connections to the Garden of Eden if there are enough clues to point them in that direction. In that way, the story demonstrates that people are susceptible to believing in an already established story or trope, regardless of how impossible it seems. Since the settlers are familiar with the Bible and the famous story of Adam and Eve, they are preconditioned to believe that another Adam and Eve may exist in a separate world, a world that has yet to be tainted with sin. \n\nThe priest is the only character that sees through Adam and Eve’s show. Although it’s strange that the religious man in the group would be the most skeptical, it’s clear that he has a keen eye for details. He purposefully asks Adam to play checkers with him to test his supernatural intellect, and when Adam refuses, he realizes that he cannot be who he says he is. Perhaps the priest has the most to lose in believing in this illusion, so his refusal to take the con artists at their word shows his true dedication to Christianity. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "1e348a091120481da21c024655fcfc77", "response_text": "The people on the surface of the moon that the crew of the Little Probe is investigating are part of a very detailed ploy to replicate the biblical story of Adam and Eve. This religious story served as a recognizable type of paradise, which the serpent used to his advantage, knowing that humans would be drawn to something that they thought was perfect. All of the details of the facade were carefully designed around an attempt to make an authentic, tempting environment. This included changing some details from the English-translated version of the biblical story, including giving the people their Hebrew names of Ha Adamah and Hawwah. The other major point of religion in the story is the Jesuit priest who is onboard the Little Probe. It is Father Briton who is the skeptic, asking questions during his stay on the surface to try to uncover the truth of the situation. The rest of the crew are surprised that it is the religious man who is skeptical of the reality of the moon, but he convinces them that he is right, having thought carefully about every detail of every interaction they had on the surface."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "f77fecfc1cc6490f8aa8f2beade9b307", "response_text": "\tThe story of Adam and Eve (or Genesis) is one of the most widely known myths. The idea that we, as humans, once inhabited Paradise, but lost it due to our greed and stolen innocence is intoxicating. It explains why life isn’t perfect, why things don’t always go our way, and why people die. \n\tIn In the Garden, this story is explored in a different manner. The Christian origin story acts as a backdrop for this uninhabited planet that a crew visits. After exploring, they are quick to believe that they have discovered another universe’s Eden. And, therefore, quick to destroy it. \n\tTheir religious faith and belief in the story of Adam and Eve adds to the gravity of the situation. If this weren’t a well-known story, then the crew would have been less amazed by the space before them. The perfection of the place, and the potential of Paradise, was what truly brought them in and, eventually, destroyed them.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "How is human fallenness explored as a theme?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "5", "uid": "d93ece0f6739491a81d5bd669adff45e", "response_text": "Human sinfulness and its collective fall from grace are referenced in several ways in the story. Ha-Adamah contrasts his world’s perfection with the fallenness that is apparent in the visitors. He claims to be free from the stain of original sin. He presents himself as perfectly happy and not subject to corruption, aging, or death. This is contrasted with Earth's humanity which was fated to “lose that happiness, and then to seek it vainly through all the ages.”\n\nThe entire crew of the Little Probe agree on the unacceptability of spoiling a pristine world. Even so, they irresistibly and almost gleefully prepare to exploit the world’s riches.\n\nSnake-Oil Sam expounds upon this inclination. He claims that on top of the very real greed of the visitors they’ve deceived over the years, they are capitalizing on the human desire to despoil the unspoiled. This is a clear summation of concupiscence—the inclination for fallen humanity to tend toward sin. It is clear that Sam and his associates are just as fallen as the other individuals in the story, preying on others to further their own goals."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "04863686a732485b9d5ac52f857d1dd8", "response_text": "Although the visiting crew members are impressed and in awe of the Garden of Eden, they have every intention of pillaging the place. They love the clean and delicious water it offers and the tasty fruit that is better than anything they’ve had before. Yet, they cannot resist their urge to take over the land and commercialize it. They do not care that their actions will ruin the purity of the land and its two occupants. They are greedy and only want what will benefit them in the end. \n\nLikewise, Snake-Oil Sam recognizes the immense beauty of the untouched world, and instead of trying to preserve it, he entices groups of people to come and try to take it over so that he can murder them and take their goods and equipment. Snake-Oil Sam is cunning because he innately knows that if he can convince settlers that this world is pure and special, they will immediately desire to destroy it. According to Sam, people can’t resist ruining something that appears to be unique and unadulterated. He uses human nature and the desire to control to his own advantage. By convincing strangers that Adam and Eve are simple and kind and unaware of ageing or suffering, he knows that those strangers will return to the land to make sure that Adam and Eve learn all about those topics. They can’t help themselves precisely because humans have already fallen and are predisposed to sinning. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "1e348a091120481da21c024655fcfc77", "response_text": "Human fallenness can be interpreted as the degraded state of mankind, or as inauthenticity in human interaction. These are both important themes to this story. In terms of inauthenticity, this is the root of the interactions on the surface of the moon. As the crew of the Little Probe is exploring the area where the two humanoids are living, everything they encounter is a carefully staged ploy. The two people on the surface do not let on any of the truth of their situation to the crew, and deliberately lie to them in order to entice them to come back to settle on the moon. This is ironic, as the serpent’s plan for this ruse is heavily based on others’ desires for authenticity in the story they are presented, thus the small changes in various iterations of this illusion of the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In terms of degradation, another central idea is that this moon is a pure and untouched place. However, the serpent knows that this will entice humans to investigate and try to settle there, because of an innate draw to spoil things that are in perfect condition. The crew of the Little Probe recognize this idea in a different way, in that they see this moon as what humankind could have been before it fell, when Adam and Eve fell to temptation. They see this as innocence that would be a crime to ruin, and know that humans of their own world would be inclined to disrupt what was there."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "f77fecfc1cc6490f8aa8f2beade9b307", "response_text": "\tThe story of Adam and Eve ends with human failure. Eve, or Hawwah, eats the apple/pomegranate that God told them not to eat. And so she is cursed with painful birth, toiling the land, and eventual return to dust, or death. Both she and Adam are expelled from Eden and their expulsion leads to the creation of other humans. There is no longer one Man or Woman. \n\tHowever in this story, the destruction of paradise is brought about by two separate groups. The Serpent’s crew of actors and props creates a false paradise to lure people in and pillage them. This in itself is an example of human fallenness, failure, or expulsion from Eden. By extorting the idea of paradise and using it to harm others, the Serpent and his crew are fallen humans. \n\tAnd so are the crew of the visiting spaceship. After discovering so-called paradise, their first thought is to destroy it. Their tools are farming, building, and burning, but not preserving. Human greed is what led to the falling, and is also what led to the falling of these two crews. \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "49165", "uid": "0b5c035a14a84470a4129c9e1fd3f2ec", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Brightside Crossing\n \n by Alan E. Nourse\n \n JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by eight.”\n \n \n Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time without justifying it.\n \n \n Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still healing.\n \n \n The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re planning to attempt the Brightside.”\n \n \n Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going to make a Brightside Crossing.”\n \n \n “At perihelion?”\n \n \n “Of course. When else?”\n \n \n The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re not going to make the Crossing.”\n \n \n “Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.\n \n \n “The name is Claney,” said the stranger.\n \n \n There was a silence. Then: “Claney? Peter Claney?”\n \n \n “That’s right.”\n \n \n Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger gone. “Great balls of fire, man— where have you been hiding? We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”\n \n \n “I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.”\n \n \n “Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking. Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His fingers were trembling.\n \n \n Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you want to hear.”\n \n \n “But you’ve got to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need details . Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma? Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make it across where your attempt failed—”\n \n \n “You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.\n \n \n “Of course we want to know. We have to know.”\n \n \n “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”\n \n \n “Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”\n \n \n Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting. It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun . They’ll whip you, too, if you try it.”\n \n \n “Never,” said Baron.\n \n \n “Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.\n \n \n\n I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082, I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.\n \n \n I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my blood, sure as death.\n \n \n But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American. He was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission.\n \n \n He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days, did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.\n \n \n I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.\n \n \n He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since Venus and what my plans were.\n \n \n “No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”\n \n \n He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”\n \n \n I told him one-thirty-five.\n \n \n “That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”\n \n \n “You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”\n \n \n “No, I mean real heat.”\n \n \n Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”\n \n \n “That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be dangerous, too.”\n \n \n “What trip?”\n \n \n “Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.\n \n \n I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”\n \n \n He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then, nobody’s got Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”\n \n \n I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself.\n \n \n It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned just how hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody would cross it.\n \n \n I wanted to be along.\n \n \n\n The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years before.\n \n \n Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside, of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival temperatures.\n \n \n Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to\n60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around.\n \n \n The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab to make final preparations.\n \n \n Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier. Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside was like.\n \n \n Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed him around like a puppy.\n \n \n It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check and test.\n \n \n We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson. We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models, with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in, and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.\n \n \n The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”\n \n \n “Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.\n \n \n “He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve probably heard of him.”\n \n \n I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil, isn’t he?”\n \n \n “Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the line? We’ll need plenty of both.”\n \n \n “Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.\n \n \n “No. Are you worried?”\n \n \n “Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”\n \n \n The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.\n“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says we should leave in three days.”\n \n \n Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline of our course.\n \n \n “This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But these to the south and west could be active. Seismograph tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface shifting.”\n \n \n Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant surface activity.”\n \n \n The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”\n \n \n It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the further we got from a solution. We knew there were active volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and localized.\n \n \n But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside millennia ago—but there was CO\n 2\n , and nitrogen, and traces of other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.\n \n \n The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way we would find out what was happening where was to be there.\n \n \n Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.\n \n \n He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed, sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness. And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.\n \n \n Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening, Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was set for an early departure after we got some rest.\n \n \n\n “And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”\n \n \n Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”\n \n \n “Of course.”\n \n \n Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t our big problem right then. Equipment worried us first and route next.”\n \n \n Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you have?”\n \n \n “The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at\n770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders if the suits failed somewhere.”\n \n \n “How about the Bugs?”\n \n \n “They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on them too much for protection.”\n \n \n “You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”\n \n \n “We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”\n \n \n Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass as he set it down on the tablecloth.\n \n \n “Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”\n \n \n “Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right. We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m getting to that.”\n \n \n He settled back in his chair and continued.\n \n \n\n We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of the planet at the hottest it ever gets.\n \n \n The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job was only half done—we would still have to travel another two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship, approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.\n \n \n That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew that.\n \n \n The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.\n“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point. If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”\n \n \n McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack and I were planning to change around. We figured he could take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”\n \n \n The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that, Jack?”\n \n \n Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”\n \n \n McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does it make any difference?”\n \n \n “I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank Peter along with me. Right?”\n \n \n “Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going to do the advance scouting?”\n \n \n “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead Bug light as possible.”\n \n \n Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down to the frame and wheels.”\n \n \n McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the advance work. You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?” He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up ahead?”\n \n \n “That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said sharply.\n \n \n “Charts! I’m talking about detail work. We don’t need to worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column. I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws. Then—”\n \n \n “No dice,” the Major broke in.\n \n \n “But why not? We could save ourselves days!”\n \n \n “I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man alone—any time, any place.”\n \n \n McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”\n \n \n “Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff. We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together. Got that?”\n \n \n McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and we nodded, too.\n \n \n “All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight, let’s go.”\n \n \n It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of the Twilight Lab.\n \n \n I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them, Stone dragged the sledges.\n \n \n Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for the first twenty miles.\n \n \n I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out the track the early research teams had made out into the edge of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to bite.\n \n \n We didn’t feel the heat so much those first days out. We saw it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.\n \n \n We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks. The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates, bulk gelatin, vitamins.\n \n \n The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it happened to be so.\n \n \n We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches, but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers for one ice-cold bottle of beer.\n \n \n After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden. Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge, with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous gases.\n \n \n It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there, so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.\n \n \n Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun itself.\n \n \n Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would get us. That was the bargain.\n \n \n I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods. The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their sides were shrouded with heavy ash.\n \n \n We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot, sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.\n \n \n I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly, at first.\n \n \n Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to think so, too.\n \n \n McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route now and then, never far, but a little further each time.\n \n \n Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.\n \n \n And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the end of an eight-hour trek.\n \n \n But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we heard a sharp cry through our earphones.\n \n \n I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand horrible pictures racing through our minds....\n \n \n We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the fiberglass helmets.\n \n \n This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on their Brightside Crossing.\n \n \n\n On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change. It looked the same, but every now and then it felt different. On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch; I gunned my motor and nothing happened.\n \n \n I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs, thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.\n \n \n I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous. I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t like it.\n \n \n One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking much about the others. I was worried about me , plenty worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.\n \n \n It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond a deep crack.\n \n \n I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.\n \n \n There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing; a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the ledge shift over a few feet.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "d624859e69234bba96888a00c6e99637", "response_text": "James Baron is planning a trek to Brightside Crossing on Mercury, a feat so far unaccomplished. Few had tried, and those that did died. All except for one. He is asked to wait at the Red Baron as someone wanted to see him at 8. He waits patiently and is rewarded with the company of Peter Claney, the man who made it back home. Claney instantly tells him to give up on the journey and stay on Earth. Baron asks for details about their trek and what went wrong, but Claney refuses to give him the details. Claney is an older man now with an epithelioma on his face. Although he came to warn him, he quickly learns that Baron may only listen if he hears the truth. So Claney recounts the story. \nMajor Tom Mikuta recruited Claney, Jack Stone, and Ted McIvers to join him. They were to adventure to the Brightside Crossing at perihelion, a more dangerous journey. Temperatures reached up to 770 degrees Fahrenheit at perihelion, but Mikuta was an all-or-nothing man. Stone arrived on Mercury first, soon followed by Mikuta and Claney. McIvers was the last to arrive and they left soon after with three Bugs and one tractor dragging the sledges. Stone was briefed by Sanderson, the head of the observatory, before they left, and the men pored over all images and maps of the Crossing before beginning. \nDespite their high-tech spacesuits and general gadgets, the giant sun still got to them. They were constantly thirsty and hot, and their skin itched and burned. They drove for eight hours, then slept for five. They needed to travel 70 miles a day. It would take 30 days to reach the Center, and then another 30 to reach the pick-up spot. The journey quickly took a toll on Stone, who was the most apprehensive of the bunch. He retreats into himself, while McIvers chatters nonstop to fill the silence. Tension grew among the crew, especially as McIvers put himself at risk by adventuring away from them. \nClaney lead the gang in his Bug, while McIvers and Mikuta flanked him. Stone was in the very back. If Claney saw something suspicious or unsafe, they would investigate on foot before continuing in their equipment. \nAs they travel, they got closer to the Sun, which appeared to be twice as big as it did on Earth. Several drives into their journey, McIvers discovered something truly terrible on one of his forrays. He screamed into the intercom, alerting the others who quickly rushed after him. He stood there, pointing below. There lay a broken, older Bug and two corpses. Wyatt and Carpenter, the original discoverers. \nThey continued on with disheartened spirits until Claney reached a cleft. There was no way to cross it, except for a very small and dangerous ledge. The cleft slowly began to crumble under their Bugs and they’re left in a very precarious position. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "19835953f87c459d973eba846d7d84a0", "response_text": "The story is about a man, Baron, who is planning to cross the bright side of the planet Mercury. Right before the trip is about to depart he runs into one of the famous adventurers that attempted it before him, Peter Claney, at a bar called the Red Lion. Peter goes into a long recollection of his experience to Baron, which is interspersed with them snapping back to reality at the bar. \n\nPeter’s attempted Brightside crossing involved a party of four: the Major (a trusted team captain of sorts), himself (who would be in the lead Bug of the expedition), McIver (who would flank one side of Peter along with the Major), and Stone (who would drag the sledges). They began the expedition at a place called the Twilight lab, an observatory for studying the sun run by a person called Sanders located in a 5 mile wide transition between the bright and dark sides of Mercury which had hospitable temperatures for humans to survive.\n\nOver the course of their journey, tensions between them grew tense. McIver started to drive on little side trips during their daily driving in the Bug vehicles. On one of his side trips he discovered the skeletons of the last known explorers that came before them - Wyatt and Carpenter. Peter does not finish recounting his tale before the story closes, but the reader knows he never did successfully make the crossing, although he did survive (because he is presently sitting in the bar with Baron and recalling this tale from the past).\n\nIt is revealed that Peter’s expedition party went beyond the farthest known point explored by humans (due to finding the bodies), and that he thinks a couple of mistakes were made in equipment choices and in not having a person driving several miles ahead to scout the terrain before the entire convoy had to drive through it.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "dacfa9fae2214c70ac8b0bb8ec400e3f", "response_text": "An explorer named James Baron waits irritatedly for a stranger in the Red Lion, a bar in New York. The stranger turns out to be another explorer, Peter Claney, whom Baron has been attempting to contact to get the details of Claney’s previous mission to Mercury’s Brightside, as he is the only man on Earth to have survived and attempt to cross the Brightside, and Baron plans to attempt it soon himself. Claney says it can’t be done, and that he’ll tell Baron his story to prove it to him. The rest of the passage takes place within Claney’s story. \n\nClaney tells of his desire since childhood to attempt the journey, and how he met Major Mikuta, who wants to attempt it. Claney joins Mikuta, along with a young acolyte of the Major’s, Jack Stone, and an impetuous, thrill-seeking climber named Ted McIvers. The addition of McIvers to the team is an unwelcome surprise to Claney, and he proves to be headstrong and restless. \n\nThe team plans and strategizes at Twilight Lab at Mercury’s north pole. They set out on their journey with Claney out front and in charge of finding safe passage routes, Mikuta and McIvers flanking him on either side, and Stone pulling the sledges in the rear. They were state-of-the-art protective equipment and travel in “bug” vehicles, but the terrain and atmosphere are treacherous. They grow more anxious as they go, with McIvers driving the rest of the crew nuts with his constant talking and wandering, and Stone growing more quiet and reserved. Their nerves are further troubled by the discovery of two previous explorers’ corpses (the two explorers Claney had mentioned looking up to as a kid). \n\nAs the passage ends, Claney is in a precarious position at the edge of a chasm with only a thin, ramp-like surface that is already shifting as he watches and ponders how they’ll cross. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f9b0380e4e004119bdf2e81a8f3b703a", "response_text": "Peter Claney shows up at the Red Lion to convince James Baron not to go on his trip to the Brightside Crossing. Baron has been trying to find Claney for months to learn about his attempt at crossing the Brightside. Claney is the only person on earth who has attempted the ordeal and made it out alive, but Claney says that it simply cannot be done. It’s impossible. \n\nClaney explains that a major named Tom Mikuta recruited him to go on the trip. Major wanted to cross the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion, except he wanted to cross the entire surface of the planet. Claney admits he was afraid because he knew the story of the last two explorers who never returned from their trip. He is also fully aware that the only place hotter than the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion is the actual surface of the sun. Claney believes that it can be done, and he agrees to join Major’s team of men. \n\nMajor and Claney meet up at The Twilight Lab, which is near the north pole of Mercury. Jack Stone, another member of the team, arrives with supplies and equipment. Claney is upset to learn that McIvers will also be joining the team. He thinks he is too much of a risk-taker. The men discuss Mercury’s atmosphere, and Claney realizes that there’s no way to prepare for a voyage this mysterious. There will be active volcanoes, but they have no idea where they will find them. McIvers finally shows up, and although he’s late, Major doesn’t make an issue of it.\n\nThe team leaves the lab with a plan to reach the Center of Brightside in 30 days. They need to travel 70 miles per day. McIvers wants to know who will be out four or five miles ahead of the pack to evaluate the surface. Major sternly tells him that isn’t part of the plan - all team members will stay in sight of one another.\n\nBack at Red Lion, Claney tells Baron that the heat was unbearable, even when their suits kept them cool at 70 degrees. The sight of the sun tricked their minds into believing they were melting. The team drives for eight hours and then stops and sleeps for five. Most of the time, the men are unable to get any rest. The only thing that propels them forward is the fact that no one had ever succeeded before.\nClaney crosses Mercury’s difficult terrain, which includes mounds of dust and impassable cracks. At one point, McIvers drives down a long canyon. Claney sees that McIvers is waving to get his attention, so he follows his lead. McIvers finds wrecked vehicles; this is the spot where the two explorers died. Claney begins to experience difficulties with his Bug. He comes to a six foot drop that his vehicle cannot pass over. He sees a narrow ledge that resembles a ramp. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is McIvers, and what happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "d624859e69234bba96888a00c6e99637", "response_text": "From the get-go, Claney is clear in his obvious mistrust of McIvers and his preceding reputation. Late to Mercury, he arrives ready to explore. With long, gray hair and paradoxically drowsy yet alert eyes, McIvers’ constant movement and chatter get on his colleague’s nerves. McIvers is a famous climber known for pushing the boundaries and being a daredevil. \nAfter his arrival on Mercury, he and the crew soon set out for their treacherous journey to the Brightside Crossing. He switches spots with Stone, so he would have control of a Bug. He also asks to explore four or five miles ahead of the rest of the crew to see if it’s dangerous footing ahead. Mikuta quickly shuts him down. McIvers talks nonstop through the intercoms or when they’re supposed to be resting. As well, he disobeys Mikuta’s orders and occasionally drifts off from the rest of the group, discovering things as he goes. He never drifts far enough to receive any real punishment, though he does get farther away every time. \nDuring one of his side-explorations, he discovers a wrecked Bug and two corpses belonging to Wyatt and Carpenter, the previous explorers of the Brightside Crossing. With this shocking find, he returns to the crew in silence. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "19835953f87c459d973eba846d7d84a0", "response_text": "McIvers had a reputation in the climbing world for being both skilled and lucky, and the Major sought him out for the Brightside Crossing he was leading because he thought his skills would be useful. They had never met prior to this trip together, though they had spoken about the intent of the trip and that there would be no fooling around. The Major lets it slide that McIver shows up late, however, he does not approve of McIver’s plan to go ahead of the rest of the party to scout the terrain. This turns out to potentially be one of the big mistakes that foils their attempted crossing.\n\nDuring their crossing, tensions between the crew and McIver become frazzled because they are tired of McIver’s talking and bad jokes. McIver irritates the crew by taking little side trips away from the rest of them as they try to make forward progress through the Brightside. During one of those trips, McIver makes a significant discovery of two skeletons of the last known explorers. It is not known whether he lives or dies at the close of the crossing attempt that Peter is recollecting.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "dacfa9fae2214c70ac8b0bb8ec400e3f", "response_text": "McIvers is a climbing enthusiast who is known as something of a daredevil, and is described by Mikuta as possessing skill and luck. Claney describes him as tall, with long, wavy, prematurely graying hair and “climber’s” eyes that can look drowsy or suddenly very alert. He never stands still and is always speaking, moving, or doing something. He has been invited on the Brightside Crossing mission, unbeknownst to Peter Claney, by Major Mikuta. He casually shows up three days late, having missed the ship that Claney and Mikuta took and conned his way into a different route via Venus. On the eve of the mission, as plans are being doled out, he asserts that he thinks he and Jack Stone should switch roles and he should be given more leeway for movement. He asks if he can go several miles ahead of the rest to scout out the terrain, but Mikuta insists that they will all stay together. McIvers shows his hot temper during this exchange but ultimately agrees. He grows restless during the journey and annoys everyone with his constant talking and wandering. Because of his meandering, he is the first to encounter a chilling sight: the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, the first two explorers to attempt the Brightside Crossing. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f9b0380e4e004119bdf2e81a8f3b703a", "response_text": "McIvers is an excellent climber with long gray hair and sleepy eyes. He is fidgety and difficult to take seriously. \n\nMajor Tom Mikuta invites Ted McIvers to join the team on their mission to cross the Brightside of Mercury, and Peter Claney is immediately disappointed. McIvers has a reputation for being a daredevil, and Claney worries that he’s incapable of taking the danger of the mission seriously. Major argues that McIvers is both lucky and skillful, and the team will need plenty of luck and skill on this difficult trip. He also explains that McIvers knows that fooling around is unacceptable. When Claney tells James Baron the story of his trip, Baron agrees that taking McIvers was a huge mistake. Claney tells him that actually, the equipment and the route were more worrisome than McIvers. \n\nMcIvers arrives late to The Twilight Lab, but Major doesn’t chide him. He actually shows up on a freight rocket from Venus because he missed his original chance to get on the ship that Major and Claney took. Major, the leader of the pack, tells McIvers that he will be dragging the sledges, but McIvers tells his boss that he and Jack Stone have already decided to switch roles. He clearly has no issue with challenging authority, and he gets his way. However, McIvers also wants to know who will be miles ahead of the group scouting the terrain, and Major tells him that no one will take that role. Everyone is to remain in sight of one another. Later, Claney reveals that McIvers was right about this suggestion. It would have been incredibly helpful to have a scout out ahead so the team wasn’t driving blind. \n\nMcIvers’ constant talking really annoys Claney and perhaps the other team members as well. He tells the same stupid jokes over and over and repeatedly wishes he had a cold beer. He also begins to go further and further away from the rest of the group members. On one of these tangents, McIvers spots the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, two explorers who failed at their mission to cross The Brightside. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "d624859e69234bba96888a00c6e99637", "response_text": "Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse mostly takes place on the surface of Mercury.  The main characters begin in an observatory equipped to support human life as well as do research on the planet itself. However, they quickly move on in their journey to cross the Brightside at perihelion. Full of craters, gorges, and cracked land, the planet’s surface is incredibly dangerous to travel on. Sulfurous, hot winds blow across the planet. Beyond the towering, rocky spears and jagged gorges lay yellow valleys and flatlands. The gas beneath the surface of the planet can cause volcanic-like eruptions. This gas can also imply rise up from the core and poison the atmosphere around it. Gray dust caused by years of erosion rested atop every surface. \nMercury is an incredibly hot planet, being the nearest to the sun, and the surface reflects that. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "19835953f87c459d973eba846d7d84a0", "response_text": "The only ‘real’ setting is a bar called Red Lion where Baron and Peter are sitting together. All other settings are imagined through Peter’s recalling of past events.\n\nPeter’s story includes settings from the Twilight Lab (an observatory on Mercury in the twilight zone between the bright and dark sides of the planet), in vehicles called Bugs on the surface of Mercury as his expedition party tries to cross the Brightside, and in various inhospitable locations on the surface of the bright side of the planet, including molten lead lakes and volcanoes.\n\nThe surface of the planet Mercury that faces the sun is referred to as the Brightside. Crossing it is extremely difficult due to the environmental conditions. It is described that the bright side of mercury is always facing towards the light as it rotates around the sun, never having darkness over it. It is an extremely hot place (770F), known to have active volcanoes, and an atmosphere that is mostly CO2, nitrogen and heavier gases. Humans must wear specialized suits to keep their body temperature at 75F while on the Brightside. A journey from the twilight zone (the transition between the bright and dark sides of the planet) to the Center of the Brightside would take about 30 days.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "dacfa9fae2214c70ac8b0bb8ec400e3f", "response_text": "The initial setting is on Earth, in New York, outside of and then inside of a bar called the Red Lion. It is a quiet and sparsely populated lounge where some other adventurers (Andean climbers, the person who had mapped a previous voyage for Baron) are in attendance. Peter Claney’s story touches briefly on settings during his childhood (presumably somewhere on Earth), Mikuta’s time on Mars, his time with Mikuta on Venus, and New York again, but the primary setting is Mercury. The first area of Mercury they encounter is the Twilight Lab, located near Mercury’s north pole. This is the jumping off point for the mission, and includes a rocket landing, labs and quarters located deep in Mercury’s crust, and a tower with a solar scope. Mercury’s temperature is around -410 degrees F on the darkside and can reach 770 degrees on the brightside. The lab is located in a twilight zone between the two, which is about five miles wide at the pole and allows the area to be habitable. The brightside has ranges of craters, peaks, and faults; some ranges are inactive while others have volcanic activity and shifting below surface level. The atmosphere is as treacherous as the terrain, with Co2, nitrogen, traces of heavier gases, sulfur vapor, carbon disulfide, and sulfur dioxide flowing in constant atmospheric tides from the brightside to the darkside. The first thirty miles of the trek take them through fluffy volcanic ash and into virgin territory full of desolate gorges and intense heat. They see tall, jagged rocks, as well as the yellow, smoky plains below them. They venture closer and closer to the sun, and have to be increasingly cautious of the tenuous surface of Mercury. Based on Claney saying he was ten in 2082, the events Claney describes as well as his meeting with Baron likely occur in the 2100s (or later). \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f9b0380e4e004119bdf2e81a8f3b703a", "response_text": "The story begins at Red Lion, a place with few patrons. A doorman is in charge of the comings and goings. Several climbers are conversing, including Andean climbers and the first man to cross the Vulcan Crater on Venus. \nClaney then dives into his story about his trip to cross the Brightside of Mercury. The men meet up for their trip at the Twilight Lab near the north pole of the planet. The lab has a rocket landing and a lab, and much of it is deep in the crust of the planet where it is cooler. There is also a tower that houses the Solar ‘scope. Sanderson, the lab’s manager, is a sun researcher, so his lab is located at the closest reasonable spot to the sun. Its position between the Brightside and the Darkside means that the temperatures only fluctuate about 50-60 degrees. \nMercury is situated on an axis, and the part that turns in faces the sun. This area, the perihelion, is the hottest place in the solar system besides the actual surface of the sun. Here, the temperatures soar to 770 degrees fahrenheit. The surface of Mercury is particularly treacherous. There are many active volcanoes, and the ground shifts frequently, creating cracks and craters that are difficult to see and impossible to cross. The gases present are also dangerous, including CO 2, nitrogen, sulfur vapor, and sulfur dioxide. There is liquid lead and boiling pools of sulfur. \nOn Mercury, the sun appears to be twice as big as it does on Earth. The planet only has 30% of the gravity that Earth does, and it is blanketed with gray ash. Huge cracks in the surface appear out of nowhere, and cliffs rise out of the land, and rocks and rubble and molten lead make driving treacherous. Everything is difficult to see because of the sulfur mist and the volcanic ash. Without filters and screens, humans would be instantly blinded by the light from the sun. \nThere is a deep gorge where the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, two famous explorers who attempted to cross The Brightside, lie. Their outdated Bugs crashed there, presumably because they misjudged the surface and did not see the crack in the lan\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the Brightside Crossing?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "d624859e69234bba96888a00c6e99637", "response_text": "The Brightside Crossing is an undiscovered portion of Mercury. It is the closest planet to the sun, and the Brightside is the surface that is face-to-face with the surface of the sun most of the time, thanks to Mercury’s quick orbit. It is an incredibly dangerous area of Mercury, with temperatures reaching up to 770 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly more. Because of the difficult atmosphere, the presence of dangerous gases, treacherous landscape, and the heat, the Brightside Crossing remained undiscovered and uninhabitable for hundreds of years. \nMajor Tom Mikuta decided to follow in the footsteps of Wyatt and Carpenter and take on the challenge. The promise of power and discovery draws the main characters forward, as well as the idea of being the first. Mikuta claims that if he were to make the crossing, Mercury would be his. The challenge of the Brightside Crossing is the origin of their desire."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "19835953f87c459d973eba846d7d84a0", "response_text": "It is significant to the explorers because it has never been done before, so being the first would presumably make them very famous. On a greater scale, a successful crossing means conquering Mercury for humanity to the Major. He thinks that if he can successfully cross the bright side of Mercury at perihelion (when the planet is closest to the sun) then man has “got Mercury”. As in, if they have the technologies, knowledge, and skills to make the crossing at the hottest possible time there is nothing that isn’t possible for humans to do on the planet.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "dacfa9fae2214c70ac8b0bb8ec400e3f", "response_text": "The Brightside Crossing is significant because no one has done it successfully, though it has been attempted before. It is also significant because the entire story is about the Brightside Crossing. Baron’s well-publicized upcoming mission to cross it is what brings Claney to speak with him (and try to talk him out of it), and the story Claney tells is about his own experience attempting to cross, as he is the only man on Earth to have survived an attempt (though he did sustain some physical damage). The Brightside gets its name from one of the most dangerous things about it: its proximity to the sun. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f9b0380e4e004119bdf2e81a8f3b703a", "response_text": "Many climbers and explorers wish to take on the Brightside Crossing, but it seems as though the trip is nearly impossible. Wyatt and Carpenter, two famous explorers, attempted to make the trip across the hottest planetary surface in the solar system in 2082, and they never returned from the trip. \n\nPeter Claney is the only living man who has attempted the trip and made it back alive. He was not successful in his mission to cross the perihelion, so it can be assumed that he turned back towards The Twilight Lab after his teammates perished. \n\nMaps of the terrain are shoddy at best since, and the surface is ever changing. Volcanoes erupt, cracks appear, cliffs crumble, and photography and technology is not yet good enough to create detailed pictures of the surface that would allow explorers to create a definitive and safe route. Since the men must travel at least 70 miles a day, there can be zero detours. It’s a constant game of scanning the terrain and making last minute decisions about which way is safest. \n\nPeter Claney and his teammates are motivated almost entirely by their desire to be the first people to conquer The Brightside Crossing. They believe that The Brightside would get them or they would get The Brightside. There is no other way, and their fame and success makes the dangerous trip worth a try. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Jack Stone, and what happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "d624859e69234bba96888a00c6e99637", "response_text": "Jack Stone arrives on the surface of Mercury around a week ahead of his partners. It’s revealed rather early on that Stone is not much of an explorer himself. His wits and genius make him an invaluable resource, but his heart wasn’t necessarily in the right place. Claney claims that Stone only came to follow Major Mikuta around, a man he deeply respected and admired. \nAt barely 25 years old, Stone was the youngest member of the team. His experience with Mikuta at the Vulcan qualified him for the trek, or so he thought, and so he tagged along. \nHis apprehension and anxiety about the trip are evident from the beginning. After Sanderson, the leader of an observatory on Mercury, explained how treacherous their journey was going to be, Stone almost cried. \nOnce they begin their trek, Stone retreats further into himself. Jack’s job was to drag the sledges behind the rest of the crew. Possibly fed up by McIvers’ constant joking or tortured by the fear that he would be lost on this planet forever, Stone became a shell of himself. \nIn the end, after McIvers discovered the corpses of the two discoverers that came before them, Wyatt and Carpenter, we can only assume that Stone’s fear and reservedness increased tremendously. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "19835953f87c459d973eba846d7d84a0", "response_text": "Jack Stone is one of the explorers the Major recruits for his expedition. He is hardly twenty-five years old and crewed on the Major’s vulcan explorations. Peter’s assessment of Stone is that he follows the Major around like a puppy and begged to come on the Brightside Crossing. \n\nStone has the important role of bringing the supplies and equipment for their crossing. He receives some information about the inhospitable conditions of the Brightside from Sanders (owner of the Twilight Lab) that dejects him and makes him nervous about their trip. Stone has the important role of dragging the sleds of supplies during their crossing. He does not irritate the rest of the team, but instead grows more quiet and apprehensive with each day.\n\nThe reader doesn’t know whether he survived the attempted crossing or what he did afterwards.\n"}, {"worker_id": "9", "uid": "dacfa9fae2214c70ac8b0bb8ec400e3f", "response_text": "Jack Stone is a young man of about twenty-five who is part of the Brightside Crossing team. He had worked with Major Makuta at Vulcan and pleaded with him to be part of the Brightside mission. Claney theorizes that he doesn’t care as much about exploring as he does Mikuta, who he sees as a kind of god and follows around. He arrives to Twilight Lab a few days before Claney and Mikuta to be briefed by Sanderson, and brings the supplies and equipment for the mission with him. By the time the other two arrive, Jack seems somewhat despondent based on what Sanderson has told him about the difficulties and improbability of the mission. Jack is assigned to flank Peter on the mission, along with Mikuta, but agrees to switch positions with McIvers and pull the sledges instead. This seems like something McIvers had pushed for in a previous conversation, but Jack says he doesn’t mind and Mikuta agrees to the switch. As the mission goes on, Claney notices that, unlike McIvers, Jack gets quieter and more reserved as he grows more apprehensive. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f9b0380e4e004119bdf2e81a8f3b703a", "response_text": "Jack Stone is the youngest member of The Brightside Crossing team. He is about 25 years old, and he looks to Major Tom Mikuta as a mentor. They worked together on Venus, and that’s where he discovered that Major would be making the trip across The Brightside. Stone begged Major to let him go along, even though it appears that he’s very nervous about the trip. When Sanderson, The Twilight Lab manager, tells Stone about what The Brightside is really like, Stone nearly cries from fear. He gets the equipment all ready and helps to prepare the team for the treacherous trip. \nStone has never met McIvers before, but the two become fast friends. McIvers is able to easily manipulate Stone into switching roles with him. He wants to be more mobile, so he tells Stone that he should drag the sledges instead. Stone acquiesces without a fight. \nThroughout the trip, Stone becomes quiet and stoic. He is a young guy and isn’t prepared to die on this trip. He responds to the difficult terrain and uncertainties with silence. \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63442", "uid": "a74c53a7a8654bda889a2f27e01c8b04", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "\n\n\n\nProduced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\nDOUBLE TROUBLE\nby CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, that waspish science-fiction\n   \n  writer, was in a jam again. What with red-spot\n   \n  fever, talking cockatoos and flagpole trees,\n   \n  I was running in circles—especially since\n   \n  Grannie became twins every now and then.\n \n  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n   \n  Planet Stories Spring 1945.\n   \n  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n   \n  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWe had left the offices of\nInterstellar Voice\nthree days ago, Earth\ntime, and now as the immense disc of Jupiter flamed across the sky,\nentered the outer limits of the Baldric. Grannie Annie strode in the\nlead, her absurd long-skirted black dress looking as out of place in\nthis desert as the trees.\n \n  Flagpole trees. They rose straight up like enormous cat-tails, with\nonly a melon-shaped protuberance at the top to show they were a form of\nvegetation. Everything else was blanketed by the sand and the powerful\nwind that blew from all quarters.\n \n  As we reached the first of those trees, Grannie came to a halt.\n \n  \"This is the Baldric all right. If my calculations are right, we've hit\nit at its narrowest spot.\"\n \n  Ezra Karn took a greasy pipe from his lips and spat. \"It looks like the\nrest of this God-forsaken moon,\" he said, \"'ceptin for them sticks.\"\n \n  Xartal, the Martian illustrator, said nothing. He was like that,\ntaciturn, speaking only when spoken to.\n \n  He could be excused this time, however, for this was only our third day\non Jupiter's Eighth Moon, and the country was still strange to us.\nWhen Annabella C. Flowers, that renowned writer of science fiction,\nvisiphoned me at Crater City, Mars, to meet her here, I had thought she\nwas crazy. But Miss Flowers, known to her friends as Grannie Annie,\nhad always been mildly crazy. If you haven't read her books, you've\nmissed something. She's the author of\nLady of the Green Flames\n,\nLady of the Runaway Planet\n,\nLady of the Crimson Space-Beast\n, and\nother works of science fiction. Blood-and-thunder as these books are,\nhowever, they have one redeeming feature—authenticity of background.\nGrannie Annie was the original research digger-upper, and when she\nlaid the setting of a yarn on a star of the sixth magnitude, only a\ntransportation-velocity of less than light could prevent her from\nvisiting her \"stage\" in person.\n \n  Therefore when she asked me to meet her at the landing field of\nInterstellar Voice\non Jupiter's Eighth Moon, I knew she had another\nnovel in the state of embryo.\n \n  What I didn't expect was Ezra Karn. He was an old prospector Grannie\nhad met, and he had become so attached to the authoress he now followed\nher wherever she went. As for Xartal, he was a Martian and was slated\nto do the illustrations for Grannie's new book.\n \n  Five minutes after my ship had blasted down, the four of us met in the\noffices of\nInterstellar Voice\n. And then I was shaking hands with\nAntlers Park, the manager of I. V. himself.\n \n  \"Glad to meet you,\" he said cordially. \"I've just been trying to\npersuade Miss Flowers not to attempt a trip into the Baldric.\"\n \n  \"What's the Baldric?\" I had asked.\n \n  Antlers Park flicked the ash from his cheroot and shrugged.\n \n  \"Will you believe me, sir,\" he said, \"when I tell you I've been out\nhere on this forsaken moon five years and don't rightly know myself?\"\n \n  I scowled at that; it didn't make sense.\n \n  \"However, as you perhaps know, the only reason for colonial activities\nhere at all is because of the presence of an ore known as Acoustix.\nIt's no use to the people of Earth but of untold value on Mars. I'm\nnot up on the scientific reasons, but it seems that life on the red\nplanet has developed with a supersonic method of vocal communication.\nThe Martian speaks as the Earthman does, but he amplifies his thoughts'\ntransmission by way of wave lengths as high as three million vibrations\nper second. The trouble is that by the time the average Martian reaches\nmiddle age, his ability to produce those vibrations steadily decreases.\nThen it was found that this ore, Acoustix, revitalized their sounding\napparatus, and the rush was on.\"\n \n  \"What do you mean?\"\n \n  Park leaned back. \"The rush to find more of the ore,\" he explained.\n\"But up until now this moon is the only place where it can be found.\n \n  \"There are two companies here,\" he continued, \"\nInterstellar Voice\nand\nLarynx Incorporated\n. Chap by the name of Jimmy Baker runs that.\nHowever, the point is, between the properties of these two companies\nstretches a band or belt which has become known as the Baldric.\n \n  \"There are two principal forms of life in the Baldric; flagpole trees\nand a species of ornithoid resembling cockatoos. So far no one has\ncrossed the Baldric without trouble.\"\n \n  \"What sort of trouble?\" Grannie Annie had demanded. And when Antlers\nPark stuttered evasively, the old lady snorted, \"Fiddlesticks, I never\nsaw trouble yet that couldn't be explained. We leave in an hour.\"\nSo now here we were at the outer reaches of the Baldric, four travelers\non foot with only the barest necessities in the way of equipment and\nsupplies.\n \n  I walked forward to get a closer view of one of the flagpole trees. And\nthen abruptly I saw something else.\n \n  A queer-looking bird squatted there in the sand, looking up at me.\nSilver in plumage, it resembled a parrot with a crest; and yet it\ndidn't. In some strange way the thing was a hideous caricature.\n \n  \"Look what I found,\" I yelled.\n \n  \"What I found,\" said the cockatoo in a very human voice.\n \n  \"Thunder, it talks,\" I said amazed.\n \n  \"Talks,\" repeated the bird, blinking its eyes.\n \n  The cockatoo repeated my last statement again, then rose on its short\nlegs, flapped its wings once and soared off into the sky. Xartal,\nthe Martian illustrator, already had a notebook in his hands and was\nsketching a likeness of the creature.\n \n  Ten minutes later we were on the move again. We saw more silver\ncockatoos and more flagpole trees. Above us, the great disc of Jupiter\nbegan to descend toward the horizon.\n \n  And then all at once Grannie stopped again, this time at the top of a\nhigh ridge. She shielded her eyes and stared off into the plain we had\njust crossed.\n \n  \"Billy-boy,\" she said to me in a strange voice, \"look down there and\ntell me what you see.\"\n \n  I followed the direction of her hand and a shock went through me from\nhead to foot. Down there, slowly toiling across the sand, advanced a\nparty of four persons. In the lead was a little old lady in a black\ndress. Behind her strode a grizzled Earth man in a flop-brimmed hat,\nanother Earth man, and a Martian.\nDetail for detail they were a duplicate of ourselves!\n\"A mirage!\" said Ezra Karn.\n \n  But it wasn't a mirage. As the party came closer, we could see that\ntheir lips were moving, and their voices became audible. I listened in\nawe. The duplicate of myself was talking to the duplicate of Grannie\nAnnie, and she was replying in the most natural way.\n \n  Steadily the four travelers approached. Then, when a dozen yards away,\nthey suddenly faded like a negative exposed to light and disappeared.\n \n  \"What do you make of it?\" I said in a hushed voice.\n \n  Grannie shook her head. \"Might be a form of mass hypnosis superinduced\nby some chemical radiations,\" she replied. \"Whatever it is, we'd better\nwatch our step. There's no telling what might lie ahead.\"\n \n  We walked after that with taut nerves and watchful eyes, but we saw no\nrepetition of the \"mirage.\" The wind continued to blow ceaselessly, and\nthe sand seemed to grow more and more powdery.\n \n  For some time I had fixed my gaze on a dot in the sky which I supposed\nto be a high-flying cockatoo. As that dot continued to move across the\nheavens in a single direction, I called Grannie's attention to it.\n \n  \"It's a kite,\" she nodded. \"There should be a car attached to it\nsomewhere.\"\n \n  She offered no further explanation, but a quarter of an hour later as\nwe topped another rise a curious elliptical car with a long slanting\nwindscreen came into view. Attached to its hood was a taut wire which\nslanted up into the sky to connect with the kite.\n \n  A man was driving and when he saw us, he waved. Five minutes later\nGrannie was shaking his hand vigorously and mumbling introductions.\n \n  \"This is Jimmy Baker,\" she said. \"He manages\nLarynx Incorporated\n, and\nhe's the real reason we're here.\"\n \n  I decided I liked Baker the moment I saw him. In his middle thirties,\nhe was tall and lean, with pleasant blue eyes which even his sand\ngoggles could not conceal.\n \n  \"I can't tell you how glad I am you're here, Grannie,\" he said. \"If\nanybody can help me, you can.\"\n \n  Grannie's eyes glittered. \"Trouble with the mine laborers?\" she\nquestioned.\nJimmy Baker nodded. He told his story over the roar of the wind as we\nheaded back across the desert. Occasionally he touched a stud on an\nelectric windlass to which the kite wire was attached. Apparently these\nadjustments moved planes or fins on the kite and accounted for the\ncar's ability to move in any direction.\n \n  \"If I weren't a realist, I'd say that\nLarynx Incorporated\nhas been\nbewitched,\" he began slowly. \"We pay our men high wages and give them\nexcellent living conditions with a vacation on Callisto every year.\nUp until a short time ago most of them were in excellent health and\nspirits. Then the Red Spot Fever got them.\"\n \n  \"Red Spot Fever?\" Grannie looked at him curiously.\n \n  Jimmy Baker nodded. \"The first symptoms are a tendency to garrulousness\non the part of the patient. Then they disappear.\"\n \n  He paused to make an adjustment of the windlass.\n \n  \"They walk out into the Baldric,\" he continued, \"and nothing can stop\nthem. We tried following them, of course, but it was no go. As soon as\nthey realize they're being followed, they stop. But the moment our eyes\nare turned, they give us the slip.\"\n \n  \"But surely you must have some idea of where they go,\" Grannie said.\n \n  Baker lit a cigarette. \"There's all kinds of rumors,\" he replied, \"but\nnone of them will hold water. By the way, there's a cockatoo eyrie\nahead of us.\"\n \n  I followed his gaze and saw a curious structure suspended between\na rude circle of flagpole trees. A strange web-like formation of\ntranslucent gauzy material, it was. Fully two hundred cockatoos were\nperched upon it. They watched us with their mild eyes as we passed, but\nthey didn't move.\n \n  After that we were rolling up the driveway that led to the offices of\nLarynx Incorporated\n. As Jimmy Baker led the way up the inclined ramp,\na door in the central building opened, and a man emerged. His face was\ndrawn.\n \n  \"Mr. Baker,\" he said breathlessly, \"seventy-five workers at Shaft Four\nhave headed out into the Baldric.\"\n \n  Baker dropped his cigarette and ground his heel on it savagely.\n \n  \"Shaft Four, eh?\" he repeated. \"That's our principal mine. If the fever\nspreads there, I'm licked.\"\n \n  He motioned us into his office and strode across to a desk. Silent\nXartal, the Martian illustrator, took a chair in a corner and got his\nnotebook out, sketching the room's interior. Grannie Annie remained\nstanding.\n \n  Presently the old lady walked across to the desk and helped herself to\nthe bottle of Martian whiskey there.\n \n  \"There must be ways of stopping this,\" she said. \"Have you called in\nany physicians? Why don't you call an enforced vacation and send the\nmen away until the plague has died down?\"\n \n  Baker shook his head. \"Three doctors from Callisto were here last\nmonth. They were as much at loss as I am. As for sending the men away,\nI may have to do that, but when I do, it means quits. Our company is\nchartered with Spacolonial, and you know what that means. Failure\nto produce during a period of thirty days or more, and you lose all\nrights.\"\n \n  A visiphone bell sounded, and Baker walked across to the instrument. A\nman's face formed in the vision plate. Baker listened, said \"Okay\" and\nthrew off the switch.\n \n  \"The entire crew of Shaft Four have gone out into the Baldric,\" he said\nslowly. There was a large map hanging on the wall back of Baker's desk.\nGrannie Annie walked across to it and began to study its markings.\n \n  \"Shaft Four is at the outer edge of the Baldric at a point where that\ncorridor is at its widest,\" she said.\n \n  Baker looked up. \"That's right. We only began operations there a\ncomparatively short time ago. Struck a rich vein of Acoustix that\nruns deep in. If that vein holds out, we'll double the output of\nInterstellar Voice\n, our rival, in a year.\"\n \n  Grannie nodded. \"I think you and I and Xartal had better take a run up\nthere,\" she said. \"But first I want to see your laboratory.\"\n \n  There was no refusing her. Jimmy Baker led the way down to a lower\nlevel where a huge laboratory and experimental shop ran the length\nof the building. Grannie seized a light weight carry-case and began\ndropping articles into it. A pontocated glass lens, three or four\nWellington radite bulbs, each with a spectroscopic filament, a small\ndynamo that would operate on a kite windlass, and a quantity of wire\nand other items.\n \n  The kite car was brought out again, and the old woman, Baker and the\nMartian took their places in it. Then Jimmy waved, and the car began to\nroll down the ramp.\nNot until they had vanished in the desert haze did I sense the\nloneliness of this outpost. With that loneliness came a sudden sense of\nforeboding. Had I been a fool to let Grannie go? I thought of her, an\nold woman who should be in a rocking chair, knitting socks. If anything\nhappened to Annabella C. Flowers, I would never forgive myself and\nneither would her millions of readers.\n \n  Ezra Karn and I went back into the office. The old prospector chuckled.\n \n  \"Dang human dynamo. Got more energy than a runaway comet.\"\n \n  A connecting door on the far side of the office opened onto a long\ncorridor which ended at a staircase.\n \n  \"Let's look around,\" I said.\n \n  We passed down the corridor and climbed the staircase to the second\nfloor. Here were the general offices of\nLarynx Incorporated\n, and\nthrough glass doors I could see clerks busy with counting machines and\nreport tapes. In another chamber the extremely light Acoustix ore was\nbeing packed into big cases and marked for shipment. At the far end a\ndoor to a small room stood open. Inside a young man was tilted back in\na swivel chair before a complicated instrument panel.\n \n  \"C'mon in,\" he said, seeing us. \"If you want a look at your friends,\nhere they are.\"\n \n  He flicked a stud, and the entire wall above the panel underwent a\nslow change of colors. Those colors whirled kaleidescopically, then\ncoalesced into a three-dimensional scene.\n \n  It was a scene of a rapidly unfolding desert country as seen from the\nrear of a kite car. Directly behind the windscreen, backs turned to me,\nwere Jimmy Baker, Grannie, and Xartal. It was as if I were standing\ndirectly behind them.\n \n  \"It's Mr. Baker's own invention,\" the operator said. \"An improvement on\nthe visiphone.\"\n \n  \"Do you mean to say you can follow the movements of that car and its\npassengers wherever it goes? Can you hear them talk too?\"\n \n  \"Sure.\" The operator turned another dial, and Grannie's falsetto voice\nentered the room. It stopped abruptly. \"The machine uses a lot of\npower,\" the operator said, \"and as yet we haven't got much.\"\n \n  The cloud of anxiety which had wrapped itself about me disappeared\nsomewhat as I viewed this device. At least I could now keep myself\nposted of Grannie's movements.\n \n  Karn and I went down to the commissary where we ate our supper. When\nwe returned to Jimmy Baker's office, the visiphone bell was ringing.\nI went over to it and turned it on, and to my surprise the face of\nAntlers Park flashed on the screen.\n \n  \"Hello,\" he said in his friendly way. \"I see you arrived all right. Is\nMiss Flowers there?\"\n \n  \"Miss Flowers left with Mr. Baker for Shaft Four,\" I said. \"There's\ntrouble up there. Red spot fever.\"\n \n  \"Fever, eh?\" repeated Park. \"That's a shame. Is there anything I can\ndo?\"\n \n  \"Tell me,\" I said, \"has your company had any trouble with this plague?\"\n \n  \"A little. But up until yesterday the fever's been confined to the\nother side of the Baldric. We had one partial case, but my chemists\ngave the chap an antitoxin that seems to have worked. Come to think of\nit, I might drive over to Shaft Four and give Jimmy Baker the formula.\nI haven't been out in the Baldric for years, but if you didn't have any\ntrouble, I shouldn't either.\"\n \n  We exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then he rang off. In exactly\nan hour I went upstairs to the visiscreen room.\n \n  Then once more I was directly behind my friends, listening in on their\nconversation. The view through the windscreen showed an irregular array\nof flagpole trees, with the sky dotted by high-flying cockatoos.\n \n  \"There's an eyrie over there,\" Jimmy Baker was saying. \"We might as\nwell camp beside it.\"\nMoments later a rude circle of flagpole trees loomed ahead. Across the\ntop of them was stretched a translucent web. Jimmy and Grannie got out\nof the car and began making camp. Xartal remained in his seat. He was\ndrawing pictures on large pieces of pasteboard, and as I stood there in\nthe visiscreen room, I watched him.\n \n  There was no doubt about it, the Martian was clever. He would make\na few rapid lines on one of the pasteboards, rub it a little to get\nthe proper shading and then go on to the next. In swift rotation\nlikenesses of Ezra Karn, of myself, of Jimmy Baker, and of Antlers Park\ntook form.\n \n  Ezra spoke over my shoulder. \"He's doing scenes for Grannie's new\nbook,\" he said. \"The old lady figures on using the events here for a\nplot.\nLook at that damned nosy bird!\n\"\n \n  A silver cockatoo had alighted on the kite car and was surveying\ncuriously Xartal's work. As each drawing was completed, the bird\nscanned it with rapt attention. Abruptly it flew to the top of the\neyrie, where it seemed to be having a consultation with its bird\ncompanions.\n \n  And then abruptly it happened. The cockatoos took off in mass flight. A\ngroup of Earth people suddenly materialized on the eyrie, talking and\nmoving about as if it were the most natural thing in the world.\n \n  With a shock I saw the likeness of myself; I saw Ezra Karn; and I saw\nthe image of Jimmy Baker.\n \n  The\nreal\nJimmy Baker stood next to Grannie, staring up at this\nincredible mirage. Grannie let out a whoop. \"I've got it!\" she said.\n\"Those things we see up there are nothing more than mental images.\nThey're Xartal's drawings!\"\n\"Don't you see,\" the lady continued. \"Everything that Xartal put on\npaper has been seen by one or more of these cockatoos. The cockatoos\nare like Earth parrots all right, but not only have they the power\nof copying speech, they also have the ability to recreate a mental\nimage of what they have seen. In other words their brains form a\npowerful photographic impression of the object. That impression is\nthen transmitted simultaneously in telepathic wavelengths to common\nfoci. That eyrie might be likened to a cinema screen, receiving brain\nvibrations from a hundred different sources that blend into the light\nfield to form what are apparently three-dimensional images.\"\n \n  The Larynx manager nodded slowly. \"I see,\" he said. \"But why don't the\nbirds reconstruct images from the actual person. Why use drawings?\"\n \n  \"Probably because the drawings are exaggerated in certain details and\nmade a greater impression on their brains,\" Grannie replied.\n \n  Up on the eyrie a strange performance was taking place. The duplicate\nof Grannie Annie was bowing to the duplicate of Jimmy Baker, and the\nimage of Ezra Karn was playing leap frog with the image of Antlers Park.\n \n  Then abruptly the screen before me blurred and went blank.\n \n  \"Sorry,\" the operator said. \"I've used too much power already. Have to\ngive the generators a chance to build it up again.\"\n \n  Nodding, I turned and motioned to Karn. We went back downstairs.\n \n  \"That explains something at any rate,\" the old prospector said. \"But\nhow about that Red spot fever?\"\n \n  On Jimmy Baker's desk was a large file marked: FEVER VICTIMS. I opened\nit and found it contained the case histories of those men who had been\nattacked by the strange malady.\n \n  Reading them over, I was struck by one detail. Each patient had\nreceived the first symptoms, not while working in the mines, but while\nsleeping or lounging in the barracks.\n \n  Five minutes later Karn and I were striding down a white ramp that\nled to the nearest barracks. The building came into sight, a low\nrectangular structure, dome-roofed to withstand the violent winds.\n \n  Inside double tiers of bunks stretched along either wall. In those\nbunks some thirty men lay sleeping.\n \n  The far wall was taken up by a huge window of denvo-quartz. As I stood\nthere, something suddenly caught Ezra Karn's eye. He began to walk\ntoward that window.\n \n  \"Look here,\" he said.\n \n  Six feet up on that window a small almost imperceptible button of dull\nmetal had been wedged into an aperture cut in the quartz. The central\npart of the button appeared to be a powerful lens of some kind, and as\nI seized it and pulled it loose, I felt the hum of tiny clock work.\n \n  All at once I had it! Red spot fever. Heat fever from the infra-red\nrays of Jupiter's great spot. Someone had constructed this lens to\nconcentrate and amplify the power of those rays. The internal clockwork\nserved a double purpose. It opened a shutter, and it rotated the lens\nslowly so that it played for a time on each of the sleeping men.\n \n  I slid the metal button in my pocket and left the barracks at a run.\nBack in the visiscreen room, I snapped to the operator:\n \n  \"Turn it on!\"\n \n  The kite car swam into view in the screen above the instrument panel.\nI stared with open eyes. Jimmy Baker no longer was in the car, nor\nwas Xartal, the Martian. Grannie Annie was there, but seated at the\ncontrols was Antlers Park, the manager of Interstellar Voice.\nEzra Karn jabbed my elbow. \"Grannie's coming back. I thought she'd be\ngetting sick of this blamed moon.\"\n \n  It didn't make sense. In all the years I'd known Annabella C. Flowers,\nnever yet had I seen her desert a case until she had woven the clues\nand facts to a logical conclusion.\n \n  \"Ezra,\" I said, \"we're going to drive out and meet them. There's\nsomething screwy here.\"\n \n  Ten minutes later in another kite car we were driving at a fast clip\nthrough the powdery sands of the Baldric. And before long we saw\nanother car approaching.\n \n  It was Grannie. As the car drew up alongside I saw her sitting in her\nprim way next to Antlers Park. Park said:\n \n  \"We left the others at the mine. Miss Flowers is going back with me to\nmy offices to help me improve the formula for that new antitoxin.\"\n \n  He waved his hand, and the car moved off. I watched it as it sped\nacross the desert, and a growing suspicion began to form in my mind.\nThen, like a knife thrust, the truth struck me.\n \n  \"Ezra!\" I yelled, swinging the car. \"That wasn't Grannie!\nThat was one\nof those damned cockatoo images.\nWe've got to catch him.\"\n \n  The other car was some distance ahead now. Park looked back and saw us\nfollowing. He did something to the kite wire, and his car leaped ahead.\n \n  I threw the speed indicator hard over. Our kite was a huge box affair\nwith a steady powerful pull to the connecting wire. Park's vehicle\nwas drawn by a flat triangular kite that dove and fluttered with each\nvariance of the wind. Steadily we began to close in.\n \n  The manager of Interstellar Voice turned again, and something glinted\nin his hand. There was a flash of purple flame, and a round hole\nappeared in our windscreen inches above Karn's head.\n \n  \"Heat gun!\" Ezra yelled.\n \n  Now we were rocketing over the sand dunes, winding in and out between\nthe flagpole trees. I had to catch that car I told myself. Grannie\nAnnie's very life might be at stake, not to mention the lives of\nhundreds of mine workers. Again Park took aim and again a hole\nshattered our windscreen.\n \n  The wind shifted and blew from another quarter. The box kite soared,\nbut the triangular kite faltered. Taking advantage of Park's loss of\nspeed, I raced alongside.\n \n  The I. V. manager lifted his weapon frantically. But before he could\nuse it a third time, Ezra Karn had whipped a lariat from his belt and\nsent it coiling across the intervening space.\n \n  The thong yanked tight about the manager's throat. Park did the only\nthing he could do. He shut off power, and the two cars coasted to a\nhalt. Then I was across in the other seat, wrenching the weapon free\nfrom his grasp.\n \n  \"What have you done with Miss Flowers?\" I demanded.\n \n  The manager's eyes glittered with fear as he saw my finger tense on the\ntrigger. Weakly he lifted an arm and pointed to the northwest.\n \n  \"Val-ley. Thir-ty miles. Entrance hidden by wall of ... flagpole trees.\"\nI leaped into the driver's seat and gave the kite its head. And now the\ncountry began to undergo a subtle change. The trees seemed to group\nthemselves in a long flanking corridor in a northwesterly direction, as\nif to hide some secret that lay beyond. Twice I attempted to penetrate\nthat wall, only to find my way blocked by those curious growths.\n \n  Then a corridor opened before me; a mile forward and the desert began\nagain. But it was a new desert this time: the sand packed hard as\ngranite, the way ahead utterly devoid of vegetation. In the distance\nblack bulging hills extended to right and left, with a narrow chasm or\ndoorway between.\n \n  I headed for that entrance, and when I reached it, I shut off power\nwith an exclamation of astonishment.\n \n  There was a huge chair-shaped rock there, and seated upon it was\nGrannie Annie. She had a tablet in her hands, and she was writing.\n \n  \"Grannie!\" I yelled. \"What're you doing here? Where's Mr. Baker?\"\n \n  She rose to her feet and clambered down the rock.\n \n  \"Getting back Jimmy's mine laborers,\" she said, a twinkle in her eyes.\n\"I see you've got Antlers Park. I'm glad of that. It saves me a lot of\ntrouble.\" She took off her spectacles and wiped them on her sleeve.\n\"Don't look so fuddled, Billy-boy. Come along, and I'll show you.\"\n \n  She led the way through the narrow passage into the valley. A deep\ngorge, it was, with the black sheer cliffs on either side pressing\nclose. Ten feet forward, I stopped short, staring in amazement.\n \n  Advancing toward me like a column of infantry came a long line of\nLarynx miners. They walked slowly, looking straight ahead, moving down\nthe center of the gorge toward the entrance.\n \n  But there was more! A kite car was drawn up to the side. The windscreen\nhad been removed, and mounted on the hood was a large bullet-like\ncontrivance that looked not unlike a search lamp. A blinding shaft of\nbluish radiance spewed from its open end. Playing it back and forth\nupon the marching men were Jimmy Baker and Xartal, the Martian.\n \n  \"Ultra violet,\" Grannie Annie explained. \"The opposite end of the\nvibratory scale and the only thing that will combat the infra-red rays\nthat cause red spot fever. Those men won't stop walking until they've\nreached Shaft Four.\"\n \n  Grannie Annie told her story during the long ride back to Shaft Four.\nWe drove slowly, keeping the line of marching Larynx miners always\nahead of us.\n \n  Jimmy Baker had struck a new big lode of Acoustix, a lode which if\nworked successfully would see\nLarynx Incorporated\nbecome a far more\npowerful exporting concern than\nInterstellar Voice\n. Antlers Park\ndidn't want that.\n \n  It was he or his agents who placed those lens buttons in the Larynx\nbarracks.\nFor he knew that just as Jupiter's great spot was\nresponsible for a climate and atmosphere suitable for an Earthman on\nthis Eighth Moon, so also was that spot a deadly power in itself,\ncapable when its rays were concentrated of causing a fatal sickness.\nThen suddenly becoming fearful of Grannie's prying, Antlers Park strove\nto head her off before she reached Shaft Four.\n \n  He did head her off and managed to lure her and Baker and Xartal into\nthe Shaft barracks where they would be exposed to the rays from the\nlens button. But Grannie only pretended to contract the plague.\n \n  Park then attempted to outwit Ezra Karn and me by returning in Jimmy\nBaker's kite car with a cockatoo image of Grannie.\nI listened to all this in silence. \"But,\" I said when she had finished,\n\"how did Park manage to have that image created and why did the mine\nlaborers walk out into the Baldric when they contracted the fever?\"\n \n  Grannie Annie frowned. \"I'm not sure I can answer the first of those\nquestions,\" she replied. \"You must remember Antlers Park has been on\nthis moon five years and during that time he must have acquainted\nhimself with many of its secrets. Probably he learned long ago just\nwhat to do to make a cockatoo create a mental image.\n \n  \"As for the men going out into the Baldric, that was more of Park's\ndiabolical work. In the walls of the barracks besides those lens\nbuttons were also miniature electro-hypnotic plates, with the master\ncontrolling unit located in that valley. Park knew that when the miners\nwere in a drugged condition from the effects of the fever they would\nbe susceptible to the machine's lure.... And now, Billy-boy, are you\ncoming with me?\"\n \n  \"Coming with you?\" I repeated. \"Where?\"\n \n  The old lady lit a cigarette. \"Pluto maybe,\" she said. \"There's a penal\ncolony there, you know, and that ought to tie in nicely with a new\ncrime story. I can see it now ... prison break, stolen rocket ship,\nfugitives lurking in the interplanetary lanes....\"\n \n  \"Grannie,\" I laughed. \"You're incorrigible!\"\n", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "3a1cd1040dfb403caeeea2fc1f29370d", "response_text": "The mining for a precious ore called Acoustix has spurred colonization of Jupiter’s eighth moon by two mining companies called Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. There is a barren desert landscape between the mining areas of the two companies that is called the Baldric. The only plant appears to be trees that have melon-shaped tops, and the only animal is a silver parrot-like bird that is capable of imitating human speech, and also of imitating human forms in a holographic-like manner.\n\nGrannie Annie (AKA Annabella C. Flowers) is a famous science fiction writer, who is travelling to the Baldric with her martian employee, Xartal, who takes detailed drawings that are the background research for her next novel. She is travelling in a party of four: herself, Xartal, Ezra Karn (old prospector), and the narrator (called Billy-boy by Grannie).\n\nStrange happenings are known to occur in the Baldric. They encounter a silver bird that repeats English words and creates what seems like a mirage of themselves projected in the distance which disappears as it comes closer. They do not know at the time, but the parrot has created this mirage based on viewing one of the lifelike drawings that Xartal is making of the group.\n\nThey happen to run into Jimmy Baker, the manager of the Larynx Incorporated mining company, who is interested in Grannie’s help sorting out the root cause of his workers coming down with “red spot fever” which causes them to leave their work and walk into the Baldric, never to return. They travel to Larynx Incorporated’s offices with Jimmy, where he learns all of the workers from Shaft Four have left their posts due to the fever. Coincidentally, that is also their most productive ore location. Jimmy, Grannie, and Xartal take off to Shaft Four via the Baldric to investigate what is going on. During their travel, they break for camp near a flock of the birds and discover their ability to imitate human forms.\n\nAntlers Karn, the manager of Interstellar Voice, turns out to be a bad guy who ambushes Grannie’s camp. He is trying to sabotage Jimmy’s company by causing the red spot fever to stop them from capitalizing on a huge deposit of Acoustix they discovered in Shaft Four. He steals Jimmy’s car and kidnaps a mirage-version of Grannie. Billy and Ezra chase them down and discover Antlers has stranded their friends in a valley thirty miles away. \n\nGrannie has independently solved the mystery of the Red Spot Fever and sending her mirage with Antlers was part of her master plan. When Billy and Ezra return to her, Jimmy is projecting ultra-violet light onto a large group of the Shaft Four workers in a deep valley gorge. This counteracts the infra-red radiation that put them into a trance-like state that caused them to wander into the desert.\n\nGrannie, Jimmy, Xartal, Billy, and Ezra are triumphantly returning the workers to Shaft Four at the close of the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3915a281e4574e9c9e7632a79dc66071", "response_text": "The story starts three days into an expedition on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, led by Annabella C. Flowers, a science fiction author, known by her friends as Grannie Annie. Also in the group were some of her friends: the narrator Billy, the prospector Ezra Karn, and the Martian illustrator named Xartal. The moon was known for Acoustix, an ore that allows aging Martians to improve their supersonic telecommunication abilities. They traveled through the desert to an area called the Baldric, which was filled with cat-tail-like trees and silver cockatoo-like creatures. Antlers Park, the manager of Interstellar Voice (an Acoustix mining company) had told them about the area. As they continued on, the group had a shock: they saw duplicates of themselves traveling toward them. It was not a simple mirage, as they could hear the others talking. Once they got close, however, the doubles disappeared. Shaking off the odd situation, the group continued, and eventually ran into Jimmy Baker, the manager of Larynx Incorporated, the competitors of Interstellar Voice. It seemed Jimmy needed Grannie's help: his workers at the mine had been falling sick with Red Spot Fever, which made them wander into the Baldric. The group headed to the Larynx Incorporated offices, where Jimmy admitted that calling off the mining expedition would mean the end of Jimmy's company, so he needed to combat the Fever. Grannie grabbed supplies from Jimmy's laboratory and they headed to the desert with Xartal. Ezra and Billy stayed to look around the offices, and briefly talked to Antlers Park on the visiphone. He had less issue with the Fever, but had an antitoxin that he was willing to share with Jimmy. Through a camera on Jimmy's car, Billy was able to watch the group in the desert as another set of mirages appeared. Grannie excitedly realized that the cockatoos on the moon were copying Xartal's drawings, mimicking the mental images and causing these \"mirages\". Ezra and Billy headed to Jimmy's office to investigate reports, realizing that everyone fell sick in the barracks, not while mining. They found a lens in the barracks that was pushing concentrated rays towards the workers, so they ran to the visiscreen room to find out where Grannie was. They were surprised to see Antlers Park was the only person in the car with Grannie, Jimmy and Xartal nowhere to be seen. Ezra and Billy drove out to meet them, where Billy realized this was a cockatoo and not the actual Grannie. Antlers Park eventually gave up the information about where he had left Grannie and the others, and when Billy and Ezra found them, Grannie showed them the blue ultraviolet light that had been set up to counteract the red rays that cause the fever. It seemed that the lens amplifying the rays to cause the fever was placed in Jimmy's company's barracks by Antlers' company, and the Red Spot Fever was a plan to keep Jimmy's company from becoming more successful than Antlers'.  "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "51d888da97bc4bf2820f0de05a6729cf", "response_text": "Annabella C. Flowers, known as Grannie Annie, is a famed science fiction writer who summons the story's narrator, Billy, to join her on a mission to the 8th moon of Jupiter, where she ostensibly plans to observe the setting for her next novel. She also invites her constant companion, a prospector name Ezra Karn, and her illustrator, a Martian named Xartal. On the moon, the team unites at the offices of Interstellar Voice, a company managed by Antlers Park. Upon Billy's arrival, Antlers updates him on the history of the company; Interstellar Voice and their rival company Larynx Incorporated mine the moon for its resource of an ore called Acoustix, which is popular amongst Martians because of its ability to revitalize their supersonic vocalizations that dwindle around middle age. Between the properties of these two companies stretches a vast desert known as the Baldric, which is home to a bird-like species resembling cockatoos as well as flagpole trees. Grannie Annie plans to cross in order to further observe the moon's environment and make way to Larynx Incorporated. Antlers Park warns them vaguely of danger in the Baldric, but the team leaves anyway. During the course of their journey, they observe the cockatoos and discover their ability to mimic human voices. In addition, they discover an alarming visage--from their perch atop a high cliff, they see four travelers, seemingly themselves in exact 3D duplicate, walking along the same path they'd just traversed. After this odd discovery, they meet Jimmy Baker, who arrives in his car guided through the air attached to a kite, and Grannie Annie reveals the true purpose of their trip is to help Jimmy resolve the labor issues at his company, Larynx Incorporated. His workers have been stricken with Red-Spot Fever, which causes them to abandon their job and walk into the desert; Jimmy worries this will destroy his business. After Grannie Annie, Xartal, and Jimmy Baker leave to tour his company's laboratory and Shaft Four, Billy and Ezra stay behind and tour the offices of Larynx Incorporated. An employee shows them an updated visiphone from which they can view Grannie Annie's journey, and they witness them stopping by a cockatoo nest, where a cockatoo observes Xartal's drawings and uses its ability to mentally mimic images to recreate his drawings of the team in 3D just as they saw previously in the desert. When Billy and Ezra discover a device in the workers' bunker that has been used to spread Red-Spot Fever and see Grannie Annie is returning with Antlers Park, they rush to meet them. Billy realizes this isn’t the real Grannie Annie, but rather her 3D image, and they hurry to stop Antlers Park. After a chase, Antlers admits he set up the Red-Spot device in order to sabotage his business rival. When they reunite with Annie, she and Jimmy and Xartal are using ultra-violet rays to combat the infra-red rays that ignited the Red-Spot Fever in order to draw them back to Larynx Incorporated.\n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f33ca781a15d4ea8be31c4f18c36a0ac", "response_text": "Grannie Annie, Ezra Karn, and Billy-Boy are on Jupiter’s Eighth Moon. Xartal, a Martian, is also there to draw illustrations for Grannie Annie’s book. The group meets with Antlers Park, the manager of Interstellar Voice, and he tells them about the Baldric, a stretch of land that connects his company, Interstellar Voice, with Larynx Incorporated. The two companies are competing to harvest Acoustix. Acoustix is an ore that amplifies Martians’ thoughts so that they can continue to speak to Earthmen even in their old age when their ability to produce vibrations diminishes. Park warns that the Baldric is dangerous, but Annie is undeterred. \n\nAnnie, Ezra, Billy, and Xartal arrive at the Baldric and spot a cockatoo. Xartal draws the creature and the group members in his notebook. Moments later, Annie spots four figures that look just like herself and her crew members walking on the other side of the hill. The apparent mirage disappears quickly.\n\nBilly sees a kite car, and minutes later Jimmy Baker, the manager of Larynx Incorporated, approaches the group. His company is in trouble because a lot of its workers have come down with Red Spot Fever. The workers become talkative and then they walk out into the Baldric. Annie, Jimmy, and Xartal head out to investigate. Billy and Ezra stay behind, and they check out an invention of Jimmy’s - a three-dimensional screen that makes them feel like they’re right there with their group members. They speak to Park on the contraption, and he says that he will give Jimmy the antidote to Red Spot Fever. Billy spots his own likeness on the screen, and he’s shocked. Annie tells the others that the cockatoos are looking at Xartal’s drawings and projecting their mental images of his pictures. \n\nBilly realizes that all of the workers become sick when they’re in their barracks, not when they’re in the mines. At the barracks, Ezra finds a piece of metal with a lens on the wall. The infra-red rays from Jupiter are causing the plague; the lens was put there to amplify those rays, and they sicken the sleeping workers. \n\nBilly and Ezra return to the screen and see Park driving a kite car with Annie by his side.  While the men follow Park’s car, he tries to shoot at them. He fails, and Ezra uses a tool to grab Park by the throat. Billy and Ezra find Annie and hundreds of Jimmy’s workers. The group has set up a large ultraviolet light that works to fight the infra-red rays that cause the fever. It was Park all along who was forcing the men to become sick because he did not want Jimmy’s company to be competitive. Park had tried to get Grannie Annie sick as well, but he ended up taking her duplicate image in the kite car instead of the real one. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What settings does the story take place in?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "3a1cd1040dfb403caeeea2fc1f29370d", "response_text": "In the buildings of Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated, two Acoustix ore mining companies on Jupiter’s eighth moon.\n\nThe Baldric - the largely deserted space between the mining grounds of Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. It is a desert-like place with trees that are trunks with melon-shaped tops, and silver birds that can repeat English phrases as well as mimic human forms that appear like mirages. There is also a deep valley gorge within the desert and many eyries which seem similar to oases.\n\nThere are several scenes aboard kite-propelled cars in the Baldric, as well as visiphone-like video feed of Jimmy’s car that is viewed from the offices of Larynx Incorporated.\n\nShaft Four is one of the locations that Larynx Incorporated mines in on the border of the Baldric, which is talked about often, but is never actually visited by the main characters during the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3915a281e4574e9c9e7632a79dc66071", "response_text": "The surface of Jupiter's Eighth Moon is covered in desert with huge trees that look like giant cat-tails, long thin poles with a melon-shaped part on top. It is very windy, which pushes all of the desert sand around a lot. The \"flagpole trees\" mark the edge of the Baldric, an area defined by the trees and a cockatoo-like creature. When Antlers Park said that the area would be trouble, Grannie knew she had to investigate. The Baldric itself acts as a line between the areas controlled by the two mining companies, and the mines themselves are where the work happens. Most of the surface, then, is covered either in sand or rock. The other major location in the story is the headquarters of Larynx Incorporated, which is also on Jupiter's Eighth Moon. In the headquarters, there are barracks for the miners, which have huge windows made of denvo-quartz. There is a commissary where people can eat, and a number of administrative areas such as Jimmy's office, and a large visiscreen room where the characters at the headquarters are able to track the movements of the part of the group that left to investigate Red Spot Fever. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "51d888da97bc4bf2820f0de05a6729cf", "response_text": "The primary action of the story takes place on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, where Grannie Annie assembles a team to help Jimmy Baker resolve the labor issues at his company, Larynx Incorporated. Although the team assembles at the headquarters of Jimmy's rival company, Interstellar Voice, they never go inside, and immediately make their way across a vast, desert-like area known as the Baldric. The manager of Interstellar Voice, Antlers Park, warns them of threats in the Baldric, but they never run into any such danger. Instead, they observe two of the Baldric's most unique characteristics: The flagpole trees that look like vertical cat tails topped with a melon-like protuberance and the bird-like creatures resembling cockatoos that build large, transparent, web-like nests between them. The cockatoos are silver and look like parrots with a crest and have the unique ability to mimic not only the sounds of a person's voice but also the 3D image of their visage in exact duplicate. As the team makes their way across the desert, they are pelted by wind and powdery sand and climb a high ridge from which they are picked up by Jimmy Baker flying his kite-guided car. These vehicles appear to be the main mode of transportation for representatives of both companies on the moon. The final unique setting of the story is Larynx Incorporated, which is comprised of offices and crew bunkers in a large central building, several mining shafts spread throughout the Baldric, a laboratory, a commissary, and an experimental shop. From one of the many offices in the building, an operator shows Billy and Ezra an update to the visiphone that allows viewers to witness 3D events remotely. Later, Billy and Ezra examine the barracks, housed in a low, rectangular building with a dome roof."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f33ca781a15d4ea8be31c4f18c36a0ac", "response_text": "“Double Trouble” takes place on the Eighth Moon of Jupiter. Two companies, Interstellar Voice, and Larynx Incorporated are at war with each other to harvest the most Acoustix ore. The companies are located about 10 miles away from each other, and in between them is a space called the Baldric. The Baldric is covered with Flagpole trees. They stand straight up and have a bulbous fruit or vegetable that grows out of the very top. The entire surface is covered in sand, and wind is an ever-present feature of the atmosphere. There are also hundreds of birds that look a lot like cockatoos. The birds look at Xartal’s drawings and then project those images out of their minds. This makes it appear like there are two Grannie Annies or two Billys, when there is really just one. The cockatoos’ ability to project images is similar to their ability to repeat words and phrases that humans say. \n \nThe characters also venture inside of Larynx Incorporated, the company owned by Jimmy Baker. There are offices, glass doors, counting machines, and report tapes there. The offices are where they package the Acoustix ore to ship it to their customers. The most interesting part of Larynx Incorporated is Jimmy’s invention, an improvement on the visiphone called a visiscreen. Viewers can be taken to a location and the three D image that’s created makes it feel like they are there, experiencing everything along with the group. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What was the relationship like between Jimmy and Grannie?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "3a1cd1040dfb403caeeea2fc1f29370d", "response_text": "Jimmy Baker is the manager of the Acoustix ore mining company called Larynx Incorporated on Jupiter’s eighth moon. Grannie Annie (AKA Annabella C. Flowers) is a famous science fiction writer, well known for her authentic background research for her novels. She is exploring the eighth moon of Jupiter for her newest novel.\n\nJimmy has knowledge of Grannie’s work and is hoping she can help him solve the mystery of the Red Spot Fever with her excellent problem solving skills. Grannie does not appear to know Jimmy before their meeting in the Baldric. They have a cordial and collaborative relationship through the story that results in solving the mystery.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3915a281e4574e9c9e7632a79dc66071", "response_text": "Jimmy Baker is the director of Larynx Incorporated, one of the companies on Jupiter's Eighth Moon that aims to collect Acoustix ore. Visiting Jimmy was Grannie's primary reason for traveling to the Baldric, and Jimmy seems to need her help. In fact, he thinks she is the only one who might be able to solve his problem. Grannie is excited to help, and is intrigued by the puzzle he has for her. The two of them seem to work well together; Jimmy trusts Grannie to go with him to investigate the issues, and Grannie has some good ideas for him. In the end, they are able to uncover the issue and find a way to help Jimmy's workers. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "51d888da97bc4bf2820f0de05a6729cf", "response_text": "Jimmy Baker is the congenial manager of Larynx Incorporated, and Billy immediately likes him. When Jimmy picks up Grannie Annie and her team in the Baldric, he mentions how relieved he feels to have her there to help him with his labor problems. Jimmy is a realist, and Grannie Annie is a science fiction writer, so his pragmatic thinking and her creativity work well together to put a stop to Antlers Park's plot to sabotage Jimmy's business. Because of her stubborn insistence of carefully observing each setting for her potential novels, Grannie Annie has developed a quick and keen understanding of unusual phenomena she discovers in her travels. This helps her determine the cause of the 3D duplicates of themselves the cockatoos create and also helps her to quickly deduce Antlers' scheme. When Antlers attempts to force the Red-Spot Fever upon Annie, Jimmy, and Xartal, Annie's creativity leads her to pretend to contract the plague, so that Antlers will leave them to enact the rest of his plot. With Antlers gone, Jimmy and Annie work together to develop the plan to remove the windscreen from his kite car and replace it with an ultra-violet radiator that could be used to guide his lost workers back to Larynx Incorporated."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f33ca781a15d4ea8be31c4f18c36a0ac", "response_text": "Jimmy is thankful that Grannie Annie and her friends have come to help him solve the mystery of the Red Spot Fever. His business, Larynx Incorporated, will no longer exist if they can’t find the route cause of the illness. Jimmy needs his workers to stay on task and mine the ore, Acoustix, so that he can sell his product. Without the miners, Interstellar Voice will undoubtedly win the race and Larynx Incorporated will become obsolete. Jimmy explains that he pays his workers well and sends them on a nice vacation every year, so he can’t figure out why they are all walking off the job. \n\nAlthough Antlers Park tries to scare Grannie Annie away from going to the Baldric to help her friend, Grannie Annie isn’t buying what he’s selling. She’s there to research her new novel and help out Jimmy, and nothing is going to stop her from completing her task. It is Grannie Annie’s idea to set up the ultraviolet screen that will counteract the infrared-rays that cause Red Spot Fever, and she does it all to get Jimmy’s workers back to the mines. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the importance of Acoustix in the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "3a1cd1040dfb403caeeea2fc1f29370d", "response_text": "It is a precious, lightweight ore found on at least one of Jupiter’s moons (eighth moon) that is highly valuable on Mars, but of no value on Earth. Martians are able to speak out loud as Earthlings do by supersonically amplifying their thoughts. As Martians grow beyond middle age, they are no longer able to do this amplification without the assistance of the Acoustix ore. Thus, it is highly valuable to them.\n\nThe ore is the only reason for colonization of Jupiter’s moons, and there are two main companies that mine it - Interstellar Voice, Larynx Incorporated. It becomes a source of greed, which causes the manager of Interstellar Voice (Antlers Karn) to attempt sabotage against the other company, serving as the main climax of the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3915a281e4574e9c9e7632a79dc66071", "response_text": "Acoustix is an ore found on Jupiter's eighth moon that helps older martians continue to amplify their thoughts with their supersonic communication methods that usually deteriorate once the Martian hits middle age. Although there is no use for it on Earth, it is the entire reason there is colonial presence on the moon, and the reason for the presence of the companies Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. The ore is therefore the primary point of competition between the two companies, and when Larynx Incorporated finds a new, rich source of the ore, Antlers Park decides he has to take action to keep Jimmy Baker's company from getting ahead. This is why Antlers made a small device to make the rays more concentrated, to shine them on the workers in the barracks, to give them Red Spot Fever. This would allow him to take over the area that is rich in ore.  \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "51d888da97bc4bf2820f0de05a6729cf", "response_text": "Acoustix is an ore unique to Jupiter's Eighth Moon and is the reason for the presence of the mining operations of Intersteller Voice and Larynx Incorporated. As Antlers Park informs Billy, although the ore is useless to Earthmen, the Martians highly value it. Because Martians speak using a supersonic method, they are able to amplify their thoughts via high-frequency wavelengths. As they get older, this ability decreases, and the Acoustix has the ability to restore that ability to its previous strength. Jimmy Baker's company, Larynx Incorporated, has discovered a massive reserve of Acoustix that would essentially put them far ahead of their competition, and therefore Antlers Park works to sabotage them by spreading Red-Spot fever amongst his workers, knowing their discovery would hurt his own business, Interstellar Voice. Jimmy worries that the labor shortage will impair his company's ability to mine Shaft Four, which produces their largest share of Acoustix, and will lead to the termination of his charter through Spacolonial."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f33ca781a15d4ea8be31c4f18c36a0ac", "response_text": "Acoustix is the ore that Larynx Incorporated and Interstellar Voice are both harvesting and selling. As far as anyone knows, Acoustix can only be found on this moon of Jupiter's. The ore is useless on Earth, but Martians use it to continue to communicate with Earthmen after they have reached old age. Martians create wave lengths with their thoughts using vibrations. After they become older, they are unable to create the same frequency of vibrations, and therefore lose the ability to speak with others. The Acoustix ore revitalizes the organ they use to create the vibrations, and it gives them the gift of communication once more. \n\nAntlers Park does not want Jimmy Baker and his company to outdo his business, Interstellar Voice. The men share access to the Baldric, which is where the miners are harvesting Acoustix. If Park can get Baker out of the way, he will have the whole stretch of land to harvest for himself, and he will be the sole person profiting off of the moon. He hatches a plan to make Baker's employees sick with Red Spot Fever so that they walk off the job and leave the Acoustix to his miners to gather and sell. \n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is Red Spot Fever?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "3a1cd1040dfb403caeeea2fc1f29370d", "response_text": "The symptoms of the fever are described as “garrulousness” followed by the victims leaving their post and walking into the Baldric desert.\n\nThe fever is brought on by infra-red rays from Jupiter’s great spot. Normally, people on this moon aren’t coming down with the fever from their regular activities. However, a lens-like device mounted in the window of the worker barracks at Larynx Incorporated projects the infra-red rays from the great spot around the room onto the sleeping workers which puts them into this trance-like state.\n\nAntlers Karn is responsible for causing the Red Spot Fever by having the devices installed in his competitors' barracks. He also claims to have developed an antitoxin that would reverse the fever, however, it is implied that this was only a lie to cover up his actions.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3915a281e4574e9c9e7632a79dc66071", "response_text": "Red Spot Fever makes the people who catch it start to talk a lot, and after rambling for a while the people wander into the Baldric as long as they can do so unnoticed. When someone is watching them to try to see where they are going, they stop until they can slip away. This is a big issue for the mining companies that rely on their workers for survival. The Fever comes about by the infra-red rays from Jupiter's great spot, and exposure to these rays over time causes the Fever in humans. The good news is that the infra-red rays can be combated with ultra violet light, which we see Jimmy Baker and Xartal use at the end of the story, shining the light on the miners to counteract the exposure.  "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "51d888da97bc4bf2820f0de05a6729cf", "response_text": "Jimmy Baker believes he is losing his workers to onset Red Spot Fever, the symptoms of which include extreme talkativeness followed by a tendency to wander away and disappear. Following the discovery of the massive store of Acoustix around Shaft Four, his workers began wandering into the vastness of the Baldric. Billy and Ezra confirm Jimmy's suspicions when they discover a device hidden in the barracks at Larynx Incorporated that concentrates and amplifies the power of the infra-red rays from nearby Jupiter's great spot. The device operates on a timer so that it beams onto the workers as they sleep. Antlers Park admits to having installed the device because he feared the resultant competition from Jimmy Baker's discovery of the deep Acoustix vein. In order to combat the Red Spot Fever, Annie and Jimmy concoct a plan to utilize Jimmy's kite car as a makeshift beam from which to cast ultraviolet rays upon the wandering workers. Since the rays are at the opposite end of the vibratory scale, they can be used to subvert the symptoms of Red Spot Fever and draw the workers back to Larynx Incorporated."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "f33ca781a15d4ea8be31c4f18c36a0ac", "response_text": "Red Spot Fever is an illness that Jimmy Baker's workers come down with after Antlers Park hatches a plan to make them sick. He or one of his minions sneaks into the workers' barracks and places a piece of metal with a lens on the wall. The lens works to amplify Jupiter's infrared-rays, and the rays hit the men while they are sleeping. The workers are affected by this contraption because it makes them extremely talkative and forces them to walk out of their mines. Importantly, Billy looks through Jimmy Baker's folder of victims and makes a connection that the men are becoming sick while they are sleeping, and not while they are working. This gives Ezra and Billy the idea to go to the barracks and look around, and that's when they find the lens that amplifies the harmful rays. \n\nGrannie Annie is able to solve the problem by hitting the infected men with ultraviolet light which counteracts against the infrared-rays. When the men are no longer poisoned by the infrared, they walk right back to their work stations. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51494", "uid": "98c5691766924463ade6a3406e9f9bc0", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "BEACH SCENE\n \n \n By MARSHALL KING\n \n Illustrated by WOOD\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n It was a fine day at the beach for Purnie's game—but his new friends played very rough!\n \n\n \n Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the ocean at last.\n \n When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.\n \n \"On your mark!\" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that some object might try to get a head start. \"Get set!\" he challenged the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. \"Stop!\" He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder how tall the trees really were.\n \n His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be: the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant, its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi.\n \n With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie hurried toward the ocean.\n \n If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now, as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.\n \n He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!\n \n \"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!\" As he passed one of the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.\n \n \n\n \n When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing. He chose to ignore the negative maxim that \"small children who stop time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it.\"\n \n He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends when they learned of his brave journey.\n \n The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.\n \n He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!\n \n He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his \"Hurrah!\" came out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth orange curls waiting to start that action.\n \n And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers of munching seaweed.\n \n \"Hi there!\" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that he himself was \"dead\" to the living world: he was still in a zone of time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.\n \n \n\n \n \"Hi there!\" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.\n \n He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped, not the world around him.\n \n He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the tripons who, to him, had just come to life.\n \n \"I can stand on my head!\" He set down his lunch and balanced himself bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.\n \n The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its repast.\n \n Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual \"Hi there!\" when he heard them making sounds of their own.\n \n \"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!\"\n \n \"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in San Diego?\"\n \n \"Hi there, wanna play?\" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter. He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them, tagging along at their heels. \"I've got my lunch, want some?\"\n \n \"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation.\"\n \n \n\n \n The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in their heels.\n \n \"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home.\"\n \n \"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the ocean with a three-legged ostrich!\"\n \n \"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim.\"\n \n \"Bah! Bunch of damn children.\"\n \n As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. \"Benson, will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!\" Purnie shrieked with joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position he got an upside down view of them walking away.\n \n He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway? What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out his lunch. \"Want some?\" No response.\n \n Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.\n \n \"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the vicinity. He's trying to locate it now.\"\n \n \"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I believe.\"\n \n \"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque.\"\n \n \"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively now!\"\n \n \n\n \n When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.\n \n \"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.\n \n \"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will slide down on top of us.\"\n \n \"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be solid. It's got to stand at least—\"\n \n \"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a flag.\"\n \n \"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it sentiment if you will.\"\n \n \"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before.\"\n \n \"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal? What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering.\"\n \n \"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them.\"\n \n \"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man! It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?\"\n \n \"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months.\"\n \n When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to himself, content to be in their company.\n \n He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see the remainder of the group running toward them.\n \n \"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!\"\n \n \"How about that, Miles?\"\n \n \"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale.\"\n \n \n\n \n Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box. Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. \"Can you do this?\" He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful noises, and he felt most satisfied.\n \n \"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!\"\n \n \"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you suppose—\"\n \n By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he stood on one leg.\n \n \"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box.\"\n \n \"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—\"\n \n \"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!\"\n \n \"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—\"\n \n \"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why, they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors flocking to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or doesn't it?\"\n \n \"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be great danger to the crew—\"\n \n \"Now look here! You had planned to put mineral specimens in a lead box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box.\"\n \n \"He'll die.\"\n \n \"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box.\"\n \n Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for, the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their own tricks.\n \n He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box. Purnie sat up to watch the show.\n \n \"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no intention of running away.\"\n \n \"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope.\"\n \n \"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes.\"\n \n \"All right, careful now with that line.\"\n \n \"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!\"\n \n \n\n \n Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he wiggled in anticipation.\n \n He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered. Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to protect himself.\n \n He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.\n \n \"Wait!\" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back into the little crowd. \"I've got my lunch, want some?\"\n \n The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that, and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box. He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.\n \n \"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!\"\n \n \"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's all. Now pick him up.\"\n \n The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion. What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had ordered the stoppage of time.\n \n The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to understand.\n \n As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed, he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head. He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing. Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its three legs drawn up into a squatting position.\n \n Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll, torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach animals.\n \n Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already abused this faculty.\n \n \n\n \n When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the spot where Purnie had been standing.\n \n \"My God, he's—he's gone.\"\n \n Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.\n\"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What did you do with him?\"\n \n The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.\n \n \"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?\"\n \n \"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?\"\n \n \"Well, I'll be damned!\"\n \n \"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way.\"\n \n \"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that gun!\"\n \n Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide. Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below filled him with hysteria.\n \n The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf. Others were pinned down on the sand.\n \n \"I didn't mean it!\" Purnie screamed. \"I'm sorry! Can't you hear?\" He hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and shame. \"Get up! Please get up!\" He was horrified by the moans reaching his ears from the beach. \"You're getting all wet! Did you hear me? Please get up.\" He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off, tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it about.\n \n The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.\n \n \n\n \n Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves. The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of death.\n \n \"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?\"\n \n \"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to drown!\"\n \n \"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?\"\n \n \"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us here in the water—\"\n \n \"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—\" His sounds were cut off by a wavelet gently rolling over his head.\n \n Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding the consequences, he ordered time to stop.\n \n Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid, where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.\n \n It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.\n \n Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there. He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock. Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the chaotic scene before him.\n \n At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from him.\n \n He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness, he knew he must first resume time.\n \n Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.\n \n Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered time to resume, nothing happened.\n \n His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he wanted to see them safe.\n \n He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no urging time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces, first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He had to take one viewpoint or the other.\n \n Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took command....\n \n \n\n \n His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over Purnie as sounds came from the animal.\n \n \"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick! What's happening?\"\n \n \"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either crazy or those damn logs are alive!\"\n \n \"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles, we're both cracking.\"\n \n \"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are. I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're piled up over there!\"\n \n \"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain Benson!\"\n \n \"Are you men all right?\"\n \n \"Yes sir, but—\"\n \n \"Who saw exactly what happened?\"\n \n \"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—\"\n \n \"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the others and get out of here while time is on our side.\"\n \n \"But what happened, Captain?\"\n \n \"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would take super-human energy to move one of those things.\"\n \n \"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so busy eating seaweed—\"\n \n \"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't walk. Where's Forbes?\"\n \n \"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or laughing. I can't tell which.\"\n \n \"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all right?\"\n \n \"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!\"\n \n \"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along shortly.\"\n \n \"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this. Hee-hee!\"\n \n \n\n \n Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?\n \n He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks, where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.\n \n \"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?\"\n \n \"It's possible, but we're not.\"\n \n \"I wish I could be sure.\"\n \n \"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?\"\n \n \"I still can't believe it.\"\n \n \"He'll never be the same.\"\n \n \"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back there?\"\n \n \"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us suddenly—\"\n \n \"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that.\"\n \n \"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up.\"\n \n \"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?\"\n \n \"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of myself.\"\n \n \"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him too.\"\n \n \"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir.\"\n \n \"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under those logs?\"\n \n \"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm still a little shaky.\"\n \n \"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off. I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around. You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone.\"\n \n \"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked.\"\n \n \"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on.\"\n \n \n\n \n As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now had become familiar.\n \n \"Where are you?\"\n \n Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he returned.\n \n \"We've made a terrible mistake. We—\" The sounds faded in and out on Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered logs and peer around and under them.\n \n \"If you're hurt I'd like to help!\" The twin moons were high in the sky now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of the others.\n \n Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "854530e8f8534a138e1789433cc58ac3", "response_text": "Purnie, an animal, is going to see the ocean on his fifth birthday. He has heard stories about this place, and experiencing it firsthand is surreal for him. Purnie is careful not to disturb the animals he sees along the way because he has frozen time, and everything must resume normally when he unfreezes it. He knows that time-stopping is forbidden for animals his age, but he chooses to believe that his family will be proud of his bravery. \n\nFinally, he sees the ocean in front of him, and he resumes time. He does a head-stand and feels weak and dizzy. These feelings are a result of the time-stop, and he knows it. Purnie approaches some humans on the beach. A man named Forbes is in the middle of explaining to his captain, Benson, that he has found 17 planets to claim as his own. Forbes is hellbent on raising his FORBES flag as soon as possible. He is eager to stake his claim to the land and says that his mission is much bigger than real estate alone. Benson retorts that yes, his mission is bigger than just real estate because his paperwork says that Forbes will own all of the inhabitants of the planets he claims as well as the land. \n\nThe crew members use a special machine and  find radiation emanating from Purnie. Forbes demands that they put the animal in a box. Benson protests and reminds Forbes that it’s against Universal Law, but Forbes insists. Purnie experiences his first-ever impulse to run away with fear when a noose comes towards him. He goes back to pick up his fruit, and Forbes shoots him in the leg. When the man throws the noose again, Purnie involuntarily stops time. He drags himself up the knoll where he originally came from. \n\nThe humans are astonished when time resumes and Purnie is not where he was a split second ago. They spot him up on top of a pile of petrified logs, and suddenly the logs fall down the hill and pin the men down. Purnie is shocked and regretful. The whole thing was an accident. He deliberately stops time and uses all of his remaining strength to lift the logs off of the humans. Purnie begins to lose consciousness, and he knows that he must resume time or he will die. After pouring all of his strength into this action, time does begin again. The humans resume life and feel as though they have gone mad. They know that they were just facing death by drowning, and now they are free. The logs were so heavy that it would have taken superhuman strength to move them. Forbes, in particular, has really gone mad, and he laughs to himself uncontrollably. Benson believes that Purnie was responsible for moving the logs, but of course that seems physically impossible. \n \nPurnie stares off at the beautiful ocean views and watches the men leave in their vehicle as he dies. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "402b2fdd91eb4c30ab476be31fe34319", "response_text": "On his fifth birthday, Purnie--a small, kangaroo-like creature with large eyes--runs through the forest as he goes to see the beach for the first time. Bemoaning the fact that days are so short, he triggers his ability to stop time. He marvels at the bees frozen in mid-air and reminds himself to not abuse his time-stopping power or it could drain all of his energy and kill him. Before arriving at the beach, he gathers some fruit for lunch and then pauses atop a small, rocky hill from where he takes in his first view of the ocean. Purnie is overwhelmed and thrilled at the idea of making friends with the new animals he sees: three-legged tripons, a flock of spora, and, further down, a group of ten humans making their way onto the beach. When he unfreezes time, Purnie climbs down the rockpile and runs around the beach, showing his new animal friends his headstand technique. Next, he visits two humans, who barely notice his presence. Captain Benson is the hired leader of the expedition; Forbes is a wealthy real estate investor who owns seventeen planets and considers himself a \"pioneer\". Forbes explains to Benson that coming to the planet is a mere formality as he has already staked his claim to make this planet his eighteenth; planting a flag emblazoned with his name is a symbolic gesture. Benson's men wish to explore the new planet and its native species, but Forbes is impatient to build his flagpole and leave. He has no interest in learning about the creatures there, only in owning their land and tripling his investment over time. Purnie wants to play with the humans, and Forbes expresses his annoyance and tries to get a crewmember to take him away. One of the crew members, Miles, checks the planet's surface for radiation while Benson and Forbes investigate the rockpile where Purnie had perched earlier to see if the rocks may be used to support Forbes' flagpole. After they determine the rocks are extremely heavy petrified logs and cannot be moved, Miles alerts them that Purnie is emitting a large amount of radiation. Forbes orders the crew to capture Purnie so he can take him home, reproduce him, and profit off of his radiation resource. As Purnie evades capture, thinking he is playing with the men, Forbes grows impatient and shoots him, causing Purnie to instinctively stop time. Injured, Purnie takes shelter atop the petrified logs, which fall under him and crush the humans below. Panicked, Purnie rushes to remove the logs, using up his own energy. When he unfreezes time again, the men are astonished. In one moment, they were crushed by logs, and in the next, the logs had disappeared. This drives Forbes insane, and he laughs as they take him away to the ship. Having exhausted all of his energy saving the men, Purnie watches them leave, succumbs to his wounds, and dies."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "88f4f4cbafc945e2a7c83a1804a4799a", "response_text": "Purnie, a five-year-old creature, is off from school for his birthday and takes a secret trip to see the ocean. When he is near enough to smell the ocean, Purnie freezes time even though he has been warned about the amount of energy this takes, and there is a maxim that small children who stop time without an adult may not live to regret it. When he reaches the shore, he recognizes the petrified logs, spora, and tripons from his brothers’ descriptions and is delighted to find two-legged animals there as well. Purnie approaches the two-legged animals who are actually humans and speaks to them but is ignored. The humans discuss the men who are curiously looking at the animals around them, and Forbes, the leader, orders Captain Benson to have the men work right away. Purnie follows the men closely, and Forbes gets annoyed and kicks at him. They talk about this being Forbes's eighteenth planet, and Forbes wants his flag planted and a cornerstone and plaque installed. One of the men gets a strong reading on his scintillometer, a device that detects radiation. Tracing the reading, they find it is coming from Purnie. Forbes orders Purnie put into a lead box, thinking radioactive animals can reproduce and provide an endless supply of radioactive materials. Benson is reluctant because putting Purnie in the box will kill him, and it goes against Universal Law. Forbes reminds him of their contract, and Benson has his men try to rope Purnie, who thinks it is a game and playfully comes near the box before running away. When Forbes loses patience, he shoots at Purnie to wound him. Stunned, he stops and sees the noose coming toward him. Purnie freezes time again, limps away, and climbs to the top of the bluff. When he restarts time, the men are shocked he is no longer there on the beach with them. Spying Purnie on the bluff, they approach him; Purnie shifts, causing the logs to slide down and hit the men. Purnie is shocked and saddened at their suffering and feels awful he caused it. He realizes some of the men will drown because they can’t move and the tide is coming in, so he freezes time again, pulls the logs off the men, and drags them onto the beach. At the top of the hill, he restarts time, and the men are puzzled to be back on the beach with the logs off them. They question their sanity, and Forbes really has gone insane. The men help those who are seriously wounded, disarm Forbes and tie his hands together, and return him to the ship. Benson wonders why Purnie would come back to the humans who tormented him and goes back to the beach looking for him. He calls out for Purnie, tells him they made a mistake, and he would like to help Purnie if he is hurt. When he doesn’t see him, Benson leaves."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c0ec7220fdbd43dd9fadab6237f73640", "response_text": "On an alien planet, a small non-human creature named Purnie is turning five years old. Purnie is precocious and adventurous, with the amazing ability to stop and start time with its mind. However, the super power comes with consequences. It tires Purnie to use time-stopping, and if done too much it can kill the user.\n\nPurnie leaves brothers and parents in a village in the forest and stops time while venturing beside a stream towards the ocean. Upon reaching a cliff overlooking the orange colored ocean, Purnie restarts time and discovers a group of human space explorers that are attempting to claim the planet and have only been onshore for 20 minutes musing at the strange creatures they are finding.\n\nForbes is from San Diego and has a history of claiming planets, this current one being the 17th if successfully staked with his flag, cornerstone, and plaque. He orders around Captain Benson and the rest of the crew, in a hurry to claim the planet upon their arrival.\n\nPurnie thinks the humans are friends to play with and tries to interact with them on multiple occasions. When the crew discovers that Purnie is radioactive, Forbes orders them to capture it and place it in a lead box to bring to Earth, which Forbes thinks will make him very rich. Purnie’s confusion about their hostility leads to an involuntary stopping of time which is used to return to the top of the cliff. Accidentally, Purnie sets off a rock slide after restarting time from the location on the top of the cliff and sets off a rock slide while peering over the edge that traps most of the humans under rocks and petrified logs along the beach and in the ocean. Deep horror causes Pernie to once again stop time, go down to the beach, and move all the debris off the humans - saving their lives.\n\nWhen time restarts once again, the humans are completely baffled as to how they were rescued, and Forbes loses his grip on reality entirely - having to be tied up by the crew for their return trip. Captain Benson wonders why a creature they tried to capture and kill would have come back to their rescue from their almost certain deaths and goes looking for Pernie as the crew prepares to leave. Not finding Purnie, the spaceship takes off, and the final sight of Purnie’s life before dying of exhaustion from using the superpower is a floating wet flag of Forbes' in the ocean.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe Forbes' relationship with Benson.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "854530e8f8534a138e1789433cc58ac3", "response_text": "Forbes is the head of the expedition to claim planets, and Benson is the Captain of the crew. Forbes provides all of the money to make the trips possible, and he pays Benson’s and the other mens’ salaries. Captain Benson is responsible for keeping all of the men safe and making sure the trip goes smoothly. \n\nAlthough Forbes is Benson’s superior, Benson does feel the need to speak his mind to Forbes. When Forbes demands that Benson’s crew stop dawdling and hurry up and put his FORBES flag up, Benson tells Forbes that they are only humans. Of course they are interested in the new environment and want to take a moment to look around. He is not afraid to tell Forbes that capturing Purnie or injuring him is against Universal Laws. Benson does not want to take part in illegal activities, and he scoffs at Forbes’ remarks that he is a pioneer and not a real estate developer. He openly tells Forbes that he knows he will triple his money after claiming these planets, so it’s not like he’s doing it for the greater good of humanity. Benson also asks Forbes if he’s going to take his 17 new planets back home with him to San Diego. It’s clear that Benson has little respect for Forbes and the way he conducts his business, but at the same time, he needs a job and Forbes is providing him with an incredible opportunity to survey all sorts of different planets.\n\nBenson has to face Forbes’ wrath when Purnie goes missing after Forbes shoots him and they attempt to put a noose around his neck. After Purnie unfreezes time, the men are confused as to what they just saw. Forbes turns to Benson and tells him that he is holding him responsible for this mishap even though there is zero evidence that Benson did anything wrong.\n\nAfter the logs fall on the men and Purnie uses all of his remaining strength to save their lives, Forbes is completely out of his mind. Benson finds it a bit humorous, especially since he has an inkling that Purnie, the bug-eyed creature, was behind the whole thing. He does not respect Forbes and thinks his disconnect to reality and repetitive laughter is what he deserves for the way he treated Purnie, himself, and the crew. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "402b2fdd91eb4c30ab476be31fe34319", "response_text": "As a wealthy real estate investor who hires Captain Benson to lead the expedition to the new planet, Forbes treats Benson with a great amount of flippancy and disrespect. He disregards Benson's request to let the crew explore the planet before rushing to build his flagpole to symbolically stake his claim there. He completely ignores Benson when he shows concern for Purnie's well-being when Forbes wants to capture Purnie and take him home to profit off of the radiation in his body. While Benson cares for the safety of his crew and the lives of the new species they discover on this new planet, Forbes only sees ways in which he can personally profit and build his real estate empire. Forbes infuriates Benson when he shoots Purnie, and he goes so far as to call him a fool in spite of Forbes' warnings against talking to him with disrespect. While Benson attempts to understand how Purnie was able to evade capture, Forbes simply wants to maim Purnie and blame Benson for his own mistakes. When the crew gets pinned by the logs dislodged accidentally by Purnie, Benson's instincts are to find and help as many people as he can, including Forbes. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "88f4f4cbafc945e2a7c83a1804a4799a", "response_text": "For the most part, the two men seem to tolerate each other. Forbes has employed Benson to hire men to explore the eighteenth planet that Forbes intends to claim as his own. As the employer, Forbes uses his position to order Benson to carry out his demands, although sometimes Benson questions Forbes's orders and resists carrying them out. Benson also questions Forbes's right to claim all the planets he is claiming and pokes a little fun at him at times. When Forbes wants Benson to order his men right to work after they arrive, Benson counters by asking if Forbes is human since they’ve only been there twenty minutes, and the men are curious about the new planet. Benson also needles Forbes when the men discover radiation, pointing out that he will make enough money to buy his next planet. Forbes is unimpressed with the discovery of radiation since they’ve found some on each of his other planets so far, but not in significant quantities. Forbes is most concerned about staking his claim by installing his flag, a cornerstone, and a plaque. When Benson questions the importance of the flag, Forbes tells him it signifies an empire, development, and progress. When Benson says Forbes will practically own the people who buy real estate on Forbes's planets, Forbes angrily replies that it is he and other people like him who risk their own money to give Benson and others space ships and places to go so they can get away from their thirteen-story tenement houses. Once it becomes clear that Purnie is the source of the large amount of radiation their equipment is detecting, Forbes orders Benson to have the animal put in one of their lead boxes meant to hold radioactive minerals. When Benson starts to remind him that this is forbidden by Universal Law, Forbes asserts his authority, reminding Benson the planet is his, and he is the law. After Purnie avoids capture and Forbes wounds him, Benson calls Forbes a fool and tells him to put his gun away, but Forbes claims he just nicked the animal. When Purnie escapes their attempts to rope him, Forbes blames Benson for ruining everything and is determined to capture Purnie himself. Benson tries to stop him, but Purnie shifts on the pile of petrified logs, sending them onto the men. When Forbes goes mad at the end of the story, Benson orders his men to take his gun from him and tie his hands together as they take him to the ship. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c0ec7220fdbd43dd9fadab6237f73640", "response_text": "Benson is the captain of Forbes’ expedition spaceship that has landed on the ocean shore of an alien planet. Forbes is very much in charge and makes repeated orders to Benson throughout the story that he obeys. Benson attempts to keep the peace by following and acquiescing to Forbes’ sometimes unethical orders (like placing the creature, Purnie, in a sealed lead box that would kill him). Benson has a sensitive reasoning that Forbes does not possess, like when he thinks it possible Purnie may just come along without being sealed in the box, and when he wonders why Purnie would return to rescue the men that had tried to capture him.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "854530e8f8534a138e1789433cc58ac3", "response_text": "The unnamed planet where the story takes place is breathtaking, colorful, and lively with all sorts of fauna and flora unknown to Earth. There is blue moss on the forest floors, bubbling streams, and orange pools of water. There are also bees, purple clouds, petrified logs by the ocean, and three-legged animals who eat seaweed. The orange ocean waves crash against the sand, and two moons hover in the sky. Humans have never touched this land, so Purnie is surprised that he has never heard his brothers or parents talk about the two-legged animals who make strange sounds. He does not understand that they have just landed their ship here and are experiencing the land for the first time. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "402b2fdd91eb4c30ab476be31fe34319", "response_text": "The story takes place on an unnamed planet home to a great amount of biodiversity. Purnie is a small, kangaroo-like creature with large, bugged-out eyes; there seem to be several of his kind on this planet as well. There are forests with plentiful foliage, tall trees, and blue moss. The sky above has two moons and makes the trees seem endlessly tall with its low, dense, purple clouds. Throughout the forest flow milky-orange streams and whirlpools; bees buzz about pollinating paka plants. Purnie runs through this environment filled with the joy of life and makes his way to the ocean, driven towards it by its acid-sweet smell, and gathers fruit along the way. When Purnie arrives at the ocean, he stands atop a large rock pile, which turns out to be comprised of heavy petrified logs. He has stopped time, so everything he sees is frozen mid-action: The orange-and-white waves of the ocean tower mid-break, and he sees a flock of spora flying overhead, three-legged tripons chewing on seaweed, and a group of humans. According to the human crew member, Miles, there appears to be a great amount of radiation present on the surface of the planet as well as its creatures. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "88f4f4cbafc945e2a7c83a1804a4799a", "response_text": "The setting is on a planet similar to Earth, with a varied landscape featuring forests, oceans, and valleys. Purnie lives in a village where there is a school that he and his brothers attend. There is a nearby ocean on the other side of the forest that separates it from the village. The forest is colorful with patches of blue moss and a stream with milky-orange water with little whirlpools, bees and other creatures, and low-hanging purple clouds. The forest extends for quite a distance because Purnie has never been to the ocean before. It is lush with foliage, including paka plants, plants that produce pollen and fruit, and tall trees that seem to reach as high as the clouds. From his brothers’ descriptions, Purnie knows what to expect at the beach, but he is still amazed when he sees everything for himself. The forest ends at a rocky knoll formed by petrified logs that overlooks the sea with its orange waves higher than a house and breakers coming onto the shore. There is a flock of birds called spora who land on the beach in a deep glide and humorous three-legged tripons that stand in the water and eat seaweed. As day ends, two moons appear in the sky, and their light is bright enough that Purnie can see the men leaving to return to their ship. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c0ec7220fdbd43dd9fadab6237f73640", "response_text": "On an unnamed Earth-like planet with orange water and purple clouds, there are creatures with spoken language that communicate amongst themselves, but are not able to communicate with humans when they speak.\n\nPurnie adventures away from his family village, along a small stream in the forest to a cliff by the sea, where it innocently tries playing along the water’s edge with human explorers attempting to make a claim to the planet. Most of the story takes place in this beach location where the ocean is orange colored, there is a tall cliff with petrified logs piled up along its edge, and many hiding places. \n\nThe creatures on the planet are all very different to what humans are used to seeing, which creates a distracting setting for the crew through the story.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is Purnie's role in the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "854530e8f8534a138e1789433cc58ac3", "response_text": "Although Purnie is an animal and not a human, he plays a very important role in the story. Through his understanding of the world, we learn that he has never felt real fear before. This makes sense because although he has been warned about stopping time, and he has explicitly been told that it could lead to his death, he decides to go ahead with his birthday plan anyway and stop time and see the ocean. When the humans throw a noose at him in an attempt to capture him, he is shocked to find that his body instinctively runs from it. He doesn’t really experience the fear because he wants to play with them and has no interest in leaving the fun, but his natural impulses as an animal save his life at this moment. Humans have never before visited his planet, so this means that no other animal Purnie has come in contact with has made his body react this way. \nPurnie also demonstrates how evil Forbes is for trying to capture and kill such an innocent and caring animal. When Benson reminds Forbes that it’s illegal to shoot or capture Purnie, Forbes does not care at all. He wants the animal that is emitting radiation because he believes he can make a profit off of him. The value of Purnie’s life means nothing to him. However, as soon as Purnie feels as though his “friends” are in danger, he is willing to risk his own life by stopping time to help them. Purnie feels guilt, regret, and sorrow when he accidentally causes the petrified logs to fall on the men, yet Forbes has none of those feelings when he shoots Purnie in the leg and causes him pain. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "402b2fdd91eb4c30ab476be31fe34319", "response_text": "Purnie celebrates his fifth birthday by taking his first-ever trip to the beach to take in the sights and meet new friends with the animals his brothers have told him about. Purnie is a small, kangaroo-like creature with the ability to stop time and an extremely upbeat and friendly attitude. Not only does he want to be friends with every animal he encounters, but he also wants to share his lunch with them and show them his ability to do a headstand. Purnie lives in harmony with the forest and its creatures and contrasts with the human explorers who come to lay claim to his planet. Purnie uses his time-stopping ability to extend his birthday because he feels there is not enough time in the day to enjoy all the wonders life has to offer. When he encounters the humans, he is curious because he has never seen their kind before. He listens to the funny sounds they make and follows them persistently, trying to share his lunch with them and demonstrate his headstand. When Forbes orders the men to capture him, Purnie believes they are simply playing a game, and he obliges by evading them. Even after Forbes shoots him, Purnie maintains his positive view of the humans and is more confused by what he did wrong than he is hurt by his actions. This further demonstrates Purnie's naivete and purity of heart. Although his family had warned him about the fatal danger of using his time-stopping powers for too long, Purnie cares more about the survival of the humans he perceives to be his friends and therefore sacrifices his own life to save them when they are crushed by the petrified logs."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "88f4f4cbafc945e2a7c83a1804a4799a", "response_text": "Purnie is a mischievous creature with the ability to stop and restart time who innocently causes a tragedy that he then tries to set right. Purnie is out for a day of exploration for his birthday when he comes across the humans on the beach. The humans have no interest in him until they discover Purnie is radioactive; then Forbes, the man financing the expedition and claiming the planet as his, orders them to put Purnie in one of their lead boxes. He is excited that animals are radioactive because they can reproduce and provide him with an endless supply of radioactive material to make him extremely wealthy. Purnie doesn’t know this, of course, and tries to engage the men in play with him. When he realizes they want him near the box, he teasingly runs close to it then away again. When Forbes shoots Purnie, Purnie sees the noose coming toward his head and instinctively stops times. This allows him to evade capture, make his way atop the bluff, and watch from a safe distance once he restarts time. The men are puzzled at Purnie’s sudden disappearance but plan to catch him when they see him on the bluff. As they approach, Purnie accidentally triggers a rockslide of the petrified logs that spill onto the men, trapping them where they are. Purnie is horrified at what he has caused as he hears the men’s cries of pain. He also notices that the tide is coming in, and the men will drown, so he stops time again, removes the logs from the men, and drags them onto the beach where they will be safe. After everyone is safe, Purnie restarts time, and men are incredulous to find themselves suddenly freed from the logs and on the beach. Forbes goes insane. Before they leave, Benson goes back to look for Purnie and offers to help him if he is wounded.\n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c0ec7220fdbd43dd9fadab6237f73640", "response_text": "Purnie creates the juxtaposition of innocent youth against corrupted power in adults. Purnie’s role is of childlike wonder in trying to interact with what it thinks are new friends along the shoreline - while those very friends attempt to capture and kill it. \n\nBecause Purnie is unable to communicate with humans, it also acts as a mime-like guide to the story, providing many physical actions that convey its emotions rather than language. Purnie’s ability to start and stop time creates pause for the reader to exist in the moments of great emotion that Purnie experiences - joy adventuring to the beach, confusion in trying to be captured, horror in thinking it has killed the humans. Ultimately, this superpower drains Purnie to the point of death.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What causes Forbes to go mad?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "854530e8f8534a138e1789433cc58ac3", "response_text": "Forbes believes he can control anyone and anything he comes in contact with. His first order of business upon landing on the gorgeous planet is to put up his flag emblazoned with his name. When Benson reminds him that the crew members are interested in taking a moment to look around, Forbes reprimands him for suggesting that they have the right to waste his money. He believes that putting up his flag is a symbol of defeat, and he is incredibly eager to take over a planet he literally just landed on and knows almost nothing about. He incessantly talks about the 17 other planets he has already conquered, and he calls himself a pioneer. Although Forbes definitely makes a lot of money by claiming these planets, he is more interested in the control and fame it brings him than the money he will inevitably make. \nThe first time that Purnie freezes time to escape the noose after Forbes shoots him in the leg, Forbes is incredibly confused but willing to blame the glitch on Benson. He shot Purnie after explicitly being told not to, so he assumes that Benson secretly managed to aid Purnie in getting away. He is furious at this act because capturing the animal emitting radiation is very important to him. He doesn't care if it’s illegal or immoral. He wants control of the planet, the animal, and the crew. \nThe second time that Purnie freezes time, Forbes cannot simply ignore it. He knows that he saw the petrified logs falling down the hill, he knows that he saw several crew members pinned under the logs, about to drown, and he knows that he himself was in a near-death situation one second and saved in the next. There is simply no explanation in his mind for what occurred, and his brain can’t compute the mysterious event. He laughs hysterically because he can’t process the information that his brain receives. He was about to die, and now he is perfectly fine, and he has no explanation for the chain of events. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "402b2fdd91eb4c30ab476be31fe34319", "response_text": "When Forbes shoots Purnie in an effort to try to capture him and bring him back to Earth to exploit his radiation for profit, Purnie instinctively triggers his ability to stop time. He uses this opportunity to retreat back to his perch atop the pile of petrified logs. When he unfreezes time again, Forbes and the rest of the crew are astonished as it appears he has disappeared right before their eyes and reappeared atop the logs. As Purnie moves across the log pile, the logs begin to slip and roll down toward the beach, crushing the men and pinning them to the beach. As the surf begins to cover them, Purnie fears they will drown, pauses time, and begins to save them one-by-one as he slowly bleeds out and expends his energy. Once he has removed the logs from all of the crew members, including Forbes, he once more retreats to the top of the hill and collapses, exhausted. His mind un-freezes time, and the men are once more flabbergasted as it appears the logs have disappeared from their bodies in the blink of an eye. Purnie has saved them, but the experience is too baffling and too overwhelming for Forbes to process. He goes mad, and the men carry him away back to the ship."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "88f4f4cbafc945e2a7c83a1804a4799a", "response_text": "Forbes goes mad after Purnie stops time, removes the petrified logs from the men, and moves them up to the beach out of reach of the water so they won't drown. All of the men knew that the logs were so heavy they could not have moved them. And because the men don't know that time can be stopped, they have no idea how they moved from where they were or how the logs were pulled off them. After time resumes, Forbes is seen sitting in the water, talking about his seventeen planets that will do anything that he says. However, he says this planet has a mind of its own. Forbes is astonished that the rocks seemingly moved on their own. Forbes laughs continually and comments that he will hold Benson personally responsible. The men speculate that Forbes will never be the same after this experience. In fact, they take his gun so he can’t shoot any of them, and they tie his hands before they take him back to the ship. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c0ec7220fdbd43dd9fadab6237f73640", "response_text": "When Purnie stops time on two occasions - escaping from being put in the lead box, and saving the crew from death under fallen rocks - it creates a disappearing act that Forbes cannot wrap his head around. Forbes thinks he is rooted in reality, and then all of a sudden Purnie no longer exists, or the entire crew has been saved by what must have been superhuman strength to move petrified logs off their bodies.\n\nWhen Forbes can’t make sense of mysteriously being rescued from near-death in the ocean, he doesn’t know what is real any more. He goes mad into a giddiness of having done what he considers capturing this strange and wonderful planet for himself.\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51433", "uid": "c7ce7d77c1894e59818b0fab604bcd88", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "HUNT the HUNTER\n \n \n BY KRIS NEVILLE\n \n Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n Of course using live bait is the best way to lure dangerous alien animals ... unless it turns out that you are the bait!\n \n \n \n \"We're somewhat to the south, I think,\" Ri said, bending over the crude field map. \"That ridge,\" he pointed, \"on our left, is right here.\" He drew a finger down the map. \"It was over here,\" he moved the finger,\n\"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them.\"\n \n Extrone asked, \"Is there a pass?\"\n \n Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. \"I don't know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the ridge, too.\"\n \n Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. \"I'd hate to lose a day crossing the ridge,\" he said.\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. \"Listen!\"\n \n \"Eh?\" Extrone said.\n \n \"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up ahead of us.\"\n \n Extrone raised his eyebrows.\n \n This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.\n \n \"It is!\" Ri said. \"It's a farn beast, all right!\"\n \n Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. \"I'm glad we won't have to cross the ridge.\"\n \n Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n \"We'll pitch camp right here, then,\" Extrone said. \"We'll go after it tomorrow.\" He looked at the sky. \"Have the bearers hurry.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. \"You, there!\" he called.\n\"Pitch camp, here!\"\n \n He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, \"Be quick, now!\" And to Mia, \"God almighty, he was getting mad.\" He ran a hand under his collar. \"It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd hate to think of making him climb that ridge.\"\n \n Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. \"It's that damned pilot's fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other side. I told him so.\"\n \n Ri shrugged hopelessly.\n \n Mia said, \"I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he wanted to get us in trouble.\"\n \n \"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side of the ridge, too.\"\n \n \"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for us.\"\n \n Ri cleared his throat nervously. \"Maybe you're right.\"\n \n \"It's the Hunting Club he don't like.\"\n \n \"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast,\" Ri said. \"At least, then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody else?\"\n \n \n\n \n Mia looked at his companion. He spat. \"What hurts most, he pays us for it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less than I pay my secretary.\"\n \n \"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge.\"\n \n \"Hey, you!\" Extrone called.\n \n The two of them turned immediately.\n \n \"You two scout ahead,\" Extrone said. \"See if you can pick up some tracks.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their shoulder straps and started off.\n \n Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. \"Let's wait here,\" Mia said.\n \n \"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in.\"\n \n They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not professional guides.\n \n \"We don't want to get too near,\" Ri said after toiling through the forest for many minutes. \"Without guns, we don't want to get near enough for the farn beast to charge us.\"\n \n They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.\n \n \"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him,\" Mia said. \"But we go it alone. Damn him.\"\n \n Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. \"Hot. By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we were here.\"\n \n Mia said, \"The first time, we weren't guides. We didn't notice it so much then.\"\n \n They fought a few yards more into the forest.\n \n Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.\n \n \"This isn't ours!\" Ri said. \"This looks like it was made nearly a year ago!\"\n \n Mia's eyes narrowed. \"The military from Xnile?\"\n \n \"No,\" Ri said. \"They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we leased from the Club. Except the one he brought.\"\n \n \"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?\" Mia asked. \"You think it's their blast?\"\n \n \"So?\" Ri said. \"But who are they?\"\n \n \n\n \n It was Mia's turn to shrug. \"Whoever they were, they couldn't have been hunters. They'd have kept the secret better.\"\n \n \"We didn't do so damned well.\"\n \n \"We didn't have a chance,\" Mia objected. \"Everybody and his brother had heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't our fault Extrone found out.\"\n \n \"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of us.\"\n \n Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. \"We should have shot our pilot, too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told Extrone we'd hunted this area.\"\n \n \"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that.\"\n \n \"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute.\"\n \n There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.\n \n \" I didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking,\" Mia said.\n \n Ri's mouth twisted. \"I didn't say you did.\"\n \n \"Listen,\" Mia said in a hoarse whisper. \"I just thought. Listen. To hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us, too, when the hunt's over.\"\n \n Ri licked his lips. \"No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even him . And besides, why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself.\"\n \n Mia said, \"I hope you're right.\" They stood side by side, studying the blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, \"We better be getting back.\"\n \n \"What'll we tell him?\"\n \n \"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?\"\n \n They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.\n \n \"It gets hotter at sunset,\" Ri said nervously.\n \n \"The breeze dies down.\"\n \n \"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this.\"\n \n \"There may be a pass,\" Mia said, pushing a vine away.\n \n Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. \"I guess that's it. If there were a lot of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's damned funny, when you think about it.\"\n \n Mia looked up at the darkening sky. \"We better hurry,\" he said.\n \n \n\n \n When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low, obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its blasts.\n \n Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.\n \n Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce, the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and knees almost stiff.\n \n \"What in hell do you want?\" Extrone asked.\n \n They stopped a respectful distance away. \"Sir....\" one began.\n \n \"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?\" Extrone demanded, ominously not raising his voice.\n \n \"Sir,\" the lead officer said, \"it's another alien ship. It was sighted a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir.\"\n \n Extrone's face looked much too innocent. \"How did it get there, gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?\"\n \n \"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir.\"\n \n \"So?\" Extrone mocked.\n \n \"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could locate and destroy it.\"\n \n Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned away, in the direction of a resting bearer. \"You!\" he said. \"Hey! Bring me a drink!\" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. \"I'm staying here.\"\n \n The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. \"But, sir....\"\n \n Extrone toyed with his beard. \"About a year ago, gentlemen, there was an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it, didn't you?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir.\"\n \n \"You'll destroy this one, too,\" Extrone said.\n \n \"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a long range bombardment, sir.\"\n \n \n\n \n Extrone said, \"To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here. And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway.\"\n \n \"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir.\"\n \n Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. \"You'll lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen. I'm quite safe here, I think.\"\n \n The bearer brought Extrone his drink.\n \n \"Get off,\" Extrone said quietly to the four officers.\n \n Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back. Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the tangle of forest.\n \n Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area, casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.\n \n Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away, listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to his tent.\n \n \"Sir?\" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.\n \n \"Eh?\" Extrone said, turning, startled. \"Oh, you. Well?\"\n \n \"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east.\"\n \n Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, \"You killed one, I believe, on your trip?\"\n \n Ri shifted. \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n Extrone held back the flap of the tent. \"Won't you come in?\" he asked without any politeness whatever.\n \n Ri obeyed the order.\n \n The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers, costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals. They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to the bed, sat down.\n \n \"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?\" he said.\n \n \"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir.\"\n \n \n\n \n Extrone narrowed his eyes. \"I see by your eyes that you are envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent.\"\n \n Ri looked away from his face.\n \n \"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't seen a farn beast.\"\n \n Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's glittering ones. \"Few people have seen them, sir.\"\n \n \"Oh?\" Extrone questioned mildly. \"I wouldn't say that. I understand that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their planets.\"\n \n \"I meant in our system, sir.\"\n \n \"Of course you did,\" Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his sleeve with his forefinger. \"I imagine these are the only farn beasts in our system.\"\n \n Ri waited uneasily, not answering.\n \n \"Yes,\" Extrone said, \"I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?\"\n \n Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. \"Yes, sir. It would have been.\"\n \n Extrone pursed his lips. \"It wouldn't have been very considerate of you to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to come along as my guide.\"\n \n \"It was an honor, sir.\"\n \n Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. \"If I had waited until it was safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to find such an illustrious guide.\"\n \n \"... I'm flattered, sir.\"\n \n \"Of course,\" Extrone said. \"But you should have spoken to me about it, when you discovered the farn beast in our own system.\"\n \n \"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity, sir....\"\n \n \"Of course,\" Extrone said dryly. \"Like all of my subjects,\" he waved his hand in a broad gesture, \"the highest as well as the lowest slave, know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best.\"\n \n Ri squirmed, his face pale. \"We do indeed love you, sir.\"\n \n Extrone bent forward. \" Know me and love me.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. Know you and love you, sir,\" Ri said.\n \n \"Get out!\" Extrone said.\n \n \n\n \n \"It's frightening,\" Ri said, \"to be that close to him.\"\n \n Mia nodded.\n \n The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree, were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.\n \n \"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what we've read about.\"\n \n Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. \"You begin to understand a lot of things, after seeing him.\"\n \n Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.\n \n \"It makes you think,\" Mia added. He twitched. \"I'm afraid. I'm afraid he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You, me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us first.\"\n \n Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. \"No. We have friends. We have influence. He couldn't just like that—\"\n \n \"He could say it was an accident.\"\n \n \"No,\" Ri said stubbornly.\n \n \"He can say anything,\" Mia insisted. \"He can make people believe anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it.\"\n \n \"It's getting cold,\" Ri said.\n \n \"Listen,\" Mia pleaded.\n \n \"No,\" Ri said. \"Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen. Everybody would know we were lying. Everything they've come to believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us. He knows that.\"\n \n \"Listen,\" Mia repeated intently. \"This is important. Right now he couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A bearer overheard them talking. They don't want to overthrow him!\"\n \n Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.\n \n \"That's another lie,\" Mia continued. \"That he protects the people from the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were ever plotting against him. Not even at first. I think they helped him, don't you see?\"\n \n Ri whined nervously.\n \n \"It's like this,\" Mia said. \"I see it like this. The Army put him in power when the people were in rebellion against military rule.\"\n \n \n\n \n Ri swallowed. \"We couldn't make the people believe that.\"\n \n \"No?\" Mia challenged. \"Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow? You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the alien system!\"\n \n \"The people won't support them,\" Ri answered woodenly.\n \n \" Think. If he tells them to, they will. They trust him.\"\n \n Ri looked around at the shadows.\n \n \"That explains a lot of things,\" Mia said. \"I think the Army's been preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep them from exposing him to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled like we were, so easy.\"\n \n \"No!\" Ri snapped. \"It was to keep the natural economic balance.\"\n \n \"You know that's not right.\"\n \n Ri lay down on his bed roll. \"Don't talk about it. It's not good to talk like this. I don't even want to listen.\"\n \n \"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command all their loyalties. To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then. He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to tell the truth.\"\n \n \"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong.\"\n \n Mia smiled twistedly. \"How many has he already killed? How can we even guess?\"\n \n Ri swallowed sickly.\n \n \"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?\"\n \n Ri shuddered. \"That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like that.\"\n \n \n\n \n With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells. The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike, uncontaminated.\n \n And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.\n \n \"Breakfast!\" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher and a drinking mug.\n \n Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with water and spat on the ground.\n \n \"Lin!\" he said.\n \n His personal bearer came loping toward him.\n \n \"Have you read that manual I gave you?\"\n \n Lin nodded. \"Yes.\"\n \n Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. \"Very ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me, twenty years ago, damn them.\"\n \n Lin waited.\n \n \"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me.\"\n \n \"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir,\" Lin said.\n \n \"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?\"\n \n \"I believe they're carnivorous, sir.\"\n \n \"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of course, two businessmen.\"\n \n \"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of tearing a man—\"\n \n \"An alien?\" Extrone corrected.\n \n \"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an alien to pieces, sir.\"\n \n Extrone laughed harshly. \"It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?\"\n \n Lin's face remained impassive. \"I guess it seems that way. Sir.\"\n \n \"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do,\" Extrone said. \"But you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?\"\n \n Lin shrugged. \"Maybe.\"\n \n \"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how wonderful it feels to have people all afraid of you.\"\n \n \"The farn beasts, according to the manual....\"\n \n \"You are very insistent on one subject.\"\n \n \"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of aliens. Sir.\"\n \n \"All right,\" Extrone said, annoyed. \"I'll be careful.\"\n \n In the distance, a farn beast coughed.\n \n Instantly alert, Extrone said, \"Get the bearers! Have some of them cut a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get the hell over here!\"\n \n Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.\n \n \n\n \n Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy breathing.\n \n Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.\n \n Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.\n \n Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered two-way communication set.\n \n Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny, arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.\n \n When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume, he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted, reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.\n \n \"For you, sir,\" the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.\n \n \"Damn,\" Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. \"It better be important.\" He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The bearer twiddled the dials.\n \n \"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't you?\"\n \n \"Blasted them right out of space,\" the voice crackled excitedly. \"Right in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir.\"\n \n \"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!\" Extrone tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. \"If they call back, find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's important.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.\n \n Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.\n\"I located a spoor,\" he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. \"About a quarter ahead. It looks fresh.\"\n \n Extrone's eyes lit with passion.\n \n Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. \"There were two, I think.\"\n \n \"Two?\" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. \"You and I better go forward and look at the spoor.\"\n \n Lin said, \"We ought to take protection, if you're going, too.\"\n \n Extrone laughed. \"This is enough.\" He gestured with the rifle and stood up.\n \n \"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir,\" Lin said.\n \n \"One is enough in my camp.\"\n \n \n\n \n The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.\n \n \"This way,\" Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started off.\n \n They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a restraining hand. \"They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to bring up the column?\"\n \n The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed. Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.\n \n The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.\n \n \"They're moving away,\" Lin said.\n \n \"Damn!\" Extrone said.\n \n \"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and fast, too.\"\n \n \"Eh?\" Extrone said.\n \n \"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track down a man for as long as a day.\"\n \n \"Wait,\" Extrone said, combing his beard. \"Wait a minute.\"\n \n \"Yes?\"\n \n \"Look,\" Extrone said. \"If that's the case, why do we bother tracking them? Why not make them come to us?\"\n \n \"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have surprise on our side.\"\n \n \"You don't seem to see what I mean,\" Extrone said. \" We won't be the—ah—the bait.\"\n \n \"Oh?\"\n \n \"Let's get back to the column.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Extrone wants to see you,\" Lin said.\n \n Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.\n\"What's he want to see me for?\"\n \n \"I don't know,\" Lin said curtly.\n \n Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously at Lin's bare forearm. \"Look,\" he whispered. \"You know him. I have—a little money. If you were able to ... if he wants,\" Ri gulped, \"to do anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could....\"\n \n \"You better come along,\" Lin said, turning.\n \n Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound, ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.\n \n Extrone nodded genially. \"The farn beast hunter, eh?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. \"Tell me what they look like,\" he said suddenly.\n \n \"Well, sir, they're ... uh....\"\n \n \"Pretty frightening?\"\n \n \"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir.\"\n \n \"But you weren't afraid of them, were you?\"\n \n \"No, sir. No, because....\"\n \n Extrone was smiling innocently. \"Good. I want you to do something for me.\"\n \n \"I ... I....\" Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye. Lin's face was impassive.\n \n \"Of course you will,\" Extrone said genially. \"Get me a rope, Lin. A good, long, strong rope.\"\n \n \"What are you going to do?\" Ri asked, terrified.\n \n \"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as bait.\"\n \n \"No!\"\n \n \"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you can scream, by the way?\"\n \n Ri swallowed.\n \n \"We could find a way to make you.\"\n \n There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop, creeping toward his nose.\n \n \"You'll be safe,\" Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. \"I'll shoot the animal before it reaches you.\"\n \n Ri gulped for air. \"But ... if there should be more than one?\"\n \n Extrone shrugged.\n \n \"I—Look, sir. Listen to me.\" Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands were trembling. \"It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir. He killed a farn beast before I did, sir. And last night—last night, he—\"\n \n \"He what?\" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.\n \n Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. \"He said he ought to kill you, sir. That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you. He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident, sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I wouldn't....\"\n \n Extrone said, \"Which one is he?\"\n \n \"That one. Right over there.\"\n \n \"The one with his back to me?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir.\"\n \n Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle and said, \"Here comes Lin with the rope, I see.\"\n \n Ri was greenish. \"You ... you....\"\n \n Extrone turned to Lin. \"Tie one end around his waist.\"\n \n \"Wait,\" Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. \"You don't want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it.\"\n \n \"Tie it,\" Extrone ordered.\n \n \"No, sir. Please. Oh, please don't, sir.\"\n \n \"Tie it,\" Extrone said inexorably.\n \n Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.\n \n \n\n \n They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.\n \n Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed, half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base of a scaling tree.\n \n \"You will scream,\" Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed across the water hole. \"The farn beast will come from this direction, I imagine.\"\n \n Ri was almost slobbering in fear.\n \n \"Let me hear you scream,\" Extrone said.\n \n Ri moaned weakly.\n \n \"You'll have to do better than that.\" Extrone inclined his head toward a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.\n \n \n\n \n Ri screamed.\n \n \"See that you keep it up that way,\" Extrone said. \"That's the way I want you to sound.\" He turned toward Lin. \"We can climb this tree, I think.\"\n \n Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.\n \n Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert. Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller crotch.\n \n Looking down, Extrone said, \"Scream!\" Then, to Lin, \"You feel the excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt.\"\n \n \"I feel it,\" Lin said.\n \n Extrone chuckled. \"You were with me on Meizque?\"\n \n \"Yes.\"\n \n \"That was something, that time.\" He ran his hand along the stock of the weapon.\n \n The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet, underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.\n \n Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick, jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away. Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.\n \n \n\n \n A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.\n \n Extrone laughed nervously. \"He must have heard.\"\n \n \"We're lucky to rouse one so fast,\" Lin said.\n \n Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. \"I like this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I know.\"\n \n Lin nodded.\n \n \"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing that matters.\"\n \n \"It's not only the killing,\" Lin echoed.\n \n \"You understand?\" Extrone said. \"How it is to wait, knowing in just a minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going to kill it?\"\n \n \"I know,\" Lin said.\n \n \"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too.\"\n \n The farn beast coughed again; nearer.\n \n \"It's a different one,\" Lin said.\n \n \"How do you know?\"\n \n \"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?\"\n \n \"Hey!\" Extrone shouted. \"You, down there. There are two coming. Now let's hear you really scream!\"\n \n Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether tree, his eyes wide.\n \n \"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too,\" Extrone said.\n\"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them.\" He opened his right hand. \"Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it.\" He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes, imprisoning the idea. \"Spring the trap when the quarry is inside. Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they really will come to your bait.\"\n \n Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.\n \n \"I've always liked to hunt,\" Extrone said. \"More than anything else, I think.\"\n \n Lin spat toward the ground. \"People should hunt because they have to. For food. For safety.\"\n \n \"No,\" Extrone argued. \"People should hunt for the love of hunting.\"\n \n \"Killing?\"\n \n \"Hunting,\" Extrone repeated harshly.\n \n \n\n \n The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and there was a noise of crackling underbrush.\n \n \"He's good bait,\" Extrone said. \"He's fat enough and he knows how to scream good.\"\n \n Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully eying the forest across from the watering hole.\n \n Extrone began to tremble with excitement. \"Here they come!\"\n \n The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his lap.\n \n The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank, swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed. Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs behind them, rattling leaves.\n \n \n\n \n \"Shoot!\" Lin hissed. \"For God's sake, shoot!\"\n \n \"Wait,\" Extrone said. \"Let's see what they do.\" He had not moved the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.\n \n The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.\n \n \"Look!\" Extrone cried excitedly. \"Here it comes!\"\n \n Ri began to scream again.\n \n Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.\n \n The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.\n \n \"Watch! Watch!\" Extrone cried gleefully.\n \n And then the aliens sprang their trap.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a68260d2a234888b35af9093329711a", "response_text": "\nExtrone is a very important person of influence who is on a hunting trip looking for farn beasts on an outer planet. He has hired guides, Ri and Mia, who are businessmen who have successfully shot a farn beast on a prior private trip. They attempted to conceal their killing of a farn beast on that trip, however, the word got out and now Extrone has forced them (seemingly against their will) to be the guides for his own trip. Ri and Mia do not turn out to be very good guides. Mia is unsupportive of Extrone and suspicious of his activities and potential plans to violently attack the aliens, and Ri is fearful of that talk and of Extrone himself causing him to be unhelpful as a guide.\n\nExtrone refers to being loved by his “subjects” suggesting he has a position of royalty or power. The military is at his disposal and seem eager to please him. He is highly focused on finding and killing a farn beast any way possible - and attempts sacrificing his guide Ri as bait for the animal to do it. He kills Mia by shooting him in the back after Ri accuses him of intent to kill Extrone, suggesting Extrone is a violent ruler.\n\nExtrone’s focus is on killing a farn beast and this blinds him to the existence of an alien trap on the planet. It is heavily implied that the aliens have intentions to do harm to Extrone, and it is revealed that his fixation on the farn beast led him directly into a trap set by the aliens to capture him.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "0395d05d059e4283a7caaacb0f52006a", "response_text": "Extrone, a prominent leader of the humans, has taken his hunting party to track down a farn beast, a newly-discovered creature. His guides are two businessman, Ri and Mia, who were the first to come across and kill a farn beast. They are there begrdugingly, but their fear of Extrone is clear. They arrive on the wrong side of the ridge and are searching for a way to cross it to reach the farn beasts. Ri hears the cough of a farn beast on their side, and Extrone is pleased they won’t have to waste time crossing the ridge. They set up camp there, and Extrone asks Mia and Ri to scout ahead and find farn beast tracks. No one is armed, except for Extrone, so Mia and Ri are extremely cautious not to get too far into the beasts’ territory. They’re sweating as they come across land marred by a rocket’s blast off probably from a year ago. They theorize that it’s the people who discovered the beasts, though they don’t know who. \nRi reveals that they shot their guide after finding the farn beast, but not their pilot. They bicker a little, scared of Extrone and the possibility of him killing them afterward. They agree to hide the blast area from him, but inform him they found tracks instead. A rocket flies over the camp, looking for Extrone. They land near and tell Extrone that an alien ship was spotted on this planet. They were unable to destroy it at the time. Extrone gives out orders to destroy it and then sends them away. Extrone asserts his dominance over Ri after they return. Ri and Mia rest in their sleeping bags, discussing what they need to do about Extrone. \nThe next morning, Extrone’s personal bearer, Lin, presents alien information about the farn beasts. They begin their trek into the forest, people cutting the way for Extrone who managed to kill one small animal with his weapon. Extrone’s men were able to shoot down the alien ship. Lin finds a spoor and leads Extrone to it, revealing on the way that the farn beasts are great hunters. Extrone decides to use Ri as bait to draw the beasts to him. \nWhen he informs Ri of his decision, Ri betrays Mia in a way to guarantee his safety. So, Extrone kills Mia and then uses Ri as bait anyway. After stringing him up and torturing him, his screams eventually draw the farn beast near. A farn beast and its mate appear and charge Ri. The story ends with Extrone holding fire as the farn beast nears, and the alien trap being sprung. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "4848b3dbb4134ced83d4cb936c6e26f5", "response_text": "General Extrone is on a hunting trip to kill a farn. To help him track the farn, he has hired two businessmen, Ri and Mia, who actually killed the first farn, which Extrone resents; he wanted to kill the first one. While Ri and Mia are out tracking the farn beast, they talk about how much they hate working for Extrone since he is a self-centered, egotist who cares nothing about anyone except himself. After Ri and Mia killed their farn, they killed their guide to keep word from getting out about it. Now they wonder if their pilot was the one who told others about it. Mia points out to Ri that Extrone might just shoot them after the hunt is over, but Ri says Extrone wouldn’t do that because they aren’t a couple of nobodies. Meanwhile, a low-flying rocket passes overhead and lands; it is part of Extrone’s Ninth Fleet with news that an alien ship has been sighted near the planet where the general is hunting. Extrone refuses to leave with them for someplace safer, instead making it clear he expects them to take care of the problem. Ri and Mia return to camp, and Extrone has Ri give him an update. Extrone makes it clear that the two businessmen had better not have killed the last farn beast and then make Ri say he knows and loves Extrone. Later than night, Mia tells Ri he is afraid Extrone will kill them before he lets them return to civilization. Mia points out lies that Extrone has told, such as that the army tried to plot against him; Mia figured out that the army was helping him. He also thinks Extrone cut off trade with the aliens because he is getting ready to invade them. The next day, Extrone talks with his personal bearer, Lin, who has read an alien manual about the farn beast. When Extrone complains about Ri and Mia, Lin keeps telling him facts about the farn beast. Extrone allows Lin to disagree with him, but Lin always follows his statement with “Sir.” Hunting later that day, Lin spies a spoor and shows it to Extrone. When they hear the farn cough, Lin says it’s a good thing they are downwind; otherwise the farn beast would track them down. This gives Extrone the idea of using a human for bait and chooses Ri. When Ri realizes what is planned, he tells Extrone that Mia has been talking about killing Extrone. Extrone shoots Mia and still uses Ri for bait, which does lure two farn beasts. Instead of killing them, Extrone waits to see what they will do. The the aliens spring their trap.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "762ce2d879c84a76b4a406608924a4f9", "response_text": "Ri and Mia are two businessmen hired as guides by Extrone, a violent, though popular leader, on his mission to hunt farn beasts. They were hired because of their success killing a farn beast during one of their Hunting Club missions. Soon after their arrival on the planet where the hunt takes place, Ri hears a farn beast cough while plotting their course with Extrone, and Extrone sends him and Mia into the forest to track it. Ri and Mia bemoan the fact that they have been hired for this purpose in spite of the fact that neither of them is a professional guide; they merely have hunted a farn beast in the past. As they track the beast, they discover a blast area and cannot identify the source of it, although they do know it wasn't created by one of the Hunting Club's rockets. When they make their way back to camp, they worry about if Extrone will kill them after the hunt in order to keep the discovery of the farn beasts a secret despite the fact that rumors of their existence had already spread. Extrone has killed others in the past. Back at camp, a group of high-ranking officers from the Ninth Fleet visit Extrone to warn him about the presence of a nearby alien spacecraft, fearing it is seeking him out to exterminate him. Extrone orders them to destroy it and scoffs at the idea that he might not be safe on this planet. After the officers leave, Extrone calls Ri into his tent and admits he needs him because he has never seen a farn beast and would have hunted them on alien planets (where he has heard they hunt them frequently) had it been safe for him to do so. It is clear from his conversation with Ri that Extrone is loved by his constituents and hated by his alien enemies. When Ri joins Mia later, they again discuss their fear of being killed after the hunt, and Mia suggests the army purposefully installed Extrone as puppet leader during the anti-military rebellion in order to gain popular support for their eventual attack on the alien system. Ri refuses to believe Mia's theories whether out of fear or denial; either way, Ri and Mia guides Extrone's hunt the next morning, joined by Extrone's personal bearer Lin and several other attendants. Lin warns a dismissive Extrone of the dangers of the farn beasts, and Extrone decides to use Ri as bait to lure them to their spot. In a panic, Ri tells Extrone to use Mia instead, since he had plotted to kill Extrone. Without missing a beat, Extrone kills Mia and continues to use Ri as bait. Lin and Extrone hideaway as Ri screams and draws the farn beasts to their location. Suddenly, the aliens the Ninth Fleet officers had warned Extrone about spring their trap. They had been using Extrone as bait to catch the farn beasts themselves."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the farn beast and its significance?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a68260d2a234888b35af9093329711a", "response_text": "The farn beast is capable of killing humans and aliens. It resides on alien planets, but is rare within the human-occupied system. It is thought by Extrone that Ri may have been one of the only humans to ever see and shoot one.\n\nThey are described as having long fangs and being carnivorous. Their main sound is a coughing noise, which can be used to locate how far away they are. They do indeed seem attracted to humans, as they are drawn to Ri screaming when he is placed as bait at the watering hole.\n\nThe farn beast is significant, because as Extrone and his party are focused on hunting them, it is revealed that the beast itself is being used as bait by aliens to lure Extrone to the planet. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "0395d05d059e4283a7caaacb0f52006a", "response_text": "The farn beast is a newly-discovered creature. Although they are newly discovered by humans, aliens have known about them for some time. They are a dangerous and terrifying animal with long fangs and red beady eyes. After two businessman discovered and killed the beast on their hunting trip, it soon became the new adventure each man must attempt. The farn beasts in this story are being hunted by a party led by Extrone, an extremely powerful man. The hunt for the farn beast reveals Extrone’s true colors as he kills Mia, one of his guides, and uses the other guide, Ri, as bait to kill a farn beast. The farn beasts also act as a great plot progressor and keep the characters moving forward. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "4848b3dbb4134ced83d4cb936c6e26f5", "response_text": "The farn beast is the whole reason for the expedition in the story, and it is Extrone’s obsession, so much so that he pays no attention to his army intelligence about aliens in the area near the planet where he is hunting. The farn beast is a rare creature that has only been seen by a few humans and only recently been killed by humans. They wanted to keep it a secret, so they killed their guide before returning home. Now General Extrone wants to kill a farn beast, and he is forcing the two men who killed the last one to be his guides to find one. He is angry that the two men didn’t tell him about finding and killing one. The farn beast is distinguishable by its coughing roar and is known to be dangerous to humans. They are carnivorous, have long, sharp fangs, and when angered, can tear a man apart. They charge when they detect the scent, sight, or sound of prey and will track and hunt down a man even if it takes all day. After Extrone uses one of his guides as bait, two farn beasts are drawn to it. They have tiny eyes that are red and full of hatred; they swing their heads wildly and flare their nostrils in anger. Their tails thrash against the flora of the forest. When Ri screams, the farn cross the watering hole directly toward him. The story says this is when the aliens spring their trap."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "762ce2d879c84a76b4a406608924a4f9", "response_text": "The farn beasts are dangerous, carnivorous creatures with small, red eyes, long, sharp fangs, and tails. Although their behavior is largely unpredictable, they are able to dismember men and aliens alike when they are angry. They also have excellent tracking skills and will pursue the scene, sight, or sound of their prey for as long as a day. Lin calls them the \"particular enemy of men\" although they are also frequently hunted by aliens. As members of the Hunting Club, Ri and Mia hunt a farn beast, and this successful kill draws the attention of Extrone, who hires them as his guides to hunt farn beasts himself. Farn beasts emit loud coughs, which is how Ri determines one of them is nearby in the first place. Later, Lin and Extrone realize there are multiple farn beasts nearby on their hunt when they hear multiple coughs. Extrone's alien enemies not only hunt the farn beasts, but they have also developed a manual for identifying and understanding them; they clearly understand the beasts much better than Extrone. This works to their advantage later as they use Extrone and Lin as bait to spring a trap to catch the farn beasts they were hunting.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship like between Lin and Extrone?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a68260d2a234888b35af9093329711a", "response_text": "Lin is Extrone’s personal bearer who does anything that is asked of him by Extrone. Extrone is pleased when people are fearful of him, but it appears that Lin may not have a fear or may be suppressing it. \n\nLin appears very loyal to Extrone, which is proven when he rejects an attempt of bribery by Ri who wants to know if he is in danger by Extrone’s plan. Lin does Extrone’s bidding by tying up Ri and staking him out for bait to lure the farn beast.\nHowever, when Lin and Extrone hide in a nearby tree to shoot the farn beast when they come after Ri, Lin’s actions become more sinister and it is revealed that he may have different beliefs from Extrone. Lin says hunting animals should be done for reasons like survival, not just for killing - which is the opposite of what Extrone believes - that the waiting and then the killing is the appeal. It is never clear if Lin is part of the alien trapping of Extrone that results, or whether he was as blind to it as Extrone.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "0395d05d059e4283a7caaacb0f52006a", "response_text": "Extrone is the head hunter and hotshot of this particular expedition. It seems as though he holds a monopoly over humanity through his control of the Army. Lin is his right-hand man and personal bearer. Lin is one of the few in the camp who will challenge Extrone, but not in an obvious way. He presents information to him in a way that is subtle and not demeaning, usually aided by his addition of the word “Sir,” at the end of a sentence. Extrone respects what Lin has to say, possibly through him proving himself over and over, and even chooses not to kill him when he says something contradictory. Lin presents the manual on farn beasts to Extrone, who hates that it’s developed by aliens. Lin explains how dangerous and fast these beasts are and remains calm and impassive when Extrone tries to challenge him. \nLater on, Lin discovers a spoor close to where the farn beasts are living. He races back to tell Extrone, and the two of them journey together alone. On this trip, Lin reveals that the farn beasts are excellent trackers and hunters, which inspires Extrone to set up bait for the beasts. \nIn the end, however, there seems to be a change in Lin’s composure. While discussing Extrone’s love for hunting, Lin claims that no one should hunt for fun, only out of necessity. He argues a little with Extrone, until the farn beasts arrive. Perhaps this signals that Lin is not as loyal to Extrone as we are led to believe. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "4848b3dbb4134ced83d4cb936c6e26f5", "response_text": "While the two men don’t completely accept each other, they seem to be more accepting of each other than the other characters. In a position of authority, a leader cannot afford to be too friendly with those under him; however, Extrone takes this concept to the extreme and is downright hateful and hard to tolerate. The only person he is somewhat civil to is Lin, and even then, his civility is limited. Extrone treats other people in a very arrogant manner, barking orders at them (“You! Hey! Bring me a drink!”), making veiled threats (“It would be a shame if you had killed the last one. Don’t you think?”), and treating them as if they are utterly useless. With Lin, however, Extrone allows him to respectfully disagree with him or contradict him. Extrone acknowledges that very few people will stand up to him like Lin does, and yet it may be Lin’s manner of doing so that enables him to get away with this. Lin does not act afraid of Extrone, and when Extrone drones on about the way people disrespect him, Lin focuses on the topic at hand, the farn beast. When Extrone confronts him about contradicting him, Lin affects an impassive response rather than kowtowing to him. And when Lin says people should only hunt when they have to for food, Extrone says people should hunt for the love of hunting. Lin names it “killing,” but Extrone corrects him with “hunting.” Lin drops the topic as if he knows better than to debate Extrone.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "762ce2d879c84a76b4a406608924a4f9", "response_text": "Lin has been Extrone's personal bearer for a while, having accompanied him on several expeditions such as the one on Meizque, and he does Extrone's bidding. However, he is also intelligent and clever and understands how to say the right thing to Extrone to get the reaction he wants; he appears emotionally unaffected by Extrone's bombastic behavior and is matter-of-fact in most of his actions. Lin does his best to educate Extrone about the characteristics and known behavior of the farn beasts and their potential danger to humans. Lin is practical and encourages proper precautions when they get closer to the farn beasts; he guides Extrone to the farn beasts more effectively than Ri and Mia. Lin wrangles Ri when Extrone orders him to be used as bait to catch the farn beasts. For his part, Extrone treats Lin with the same dismissiveness and condescension that he treats any of his associates. However, he does have some amount of deference for Lin and, although he does not absorb much of the information Lin tries to give him, he does listen to much of his practical advice when pursuing the farn beasts."}]}, {"question_text": "What settings does the story take place in?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a68260d2a234888b35af9093329711a", "response_text": "On the surface of a planet which is wooded in scrub forest and one of the few places known to have farn beasts. The hunting party is next to a ridge that would be a significant effort to cross, and there are “blast sites” around the woods. The hunting party also uses a nearby water hole location to lure farn beasts while hiding up in a tree.\n\nExtrone’s camp set up by “bearers” and his tent, which is extravagantly decorated, are also scenes used throughout the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "0395d05d059e4283a7caaacb0f52006a", "response_text": "Hunt the Hunter by Kris Neville takes place on a mostly unexplored planet inhibited by the farn beast and other creatures. The coughing roar of the farn beast can often be heard in the distance. Great sprawling vines, trees, and bushes cover the land, and the heat is oppressive in its thickness. It only gets hotter, too. Once the sun goes down, the breeze dies off too, leaving just stale heat in its wake. There is a ridge separating the humans and the farn beasts, and the humans spend their time searching for the pass. \nRocket blast-off marks cover the ground in some places. Other spots are watering holes, lakes, and rivers, perfect for the creatures living on this land.  \nRi and Mia sleep in sleeping bags on the ground when they pitch camp. However, Extrone has a luxurious tent equipped with electric lights, tiled floors, and a feather bed. A crystal chain hangs from the front opening too. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "4848b3dbb4134ced83d4cb936c6e26f5", "response_text": "The story takes place on an unnamed outer planet where the characters are involved in hunting for the farn beast. At the same time, alien space ships are seen nearby, and the military wants Extrone to return to an inner planet where he will be safer. The unnamed planet has many features that support wildlife and include land features such as ridges. We know that, in addition to farn beasts, there are birds and arboreal creatures in the forest. The forests are thick with many trees, and it is sweltering, especially in the forest where the foliage stops outside air from entering. There are dense thickets that the men have to hack in order for Extrone to pass through the area. There are gently swaying grasses in some areas, and in the mornings, they can hear the birds singing. While Extrone sleeps in a luxurious tent, the other men sleep under the sky where a smooth-surfaced moon hangs, bisected into twin hemispheres by a central mountain range. The drinking hole is where they see the farns’ prints and where Extrone has Ri tied to a tree to serve as bait.\n\tAnother setting within this setting is Extrone’s tent. Inside it is absolutely luxurious. The bedding is composed of feathers and is surrounded by silk curtains. The flooring is made of tile blocks that have been transported to the planet and laid neatly and smoothly in the ground to create an even floor. There is a chain of crystals hanging from the top of the tent, and the electric lights are powered by a portable dynamo. Extrone seems to have every luxury available to him.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "762ce2d879c84a76b4a406608924a4f9", "response_text": "The primary action of the story takes place on an unnamed planet, where Extrone and his entourage travel to hunt farn beasts. They make camp in a field of grass next to a scrub forest somewhere in the southern region and there is a ridge to their north over which they previously sighted farn beasts. The forest is hot and dense and filled with trees and vines. Military officers from the Ninth Fleet visit Extrone to provide a warning about the sighting of an alien spacecraft; the officers come from the military outpost on a nearby moon. When Extrone invites Ri inside of his tent, the luxuriousness of his lifestyle highlights not only Extrone's wealth but also the glee with which he shows it off: His bed is expensive, full of heavy feathers, and flanked by silken sleep curtains. Solid tile blocks form the base of his floor, and a chain of crystals hangs in the middle of the tent to the left of a thin, hand-carved pole. Electric light brightens the space. Juxtaposed with Extrone's extravagancies, Mia and Ri sleep in sleeping bags under a gnarled tree. During the hunt for the farn beast, Extrone and Lin discover farn beast tracks in a muddy waterhole, and this is where they tie Ri to the base of a scaling tree."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship like between Ri and Mia?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a68260d2a234888b35af9093329711a", "response_text": "They are businessmen that have been recruited (seemingly against their will) as guides for Extrone on a hunting trip seeking to kill farn beasts. They had come to the same location once before on a hunting trip together in good relations, and killed their guide to keep their finding of the farn beasts a secret. Initially, they seem to be bonded in their misery about being forced into this situation by Extrone. However, this relationship changes and deteriorates over the story.\n\nMia is highly suspicious of Extrone, his possible appointment by the Army, and what he thinks is an impending invasion of the alien system to be led by Extrone. \n\nRi has had several personal meetings with Extrone and is completely terrified of him and what he is capable of. Ri rejects the notions suggested by Mia and is scared to be caught speaking of them. When Extrone threatens to put Ri out for bait to lure the farn beasts, he rats Mia out as having intention to kill Extrone in order to avoid his own death. The plan fails when Extrone kills Mia on the spot by shooting him in the back, thus ending their relationship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "0395d05d059e4283a7caaacb0f52006a", "response_text": "Ri and Mia are two businessmen who were on a hunting trip before this current expedition. There, with their guide and pilot, they discovered the farn beast and killed at least one. Extrone hired them to be his guides on his own expedition, seeing as they found the beast in the first place. \nAfter their discovery, Ri and Mia shot their guide but left the pilot alive. This meant that the word about farn beasts spread and soon became a hot topic. Now, Ri and Mia are trapped on this planet with Extrone, a scary and powerful man, and their relationship begins to crack under the weight of all this pressure. \nMia firmly believes that Extrone will kill both of them once this expedition is over. Ri disagrees, choosing to remain optimistic. On one of their guide trips, they discover blast tracks, a sign that others have been here. They choose to not tell Extrone out of fear. \nAfter Mia divulges his plans to expose Extreone for what he really is when they return to civilization. Ri feels nervous about the prospect and tries to shut the conversation down. Later on, when Extrone calls Ri into his tent to use him as bait, Ri betrays Mia and reveals his treacherous plans. Extrone kills Mia quickly and efficiently but uses Ri as bait anyway. Despite their history as hunters and friends, Ri still betrays Mia in order to save his own skin. \n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "4848b3dbb4134ced83d4cb936c6e26f5", "response_text": "Ri and Mia have a friendly camaraderie until the end of the story when Ri lies and tries to convince Extrone to use Mia as live bait for the farn beast rather than himself. Ri and Mia killed the first farn beast in their world, and when Extrone heard this, he hired them for a pittance to be his guides on a hunting expedition for the farn beast. Neither man wants to be there, but they have no choice. When Ri and Mia killed a farn beast, they killed their guide to prevent news of it from leaking, but other people still found out. Mia worries that Extrone will kill them, too, when the hunt is over, but Ri insists that they are too important for that to happen. Ri insists their friends and influence will prevent Extrone from doing that, but Mia counters that Extrone can always claim it was an accident. The two men are suspicious about how Extrone came to power, and Mia suspects that he is planning to invade the aliens and, for that reason, cut off trade with them. Ri disagrees and says the trade discontinuation was to keep an economic balance. While the two men disagree about Extrone’s methods, they both agree that he is a scary guy. At the end of the story, however, when Extrone’s plan to use Ri as live bait for the farn beast becomes clear to him, Ri lies and says Extrone should use Mia as bait because Mia has been talking about killing Extrone. Extrone has Ri point out Mia to him and then shoots him and still uses Ri for bait. So Ri gains nothing and causes his friend’s death. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "762ce2d879c84a76b4a406608924a4f9", "response_text": "Ri and Mia are two businessmen who are hired by Extrone to serve as guides on his hunting trip because of their association with the Hunting Club and their success in killing one during a recent mission. Although they successfully hunted a farn beast in the past, they are not professional guides by any means. Despite this and the low pay that they receive for their efforts, they feel compelled to meet Extrone's demands out of fear of reprisal. Mia is more assertive and confident than Ri, and he strongly believes that Extrone is a puppet leader installed by the military to ensure the people will support future military action against the aliens. Ri, fearful and timid, does not want to believe Mia's conspiracies and espouses faith in Extrone. Mia further fears that Extrone will kill them once the hunt is over because he does not want them to reveal the location of the farn beasts. Ri's fear of Extrone takes over when Extrone wants to use him as bait to catch the farn beasts, and he throws Mia under the bus by claiming Mia has suggested assassinating Extrone. Extrone immediately kills Mia and uses Ri as bait anyway."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "50988", "uid": "0b5352c67d35444984e866a129ee4f0f", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Bodyguard\n \n \n By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM\n \n Illustrated by CAVAT\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!\n \n\n \n The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.\n \n Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was almost ordinary-looking.\n \n As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous.\n \n Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.\n \n The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt he was, which was what mattered.\n \n \"Sorry, colleague,\" Gabe said lazily. \"All my fault. You must let me buy you a replacement.\" He gestured to the bartender. \"Another of the same for my fellow-man here.\"\n \n The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth hastily supplied by the management.\n \n \"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill,\" Gabe said, taking out his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look at them. \"Here, have yourself a new suit on me.\" You could use one was implied.\n \n And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance, was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's handsome face.\n \n \n\n \n Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. \"Don't do that,\" the nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. \"You wouldn't want to go to jail because of him.\"\n \n The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to smash back, and now it was too late for that.\n \n Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. \"So, it's you again?\"\n \n The man in the gray suit smiled. \"Who else in any world would stand up for you?\"\n \n \"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you around, of course,\" Gabriel added too quickly. \"You do come in useful at times, you know.\"\n \n \"So you don't mind having me around?\" The nondescript man smiled again.\n\"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?\"\n \n Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. \"Come on, have a drink with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out.\"\n \n \"I drank with you once too often,\" the nondescript man said. \"And things worked out fine, didn't they? For you.\" His eyes studied the other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were not pleased with what they saw. \"Watch yourself, colleague,\" he warned as he left. \"Soon you might not be worth the saving.\"\n \n \"Who was that, Gabe?\" the girl asked.\n \n He shrugged. \"I never saw him before in my life.\" Of course, knowing him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he happened to have been telling the truth.\n \n \n\n \n Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions, reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to the letter combination bodyguard , he went out into the street.\n \n If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for years.\n \n The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. \"Where to, fellow-man?\" the driver asked.\n \n \"I'm new in the parish,\" the other man replied and let it hang there.\n \n \"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?\"\n \n But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.\n \n \"Games?\" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was wanted by then. \"Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?\"\n \n \"Is there a good zarquil game in town?\"\n \n The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the teleview. A very ordinary face. \"Look, colleague, why don't you commit suicide? It's cleaner and quicker.\"\n \n \"I can't contact your attitude,\" the passenger said with a thin smile. \"Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a thrill-mill.\" He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.\n \n \"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?\" The driver spat out of the window. \"If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ... anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em.\"\n \n \"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a commission, wouldn't it?\" the other man asked coolly.\n \n \"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though.\"\n \n \"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun.\"\n \n \"You're the dictator,\" the driver agreed sullenly.\n \n \n\n II\n \n It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.\n \n \"Let me take the controls, honey,\" the light-haired girl urged, but he shook his handsome head.\n \n \"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty,\" he said thickly, referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held, and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.\n \n Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.\n \n To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.\n \n Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him speculatively. \"My guardian angel,\" he mumbled—shock had sobered him a little, but not enough. He sat up. \"Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have thrown me back in.\"\n \n \"And that's no joke,\" the fat man agreed.\n \n The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall that he had not been alone. \"How about Helen? She on course?\"\n \n \"Seems to be,\" the fat man said. \"You all right, miss?\" he asked, glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.\n \n \" Mrs. ,\" Gabriel corrected. \"Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel Lockard,\" he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.\n\"Pretty bauble, isn't she?\"\n \n \"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard,\" the fat man said, looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. \"I hope you'll be worthy of the name.\" The light given off by the flaming car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too. Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.\n \n There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and beginning to slide downhill....\n \n Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.\n \n \n\n \n There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before, which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket closer about her chilly body. \"Aren't you going to introduce your—your friend to me, Gabe?\"\n \n \"I don't know who he is,\" Gabe said almost merrily, \"except that he's no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?\"\n \n \"Of course I have a name.\" The fat man extracted an identification card from his wallet and read it. \"Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago, and now he isn't ... anything.\"\n \n \"You saved our lives,\" the girl said. \"I'd like to give you some token of my—of our appreciation.\" Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation held little gratitude.\n \n The fat man shook his head without rancor. \"I have plenty of money, thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come,\" he addressed her husband,\n\"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the future! Sometimes,\" he added musingly, \"I almost wish you would let something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?\"\n \n Gabriel shivered. \"I'll be careful,\" he vowed. \"I promise—I'll be careful.\"\n \n \n\n \n When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night, the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification. Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.\n \n Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of\n\"crimes against nature.\" Actually the phrase was more appropriate to zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator; otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.\n \n \n\n \n Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs. Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been big money in musical chairs as such.\n \n When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.\n \n The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible. But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.\n \n The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but, when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew everybody else far too well.\n \n The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed too logical for the man he was haunting.\n \n However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. \"One?\" the small green creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.\n \n \"One,\" the fat man answered.\n \n \n\n III\n \n The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. \"Only weighted out,\" he muttered, \"he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you two to come out to a place like this?\"\n \n \"I really think Gabriel must be possessed....\" the girl said, mostly to herself. \"I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse. It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?\"\n \n \"It does indeed,\" the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.\n \n The girl looked closely at him. \"You look different, but you are the same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?\"\n \n The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. \"Yes, I'm all of them.\"\n \n \"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?\" Automatically she reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.\n \n \n\n \n He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.\n \n \"But why do you do it? Why! Do you like it? Or is it because of Gabriel?\" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was included in its scope. \"Do you want to keep him from recognizing you; is that it?\"\n \n \"Ask him.\"\n \n \"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I think?\"\n \n There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not, she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so casually.\n \n \n\n \n It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about herself. The thin young man began to cough again.\n \n Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of them would stay....\n \n \"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him,\" she asked, \"why then do you keep helping him?\"\n \n \"I am not helping him . And he knows that.\"\n \n \"You'll change again tonight, won't you?\" she babbled. \"You always change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's something about you that doesn't change.\"\n \n \"Too bad he got married,\" the young man said. \"I could have followed him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway,\" he added, his voice less impersonal, \"for your sake.\"\n \n She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect that he was even more closely involved than that.\n \n \"Why must you change again?\" she persisted, obliquely approaching the subject she feared. \"You have a pretty good body there. Why run the risk of getting a bad one?\"\n \n \"This isn't a good body,\" he said. \"It's diseased. Sure, nobody's supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty of foliage.\"\n \n \"How—long will it last you?\"\n \n \"Four or five months, if I'm careful.\" He smiled. \"But don't worry, if that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then it was tough on me too, wasn't it?\"\n \n \"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?\" she asked again. \"And why are you doing it?\" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should know him better than most.\n \n \"Ask your husband.\"\n \n The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate, snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name, and stirred it with his toe. \"I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to death.\"\n \n He signaled and a cab came.\n \n \"Tell him, when he comes to,\" he said to the girl as he and the driver lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, \"that I'm getting pretty tired of this.\" He stopped for a long spell of coughing.\n\"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't, in the long run, be most beneficial for my face.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Sorry,\" the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, \"but I'm afraid you cannot play.\"\n \n \"Why not?\" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.\n \n \"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house.\"\n \n \"But I have plenty of money.\" The young man coughed. The Vinzz shrugged. \"I'll pay you twice the regular fee.\"\n \n The green one shook his head. \"Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This game is really clean.\"\n \n \"In a town like this?\"\n \n \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung with him.\n \n \"We do a lot of business here,\" he said unnecessarily, for the whole set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by no means poor when it came to worldly goods. \"Why don't you try another town where they're not so particular?\"\n \n The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game. He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration. And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him? Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original casing had?\n \n He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl, seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of information.\n \n \n\n \n The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they detached, and the first approached the man once more. \"There is, as it happens, a body available for a private game,\" he lisped. \"No questions to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good health.\"\n \n The man hesitated. \"But unable to pass the screening?\" he murmured aloud. \"A criminal then.\"\n \n The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.\n \n \"Male?\"\n \n \"Of course,\" the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or biological impossibility, no one could tell.\n \n It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever been proved that an alien life-form had \"desecrated\" a human body, Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,\n\"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em.\"\n \n \"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take such a risk.\" The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. \"How much?\"\n \n \"Thirty thousand credits.\"\n \n \"Why, that's three times the usual rate!\"\n \n \"The other will pay five times the usual rate.\"\n \n \"Oh, all right,\" the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.\n \n \n\n \n He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body; tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful student of the \"wanted\" fax that had decorated public buildings from time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily, nor whom the police intended to capture easily.\n  This might be a lucky break for me after all , the new tenant thought, as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious rude health, was not a very comfortable fit. I can do a lot with a hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe I'll be able to get away with it.\n \n\n\n IV\n \n \"Look, Gabe,\" the girl said, \"don't try to fool me! I know you too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel Lockard's—body.\" She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.\n \n Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven chin. \"That what he tell you?\"\n \n \"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to see his body spoiled.\"\n \n \"It is a pretty good body, isn't it?\" Gabe flexed softening muscles and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved at having someone with whom to share his secret.\n \n \"Not as good as it must have been,\" the girl said, turning and looking at him without admiration. \"Not if you keep on the way you're coursing. Gabe, why don't you...?\"\n \n \"Give it back to him, eh?\" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.\n\"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be his wife then. That would be nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little more than you deserve?\"\n \n \"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe,\" she said truthfully enough, for she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. \"Of course I'd go with you,\" she went on, now knowing she lied, \"when you got your ... old body back.\"\n  Sure , she thought, I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and thrill-mills. Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash that experience from her mind or her body.\n \n \"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?\" she went on. \"You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose, does he?\"\n \n \"I don't want to know!\" he spat. \"I wouldn't want it if I could get it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he looked in a mirror.\" He swung long legs over the side of his bed.\n\"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a hulk I had!\"\n \n \"Oh, yes, I can,\" she said incautiously. \"You must have had a body to match your character. Pity you could only change one.\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "3", "uid": "ad2acea196584f569f3432f52034def4", "response_text": "\nGabriel (Gabe) Lockard, an attractive man, is sitting in a bar with humans and extraterrestrials. He knocks over a man's drink while he talks to a girl. He offers to pay for a new suit, showing off his wealth. The other man reaches to throw his drink at Lockard but is stopped by a third man wearing a gray suit, who seems to know Lockard. This man warns Lockard to be careful, and when he leaves, Lockard tells the woman he's with that he's never seen him before, even though they talked as if they were acquaintances. The stranger visits a locker at a nearby airstation, puts most of his belongings inside, including all forms of identification, and sets the lock to the word \"bodyguard\". He climbs into a helicab, where he pressures the driver into taking him to a zarquil game. This man has been floating around without an identity, but operates as a flying dutchman, floating between zarquil games. Another day, Lockard crashes a helicar on a rainy fall night in a dark corner of a degrading city, and a fat stranger pulls him and his wife out of the helicar before it exploded. The man who saved them has the ID of Dominic Bianchi, a milgot dealer who seems to have disappeared in the past few weeks. Mrs. Lockard warns her husband to be more careful lest something happen to him. It seems the stranger's job is to rotate identities and protect Lockard. On yet another day, a thin stranger chases off a thief with his gun, and checks in on Mr. and Mrs. Lockard. Mrs. Lockard realizes that he is the same man who pulled them out of their aircar crash, and was the man wearing the gray suit at the bar. He has been changing bodies this whole time. She wants to know why, but the stranger suggests she ask Gabriel. She suspects they've been running from this stranger, and has started to be able to identify him, which the stranger is disappointed by as he explains it is not Gabriel he is helping. Because Gabriel is going to run-down cities, the bodies the stranger is getting are not well-vetted, and can't last too long. It turns out the stranger was the original Gabriel Lockard, the implication being that he's trying to protect his original body. As the stranger tries to swap bodies again, he finds that nobody wants the one he's in. He's offered a body that is healthy but likely a criminal, for three times the usual fee, and the stranger accepts the expensive deal. After the bodyswap, he recognizes the man as someone police are ordered to burn on sights. Mrs. Lockard interrogates her husband about his stolen body, which starts an argument. She recognizes he can't get his old body back, but lies and says she'd stay with him if he switched back, and the two talk about how ugly he was. "}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "4f41c38b37cc4119a4348535244076dc", "response_text": "Gabriel Lockard, a good looking man, stands at the bar with his wife. He accidentally hits another man’s drink, and the ugly little man winds up to hit Gabe. However, a stranger in a gray suit interjects. Gabe’s wife asks who the stranger was, and he tells her that he’s never seen him before. \n\nThe stranger hails a cab  and requests to be taken to the zarquil game. The cab driver tells him that he might as well commit suicide, but the stranger insists. \n\nOn a dark and rainy night, Gabe refuses to allow his wife to drive the helicar. When they crash, the stranger, with a brand new look, is right behind them. He pulls them out of the car before it blows up. Mrs. Lockard has a feeling that she has met the stranger before, but she dismisses her thought as ludicrous. When she asks for an introduction, Gabe asks the stranger for his name. He pulls out an ID card with the name Dominic Bianchi on it and explains that Bianchi lost all of his money a few weeks ago, and now he’s nothing. Mrs. Lockard tries to compensate the stranger for saving their lives, but he tells her that he has plenty of money. Gabe promises to be more careful in the future.\n\nThe stranger then makes his way to the zarquil game, which is an illegal activity. The game is run by the Vinzz, and it is very expensive to play. While there, he gains a new body, and this time he has small, angular features. \n\nLater, the stranger approaches Gabe, laying on the ground in an alleyway, and his distressed wife. Mrs. Lockard recognizes the skinny stranger as the same man that has been following them and saving their lives. He admits that he is all of them, and she realizes that the stranger is playing in the zarquil games. The stranger calls a cab so that Gabe won’t freeze to death outside, once again saving his life. \n\nThe stranger then goes to a zarquil game to change his appearance again. The Vinzz tries to turn him away because his body is in poor condition, but he asserts that he has lots of money to fork over. The alien offers him the body of a criminal. The stranger agrees to take the body, and he finds it to be very handsome. He recognizes the new face he wears as one that belongs to a man who will be burned immediately by any police officer he encounters. \n\nMrs. Lockard tells Gabe that she knows that the stranger who has been chasing them is the real Gabe Lockard, and he wants his body back. When the man in Lockard’s body becomes defensive, she assures him that she would stay with him regardless of what his actual body looks like. He has zero interest in returning to his old body, and his wife says it’s sad that he can’t buy a new personality as well. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "beb41634158d4082844e490a3240e552", "response_text": "The story takes place in a reality where humans can trade bodies through a game called zarquil, thus taking on the physical appearance of a new person while someone else gets their old body. The premise is that the body of Gabriel Lockard is actually inhabited by an unknown person. His wife, Helen, is the one to unravel the story as she begins to discover that “strangers” (the real Gabe inhabiting the bodies of strangers, changing form repeatedly through the story) keep coming to their rescue. \nThe “strangers” that Helen starts to realize are a single person (Gabe’s consciousness) changing bodies over time appear when the arrogant and incredibly handsome body of Gabriel Lockard: gets a drink thrown in his face at a bar, crashes his vehicle into a tower with Helen as a passenger, and when he is face down unconscious in an alley. \nHelen first realizes what is happening when the “strangers” seem deeply concerned that Gabe remain alive. Through their interactions, she comes to realize that Gabe is not actually in his own body, and that the real Gabe is following his body around like a bodyguard, resentful of the person in there and not wanting any harm to come to what he considers his perfect physique. \nThe stranger continues to change forms throughout the story to evade detection by Gabe, though Helen foils that plan. He also does this for the reason of wanting to inhabit a body as perfect as he believes his original body was, hoping to “trade up” to a body he finds suitable through the process. The last body switch he makes is a dark deal into the body of a wanted criminal that is very handsome and fit. He is happy with the outcome as he thinks he may be able to get away with the crimes this body committed with his cunning wit.\nThe story closes with Helen confronting the body of Gabe with an unknown person inside, in which he confirms that what she knows is true. The person inside Gabe is unkind to her and does not treat her well, and the story ends with her in this predicament, having to make a choice whether to stay or go.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c7dd20d7f0f04817961ecd8b481324d5", "response_text": " In a bar with his wife, Gabriel Lockard draws attention to himself with his good looks and arrogance. Lockard gestures expansively, bumping another man and spilling his drink on his suit, knocking his glass to the floor. Condescendingly, Lockard offers to buy him another drink and pay his cleaning bill. When the man starts to throw his fresh drink on Lockard, he is stopped by a stranger in a gray suit. Lockard and the man in the gray suit talk as if they know each other; Lockard acknowledges the stranger is useful to have around, and the stranger, noticing signs of Lockard’s aging, comments Lockard soon might not be worth saving. \nAfter following Lockard to his hotel, the stranger takes a cab to the zarquil games to change his body, something he does after every encounter with Lockard. In the meantime, Gabe and Mrs. Lockart go out in a helicar. When Mrs. Lockart suggests she drive because Gabe is drunk, he insists on driving. He crashes the helicar, and the stranger, now a fat man, rescues him and his wife from the helicar just before it catches on fire. Gabe introduces his wife, and the stranger mysteriously states, “I hope you’ll be worthy of the name.” He takes the Lockards back to their hotel and then goes to the zarquil games again.\nAs a slim, sickly man, the stranger rescues Lockard and his wife from a would-be thief. Lockard is unconscious while Mrs. Lockard and the stranger discuss the situation. She realizes he is the same person who keeps protecting Gabe but exchanging bodies over and over and wants to know why he does it; the stranger says she should ask her husband. He acknowledges Mrs. Lockard is in a difficult situation with her marriage, stating, “Too bad he got married anyway for your sake.” When Mrs. Lockard wants to know why the stranger protects Gabriel, he encourages her to ask her husband. \nWhen the stranger tries to change bodies again, he is first told his diseased body makes him ineligible but then is offered a game where all he knows is the other body is a healthy male. He suspects this means the other person is a criminal but accepts the offer anyway, knowing he will assume responsibility for the crimes the other identity had committed. The stranger ends up with a “fine” new body that is handsome in a dark way, but the stranger recognizes the face as someone wanted by the police.\nMrs. Lockard confronts her husband about knowing the stranger better than he claimed. She asks if he would consider taking his original body back, and Gabe states she would then be the real Gabriel Lockart’s wife. She claims she would stay with her husband’s soul but knows this is a lie. He claims anything would be better than the hulk of his original body; Mrs. Lockard comments it’s a shame he could only change his body or his character, not both. \n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Mrs. Lockard and what is her significance to the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "3", "uid": "ad2acea196584f569f3432f52034def4", "response_text": "The young woman who Lockard is sitting with at the bar at the beginning of the story is the woman who would eventually become his wife. Her name is Helen, but she is mostly referred to as Mrs. Lockard. By the time the helicar crash happens, they have been married, and by the time they are almost robbed, they have been married six months. Her role is most clear when she is talking to the stranger after the robbery. She is the one who explicitly pieces together that the stranger she has seen, although varying in form at each event, has been the same person. The gray suit, the fat man, and the scrawny man have all been the same person. It is her perspective that changes Lockard's life and his possible path for the future, and the two of them have been on the run from the stranger the whole time they've been married. She gets enough information from the stranger to be able to confront her husband about what's happening, allowing her to uncover the whole story."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "4f41c38b37cc4119a4348535244076dc", "response_text": "\nMrs. Lockard is Gabe’s wife of six months. She is a very good-looking woman with a penchant for furs. She does not realize that the Gabe Lockard she knows is not the true Gabe Lockard until she uncovers the mystery of why a shape-changing stranger is always saving their lives. Mrs. Lockard is not part of the seedy underclass, so she has little awareness of the zarquil games and would not know to be on the lookout for an intruder in her husband’s body. \n\nEven before she realizes that the man she is married to is a liar, she is deeply unhappy in the marriage. At one point, the stranger who is chasing them, the real Gabe Lockard, notices that her face is bruised beneath her makeup. She is being abused by her husband, and she feels as though she has no way out of the relationship. Mrs. Lockard also complains that she has been forced to run from these strangers ever since she married Gabe. He won't tell her anything, so she is forced to figure everything out on her own, and she now recognizes that she is constantly on the run. When the real Gabe Lockard says that it’s a pity that she’s married, she agrees with him. \n\nThroughout her many interactions with the stranger that saves Gabe’s life, Mrs. Lockard asks a lot of tough questions. She is very intelligent and continues to seek the truth even when she’s being ignored. Her persistence pays off because the real Gabe Lockard admits to her that he is the same person in all of the strangers’ bodies. She is then able to approach her husband with the information she has uncovered. When she tells him that she knows what’s really going on, she suggests that he go back to his old body and promises to stay with him. She discovers how vain and immoral he is when he tells her that would never happen; he had the worst body before and he has zero intention of living in it again. Mrs. Lockard tells him that it’s too bad he can’t get a new personality. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "beb41634158d4082844e490a3240e552", "response_text": "Helen Lockard is the wife of Gabe. She is significant because she guides the story and unravels the mysterious plot line of her husband trading bodies. She also has a significant role in attempting to enact justice upon the person that came to inhabit Gabe’s body, though the reader does not see this situation fully resolved.\n\nAs the story’s guide, she discovers that the strangers following her and her husband continue to rescue them from the harmful situations that Gabe places them in. She realizes the strangers are actually a single person (Gabe’s consciousness) that has been taking different bodily forms by playing zarquil and following his real body around.\n\nShe often assumes Gabe is lying to her, and even considers escaping her marriage by entering a game of zarquil to become someone else. When she discovers that the body of Gabe actually has the consciousness of another person in it, she confronts them. Although she is demeaned and taunted, her motivations are set on seeking justice for Gabe.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c7dd20d7f0f04817961ecd8b481324d5", "response_text": "Mrs. Lockard is first described as “the girl” with Gabriel Lockard in the bar. Gabriel is extremely good-looking and draws a lot of attention because of his looks. Compared to him, Mrs. Lockard almost looks plain. She has been married to Gabe for six months. Her husband is rude, coarse, and self-centered, and she regrets marrying him. He isn’t above striking her cheek violently when they argue. For instance, Mrs. Lockard tries to get along with Gabe, gently offering to drive the helicar when Gabe has had too much to drink. After she sees the stranger at the bar, and he rescues her from the wrecked helicar, she begins to think the stranger is familiar, although he looks different each time she sees him. After the stranger saves her and Gabe from the thief, she opens up to the stranger and confesses she feels like Gabe is looking for trouble. This is also when she realizes the stranger is definitely the same person from the bar, the wreck, and now the attempted theft. She opens up to the stranger and admits that Gabe is running from something. She wonders what it would be like to change bodies with another person in a zarquil game and escape from Gabriel, but she realizes her body is a good one and would hate to give it up. She begins to realize how closely connected the stranger is to her and Gabe. She accepts the stranger, although his significance is a secret her husband keeps from her, and her acceptance spurs the stranger to admit that his current body, thin and sickly, will only last another four or five months. She later asks her husband why he doesn’t give up the body, and he skeptically accuses her of wanting to be the real Gabe’s wife because then her husband would be sound in mind and body. She denies thinking of herself with the real Gabe and says she would stay with her husband in his “real” body. When her husband admits he doesn’t know where his real body is and thinks whoever has it might have killed himself after looking in the mirror, Mrs. Lockard comments that his real body must have matched his character and that it is a shame he could only change one of them, not both. Her husband realizes that she is dissatisfied with him, and her interaction with the stranger helps her see her husband as he really is. Compared to her husband, the stranger is much kinder, more honest, and stable. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is the stranger in the gray suit and what is his significance?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "3", "uid": "ad2acea196584f569f3432f52034def4", "response_text": "The stranger in the gray suit at the bar in the beginning of the story happens to be the original Gabriel Lockard, and it is hinted that the original Lockard only switched bodies because the current one had convinced him to when they'd had too much to drink. The stranger is keeping an eye on the current Gabriel Lockard to protect the body from harm. He does this by participating in zarquil games, run by the alien race the Vinzz, which allows him to swap bodies with other people. If he is in a reputable area, there are careful checks to make sure that these bodies are healthy, but he ends up with a sick body partway through the story, which forces him to take the body of a criminal as his only option because nobody will buy the sick body from him. The stranger's desire to protect his original body pushes him to become obsessed with this task, and it is his only real goal. He follows Lockard throughout the story, switching bodies every time he is seen, which forces Lockard and his wife to flee from him, staying constantly on the run. Lockard is used to this stranger being around, and tries to avoid making him angry, but there is a sense that he is sick of being saved and wants to live his own life. Lockard even offers to buy the stranger a drink at the beginning to try to work something out, seemingly exhausted from being followed. His single-mindedness is shown by the fact that the stranger's password on his locker is \"bodyguard\", in reference to his original body."}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "4f41c38b37cc4119a4348535244076dc", "response_text": "The stranger in the gray suit is the real Gabriel Lockard. He managed to lose his body through the illegal game known as zarquil, and he desperately wants it back. The stranger thinks of himself as Gabe Lockard’s bodyguard, and he uses the term as the passcode for the locker where he keeps his valuables. His life’s mission is to guard Gabe’s body and get it back so that he can be himself once more. In order to do this, he follows the fake Gabe Lockard and his wife around town to make sure that he is treating his body nicely. Fake Gabe Lockard frequently gets into fights, accidents, and other situations that could lead to his death or irreparably damage his body, and the stranger spends nearly all of his waking hours keeping tabs on him and rescuing him from destruction. \n\nThe stranger seems sinister at first, especially since he goes to seedy areas of town where the Vinzz run illegal zarquil games. He uses his immense wealth to purchase other peoples’ bodies. However, his motivation for continuously changing bodies is to keep his secret from the fake Gabe Lockard. He does not want the man who stole his body to be able to recognize him and kill him. Although he has not found the perfect solution to his problem, he is merely doing what he can to survive, protect his true body, and try to get it back. The stranger treats Gabe’s new wife well, and he even tells her the truth about his predicament. If he did not have the incredible amounts of cash he has, he would not be able to keep up with this plan. But he is able to use his money to keep buying new bodies and chasing around Gabe. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "beb41634158d4082844e490a3240e552", "response_text": "The stranger in the gray suit is just one of the embodiments of the “stranger” throughout the story that keeps watch over Gabe. It is revealed that this stranger is actually Gabe himself who is continuously changing physical appearance by playing zarquil. He tries to take on bodies of greater and greater physical beauty until he can find one that is as good as the body he left, which he considers to be a perfect physical form. \n\nThe stranger is significant because he ultimately provides the key information that could liberate Helen from a marriage where she is treated poorly and gets into dangerous situations that could ultimately get her killed if she stays with him. \n\nThe stranger also represents the great lengths humans are willing to go to for pursuing or maintaining physical beauty or health. The game required to change form is dangerous and illegal, but the stranger continues to return to it for the allure of a better form.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c7dd20d7f0f04817961ecd8b481324d5", "response_text": "The stranger in the gray suit at the bar is the real Gabriel Lockart. He lost his body to the man who currently inhabits it in a zarquil game after having too many drinks with him, and now he follows Gabe Lockart wherever he goes and protects him whenever he is in danger. Actually, the stranger is not protecting the person in Gabe Lockart’s body, but the body of Gabe Lockart. The stranger shows up in the bar and protects Gabe when another man wants to throw a drink on Gabe; he also shows up and pulls Gabe and his wife from the wreckage of their helicar. He saves them from a would-be thief and calls for a cab to take them to where they are staying to prevent Gabe from freezing to death. The stranger follows Gabe wherever he goes, protecting his body. The stranger seems to want his body and identity back, but the current Gabe will not willingly give up the body and identity because he enjoys them too much.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What are the zarquil games and what is their significance?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "3", "uid": "ad2acea196584f569f3432f52034def4", "response_text": "An alien race called the Vinzz, from Altair's seventh planet, run the zarquil games as a way to make money so that they can buy slaves. Through these games, humans are able to swap bodies so they can experience what it is like to live as someone else. People who participate frequently are known as flying dutchmen, and the stranger in the story is called this a few times. These games are illegal and dangerous, and you must have a lot of money to participate. In larger cities with more resources and oversight, all of the potential bodies go through a detailed vetting process to make sure that the body in question does not have any illnesses or a criminal past. When the stranger ends up with a sick body near the end of the story, his only option is to accept a body with a criminal past because nobody will accept an ill body at a reputable game. Public perception shows that society looks down on these games. The cab driver that the stranger meets explicitly says that he looks down on dutchmen, saying he hates them, and very reluctantly takes the stranger to a zarquil game because he is promised the money and he knows the stranger has a gun. It is this game that caused the original Gabriel Lockard to lose his body and identity, and it is through this game that he rotates through nameless people in order to follow the new Lockard to keep an eye on the body. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "4f41c38b37cc4119a4348535244076dc", "response_text": "The zarquil games are illegally run by the Vinzz, an alien race. The illegal operation has such a terrible reputation that one of the cab drivers the stranger encounters suggests that he kill himself rather than playing. The cab driver almost refuses to bring him to the games, but he sees the amount of cash the stranger is holding and agrees to do his bidding. Many people in the society know nothing about zarquil because it’s an underground game that people with good reputations do not take part in. The stranger is known as a “dutchman,” which is a term for someone who plays zarquil all the time for the rush of it. \n\nZarquil is an interesting phenomenon because both the victim and the perpetrator are both considered guilty. The game is very expensive to play, and that’s why the Vinzz spend their time running the activity for humans. The Vinzz use the money they make to return to their home planet of Vinau and purchase slaves. The aliens rarely get in trouble for hosting the games because the Vinzz live about 2,000 years, and therefore no punishment would be worthwhile. The Vinzz are not subjected to capital punishment because the humans don’t know if their weapons are good enough to kill them. \n\nMales are given male bodies, and females are given female bodies. The Vinzz do not play “mixed games” and switch up genders, even though there is surely a market for that. Humans are also not allowed to trade bodies with aliens. The Vinzz feel that if they successfully traded a human body for an alien one, the humans would become outraged and start a war over the matter. Some seedy zarquil games include private purchases of criminal bodies. Criminals do not pass the standard testing and must be bought in secret. \n\nThe zarquil games are an important part of the story because Gabe Lockard loses his body to the stranger in one of these illegal games. The stranger, or the real Gabe Lockard, then uses zarquil to continuously change bodies to go undetected by the fake Gabe Lockard. He wants to get his real body back, and in order to do that he must not let the fake Gabe Lockard know his true identity. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "beb41634158d4082844e490a3240e552", "response_text": "Zarquil is an extremely illegal “crime against nature” sport which is akin to a game of musical chairs. Instead of trading chairs, the game is a high consequence one where humans trade bodies. Supposedly the entrants to the game have a physical health check to ensure the participants get into bodies free of disease, but this proves to not be well regulated as the stranger receives several bodies which he thinks are “diseased”.\n\nThe sport is run by aliens, Vinzz, from Altair’s seventh planet that have no regard for the welfare of the humans playing, only the profits. The game persists on Terra (where humans live in the story) because there is no capital punishment that can be brought upon the Vinzz, as they live over 2000 years, making prison sentences useless to discourage them from running the game.\n\nThe games are significant because they allow humans to escape their lives by changing into completely different identities. This can enable criminals to escape the law, or for a single person to follow others undetected by continuously changing appearances.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c7dd20d7f0f04817961ecd8b481324d5", "response_text": "The zarquil games are an illegal activity played by people referred to as dutchmen who go from one game to another seeking the thrills they get from it. Part of the thrill of the game was the unknown; players don’t know for sure what kind of body they will end up with. The games are very expensive and are run by the Vinzz, who are strange beings from Altair’s seventh planet Vinau. The Vinzz have no concerns for the humans playing their games; they are running the games strictly for the money they can make from them so that they can return to Vinau and buy many slaves. The Vinzz live for around two thousand earth years and bodies mean little to them; they care nothing about a human’s body. The Vinzz are not barred from coming to Earth to run their games because the trade between the two planets is so valuable that they maintain peace. In the games, people exchange bodies. The Vinzz are supposed to vet everyone who plays to make sure their bodies are healthy, but they have been known to cut corners when profits are lagging. This explains why the stranger ends up as the sickly, thin man who only has four or five months left to live. \nThe zarquil games are significant in the story because that is how the stranger lost his body and name to the current Gabe Lockard. Apparently, the stranger drank too much too many times and played the zarquil game, losing his body and identity. He continues playing the game, changing his identity after every interaction with the current Gabe. The stranger isn’t sure whether he keeps changing after interacting with the current Gabe because of his interaction or because none of the subsequent bodies feel right to him. Perhaps he just wants to one day obtain a body that is as close to perfection as his original body was. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Gabe Lockard and the stranger?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "3", "uid": "ad2acea196584f569f3432f52034def4", "response_text": "The stranger is actually the original Gabriel Lockard, and the man we know as Lockard now is the man who took this body a while ago. The new Lockard has some sense of who the stranger is, though he knows he will never recognize him because the stranger switches bodies frequently. The stranger is keeping an eye out on his original body, trying to protect it, with a bit of hope that he may one day get it back. They have a tenuous and superficial relationship, with the new Lockard being somewhat hesitant about the stranger's involvement in his life. The stranger makes it clear that it is not Lockard he is protecting, but just the body he is in. Through this story, the stranger keeps a man from throwing a glass in Lockard's face at a bar, pulls Lockard and his wife out of a helicar crash, and stops a robbery from happening. There is bitterness and exhaustion on both sides of this relationship, and at the beginning of the story the new Lockard tries to offer the stranger a drink so they can sort things out, but the stranger refuses and it seems he would only be appeased if he had his original body back. "}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "4f41c38b37cc4119a4348535244076dc", "response_text": "The stranger follows Gabe Lockard and his wife around everywhere they go in order to protect them. The stranger used to be the real owner of Gabe Lockard's body, but he lost it in a game of zarquil. Since then, he has made it his life's mission to protect his former body from harm. When an angry man at a bar almost assaults Gabe, the stranger stops the man from hitting Gabe in the face. When Gabe crashes his helicar into a beacon tower, the stranger is right behind the vehicle, and he pulls Gabe and his wife out of the crashed car before it blows up. When Gabe lies unconscious in the snow on a freezing night in an alleyway, the stranger shows up and calls him a cab to get his body back home in the warmth. \n\nGabe knows exactly why the stranger is following him and saving his life, but he refuses to tell his wife, Mrs. Lockard, the reason behind the strange behavior. However, Mrs. Lockard continues asking the stranger questions and eventually uncovers the truth. She realizes that she's married to the fake Gabe Lockard, and that he is a liar and a manipulator. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "beb41634158d4082844e490a3240e552", "response_text": "The stranger is Gabe’s consciousness inhabiting the bodies of other people. Gabe left his own body in unknown circumstances, and now his body is inhabited by someone else. The relationship between them is not a shared mutual experience. The person in Gabe’s body is largely indifferent to the help from the stranger and does not recognize it is the same person sharing care towards him over time. The stranger (the real Gabe) feels a mix of protectiveness for his body and a deep resentment of the new person that is inside of it.\n\nThe stranger monitors “Gabe” closely like a bodyguard and cares deeply about his body continuing to exist, even calling a cab so it doesn’t freeze to death at one point. Potentially he does this with the hope that he can one day get back into it. The stranger continues to follow and save the body of “Gabe” while simultaneously changing physical forms through playing zarquil. This serves both to try to avoid being detected by Gabe and Helen (ultimately foiled when Helen figures it out), and to attempt to enter a physical form that is as perfect as he felt his original body was.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c7dd20d7f0f04817961ecd8b481324d5", "response_text": "Gabe Lockard in the story is actually a man inhabiting the body and adopting the identity of the real Gabriel Lockard. The real Gabe Lockard is the stranger in the gray suit in the bar, the fat man who pulls Gabe and Mrs. Lockard from their wrecked helicar, the thin, sickly man who saves Gabe and Mrs. Lockard from the would-be thief, and the handsome, dark, coarse-featured hulking man at the end of the story. The stranger follows Gabe and Mrs. Lockard from town to town, acting like a kind of bodyguard for Gabe to protect him from the harm he can do to himself and from other dangers. Apparently, at some time in the past, the real Gabe Lockard crossed paths with the man who now inhabits his body, and they had drinks together. The real Gabe comments that he drank with the current Gabe “once too often” and says that things worked out well for the current Gabe. Gabe Lockard’s body is incredibly handsome and attracts attention wherever he goes. The current Gabe, though, is coarse, rude, and self-centered; he has been moving from town to town to get away from the real Gabe who is following him, protecting Gabe’s body. It seems that the real Gabe hopes to get his real body back at some point in the future.\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61242", "uid": "cb79c5d16ee0415b87ac969b616167a9", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "The Winning of the Moon\n \n\n BY KRIS NEVILLE\n \n\n The enemy was friendly enough. Trouble was—their friendship was as dangerous as their hate!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n General Finogenov notified Major Winship that the underground blast was scheduled for the following morning.\n \n Major Winship, after receiving the message, discussed precautions with the three other Americans.\n \n Next morning, before the sunlight exploded, the four of them donned their space suits and went and sat outside the dome, waiting. The sun rose with its bright, silent clap of radiance. Black pools of shadows lay in harsh contrast, their edges drawn with geometric precision.\n \n Major Winship attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with Base Gagarin. \"Will you please request the general to keep us informed on the progress of the countdown?\"\n \n \"Is Pinov,\" came the reply. \"Help?\"\n \n \" Nyet ,\" said Major Winship, exhausting his Russian. \"Count down. Progress. When—boom?\"\n \n \"Is Pinov,\" came the reply.\n \n \"Boom! Boom!\" said Major Winship in exasperation.\n \n \"Boom!\" said Pinov happily.\n \n \"When?\"\n \n \"Boom—boom!\" said Pinov.\n \n \"Oh, nuts.\" Major Winship cut out the circuit. \"They've got Pinov on emergency watch this morning,\" he explained to the other Americans.\n\"The one that doesn't speak English.\"\n \n \"He's done it deliberately,\" said Capt. Wilkins, the eldest of the four Americans. \"How are we going to know when it's over?\"\n \n No one bothered to respond. They sat for a while in silence while the shadows evaporated. One by one they clicked on their cooling systems.\n \n Ultimately, Lt. Chandler said, \"This is a little ridiculous. I'm going to switch over to their channel. Rap if you want me.\" He sat transfixed for several minutes. \"Ah, it's all Russian. Jabbering away. I can't tell a thing that's going on.\"\n \n In the airless void of the moon, the blast itself would be silent. A moth's wing of dust would, perhaps, rise and settle beyond the horizon: no more.\n \n \"Static?\"\n \n \"Nope.\"\n \n \"We'll get static on these things.\"\n \n A small infinity seemed to pass very slowly.\n \n Major Winship shifted restlessly. \"My reefer's gone on the fritz.\" Perspiration was trickling down his face.\n \n \"Let's all go in,\" said the fourth American, Capt. Lawler. \"It's probably over by now.\"\n \n \"I'll try again,\" Major Winship said and switched to the emergency channel. \"Base Gagarin? Base Gagarin?\"\n \n \"Is Pinov. Help?\"\n \n \" Nyet. \"\n \n \"Pinov's still there,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"Tell him, 'Help',\" said Capt. Wilkins, \"so he'll get somebody we can talk to.\"\n \n \"I'll see them all in hell, first,\" Major Winship said.\n \n Five minutes later, the perspiration was rivers across his face. \"This is it,\" he said. \"I'm going in.\"\n \n \"Let's all—\"\n \n \"No. I've got to cool off.\"\n \n \"Hell, Charlie, I feel stupid sitting out here,\" Capt. Lawler said.\n\"The shot probably went off an hour ago.\"\n \n \"The static level hasn't gone up much, if at all.\"\n \n \"Maybe,\" Lt. Chandler said, \"it's buried too deep.\"\n \n \"Maybe so,\" Major Winship said. \"But we can't have the dome fall down around all our ears.\" He stood. \"Whew! You guys stay put.\"\n \n \n\n \n He crossed with the floating moon-motion to the airlock and entered, closing the door behind him. The darkness slowly filled with air, and the temperature inside the suit declined steadily. At the proper moment of pressure, the inner lock slid open and Major Winship stepped into the illuminated central area. His foot was lifted for the second step when the floor beneath him rose and fell gently, pitching him forward, off balance. He stumbled against the table and ended up seated beside the radio equipment. The ground moved again.\n \n \"Charlie! Charlie!\"\n \n \"I'm okay,\" Major Winship answered. \"Okay! Okay!\"\n \n \"It's—\"\n \n There was additional surface movement. The movement ceased.\n \n \"Hey, Les, how's it look?\" Capt. Wilkins asked.\n \n \"Okay from this side. Charlie, you still okay?\"\n \n \"Okay,\" Major Winship said. \"We told them this might happen,\" he added bitterly.\n \n There was a wait during which everyone seemed to be holding their breath.\n \n \"I guess it's over,\" said Major Winship, getting to his feet. \"Wait a bit more, there may be an after-shock.\" He switched once again to the emergency channel.\n \n \"Is Pinov,\" came the supremely relaxed voice. \"Help?\"\n \n Major Winship whinnied in disgust. \" Nyet! \" he snarled. To the other Americans: \"Our comrades seem unconcerned.\"\n \n \"Tough.\"\n \n They began to get the static for the first time. It crackled and snapped in their speakers. They made sounds of disapproval at each other. For a minute or two, static blanked out the communications completely. It then abated to something in excess of normal.\n \n \"Well,\" Lt. Chandler commented, \"even though we didn't build this thing to withstand a moonquake, it seems to have stood up all right.\"\n \n \"I guess I was just—\" Major Winship began. \"Oh, hell! We're losing pressure. Where's the markers?\"\n \n \"By the lug cabinet.\"\n \n \"Got 'em,\" Major Winship said a moment later.\n \n He peeled back a marker and let it fall. Air currents whisked it away and plastered it against a riveted seam of the dome. It pulsed as though it were breathing and then it ruptured.\n \n Major Winship moved quickly to cut out the emergency air supply which had cut in automatically with the pressure drop. \"You guys wait. It's on your right side, midway up. I'll try to sheet it.\"\n \n He moved for the plastic sheeting.\n \n \"We've lost about three feet of calk out here,\" Capt. Lawler said. \"I can see more ripping loose. You're losing pressure fast at this rate.\"\n \n Major Winship pressed the sheeting over the leak. \"How's that?\"\n \n \"Not yet.\"\n \n \"I don't think I've got enough pressure left to hold it, now. It's sprung a little, and I can't get it to conform over the rivet heads.\"\n \n There was a splatter of static.\n \n \"Damn!\" Major Winship said, \"they should have made these things more flexible.\"\n \n \"Still coming out.\"\n \n \"Best I can do.\" Major Winship stepped back. The sheet began slowly to slide downward, then it fell away completely and lay limply on the floor.\n \n \"Come on in,\" he said dryly.\n \n \n\n \n With the four of them inside, it was somewhat cramped. Most of the five hundred square feet was filled with equipment. Electrical cables trailed loosely along the walls and were festooned from the ceiling, radiating from the connections to the outside solar cells. The living space was more restricted than in a submarine, with the bunks jutting out from the walls about six feet from the floor.\n \n Lt. Chandler mounted one of the bunks to give them more room. \"Well,\" he said wryly, \"it doesn't smell as bad now.\"\n \n \"Oops,\" said Major Winship. \"Just a second. They're coming in.\" He switched over to the emergency channel. It was General Finogenov.\n \n \"Major Winship! Hello! Hello, hello, hello. You A Okay?\"\n \n \"This is Major Winship.\"\n \n \"Oh! Excellent, very good. Any damage, Major?\"\n \n \"Little leak. You?\"\n \n \"Came through without damage.\" General Finogenov paused a moment. When no comment was forthcoming, he continued: \"Perhaps we built a bit more strongly, Major.\"\n \n \"You did this deliberately,\" Major Winship said testily.\n \n \"No, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Major Winship, please believe me. I very much regret this. Very much so. I am very distressed. Depressed. After repeatedly assuring you there was no danger of a quake—and then to have something like this happen. Oh, this is very embarrassing to me. Is there anything at all we can do?\"\n \n \"Just leave us alone, thank you,\" Major Winship said and cut off the communication.\n \n \"What'd they say?\" Capt. Wilkins asked.\n \n \"Larry, General Finogenov said he was very embarrassed by this.\"\n \n \"That's nice,\" Lt. Chandler said.\n \n \"I'll be damned surprised,\" Major Winship said, \"if they got any seismic data out of that shot.... Well, to hell with them, let's get this leak fixed. Skip, can you get the calking compound?\"\n \n \"Larry, where's the inventory?\"\n \n \"Les has got it.\"\n \n Lt. Chandler got down from the bunk and Capt. Wilkins mounted.\n \n \"Larry,\" Major Winship said, \"why don't you get Earth?\"\n \n \"Okay.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins got down from the bunk and Capt. Lawler ascended.\n \n \"Got the inventory sheet, Les?\"\n \n \"Right here.\"\n \n Squeezed in front of the massive transmitter, Capt. Wilkins had energized the circuits. There was a puzzled look on his face. He leaned his helmet against the speaker and then shook his head sadly. \"We can't hear anything without any air.\"\n \n Major Winship looked at the microphone. \"Well, I'll just report and—\" He started to pick up the microphone and reconsidered. \"Yes,\" he said.\n\"That's right, isn't it.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins flicked off the transmitter. \"Some days you don't mine at all,\" he said.\n \n \"Les, have you found it?\"\n \n \"It's around here somewhere. Supposed to be back here.\"\n \n \"Well, find it.\"\n \n Lt. Chandler began moving boxes. \"I saw it—\"\n \n \"Skip, help look.\"\n \n Capt. Lawler got down from the bunk and Major Winship mounted. \"We haven't got all day.\"\n \n A few minutes later, Lt. Chandler issued the triumphant cry. \"Here it is! Dozen tubes. Squeeze tubes. It's the new stuff.\"\n \n Major Winship got down and Capt. Wilkins got up.\n \n \"Marker showed it over here,\" Major Winship said, inching over to the wall. He traced the leak with a metallic finger.\n \n \"How does this stuff work?\" Capt. Lawler asked.\n \n They huddled over the instruction sheet.\n \n \"Let's see. Squeeze the tube until the diaphragm at the nozzle ruptures. Extrude paste into seam. Allow to harden one hour before service.\"\n \n Major Winship said dryly, \"Never mind. I notice it hardens on contact with air.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins lay back on the bunk and stared upward. He said, \"Now that makes a weird kind of sense, doesn't it?\"\n \n \"How do they possibly think—?\"\n \n \"Gentlemen! It doesn't make any difference,\" Lt. Chandler said. \"Some air must already have leaked into this one. It's hard as a rock. A gorilla couldn't extrude it.\"\n \n \"How're the other ones?\" asked Major Winship.\n \n Lt. Chandler turned and made a quick examination. \"Oh, they're all hard, too.\"\n \n \"Who was supposed to check?\" demanded Capt. Wilkins in exasperation.\n \n \"The only way you can check is to extrude it,\" Lt. Chandler said, \"and if it does extrude, you've ruined it.\"\n \n \"That's that,\" Major Winship said. \"There's nothing for it but to yell help.\"\n \n \n\n II\n \n Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler took the land car to Base Gagarin. The Soviet base was situated some ten miles toward sunset at the bottom of a natural fold in the surface. The route was moderately direct to the tip of the gently rolling ridge. At that point, the best pathway angled left and made an S-shaped descent to the basin. It was a one-way trip of approximately thirty exhausting minutes.\n \n Major Winship, with his deficient reefer, remained behind. Capt. Wilkins stayed for company.\n \n \"I want a cigarette in the worst way,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \"So do I, Larry. Shouldn't be more than a couple of hours. Unless something else goes wrong.\"\n \n \"As long as they'll loan us the calking compound,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \"Yeah, yeah,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"Let's eat.\"\n \n \"You got any concentrate? I'm empty.\"\n \n \"I'll load you,\" Capt. Wilkins volunteered wearily.\n \n It was an awkward operation that took several minutes. Capt. Wilkins cursed twice during the operation. \"I'd hate to live in this thing for any period.\"\n \n \"I think these suits are one thing we've got over the Russians,\" Major Winship said. \"I don't see how they can manipulate those bulky pieces of junk around.\"\n \n They ate.\n \n \"Really horrible stuff.\"\n \n \"Nutritious.\"\n \n After the meal, Major Winship said reflectively, \"Now I'd like a cup of hot tea. I'm cooled off.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins raised eyebrows. \"What brought this on?\"\n \n \"I was just thinking.... They really got it made, Larry. They've got better than three thousand square feet in the main dome and better than twelve hundred square feet in each of the two little ones. And there's only seven of them right now. That's living.\"\n \n \"They've been here six years longer, after all.\"\n \n \"Finogenov had a clay samovar sent up. Lemon and nutmeg, too. Real, by God, fresh lemons for the tea, the last time I was there. His own office is about ten by ten. Think of that. One hundred square feet. And a wooden desk. A wooden desk. And a chair. A wooden chair. Everything big and heavy. Everything. Weight, hell. Fifty pounds more or less—\"\n \n \"They've got the power-plants for it.\"\n \n \"Do you think he did that deliberately?\" Major Winship asked. \"I think he's trying to force us off. I think he hoped for the quake. Gagarin's built to take it, I'll say that. Looks like it, anyhow. You don't suppose they planned this all along? Even if they didn't, they sure got the jump on us again, didn't they? I told you what he told me?\"\n \n \"You told me,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \n\n \n After a moment, Major Winship said bitterly, \"To hell with the Russian engineer.\"\n \n \"If you've got all that power....\"\n \n \"That's the thing. That's the thing that gripes me, know what I mean? It's just insane to send up a heavy wooden desk. That's showing off. Like a little kid.\"\n \n \"Maybe they don't make aluminum desks.\"\n \n \"They've—got—aluminum. Half of everything on the whole planet is aluminum. You know they're just showing off.\"\n \n \"Let me wire you up,\" Capt. Wilkins said. \"We ought to report.\"\n \n \"That's going to take awhile.\"\n \n \"It's something to do while we wait.\"\n \n \"I guess we ought to.\" Major Winship came down from the bunk and sat with his back toward the transmitter. Capt. Wilkins slewed the equipment around until the emergency jacks were accessible. He unearthed the appropriate cable and began unscrewing the exterior plate to the small transmitter-receiver set on Major Winship's back. Eventually, trailing wires, Major Winship was coupled into the network.\n\"Okay?\"\n \n \"Okay,\" Major Winship gestured.\n \n They roused Earth.\n \n \"This is Major Charles Winship, Commanding Officer, Freedom 19, the American moonbase.\"\n \n At this point, Major Winship observed for the first time that he was now on emergency air. He started to ask Capt. Wilkins to change his air bottle, but then he realized his communications were cut off. He reached over and rapped Capt. Wilkins' helmet.\n \n \"This is the Cape. Come in, Major Winship.\"\n \n \"Just a moment.\"\n \n \"Is everything all right?\"\n \n Major Winship was squirming nervously, obviously perturbed.\n \n \"A-Okay,\" he said. \"Just a moment.\"\n \n \"What's wrong?\" came the worried question. In the background, he heard someone say, \"I think there's something wrong.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins peered intently. Major Winship contorted his face in a savage grimace.\n \n Capt. Wilkins raised his eyebrows in alarm. They were face to face through their helmets, close together. Each face appeared monstrously large to the other.\n \n Major Winship made a strangling motion and reached for his throat. One arm tangled a cable and jerked the speaker jack loose. Major Winship could no longer hear the alarmed expressions from the Cape. The effort was not entirely subvocal, since he emitted a little gasping cry in involuntary realism.\n \n This, in the course of some 90 seconds, was transmitted to Earth.\n \n Capt. Wilkins's lips were desperately forming the word \"Leak?\"\n \n Air, Major Winship said silently.\n \n Leak?\n \n Bottle! Bottle! Bottle! It was a frog-like, unvocal expletive.\n \n \n\n \n Comprehension dawned. Capt. Wilkins nodded and started to turn away. Major Winship caught his arm and nodded his head toward the loose jack.\n \n Oh.\n \n Capt. Wilkins nodded and smiled. He reached across and plugged the speaker in again.\n \n \"... Freedom 19! Hello, Freedom 19! Come in!\"\n \n \"We're here,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"All right? Are you all right?\"\n \n \"We're all right. A-Okay.\" Major Winship, mindful of the extent of his potential audience, took a deep breath. \"Earlier this morning, the Soviet Union fired an underground atomic device for the ostensible purpose of investigating the composition of the lunar mass by means of seismic analysis of the resultant shock waves. This was done in spite of American warnings that such a disturbance might release accumulated stresses in the long undisturbed satellite, and was done in the face of vigorous American protests.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins tapped his helmet and gestured for him to swivel around. The turn was uncomfortably tight and complicated by the restraining cables. Capt. Wilkins began replacement of the air bottle.\n \n \"These protests have proved well founded,\" Major Winship continued.\n\"Immediately following the detonation, Freedom 19 was called on to withstand a moderately severe shifting of the Lunar surface. No personnel were injured and there was no equipment damage.\"\n \n Capt. Wilkins tapped his shoulder to indicate the new air bottle was being inserted. Another tap indicated it was seated. Major Winship flicked the appropriate chest button and nodded in appreciation.\n \n \"However,\" he continued, \"we did experience a minor leak in the dome, which is presently being repaired.\"\n \n \"The Soviet Union,\" came the reply, \"has reported the disturbance and has tendered their official apology. You want it?\"\n \n \"It can wait until later. Send it by mail for all I care. Vacuum has destroyed our organic air reconditioner. We have approximately three weeks of emergency air. However, Base Gagarin reports no damage, so that, in the event we exhaust our air, we will be able to obtain the necessary replacement.\"\n \n The wait of a little better than three seconds for the response gave the conversation a tone of deliberation.\n \n A new voice came on. \"We tried to contact you earlier, Major. We will be able to deliver replacements in about ten days.\"\n \n \"I will forward a coded report on the occurrence,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"Let us hear from you again in ... about three hours. Is the leak repaired?\"\n \n \"The leak has not yet been repaired. Over and out.\"\n \n He nodded to Capt. Wilkins and leaned back.\n \n Methodically, Capt. Wilkins set about disconnecting the major from the transmitter.\n \n \"Wow!\" said Major Winship when he was once more in communication. \"For a moment there, I thought....\"\n \n \"What?\" Capt. Wilkins asked with interest.\n \n \"I could see myself asking them to ask the Russians to ask Finogenov to get on the emergency channel to ask you to charge the air bottle. I never felt so ... idiotic is not quite strong enough ... there for a minute in my whole life. I didn't know how much emergency air was left, and I thought, my God, I'll never live this down. All the hams in the world listening, while I try to explain the situation. I could see the nickname being entered in my files: aka. The Airless Idiot. I tell you, that was rough.\"\n \n \n\n III\n \n Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler returned with the calking compound. It occupied the rear section of the land car. Lt. Chandler sat atop it. It was a fifty-five gallon drum.\n \n The airlock to Freedom 19 was open. \"What is that ?\" asked Major Winship, squinting out into the glaring sunlight.\n \n \"That,\" said Capt. Lawler, \"is the calking compound.\"\n \n \"You're kidding,\" said Capt. Wilkins.\n \n \"I am not kidding.\"\n \n Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler came inside. Capt. Wilkins mounted a bunk.\n \n \"Why didn't you just borrow a cupful?\" Major Winship said sarcastically.\n \n \"It's this way,\" Lt. Chandler said. \"They didn't have anything but\n55-gallon drums of it.\"\n \n \"Oh, my,\" said Capt. Wilkins. \"I suppose it's a steel drum. Those things must weigh....\"\n \n \"Actually, I think you guys have got the general wrong,\" Capt. Lawler said. \"He was out, himself, to greet us. I think he was really quite upset by the quake. Probably because his people had misfigured so bad.\"\n \n \"He's too damned suspicious,\" Major Winship said. \"You know and I know why they set that blast off. I tried to tell him. Hell. He looks at me like an emasculated owl and wants to know our ulterior motive in trying to prevent a purely scientific experiment, the results of which will be published in the technical press for the good of everybody. I'll bet!\"\n \n \"About this drum,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \"Well, like I said, it's this way,\" Lt. Chandler resumed. \"I told him we needed about a pint. Maybe a quart. But this stuff you have to mix up. He only had these drums. There's two parts to it, and you have to combine them in just the right proportion. He told me to take a little scale—\"\n \n \"A little scale?\" asked Capt. Wilkins, rolling his eyes at the dome.\n \n \"That's what I told him. We don't have any little scale.\"\n \n \"Yeah,\" said Captain Lawler, \"and he looked at us with that mute, surprised look, like everybody, everywhere has dozens of little scales.\"\n \n \"Well, anyway,\" Lt. Chandler continued, \"he told us just to mix up the whole fifty-five gallon drum. There's a little bucket of stuff that goes in, and it's measured just right. We can throw away what we don't need.\"\n \n \"Somehow, that sounds like him,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"He had five or six of them.\"\n \n \"Jesus!\" said Capt. Wilkins. \"That must be three thousand pounds of calking compound. Those people are insane.\"\n \n \"The question is,\" Capt. Lawler said, \"'How are we going to mix it?' It's supposed to be mixed thoroughly.\"\n \n They thought over the problem for a while.\n \n \"That will be a man-sized job,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"Let's see, Charlie. Maybe not too bad,\" said Capt. Wilkins. \"If I took the compressor motor, we could make up a shaft and ... let's see ... if we could....\"\n \n \n\n \n It took the better part of an hour to rig up the electric mixer.\n \n Capt. Wilkins was profusely congratulated.\n \n \"Now,\" Major Winship said, \"we can either bring the drum inside or take the mixer out there.\"\n \n \"We're going to have to bring the drum in,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \"Well,\" said Capt. Lawler, \"that will make it nice and cozy.\"\n \n It took the four of them to roll the drum inside, rocking it back and forth through the airlock. At that time, it was apparent the table was interposing itself.\n \n Lt. Chandler tried to dismantle the table. \"Damn these suits,\" he said.\n \n \"You've got it stuck between the bunk post.\"\n \n \"I know that.\"\n \n \"I don't think this is the way to do it,\" Major Winship said. \"Let's back the drum out.\"\n \n Reluctantly, they backed the drum out and deposited it. With the aid of Capt. Lawler, Lt. Chandler got the table unstuck. They passed it over to Major Winship, who handed it out to Capt. Wilkins. Captain Wilkins carried it around the drum of calking compound and set it down. It rested uneasily on the uneven surface.\n \n \"Now, let's go,\" said Major Winship.\n \n Eventually, they accomplished the moving. They wedged the drum between the main air-supply tank and the transmitter. They were all perspiring.\n\"It's not the weight, it's the mass,\" said Capt. Wilkins brightly.\n \n \"The hell it isn't the weight,\" said Lt. Chandler. \"That's heavy.\"\n \n \"With my reefer out,\" said Major Winship, \"I'm the one it's rough on.\" He shook perspiration out of his eyes. \"They should figure a way to get a mop in here, or a towel, or a sponge, or something. I'll bet you've forgotten how much sweat stings in the eyes.\"\n \n \"It's the salt.\"\n \n \"Speaking of salt. I wish I had some salt tablets,\" Major Winship said.\n\"I've never sweat so much since basic.\"\n \n \"Want to bet Finogenov hasn't got a bushel of them?\"\n \n \"No!\" Major Winship snapped.\n \n \n\n \n With the drum of calking compound inside, both Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler retreated to the bunks. Capt. Wilkins maneuvered the mixing attachment. \"I feel crowded,\" he said.\n \n \"Cozy's the word.\"\n \n \"Watch it! Watch it! You almost hit me in the face plate with that!\"\n \n \"Sorry.\"\n \n At length the mixer was in operation in the drum.\n \n \"Works perfectly,\" said Capt. Wilkins proudly.\n \n \"Now what, Skip? The instructions aren't in English.\"\n \n \"You're supposed to dump the bucket of stuff in. Then clean the area thoroughly around the leak.\"\n \n \"With what?\" asked Major Winship.\n \n \"Sandpaper, I guess.\"\n \n \"With sandpaper?\" Major Winship said, emptying the bucket of fluid into the drum. \"We don't have any sandpaper.\"\n \n \"It's been a long day,\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n \"Mix it thoroughly,\" Lt. Chandler mused. \"I guess that means let it mix for about ten minutes or so. Then you apply it. It sets for service in just a little bit, Finogenov said. An hour or so, maybe.\"\n \n \"I hope this doesn't set on exposure to air.\"\n \n \"No,\" Capt. Lawler said. \"It sets by some kind of chemical action. General Finogenov wasn't sure of the English name for it. Some kind of plastic.\"\n \n \"Let's come back to how we're going to clean around the leak,\" Major Winship said.\n \n \"Say, I—\" interrupted Capt. Wilkins. There was a trace of concern in his voice. \"This is a hell of a time for this to occur to me. I just wasn't thinking, before. You don't suppose it's a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin, do you? \"\n \n \"Larry,\" said Major Winship, \"I wouldn't know a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin from—\"\n \n \"Hey!\" exclaimed Capt. Wilkins. \"The mixer's stopped.\" He bent forward and touched the drum. He jerked back. \"Ye Gods! that's hot! And it's harder than a rock! It is an epoxy! Let's get out of here.\"\n \n \"Huh?\"\n \n \"Out! Out!\"\n \n Major Winship, Lt. Chandler, and Capt. Lawler, recognizing the sense of urgency, simultaneously glanced at the drum. It was glowing cherry red.\n \n \"Let's go!\" Capt. Wilkins said.\n \n He and the Major reached the airlock at the same time and became temporarily engaged with each other. Movement was somewhat ungainly in the space suits under the best of conditions, and now, with the necessity for speed, was doubly so. The other two crashed into them from behind, and they spewed forth from the dome in a tangle of arms and legs.\n \n At the table, they separated, two going to the left, two to the right. The table remained untouched.\n \n When they halted, Capt. Wilkins said, \"Get to one side, it may go off like shrapnel.\" They obeyed.\n \n \"What—what—what?\" Capt. Lawler stuttered.\n \n They were still separated, two on one side of the airlock, two on the other.\n \n \"I'm going to try to look,\" Capt. Wilkins said. \"Let me go.\" He lumbered directly away from the dome for a distance of about fifteen feet, then turned and positioned himself, some five feet behind the table, on a line of sight with the airlock.\n \n \"I can see it,\" he said. \"It's getting redder. It's ... it's ... melting, yes. Melting down at the bottom a little. Now it's falling over to one side and laying on the air tank. The air tank is getting red, too. I'm afraid ... it's weakening it.... Redder. Oh, oh.\"\n \n \"What?\" said Capt. Lawler.\n \n \"Watch out! There. There! \" Capt. Wilkins leaped from his position. He was still floating toward the ground when there was an incredibly bright flare from inside the dome, and a great, silent tongue of flame lashed through the airlock and rolled across the lunar surface. The table was sent tumbling. The flame was gone almost instantly.\n \n \n\n \n \"There went the air,\" Capt. Lawler commented.\n \n \"We got T-Trouble,\" said Lt. Chandler.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "ba9528a78921460085d46c72bc5d94ed", "response_text": "On the surface of the moon, the American base (Freedom 19) is headed by Major Winship, with his three men, Captain Wilkins, Captain Lawler, and Lieutenant Chandler. The Soviets of Base Garagin are conducting a seismic test to learn more about the depths of the moon. The Americans protested it, as their base is not as strongly built, but the Russians went ahead anyway. With a language barrier and poor communication, the Americans don’t know when they are going to perform the test, so they stand outside in their suits waiting. After a few hours, a moonquake occurs, rippling through the surface. The quake caused a leak in their base, which Winship tries and fails to fix with a marker and a plastic sheet. He complains that the Russians did this on purpose, to try and force them off the moon, but they have three weeks of emergency air. They can try and fix it. \nThey are unable to use the transmission since there is no air in the base. Winship orders his men to find the caulking solution, but it has hardened and dried out. He orders Lawler and Chandler to make the 60-minute-round-trip journey to Base Garagin to ask for help. Though Soviet General Finogenov denies it, Winship still wonders if this was intentional. Wilkins and Winship share a meal of gross nutrition tablets. \nWilkins, the resident tech, hooks Winship up to the radio within his suit, so he can speak into the radio. With all the complicated wiring, Winship’s air supply is cut off, and he motions to Wilkins to fix it. Earth is on the line, but he tries to not make his problem known. After Wilkins fixes it, Winship informs them of their difficulties and is told that a replacement could arrive in 10 days and that the Russians formally apologized. \nChandler and Lawler arrive with a 55-gallon barrel of caulking agent, along with another compound that must be mixed in. Displeased by the Russian’s excessiveness, the team figures out a way to successfully mix it. Wilkins creates an electric mixer, while the rest move the barrel inside the dome with great difficulty. They mix the barrel and quickly realize that it is a chemical epoxy, one that reacts to temperature. The heat of the mixer and the dome causes the epoxy to heat up drastically. The men escape to the airlock and watch as the barrel explodes, the fire it causes using up all their remaining oxygen. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2a5de3150ff94f21a84049f1efcb0fda", "response_text": "An American man named Major Winship learns that there will be an underground blast the following day. He calls Base Gagrin, the Soviet Union’s dome, to request that they relay the exact timing of the explosion. The person who answers cannot speak English, so Winship hangs up. Winship and his three crew members, Lawler, Wilkins, and Chandler, have no way of knowing when the explosion will be over because they are on the moon. Winship’s suit stops working, and his body starts to overheat. Although he knows it’s a risk, he decides to leave the safety of the dome so that he can cool down. He can’t stand the excessive heat and thinks that the explosion has already occurred.\n\nWhen Winship immerses himself in the moon’s environment, he successfully cools down. Within seconds, however, he feels the explosion. The men hear several minutes of static on their communication devices. They realize that their capsule has a dome and is losing pressure. Winship tries to cover the hole with a plastic sheet, but it doesn’t work. He reenters the dome and speaks to the Soviets on the phone. Their leader lets him know that they suffered zero damage and suggests that it’s because their dome is stronger and superior to the Americans’. Winship accuses them of purposefully failing to communicate, and the Soviet denies it. The men attempt to use some calk to fix the hole, but it is useless because it has already been exposed to air. \n\nAlthough the Americans hate to rely on the Soviets for any type of help, the crew has no choice at this point. Lawler and Chandler take the land car to the Soviet base to get supplies to patch the hole. Winship cannot travel because of his busted suit, and Wilkins stays behind with him. They share a meal and complain about how the Soviets have a much nicer dome than they do, and their leader has a real wooden desk, among other nicer amenities. Some time later, Winship calls Earth. He tells the Americans on the ground about the leak in their dome. The man on the other end tells Winship that the Soviets have apologized for the incident, but Winship still isn’t convinced of their sincerity. \n\nLawler and Chandler return with a 55-gallon drum of the calking agent, and this shocks Wilkins and Winship. They need only a very small amount, and this massive drum is difficult to carry and maneuver. Again, Winship wonders if the Soviets are playing tricks with the Americans. The team uses an electric mixer to prepare the calk, but the mixture gets incredibly hot and starts turning bright red. Wilkins realizes that the compound is an epoxy, and the men need to exit the dome immediately. He yells at everyone to evacuate. The Americans are very worried that the drum of calk is going to blow up like a bomb. Moments later, it does. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3c517552d0524beea53ff661423a4360", "response_text": "The story starts with four Americans in spacesuits on the moon waiting outside of their dome as the Russians conduct a seismic test involving some explosions. Pinov is the Russian on the emergency line, but he does not speak English, so the Americans don't know when it will be safe to enter the dome again. It was hot outside the dome, and the suits' cooling systems could only do so much. Major Winship got tired of waiting and wanted to cool off, so he entered the dome, but as soon as he did so he was thrown off his feet from an explosion. Soon after, some static blocked communications for a minute or two, but then the men had a new problem: the dome was losing pressure, so they were losing air. After their best attempt at patching the hole, they got in touch with the Russians who had not sustained any damage. Major Winship had no patience for General Finogenov, even though the Russian was seemingly embarrassed that there had been a quake caused by his test, as he had promised therew ould not be. Lt. Chandler found the squeeze tubes that they could use to patch the rupture, but they were no longer any good, so Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler headed to Base Gagarin in their land car to ask to borrow calking compound from the Russians.  Major Winship and Capt. Wilkins figured they may as well report back to Earth, but once their communications connect, Major Winship realized he is on emergency air and tries to get help from Capt. Wilkins, but those on Earth heard Winship lose air and gasp. Wilkins caught on just in time, and updated those on Earth as they swaped out their oxygen supplies in their suits. Earth requested a report in three hours, confirming that the dome's leak hadn't been repaired, and Winship was relieved the Soviet didn't have to step in to help with his air issue. When the others returned with the fifty-five gallon drum of calking compound, they marveled at how much the Soviets had on hand, and then moved to make an electric mixer to prepare the compound. They tried to move the drum inside to mix it, but there wasn't room, and they tried to move it back out, so all of the men were sweating again. As they discussed how best to proceed in patching the dome, it occured to Wilkins that it could be a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin, and just then they realized that the epoxy had become rock-solid and hot. Wilkins threw out orders to try to protect the men from the impending explosion, but he watched the drum of compound melt, and eventually the air tank started to heat up too. A quick burst of flame flashed inside the dome, leaving the men stranded without air at the end of the story. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "f7f2d3e848ad426a94701e5cfa068f11", "response_text": "Major Winship and his crew stationed at the American moonbase Freedom 19 await a subterranean atomic explosion resulting from a test conducted by their Russian counterparts at Base Gagarin. According to the Russians, the test will help them determine the composition of the moon by analyzing the resultant seismic activity. However, Major Winship suspects the Russians, led by General Finogenov, are conducting the tests in order to purposefully sabotage American efforts to fortify their moon presence. They struggle to communicate with the Russian base as they await word on the status of their test, and when Major Winship goes back inside the dome to call them again, he is suddenly knocked over by movements of the moon's surface, signifying completion of the test. After the quakes settle, the crew discovers a leak in the protective dome, which causes air to slowly seep out. Luckily, they have an emergency air supply to last three weeks, but they lose a significant amount of calking that could be used to repair the leak. When a plastic sheet fails to patch the damage, Lt. Les Chandler searches for squeeze tubes that can ostensibly repair it. However, he discovers that the paste inside requires air in order to harden and some of the tubes have hardened already. Captain Skip Lawler accompanies Lt. Chandler to Base Gagarin in order to ask for calking that might help repair the patch. In their absence, Major Winship bemoans to Captain Larry Wilkins the luxury in which the Russians live on Base Gagarin compared to their discomfort in the cramped quarters of Freedom 19. He continues to muse about his theory that General Finogenov intentionally caused the explosion to harm their base and cause them to vacate the moon. As they await Lawler and Chandler's return, Capt. Wilkins calls Earth on the radio transmitter so that Winship can report the test explosion and the resulting damage. While he talks, he suddenly runs out of his emergency supply of air, and Wilkins refills it for him. Earth promises to restore their air supply in ten days. When Lawler and Chandler return with the calking compound, the crew spends a good amount of time engineering a large, mechanical mixer since the compound comes in a massive, heavy barrel and must be mixed together in order to use it properly. As Captain Wilkins begins mixing the compound, he suddenly realizes that it is a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin. The resin hardens, and the crew rushes out of the dome just before it melts, tips over the barrel, and ignites the air tank next to it, causing a massive explosion. Now the crew is left without any supply of air, and their only hope is an emergency supply still ten days from arriving."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the relationship between the Soviets and the Americans.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "ba9528a78921460085d46c72bc5d94ed", "response_text": "As can be seen from the beginning, Base Gagarin and the small group of Americans have a slightly contentious relationship. Even the title of the story, The Winning of the Moon, emphasizes the undercurrent of war and competition that informs the way they interact with each other. \nThe story begins with potentially purposeful miscommunication between the Russians and the Americans. The Soviet base is running an underground seismic wave test, the likes of which could release after-shocks and tremors. Such a quake could damage the American dome, meager in comparison with Base Gagarin. The Soviets put Pinov on the line, who only speaks Russian. Without the ability to communicate, the Americans were stuck outside on the moon for hours, waiting to see if the seismic eruption could be seen or felt. Feeling like idiots, one goes inside, just as an aftershock causes a leak in their dome. They instantly blame the Russians, especially since the Americans protested such a test. \nThis series of unfortunate events continues as the Americans quickly realize that their supplies are not able to fix the leak. They must ask the Russians for help, even after complaining to their home base about their actions. \nBase Gagarin is huge compared to the American dome. General Finogenov even has a wooden desk in his office, along with other earthly amenities that the Americans have been deprived of. The Russians have been on the moon for six years longer than the Americans, which could explain their extensive supplies. \nThey give the Americans a 55-gallon mixture to fix the leak, however, the language barrier prevents them from realizing what kind of epoxy it is. This miscommunication leads to the barrel exploding and further destroying the American dome. It’s fair to say that it’s not smooth sailing on the moon. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2a5de3150ff94f21a84049f1efcb0fda", "response_text": "When Winship calls the Soviets to discuss the exact timing for the underground explosion, Pinov, the person who answers the call, cannot speak English. This makes Winship frustrated. When Captain Wilkins suggests to Captain Winship that he say the word “help” into the phone so that the Soviets will know it’s serious, Winship says he would rather die. This suggests that there’s a power dynamic between the two nations, and Winship, as an American, does not want to appear weak in front of the Soviets. Winship wants to keep his American crew safe, but his pride is equally important at this point. As a result of Winship’s refusal to say the word “help,” he ends up stepping outside of the dome before the explosion occurs. \n\nLater, Winship called General Finogenov, the Soviet leader, to report some damage to their dome. The General responds by explaining that the Soviets have a stronger dome, and Winship accuses Finogenov of deliberately cutting the ties of communication to keep the Americans guessing and jeopardize their safety. Finogenov profusely denies Winship’s claim and offers to help in any way possible. \n\nWinship is highly suspicious of the Soviets, and especially suspicious of Finogenov’s incredible working space in the dome. He has a wooden desk, a chair, and one hundred square feet to move around in. It appears to Winshp that Finogenov cares only about his own comfort and not about the safety of his American counterparts. When Winship has to call the Americans on Earth to let them know about the air leak, he is concerned that the Soviets are listening in on his call. He and his men do not want to wait 10 days for the other Americans to send them supplies to fix the leak, so their only real choice is to rely on the kindness of the Soviets. This makes Winship sick to his stomach, as he loathes asking them for help and potentially looking weak. \n\nIt appears that Winship’s suspicions are merited when the Soviets send over a 55-gallon drum of calk to fix a very small leak in the Americans’ dome, and they do not give the Americans proper instructions for how to prepare and use the chemicals. The crew uses an electric mixer to prepare the calk, and the epoxy mixture turns bright red and blows up. \n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3c517552d0524beea53ff661423a4360", "response_text": "There are seven Soviets and four Americans on the moon in this story, and there is definitely an issue of a balance of power. The Soviets have been there for six years longer than the Americans have, and have way more space set up for their equipment and living. The Americans operate out of one 500 square foot dome, and the Soviets have a 3000 square foot dome and two smaller ones (that are each still larger than the American one). The Americans think they have better space suits, that are at least less bulky, but don't have the amenities like the nice furniture or the fresh plants. Things are very tense over the radio: Major Winship seems constantly angry while communicating with the Soviets, and the Russians act polite and apologetic when things go terribly wrong, even if it's unclear how much happened on purpose. On the day of the seismic test, the one Soviet who does not speak English is the one who is in charge of emergency communication, which Winship thinks was on purpose. The Soviets have a lot more electric power, and say that their experiments are all for purely scientific purposes, even if the Americans think the Soviets are trying to drive them out. The Americans have to rely on the Soviets for emergency supplies; they hope not to have to ask for air, but do retrieve a drum of calking compound to aid in the dome repairs which eventually causes an even larger problem as their air supply is burnt out. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "f7f2d3e848ad426a94701e5cfa068f11", "response_text": "Although the two groups both operate bases on the moon, they live very different lives and struggle to effectively communicate with each other. While one large dome and three smaller ones comprise the Soviet Base Gagarin, the American Freedom 19 base is one cramped dome where the four-person crew lives and works.  The seven-person crew at Base Gagarin live in luxury compared to the American crew and have hot tea, better supplies, and more space to live and work. Major Winship expresses consistent frustration with the inability to communicate with Pinov during the atomic test, and he is deeply suspicious about General Finogenov's motives regarding the test in the first place. Winship does not trust when Finogenov insists the tests are being conducted for purely scientific purposes, and the results of the study will be made available in the technical press. For his part, Finogenov is deeply apologetic when the test causes a leak in Freedom 19 and therefore a drop in air pressure, but Winship still doesn't trust him. He believes it is all part of a Soviet plan to sabotage their mission and expel them from the moon. Winship's misgivings appear to have some truth (or else the whole incident reveals the incompetence of the American crew) when the Soviet base supplies the Americans a large batch of what they believe to be a calking compound in order to repair the air leak. The compound turns out to be a highly explosive material that combusts when it makes contact with the American air tank, thus completely depleting its air supply."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "ba9528a78921460085d46c72bc5d94ed", "response_text": "The Winning of the Moon by Kris Neville takes place on the moon, although exactly what moon is never specified. The moon itself has a fairly uneven surface, especially after the moonquake rips through its bases. \nMost of the story takes place inside of the American base, a mere 500 square feet. It is cramped inside, filled to the brim with equipment, tools, and supplies necessary for the moon. The American men slept on bunks that rose up from the floor. Cables hung from the ceiling and snaked across the walls, bringing energy into the dome using solar power. The base itself is in the shape of a dome with an airlock leading to the outside. \nThe Russian base, Base Gagarin, is incredibly different. They’ve got three buildings that make up the base, the biggest of which is 3,000 square feet. With luxuries like wooden furniture, fresh lemons from Earth, and nutmeg, the Soviet base has everything the Americans lacked. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2a5de3150ff94f21a84049f1efcb0fda", "response_text": "“The Winning of the Moon” takes place on Earth’s moon, where both the Americans and the Soviets have built domes that house crews for years at a time. There is no oxygen on the moon’s surface, so it’s very important that the crew members have strong suits with plenty of emergency air canisters. In this story, the Soviets’ explosion creates a leak in the Americans’ dome, which poses a major problem. The Americans housed in the dome will die if they cannot fix the leak in a few weeks’ time.\n\nThe Americans’ dome is small and cramped. There is a ton of necessary equipment, and not a lot of room to move around for the four crew members. The men sleep in bunk beds. The Soviets’ dome, however, is much nicer and roomier. Their home is called Base Gagarin, and it’s located about 10 miles away from the Americans. It is much sturdier, and as a result, it does not spring a leak after the purposeful detonation is over with. The Soviet General has a real wooden desk in his office and a real wooden chair, and the norm is to use aluminum furniture. The Soviets have lots of space to move around, and they look down upon the Americans for their less luxurious space. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3c517552d0524beea53ff661423a4360", "response_text": "This story takes place on the moon, where the American mission Freedom 19 has established a base. Their neighbors, so to speak, are the Soviet Union. These bases are ten miles apart, which is a thirty-minute trip by land car. The dome that the Americans live and work in is very small, only 500 square feet, but the Soviets have one large dome and two smaller ones which gives them much more space. It is hot on the surface of the moon in the space suits, so the Americans have to be inside the dome to be able to cool off. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "f7f2d3e848ad426a94701e5cfa068f11", "response_text": "The story takes place at Freedom 19, an American moonbase. An airlock leads into a five hundred square foot dome on the surface of the moon filled with various kinds of equipment, a table, an air tank, and radio transmitter. The dome is powered by solar cells affixed to the roof. The compact living space includes bunks attached to the walls six feet above the floor. Ten miles from Freedom 19 rests Base Gagarin, the Russian moonbase situated at the bottom of a fold in the moon's surface. The Americans travel to and from Base Gagarin in a small land car for supply runs and meetings. Compared to the cozy quarters of the American base, the Russian base is large and comfortable with three domes instead of one. The main dome has more than three thousand square feet and the smaller two are twelve hundred square feet each. Finogenev's office is one-hundred square feet with a wooden desk and chair. Major Winship envies the comfort in which the Russians live on their base and mentions the presence of a samovar, which they use to boil and dispense hot tea. Winship also believes the Russians chose their heavy, wooden furniture to taunt the Americans since they have access to vast amounts of aluminum and choose wood construction instead. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the seismic test the Russians conduct?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "ba9528a78921460085d46c72bc5d94ed", "response_text": "After the Russians conduct their seismic test, a moonquake erupts and tears a leak in the American dome. This leak is significant because it is the first of a series of slightly cataclysmic events. As well, it highlights the strained and tense relationship between the Russians and the Americans. \nMajor Winship accused the Russians of deliberately injuring their base, further showing how contentious their relationship is. General Finogenov ardently denies this, however, and says that their base had no damage at all. \nAfter trying and failing to fix the leak with their own supplies, two of the Americans are forced to travel to Base Gagarin and borrow their resin. This ends up backfiring, however, as the epoxy quickly heats up and explodes as they mix the two components together. The explosion further damages the dome and takes away the American’s entire air supply. \nAs well, the seismic testing was greatly discouraged and protested by the Americans. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2a5de3150ff94f21a84049f1efcb0fda", "response_text": "The four man American crew on the moon is warned about the Soviets’ underground atomic device and its planned detonation before the test is completed. The Soviets have planned the explosion in order to learn more about the composition of the moon. The shock waves from the explosion should give them information about the various layers of the moon. The Americans protested the underground explosion because they feared that the device’s detonation would disturb their satellite. Although the Americans call their Soviet counterparts to get information about the exact timing of the explosion, the person who answers the phone cannot speak English, so they are unable to learn the Soviets’ specific plans. Major Winship is outside of the American dome when the device is detonated, which is strictly against protocol. The Americans prove that they were right to fight the Soviets about their plan because the dome they live in gets a leak from the shifting surface of the moon. The Soviet General apologizes for the lack of communication and the damage to the Americans’ dome, but their behavior still reads as suspicious. "}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3c517552d0524beea53ff661423a4360", "response_text": "The Soviet Union had conducted a seismic test on the moon by detonating an underground atomic device, but the Americans had warned the Soviets that they shouldn't go through with the tests because of potential dangers. Even though the Americans asked the Soviets not to run the test, they did anyway, and the resulting tremors ruptured the American dome. Not only was the dome leaking air because of this test, but the Americans had to rely on the Soviets for supplies to try to fix it. This only made matters worse, because the materials the Americans borrowed from the Soviets to repair the dome ended up burning out their entire oxygen supply, leaving them stranded without air at the end of the story. In this way, the seismic test shows both the power the Soviets think they hold over the Americans as well as a chance for the Americans to lose emergency supplies as their situation rapidly falls downhill.  "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "f7f2d3e848ad426a94701e5cfa068f11", "response_text": "The Russians claim to conduct the seismic test in order to analyze the resultant shock waves to help them better understand the composition of the moon where they and the American have established bases. Although they insist their purpose is purely scientific, Major Winship suspects they intended the test to harm Freedom 19. The test triggers a few moonquakes, which ultimately causes a leak to appear in the dome. The resulting loss in air pressure leads the crew of the Freedom 19 to attempt a variety of methods to patch the leak. However, they have subpar materials and tools to work with compared with the plentiful resource at Base Gagarin. Lawler and Chandler make their way to the Russian base in order to procure calking that may seal the leak. They return with the calking compound which turns out to be a highly combustible material, which explodes and eliminates the rest of their air supply."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Major Winship, and what happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "6", "uid": "ba9528a78921460085d46c72bc5d94ed", "response_text": "Major Winship is one of the few Americans who is currently living on base on the surface of the moon. He is in charge as the Commanding Officer of Freedom 19, as he outranks both the Captains and the first Lieutenant. After watching the moonquake shake the surface from inside the base, Major Winship quickly realizes that the quake ripped a hole in the dome itself. He attempts to fix it with a marker, then with a plastic sheet, but both fail. Their caulking compound has hardened and is completely unusable. Winship accuses the Russians of causing the quake and leak on purpose, but the General vehemently denies his claims. They try to call into Earth but realize that without air, there’d be no sound. So, they have to find another way.  \nStuck in his suit until they can restore air to the base, Winship sends Lt. Chandler and Capt. Lawler to ask the Soviets for help. Winship shares a meal with Wilkins, and then the Captain connected to Winship with a series of wires to the radio. This way he’d be able to communicate while in his suit. \nHe suffers a major mistake with the wiring, however, when his air supply is cut off. He motions to Wilkins who saves him, reconnecting the lost cable, and Winship lets those on Earth know what happened. They let him know that they’ve received a formal apology and that they will send a replacement in ten days’ time. \nOnce Chandler and Lawler return, Winship is faced with a new problem: how to mix and activate the 55-gallon fix for the leak. Wilkins creates an electric mixer, and they bring the barrel inside to mix. The barrel becomes red-hot and looks to be on the verge of combustion. The men scramble and get to the airlock. The barrel explodes and the flames use up all the oxygen. Winship is faced with an even greater problem now: how to survive. \n"}, {"worker_id": "1", "uid": "2a5de3150ff94f21a84049f1efcb0fda", "response_text": "Major Winship is the main character in “The Winning of the Moon”, and he faces external and internal conflicts throughout the story. At the beginning of the story, Winship’s spacesuit malfunctions, and the technology that keeps him cool stops working. He begins sweating profusely, and it deeply annoys him. He wants information about the Soviets’ planned explosion, but he cannot learn the timing of the explosion because the person he speaks to at the Soviet base does not speak English. This further frustrates Winship, and he begins to believe that the Soviets are making the Americans’ lives difficult on purpose. He decides to take a risk and exit the dome even though he can’t be totally sure that the device was already detonated. He goes outside to cool himself off, and within moments he feels the ground quaking. When he discovers a leak in the dome, he tries unsuccessfully to patch it up with plastic sheeting. The last thing he wants to do is ask the Soviets for help, so he becomes even more irritated when he learns that the calk the Americans have on hand is busted and will not work to fix the leak.Two of his team members head to the Soviet base to get supplies to fix the leak, but Winship stays behind with his malfunctioning suit. He decides to call Earth to discuss the Soviets’ actions, and while he is on the phone, he realizes that he is using his emergency air supply. He has to motion silently to his colleague, Wilkins, to help him out so that he can breathe. Winship is very frustrated when Lawler and Chandler return to the American base with a 55-gallon drum of calk to fix the small leak, and he once again questions the Soviets’ actions. He has to quickly exit the dome along with the other crew members before the drum explodes after they attempt to ready the concoction for use with an electric mixer. "}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "3c517552d0524beea53ff661423a4360", "response_text": "Major Winship is the commanding officer of the mission Freedom 19, the American base on the moon. He runs communications with the Russians who are also on the moon, and is trying to requet information from Pinov, who does not speak English, at the beginning of the story. He is upset with the Russians and does not like them very much, and he thinks they are deliberately making communication difficult. His reefer isn't working and he's boiling in his suit so he insists on going back into the dome to cool off, when he is knocked over by the quake from a seismic test the Russians are doing. He has a spat on the radio with the Russians and complains about the situation as the Americans try to patch the dome. While Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler head to the base for supplies, he stays behind in the dome, reflecting on how the American space suits are better than those of the Russians, as he yearns to be able to smoke. After the men return with a drum of calking compound, Winship continues discussing his suspicions that the Soviets ran the test to cause damage to the American base on purpose. After they try to mix the drum indoors, he realizes they have to move it back outside, but soon everything goes wrong. The drum heats up, heating up the air tank in turn, and a flame shoots through the dome, burning through the entire American oxygen supply."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "f7f2d3e848ad426a94701e5cfa068f11", "response_text": "Major Winship is the commander of the four-person crew of the Freedom 19. Suspicious and cynical, Winship envies the luxury in which the crew at Base Gagarin lives. His bitterness manifests in his interactions with everyone from the Russian crew; he grows frustrated and impatient when Pinov cannot speak English. He suspects General Finogenov is lying about the purpose of the atomic test and believes he wants to eliminate the American base from the moon entirely. Winship orders his crew through a series of failed repairs using their inferior resources after the atomic test results in an air leak in the Freedom 19 dome. During his call to Earth to report the explosion damage, he thinks he is dying when his emergency air supply runs out, but Wilkins quickly replaces it. Winship's growing frustration reaches its crescendo when Lawler and Chandler return from their supply run, and the five-person crew struggles to maneuver the large container into the small dome and then further struggle to build a makeshift mixer which with to stir the calking compound. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61405", "uid": "24bd0bfd7655417d9dc72f6eec65e559", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "DOWN TO THE WORLDS OF MEN\n \n\n BY ALEXEI PANSHIN\n \n\n The ancient rule was sink or swim—swim in the miasma of a planet without spaceflight, or sink to utter destruction!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n I\n \n The horses and packs were loaded before we went aboard the scoutship. The scout bay is no more than a great oversized airlock with a dozen small ships squatting over their tubes, but it was the last of the Ship that I might ever see, so I took a long final look from the top of the ramp.\n \n There were sixteen of us girls and thirteen boys. We took our places in the seats in the center of the scout. Riggy Allen made a joke that nobody bothered to laugh at, and then we were all silent. I was feeling lost and just beginning to enjoy it when Jimmy Dentremont came over to me. He's red-headed and has a face that makes him look about ten. An intelligent runt like me.\n \n He said what I expected. \"Mia, do you want to go partners if we can get together when we get down?\"\n \n I guess he thought that because we were always matched on study I liked him. Well, I did when I wasn't mad at him, but now I had that crack he'd made about being a snob in mind, so I said, \"Not likely. I want to come back alive.\" It wasn't fair, but it was a good crack and he went back to his place without saying anything.\n \n My name is Mia Havero. I'm fourteen, of course, or I wouldn't be telling this. I'm short, dark and scrawny, though I don't expect that scrawniness to last much longer. Mother is very good looking. In the meantime, I've got brains as a consolation.\n \n After we were all settled, George Fuhonin, the pilot, raised the ramps. We sat there for five minutes while they bled air out of our tube and then we just ... dropped. My stomach turned flips. We didn't have to leave that way, but George thinks it's fun to be a hot pilot.\n \n Thinking it over, I was almost sorry I'd been stinking to Jimmy D. He's the only competition I have my own age. The trouble is, you don't go partners with the competition, do you? Besides, there was still that crack about being a snob.\n \n The planet chosen for our Trial was called Tintera. The last contact the Ship had had with it—and we were the ones who dropped them—was almost 150 years ago. No contact since. That had made the Council debate a little before they dropped us there, but they decided it was all right in the end. It didn't make any practical difference to us kids because they never tell you anything about the place they're going to drop you. All I knew was the name. I wouldn't have known that much if Daddy weren't Chairman of the Council.\n \n I felt like crawling in a corner of the ship and crying, but nobody else was breaking down, so I didn't. I did feel miserable. I cried when I said good-by to Mother and Daddy—a real emotional scene—but that wasn't in public.\n \n \n\n \n It wasn't the chance of not coming back that bothered me really, because I never believed that I wouldn't. The thought that made me unhappy was that I would have to be on a planet for a whole month. Planets make me feel wretched.\n \n The gravity is always wrong, for one thing. Either your arches and calves ache or every time you step you think you're going to trip on a piece of fluff and break your neck. There are vegetables everywhere and little grubby things just looking for you to crawl on. If you can think of anything creepier than that, you've got a real nasty imagination. Worst of all, planets stink. Every single one smells—I've been on enough to know that. A planet is all right for a Mud-eater, but not for me.\n \n We have a place in the Ship like that—the Third Level—but it's only a thousand square miles and any time it gets on your nerves you can go up a level or down a level and be back in civilization.\n \n When we reached Tintera, they started dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. Finally George spotted a clear area and dropped into it. They don't care what order you go in, so Jimmy D. jumped up, grabbed his gear and then led his horse down the ramp. I think he was still smarting from the slap I'd given him.\n \n In a minute we were airborne again. I wondered if I would ever see Jimmy—if he would get back alive.\n \n It's no game we play. When we turn fourteen, they drop us on the nearest colonized planet and come back one month later. That may sound like fun to you, but a lot of us never come back alive.\n \n Don't think I was helpless. I'm hell on wheels. They don't let us grow for fourteen years and then kick us out to die. They prepare us. They do figure, though, that if you can't keep yourself alive by the time you're fourteen, you're too stupid, foolish or unlucky to be any use to the Ship. There's sense behind it. It means that everybody on the Ship is a person who can take care of himself if he has to. Daddy says that something has to be done in a closed society to keep the population from decaying mentally and physically, and this is it. And it helps to keep the population steady.\n \n I began to check my gear out—sonic pistol, pickup signal so I could be found at the end of the month, saddle and cinches, food and clothes. Venie Morlock has got a crush on Jimmy D., and when she saw me start getting ready to go, she began to check her gear, too. At our next landing, I grabbed Ninc's reins and cut Venie out smoothly. It didn't have anything to do with Jimmy. I just couldn't stand to put off the bad moment any longer.\n \n The ship lifted impersonally away from Ninc and me like a rising bird, and in just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the half-overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.\n \n \n\n II\n \n The first night was hell, I guess because I'm not used to having the lights out. That's when you really start to feel lonely, being alone in the dark. When the sun disappears, somehow you wonder in your stomach if it's really going to come back. But I lived through it—one day in thirty gone.\n \n I rode in a spiral search pattern during the next two days. I had three things in mind—stay alive, find people and find some of the others. The first was automatic. The second was to find out if there was a slot I could fit into for a month. If not, I would have to find a place to camp out, as nasty as that would be. The third was to join forces, though not with that meatball Jimmy D.\n \n No, he isn't really a meatball. The trouble is that I don't take nothing from nobody, especially him, and he doesn't take nothing from nobody, especially me. So we do a lot of fighting.\n \n I had a good month for Trial. My birthday is in November—too close to Year End Holiday for my taste, but this year it was all right. It was spring on Tintera, but it was December in the Ship, and after we got back we had five days of Holiday to celebrate. It gave me something to look forward to.\n \n In two days of riding, I ran onto nothing but a few odd-looking animals. I shot one small one and ate it. It turned out to taste pretty good, though not as good as a slice from Hambone No. 4, to my mind the best meat vat on the Ship. I've eaten things so gruey-looking that I wondered that anybody had the guts to try them in the first place and they've turned out to taste good. And I've seen things that looked good that I couldn't keep on my stomach. So I guess I was lucky.\n \n On the third day, I found the road. I brought Ninc down off the hillside, losing sight of the road in the trees, and then reaching it in the level below. It was narrow and made of sand spread over a hard base. Out of the marks in the sand, I could pick out the tracks of horses and both narrow and wide wheels. Other tracks I couldn't identify.\n \n One of the smartest moves in history was to include horses when they dropped the colonies. I say \"they\" because, while we did the actual dropping, the idea originated with the whole evac plan back on Earth. Considering how short a time it was in which the colonies were established, there was not time to set up industry, so they had to have draft animals.\n \n The first of the Great Ships was finished in 2025. One of the eight, as well as the two that were being built then, went up with everything else in the Solar System in 2041. In that sixteen years 112 colonies were planted. I don't know how many of those planets had animals that could have been substituted but, even if they had, they would have had to be domesticated from scratch. That would have been stupid. I'll bet that half the colonies would have failed if they hadn't had horses.\n \n \n\n \n We'd come in from the west over the ocean, so I traveled east on the road. That much water makes me nervous, and roads have to go somewhere.\n \n I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, ducking an overhanging branch, and pulled Ninc to a stop. There were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive.\n \n They were green and grotesque. They had squat bodies, long limbs and knobby bulges at their joints. They had square, flat animal masks for faces. But they walked on their hind legs and they had paws that were almost hands, and that was enough to make them seem almost human. They made a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along.\n \n I started Ninc up again and moved slowly to catch up with them. All the men on horseback had guns in saddle boots. They looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.\n \n He was a middle-aged man, maybe as old as my Daddy. He was large and he had a hard face. Normal enough, but hard. He pulled to a halt when we reached each other, but I kept going. He had to come around and follow me. I believe in judging a person by his face. A man can't help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe that he is. This one looked mean. That was why I kept riding.\n \n He said, \"What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head? There be escaped Losels in these woods.\"\n \n I told you I hadn't finished filling out yet, but I hadn't thought it was that bad. I wasn't ready to make a fight over the point, though. Generally, I can't keep my bloody mouth shut, but now I didn't say anything. It seemed smart.\n \n \"Where be you from?\" he asked.\n \n I pointed to the road behind us.\n \n \"And where be you going?\"\n \n I pointed ahead. No other way to go.\n \n He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes. Even on Mother and Daddy, who should know better.\n \n We were coming up on the others now, and the man said, \"Maybe you'd better ride on from here with us. For protection.\"\n \n He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. I wondered whether he were just an oddball or whether everybody here spoke the same way. I'd never heard International English spoken any way but one, even on the planet Daddy made me visit with him.\n \n One of the other outriders came easing by then. I suppose they'd been watching us all the while. He called to the hard man.\n \n \"He be awfully small, Horst. I doubt me a Losel'd even notice him at all. We mought as well throw him back again.\"\n \n The rider looked at me. When I didn't dissolve in terror as he expected, he shrugged and one of the other men laughed.\n \n The hard man said to the others, \"This boy will be riding along with us to Forton for protection.\"\n \n I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving along and one looked back at me with dull, expressionless golden eyes. I felt uncomfortable.\n \n I said, \"I don't think so.\"\n \n What the man did then surprised me. He said, \"I do think so,\" and reached for the rifle in his saddle boot.\n \n I whipped my sonic pistol out so fast that he was caught leaning over with the rifle half out. His jaw dropped. He knew what I held and he didn't want to be fried.\n \n I said, \"Ease your rifles out and drop them gently to the ground.\"\n \n They did, watching me all the while with wary expressions.\n \n When all the rifles were on the ground, I said, \"All right, let's go.\"\n \n They didn't want to move. They didn't want to leave the rifles. I could see that. Horst didn't say anything. He just watched me with narrowed eyes. But one of the others held up a hand and in wheedling tones said, \"Look here, kid....\"\n \n \"Shut up,\" I said, in as mean a voice as I could muster, and he did. It surprised me. I didn't think I sounded that mean. I decided he just didn't trust the crazy kid not to shoot.\n \n After twenty minutes of easy riding for us and hard walking for the creatures, I said, \"If you want your rifles, you can go back and get them now.\" I dug my heels into Ninc's sides and rode on. At the next bend I looked back and saw four of them holding their packhorses and the creatures still while one beat a dust-raising retreat down the road.\n \n I put this episode in the \"file and hold for analysis\" section in my mind and rode on, feeling good. I think I even giggled once. Sometimes I even convince myself that I'm hell on wheels.\n \n \n\n III\n \n When I was nine, my Daddy gave me a painted wooden doll that my great-grandmother brought from Earth. The thing is that inside it, nestled one in another, are eleven more dolls, each one smaller than the last. I like to watch people when they open it for the first time.\n \n My face must have been like that as I rode along the road.\n \n The country leveled into a great rolling valley and the trees gave way to great farms and fields. In the fields, working, were some of the green creatures, which surprised me since the ones I'd seen before hadn't seemed smart enough to count to one, let alone do any work.\n \n But it relieved me. I thought they might have been eating them or something.\n \n I passed two crossroads and started to meet more people, but nobody questioned me. I met people on horseback, and twice I met trucks moving silently past. And I overtook a wagon driven by the oldest man I've seen in my life. He waved to me, and I waved back.\n \n Near the end of the afternoon I came to the town, and there I received a jolt that sickened me.\n \n By the time I came out on the other side, I was sick. My hands were cold and sweaty and my head was spinning, and I wanted to kick Ninc to a gallop.\n \n I rode slowly in, looking all around, missing nothing. The town was all stone, wood and brick. Out of date. Out of time, really. There were no machines more complicated than the trucks I'd seen earlier. At the edge of town, I passed a newspaper office with a headline pasted in the window—INVASION! I remember that. I wondered about it.\n \n But I looked most closely at the people. In all that town, I didn't see one girl over ten years old and no grown-up women at all. There were little kids, there were boys and there were men, but no girls. All the boys and men wore pants, and so did I, which must have been why Horst and his buddies assumed I was a boy. It wasn't flattering; but I decided I'd not tell anybody different until I found what made the clocks tick on this planet.\n \n But that wasn't what bothered me. It was the kids. My God! They swarmed. I saw a family come out of a house—a father and four children. It was the most foul thing I've ever seen. It struck me then—these people were Free Birthers! I felt a wave of nausea and I closed my eyes until it passed.\n \n \n\n \n The first thing you learn in school is that if it weren't for idiot and criminal people like these, Earth would never have been destroyed. The evacuation would never have had to take place, and eight billion people wouldn't have died. There wouldn't have been eight billion people. But, no. They bred and they spread and they devoured everything in their path like a cancer. They gobbled up all the resources that Earth had and crowded and shoved one another until the final war came.\n \n I am lucky. My great-great-grandparents were among those who had enough foresight to see what was coming. If it hadn't been for them and some others like them, there wouldn't be any humans left anywhere. And I wouldn't be here. That may not scare you, but it scares me.\n \n What happened before, when people didn't use their heads and wound up blowing the Solar System apart, is something nobody should forget. The older people don't let us forget. But these people had, and that the Council should know.\n \n For the first time since I landed on Tintera, I felt really frightened. There was too much going on that I didn't understand. I felt a blind urge to get away, and when I reached the edge of town, I whomped Ninc a good one and gave him his head.\n \n I let him run for almost a mile before I pulled him down to a walk again. I couldn't help wishing for Jimmy D. Whatever else he is, he's smart and brains I needed.\n \n How do you find out what's going on? Eavesdrop? That's a lousy method. For one thing, people can't be depended on to talk about the things you want to hear. For another, you're likely to get caught. Ask somebody? Who? Make the mistake of bracing a fellow like Horst and you might wind up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to find a library, but that might be a job.\n \n I'd had two bad shocks on this day, but they weren't the last. In the late afternoon, when the sun was starting to sink and a cool wind was starting to ripple the tree leaves, I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. Back again? I wondered what had gone wrong.\n \n I reached down into my saddlebag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a familiar movement calculated to drop the stomach out of everybody aboard. George Fuhonin's style. I triggered the signal, my heart turning flips all the while. I didn't know why he was back, but I wasn't really sorry.\n \n The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path almost over my head, going in the same direction. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew this wasn't hot piloting at all, just plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn't one of ours. Not too different, but not ours.\n \n \n\n \n One more enigma. Where was it from? Not here. Even if you know how, and we wouldn't tell these Mud-eaters how, a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.\n \n \n\n \n I felt defeated and tired. Not much farther along the road, I came to a campsite with two wagons pulled in for the night, and I couldn't help but pull in myself. The campsite was large and had two permanent buildings on it. One was a well enclosure and the other was little more than a high-walled pen. It didn't even have a roof.\n \n I set up camp and ate my dinner. In the wagon closest to me were a man, his wife and their three children. The kids were running around and playing, and one of them ran close to the high-walled pen. His father came and pulled him away.\n \n The kids weren't to blame for their parents, but when one of them said hello to me, I didn't even answer. I know how lousy I would feel if I had two or three brothers and sisters, but it didn't strike me until that moment that it wouldn't even seem out of the ordinary to these kids. Isn't that horrible?\n \n About the time I finished eating, and before it grew dark, the old man I had seen earlier in the day drove his wagon in. He fascinated me. He had white hair, something I had read about in stories but had never seen before.\n \n When nightfall came, they started a large fire. Everybody gathered around. There was singing for awhile, and then the father of the children tried to pack them off to bed. But they weren't ready to go, so the old man started telling them a story. In the old man's odd accent, and sitting there in the campfire light surrounded by darkness, it seemed just right.\n \n It was about an old witch named Baba Yaga who lived in the forest in a house that stood on chicken legs. She was the nasty stepmother of a nice little girl, and to get rid of the kid, she sent her on a phony errand into the deep dark woods at nightfall. I could appreciate the poor girl's position. All the little girl had to help her were the handkerchief, the comb and the pearl that she had inherited from her dear dead mother. But, as it turned out, they were just enough to defeat nasty old Baba Yaga and bring the girl safely home.\n \n I wished for the same for myself.\n \n The old man had just finished and they were starting to drag the kids off to bed when there was a commotion on the road at the edge of the camp. I looked but my eyes were adjusted to the light of the fire and I couldn't see far into the dark.\n \n A voice there said, \"I'll be damned if I'll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here hours ago. It be your fault we're not.\"\n \n Horst growled a retort. I decided that it was time for me to leave the campfire. I got up and eased away as Horst and his men came up to the fire, and cut back to where Ninc was parked. I grabbed up my blankets and mattress and started to roll them up. I had a pretty good idea now what they used the high-walled pen for.\n \n I should have known that they would have to pen the animals up for the night. I should have used my head. I hadn't and now it was time to take leave.\n \n I never got the chance.\n \n \n\n \n I was just heaving the saddle up on Ninc when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I was swung around.\n \n \"Well, well. Horst, look who we have here,\" he called. It was the one who'd made the joke about me being beneath the notice of a Losel. He was alone with me now, but with that call the others would be up fast.\n \n I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he went down. He started to get up again, so I dropped the saddle on him and reached inside my jacket for my gun. Somebody grabbed me then from behind and pinned my arms to my side.\n \n I opened my mouth to scream—I have a good scream—but a rough smelly hand clamped down over it before I had a chance to get more than a lungful of air. I bit down hard—5000 lbs. psi, I'm told—but he didn't let me go. I started to kick, but Horst jerked me off my feet and dragged me off.\n \n When we were behind the pen and out of earshot of the fire, he stopped dragging me and dropped me in a heap. \"Make any noise,\" he said, \"and I'll hurt you.\"\n \n That was a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he'd threatened to break my arm or my head. It left him a latitude of things to do if he pleased. He examined his hand. There was enough moonlight for that. \"I ought to club you anyway,\" he said.\n \n The one I'd dropped the saddle on came up then. The others were putting the animals in the pen. He started to kick me, but Horst stopped him.\n \n \"No,\" he said. \"Look through the kid's gear, bring the horse and what we can use.\"\n \n The other one didn't move. \"Get going, Jack,\" Horst said in a menacing tone and they stood toe to toe for a long moment before Jack finally backed down. It seemed to me that Horst wasn't so much objecting to me being kicked, but was rather establishing who did the kicking in his bunch.\n \n But I wasn't done yet. I was scared, but I still had the pistol under my jacket.\n \n Horst turned back to me and I said, \"You can't do this and get away with it.\"\n \n He said, \"Look, boy. You may not know it, but you be in a lot of trouble. So don't give me a hard time.\"\n \n He still thought I was a boy. It was not time to correct him, but I didn't like to see the point go unchallenged. It was unflattering.\n \n \"The courts won't let you get away with this,\" I said. I'd passed a courthouse in the town with a carved motto over the doors: EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW or TRUTH OUR SHIELD AND JUSTICE OUR SWORD or something stuffy like that.\n \n He laughed, not a phony, villian-type laugh, but a real laugh, so I knew I'd goofed.\n \n \"Boy, boy. Don't talk about the courts. I be doing you a favor. I be taking what I can use of your gear, but I be letting you go. You go to court and they'll take everything and lock you up besides. I be leaving you your freedom.\"\n \n \"Why would they be doing that?\" I asked. I slipped my hand under my jacket.\n \n \"Every time you open your mouth you shout that you be off one of the Ships,\" Horst said. \"That be enough. They already have one of you brats in jail in Forton.\"\n \n I was about to bring my gun out when up came Jack leading Ninc, with all my stuff loaded on. I mentally thanked him.\n \n He said, \"The kid's got some good equipment. But I can't make out what this be for.\" He held out my pickup signal.\n \n Horst looked at it, then handed it back. \"Throw it away,\" he said.\n \n I leveled my gun at them—Hell on Wheels strikes again! I said, \"Hand that over to me.\"\n \n Horst made a disgusted sound.\n \n \"Don't make any noise,\" I said, \"or you'll fry. Now hand it over.\"\n \n I stowed it away, then paused with one hand on the leather horn of the saddle. \"What's the name of the kid in jail in Forton.\"\n \n \"I can't remember,\" he said. \"But it be coming to me. Hold on.\"\n \n I waited. Then suddenly my arm was hit a numbing blow from behind and the gun went flying. Jack pounced after it and Horst said, \"Good enough,\" to the others who'd come up behind me.\n \n I felt like a fool.\n \n Horst stalked over and got the signal. He dropped it on the ground and said in a voice far colder than mine could ever be, because it was natural and mine wasn't, \"The piece be yours.\" Then he tromped on it until it cracked and fell apart.\n \n Then he said, \"Pull a gun on me twice. Twice.\" He slapped me so hard that my ears rang. \"You dirty little punk.\"\n \n I said calmly, \"You big louse.\"\n \n It was a time I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. All I can remember is a flash of pain as his fist crunched against the side of my face and then nothing.\n \n Brains are no good if you don't use them.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8ae98e9c174643e8a6c42be06fd58733", "response_text": "The story begins on a scoutship with 29 fourteen-year-olds. The narrator of the story is Mia Havero, she is short and skinny. Her father is the Chairman of the Council. The fourteen-year-olds are being dropped on a planet called Tintera for their Trial. \n\n\nMia details her dislike of the planet. She rides on her horse Ninc for three days before she comes across other people. The men and Mia get into a disagreement because she does not want to join them. Mia proceeds to point her weapon and them. She tells them to drop their rifles on the ground and only lets them return to retrieve them once Mia and the men are a 20-minute ride away from the weapons. \n\nMia continues on riding her horse and passes a town where she meets more people. Eventually, Mia ends up at a campsite where she intends to rest and eat. However, the men who she encountered before and flashed her weapon at, find her at the campsite. She is grabbed from behind. The men have their grip on her, preventing her from escaping from them. The men destroy her pickup signal and she is punched in the face by one of the men. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "308f87dd950a424cbd907c08a38dcdba", "response_text": "First we see the main character, Mia, in a scoutship, where she and another fifteen girls and thirteen boys are being sent to the planet Tintera for their Trial. All of the inhabitants at the age of fourteen will be send to the Trial where they have to survive thirty days on a colonized planet. Those make to the end and are brought back by the ship are considered as useful to the society while those that cannot make it are not. \n\nMia spends the first night by her own after declining Jimmy Dentremont’s invitation, a boy who is also on the Trial, to become partners, and avoiding Venie Morlock, a girl on Trial and has a crush on Jimmy Dentremont. Finally on the third day, Mia goes on the road, travelling east with her horse, Ninc. She meets Horst and his group of men. After they threaten her to go along with them, she pulls out her gun before they do. So she tells them to drop their weapons and walk along with her. Later she lets them go back to retrieve their guns. Afterwards, she gets to a village where she is shocked again. Here she sees the Free Birthers who destroyed Earth. But apparently, they seem to have forgotten what horrifying things they have done to Earth, to mankind. Then later, Mia sees the scoutship again, but the driver is not one of theirs, which is weird.\n\nAs she gets to a campsite, she pulls herself in. There she sees a family with three kids. They have a campfire and tell bedtime stories. Not long after, Horst and his group get here as well. Mia tries to escape, but she can’t and is caught by Horst. She tries to use her gun again when they take her pickup signal, but this time she gets caught and is knocked unconscious. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "39b3a3738b364bb0b930ab1941093374", "response_text": "Mia Havero is a fourteen year old girl who lives on a spaceship home to a human civilization. She, along with twenty eight other young adults are about to be dropped off on a colonized planet Tintera, where they will undergo their Trial. Members of the Ship’s population, upon turning fourteen, are dropped off on a planet with a horse, food and clothes, a pistol, and a pickup signal so that they may be picked up a month later, forced to survive on their wits and skills. \n\tJimmy Dentremont, one of the children about to be dropped off whom Mia considers to be of similar intelligence as herself, approaches her and asks if she wants to partner up during the trial. She teasingly refuses, and Jimmy disembarks the ship to begin his trial. Mia is dropped off at another location with her horse Ninc, and we learn of her dislike for planets: she is unaccustomed to the gravity, the fauna, and the smell.  \n\tOn her third day of riding, Mia discovers a road and five men herding grotesque green creatures. As she catches up with them, she notices that they are armed. Their leader, who she judges to have a mean face, invites her to ride with them to Forton. When she refuses, he gestures towards his rifle; however, she quickly draws her sonic pistol and forces the men to disarm. Twenty minutes of riding later, she leaves the men, allowing them to return for their weapons. \n\tMia enters a town whereupon she encounters a family with four children and realizes that the population of the planet engage in unregulated reproduction. She is disgusted by this behaviour, remembering that it was such behaviour that led to the overpopulation of Earth and the need to evacuate onto the Great Ships. Overhead, she notices a scout ship, similar to the one that dropped her off on Tintera, and wonders what it is doing there. \n\tNow at a campsite, Mia rests and observes the interaction between an old man and a family with three children. He tells the children the tale of Baba Yaga, an evil witch who lived in a house that stood on chicken legs. Baba Yaga’s stepdaughter is sent to live with her, and foils her stepmother’s attempt to get rid of her. \n\tSuddenly, Mia notices commotion at the edge of the camp, and realizes that the five men whom she held at gunpoint earlier had arrived. As she makes to leave, one of the men pins her and calls over the others. He tells Mia that it is obvious she is from a Ship, and that one of her friends was imprisoned in Forton. Mia quickly levels her gun at him, asking for the name of her friend. As he stalls, she is struck by another one of the men, and her pickup signal is destroyed shortly before she is knocked out.\n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "95215f5ccaec46e091924e2317b7e810", "response_text": "Mia is a fourteen year old girl aboard Earth's ship after the planet's evacuation. When all children on the ship turn fourteen, they go through the Trial, where they are dropped on a random colonized planet and told to survive on their own for a month. Mia is waiting to be dropped on Tintera, a planet that has had little to no contact with the ship for over a century. She is accompanied by other children that she has known, some friends, most of them she is indifferent about. Once Mia is dropped onto Tintera along with her horse Ninc, she gets through the first night feeling frightened and lonely. For the next few days, she roams the planet in search of people to stick with. As she explores, she notes that Tintera is home to odd animals. Mia eventually finds a road and travels down it, meeting a group of men on horseback. The men question Mia, calling her a boy, and insist that she join them. Mia declines, to which the men draw their weapons at her. However, she raises her sonic pistol at them and is able to get away. Mia continues until she reaches a town, where she discovers that the people there are Free Birthers: people who were blamed for Earth's downfall and have multiple children. Mia is shocked by this, determined to find out more about the planet. Later that night, she comes across a campsite where she decides to turn in. She is surrounded by families and an old man who tells a story by the campfire about Baba Yaga, a wicked stepmother who sends her stepdaughter on a dangerous quest into the woods. As bedtime approaches, the men on horseback from earlier return, where they find Mia and attack her, robbing her of her gear and horse. Mia insults the men and is then knocked out."}]}, {"question_text": "What was Mia taught about Earth being destroyed?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8ae98e9c174643e8a6c42be06fd58733", "response_text": "Mia is taught that those who destroyed Earth were not smart and that they deserve punishment for their actions. According to her, Earth was evacuated because of overpopulation. People had too many children that required more resources than Earth was capable of providing. Consequently, there was a fight over the remaining resources that caused a war. \n\nMia has great-great-grandparents that were among those who anticipated the destruction of Earth and prepared to leave. \n\nIn addition, Mia talks about how humans left Earth. She says there were Great Ships built around 2025. The Great Ships and other things went into the Solar System in 2041. The humans that escaped established 112 colonies in the first 16 years. During this retelling of what she was taught, she emphasizes that horses were important to the success of the new colonies. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "308f87dd950a424cbd907c08a38dcdba", "response_text": "Mia knows that there was a evac plan on Earth long ago, the evac plan needed to be implemented and colonies had to be established in a very short amount of time. In 2025, first of the eight Great Ships was finished. Then before 2041, 112 colonies were created. Mia believes that bringing horses to the colonies was an important factor that lead to the success of those colonies. Even those few planets could have had substitutes for horses, they had to be domesticated and trained. \n\nLater we acknowledge that Mia has learned about the Free Birthers in school. They destroyed Earth. Those Free Birthers basically just bred and spread, and the population on earth reached 8 billion. With so many people, resources became limited, which in the end lead to the war that destroyed Earth, and 8 billion people died along with the blow up of the Solar System. Thus, without those Free Birthers, there would never be 8 billion people on Earth, then the evac plan would never take place, and those 8 billion people would not have to die. If his great-great-grandparents did not have the foresight he did, Mia might not even be alive. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "39b3a3738b364bb0b930ab1941093374", "response_text": "Mia is taught that, ultimately, Earth’s destruction is attributable to Free Birthers, those who have an unregulated number of children. Because of the resulting overpopulation, the resources of Earth were consumed and contested, resulting in the death of eight billion people and the final war which tore apart the solar system in 2041. The first of the Great Ships, like the one on which Mia lives, was built sixteen years prior, and, in the intervening years, 112 colonies had been established. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "95215f5ccaec46e091924e2317b7e810", "response_text": "Mia was taught, along with all young students, that Earth was destroyed due to an overpopulation problem. \"Free Birthers\" are to blame for the destruction of Earth; these are people that had multiple children, and according to what Mia was taught, used up all the limited resources that Earth had. By a certain point, Earth had become too overcrowded, with over eight billion people as a population. This ultimately led to a final war, and an evacuation."}]}, {"question_text": "What about the planet Tintera does Mia note is different than what she is used to?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8ae98e9c174643e8a6c42be06fd58733", "response_text": "Mia discusses how she does not like different planets for many reasons, gravity included. In addition, she does not like the idea of animals that can crawl on her or vegetation existing unintentionally. She also does not like the smells of different planets. When Mia sees individuals with more than one child, she becomes nauseous at the sight. To Mia, that seems reckless to have so many children as she is taught that it was the cause of Earth’s destruction. Another occurrence that Mia finds interesting is when she sees an old man during her travels. She is fascinated by his white hair, which she notes that she had never seen in person before. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "308f87dd950a424cbd907c08a38dcdba", "response_text": "Firstly, the planet Tintera has not been in contact with the Ship for almost 150 years. For the first two days in her Trial she sees nothing except some odd looking animals. To her surprise, they actually taste good, while some other good looking things do not taste so good. She also notices the ugly animals that Horst and his men are herding. Secondly, the town shocks her. Everything there are out of date. The truck she saw is the most advanced machine they have. The newspaper at the rear of the town has “invasion” printed on them. There are literally no women older than 10 years old, only men, boys and kids. She feels weird. But after she sees the swarming kids, she realizes that those people are Free Birthers. She feels sick by what she sees in this sight since they are the ones that basically destroyed Earth. Moreover, to her surprises, they don’t even seem to remember about the things that they’ve done to Earth at all. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "39b3a3738b364bb0b930ab1941093374", "response_text": "Mia harbors a dislike for planets, particularly because she is unaccustomed to certain aspects. Specifically, she feels the attractive force gravity is different from on the ship where she lives. She is unfamiliar with the ubiquitous vegetation and the fauna. Furthermore, Mia mentions that she is not used to having the lights go out, suggesting that the lights on the ship stay on at all times. Most of all, however, she dislikes the smell of planets. Though there is a relatively small space on her ship on the third level which bear semblance to planets, it is different from Tintera in that Mia is able to leave when she feels uncomfortable. \n\tAdditionally, Tintera’s human culture is different from on the ship. Whereas the inhabitants of the ship are bound by a culture which prohibits unregulated reproduction, the people of Tintera are Free Birthers unconcerned with such matters. When Mia discovers this, she feels nauseated and disgusted at their behaviour. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "95215f5ccaec46e091924e2317b7e810", "response_text": "Tintera has many differences from the life on the ship that Mia is used to. Firstly, and as is similar for all planets, it has an unpleasant smell in its atmosphere. The seasons are also different; despite it being December on the ship, it is spring on Tintera. The planet also has animals that Mia is not used to seeing; for example, the strange creatures that she sees being herded by the men on horseback. The biggest difference that Mia notes about Tintera is that here, people have multiple children who roam about freely. This goes against the rules of the Council and frightens Mia. "}]}, {"question_text": "What happens at fourteen for the inhabitants of the Ship and why?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8ae98e9c174643e8a6c42be06fd58733", "response_text": "At fourteen years old, the inhabitants of the Ship are put through a Trial. During the trial, they are dropped off at the nearest colonized planet and then picked up a month later if they manage to survive on the planet. Each of the fourteen-year-olds are dropped off in separate locations on the planet. They are given a pick signal device so the scoutship that escorted them to the planet is able to locate them at the end of their 30-day Trial period. \n\nThe purpose of the trial according to the Chairman of the Council is because a closed society needs a way to ensure the physical and mental of its populations. In addition, it helps to maintain a suitable number of individuals in the population. Those that are unable to survive their Trial are presumed to be not fit for life on the Ship.  \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "308f87dd950a424cbd907c08a38dcdba", "response_text": "At the age of fourteen, each of the inhabitants of the Ship are supposed to have their Trial. Simply stated, they will be dropped at a colonized planet that is the nearest to them for a month, and for this whole thirty days, the inhabitants will try to keep themselves alive. They can do this on their own, with partners, or join forces. Each of the inhabitants is provided with a sonic pistol, pickup signal, saddle, cinches, food and clothes. One month later, the Ship will come back to get them according to their pickup signal. It is important to note that, while they have all been prepared and trained to survive, some of them are still not able to make it out alive. According to the society, they are incapable of presenting themselves as useful to the Ship if they cannot make it out alive. Mia understands that this whole process is for the good of the society. And since they have all been through this training, everyone on the Ship – the society – are able to take care of themselves if they ever have to do so. Moreover, this process prevents the society from decaying, both in the mind and in the body as well as to keep a steady population. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "39b3a3738b364bb0b930ab1941093374", "response_text": "At fourteen, the inhabitants of the Ship undergo their Trial, a month-long period in which they must survive on the nearest inhabited planet by themselves. Though Mia Havero, the first-person narrator of the story, expects to return safely to the ship after the duration of her Trial, many do not survive. For her trial, Mia is left on the planet Tintera with her horse, Ninc, food and clothes, and a pickup signal.\n\tThe rationale behind the trial, as Mia presents it, is to screen for those inhabitants of the ship able to take care of themselves. Those who are unable to look after themselves and thereby fail the trial are not sufficiently prepared for life on the Ship. Additionally, Mia’s father, the chairman of the council of the ship, tells her that it is to prevent its population from decaying mentally and physically, as well as to maintain the population. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "95215f5ccaec46e091924e2317b7e810", "response_text": "When children on the ship turn fourteen, they are dropped on a planet that has been colonized. They are left alone for a month to fend for themselves and survive, then are picked up again by the ship. The children are prepared beforehand, and trained in survival and fighting in order to stand a chance at the Trial. However, not everyone makes it. The Ship's reasoning behind this is to ensure that every individual is able to take care of themselves and be properly skilled. Mia's father has also suggested other motives, including maintaining a steady population and keeping it from decreasing its value mentally and physically."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Horst and what is his relationship with Mia?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8ae98e9c174643e8a6c42be06fd58733", "response_text": "Horst, along with his four companions, is a man that Mia meets on the planet Tintera. He, along with his companions, were on horses and shepherding animals in front of them. Mia describes him as a middle-aged man with a large build. Mia analyzes his face and decides that she does not want to interact with him because his face looks mean. \n\nHorst, incorrectly, assumes Mia is a boy and asks her questions. Horst asserts that Mia will ride along with the men to the town of Forton. However, Mia disagrees with that statement and Horst does not like the response. Horst begins to bring out his rifle, but Mia grabs her sonic pistol before he is able to do so. She holds them at gunpoint until they drop their weapons. \n\nAfter this confrontation, Horst and Mia do not see each other again until they both end up at the same campsite. At the campsite, Horst and his companions bind Mia’s arms together to prevent her from escaping them. They look through her stuff and threaten her. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "308f87dd950a424cbd907c08a38dcdba", "response_text": "Horst was herding some weird looking creatures with his group of men when Mia came across them on the road during her third day of stay. Horst seems to be middle-aged and he is large with a mean looking face. When Mia ride passes him, she wanted to continue going since she thought he is mean. But he follows and asks her where she is from and going. He wants her to ride with them for protection, but Mia refuses. Interestingly, he thinks Mia is a boy. Before Horst could pull out his gun, Mia pulls out her gun first. She tells them to leave their weapons and ride along, which they did surprisingly. After a while, she tells them they can go back to gather their weapons. She finds this quite amusing. \n\nMia never thought of meeting Horst again. But as she is about to stay at a campsite for the night, she heard Horst and his group of men’s voice. She tries to run, but gets caught by one of Horst’s man. She tries to scream for help, but before she could do so, her mouth gets covered by Horst. Mia still has the gun with her, so she threatens Horst to hand her the pickup signal since this is her only way of getting contact with the Ship when they are to be brought back. After he handed it to her, she asks for the name of the kid in jail. But before she could get an answer, she gets hit and lost her gun. Horst has the pickup signal now. He smashes it until it fells apart. Then after calling him a “big louse” she is knocked out. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "39b3a3738b364bb0b930ab1941093374", "response_text": "Horst is a man whom Mia meets on her third day on Tintera. He wields a gun which he keeps in his saddle boots, and is roughly the age of Mia’s father. Mia describes his face as mean-looking, from which she surmises that he is mean. He and his team of four others are tasked with herding a group of ugly green creatures with squat figures and lanky limbs. \nOn his first encounter with Mia, he mistakes her for a boy and encourages her to join his team on the ride to Forton. However, when she refuses, he reaches for his gun before Mia quickly unholsters her weapon and aims it at him. She holds him and his team at gunpoint, forcing them to disarm, and makes them ride with her for twenty minutes before letting them go. \nLater, Mia is at a camp when she notices the arrival of Horst and his team. One of them recognizes her and signals Horst over. As she fights with this other man, Horst subdues her and threatens to harm her. As the other man beats Mia, Horst intervenes and tells him to stop, asserting his leadership of the group. Mia threatens to report Horst to the courts, which causes him to laugh and point out that she is obviously not from Tintera. As Horst is distracted with one of the other men, Mia pulls her gun on him and asks him a question. As he stalls, another man strikes her, and Horst quickly renders her unconscious. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "95215f5ccaec46e091924e2317b7e810", "response_text": "Horst is one of the riders that Mia encounters at her arrival on Tintera. He is a middle-aged man with a mean and threatening demeanor. Horst has violent intentions with Mia; he initially offers to take her along with the team of men for protection, but upon Mia's refusal, threatens her with his rifle. Mia is able to intimidate him with her own weapons, but later that night the men return by the campfire, where Mia is attacked by Horst and robbed. Mia initially only dislikes Horst, because of his mean aura and the fact that he refers to her as a boy; however, as Horst's violence is demonstrated more throughout the story, she becomes fearful of him, though still determined to stand up to him."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "50969", "uid": "74a1c4030265483da3483be2fb782546", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "BIG ANCESTOR\n \n \n By F. L. WALLACE\n \n Illustrated by EMSH\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!\n \n\n \n In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons.\n \n Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good imitation of speech. \"Yes, I've heard the legend.\"\n \n \"It's more than a legend,\" said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient speculation and nothing more. \"There are at least a hundred kinds of humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the ages before space travel— and yet each planetary race can interbreed with a minimum of ten others ! That's more than a legend—one hell of a lot more!\"\n \n \"It is impressive,\" admitted Taphetta. \"But I find it mildly distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my species.\"\n \n \"That's because you're unique,\" said Halden. \"Outside of your own world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human development.\n \n \n\n \n \"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle. And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may extend to Kelburn.\"\n \n \n\n \n Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. \"But I thought it was proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years.\"\n \n \"You're thinking of Earth,\" said Halden. \"Humans require a certain kind of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.\n \n \"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout this section of the Milky Way.\"\n \n \"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,\" commented Taphetta dryly. \"It seems an unnecessary simplification.\"\n \n \"Can you think of a better explanation?\" asked Kelburn.\n \n \"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are involved, and only the human race.\"\n \n \"I can't think of a better explanation.\" Taphetta rearranged his ribbons. \"Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories about himself.\"\n \n It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.\n \n Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in helping him make up his mind. \"You've heard of the adjacency mating principle?\" asked Sam Halden.\n \n \"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men.\"\n \n \"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close. We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but was a little further along. When we project back into time those star systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you.\"\n \n The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he was interested.\n \n \n\n \n Kelburn went to the projector. \"It would be easier if we knew all the stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past.\"\n \n He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. \"We're looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is today and here are the human systems.\" He pressed another control and, for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant. There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. \"The whole Milky Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we calculate the positions of stars in the past.\"\n \n Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped the motion.\n \n \"Two hundred thousand years ago,\" he said.\n \n There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.\n \n Taphetta rustled. \"The math is accurate?\"\n \n \"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem.\"\n \n \"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?\"\n \n \"To the best of our knowledge,\" said Kelburn. \"And whereas there are humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate with those they were adjacent to two hundred thousand years ago !\"\n \n \"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,\" murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. \"Is that the only era that satisfies the calculations?\"\n \n \"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a representative section of territory,\" said Kelburn. \"However, we have other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically. The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the time right.\"\n \n Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. \"And you think that where the two ends of the curve cross is your original home?\"\n \n \"We think so,\" said Kelburn. \"We've narrowed it down to several cubic light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it this trip.\"\n \n \"It seems I must decide quickly.\" The Ribboneer glanced out the visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.\n\"Do you mind if I ask other questions?\"\n \n \"Go ahead,\" Kelburn invited sardonically. \"But if it's not math, you'd better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition.\"\n \n Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn was the most advanced human type present, but while there were differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some respect.\n \n The Ribboneer shifted his attention. \"Aside from the sudden illness of your pilot, why did you ask for me?\"\n \n \"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational ability.\"\n \n Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. \"I had other plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are the incentives?\"\n \n Sam Halden coughed. \"The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the profits from any discoveries we may make.\"\n \n \"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well,\" said Taphetta,\n\"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me, you'll take my contract. I came prepared.\" He extended a tightly bound roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.\n \n They glanced at one another as Halden took it.\n \n \"You can read it if you want,\" offered Taphetta. \"But it will take you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly everywhere in this sector—places men have never been.\"\n \n There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.\n \n \"Good.\" Taphetta crinkled. \"Send it to the ship; they'll forward it for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me.\" He rubbed his ribbons together. \"Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the region toward which we're heading.\"\n \n \n\n \n Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of his place in the human hierarchy.\n \n Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter, wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy to see why.\n \n Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the biologist. \"The pilot doesn't like our air.\"\n \n \"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more about these things than I do.\"\n \n \"More than a man?\" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed to smile, added plaintively, \"I did try to change it, but he still complains.\"\n \n \n\n \n Halden took a deep breath. \"Seems all right to me.\"\n \n \"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes through a million tubes scattered over his body.\"\n \n It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's reaction was quite typical.\n \n \"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it,\" said Halden. \"Do anything you can to give it to him.\"\n \n \"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do something about it.\"\n \n \"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing I can do.\" Halden paused thoughtfully. \"Is there something wrong with the plants?\"\n \n \"In a way, I guess, and yet not really.\"\n \n \"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?\"\n \n \"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as fast as they grow.\"\n \n \"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays. Use them.\"\n \n \"It's an animal,\" said Firmon. \"We tried poison and got a few, but now they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that way.\"\n \n Halden glowered at the man. \"How long has this been going on?\"\n \n \"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them.\"\n \n It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.\n \n \"Tell me what you know about it,\" said Halden.\n \n \"They're little things.\" Firmon held out his hands to show how small.\n\"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of places to hide.\" He looked up defensively. \"This is an old ship with new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward.\"\n \n Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.\n \n They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.\n \n Sam Halden got up. \"I'll take a look and see what I can do.\"\n \n \"I'll come along and help,\" said Meredith, untwining her legs and leaning against him. \"Your mistress ought to have some sort of privileges.\"\n \n Halden started. So she knew that the crew was calling her that! Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't said it. It didn't help the situation at all.\n \n \n\n \n Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body, he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never quite still.\n \n He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. \"The hydroponics tech tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it.\"\n \n Halden shrugged. \"We've got to have better air. It might work.\"\n \n \"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!\"\n \n \"Neither do we.\"\n \n The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. \"What kind of creatures are they?\"\n \n \"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A typical pest.\"\n \n Taphetta rustled. \"Have you found out how it got on?\"\n \n \"It was probably brought in with the supplies,\" said the biologist.\n\"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things it detects and avoids, even electronic traps.\"\n \n \"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's smarter?\"\n \n \"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's strong enough.\"\n \n \"That's what I don't like,\" said Taphetta, curling. \"Let me think it over while I ask questions.\" He turned to Emmer. \"I'm curious about humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical ancestor?\"\n \n Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy hands through shaggier hair.\n \n \"I can speak with some authority,\" he rumbled. \"I was born on a world with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of their camp.\"\n \n \"I don't question your authority,\" crinkled Taphetta. \"To me, all humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you are an archeologist, that's enough for me.\" He paused and flicked his speech ribbons. \"Camp, did you say?\"\n \n \n\n \n Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. \"You've never seen any pictures? Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were forty feet high.\"\n \n \"Very large,\" agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was impressed. \"What did you find in the ruins?\"\n \n \"Nothing,\" said Emmer. \"There were buildings there and that was all, not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of.\"\n \n \"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life,\" mused Taphetta.\n\"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?\"\n \n \"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found. Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us did.\"\n \n \"This special planet sounds strange,\" murmured Taphetta.\n \n \"Not really,\" said Emmer. \"Fifty human races reached space travel independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is.\"\n \n \"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?\" asked Taphetta.\n \n \"We helped them,\" said Emmer.\n \n And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?\n \n \n\n \n Taphetta changed his questioning. \"What do you expect to gain from this discovery of the unknown ancestor?\"\n \n It was Halden who answered him. \"There's the satisfaction of knowing where we came from.\"\n \n \"Of course,\" rustled the Ribboneer. \"But a lot of money and equipment was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual curiosity.\"\n \n \"Cultural discoveries,\" rumbled Emmer. \"How did our ancestors live? When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span.\"\n \n \"No doubt,\" said Taphetta. \"An archeologist would be interested in cultural discoveries.\"\n \n \"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced civilization,\" added Halden. \"A faster-than-light drive, and we've achieved that only within the last thousand years.\"\n \n \"But I think we have a better one than they did,\" said the Ribboneer.\n\"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics, but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?\"\n \n Halden nodded. \"Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So, working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and produced us. They were master biologists.\"\n \n \"I thought so,\" said Taphetta. \"I never paid much attention to your fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built up a convincing case.\" He raised his head, speech ribbons curling fractionally and ceaselessly. \"I don't like to, but we'll have to risk using bait for your pest.\"\n \n He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been bothering him vaguely. \"What's the difference between the Ribboneer contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal.\"\n \n \"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as much as you think you will. The difference is this: My terms don't permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race.\"\n \n Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding anything. Halden examined his own attitudes. He hadn't intended, but could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition? He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired would have to be shared.\n \n That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.\n \n \n\n \n \"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?\" asked Meredith, glancing up. \"I'd rather be in hydroponics.\"\n \n Halden shrugged. \"They may or may not be smarter than planetbound animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near.\"\n \n Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a miniature keyboard.\n \n \"Ready?\"\n \n When they nodded, Halden said: \"Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them exactly.\"\n \n At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.\n \n Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began nibbling what it could reach.\n \n Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up and mauled the other unmercifully.\n \n \n\n \n It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none. Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within reach, it climbed into the branches.\n \n The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying away, still within range of the screen.\n \n Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent defeat.\n \n This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.\n \n The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed. The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped moving.\n \n The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been found— and laid it down .\n \n \n\n \n At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too bright for anything to be visible.\n \n \"Go in and get them,\" said Halden. \"We don't want the pests to find out that the bodies aren't flesh.\"\n \n \"It was realistic enough,\" said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their machines and went out. \"Do you think it will work?\"\n \n \"It might. We had an audience.\"\n \n \"Did we? I didn't notice.\" Meredith leaned back. \"Were the puppets exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?\"\n \n \"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough, they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it.\"\n \n \"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a creature without real hands?\"\n \n \"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and they'll never get away from the trap to try.\"\n \n \"Very good. I never thought of that,\" said Meredith, coming closer. \"I like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of marrying you.\"\n \n \"Primitive,\" he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew that, in relation to her, he was not advanced.\n \n \"It's almost a curse, isn't it?\" She laughed and took the curse away by leaning provocatively against him. \"But barbaric lovers are often nice.\"\n \n Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To her, I'm merely a passionate savage.\n \n They went to his cabin.\n \n She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless, except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on the violet end of the spectrum.\n \n She settled back and looked at him. \"It might be fun living with you on primeval Earth.\"\n \n He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as her own world. She had something else in mind.\n \n \"I don't think I will, though. We might have children.\"\n \n \"Would it be wrong?\" he asked. \"I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't have subhuman monsters.\"\n \n \"It would be a step up—for you.\" Under her calm, there was tension. It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the surface now. \"Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make them start lower than I am?\"\n \n The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another, it governed personal relations between races that were united against non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.\n \n \"I haven't asked you to marry me,\" he said bluntly.\n \n \"Because you're afraid I'd refuse.\"\n \n It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a permanent union.\n \n \"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?\" demanded Halden.\n \n \"Love,\" she said gloomily. \"Physical attraction. But I can't let it lead me astray.\"\n \n \"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific about it, he'd give you children of the higher type.\"\n \n \"Kelburn.\" It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. \"I don't like him and he wouldn't marry me.\"\n \n \"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough. There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive.\"\n \n \n\n \n She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race had a body like hers and she knew it.\n \n \"Racially, there should be a chance,\" she said. \"Actually, Kelburn and I would be infertile.\"\n \n \"Can you be sure?\" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act unconcerned.\n \n \"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?\" she asked, an oblique smile narrowing her eyes. \"I know we can't.\"\n \n His face felt anesthetized. \"Did you have to tell me that?\"\n \n She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh give when his knuckles struck it.\n \n She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.\n \n \"You've broken my nose,\" she said factually. \"I'll have to stop the blood and pain.\"\n \n She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back and looked at herself critically.\n \n \"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it healed by morning.\"\n \n She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across the bridge. Then she came over to him.\n \n \"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me.\"\n \n He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage, invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still feel that attraction to her?\n \n \"Try Emmer,\" he suggested tiredly. \"He'll find you irresistible, and he's even more savage than I am.\"\n \n \"Is he?\" She smiled enigmatically. \"Maybe, in a biological sense. Too much, though. You're just right.\"\n \n He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that, nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he wanted her.\n \n \"I do think I love you,\" she said. \"And if love's enough, I may marry you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children I have.\" She wriggled into his arms.\n \n The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not completely her fault. Besides....\n \n Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior children—and they might be his.\n \n He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no, through —everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger was turned.\n \n \"Careful of the nose,\" she said, pressing against him. \"You've already broken it once.\"\n \n He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8f4bf470977a4c4abc9410bd38d43dfb", "response_text": "The story starts with four of the species of the spectrum of human development together, talking and explaining about the possibility of mating with different species on the spectrum to Taphetta the Ribboneer. Emmer is an archeologist and he sits on one end of the spectrum. Halden, the biologist is from Earth, he is somewhat towards the middle on the spectrum. Meredith is a linguist, and she is further down the spectrum. And Kelburn, the mathematician, is at the far end of it. They explain to Taphetta about the theory of ability to mate with humans that are on planets that are close to each other. However, due to movement of planets, they are no longer close to each other. But with some accurate calculations, if all the stars were to go back two hundred thousand years, the position of those stars line up in the shape of a horse shoe. And they theorize that their original home lands on where the extension of the two ends of the horse shoe cross over. And the four explorers believe they have a chance of finding their original home. They are explaining this to Taphetta because they need him to be the pilot of this expedition. \n\nAfter Taphetta suggests that he does not like the air in the ship, they realize that some animals hs been eating the plants. With failing attempts to capture them, the biologist suggest that their mental and physical state might have changed due to radiation or atomic engines. Thus they set up a play for the animal to watch so that they will get into the trap. \n\nMeredith and Halden get into a fight because Meredith thinks Halden as primitive, and Halden does not like that. When he realizes that Meredith somehow knows she can’t be fertile with Kelburn, he gets so angry that he hits her nose. Then he come to realize why Meredith will not want to marry him and have children with him, even he would want superior children."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "343eb9baf6ec4f67b8e139cc875113bf", "response_text": "The story begins with Taphetta discussing with Sam Halden, the leader of the expedition, Sam’s theory on the origins of humans. They talk about different species and their abilities to mate with other species depending on how closely related the species are physical. They attempt to persuade Taphetta to pilot the ship by arguing that their theory is sound in logic and could lead to a great discovery. Taphetta is skeptical of their assertions for the origins of humans. Kelburn continues to explain in an attempt to convince him to navigate their ship.\n\nEventually, Taphetta agrees to navigate their ship as long as they sign his contract. The group does sign his contract as they desperately need his skills to complete their expedition. Halden trusts that his contract will not be deceitful. Once he has agreed, the group discusses Taphetta’s need for better oxygen on the ship. During this discussion, it is brought to Halden’s attention that there is an unknown pest on board the ship, an animal. \n\nEmmer talks to Taphetta about how every human race has achieved space travel at some point in their existence. Taphetta questions what they hope to achieve from their expedition, assuming that there will be money and technology to gain from the mission. Emmer and Halden argue that the examination of their culture and the drive of curiosity are their motivations for the mission. \n\nAt some point, the animals on the ship engage in a fight with a knife. After, Meredith and Halden begin conversing about their potential relationship. Halden leads Meredith to his cabin where he instinctively punches her nose after she has made him upset. They exchange words of admiration and lust for each other. Halden primitively kisses Meredith with passion.\n"}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "d90c4553c9e94d6b9085bdbc828fde00", "response_text": "Sam Halden, a biologist from a world where humans have developed to the early-middle section of their evolution, is in conversation with Taphetta, an individual of the non-human species Ribboneers, so named because of the ribbons protruding from his head. Halden explains to Taphetta that there are hundreds of independently-evolved human species on just as many worlds, each at various stages of human development. The crew of Halden’s expedition, humans from the various human-inhabited worlds, represents the range of human development: Emmer is a Neanderthal-type archeologist who represents early humanity, Halden is an early-middle human, Meredith is a linguist from an advanced-middle human society, and Kelburn is a mathematician from the far advanced side of human evolution. \nTaphetta, himself from an advanced civilization, is initially uninterested in Halden’s theories of human evolution. However, as Kelburn elaborates on the adjacency mating principle, an observation supporting the humans’ hypothesis of a common ancestor which distributed humans throughout the galaxy, he becomes interested. Taphetta accepts the humans’ invitation to be their pilot for the expedition, on the condition that they use his contract. \n\tAn engineer from the ship’s hydroponics department, which is responsible for regulation of the ship’s air, reports to Meredith, who is physically attractive and wearing a revealing skirt, that Taphetta is not fond of the air. Halden learns that the air quality in the ship has been suffering due to damage to the plants caused by an animal. Despite the engineer’s efforts, the animal is resistant to pesticides and is intelligent enough to avoid the electric traps. They resolve to bait it into a trap. \n\tHalden approaches the ribboneer to inform him of the infestation. As he considers using the bait, Taphetta asks Emmer about the archeological evidence of their common ancestor on his home planet. The Neanderthal reveals that relics of massive proportions indicate the size of the common ancestor, and that they were likely long-lived and able to travel faster than light. Halden hypothesizes that their ancestor was unable to find a suitable planet, so instead left modified versions of themselves on each planet they visited. Taphetta is further interested by the theory of the common ancestry and finally acquiesces to using a bait to trap the pest. He also reveals that the terms of the contract upon which he insisted prohibits that information discovered during the expedition be withheld to the benefit of any race. \n\tMeredith and Halden are now monitoring the hydroponics room. They control two pest-like puppets which enact a fight scene: the smaller puppet, initially defeated by the larger, finds a knife and is able to slay the larger. The humans hope that the pests will be lured to the knife. Meredith and Halden then retire to his cabin, where she discusses the possible father of her children. Though she loves him, she dismisses the idea of bearing his child, as it will dilute her evolved biology. He strikes her and breaks her nose, but she quickly heals. He kisses her. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "eb8455ccad4e4921aef1deb001587ea0", "response_text": "Taphetta, a creature of the Ribboneer species, has recently been recruited by a team of humans to aid in navigating a mission to discover the human race's \"big ancestor\": the original source of all humans which are now scattered across the Milky Way. Curious, and slightly skeptical, of the mission, Taphetta interrogates Sam Halden, a biologist, and Kelburn, a mathematician, about their theory of how humans evolved. Through analyzing the galactic routes of the human race and their locations throughout history, the team believes they have pinned the general home of the big ancestor. Taphetta agrees to help in the mission, under the condition that the team agrees to his own proposed contract rather than their own. As Taphetta prepares for navigation, he notes to Firmon, head of hydroponics, that he is bothered by the air quality on the ship. Firmon attempts to improve the air, however is met with an issue; the plants on the ship are being eaten by an unknown animal that hides within its machinery. With options limited to rebuilding the ship or baiting the animals through a risky experiment, Taphetta is again skeptical of the conditions of the ship. He requests that the team answer more questions while he thinks it over, and inquires about the big ancestor and its qualities. Emmer, a Neanderthal archaeologist, recounts his experiences growing up around the ruins of the ancestors; the infrastructure was all that they left behind, with no other scrap of information that would indicate their existence, though it is likely that they left in search of another planet to live on while improving themselves through the alteration of their germ plasm. Taphetta then questions the motives of the mission, to which Emmer and Halden consider the abilities of the big ancestor, and how much of an achievement it would be to gain the knowledge they possessed biologically. Holden asks Taphetta what the difference was between the contract the team proposed and his own; he responds and says that his contract ensured the discoveries made on this mission would not be withheld for humans exclusively. With Taphetta agreeing to baiting the animals, the team uses a realistic puppet that resembles the pests, with a retractable knife that is able to kill them when they get close. After a successful test run, Halden and linguist Meredith, who have an intimate relationship to each other, go back to Halden's cabin, where they discuss the future, including having children. Meredith, who is of a higher race than Halden, admits that her main concern is bearing children that are as superior as possible, which requires a partner of a higher race than her. This angers Halden, resulting in him striking her, yet they both love each other and their passion overweighs their tension."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Garrett and what happens to him in the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8f4bf470977a4c4abc9410bd38d43dfb", "response_text": "Taphetta the Ribboneer was on another ship that was passing by the expedition ship. Since the pilot that was supposed to fly the expedition got very sick and needed some treatment, he was taken by the other ship, and they told the explorers that they have an experienced pilot on board. After having Taphetta on the expedition ship, they introduce themselves and explains how they are at different points on the development spectrum. However, unlike human themselves, Taphetta does not see any difference between the early and late stage of humans, they are all the same to her. \n\nLater they explain the theory of horse shoe planets, the adjacency mating principle and suggest that they are likely to find their origin planet on their trip. Taphetta is interested and asks them to take her contract. Taphetta is afraid of them holding discoveries for the benefit of one race, thus offers them his own contract. While the truth is that the explorers are not going to hold anything, no one can be sure of the institutions that support this expedition. \n\nFurthermore, Taphetta senses that something is wrong with the air, which makes them realize that there has been animals consuming the plants they grew. Despite the fact that he doesn’t want to risk bait for the pest, he is convinced. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "343eb9baf6ec4f67b8e139cc875113bf", "response_text": "Taphetta is a part of the Ribboneer racial group. He has four flat legs, a wide and thin body with a flat neck. His head is thick and is topped with a dozen narrow, long ribbons. He is an experienced pilot, which is common among people in his group. Ribboneer’s are well-known for their navigational ability in the universe. \n\nTaphetta was on board a ship that was passing a group in need of help. The group had a pilot that became sick and they hailed a ship that was passing by to get him to treatment. They heard that there was an experienced pilot on the passing ship, which is how Taphetta came upon their group. The group is trying to convince Taphetta to pilot them to their desired destination. He presents them with a contract that they have to accept for him to agree to the mission. His contract includes a provision that any discovery during the mission cannot be withheld to benefit one race. They accept the contract. He begins to be ready for the mission. \n"}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "d90c4553c9e94d6b9085bdbc828fde00", "response_text": "Taphetta is a member of the non-human species known as Ribboneers, who are renowned for their integrity and navigational skills. He is described as having four flat, ribbon-like legs which loop out and tuck under his flat body. His neck is thicker than the rest of his body, and his head has a crown of many smaller ribbons. Prior to the start of the story, the pilot of the humans’ ship falls ill. They hail a ship passing by, partly in an attempt to find a new pilot. Taphetta was on that ship, and the story begins with a conversation between him and the human biologist, Sam Halden. \n\tHalden describes to Taphetta the theory behind the expedition on which the human ship has embarked, concerning an ancestor common to the many planets of humans in the Milky Way galaxy. Though initially uninterested, Taphetta is confronted with evidence for the humans’ theory, and later admits that they make a compelling argument. Taphetta arees to join the crew of the expedition, on the condition that he be hired under an extensive micro-printed contract which stipulates that no discovery in which he takes part should be hidden to the benefit of any race. \nOn the ship, Taphetta suffers from the air quality. Ribboneers breathe through tubes scattered throughout their bodies. Halden discovers that the problem is animals interfering with the growth of plants in the hydroponics sector of the ship, which are responsible for air quality regulation. Halden proposes using bait to trap the pests, to which Taphetta says he needs to think on the issue. As he thinks, Taphetta enquires further about the evidence supporting the humans’ theory, asking about the significance of discovering an answer, and the unequal development of humans across various planets. Aftering demonstrating interest in the answers given by his interlocutor Emmer, an archeologist, he acquiesces to use of bait to deal with the pest problem.\n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "eb8455ccad4e4921aef1deb001587ea0", "response_text": "Taphetta is a non-human, of the Ribboneer species. His appearance resembles his name; he has flat limbs and a knotted thin body. Taphetta is also an experienced pilot, as his species specializes in navigation. Taphetta is recruited by the humans to guide their ship for their mission in finding their original ancestor, as their initial pilot became ill. Taphetta is a wary and dubious creature, so he asks several questions before agreeing to help. He also requires that the team agree to his own terms and contract, which demand transparency in their findings and condemn the withholding of information. Taphetta settles into the ship, but is uncomfortable with the cleanliness of the air; the team recognizes how crucial Taphetta's compliance is to their mission and stages an experiment to catch pests that are damaging the ship's plants. Taphetta uses this as another opportunity to ask questions and gauge more information on the mission."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Meredith and Halden?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8f4bf470977a4c4abc9410bd38d43dfb", "response_text": "Meredith is a linguist who sits on the middle towards end of the spectrum; Halden is a biologist that is on the middle towards beginning of the spectrum. Meredith is wearing a short skirt which gets Firmon’s unwanted attention. She is also aware of the fact that she has been called “mistress” by the ship crews. \n\nAfter setting the trap for the plant eating animals, Meredith complements Halden for his primitiveness and calls their love barbaric, but Halden takes it a different way. He is indeed primitive in comparison to Meredith, but he clearly does not like the sound of it. He is of the lower level, she is a step up for him. In strong constrast to Taphetta’s belief of all humans are the same disregarding where they are on the spectrum, Meredith thinks that this spectrum weights more than the amount of love between Meredith and Halden. They seem to have known this all along. Halden never asks Meredith if she wanted to marry him, nor will Meredith say yes to that. Halden doesn’t like to be thought of the lower level human, but to his surprise, Halden later realizes that he also prefers a higher level children. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "343eb9baf6ec4f67b8e139cc875113bf", "response_text": "Sam Halden is a biologist from Earth and Meredith is a linguist from a place located on the other side of the middle. They are from two different points on the biological spectrum of human development. Meredith is on a higher point of the scale. They have the potential to be able to successfully produce a child from mating. Halden is from a more primitive version of humans. \n\nPeople have rumored that Meredith is Halden’s mistress. There is a conflict between them as a potential relationship would cause Meredith to be reproducing with a race lesser than her race. She admits that she is in love and is physically attracted to Halden, but she does not want that to convince her to be in a relationship with him. They have tension in the story that creates a fight where Halden instinctively punches Meredith in the nose. Halden recognizes that Meredith is cruel to him and perhaps using him, yet he too loves her. He is tortured by the thought that he is as manipulative as Meredith because he is attracted to the idea of marrying a woman of a higher race as it would reflect him achieving a high goal. \n"}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "d90c4553c9e94d6b9085bdbc828fde00", "response_text": "Meredith and Halden are both human crewmembers on an expedition with the intention of exploring the humans’ common ancestor. Though they are of the same species, they are from different planets on each of which humans have evolved independently and at different rates. Halden, a biologist, is on the early-middle side of the evolutionary scale. Meredith, a linguist, though more closely related to Halden than to any of her other crewmates, is from the later-middle side of the evolutionary scale. Despite Meredith’s refusal to bear children with halden, they are of similar enough evolutionary stages that they are compatible. \nAs Meredith and Halden watch the simulated fight between the puppet pests, she comments on Halden’s primitive strategizing, and fetishizes this aspect of Halden. Halden briefly recalls the previous times when she did the same, before they return to his cabin. Halden reflects on Meredith’s physical attractiveness, but concludes that her facial features are plain. She reiterates her desire against bearing children with him, for they would be of a lower evolutionary status than she is. Halden comments that, if she were searching for a mate who would yield offspring of the higher type, then Kelburn, a far-advanced human, would be the best choice. However, Meredith implies that she and Kelburn have previously attempted to mate, but are incompatible with one another. She nuzzles Halden, before he instinctively hits her. She quickly heals her nose, and tells him that she loves him, but will not bear his children if they marry. He kisses her. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "eb8455ccad4e4921aef1deb001587ea0", "response_text": "Meredith and Halden have a passionate but high-strung relationship. They are both of the general human race; however, Halden is of an inferior species on Earth, while Meredith is slightly more advanced, of the Terran race. Halden and Meredith are in love, but face several complications: their relationship is mainly, at its surface level, physical, as Halden and the team refer to Meredith as his \"mistress\". Additionally, Meredith is preoccupied with the idea of bearing children that are biologically superior; she believes that having children with Halden would be a setback and against her morals. For these reasons, Meredith plans to explore bearing children with humans from other races, which enrages Halden. The tension between them is detrimental to their relationship, as Halden expresses it through violence. However, their love and passion for each other keeps them together in an imperfect situation. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the mission of the expedition and its theory?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8f4bf470977a4c4abc9410bd38d43dfb", "response_text": "The goal of the expedition is to find their original home. There are many different species on the human development spectrum, and it is assumed that they can only mate with the species that are close to them on the spectrum according to the adjacency mating principle. Following this principle, careful calculations are done on the orbits of those planets. By determining their location in space at different times, the team are able to find a specific time in the whole universe that not only makes the specific pattern of a horse shoe, but also has supporting data backed up this hypothesis. Furthermore, if two imaginary lines extend from the ends of the horse shoe, the two lines will eventually meet and cross over at a specific location in space. The team are able to narrow the crossing point down to a few cubic light-years. According to the team, this space should be the place that their original home is. If they are to find the planet that the hypothetical unknown ancestors belongs to, they will be making cultural discoveries, technological advances, and finding out where they actually come from. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "343eb9baf6ec4f67b8e139cc875113bf", "response_text": "The mission of the expedition is to find the origins of the human race. Taphetta refers to this as the big ancestor. The theory is that the human race did not originate on any planets that it currently inhabits. They believe that humans evolved at a different location and then began to settle across a particular section of the Milk Way. Their evidence to support this theory is that there are worlds where humans have been before the Stone Age and are not related to anything in that world. \n\nAnother supporting theory they present is the adjacency mating principle. The principle outlines which humans can mate with each other, theorizing that those which can mate had to have been physically close at one point. \n"}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "d90c4553c9e94d6b9085bdbc828fde00", "response_text": "Humans have independently evolved across hundreds of planets across a stretch of the Milky Way galaxy. The patterning of planets in the galaxy on which human species have developed reveals a pattern of stars, which is hypothesized by humans to be the path of their common ancestor. Furthermore, it appears that the path traced by their ancestor attempts to gather a representative sample of planets in the Milky Way. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the ancestors’ aim to find an inhabitable planet. Were the pattern extended, the original home of the common ancestors would be found, and to find this common home is the purpose of the expedition. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "eb8455ccad4e4921aef1deb001587ea0", "response_text": "Across the galaxy, there are hundreds of species of humans; certain species are able to mate with others, despite them living in faraway areas with no possible contact before space travel. To make sense of these circumstances, the mission's team believes that one original ancestor exists from which all humans came from, and were then dispersed throughout the Milky Way. There is also a pattern in the ways human races can interbreed; humans can mate with other humans that were adjacent to each other two hundred thousand years ago, indicating that this historical proximity points to a source of the big ancestor. The mission of this expedition is to travel to that location in search of the big ancestor, hopefully gaining cultural insight into the species as well as their superior biological abilities that make them able to mutate and improve themselves."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8f4bf470977a4c4abc9410bd38d43dfb", "response_text": "The story is set in a space ship of an expedition with the goal of finding human’s original home. The universe has many species of human beings at different development levels, and four of them are on board of the ship. They seem to believe that there is a planet of origin, where they evolved. They assume that later, they were brought from the original planet to the planets they now live on. There was another ship that passed the expedition ship, which allow the explorers to send their pilot home since he is sick. They learn that there is a Ribboneer on that ship. The Ribboneer is a pilot and has been to some expeditions. Thus, the team want to have him on board and be the pilot of their ship. Hence, they start to explain about their theories in trying to find out about human race and their origin. The Ribboneer is interested and decides to join the team. Later, they notice that the plants are being eaten by some animals. Thus they put on a show at the hydroponics to trick the animals. Later, we follow Halden and Meredith to Halden’s cabin where they have an argument over the level of development they have and Halden punches Meredith’s nose. Then, the story ends with the two of them in Halden’s room. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "343eb9baf6ec4f67b8e139cc875113bf", "response_text": "The story is set on a ship in space settled in the Milky Way. There is a projector on the spaceship that Kelburn uses to explain their theory of the origins of Man. The ship is quite isolated as it is currently located four months away from the nearest planet. The ship they are on is old, which creates some problems for them when trying to find a pest. The ship had new equipment added to its old frame, this has created hard to reach corners and small crevices that cannot be fixed without a proper rebuilding effort. There is a plant growing area on the ship that does not use soil in its growing. Halden has his own cabin on the ship. "}, {"worker_id": "102", "uid": "d90c4553c9e94d6b9085bdbc828fde00", "response_text": "This story takes place in a human spaceship, floating in the expanse of space next to another ship. Prior to the start of the story, the human pilot falls ill and is unable to be treated with the resources on their ship. Fortunately, another ship, the one now idling next to the human ship, was passing and has agreed to return the pilot home. Coincidentally, a passenger of the other ship, Taphetta, is a ribbonrer, a species known for their navigational skills, and agrees to pilot the human ship on their expedition. \n\tLater in the story, when Meredith and Halden are monitoring the goings-on in the hydroponics room, they are in a room with a big screen displaying a night-vision feed of the hydroponics room. Meredith and Halden then return to Halden’s room. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "eb8455ccad4e4921aef1deb001587ea0", "response_text": "The story takes place on the expedition team's ship, which is in an unknown part of space. The ship is designed for humans, making Taphetta's comfortability a bit more difficult to achieve, as indicated by his dissatisfaction with the air quality. The ship contains tanks of plants that, when running smoothly, produce oxygen to supply the ship. The ship also contains cabins for each team member. Outside the ship, not much is visible that indicates location; the only thing visible out the window is a neighboring ship from which Taphetta was pulled from."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63899", "uid": "1ef122f09a1e4d3ea55facd67063e930", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE GIANTS RETURN\n \n\n By ROBERT ABERNATHY\n \n \n Earth set itself grimly to meet them with corrosive fire, determined to blast them back to the stars. But they erred in thinking the Old Ones were too big to be clever.\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. That was the Doppler effect as the star's radial velocity changed relative to the Quest III , as for forty hours the ship had decelerated.\n \n They had seen many such stars come near out of the galaxy's glittering backdrop, and had seen them dwindle, turn red and go out as the Quest III drove on its way once more, lashed by despair toward the speed of light, leaving behind the mockery of yet another solitary and lifeless luminary unaccompanied by worlds where men might dwell. They had grown sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years.\n \n But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the Quest III's crew. It was a subdued excitement; men and women, they came and stood quietly gazing into the big vision screens that showed the oncoming star, and there were wide-eyed children who had been born in the ship and had never seen a planet. The grownups talked in low voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might lie at the long journey's end. For the Quest III was coming home; the sun ahead was the Sun, whose rays had warmed their lives' beginning.\n \n \n\n \n Knof Llud, the Quest III's captain, came slowly down the narrow stair from the observatory, into the big rotunda that was now the main recreation room, where most of the people gathered. The great chamber, a full cross-section of the vessel, had been at first a fuel hold. At the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot cylinder had been engines and fuel; but as the immense stores were spent and the holds became radioactively safe, the crew had spread out from its original cramped quarters. Now the interstellar ship was little more than a hollow shell.\n \n Eyes lifted from the vision screens to interrogate Knof Llud; he met them with an impassive countenance, and announced quietly, \"We've sighted Earth.\"\n \n A feverish buzz arose; the captain gestured for silence and went on,\n\"It is still only a featureless disk to the telescope. Zost Relyul has identified it—no more.\"\n \n But this time the clamor was not to be settled. People pressed round the screens, peering into them as if with the naked eye they could pick out the atom of reflected light that was Earth, home. They wrung each other's hands, kissed, shouted, wept. For the present their fears were forgotten and exaltation prevailed.\n \n Knof Llud smiled wryly. The rest of the little speech he had been about to make didn't matter anyway, and it might have spoiled this moment.\n \n He turned to go, and was halted by the sight of his wife, standing at his elbow. His wry smile took on warmth; he asked, \"How do you feel, Lesra?\"\n \n She drew an uncertain breath and released it in a faint sigh. \"I don't know. It's good that Earth's still there.\" She was thinking, he judged shrewdly, of Knof Jr. and Delza, who save from pictures could not remember sunlit skies or grassy fields or woods in summer....\n \n He said, with a touch of tolerant amusement, \"What did you think might have happened to Earth? After all, it's only been nine hundred years.\"\n \n \"That's just it,\" said Lesra shakily. \"Nine hundred years have gone by— there —and nothing will be the same. It won't be the same world we left, the world we knew and fitted in....\"\n \n The captain put an arm round her with comforting pressure. \"Don't worry. Things may have changed—but we'll manage.\" But his face had hardened against registering the gnawing of that same doubtful fear within him. He let his arm fall. \"I'd better get up to the bridge. There's a new course to be set now—for Earth.\"\n \n He left her and began to climb the stairway again. Someone switched off the lights, and a charmed whisper ran through the big room as the people saw each other's faces by the pale golden light of Earth's own Sun, mirrored and multiplied by the screens. In that light Lesra's eyes gleamed with unshed tears.\n \n Captain Llud found Navigator Gwar Den looking as smug as the cat that ate the canary. Gwar Den was finding that the actual observed positions of the planets thus far located agreed quite closely with his extrapolations from long unused charts of the Solar System. He had already set up on the calculator a course that would carry them to Earth.\n \n Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, \"Probably we'll be intercepted before we get that far.\"\n \n Den was jolted out of his happy abstraction. \"Uh, Captain,\" he said hesitantly. \"What kind of a reception do you suppose we'll get?\"\n \n Llud shook his head slowly. \"Who knows? We don't know whether any of the other Quests returned successful, or if they returned at all. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. It's possible—not likely, though—that something has happened to break civilization's continuity to the point where our expedition has been forgotten altogether.\"\n \n \n\n \n He turned away grim-lipped and left the bridge. From his private office-cabin, he sent a message to Chief Astronomer Zost Relyul to notify him as soon as Earth's surface features became clear; then he sat idle, alone with his thoughts.\n \n The ship's automatic mechanisms had scant need of tending; Knof Llud found himself wishing that he could find some back-breaking task for everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained.\n \n There was an extensive and well-chosen film library in the cabin, but he couldn't persuade himself to kill time that way. He could go down and watch the screens, or to the family apartment where he might find Lesra and the children—but somehow he didn't want to do that either.\n \n He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's fuel stores and the hope of success in man's mightiest venture had dwindled, so the strength had gone out of him. Now the last fuel compartment was almost empty and Captain Knof Llud felt tired and old.\n \n Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred Earth years—though physically he was only forty now, ten years older than when the voyage had begun. That was the foreshortening along the time axis of a space ship approaching the speed of light. Weeks and months had passed for the Quest III in interstellar flight while years and decades had raced by on the home world.\n \n Bemusedly Llud got to his feet and stood surveying a cabinet with built-in voice recorder and pigeonholes for records. There were about three dozen film spools there—his personal memoirs of the great expedition, a segment of his life and of history. He might add that to the ship's official log and its collections of scientific data, as a report to whatever powers might be on Earth now—if such powers were still interested.\n \n Llud selected a spool from among the earliest. It was one he had made shortly after leaving Procyon, end of the first leg of the trip. He slid it onto the reproducer.\n \n His own voice came from the speaker, fresher, more vibrant and confident than he knew it was now.\n \n \"One light-day out from Procyon, the thirty-third day by ship's time since leaving Earth.\n \n \"Our visit to Procyon drew a blank. There is only one huge planet, twice the size of Jupiter, and like Jupiter utterly unfit to support a colony.\n \n \"Our hopes were dashed—and I think all of us, even remembering the Centaurus Expedition's failure, hoped more than we cared to admit. If Procyon had possessed a habitable planet, we could have returned after an absence of not much over twenty years Earth time.\n \n \"It is cheering to note that the crew seems only more resolute. We go on to Capella; its spectrum, so like our own Sun's, beckons. If success comes there, a century will have passed before we can return to Earth; friends, relatives, all the generation that launched the Quest ships will be long since dead. Nevertheless we go on. Our generation's dream, humanity's dream, lives in us and in the ship forever....\"\n \n Presently Knof Llud switched off that younger voice of his and leaned back, an ironic smile touching his lips. That fervent idealism seemed remote and foreign to him now. The fanfares of departure must still have been ringing in his ears.\n \n He rose, slipped the record back in its niche and picked out another, later, one.\n \n \"One week since we passed close enough to Aldebaran to ascertain that that system, too, is devoid of planets.\n \n \"We face the unpleasant realization that what was feared is probably true—that worlds such as the Sun's are a rare accident, and that we may complete our search without finding even one new Earth.\n \n \"It makes no difference, of course; we cannot betray the plan.... This may be man's last chance of escaping his pitiful limitation to one world in all the Universe. Certainly the building of this ship and its two sisters, the immense expenditure of time and labor and energy stores that went into them, left Earth's economy drained and exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless and transcendent effort—the effort of Egypt that built the pyramids, or the war efforts of the nations in the last great conflicts of the twentieth century.\n \n \"Looked at historically, such super-human outbursts of energy are the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and therefore signalize the beginning of the end. Population can be limited, but the price is a deadly frustration, because growth alone is life.... In our day the end of man's room for growth on the Earth was in sight—so we launched the Quests . Perhaps our effort will prove as futile as pyramid-building, less practical than orgies of slaughter to reduce pressure.... In any case, it would be impossible to transport very many people to other stars; but Earth could at least go into its decline with the knowledge that its race went onward and upward, expanding limitlessly into the Universe....\n \n \"Hopeless, unless we find planets!\"\n \n \n\n \n Knof Llud shook his head sorrowfully and took off the spool. That was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments.\n \n He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four years old. The recorded voice sounded weary, yet alive with a strange longing....\n \n \"We are in the heart of Pleiades; a hundred stars show brilliant on the screens, each star encircled by a misty halo like lights glowing through fog, for we are traversing a vast diffuse nebula.\n \n \"According to plan, the Quest III has reached its furthest point from Earth. Now we turn back along a curve that will take us past many more stars and stellar systems—but hope is small that any of those will prove a home for man, as have none of the thousands of stars examined already.\n \n \"But what are a few thousand stars in a galaxy of billions? We have only, as it were, visited a handful of the outlying villages of the Universe, while the lights of its great cities still blaze far ahead along the Milky Way.\n \n \"On flimsy excuses I have had Zost Relyul make observations of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. There are a hundred thousand stars there in a volume of space where one finds a few dozen in the Sun's neighborhood; there if anywhere must circle the planets we seek! But Omega Centauri is twenty thousand light years away....\n \n \"Even so—by expending its remaining fuel freely, the Quest III could achieve a velocity that would take us there without dying of senility of aging too greatly. It would be a one-way journey—even if enough fuel remained, there would be little point in returning to Earth after more than forty thousand years. By then our civilization certainly, and perhaps the human race itself, would have perished from memory.\n \n \"That was why the planners limited our voyage, and those of the other Quests , to less than a thousand years Earth time. Even now, according to the sociodynamic predictions made then, our civilization—if the other expeditions failed also—will have reached a dangerously unstable phase, and before we can get back it may have collapsed completely from overpopulation.\n \n \"Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a decree five thousand years old, whose makers are dead and which may be forgotten back there?\n \n \"Would the crew be willing? I don't know—some of them still show signs of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away....\n \n \"It doesn't matter. Today I gave orders to swing the ship.\"\n \n Savagely Knof Llud stabbed the button that shut off the speaker. Then he sat for a time with head resting in his hands, staring into nothing.\n \n The memory of that fierce impulse to go on still had power to shake him. A couple of lines of poetry came into his head, as he read them once in translation from the ancient English....\n \n \n ... for my purpose holds\n \n\n To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths\n \n\n Of all the western stars, until I die.\n \n \n\n \n Llud sighed. He still couldn't say just why he had given the order to turn back. The stars had claimed his heart—but he was still a part of Earth, and not even nine hundred years of space and time had been able to alter that.\n \n He wondered if there would still be a quiet stream and a green shady place beside it where a death-weary man, relieved at last of responsibility, could rest and dream no more.... Those things went on, if men didn't change them. And a pine forest where he and young Knof could go camping, and lie on their backs at night and gaze at the glittering constellations, far away, out of reach.... He wasn't sure he would want to do that, though.\n \n Suddenly a faint cushioned jar went through the great ship; it seemed to falter one moment in flight.\n \n \n\n \n The captain was on his feet instantly, but then his movements became unhurried. Whatever it had been was past, and he had a good idea what it had been—a meteoroid, nothing unusual in the vicinity of the Sun, though in interstellar space and around planetless stars such collisions were rare to the vanishing point. No harm could have been done. The Quest III's collision armor was nonmaterial and for practical purposes invulnerable.\n \n Just as he took his finger off the button that opened the door, the intercommunication phone shrilled imperatively. Knof Llud wheeled, frowning—surely a meteoroid impact wasn't that serious. Coincidence, maybe—it might be Zost Relyul calling as instructed.\n \n He reached the phone at the moment when another, heavier jolt shook the vessel. Llud snatched up the receiver with the speed of a scalded cat.\n \n \"Captain?\" It was Gwar Den's voice, stammering a little. \"Captain, we're being attacked!\"\n \n \"Sound the alarm. Emergency stations.\" He had said it automatically, then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all these years he could still respond quickly and smoothly to a crisis. There was a moment's silence, and he heard the alarm start—three short buzzes and repeat, ringing through all the great length of the interstellar ship. Knowing that Gwar Den was still there, he said,\n\"Now—attacked by what?\"\n \n \"Ships,\" said Gwar Den helplessly. \"Five of them so far. No, there's a sixth now.\" Repeated blows quivered the Quest III's framework. The navigator said, obviously striving for calm, \"They're light craft, not fifty feet long, but they move fast. The detectors hardly had time to show them before they opened up. Can't get a telescope beam on them long enough to tell much.\"\n \n \"If they're that small,\" said Knof Llud deliberately, \"they can't carry anything heavy enough to hurt us. Hold to course. I'll be right up.\"\n \n In the open doorway he almost fell over his son. Young Knof's eyes were big; he had heard his father's words.\n \n \"Something's happened,\" he judged with deadly twelve-year-old seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, \"Can I go with you, huh, Dad?\"\n \n Llud hesitated, said, \"All right. Come along and keep out of the way.\" He headed for the bridge with strides that the boy could not match.\n \n There were people running in the corridors, heading for their posts. Their faces were set, scared, uncomprehending. The Quest III shuddered, again and again, under blows that must have had millions of horsepower behind them; but it plunged on toward Earth, its mighty engines still steadily braking its interstellar velocity.\n \n To a man, the ship's responsible officers were already on the bridge, most of them breathless. To a man they looked appeal at Captain Knof Llud.\n \n \"Well?\" he snapped. \"What are they doing?\"\n \n Gwar Den spoke. \"There are thirteen of them out there now, sir, and they're all banging away at us.\"\n \n The captain stared into the black star-strewn depths of a vision screen where occasional blue points of light winked ominously, never twice from the same position.\n \n Knof Jr. flattened himself against the metal wall and watched silently. His young face was less anxious than his elders'; he had confidence in his father.\n \n \"If they had anything heavier,\" surmised the captain, \"they'd have unlimbered it by now. They're out to get us. But at this rate, they can't touch us as long as our power lasts—or until they bring up some bigger stuff.\"\n \n \n\n \n The mild shocks went on—whether from projectiles or energy-charges, would be hard to find out and it didn't matter; whatever was hitting the Quest III's shell was doing it at velocities where the distinction between matter and radiation practically ceases to exist.\n \n But that shell was tough. It was an extension of the gravitic drive field which transmitted the engines' power equally to every atom of the ship; forces impinging on the outside of the field were similarly transmitted and rendered harmless. The effect was as if the vessel and all space inside its field were a single perfectly elastic body. A meteoroid, for example, on striking it rebounded—usually vaporized by the impact—and the ship, in obedience to the law of equal and opposite forces, rebounded too, but since its mass was so much greater, its deflection was negligible.\n \n The people in the Quest III would have felt nothing at all of the vicious onslaught being hurled against them, save that their inertialess drive, at its normal thrust of two hundred gravities, was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to provide the illusion of Earthly gravitation.\n \n One of the officers said shakily, \"It's as if they've been lying in wait for us. But why on Earth—\"\n \n \"That,\" said the captain grimly, \"is what we have to find out. Why—on Earth. At least, I suspect the answer's there.\"\n \n The Quest III bored steadily on through space, decelerating. Even if one were no fatalist, there seemed no reason to stop decelerating or change course. There was nowhere else to go and too little fuel left if there had been; come what might, this was journey's end—perhaps in a more violent and final way than had been anticipated. All around wheeled the pigmy enemies, circling, maneuvering, and attacking, always attacking, with the senseless fury of maddened hornets. The interstellar ship bore no offensive weapons—but suddenly on one of the vision screens a speck of light flared into nova-brilliance, dazzling the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart.\n \n Knof Jr. whooped ecstatically and then subsided warily, but no one was paying attention to him. The men on the Quest III's bridge looked questions at each other, as the thought of help from outside flashed into many minds at once. But Captain Llud said soberly, \"It must have caught one of their own shots, reflected. Maybe its own, if it scored too direct a hit.\"\n \n He studied the data so far gathered. A few blurred pictures had been got, which showed cylindrical space ships much like the Quest III , except that they were rocket-propelled and of far lesser size. Their size was hard to ascertain, because you needed to know their distance and speed—but detector-beam echoes gave the distance, and likewise, by the Doppler method, the velocity of directly receding or approaching ships. It was apparent that the enemy vessels were even smaller than Gwar Den had at first supposed—not large enough to hold even one man. Tiny, deadly hornets with a colossal sting.\n \n \"Robot craft, no doubt,\" said Knof Llud, but a chill ran down his spine as it occurred to him that perhaps the attackers weren't of human origin. They had seen no recognizable life in the part of the galaxy they had explored, but one of the other Quests might have encountered and been traced home by some unhuman race that was greedy and able to conquer.\n \n \n\n \n It became evident, too, that the bombardment was being kept up by a constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That argued a planned and prepared interception with virulent hatred behind it.\n \n Elsuz Llug, the gravitic engineer, calculated dismally, \"At the rate we're having to shed energy, the fuel will be gone in six or eight hours.\"\n \n \"We'll have reached Earth before then,\" Gwar Den said hopefully.\n \n \"If they don't bring out the heavy artillery first.\"\n \n \"We're under the psychological disadvantage,\" said the captain, \"of not knowing why we're being attacked.\"\n \n Knof Jr. burst out, spluttering slightly with the violence of a thought too important to suppress, \"But we're under a ps-psychological advantage, too!\"\n \n His father raised an eyebrow. \"What's that? I don't seem to have noticed it.\"\n \n \"They're mad and we aren't, yet,\" said the boy. Then, seeing that he hadn't made himself clear, \"In a fight, if a guy gets mad he starts swinging wild and then you nail him.\"\n \n Smiles splintered the ice of tension. Captain Llud said, \"Maybe you've got something there. They seem to be mad, all right. But we're not in a position to throw any punches.\" He turned back to the others. \"As I was going to say—I think we'd better try to parley with the enemy. At least we may find out who he is and why he's determined to smash us.\"\n \n And now instead of tight-beam detectors the ship was broadcasting on an audio carrier wave that shifted through a wide range of frequencies, repeating on each the same brief recorded message:\n \n \"Who are you? What do you want? We are the interstellar expedition Quest III ....\" And so on, identifying themselves and protesting that they were unarmed and peaceful, that there must be some mistake, and querying again, \"Who are you ?\"\n \n There was no answer. The ship drove on, its fuel trickling away under multiplied demands. Those outside were squandering vastly greater amounts of energy in the effort to batter down its defenses, but converting that energy into harmless gravitic impulses was costing the Quest III too. Once more Knof Llud had the insidious sense of his own nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of his ship.\n \n Zost Relyul approached him apologetically. \"If you have time, Captain—I've got some data on Earth now.\"\n \n Eagerly Llud took the sheaf of photographs made with the telescope. But they told him nothing; only the continental outlines were clear, and those were as they had been nine hundred years ago.... He looked up inquiringly at Zost Relyul.\n \n \"There are some strange features,\" said the astronomer carefully.\n\"First of all—there are no lights on the night side. And on the daylight face, our highest magnification should already reveal traces of cities, canals, and the like—but it does not.\n \n \"The prevailing color of the land masses, you see, is the normal green vegetation. But the diffraction spectrum is queer. It indicates reflecting surfaces less than one-tenth millimeter wide—so the vegetation there can't be trees or grass, but must be more like a fine moss or even a coarse mold.\"\n \n \"Is that all?\" demanded Llud.\n \n \"Isn't it enough?\" said Zost Relyul blankly. \"Well—we tried photography by invisible light, of course. The infra-red shows nothing and likewise the ultraviolet up to the point where the atmosphere is opaque to it.\"\n \n The captain sighed wearily. \"Good work,\" he said. \"Keep it up; perhaps you can answer some of these riddles before—\"\n \n \" We know who you are ,\" interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, \" and pleading will do you no good. \"\n \n \n\n \n Knof Llud whirled to the radio apparatus, his weariness dropping from him once more. He snapped, \"But who are you?\" and the words blended absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape.\n \n He snapped off the record; as he did so the speaker, still crackling with space static, said, \"It may interest you to know that you are the last. The two other interstellar expeditions that went out have already returned and been destroyed, as you will soon be—the sooner, if you continue toward Earth.\"\n \n Knof Llud's mind was clicking again. The voice—which must be coming from Earth, relayed by one of the midget ships—was not very smart; it had already involuntarily told him a couple of things—that it was not as sure of itself as it sounded he deduced from the fact it had deigned to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the Quest III's ponderous and unswerving progress toward Earth had somehow frightened it. So it was trying to frighten them.\n \n He shoved those facts back for future use. Just now he had to know something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, \" Are you human? \"\n \n The voice chuckled sourly. \"We are human,\" it answered, \"but you are not.\"\n \n The captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. Behind him somebody made a choked noise, the only sound in the stunned hush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully into its field.\n \n \"Suppose we settle this argument about humanity,\" said Knof Llud woodenly. He named a vision frequency.\n \n \"Very well.\" The tone was like a shrug. The voice went on in its language that was quite intelligible, but alien-sounding with the changes that nine hundred years had wrought. \"Perhaps, if you realize your position, you will follow the intelligent example of the Quest I's commander.\"\n \n Knof Llud stiffened. The Quest I , launched toward Arcturus and the star cloud called Berenice's Hair, had been after the Quest III the most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend of Llud's, nine hundred years ago.... He growled, \"What happened to him?\"\n \n \"He fought off our interceptors, which are around you now, for some time,\" said the voice lightly. \"When he saw that it was hopeless, he preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun.\" A short pause. \"The vision connection is ready.\"\n \n Knof Llud switched on the screen at the named wavelength, and a picture formed there. The face and figure that appeared were ugly, but undeniably a man's. His features and his light-brown skin showed the same racial characteristics possessed by those aboard the Quest III , but he had an elusive look of deformity. Most obviously, his head seemed too big for his body, and his eyes in turn too big for his head.\n \n He grinned nastily at Knof Llud. \"Have you any other last wishes?\"\n \n \"Yes,\" said Llud with icy control. \"You haven't answered one question. Why do you want to kill us? You can see we're as human as you are.\"\n \n The big-headed man eyed him with a speculative look in his great eyes, behind which the captain glimpsed the flickering raw fire of a poisonous hatred.\n \n \"It is enough for you to know that you must die.\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "072b266a911a4f7e8c3768c11a49f65d", "response_text": "A spaceship named Quest III is moving towards a color-changing star, but this time it is the Sun. The crew is excited, their journey is coming to its end and they are coming home. The captain says they have sighted Earth. Talking burst out happily, the captain's wife is anxious about nothing being the same after nine hundred years on Earth, while it was only ten for the crew in space. The course to Earth is set and the whole crew is filled with anticipation. The captain can't find how to kill time and delves into upsetting thoughts about the failure of the venture. The captain rewatches his record from the beginning of the voyage. It shows his hopes fading with every new planet proving unfit for settlement and the Earth years increasing rapidly and frighteningly. By then, the captain had an idea of going to Omega Centauri without returning to Earth, as this planet was more than forty thousand years away from Earth. The reasoning was that the captain didn't want to bring news of a failure to Earth, but eventually he decided to return no matter what. Back to reality, the captain starts thinking about his awaiting future on Earth, when a jar goes  through the ship. Very soon the captain calms down, considering a meteoroid to be the reason, but a call informs him the ship is attacked by other ships. The captain rushes up joined by his son, the whole crew is panicking. The ship is not harmed though and still landing, as there is no other place for it to go. The attack seems well-planned and the crew broadcasts an audio wave, asking the attackers who they are and introducing themselves. There is no answer and Zost, a crew member, traces no lights or urban features on Earth, even no trees or grass are detected. Suddenly, a strange voice acknowledges that the other two ships were destroyed, and Quest III will be as well if it continues towards Earth. The captain learns out soon that the voice simply tries to frighten them and is not that confident, and is told that Quest I preferred suicide to defeat and went into the Sun. The vision connection happens and the man on the other side avoids the question why, proclaiming that the Quest III's crew must die. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "9d862c432df04bae9ec3d9dea1a72ad0", "response_text": "The Quest III has spent ten years on a voyage into space in search of a habitable planet for humanity to live on following an overpopulation crisis on Earth. However, because of space travel and how it warps time, the ten years on Quest III have actually been 900 years on Earth, and now, after failing to find said planet, the ship is returning home. The captain of Quest III, Knof Llud, reports to the crew that they have identified Earth, and the crew is excited and emotional about the prospect of going home. Llud's wife, Lesra, expresses fear about what the ship would be returning to on Earth, but Llud reassures her. Llud finds Den, the Navigator, who asks him about the reception they would get when returning to Earth. Llud goes to his cabin, feeling drained from the voyage, and reflects on the past ten years, watching old tapes documenting the trip and its discoveries. He notes another discovery that the ship had made about Omega Centauri, a global cluster that could have been the home of a planet for humanity. However, Llud had to choose between returning to Earth and going to Omega Centauri because of limited fuel on the ship, and he had hesitantly decided to return home. As Quest III approaches Earth, they are attacked by unknown spacecrafts. Fearful, the crew analyzes the spacecrafts, which are surprisingly small. Quest III has a strong armor, but the crafts repeatedly attack the ship, with more and more approaching. The crew notes these as robot crafts, but it is soon discovered that they are tiny spaceships. Since the last 900 years on Earth, humans have gotten smaller, eventually evolving into minuscule beings. One of the small men reveals that Quest I had returned and also been attacked before surrendering and flying into the Sun, and advises that Quest III do the same. Llud asks them why they want to kill Quest III, to which they respond that they \"must die\""}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "eb6c2691f72b40c2b1698ef91da08ab5", "response_text": "It has been nine hundred years since Quest III left Earth. The space ship that is set to explore the space and find some planet that might be suitable for living, since Earth has reached a dangerously unstable phase. Due to the time axis of a space ship approaching light speed, it has been only ten years for thee passengers aboard on the ship. The story begins with Knof Llud, the captain of Quest III, announcing that they have sighted Earth. Though it just appears as a featureless disk on the telescope, people cheered and cried. Then the captain’s wife, Lesra, seems to be worried about what has happened to Earth during this nine hundred years that they were gone. She worries that they won’t fit in, and everything they once were familiar with are different now. During this few hours before they reach Earth, the captain goes to his private office-cabin and started to view records of their trip. He first views one among the earliest. In the record, he was energetic and, despite a blank visit to Procyon, there was idealism. Then the captain selected a later one where they still have not find any planets. They are starting to believe that the Sun’s world is a rare accident. Finally he takes a record that is only four years old, when they’ve reached the furthest point from Earth, according to the plan. While they could have gone to Omega Centauri, a cluster of stars twenty thousand light years away. They decided to turn back and return to Earth. \n\nSuddenly, as they get close to Earth, they are under attack by a few very small ships. The captain was relieved since those small ships does not carry large enough weapons to damage  Quest III, the crew on board almost do not feel the vicious onslaught being done to their ship. As more and more groups of attackers arrive, while some of the earlier ones go back for refill of ammunition, they start to get worried and believe that this is a planned attack. They start to broadcast questions asking the attacker to identify themselves. Finally, the images of Earth arrive, and to their surprise, it seems as if mold has covered all the cities. Then the attackers’ voice comes back, stating that they know who they are and tells them to stop coming toward Earth, or they will be destroyed like the other Quest ships. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "f47f264be6dd4c0eb4aeab610596aa2e", "response_text": "The story begins aboard a ship called Quest III. The ship has been traversing the galaxy for years and is now returning to Earth. The story begins with the captain of the ship, Knof Llud, descending into a recreation room where many of the crew members are gathered. He announces to the group that they have spotted Earth. The crowd reacts openly with feelings of excitement and joy. His wife, Lesra, expresses her own feelings of nervousness about the unknown that Earth brings. The captain too has his own doubts. \n\nThe ship gets closer to Earth and they are able to experience the Sun. The Navigator, Gwar Den, asks the captain if he has any thoughts about the reception they might receive upon their return. The captain says no one can be sure. Knof goes to his private office cabin to wait until there is more news about their approach to Earth. As he is waiting, he thinks through the 900 Earth years that he has spent on the ship. He listens through recordings of himself when he was much younger and relives the feelings it felt at the time. He thinks about how he had the option to pursue an expedition of the globular cluster of Omega Centauri but instead chose to return to Earth. He cannot think of why he really chose to return to Earth besides the longing and familiarity it had. \n\nDuring the captain’s time of reflection, there is a sudden jolt on the ship. The captain because confused about the potential trouble. He is informed by Den that the ship is being attacked. He orders the alarms to be sound in response. Den details that there are multiple tiny crafts attacking their ship. The attacks were not damaging the ship, but they were dangerous because they were depleting the already very limited fuel supply. \n\nEventually, the attackers make contact with the Quest III. The captain talks to the person and believes that they are trying to frighten them because they are frightened themselves. He is able to confirm that the person he is speaking to is human, but is unable to discern why he seems so strange. The voice continues to threaten to kill him and the rest of the crew on the ship. \n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does the captain feel about the voyage and return?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "072b266a911a4f7e8c3768c11a49f65d", "response_text": "The captain is very responsible concerning his position and keeps an impassive voice and appearance in relation to all events. To his wife though he shows warmth and care, and expresses confidence in Earth's stability, he calms down his wife. Nevertheless, he also feels uncertain about the reception on Earth. Space is the captain's passion, but Earth is still his home. He is nervous about returning and alone with himself doesn't know how to distract. He becomes nostalgic rewatching the records from the beginning of the voyage and feels empty and old. He used to be full of excitement and energy about the mission, but it failed, and at some point he didn't even want to return with the news of failure after centuries, when everything changed. Nevertheless, the decision was made and there is no other choice now. The trip has changed the captain and now he feels aged and tired. He wants to retire and live with his family on Earth, he becomes nostalgic of its forests and green places, but not sure he wants it either. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "9d862c432df04bae9ec3d9dea1a72ad0", "response_text": "The captain, Knof Llud, has dedicated ten years to running Quest III and searching for a place for humanity to live. He is a reassuring and comforting presence for the crew, and he comforts his wife about how they will manage returning to Earth. However, Llud internally feels a sense of disappointment and hopelessness when it comes to the failure of his voyage. He is also uncertain about his decision to return to Earth instead of going on to Omega Centauri, and is unsure why he made the decision in the first place. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "eb6c2691f72b40c2b1698ef91da08ab5", "response_text": "The captain first tells him wife that there is nothing to worry about once they return, they will be able to manage. From the records, we learn that the captain was first very excited and energetic to find a planet that is suitable for them. However, as the trip continues, the captain starts to believe that the Sun’s world is somewhat of a rare accident. Then later, when they reach the furthest point of their plan, the captain knows the hope is small. But instead of going to the Omega Centauri where a large cluster of stars exist, the captain decides to turn back. Even though they’ve failed their mission on finding a new planet to settle, the captain knows that he is still a part of Earth, he has to come back. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "f47f264be6dd4c0eb4aeab610596aa2e", "response_text": "The captain, Knof Llud, has his doubts of returning to Earth. He is nervous about the unknown that might await them. They have been gone from Earth for hundreds of generations and it cannot be predicted what awaits them on their return. He is in general uneasy about what could be waiting for them. The Captain recollects how he was hopeful in the beginning that they would be able to return to Earth and still see those they knew. However, as the voyage continued and they did not find anything hospital, he became more philosophical. "}]}, {"question_text": "How does the crew feel about approaching Earth?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "072b266a911a4f7e8c3768c11a49f65d", "response_text": "All the people are extremely excited to return, they keep talking and buzzing about it. Many are nervous about the centuries that have passed and about what they will find upon return. Lesra, the captain's wife, feels anxious, for a while she was even afraid the Earth won't be there. She is scared of how the Earth will look like now and tears fill her eyes. The navigator is also nervous about the reception they will get. When the ship is attacked, everyone is confused and scared, the mass panic starts. The captain has to maintain coolness and calm everyone down, but he is also anxious about the return. Moreover, he hates returning with failure and only does it because the ship ran out of fuel. So, the whole ship anticipates the return and misses home, but due to the long time far away, everyone is afraid of what awaits them.  "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "9d862c432df04bae9ec3d9dea1a72ad0", "response_text": "The crew is mainly excited about approaching Earth. When they first receive the news that Earth has been identified, they are emotional and amazed; it has been 10 years for them being away from Earth, but 900 years have passed on Earth, so there is a present uncertainty about what will be waiting for them when they arrive. However, the crew is mainly happy to return to Earth, being homesick, and some of their children having never been on Earth. The crew feels a bittersweet mix of hope, fear, and relief. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "eb6c2691f72b40c2b1698ef91da08ab5", "response_text": "Once the crew heard that they have sighted Earth, they were excited. They cheered and cried. However, the captain’s wife is worried that Earth has changed during this nine hundred years that they were gone. She worries that they won’t fit in, and everything they once were familiar with are different now. The captain tells that she does not need to worry, they will manage. Later, during the attack, people are confused and scared. They don’t know who are attacking them or why they attack. But the captain’s boy is not, he has faith in his father. Moreover, the boy mentions that while the attackers are mad, they aren’t. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "f47f264be6dd4c0eb4aeab610596aa2e", "response_text": "The crew on board the spaceship approaching Earth was a mixture of emotions, but a consensus surrounded excitement. Adults were discussing in hushed tones their opinions of eagerness and some of the apprehension for the unknown that they might encounter upon return. When they hear that Earth has been spotted, they begin their exciting chatter again. They embraced each other, shouted, kissed, and wept in ecstasy. Fears were not dwelled upon during the initial moments of the approach. "}]}, {"question_text": "What was the plan and purpose of the voyage?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "072b266a911a4f7e8c3768c11a49f65d", "response_text": "A few ships were sent to space as a part of the mission. Quest III was one of them, but there also were Quest I and II. The purpose was for the ships to find a sun similar to the Sun somewhere in space, and a planet to live on, in case Earth will become unfit. This mission was of extreme importance for the whole of humanity and the crew felt honored and ready to sacrifice all they were leaving on Earth. Nevertheless, they kept hoping to return as fast as possible, but every sun was unfit. The amount of fuel for no more than one thousand Earth years was loaded before departure and the fairest point to reach was chosen. All three ships went different ways, and were cut from any communication. Nevertheless, Quest III was unable to find any fitting planet and had to return or stay in a place located more than forty thousand Earth years away. The captain decided to return, though the failure upset him. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "9d862c432df04bae9ec3d9dea1a72ad0", "response_text": "The plan and purpose of the voyage was to find a planet that would be habitable enough to be colonized by Earth before humanity is eradicated by overpopulation and lack of resources. Three ships were sent out into space, Quest I, II, and III, and the current ship is the last to make its trip. Quest III traveled into space, stopping at countless planets, and once it reached the furthest point, turned back on a curve to return to Earth. However, the voyage was not successful, and Quest III has been unable to find a habitable planet. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "eb6c2691f72b40c2b1698ef91da08ab5", "response_text": "The purpose of the voyage is to expand mankind into the universe. Due to the fact that the population on Earth was outgrowing its room and resources, and because the man’s room for growth on Earth was in sight, they have to be moved elsewhere. Thus three space ships were built, which exhausts the economy. Each ship, Quest, will try to find a habitable planet by going into the space from star to star. They plan to go to as far as one thousand years Earth time. Once a habitable planet is found, they will return to Earth, however they never find one and have to return after reaching the furthest point of their plan. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "f47f264be6dd4c0eb4aeab610596aa2e", "response_text": "The purpose of the voyage was to continue with humanity’s dream and find another suitable planet to live on. Earth had begun overpopulated and humans needed to expand out of their solar system. Ships, along with Quest III, were created to search for other planets in the universe. The ships that were built were extremely costly and laborious. They required a united effort from all on Earth. The effort was energized by the hope that the human race would be able to continue and expand elsewhere in the universe.  There was hope that they would be able to return before a century on Earth, but those dreams were not realized. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the captain's decision to return to Earth instead of going to Omega Centauri?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "072b266a911a4f7e8c3768c11a49f65d", "response_text": "The whole crew was getting homesick and excited about returning, even the captain became nostalgic of the forests and green areas. On the other hand, all the people the crew knew had died a long time ago, and there was some frightening uncertainty about what awaited them upon return. Therefore, the decision was hard to make. Even more difficult it was for the captain as he didn't want to return with the news of failure. Soon, it turns out that the return was a dangerous choice and the crew is not welcome. The ship is attacked and the enemy threatens to destroy the ship, which can't turn away as it is out of fuel. Therefore, this decision put the whole crew in danger instead of fulfilling their hopes for warm welcome and excitement to come home. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "9d862c432df04bae9ec3d9dea1a72ad0", "response_text": "The captain could have advised the ship to go to Omega Centauri, a cluster of globes further past the point of Quest III's voyage. Omega Centauri contains many planets close to its Sun, and for this reason would likely be a place where several habitable planets can be found. However, Omega Centauri is too far for Quest III to make the trip there and back to Earth, so if they went there, they would not be able to return. The captain notes this risk, and decides to return back to Earth. However, this ends up being a mistake, and as Quest III returns to Earth they are attacked and unwelcome. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "eb6c2691f72b40c2b1698ef91da08ab5", "response_text": "The Omega Centauri is space clustered with stars in comparison to a few dozen in the Sun’s neighborhood, but it is twenty thousand light years away. While Quest III could get to Omega Centauri with its remaining fuel, it can only be a one-way journey. Moreover, even if it has enough fuel for the round trip, forty thousand years would have passed, there is no point in returning, when it is unclear if human race itself still remains. Most importantly, the crew has been showing signs of homesick, despite the fact that what was known as home is probably gone. From the joy an tears of the passengers once they acknowledge Earth has been sighted, we know – they are happy and want to return home. Just as Llud stated, he is still a part of Earth. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "f47f264be6dd4c0eb4aeab610596aa2e", "response_text": "Omega Centauri was a globular cluster that had a hundred thousand stars in a comparatively small volume. There was hope that Omega Centauri of all places would possess the planet necessary for human survival. The issue was that it was twenty thousand light-years away. With the limited fuel reserves that the Quest III ship had left, going to Omega Centauri would be a one-way trip. If the globular cluster proved to be as useless as every other location, the ship and its crew members would have no fuel to go anywhere else. Earth was a safer option because its existence was reality, at least when the ships left 900 Earth years ago. Omega Centauri was very uncertain. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "62349", "uid": "6a2fe8cefb6c45e984a87ee0bb1b8183", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "The Blue Behemoth\n \n\n By LEIGH BRACKETT\n \n \n Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed space-carny leased for a mysterious tour of the inner worlds. It made a one-night pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to find that death stalked it from the jungle in a tiny ball of flame.\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He knocked over the pitcher of thil , but it didn't matter. The pitcher was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to spring them.\n \n \"We,\" he said, \"are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and down the drain.\" He added, as an afterthought, \"Destitute.\"\n \n I looked at him. I said sourly, \"You're kidding!\"\n \n \"Kidding.\" Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. \"He says I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in Space, plastered so thick with attachments....\"\n \n \"It's no more plastered than you are.\" I was sore because he'd been a lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. \"The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey! I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down! Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!\"\n \n I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.\n \n Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.\n \n I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.\n \n I said, \"Bucky. Hold on, fella. I....\"\n \n Somebody said, \"Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter Shannon?\"\n \n Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled pleasantly and said, very gently:\n \n \"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?\"\n \n I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.\n \n The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.\n \n There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.\n \n He said, \"I don't think you understand.\"\n \n I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed, and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.\n \n Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.\n \n I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise. It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up, quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.\n \n Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. \"What's eating you, Jig? I'm not going to hurt him.\"\n \n \"Shut up,\" I said. \"Look what he's got there. Money!\"\n \n The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. \"Yes,\" he said.\n\"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?\"\n \n Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. \"Delighted. I'm Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager.\" He looked down at the table. \"I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity.\"\n \n The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more than you could see through sheet metal.\n \n I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,\n\"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking like hungry cats at a mouse-hole.\"\n \n The little guy nodded. \"Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus.\"\n \n \n\n \n I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh pitcher of thil on the table. Then I cleared my throat.\n \n \"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?\"\n \n Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. \"I have independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten the burden of life for those less fortunate....\"\n \n Bucky got red around the ears. \"Just a minute,\" he murmured, and started to get up. I kicked him under the table.\n \n \"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish.\"\n \n He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish ignored him. He went on, quietly,\n \n \"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of toil and boredom....\"\n \n I said, \"Sure, sure. But what was your idea?\"\n \n \"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no entertainment of the— proper sort has been available. I propose to remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt.\"\n \n Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to speak, and I kicked him again.\n \n \"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish,\" I said. \"We'd have to cancel several engagements....\"\n \n He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,\n \n \"I quite understand that. I would be prepared....\"\n \n The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.\n \n It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.\n \n He said, \"Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again.\"\n \n \"Gertrude be blowed,\" growled Bucky. \"Can't you see I'm busy?\"\n \n Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. \"I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something....\"\n \n I said, \"That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now.\"\n \n He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to fit me for a coffin. \"Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome, see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot ship'll hold her.\"\n \n He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,\n \n \"Gertrude?\"\n \n \"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental.\" Bucky took a quick drink. I finished for him.\n \n \"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp Venusian cansin . The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude.\"\n \n She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking circus than even I could stand.\n \n Beamish looked impressed. \"A cansin . Well, well! The mystery surrounding the origin and species of the cansin is a fascinating subject. The extreme rarity of the animal....\"\n \n We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, \"We'd have to have at least a hundred U.C.'s.\"\n \n It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker. Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.\n \n \"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be agreeable to me.\" He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.\n \n \"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night.\"\n \n We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made grab for the money, but I beat him to it.\n \n \"Scram,\" I said. \"There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs. Here.\" I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. \"We can get lushed enough on this.\"\n \n Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back he said suddenly,\n \n \"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game.\"\n \n \"Yeah.\"\n \n \"It may be crooked.\"\n \n \"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!\" I yelled. \"You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?\"\n \n Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.\n \n \"Yeah,\" he said. \"I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury.\" He poked his head outside. \"Hey, boy! More thildatum !\"\n \n \n\n \n It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting around and smoking and looking very ugly.\n \n It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown red dust gritted in my teeth.\n \n Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his feet. He waved and said, \"Hiya, boys.\"\n \n They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in weeks we'd come in at the front door.\n \n I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly, Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts. Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.\n \n \"Now?\" he said.\n \n \"Now,\" I said.\n \n We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.\n \n The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.\n \n Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.\n\"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've rewarded them.\"\n \n I said, \"Sure,\" rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.\n \n \"Let's go see Gertrude.\"\n \n I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.\n \n \"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye.\"\n \n \"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'....\"\n \n The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't.... Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?\n \n It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and compression units.\n \n Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them, breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled around them as strong as the cage bars.\n \n Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again. A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell, ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.\n \n It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow had them nicely conditioned to that gong.\n \n \n\n \n But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night, all of a sudden....\n \n Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. \"She's gettin' worse,\" he said. \"She's lonesome.\"\n \n \"That's tough,\" said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an owl's. He swayed slightly. \"That's sure tough.\" He sniffled.\n \n I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a cansin . There's only two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will make much difference.\n \n They're what the brain gang calls an \"end of evolution.\" Seems old Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The cansins were pretty successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.\n \n I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.\n \n I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything. Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.\n \n The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.\n \n Gow said softly, \"She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one.\"\n \n Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, \"Be reasonable, Gow! Nobody's ever seen a male cansin . There may not even be any.\"\n \n Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head. The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....\n \n Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, \"You'll have to snap her out of this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts.\"\n \n He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he turned to Gertrude.\n \n \"I saved her life,\" he said. \"When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know her. I can do things with her. But this time....\"\n \n He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a woman's talking about a sick child.\n \n \"This time,\" he said, \"I ain't sure.\"\n \n \"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need her.\" I took Shannon's arm. \"Come to bed, Bucky darlin'.\"\n \n He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at us. Bucky sobbed.\n \n \"You were right, Jig,\" he mumbled. \"Circus is no good. I know it. But it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love....\"\n \n \"Sure, sure,\" I told him. \"Stop crying down my neck.\"\n \n We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.\n \n Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly with blue, cold fire.\n \n I yelled, \"Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!\"\n \n I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.\n \n I thought, \" Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants to kill us! \" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.\n \n One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the hollow of his shoulder.\n \n The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.\n \n Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,\n\"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!\"\n \n Then I went out.\n \n \n\n II\n \n Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his teeth, and he gummed thak -weed. It smelt.\n \n \"You pretty, Mis' Jig,\" he giggled. \"You funny like hell.\"\n \n He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and said, \"Where's Shannon? How is he?\"\n \n \"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!\"\n \n I said, \"Yeah,\" and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch plaid. I felt sick.\n \n Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was a big burn across his neck. He said:\n \n \"Beamish is here with his lawyer.\"\n \n I picked up my shirt. \"Right with you.\"\n \n Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.\n \n \"Jig,\" he said, \"those vapor worms were all right when we went in. Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose.\"\n \n I hurt all over. I growled, \"With that brain, son, you should go far. Nobody saw anything, of course?\" Bucky shook his head.\n \n \"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?\"\n \n \"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped.\"\n \n \"One hundred U.C.'s,\" said Bucky softly, \"for a few lousy swampedge mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?\"\n \n I shrugged. \"You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the creditors.\"\n \n \"Yeah,\" Bucky said reflectively. \"And I hear starvation isn't a comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign.\" He put his hand on the latch and looked at my feet. \"And—uh—Jig, I....\"\n \n I said, \"Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!\"\n \n We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge, and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had kittens.\n \n Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.\n \n Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time. Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.\n \n Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.\n \n I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.\n \n \"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!\"\n \n I snarled, \"What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!\" and went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus heat was already sneaking into the ship.\n \n While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude, screaming.\n \n \n\n \n The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.\n \n I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't sound nice.\n \n You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.\n \n Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with white reptilian teeth.\n \n \"Death,\" she whispered. \"Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can smell it in the swamp wind.\"\n \n The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.\n \n \"The deep swamps are angry,\" she whispered. \"Something has been taken. They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!\"\n \n She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight and cold. Bucky said,\n \n \"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump.\"\n \n We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.\n \n He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.\n \n Bucky said, \"Jig—it's Sam Kapper.\"\n \n We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man who crawled and whimpered in the mud.\n \n Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't too broke, and we were pretty friendly.\n \n I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed, hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick, looking down at him.\n \n Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.\n \n I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't realize until later that he looked familiar.\n \n We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.\n \n Bucky said gently, \"Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?\"\n \n \n\n \n Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.\n \n He said thickly, \"I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it and brought it out.\"\n \n The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. \"Help me,\" he said simply. \"I'm scared.\" His mouth drooled.\n \n \"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it....\"\n \n He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. \"I don't know how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back. I've got to....\"\n \n Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared, suddenly. I said, \"Get what back where?\"\n \n Bucky got up. \"I'll get a doctor,\" he said. \"Stick with him.\" Kapper grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands stood out like guy wires.\n \n \"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back. Promise you'll take it back.\" He gasped and struggled over his breathing.\n \n \"Sure,\" said Bucky. \"Sure, well take it back. What is it?\"\n \n Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no use. Kapper whispered,\n \n \" Cansin . Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back.\"\n \n \"Where is it, Sam?\"\n \n I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.\n \n Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.\n \n \"Heart?\" said Beamish finally.\n \n \"Yeah,\" said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. \"Poor Sam.\"\n \n I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.\n \n \"Keep this guy here till I get back,\" I said.\n \n Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. \"Shut up,\" I told him. \"We got a contract.\" I yanked the curtains shut and walked over to the bar.\n \n I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.\n \n Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.\n \n The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.\n \n I leaned on the bar. \" Lhak ,\" I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a green bottle. I reached for it, casually.\n \n \"That guy we brought in,\" I said. \"He sure has a skinful. Passed out cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?\"\n \n \" Selak ,\" said a voice in my ear. \"As if you didn't know.\"\n \n I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing behind me. And I remembered him, then.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2c5add235d404c4f81bac16a7fd14cc0", "response_text": "Bucky Shannon, a space circus owner, and his business manager, Jig Bentley, have a dispute over the business' financial hardships. Suddenly, a little man interferes. Mistaking him for a bill-collector, Bucky starts a fight, when Jig notices money in the man's hands. Simon Beamish, the little man, is planning to invest in the circus and make its tour to other towns. He agrees to pay much more than the real cost is, Bucky and Jig suspect some kind of a game there, but they need money. The two go to their circus and are finally able to pay the performers. After having some fun all together, the two go to see Gertrude, a huge cansin, the main attraction, who was earlier reported to be unhappy. Upon entry, Jig feels uneasy, frightened and sorry for Gertrude, who is in desperate need of a mate. The sorrow of this creature makes the whole team sad and uneasy, full of pity, and no one could help, even Gow who saved her and is the closest to her. Exiting her tank, Jig has to carry Bucky, who is crying at the view and falling asleep at the same time. On their way, the two face the Vapor snakes let out by someone, they fall, and the snakes cover their bodies. Gow saves the two and they are burnt but alive, trying to find out who let the snakes out to hurt them and suspecting Beamish. Then the whole gang goes to Venus to meet Beamish, and there is a feeling of discontent coming from the gang and mixed with Gertrude's screams all the way. Further, the Nahali woman from the gang claims to smell death and trouble. Then they meet Sam, a hunter selling them animals until three seasons ago, and now he is crying and scared. Turns out, he has found the only male cansin and wants to take it back to prevent trouble, though he is afraid of people wanting to take the cansin from him. Suddenly, Jig discovers Beamish listening to the conversation and Sam dies. Jig then notices the suspicious silence and too much of a crowd in the bar and recognizes the man who gave Sam a cigarette a while ago. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "603f0ef947f64d9b8cd28845bb471455", "response_text": "Jig Bentley and his business partner Bucky Shannon run a zoo together in space. Their ship is currently stationed on Mars. Bucky is the owner of the zoo and Jig is his right hand man. Both they and the zoo are broken. That is until one night they are visited by Simon Beamish, a mysteriously rich man who offers them 100 U.C's to charter their circus to perform on Venus. They agree, but the night before they're set to leave, they pay a visit to their main attraction, a cansin, a beast native to Venus, named Gertrude. While they are down in the area where they keep the various monsters that perform in their show, along with the zookeeper named Gow, a group of vapour snakes are released on the pair. Some unknown person let these beasts free, in an effort to kill the duo. Jig takes Bucky away from the closed off area, saving his life, then blacks out. Later they wake up, speculating over who would want to kill them. They make the trip to Venus, while Gertrude is becoming restless. She is lonely and needs a mate. If she doesn't get one, Gow fears she might break out and wreak havoc. They arrive in Venus, where Ahra, one of the performers tells Jig that something has been taken from Venus, and death is coming. Jig then notices a run down Sam Kepper, a hunter he is acquainted with. Kepper falls and the pair rush over to him. A mystery man gives Kepper a cigarette, then leaves. They bring him into a bar, where Kepper tells him that he has found and acquired  a male cansin. Kepper tells Jig that he must take it back. Soon after this, he falls unconscious. Just then, Beamish arrives at their table. Jig walks over to the bar, noticing the group of men that are in the bar. Jig asks the barman what Kepper was drinking, and when he turns around, he notices the man that gave Kepper the cigarette. \nTHE END. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "833bf34190cd4adba351ef710d797d1c", "response_text": "The Blue Behemoth story begins with Bucky Shannon and Jig sitting around a table talking about how they are not doing well with their business. Jig insults the circus and notably upsets Bucky who responds with violence. Before Bucky can hurt Jig too bad, they are interrupted by a stranger. The stranger is offering the two a lot of money for their circus. Jig does not feel comfortable with the stranger but is willing to set aside his uneasiness because they desperately need the money that the stranger is offering. They begin to listen to what the stranger is offering – a charter to their circus for money and negotiate details about monetary compensation. Gow interrupts their conversation to complain about Gertrude, a member of their circus, not acting right. When they let it slip that Gertrude is a cansin, an extremely rare animal, Beamish appears impressed by the news. Beamish agrees to the terms of the contract and leaves Bucky and Jig. \n\nOnce he leaves, Jig implies that they have to pay people back before they can enjoy a large amount of money they have come into. They return to the spaceport where Bucky’s Imperial Circus is lounging around, there are about twenty of them sitting there. While in the spaceport, Bucky expresses that he wants to go see Gertrude. Jig does not. They go down a dark hallway in search of Gertrude. Jig smells a sour and wild scent emanating in the area. They hear loud screaming and can sense that Gertrude is suffering because she cannot find someone to mate. Jig emphatically tells Gow that it is impossible because a male cansin has never been seen nor proven to exist. \n\nSoon chaos is let loose. Vapor snakes are somehow let out and Jig and Bucky attempt to run away. Bucky causes Jig to stumble and the snakes are able to get to them, burning them through their clothes. They pass out and wake up in a cell with injuries. Bucky says that someone had to have let the snakes out. He wants to know why someone wanted to kill them. They are unable to figure out who did it. Someone named Sam comes up to them and then they start running towards him because they realize they recognize him. They get Sam into a shack and ask him what happened. Sam is desperately trying to communicate that he found a male cansin and wants them to take it back. He then appears to pass out and they find Beamish standing behind a curtain. Jig notices that there is something unusual about the audience at the bar and tries to explain the situation. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "876d8e6c28a04c49b25e1d72413c4be0", "response_text": "Bucky Shannon and Jig are the heads of Shannon's Imperial Circus, a circus that tours around space. They are sitting in a bar, defeated due to the lack of success in their circus. Bucky and Jig are out of money with their circus in pathetic condition. They are then interrupted by a small man who asks for Bucky, holding a large amount of money. Bucky introduces himself and Jig, and the man introduces himself as Beamish. Beamish has taken an interest in Shannon's Imperial Circus and offers to charter it, proposing that the circus make a tour on the settlements along the Tehara Belt, on Venus. Jig, not wanting to seem too desperate or reveal the state of the circus to Beamish, is hesitant at first, saying they would have to cancel on events. The three are interrupted by Gow, the circus' zoo-keeper, who informs Bucky that Gertrude, a Venusian cansin that is the star of the circus, is not doing well. Beamish is impressed at the presence of a cansin, given there is only one other animal of the species. Jig names a price of one hundred U.C's for Beamish to join the partnership. Though a large amount of money, Jig advises that it is reserved for the men they owe it to. Bucky and Jig return to the circus spaceport, where they meet a group of men and give them money, then proceed to beat the group of men up. Once inside, Bucky convinces Jig to see Gertrude with him, and once they see her, they notice that she is in terrible condition. Gow informs them that Gertrude wants a mate, which is practically impossible because there are only two known cansins. Jig tells Gow to do what he can to help Gertrude, as him and Bucky head to bed. Once they start to rest, they wake in a panic as the Vapor snakes attack them, having escaped in the night. Jig awakes, injured, and Bucky concludes that they have been sabotaged by whoever let the snakes out. They suspect Beamish as the culprit, but sign his contract anyway out of a need for money. They then go on their trip to Venus, stopping at Nahru and meeting with Beamish and the gang. On their way to a bar, they come across Sam Kapper, a hunter who supplies animals to attractions. Kapper is in visible pain. They take him into the bar, asking him what had happened. Kapper eventually tells them that he has found a male cansin, but before he can say where, he dies. Beamish is found to be listening in on the conversation."}]}, {"question_text": "What are Bucky's and Jig's attitudes towards their circus?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2c5add235d404c4f81bac16a7fd14cc0", "response_text": "Bucky, the owner, is of a rather idealistic opinion of the circus. He considers it great and he loves the participants as they are loyal and good. Jig is rather realistic, he knows the circus is broken and lousy, with Gertrude, the huge cansin, being the only worthy creature, though even she is old. Jig is also not that fond of many creatures, he sees them as ugly, some scary, some absurd. The state of Gertrude made Bucky cry, and soon he confessed that he actually knows that the circus is not great, but he loves it no matter what. Jig tried to be practical and asked Gow to snap Gertrude out of this state for the good of the circus. Nevertheless, even Jig was touched by the creature's appearance and gaze full of grief, her screams made him tremble. The Nahali woman, claiming to smell death, made Jig feel anxious and scared. Throughout the story Jig keeps feeling uneasy around the creatures and tries to avoid them, limiting the interactions to business. Bucky, at the same time, sympathizes with them and tries to get closer. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "603f0ef947f64d9b8cd28845bb471455", "response_text": "Bucky and Jig's attitudes towards the cirsus are very different. Jig thinks over the circus as a dump. It is merely a means of staying afloat financially for him. The things of the performers as uncivilised, unintelligent and below him. He looks down upon their superstitions and beliefs. He hates the beasts that are used in the circus, as they somehow make him feel less human. He hates that the circus itself is run down, as they are broke. \nBucky on the other hand loves the circus. He thinks of the performers as family. It is his pride and joy and he is willing to fight anyone who says otherwise, including Jig. He checks up on Gertrude, clearly showing his affection for her. He knows that the circus is run down, but he loves it still. It's like his child. \n"}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "833bf34190cd4adba351ef710d797d1c", "response_text": "Jig shouts at Bucky that he knows the circus is in a lousy and mangy state where nothing is working. He is not satisfied with the circus and believes that it “stinks”. Bucky also states that he does not believe the circus is doing well, though he is not happy when Jig agrees with these assertions enthusiastically. Gertrude is a member of their circus and they describe her as temperamental. While they do not believe the circus is doing well, they feel loyal to the members of their circus. Bucky relates to Jig that he is happy they have been loyal to him and he wants to reward them for that. Bucky loves the circus no matter how ugly or no good the members appear or act. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "876d8e6c28a04c49b25e1d72413c4be0", "response_text": "Bucky and Jig have a soft spot for their circus, having run it for eleven years. Jig is aware of the state of the circus, with Bucky in slight denial but eventually accepting its condition. What once was the Greatest Show in Space has become a broken, unappealing attraction. However, due to the amount of time that Bucky and Jig have devoted to the circus, it is their only source of purpose and income. Despite the unhopeful state of the circus, they both try to remain optimistic about improving it, leading to their contract with Beamish and their concern over Gertrude. "}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to Jig throughout the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2c5add235d404c4f81bac16a7fd14cc0", "response_text": "Jig argues with Bucky, the owner of the circus, whose director is the former. Jig is drunk and is careless enough to insult the circus. He almost gets beaten when a stranger interferes. Jig feels pity towards his savior at first, but then he sees a sum of money in the man’s hands. Jig stops Bucky and the three of them begin to discuss business. Jig tries to show off the circus and asks for more money than it’s worth. He is suspicious of the man, but they make a deal. Then, Jig goes together with Bucky to pay the members of the gang and they have fun. After that, the two friends go to check on Gertrude, the main attraction. The creature’s depressing appearance makes Jig feel uneasy and pitiful, he has to carry Bucky, who is crying and falling asleep, away from the cage. Then both are attacked by Vapor snakes and Jig appears a hero by covering Bucky. He finds himself bitten all over and looking ridiculous, but at least alive. He encounters Bucky and they try to learn who wanted to kill them both. Then they go to Venus to meet Beamish, Jig feels the gang’s unhappiness with the travel, and he feels uneasy himself. The Nahali woman and her death predictions make him even more scared. Then they meet Sam who used to hunt animals for their circus, his terrible appearance makes Jig feel sick. Then together with Bucky, he tries to help the hunter by asking questions in the nearby bar. Jig feels even more scared and sick when Sam starts choking and his mouth gets blue. Jig wants to rush for a doctor, but finds Beamish listening behind the curtain. When Sam dies, Jig starts understanding and suspecting something, he talks to the bartender and suddenly recognizes the man who gave a cigarette to Sam.\n"}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "603f0ef947f64d9b8cd28845bb471455", "response_text": "We hear the story from Jig’s perspective. We first meet Jig when he is talking with Bucky. He insults the circus to Bucky, and just as Bucky goes to give Jig a beating, they are met by Beamish. Jig tells Beamish that they will charter out their circus to him for 100 U.C's. Jig is really pushing his luck with this offer, ready to haggle, but Beamish agrees on the fee. When Bucky tries to take the money as soon as they get it, Beamish has to take it from him, giving it to the various men waiting outside to be paid. He and Bucky get into a fight with the men for having not played them in so long. Eventually, they all go home. He agrees to go see Gertrude with Bucky, which he hates. He looks at Gertrude, and can't help feeling sorry for her. He tries to carry Bucky back to their cells but they get attacked on the way. He awakens to Kanza the Martian Croaker. He talks briefly with Kanza before finding Bucky. They discuss who might've tried to assassinate them. They soon make the journey to Venus, where he is told by Ahra the Nahali woman that something has been taken from Venus, and death is coming. He sees Sam Kepper, and runs over to him when he falls. He brings him into the bar where Sam tells Jig that he has found a male cansin, and that Jig must return it to the wild for him. He walks over to the bar, where he talks with the bartender, and then turns around to see the man who gave Kepper the cigarette. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "833bf34190cd4adba351ef710d797d1c", "response_text": "Jig is Bucky Shannon’s business manager and he is not always treated well by Bucky. Bucky likes to threaten Jig physically with violence. At the beginning of the story, Jig negotiates with Beamish about the terms of a contract for chartering Bucky’s circus. He is able to secure a high paycheck for himself and Bucky. After the meeting and when they receive the money, Jig goes to pay the members of the circus. \n\nWhile on the spaceport, Jig reluctantly goes with Bucky to see Gertrude who is in severe distress. Somehow, the vapor snakes are let out and they are coming after Jig and Bucky. Jig tries to run away to safety but he is tripped and pinned down by Bucky. This allows the vapor snakes to come and attack him which burn him through his clothes. He passes out due to this incident and wakes up in a cell with many injuries. \n\nLater, while on the planet Venus, Jig and Bucky run into Sam Kapper, someone they recognize. Sam tries to excitedly tell the two that there is a male cansin before he passes out and is perceived to be dead. Jig goes to pull back the curtains in the small area that they have been talking to Sam and finds Beamish hiding behind the curtains. He pulls the curtain back defiantly and walks to the bar to order a drink. During this walk, he notices that the audience for this situation is unusual. They looked out of place for the location and the setting. When he orders a drink and makes polite conversation, he sees a man that he had encountered earlier and realizes that he remember the man. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "876d8e6c28a04c49b25e1d72413c4be0", "response_text": "Jig works with Bucky to run Shannon's Imperial Circus. At the beginning of this story, he talks with Bucky about his pessimism toward the circus and how hopeless the prospect is. He then meets Beamish, who offers to work with Bucky on conducting a Venusian tour of their circus. Jig decides to manipulate Beamish into thinking that the circus is more successful than it actually is, and manages to negotiate a large sum of one hundred U.C's ahead of the contract. Later that day, Jig returns to the circus with Bucky, where they pay men at the entrance before fighting them. Jig then sees Gertrude and heads to bed, where he is attacked by loose Vapor snakes. The next day, the contract is officially signed, and Jig travels to Venus, where he meets Sam Kapper at his first stop. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of Jig and Bucky meeting Beamish on the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2c5add235d404c4f81bac16a7fd14cc0", "response_text": "The first encounter between Beamish and the two occurred when Jig and Bucky were at the point of a fight. Beamish prevented them from this unnecessary action, and soon he saved the circus. The circus was broke, the performers were discontent with not getting their bills, the construction was loose, etc. There would be no tour and existence of the circus overall without this encounter. Being able to pay the gang, Jig and Bucky could show up without being afraid or ashamed to show up in their circus and keep doing business. This encounter was also somehow connected with the attempt to kill the two by letting the vapor snakes out. The trip to Venus in the end was also caused by this encounter, as it was the place where Beamish awaited for his partners and the gang. Therefore, he was somehow connected with them meeting Sam, a hunter supplying animals for the circus, and his eventual weird death. Beamish listening to their dialogue and overall investing in a broke circus creates a suspicion of his actions having some hidden reason. Together with the unhappiness of the gang and one creature smelling death, Beamish's unclear intentions seem scheming and threatening, adding to the intrigue of the whole story. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "603f0ef947f64d9b8cd28845bb471455", "response_text": "The meeting of Jig, Bucky and Beamish is very significant in the story. When we meet Jig and Bucky, they are in deep financial trouble. They have absolutely no money at all. When they are approached by Beamish, Jig can tell that there's something strange about him. He seems to have no emotion at all in his face. Beamish offers to charter out their circus for 100 U.C's. It's unclear where Beamish's money comes from. Because they get the money, the duo are finally able to pay back the men that they have been avoiding for weeks. They take the ship to Venus, where they hope this trip will help them escape financial ruin. Because they are in Venus, they are able to meet Kepper, who tells them about the stolen cansin. \n"}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "833bf34190cd4adba351ef710d797d1c", "response_text": "Beamish’s entrance was a welcome interruption to Jig because it distracted and stopped Bucky from hitting him. Beamish is wanting to offer Bucky and Jig money to charter their circus for a tour of different settlements along the Tehara Belt. They would have never gone to Venus if not by the order of Beamish and thus they never would have met up with Sam as they did in the story. It is significant that they meet Beamish because according to the same Beamish is a male cansin and previously Bucky and Jig did not believe they existed anymore. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "876d8e6c28a04c49b25e1d72413c4be0", "response_text": "Beamish gives Jig and Bucky a new opportunity for their circus. Before meeting Beamish, they were out of luck, their circus in lousy condition and no money to live off of or improve their attraction. However, when Beamish comes into the picture, they are offered a new chance to showcase their circus. Though the offer is a bit shady and not completely promising, Bucky and Jig prefer it over their current situation. Taking up Beamish's offer leads Bucky and Jig to a new tour on Venus."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2c5add235d404c4f81bac16a7fd14cc0", "response_text": "The story begins in the middle of some bar or club with a girl playing piano and drinks being served. When Beamish joined them, the three moved to a booth - a quieter place there. After the conversation, Jig and Bucky go to circus. At first, they meet the whole gang, coming through the main entrance. Then they move to the tank of a huge special creature, Gertrude, which is located a bit afar. On the way back home, outside the tank, the two were attacked by snakes. They woke up in different rooms, taken care of by Kanza the Martian croaker after being bitten by snakes and brought there by Gow, a member of the circus gang. Very soon they all together with the gang set off to Venus on a space ship to meet Beamish. On Venus the gang walked towards a local bar and the story ends there. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "603f0ef947f64d9b8cd28845bb471455", "response_text": "The story takes place on multiple planets. The story first begins when Jig and Bucky are in a bar, on Mars. It is where their ship, which holds \"Shannon's Imperial Circus\" is stationed. It is being kept in the spaceport. Mars is described as desertlike, and cold. It has an odd smell to it, like something that was once rotten is now dried up. There is red dust everywhere. There are two moon which hang in the sky. The tank in which they keep Gertrude is dark. All the bests of the performance stay there. It is as quiet as the grave. There is a ladder to climb down to get into the tank. Inside, there are rows of cages and glass tanks which hold the beasts. Jig and Bucky each have their own cells on the ship. The story then moves to Venus, where the terrain in jungle. The mud is blue and the rainy green jungle is tick. It's very hot. There are various small shacks that are dotted around. they go into one shack which turns out to be a rundown bar. there are booths in the back which are curtained off for privacy. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "833bf34190cd4adba351ef710d797d1c", "response_text": "At the beginning of the story, they are on Mars which is described as having a smell of decay. Bucky Shannon and Jig are sitting around at a table in an establishment. When Beamish enters the story, they move to a curtained booth for more privacy. Once Beamish leaves, the two go back to their spaceport that is in bad shape. Bucky’s Imperial Circus was lounging underneath the spaceport’s attachments. It is late at night when they return to the spaceport. \n\nWhen the two go to see Gertrude, they walk down a long passageway that is riddled with cages, tanks, and compression units. The floor is made of iron and causes footsteps to be amplified. \n\nAfter the situation with the vapor snakes, they head towards Venus and stop first stop at Nahru. Venus is described as having unbearable steamy heat. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "876d8e6c28a04c49b25e1d72413c4be0", "response_text": "The first part of the story takes place in a dark bar on Mars, where Bucky and Jig sit among groups of people. After meeting Beamish, they return to their circus, kept in a spaceport. Inside their ship, they have a tank where they keep their zoo animals, including Gertrude. The tank is dark, cramped, and smelly, which does not appeal to Jig. After being attacked by the snakes, Jig awakes in his own cell, and the ship takes off to Venus. They land in Nahru, a swampy place with blue mud and a large thick jungle. The end of the story takes place in a small, shack-like bar in Nahru."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "52995", "uid": "e6fed1cd2c4c459a93322067d26029ce", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "SPACEMAN ON A SPREE\n \n \n BY MACK REYNOLDS\n \n Illustrated by Nodel\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n What's more important—Man's conquest of space, or one spaceman's life?\n \n \n\n I\n \n They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.\n \n They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned up at all.\n \n In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.\n \n The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards. But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.\n \n He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony, boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.\n \n No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.\n \n They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.\n \n \n\n \n The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact, Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.\n \n That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under the Ultrawelfare State.\n \n Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home, Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, \"Any more bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have miserably failed.\"\n \n Girard-Perregaux said easily, \"I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy. In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has.\"\n \n \"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our delving into space.\" Gubelin snapped his fingers. \"Like that, either of us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the road to his destiny.\"\n \n His friend said drily, \"Either of us could have volunteered for pilot training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't.\"\n \n \"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our ancestors did?\"\n \n Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea and tequila. He said, \"Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous pastimes.\"\n \n Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. \"Face reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well. He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?\"\n \n \"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for....\"\n \n \n\n \n Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that, seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken man.\n \n He said, \"No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond.\"\n \n His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. \"Let's leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been increasingly hard to come by—even though in our minds, Hans, we are near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration.\"\n \n \"So....\" Girard-Perregaux said gently.\n \n \"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!\"\n \n \"Now we are getting to matters.\" Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement. Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. \"And do not the ends justify the means?\"\n \n Gubelin blinked at him.\n \n The other chuckled. \"The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read of the sailor and his way of life?\"\n \n \"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to do with it?\"\n \n \"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points, tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in jail. So back to sea he'd have to go.\"\n \n Gubelin grunted bitterly. \"Unfortunately, our present-day sailor can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again.\"\n \n He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his universal credit card. \"The ultimate means of exchange,\" he grunted.\n\"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it, nobody can, ah, con you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?\"\n \n The other chuckled again. \"It is simply a matter of finding more modern methods, my dear chap.\"\n \n \n\n \n II\n \n Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.\n \n When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.\n \n Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree, a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of dangers met and passed.\n \n Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.\n \n He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did you need?\n \n It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.\n \n In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution. They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week. It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none of them ever really becoming efficient.\n \n The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held.\n \n All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be sold for a lump sum on the market.\n \n Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was obviously called for.\n \n He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.\n \n Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks, fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.\n \n Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long denied him.\n \n Si was going to do it differently this time.\n \n Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The works. But nothing but the best.\n \n \n\n \n To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided. A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations, titles.\n \n Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the screen and said, \"Balance check, please.\"\n \n In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, \"Ten shares of Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars.\" The screen went dead.\n \n One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.\n \n He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one place really made sense. The big city.\n \n He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He might as well do it up brown.\n \n He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.\n \n \"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond,\" he said aloud.\n \n The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the direction of the pressure was reversed.\n \n Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the canopy and stepped into his hotel room.\n \n A voice said gently, \"If the quarters are satisfactory, please present your credit card within ten minutes.\"\n \n Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.\n \n He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that, he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.\n \n He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the mattress.\n \n He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that registration could be completed.\n \n For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias. This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.\n \n He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a dime a dozen.\n \n He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,\n\"Kudos Room.\"\n \n The auto-elevator murmured politely, \"Yes, sir, the Kudos Room.\"\n \n \n\n \n At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either. However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made his way to the bar.\n \n There was actually a bartender.\n \n Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an air of easy sophistication, \"Slivovitz Sour.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir.\"\n \n The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment. He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.\n \n Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to take a look at the others present.\n \n To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.\n \n He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked and then swallowed.\n \n \" Zo-ro-as-ter ,\" he breathed.\n \n She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her eyes. Every pore, but every pore, was in place. She sat with the easy grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.\n \n His stare couldn't be ignored.\n \n She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, \"A Far Out Cooler, please, Fredric.\" Then deliberately added, \"I thought the Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive.\"\n \n There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about building the drink.\n \n Si cleared his throat. \"Hey,\" he said, \"how about letting this one be on me?\"\n \n Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her Oriental motif, rose. \"Really!\" she said, drawing it out.\n \n The bartender said hurriedly, \"I beg your pardon, sir....\"\n \n The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, \"Why, isn't that a space pin?\"\n \n Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, \"Yeah ... sure.\"\n \n \"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?\"\n \n \"Sure.\" He pointed at the lapel pin. \"You can't wear one unless you been on at least a Moon run.\"\n \n She was obviously both taken back and impressed. \"Why,\" she said,\n\"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave you.\"\n \n Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. \"Call me Si,\" he said. \"Everybody calls me Si.\"\n \n She said, \"I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that.\"\n \n \"Si,\" Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the current sex symbols, but never in person. \"Call me Si,\" he said again.\n\"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to if they say Seymour.\"\n \n \"I cried when they gave you that antique watch,\" she said, her tone such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having met him.\n \n Si Pond was surprised. \"Cried?\" he said. \"Well, why? I was kind of bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it.\"\n \n \" Academician Gubelin?\" she said. \"You just call him Doc ?\"\n \n Si was expansive. \"Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like that. But how come you cried?\"\n \n \n\n \n She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her, as though avoiding his face. \"I ... I suppose it was that speech Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the planets....\"\n \n \"Well,\" Si said modestly, \"two of my runs were only to the Moon.\"\n \n \"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring.\"\n \n Si grunted. \"Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job, it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop. So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those spaceships costs?\"\n \n \"Funny?\" she said. \"Why, I don't think it's funny at all.\"\n \n Si said, \"Look, how about another drink?\"\n \n Natalie Paskov said, \"Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr....\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Si,\" Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. \"How come you know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like. Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.\"\n \n Natalie said earnestly, \"Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about.\"\n \n Si chuckled. \"A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested after my first run and I found out what space cafard was.\"\n \n She frowned. \"I don't believe I know much about that.\"\n \n Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. \"Old Gubelin keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard, but....\" Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "a2c1299a0e864fc0b9c84425c3f49aa6", "response_text": "Seymour Pond has just retired from his career as the last astronaut from the Ultrawelfare State at the age of thirty. At his going away party he is given a watch, and academics like Lifting Gubelin and Dr Hans Girarad-Perregaux speak on his behalf. Si has decided to take the money he has saved up from his time working, which most people in the Ultrawelfare state don't, and live a simple comfortable life. He intends to never work again, after his six space flights. The currency used in the state was universal, controlled by a personal credit card. Because most jobs were automated, few people had to work, so most people lived off of a set welfare, and those selected to work were given a little extra compensation. Si was one of these people. Gubelin and Perregaux are both horrified by the fact that Pond has decided to take an early retirement. He was their only pilot for their space program, and if they were to get another, it would take at least a year of training. Without a pilot, they are worried that their funding will be cut, and the space program will be shut down. They scheme together as to how to get Pond back in the space program. They think that the only way to get him back would be to make sure he was left without any money, and therefore would have no choice but to return to his former position. \nSi is planning a big night out. He has always gone and celebrated when there was a cause, and tonight, he was planning to spend at least half of all the money in his account. He gets dressed in his retirement rank suit to go out, checks his balance, and then takes his vacuum tube to New york city. Before he leaves, he books a room at a swanky hotel for the rich and famous, and after a few moments, his car transports him to his room. There is an amazing view of the city, and from his room, gets ready to go to the bar. \nAt the bar he orders a drink, before noticing a beautiful woman beside him. They get to talking and before long, she tells him she recognises him, telling him about how moved she found his whole retirement ceremony. Making it very clear she wasn't happy he was retiring. He asks why she has an interest in space, to which she replies that she always has. He begins to explain the aspects of space flight, when the right side of his mouth begins to tick, and he knocks his drink back. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "2b4690107f2447adb4c97ac505a72476", "response_text": "In the Ultrawelfare State, the kind of jobs that one does is decided through a lottery. The lottery is drawn whenever there’s a need for new employees. Those that work will receive some additional Variable Basic shares to be added to their portfolios. And once their portfolios reach a certain level of Variable Basic shares, they can afford to live the life in the way they prefer. The story begins with Seymour Pond, the space pilot that has been on six trips, receiving a gold watch and a banquet from the officials including Academician Lofting Gubelin, an anachronistic man, and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux to persuade him not to retire. Because there is no other space pilot at this time, and it takes a few months, if not a year, and much resources to train a new pilot ready to travel to the moon. But Pond’s mind is set, he’s had enough anxiety over space cafard, and he has quite a large amount of Variable Basic shares to support his living and to show off to the others. \n\nIn the escape room at Gubelin’s Floridian home arguing with Girard-Perregaux, who states that he would do the same in the position that Pond is currently in. Because of the way that employment works in the Ultrawelfare State, Pond doesn’t need to face danger anymore. The law does not even allow him to be selected to work again. Later, they decide to use the sailor way of life method to force Pond back to being a pilot again. \n\nPond is aware of the sailor way of life, and he does not want to spend his money in such a quick rush. After dressing himself in a great retirement-rank suit, he checks his balance and makes sure that he has enough money to spend. He goes to Manhattan and settles in a nicer room of the hotel, where he can see the Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson as well as the city. Then he decides to visit the Kudos Room for a drink where celebrities sometimes go. While he was disappointed to see no celebrities, he gets to talk to a beautiful girl who seems extremely interested in space travelling and admires him a lot. As he was explaining space cafard to the girl, he felt a tic on his mouth, so he quickly finishes his drink. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "b9de7ada94894bb99e20fbc44e798817", "response_text": "Spacemen on a Spree begins at a banquet celebrating the retirement of Seymour Pond’s, a space pilot. At the retirement banquet, Pond expresses smugness and content as he knows the program will not be viable without him. \n\nAfter the party, Hans and Gubelin discuss the significance of Pond’s retirement. They are upset because the Department of Space Exploration is in jeopardy because they do not have another trained space pilot to replace Pond and it would take a long time to train one. Hans and Gubelin go back and forth discussing how best to convince Pond to return to the space pilot job. \n\nSeymour was grateful for each time he returned from his space runs and was ready to retire at the age of 30, which was allowed by the Ultrawelfare State. Once he is retired, Seymour expresses his desire to throw a big celebration. He intends to use a great deal of his money and wants to do so in a more controlled and lavish manner than he previously has. He dresses in a newly purchased suit and is careful to attach his space pin that clearly identifies his previous occupation. He takes transportation to a Manhattan hotel to execute his plan. He is satisfied with his hotel room and heads to the bar to enjoy some drinks. At the bar he sees a girl that he finds very attractive. The girl, Natalie Paskov, initially responds coldly to his attention but then becomes interested when she sees the space pin on his suit. Natalie then mentions that she recognizes him because she follows space news since it is an interest of hers. She expresses her sadness that he retired. The story ends with him talking about space cafard. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "de436eb7abf740059235ddfa8c669e09", "response_text": "Seymour Pond is retiring from being a space pilot. Gubelin and Perregaux, big figures in space exploration, want to urge the man to stay as space has to be delved further into. The problem is that there are not enough young people willing to venture and explore the space. Pond is the only trained pilot in the world and they need him, while he has just enough fortune to retire with comfort. Without him the whole space exploration department will be terminated, so Gubelin and Perregaux think of means to deprive Seymour of his money and force him to go back to space. Seymour at that time is planning how to spend his money - he wants to spend a huge sum on the best entertainment. So, the ex-Space Pilot heads towards Manhattan in an automatic car. Seymour gets a luxurious room in a hotel and goes to get a drink in an expensive bar there. There he meets a graceful Oriental girl, and he offers her a drink. Soon she recognizes the famous pilot and starts treating him like a celebrity with utmost surprise of the possibility of talking to him. Turns out she is a huge fan of space and Seymour starts telling her things. "}]}, {"question_text": "Please describe the Ultrawelfare State.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "a2c1299a0e864fc0b9c84425c3f49aa6", "response_text": "The Ultrawelfare State is a distant future society, based upon the main ideas of communism. Every person in the state is guaranteed shares in the society, which translates to money, food, clothes, housing, medical care and education. The money of the nation is doled out by the economic planning board, who determine how the communal wealth is spent. Everyone is given a universal credit card, which only they can access, and they can check their balances on the teevee phones. The way in which people are selected to work in the state is very interesting. In this society, most jobs are automated, so very few people are unfortunate enough to have to work. People are selected for different jobs based on their physical and mental qualifications. People who don't work have their assigned shares to live off of, and those that are selected to work are given a little extra as compensation. When the society was first formed, they tried to give everyone work, but they realised that it was no good to have people working for two hours, two days a week, so they created the draft lottery. Most people live in small apartments, and the fortunate living Si, are able to afford vacuum tubes, which can take you anywhere in an instant. It is only the swankiest of places that have real people working in them. All payment is automated, and different settings of rooms can be changed in an instant in fancy hotels. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "2b4690107f2447adb4c97ac505a72476", "response_text": "The Ultrawelfare State in the early days has attempted to give everyone work by providing  little amount of working hours and working days. It was not practical and people did not know their job well, thus it was not efficient. Hence later, the system is designed so that everyone at Ultrawelfare State finishes their basic education at the age of twenty-five, and they will be a part of the lottery for employment. Once they are drawn to serve in a certain industry, they cannot deny. Those at work, or are just employed will receive additional Variable Basic shares, which can be added to their portfolios, for more money, hence better and more comfortable life style. People that are born in the Ultrawelfare State obtain a number of Basic shares that allow them to enjoy the fundamental womb-to-tomb security, including food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education. \n\nThe Department of Space Exploration at Ultrawelfare State has only one pilot, who has just resigned, and they are close to terminate as their appropriastions for expeditions has been very difficult to obtain. But the officers there believe they are onto some important breakthrough. \n\nUsing vacuum-tube vehicles, one can travel between cities very quickly and it reaches their destination directly. Moreover, one can stay at a hotel room for ten minutes to check if they are satisfactory before confirming their stay by paying with their credit card. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "b9de7ada94894bb99e20fbc44e798817", "response_text": "The Ultrawelfare State dictates the lives of its citizens. The State guarantees fundamental security through issues of Basic shares that provide enough income to secure food, clothing, medical care, shelter, and education. In the Ultrawelfare State, money is tightly restricted. No one else can use or steal or con a person out of their money. The State also regulates how labor is conducted. It conducts a labor draft that requires people to participate if their name is drawn. Individuals are given extra shares depending on their job assignments. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "de436eb7abf740059235ddfa8c669e09", "response_text": "People born in the Ultrawelfare State are issued a minimum number of Basic shares which guarantee right enough income for survival. Then people get basic education and work for the country's labour. A few people were driven to work, others just lived with their Inalienable Basic stocks. There is a department of space exploration in the state and its pilots get more Basic shares and can retire after six flights. The pilots are carefully chosen upon their qualifications as the profession is the most dangerous in the state. The job brings money for life more comfortable than most people in the state have. Nevertheless, young people do not want to venture and become space pilots, they don't have this desire for adventures. People in the state mostly don't contribute to its welfare and aren't needed. All jobs are done by machines, a human bartender, for example, is a sign of luxury. "}]}, {"question_text": "How do Gubelin and Perregaux plan to get Pond back in the space program?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "a2c1299a0e864fc0b9c84425c3f49aa6", "response_text": "Gubelin and Perregaux know that they must get Pond back into their program, if they are going to save it from their funding being cut.  Perregaux tells Gubelin about a theory, where a sailor, who has been out at sea for many months, will always blow his hard earned money on one night out the minute he's back in town, no matter how much he wanted to save it. This is because of the loneliness of the sailor, and their need to make up for all the experiences that he has missed out on while he was at sea. The sailor will wake up the next morning, having spent all his money, without a cent to his name. Then, he will have to go back out to sea, to make back the money he has lost, so the cycle continues. Perregaux believes that Pond is this sailor, and if only they could set a trap for him, in which it would cause him to lose all his money in one night, he would have to go back to work for them. They plant Natalie Paskov, a beautiful woman at the bar where Pond goes. She interacts with him as if he's famous, stroking his ego. She then goes on to show her disdain for the idea that he has retired, and he orders them drinks. And so the night begins, with Pond starting to get drunk, and lose all his money to Natalie. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "2b4690107f2447adb4c97ac505a72476", "response_text": "Gubelin and Perregaux plan to get Pond back in the space program by a method similar to the sailor way of life, but a modern day version. The sailor normally goes on trips for months at the sea, where he dreams of his retirement and such. But once he reaches the port, he goes drinking, which leads to other things such as getting tattooed or even go to jail. Spending all of his money all at once, he has to go back to the sea for another trip. Gubelin and Perregaux have decided to use a similar method on Pond, so that he is forced to go back to the space program. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "b9de7ada94894bb99e20fbc44e798817", "response_text": "Gubelin and Perregaux are desperate for Seymour not to retire because he is the only one capable of doing his job. Perregaux explains how they have to treat Seymour like a sailor from the past who is talking of retirement. A sailor would speak of retirement but then at a port, get too drunk, have a consequently messy night that ended with him in jail. The previous night would cause the sailor to have to continue to sail instead of retiring. They then suggest that they will have to adapt the pattern with more modern methods and apply them to Seymour. It can be assumed that Natalie, the woman he meets at the hotel bar, was sent by Gubelin and Perregaux to convince him to return to his job. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "de436eb7abf740059235ddfa8c669e09", "response_text": "For the two, the matter of bringing Seymour out of his retirement is essential. They have tried speeches about the importance of his missions and promises of enormous fame and wealth, but it didn't work. They are ready to use any means as they need Seymour to save their department. They want to make the ex-pilot lose all his money and need more. In their time it's almost impossible to steal someone's money. SO, the two decide to make him himself spend all his money. "}]}, {"question_text": "What was Seymour Pond's job, how was he selected for it, and what did it entail?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "a2c1299a0e864fc0b9c84425c3f49aa6", "response_text": "Ponds was a space pilot for the department of space exploration. he had completed six space runs to the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. He hated every minute of it. Initially, he was drafted into the workforce reserves. He was soon. selected for the job based on his physical attributes and mental qualifications. He had to go through rigorous training once he was selected. This training took several years. After this he was put into the field. He was crammed in a small little space cafard for what seemed like endless amounts of time. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "2b4690107f2447adb4c97ac505a72476", "response_text": "Pond was selected through the employment lottery system where at the age of twenty-five, after he finishes his basic education, he can be drawn to a specific job. He was drawn for space pilot. After his training, out of the twenty-three only him and another person passed the finals. From then on, he has been on six different runs: to the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. His trips consist of extremely long time alone, long enough to possibly develop space cafard; the available room in the spaceship is super small, enough for getting claustrophobia. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "b9de7ada94894bb99e20fbc44e798817", "response_text": "Seymour’s retirement is significant because he is the only one capable of doing his job. During his job, he took 6 trips to space; 2 of the trips were to the moon. Each trip involved being in uncomfortable quarters and was dangerous. \n\nHe was selected for the job at 25 from the labor draft after he had finished his basic education schooling. His physical and mental capabilities made him eligible to train for the space pilot position. He trained along with 22 others and only him and one other person passed that level of training. The other person who passed died during a routine Moon run that had a faulty take-off. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "de436eb7abf740059235ddfa8c669e09", "response_text": "Seymour Pond terminated his basic education and had the minimum of Basic shares in his pocket as everyone else. He got chosen for the labor draft - a small percent of people who had to work while others were unemployed and with their minimum fortune to live. Further, his mental and physical state made him eligible for the most dangerous position in the state - a space pilot. He couldn't and didn't want to decline and was put to trainings and then successfully passed the finals with another man. Seymour completed the six flights he was obliged to and retired. The dangerous job gained him extra shares and his fortune was much more than the average, adding to the fame he got. "}]}, {"question_text": "What are Pond's views on wealth and fame?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "a2c1299a0e864fc0b9c84425c3f49aa6", "response_text": "Pond seems to be obsessed with money. At his retirement, he is given a gold watch. He thinks to himself how much better it would have been if they had simply given him money instead. He vows to live a simple, comfortable life, keeping an eye on his money so it will last him for the rest of his days. He is very proud of the fact that he can afford a luxury like his vacuum tube. Whenever something goes well in Pond's life, he loves to splurge on a night out. He ends up spending enormous amounts of money on things that he sometimes deems as \"sub-par\" for a man of his status. On this one fateful night, he decides that he deserves the best of everything. He is obsessed with the idea of wealth and fame, and checks himself into the nicest hotel he can think of in New York City, partially because he presumes he might see some celebrities there. He checks the balance on his credit card often, and when he goes down to the hotel bar, he has to restrain himself from checking how much a single drink costs. He looks around for signs of famous people, but is disappointed when he sees none. He gives into the flattery of Natalie when she gushes over him, as if he were famous, believing her obvious depciet, and buying her a drink. Fame and money are everything to Pond. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "2b4690107f2447adb4c97ac505a72476", "response_text": "In comparison to the gold clock, Pond prefers Variable Basic shares which can be used as money. He does not want to be extremely wealthy, a one room mini-auto-apartment along with an autochair, built-in autobar, a teevee screen is enough for him. With the six trips to space, he has enough money for a comfortable life; he does not want more wealth, which can be obtained from going on more trip. But he keeps on warning himself about not spending too much money so quickly, since he has been doing that multiple times before. Moreover, he believes that reputation for being a wise guy or for being a cloddy is not good since there is the Inalienable Basic stock. However he still wears his air force pin on his suit. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "b9de7ada94894bb99e20fbc44e798817", "response_text": "Seymour Pond expresses content with the basic necessities of life. He appreciates receiving more than the standard, but he is capable of being content and not needing endless excess. He seems to be content with the rations that he has accumulated but is also okay with benefitting from his wealth and fame that has come from his occupation as a space pilot. He notes that he can get preferential treatment when out of town due to his prestige as a space pilot. Seymour does not need luxurious living conditions as he was used to living in a tiny vacuum-tube vehicle during his space runs. He continuously has a desire to check his account balance even though he has a share of money larger than most people. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "de436eb7abf740059235ddfa8c669e09", "response_text": "Pond wants the dangerous job of a space pilot while no-one wants to risk and everyone is fine with the minimum fortune and unemployment. He wants fame and money at first, but during the actual trips he dreams of retirement and comfort. He  doesn't want any more trips even if they bring more wealth, he is good with small auto-apartment with a TV and having some good entertainment. This comfort is just enough for him, more than some have, and he is not greedy to desire for more. But he also enjoys this money he has and wants to spend them wisely. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51310", "uid": "ad81409034e349258ba0bb2c33872448", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "My Lady Greensleeves\n \n \n By FREDERIK POHL\n \n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n This guard smelled trouble and it could be counted on to come—for a nose for trouble was one of the many talents bred here!\n \n\n\n I\n \n His name was Liam O'Leary and there was something stinking in his nostrils. It was the smell of trouble. He hadn't found what the trouble was yet, but he would. That was his business. He was a captain of guards in Estates-General Correctional Institution—better known to its inmates as the Jug—and if he hadn't been able to detect the scent of trouble brewing a cell-block away, he would never have survived to reach his captaincy.\n \n And her name, he saw, was Sue-Ann Bradley, Detainee No. WFA-656R.\n \n He frowned at the rap sheet, trying to figure out what got a girl like her into a place like this. And, what was more important, why she couldn't adjust herself to it, now that she was in.\n \n He demanded: \"Why wouldn't you mop out your cell?\"\n \n The girl lifted her head angrily and took a step forward. The block guard, Sodaro, growled warningly: \"Watch it, auntie!\"\n \n O'Leary shook his head. \"Let her talk, Sodaro.\" It said in the Civil Service Guide to Prison Administration : \"Detainees will be permitted to speak in their own behalf in disciplinary proceedings.\" And O'Leary was a man who lived by the book.\n \n She burst out: \"I never got a chance! That old witch Mathias never told me I was supposed to mop up. She banged on the door and said, 'Slush up, sister!' And then, ten minutes later, she called the guards and told them I refused to mop.\"\n \n The block guard guffawed. \"Wipe talk—that's what she was telling you to do. Cap'n, you know what's funny about this? This Bradley is—\"\n \n \"Shut up, Sodaro.\"\n \n \n\n \n Captain O'leary put down his pencil and looked at the girl. She was attractive and young—not beyond hope, surely. Maybe she had got off to a wrong start, but the question was, would putting her in the disciplinary block help straighten her out? He rubbed his ear and looked past her at the line of prisoners on the rap detail, waiting for him to judge their cases.\n \n He said patiently: \"Bradley, the rules are you have to mop out your cell. If you didn't understand what Mathias was talking about, you should have asked her. Now I'm warning you, the next time—\"\n \n \"Hey, Cap'n, wait!\" Sodaro was looking alarmed. \"This isn't a first offense. Look at the rap sheet. Yesterday she pulled the same thing in the mess hall.\" He shook his head reprovingly at the prisoner. \"The block guard had to break up a fight between her and another wench, and she claimed the same business—said she didn't understand when the other one asked her to move along.\" He added virtuously: \"The guard warned her then that next time she'd get the Greensleeves for sure.\"\n \n Inmate Bradley seemed to be on the verge of tears. She said tautly: \"I don't care. I don't care!\"\n \n O'Leary stopped her. \"That's enough! Three days in Block O!\"\n \n It was the only thing to do—for her own sake as much as for his. He had managed, by strength of will, not to hear that she had omitted to say \"sir\" every time she spoke to him, but he couldn't keep it up forever and he certainly couldn't overlook hysteria. And hysteria was clearly the next step for her.\n \n All the same, he stared after her as she left. He handed the rap sheet to Sodaro and said absently: \"Too bad a kid like her has to be here. What's she in for?\"\n \n \"You didn't know, Cap'n?\" Sodaro leered. \"She's in for conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. Don't waste your time with her, Cap'n. She's a figger-lover!\"\n \n Captain O'Leary took a long drink of water from the fountain marked\n\"Civil Service.\" But it didn't wash the taste out of his mouth, the smell from his nose.\n \n What got into a girl to get her mixed up with that kind of dirty business? He checked out of the cell blocks and walked across the yard, wondering about her. She'd had every advantage—decent Civil Service parents, a good education, everything a girl could wish for. If anything, she had had a better environment than O'Leary himself, and look what she had made of it.\n \n The direction of evolution is toward specialization and Man is no exception, but with the difference that his is the one species that creates its own environment in which to specialize. From the moment that clans formed, specialization began—the hunters using the weapons made by the flint-chippers, the food cooked in clay pots made by the ceramists, over fire made by the shaman who guarded the sacred flame.\n \n Civilization merely increased the extent of specialization. From the born mechanic and the man with the gift of gab, society evolved to the point of smaller contact and less communication between the specializations, until now they could understand each other on only the most basic physical necessities—and not even always then.\n \n But this was desirable, for the more specialists, the higher the degree of civilization. The ultimate should be the complete segregation of each specialization—social and genetic measures to make them breed true, because the unspecialized man is an uncivilized man, or at any rate he does not advance civilization. And letting the specializations mix would produce genetic undesirables: clerk-laborer or Professional-GI misfits, for example, being only half specialized, would be good at no specialization.\n \n And the basis of this specialization society was: \"The aptitude groups are the true races of mankind.\" Putting it into law was only the legal enforcement of a demonstrable fact.\n \n \"Evening, Cap'n.\" A bleary old inmate orderly stood up straight and touched his cap as O'Leary passed by.\n \n \"Evening.\"\n \n \n\n \n O'Leary noted, with the part of his mind that always noted those things, that the orderly had been leaning on his broom until he'd noticed the captain coming by. Of course, there wasn't much to sweep—the spray machines and sweeperdozers had been over the cobblestones of the yard twice already that day. But it was an inmate's job to keep busy. And it was a guard captain's job to notice when they didn't.\n \n There wasn't anything wrong with that job, he told himself. It was a perfectly good civil-service position—better than post-office clerk, not as good as Congressman, but a job you could be proud to hold. He was proud of it. It was right that he should be proud of it. He was civil-service born and bred, and naturally he was proud and content to do a good, clean civil-service job.\n \n If he had happened to be born a fig—a clerk , he corrected himself—if he had happened to be born a clerk, why, he would have been proud of that, too. There wasn't anything wrong with being a clerk—or a mechanic or a soldier, or even a laborer, for that matter.\n \n Good laborers were the salt of the Earth! They weren't smart, maybe, but they had a—well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary was a broad-minded man and many times he had thought almost with a touch of envy how comfortable it must be to be a wipe—a laborer . No responsibilities. No worries. Just an easy, slow routine of work and loaf, work and loaf.\n \n Of course, he wouldn't really want that kind of life, because he was Civil Service and not the kind to try to cross over class barriers that weren't meant to be—\n \n \"Evening, Cap'n.\"\n \n He nodded to the mechanic inmate who was, theoretically, in charge of maintaining the prison's car pool, just inside the gate.\n \n \"Evening, Conan,\" he said.\n \n Conan, now—he was a big buck greaser and he would be there for the next hour, languidly poking a piece of fluff out of the air filter on the prison jeep. Lazy, sure. Undependable, certainly. But he kept the cars going—and, O'Leary thought approvingly, when his sentence was up in another year or so, he would go back to his life with his status restored, a mechanic on the outside as he had been inside, and he certainly would never risk coming back to the Jug by trying to pass as Civil Service or anything else. He knew his place.\n \n So why didn't this girl, this Sue-Ann Bradley, know hers?\n \n \n\n II\n \n Every prison has its Greensleeves—sometimes they are called by different names. Old Marquette called it \"the canary;\" Louisiana State called it \"the red hats;\" elsewhere it was called \"the hole,\" \"the snake pit,\" \"the Klondike.\" When you're in it, you don't much care what it is called; it is a place for punishment.\n \n And punishment is what you get.\n \n Block O in Estates-General Correctional Institution was the disciplinary block, and because of the green straitjackets its inhabitants wore, it was called the Greensleeves. It was a community of its own, an enclave within the larger city-state that was the Jug. And like any other community, it had its leading citizens ... two of them. Their names were Sauer and Flock.\n \n Sue-Ann Bradley heard them before she reached the Greensleeves. She was in a detachment of three unfortunates like herself, convoyed by an irritable guard, climbing the steel steps toward Block O from the floor below, when she heard the yelling.\n \n \"Owoo-o-o,\" screamed Sauer from one end of the cell block and\n\"Yow-w-w!\" shrieked Flock at the other.\n \n The inside deck guard of Block O looked nervously at the outside deck guard. The outside guard looked impassively back—after all, he was on the outside.\n \n The inside guard muttered: \"Wipe rats! They're getting on my nerves.\"\n \n The outside guard shrugged.\n \n \"Detail, halt !\" The two guards turned to see what was coming in as the three new candidates for the Greensleeves slumped to a stop at the head of the stairs. \"Here they are,\" Sodaro told them. \"Take good care of 'em, will you? Especially the lady—she's going to like it here, because there's plenty of wipes and greasers and figgers to keep her company.\" He laughed coarsely and abandoned his charges to the Block O guards.\n \n The outside guard said sourly: \"A woman, for God's sake. Now O'Leary knows I hate it when there's a woman in here. It gets the others all riled up.\"\n \n \"Let them in,\" the inside guard told him. \"The others are riled up already.\"\n \n Sue-Ann Bradley looked carefully at the floor and paid them no attention. The outside guard pulled the switch that turned on the tanglefoot electronic fields that swamped the floor of the block corridor and of each individual cell. While the fields were on, you could ignore the prisoners—they simply could not move fast enough, against the electronic drag of the field, to do any harm. But it was a rule that, even in Block O, you didn't leave the tangler fields on all the time—only when the cell doors had to be opened or a prisoner's restraining garment removed.\n \n Sue-Ann walked bravely forward through the opened gate—and fell flat on her face. It was her first experience of a tanglefoot field. It was like walking through molasses.\n \n The guard guffawed and lifted her up by one shoulder. \"Take it easy, auntie. Come on, get in your cell.\" He steered her in the right direction and pointed to a greensleeved straitjacket on the cell cot.\n\"Put that on. Being as you're a lady, we won't tie it up, but the rules say you got to wear it and the rules—Hey. She's crying!\" He shook his head, marveling. It was the first time he had ever seen a prisoner cry in the Greensleeves.\n \n However, he was wrong. Sue-Ann's shoulders were shaking, but not from tears. Sue-Ann Bradley had got a good look at Sauer and at Flock as she passed them by and she was fighting off an almost uncontrollable urge to retch.\n \n \n\n \n Sauer and Flock were what are called prison wolves. They were laborers—\"wipes,\" for short—or, at any rate, they had been once. They had spent so much time in prisons that it was sometimes hard even for them to remember what they really were, outside. Sauer was a big, grinning redhead with eyes like a water moccasin. Flock was a lithe five-footer with the build of a water moccasin—and the sad, stupid eyes of a calf.\n \n Sauer stopped yelling for a moment. \"Hey, Flock!\"\n \n \"What do you want, Sauer?\" called Flock from his own cell.\n \n \"We got a lady with us! Maybe we ought to cut out this yelling so as not to disturb the lady!\" He screeched with howling, maniacal laughter. \"Anyway, if we don't cut this out, they'll get us in trouble, Flock!\"\n \n \"Oh, you think so?\" shrieked Flock. \"Jeez, I wish you hadn't said that, Sauer. You got me scared! I'm so scared, I'm gonna have to yell!\"\n \n The howling started all over again.\n \n The inside guard finished putting the new prisoners away and turned off the tangler field once more. He licked his lips. \"Say, you want to take a turn in here for a while?\"\n \n \"Uh-uh.\" The outside guard shook his head.\n \n \"You're yellow,\" the inside guard said moodily. \"Ah, I don't know why I don't quit this lousy job. Hey, you! Pipe down or I'll come in and beat your head off!\"\n \n \"Ee-ee-ee!\" screamed Sauer in a shrill falsetto. \"I'm scared!\" Then he grinned at the guard, all but his water-moccasin eyes. \"Don't you know you can't hurt a wipe by hitting him on the head, Boss?\"\n \n \"Shut up !\" yelled the inside guard.\n \n Sue-Ann Bradley's weeping now was genuine. She simply could not help it. The crazy yowling of the hard-timers, Sauer and Flock, was getting under her skin. They weren't even—even human , she told herself miserably, trying to weep silently so as not to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing her—they were animals!\n \n Resentment and anger, she could understand. She told herself doggedly that resentment and anger were natural and right. They were perfectly normal expressions of the freedom-loving citizen's rebellion against the vile and stifling system of Categoried Classes. It was good that Sauer and Flock still had enough spirit to struggle against the vicious system—\n \n But did they have to scream so?\n \n The senseless yelling was driving her crazy. She abandoned herself to weeping and she didn't even care who heard her any more. Senseless!\n \n It never occurred to Sue-Ann Bradley that it might not be senseless, because noise hides noise. But then she hadn't been a prisoner very long.\n \n \n\n III\n \n \"I smell trouble,\" said O'Leary to the warden.\n \n \"Trouble? Trouble?\" Warden Schluckebier clutched his throat and his little round eyes looked terrified—as perhaps they should have. Warden Godfrey Schluckebier was the almighty Caesar of ten thousand inmates in the Jug, but privately he was a fussy old man trying to hold onto the last decent job he would have in his life.\n \n \"Trouble? What trouble?\"\n \n O'Leary shrugged. \"Different things. You know Lafon, from Block A? This afternoon, he was playing ball with the laundry orderlies in the yard.\"\n \n The warden, faintly relieved, faintly annoyed, scolded: \"O'Leary, what did you want to worry me for? There's nothing wrong with playing ball in the yard. That's what recreation periods are for.\"\n \n \"You don't see what I mean, Warden. Lafon was a professional on the outside—an architect. Those laundry cons were laborers. Pros and wipes don't mix; it isn't natural. And there are other things.\"\n \n O'Leary hesitated, frowning. How could you explain to the warden that it didn't smell right?\n \n \"For instance—Well, there's Aunt Mathias in the women's block. She's a pretty good old girl—that's why she's the block orderly. She's a lifer, she's got no place to go, she gets along with the other women. But today she put a woman named Bradley on report. Why? Because she told Bradley to mop up in wipe talk and Bradley didn't understand. Now Mathias wouldn't—\"\n \n The warden raised his hand. \"Please, O'Leary, don't bother me about that kind of stuff.\" He sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. He poured himself a cup of steaming black coffee from a brewpot, reached in a desk drawer for something, hesitated, glanced at O'Leary, then dropped a pale blue tablet into the cup. He drank it down eagerly, ignoring the scalding heat.\n \n He leaned back, looking suddenly happier and much more assured.\n \n \"O'Leary, you're a guard captain, right? And I'm your warden. You have your job, keeping the inmates in line, and I have mine. Now your job is just as important as my job,\" he said piously. \" Everybody's job is just as important as everybody else's, right? But we have to stick to our own jobs. We don't want to try to pass .\"\n \n O'Leary snapped erect, abruptly angry. Pass! What the devil way was that for the warden to talk to him?\n \n \"Excuse the expression, O'Leary,\" the warden said anxiously. \"I mean, after all, 'Specialization is the goal of civilization,' right?\" He was a great man for platitudes, was Warden Schluckebier. \" You know you don't want to worry about my end of running the prison. And I don't want to worry about yours . You see?\" And he folded his hands and smiled like a civil-service Buddha.\n \n \n\n \n O'Leary choked back his temper. \"Warden, I'm telling you that there's trouble coming up. I smell the signs.\"\n \n \"Handle it, then!\" snapped the warden, irritated at last.\n \n \"But suppose it's too big to handle. Suppose—\"\n \n \"It isn't,\" the warden said positively. \"Don't borrow trouble with all your supposing, O'Leary.\" He sipped the remains of his coffee, made a wry face, poured a fresh cup and, with an elaborate show of not noticing what he was doing, dropped three of the pale blue tablets into it this time.\n \n He sat beaming into space, waiting for the jolt to take effect.\n \n \"Well, then,\" he said at last. \"You just remember what I've told you tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' Oh, curse the thing.\"\n \n His phone was ringing. The warden picked it up irritably.\n \n That was the trouble with those pale blue tablets, thought O'Leary; they gave you a lift, but they put you on edge.\n \n \"Hello,\" barked the warden, not even glancing at the viewscreen. \"What the devil do you want? Don't you know I'm—What? You did what ? You're going to WHAT?\"\n \n He looked at the viewscreen at last with a look of pure horror. Whatever he saw on it, it did not reassure him. His eyes opened like clamshells in a steamer.\n \n \"O'Leary,\" he said faintly, \"my mistake.\"\n \n And he hung up—more or less by accident; the handset dropped from his fingers.\n \n The person on the other end of the phone was calling from Cell Block O.\n \n Five minutes before, he hadn't been anywhere near the phone and it didn't look as if his chances of ever getting near it were very good. Because five minutes before, he was in his cell, with the rest of the hard-timers of the Greensleeves.\n \n His name was Flock.\n \n He was still yelling. Sue-Ann Bradley, in the cell across from him, thought that maybe, after all, the man was really in pain. Maybe the crazy screams were screams of agony, because certainly his face was the face of an agonized man.\n \n The outside guard bellowed: \"Okay, okay. Take ten!\"\n \n Sue-Ann froze, waiting to see what would happen. What actually did happen was that the guard reached up and closed the switch that actuated the tangler fields on the floors of the cells. The prison rules were humanitarian, even for the dregs that inhabited the Greensleeves. Ten minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case had to be allowed to take his hands out of the restraining garment.\n \n \"Rest period\" it was called—in the rule book. The inmates had a less lovely term for it.\n \n \n\n \n At the guard's yell, the inmates jumped to their feet.\n \n Bradley was a little slow getting off the edge of the steel-slat bed—nobody had warned her that the eddy currents in the tangler fields had a way of making metal smoke-hot. She gasped but didn't cry out. Score one more painful lesson in her new language course. She rubbed the backs of her thighs gingerly—and slowly, slowly, for the eddy currents did not permit you to move fast. It was like pushing against rubber; the faster you tried to move, the greater the resistance.\n \n The guard peered genially into her cell. \"You're okay, auntie.\" She proudly ignored him as he slogged deliberately away on his rounds. He didn't have to untie her and practically stand over her while she attended to various personal matters, as he did with the male prisoners. It was not much to be grateful for, but Sue-Ann Bradley was grateful. At least she didn't have to live quite like a fig—like an underprivileged clerk, she told herself, conscience-stricken.\n \n Across the hall, the guard was saying irritably: \"What the hell's the matter with you?\" He opened the door of the cell with an asbestos-handled key held in a canvas glove.\n \n Flock was in that cell and he was doubled over.\n \n The guard looked at him doubtfully. It could be a trick, maybe. Couldn't it? But he could see Flock's face and the agony in it was real enough. And Flock was gasping, through real tears: \"Cramps. I—I—\"\n \n \"Ah, you wipes always got a pain in the gut.\" The guard lumbered around Flock to the draw-strings at the back of the jacket. Funny smell in here, he told himself—not for the first time. And imagine, some people didn't believe that wipes had a smell of their own! But this time, he realized cloudily, it was a rather unusual smell. Something burning. Almost like meat scorching.\n \n It wasn't pleasant. He finished untying Flock and turned away; let the stinking wipe take care of his own troubles. He only had ten minutes to get all the way around Block O and the inmates complained like crazy if he didn't make sure they all got the most possible free time. He was pretty good at snowshoeing through the tangler field. He was a little vain about it, even; at times he had been known to boast of his ability to make the rounds in two minutes, every time.\n \n Every time but this.\n \n For Flock moaned behind him, oddly close.\n \n The guard turned, but not quickly enough. There was Flock—astonishingly, he was half out of his jacket; his arms hadn't been in the sleeves at all! And in one of the hands, incredibly, there was something that glinted and smoked.\n \n \"All right,\" croaked Flock, tears trickling out of eyes nearly shut with pain.\n \n But it wasn't the tears that held the guard; it was the shining, smoking thing, now poised at his throat. A shiv! It looked as though it had been made out of a bed-spring, ripped loose from its frame God knows how, hidden inside the greensleeved jacket God knows how—filed, filed to sharpness over endless hours.\n \n No wonder Flock moaned—the eddy currents in the shiv were slowly cooking his hand; and the blister against his abdomen, where the shiv had been hidden during other rest periods, felt like raw acid.\n \n \n\n \n \"All right,\" whispered Flock, \"just walk out the door and you won't get hurt. Unless the other screw makes trouble, you won't get hurt, so tell him not to, you hear?\"\n \n He was nearly fainting with the pain.\n \n But he hadn't let go.\n \n He didn't let go. And he didn't stop.\n \n \n\n IV\n \n It was Flock on the phone to the warden—Flock with his eyes still streaming tears, Flock with Sauer standing right behind him, menacing the two bound deck guards.\n \n Sauer shoved Flock out of the way. \"Hey, Warden!\" he said, and the voice was a cheerful bray, though the serpent eyes were cold and hating. \"Warden, you got to get a medic in here. My boy Flock, he hurt himself real bad and he needs a doctor.\" He gestured playfully at the guards with the shiv. \"I tell you, Warden. I got this knife and I got your guards here. Enough said? So get a medic in here quick, you hear?\"\n \n And he snapped the connection.\n \n O'Leary said: \"Warden, I told you I smelled trouble!\"\n \n The warden lifted his head, glared, started feebly to speak, hesitated, and picked up the long-distance phone. He said sadly to the prison operator: \"Get me the governor—fast.\"\n  Riot!\n \n \n The word spread out from the prison on seven-league boots.\n \n It snatched the city governor out of a friendly game of Seniority with his manager and their wives—and just when he was holding the Porkbarrel Joker concealed in the hole.\n \n It broke up the Base Championship Scramble Finals at Hap Arnold Field to the south, as half the contestants had to scramble in earnest to a Red Alert that was real.\n \n It reached to police precinct houses and TV newsrooms and highway checkpoints, and from there it filtered into the homes and lives of the nineteen million persons that lived within a few dozen miles of the Jug.\n \n Riot. And yet fewer than half a dozen men were involved.\n \n A handful of men, and the enormous bulk of the city-state quivered in every limb and class. In its ten million homes, in its hundreds of thousands of public places, the city-state's people shook under the impact of the news from the prison.\n \n For the news touched them where their fears lay. Riot! And not merely a street brawl among roistering wipes, or a bar-room fight of greasers relaxing from a hard day at the plant. The riot was down among the corrupt sludge that underlay the state itself. Wipes brawled with wipes and no one cared; but in the Jug, all classes were cast together.\n \n \n\n \n Forty miles to the south, Hap Arnold Field was a blaze of light. The airmen tumbled out of their quarters and dayrooms at the screech of the alert siren, and behind them their wives and children stretched and yawned and worried. An alert! The older kids fussed and complained and their mothers shut them up. No, there wasn't any alert scheduled for tonight; no, they didn't know where Daddy was going; no, the kids couldn't get up yet—it was the middle of the night.\n \n And as soon as they had the kids back in bed, most of the mothers struggled into their own airwac uniforms and headed for the briefing area to hear.\n \n They caught the words from a distance—not quite correctly. \"Riot!\" gasped an aircraftswoman first-class, mother of three. \"The wipes! I told Charlie they'd get out of hand and—Alys, we aren't safe. You know how they are about GI women! I'm going right home and get a club and stand right by the door and—\"\n \n \"Club!\" snapped Alys, radarscope-sergeant, with two children querulously awake in her nursery at home. \"What in God's name is the use of a club? You can't hurt a wipe by hitting him on the head. You'd better come along to Supply with me and draw a gun—you'll need it before this night is over.\"\n \n But the airmen themselves heard the briefing loud and clear over the scramble-call speakers, and they knew it was not merely a matter of trouble in the wipe quarters. The Jug! The governor himself had called them out; they were to fly interdicting missions at such-and-such levels on such-and-such flight circuits around the prison.\n \n The rockets took off on fountains of fire; and the jets took off with a whistling roar; and last of all, the helicopters took off ... and they were the ones who might actually accomplish something. They took up their picket posts on the prison perimeter, a pilot and two bombardiers in each 'copter, stone-faced, staring grimly alert at the prison below.\n \n They were ready for the breakout.\n \n But there wasn't any breakout.\n \n The rockets went home for fuel. The jets went home for fuel. The helicopters hung on—still ready, still waiting.\n \n The rockets came back and roared harmlessly about, and went away again. They stayed away. The helicopter men never faltered and never relaxed. The prison below them was washed with light—from the guard posts on the walls, from the cell blocks themselves, from the mobile lights of the guard squadrons surrounding the walls.\n \n North of the prison, on the long, flat, damp developments of reclaimed land, the matchbox row houses of the clerical neighborhoods showed lights in every window as the figgers stood ready to repel invasion from their undesired neighbors to the east, the wipes. In the crowded tenements of the laborers' quarters, the wipes shouted from window to window; and there were crowds in the bright streets.\n \n \"The whole bloody thing's going to blow up!\" a helicopter bombardier yelled bitterly to his pilot, above the flutter and roar of the whirling blades. \"Look at the mobs in Greaserville! The first breakout from the Jug's going to start a fight like you never saw and we'll be right in the middle of it!\"\n \n He was partly right. He would be right in the middle of it—for every man, woman and child in the city-state would be right in the middle of it. There was no place anywhere that would be spared. No mixing. That was the prescription that kept the city-state alive. There's no harm in a family fight—and aren't all mechanics a family, aren't all laborers a clan, aren't all clerks and office workers related by closer ties than blood or skin?\n \n But the declassed cons of the Jug were the dregs of every class; and once they spread, the neat compartmentation of society was pierced. The breakout would mean riot on a bigger scale than any prison had ever known.\n \n But he was also partly wrong. Because the breakout wasn't seeming to come.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "bb1472ba897f44c49a4476a40f783490", "response_text": "Liam O’Leary is the captain of the guards at the Estates-General Correctional Institution (also known as the Jug). He starts off seeing a prisoner called Sue-Ann Bradley, who is having problems with a block guard named Sandro. She explains to him that Mathias, another prisoner, did not give her proper instructions and called the guards on her after ten minutes. O’Leary gives Sue-Ann a warning, but Sandro informs him that she has already received a similar warning the day before. He changes his mind and sends her to three days in Block O. O’Leary then begins to think about his job and how it is a good civil-service job. He then thinks about the figs (clerks) and how they are still important members of society even if there should not regularly be a cross between the barriers of the two classes. Sue-Ann, on the other hand, is taken to the Block O disciplinary block. The leading citizens, Flock, and Sauer begin shrieking at her as soon as she arrives. The guards exchange some words regarding the new additions to the block, and Sue-Ann walks through the gate to reach her cell. The two of them begin screaming and howling again. The guards are annoyed, and Sue-Ann starts to weep for real. Meanwhile, O’Leary informs Warden Godfrey Schluckebier of the upcoming trouble he senses, but the warden brushes his concerns as nothing dangerous. The warden reminds O’Leary that they each have their jobs to worry about. Suddenly, the warden gets a phone call, and he realizes that the call is made from Cell Block O by Flock. The events preceding this call cut back to Sue-Ann, who is still in her cell when Flock initially screams in agony. The guard issues a ten-minute rest period, and the tangler fields are turned off. While the inmates are getting up, the guard notices that Flock is still doubled over in pain due to his cramps. He unties the prisoner, but he sees a strange smell that is reminiscent of scorched meat. To his surprise, Flock threatens him with a hidden handmade shiv. Sauer and Flock take the guards hostage, and they threaten the warden to send a medic down for first aid for Flock. The warden then requests to speak to the governor, which triggers a huge effect on various events. Jets, rockets, and helicopters are sent to contain the possible breakout. There is also the possibility of riots starting. Everybody is fearful of what will happen once the inmates break out. However, even with this fearful anticipation from the outside world, the breakout does not seem to happen. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "3fd1710d5e11448d91be457d9d9ef139", "response_text": "Liam O'Leary is the captain of the \"Estates-General Correctional Institution\", also known as the \"Jug\". He is at a hearing for the inmate Sue-Ann Bradley, who has broken the rules of her imprisonment by not mopping the floor of her cell, and getting into a fight with another inmate. He sentences her to three days in \"Block O\", the section of the prison for inmates who cause trouble. O\"Leary is annoyed he has to punish the girl, as she seems to him like a decent enough person. It is revealed through by officer Sodaro, that the reason she is in the prison is for conspiracy to violate the Categorised Class laws. These laws were put in place long before, to fine comb different evolutionary traits in humanity, and to section off the people who fit these traits into groups. They all had specific jobs, they could only procreate in their section, and they could not move between \"specialisations\". \nSue-Ann is moved to Block O, or \"Greensleeves' ' where we meet the characters of Sauer and Flock. They are loud, and clearly disturbed. They seem to be permanent inmates of block O. Sue-Ann is let into the block, where Sauer and Glock begin to shout. She starts to weep. \nO'Leary speaks with the warden, he senses trouble coming. The warden tells O'leary that he's too suspicious, and that there's nothing to worry about. Soon, the warden gets a call, a call from Flock. Flock had made a shiv and taken over one of the guards, and grabbed Sauer. \nThe Warden calls the governor and word quickly spreads fast on the outside. A riot ensues in the lower class. The air forces prepare for an assault on the prison, and make their way there. But, when they get there, there is no breakout, not yet. The city of 19 million people waits. They wait for a breakout that never comes. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "d31a08f3170d4e348869164f77653cb9", "response_text": "The story begins with the Captain of the guards, Liam O’Leary, wondering how a particular detainee, Sue-Anne Bradley got to the prison. A guard is telling Liam that she has not been following orders so Liam is considering putting Sue-Ann in the disciplinary O-block. Sue claims that the treatment is unfair because she did not understand the orders that she was given. Eventually, Liam decides to send her to Block O for three days. He still wonders how or why she ended up in the institution when she had such a good advantage in life. \n\nLiam then begins to recount that he is proud of his job and is satisfied with being a part of the Civil Service class. He argues that he readily understands his place in society and does not understand why Sue-Ann does not understand her place in society. A prison guard guides Sue-Ann to her cell in the Greensleeves and it appears to the guard that Sue-Ann is crying. However, she is actually trying not to throw up from the sight of seeing Sauer and Flock, two other prisoners. Sauer and Flock are referred to as “wipes” and they both have spent a very long time in prison. They are causing a loud ruckus within the block and Sue-Ann does not understand why they have to scream so much. \n\nLater on, the Warden and O’Leary are having a conversation about O’Leary’s concerns. The warden does not treat them as important and ignores Liam’s claims. The Warden keeps putting blue pills in his coffee and they seem to make him feel better. His phone rings, wish he picks up with annoyance. The phone call causes the Warden to apologize to O’Leary because presumably his concern was appropriate and there is currently a situation at the prison. \n\nThe situation occurs in the O Block area. A guard opens Flock’s cell and goes to check on him because Flock seems to be in immense pain. Flock surprises him and points a shiv at the guard. Flock phones the warden and demands to be sent a medic because he is hurt. The Warden sends out an alert that there is a riot and the news spreads around fast outside of the institution and in the city-state. The outside world is terrified of the impending riot and prepares for its emergence. The outside world prepares by heavily arming the perimeter of the prison with jets, rockets, and helicopters. They wait for the inevitable so long that they have to refuel. The breakout seems to not be happening. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f29e0f48ffc84da08893b77b628173f8", "response_text": "Liam O'Leary is a captain of guards in a correctional institution and he senses trouble. He sympathizes with a young detainee Bradley and wonders what got her mixed up with trouble when she possessed every advantage. She claims to have broken the rules due to a misunderstanding but he still has to punish her as Sodaro, the block guard, justly insists. The captain walks away thinking about specialization and the necessity of knowing one's place and being proud of whatever it is. Bradley is led to the disciplinary block and turns out women are rarely sent there. She falls in the beginning on the tangler field and shakes from disgust at the sight of two prisoner leaders. They yell and make sarcastic jokes and remind Bradley of animals causing her to weep. O'Leary tells the Warden about unnatural events taking place and the smell of trouble. The Warden wants them both to pay attention only to their own area of the job. A sudden call acknowledges the Warden of trouble. During the rest period in Block O Flock attacks the guard with a  hidden shiv causing pain to Flock himself. After holding the guard as a hostage, Flock and Sauer call the Warden and order to call a medic as Flock is hurt badly. The news of the riot spread immediately all around to the city governor, police departments, TVs, millions of people living near the Jug. The whole city is scared and prepares for the hugest breakout from the prison with guns and helicopters but it doesn't seem to come. "}]}, {"question_text": "What does the conversation between Liam O’Leary and Warden Godfrey Schluckebier reveal about the society they live in?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "bb1472ba897f44c49a4476a40f783490", "response_text": "\nThe conversation between Liam O'Leary and Warden Godfrey Schluckebier reveals that their society heavily relies on specialization to thrive. It is initially said that the direction of evolution is towards specialization, and this also includes mankind. However, humans can create whatever environment they want to specialize in. The warden tells O'Leary that he should not involve himself in the warden's affairs and that he had his own job to do too. He emphasizes that everybody's jobs are important, but it is even more essential to stick to one's own and not pass on another person's occupation. Although O'Leary is upset at how the warden ignores his warnings, Schluckebier reminds him that 'specialization is the goal for civilization,' which means he does not want to worry about O'Leary's job nor should O'Leary worry about his. This goal also reveals how extreme the belief that a specialized society is one of a higher degree. Letting any specialization mix will only result in half-specialists, who fall in the same category as people who cannot specialize and ultimately serve no purpose to the future of humanity. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "3fd1710d5e11448d91be457d9d9ef139", "response_text": "Their conversation reveals the divides and the prejudices at play in the society in which they live in. O'Leary mentions how he thinks it's not right that men of different sections should be mixing together, not even for playing ball. The Warden seems to take a much kinder approach to this outlook. He thinks that while everyone should just stick to their own job, every job is important, and every person is important. The idea of passing is brought up. It is the idea that someone would eventually overcome their social class based on merit. This idea seems both taboo, and ok, as it is the main reason for sectioning in the first place. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "d31a08f3170d4e348869164f77653cb9", "response_text": "From the conversation between O’Leary and Warden Godfrey, Liam is discussing how he is worried because 2 different classes of people were interacting in a recreational manner with each other. This demonstrates that in this particular society, this course of action is not supposed to happen. Thus, it can be deduced that in the society they live in, different classes of people are not to mix. In addition, someone else cannot do another person’s job in this society. The goal of their society is specialization, which means each person has a particular service they specialize in and provide. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f29e0f48ffc84da08893b77b628173f8", "response_text": "The society is concerned about improving the civilization. It aims towards total specialization with everyone minding their own business in which they are genuinely good. When the trouble comes indeed, turns out the Warden should have listened to Liam. Therefore, this strict accordance to specialization doesn't always make good and when two specializations interfere it may be too late. It shows how the desire to make a perfect civilization so badly makes it full of stupid flaws."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Sue-Ann Bradley, and what are her traits?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "bb1472ba897f44c49a4476a40f783490", "response_text": "Sue-Ann Bradley is also known as Detainee No. WFA-656R at the Estates-General Correctional Institution. She is a recent prisoner and has not been in prison for as long as many other inmates. Her parents both work in Civil Service. She has an excellent educational background and basically whatever a girl could want. However, she chooses to abandon all of that when she lets herself get tangled in dirty business that leads to her arrest. The main reason for her arrest is for conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. She is also described to be a figger-lover because of her actions. Sue-Ann comes off as defiant and courageous when she first steps forward to confront Sandro and O’Leary to explain her side regarding the offense that Mathias reports her for doing. Inside Block O, she tries to walk bravely across the tanglefoot electronic fields only to fall on her face. Even though Sue-Ann is grateful to the guard for letting her attend to her affairs, she does make an effort to ignore him proudly. Despite this brave exterior that Sue-Ann exhibits, she does have moments of weakness. She begins to weep sincerely once the howling and screaming get worse. Although she initially refuses to let the guards hear her, she is eventually driven crazy by the senseless yelling and begins to weep freely. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "3fd1710d5e11448d91be457d9d9ef139", "response_text": "Sue-Ann Bradley is a young girl, of quite a high status, the idea of which she tries to reject throughout the story. Her parents are civil service, which, while not the highest status, is respectable. She has tried to violate the categorised class laws, by being in love with a person who is below her own class. She has been put in prison for it. She is clearly not used to the gruff nature of the prison system, and doesn't understand the slang that the other inmates use. She is clearly quite emotional, not calling the Captain ``Sir\" out of anger, retching when she sees Flock and Sauer and weeping eventually in her cell. When she is in Block O, she notes to herself that it is a good thing that Sauer and Flock were still fighting against the system. She clearly values freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to love whoever, freedom from this sectorial way of life. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "d31a08f3170d4e348869164f77653cb9", "response_text": "Sue-Ann Bradley is a detainee at the Estates-General Correctional Institution. Captain O’Leary describes her as a beautiful young girl. She is in the institution because of conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. Her parents are of the Civil Service class and she was given a good education. Sue-Ann does not like to show that she is scared or nervous and it is evident that is very prideful from the way she conducts herself throughout the prison. She is not afraid to defend herself. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f29e0f48ffc84da08893b77b628173f8", "response_text": "Sue-Ann Bradley is a young and attractive detainee in a correctional institution. She was brought up in a perfect environment and surprisingly got mixed into violating the Categories Class laws. She insists she made mistakes in the institution due to the lack of knowledge about her duties. She is emotional and appears angry with the unjust accusations and on the verge of hysteria. She tries to behave boldly and be careful, but just the sight of some makes her shake from the desire to retch. She appreciates resentment and anger and possesses these features. She is scared and disgusted with animal-like behavior and screams though. She is strong, nevertheless, and manages to behave decently. She even feels gratitude for the smallest things she gets at Block O. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the main setting of the story.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "bb1472ba897f44c49a4476a40f783490", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is inside of a prison. The cells need to be mopped out, and there is also a mess hall. There is also a water fountain that is marked as “Civil Service” that O’Leary drinks out of. Outside, the prison also has a cobblestone yard that the spray machines and sweeperdozers constantly clean. Some prisoners, however, still clean as a means of keeping themselves busy. Apart from the courtyard, there is a car pool inside the prison gates too. \n\nThe Block O portion of the prison, also known as Greensleeves, has cells with green straitjackets for the prisoners to wear and steel-slat beds. Prisoners must take steel steps up to the block and walk through a gate. The most impressive feature of Block O is the tanglefoot electronic fields that can be turned on by a switch. Prisoners are unable to move against the electronic drag of the field, which makes them essentially harmless. There is a telephone in Block O as well, that one can use to call the warden. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "3fd1710d5e11448d91be457d9d9ef139", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is the \"Estates-General Correctional Institution'' or the \"Jug\". It is a prison in a future society. There are cells in which inmates sleep. There is a mess hall, and there seems to be a courtroom where disciplinary hearings take place. There is a mess hall where the inmates dine, and a yard where they have recreational facilities. In the prison, there is a special section called \"Block O ''. It is where inmates who are serving disciplinary action go for short periods of time. All the inmates in Block O, or \"The Jug'' wore green straightjackets. There are steel steps that lead to the block. At the top of the stairs is a cell block. There are \"tanglefoot electronic fields' ' on the floor of the cell which impedes the movement of the prisoners. These were only turned on when a door was opened or a straightjacket was taken off. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "d31a08f3170d4e348869164f77653cb9", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is at the Estates-General Correctional Institution. There is a block within the prison called O Block and it is a place for disciplinary action. It is referred to as Greensleeves because prisoners are made to wear green straitjackets while in the area. The Greensleeves area has an electric mechanism that makes walking in it feel like the person is walking through molasses. The correctional institution is colloquially referred to as the Jug and it exists as its own community within a larger city-state. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f29e0f48ffc84da08893b77b628173f8", "response_text": "The story takes place in the Estates-General Correctional Institution. A line of prisoners is waiting for their cases to be judged by the captain of the guards. Then the setting moves to the cell blocks and to the yard. Suddenly, the setting switches to the place of punishment, Block O, the disciplinary block. Its inhabitants wear green straitjackets and Block O reminds of a noisy community. Inside, the tangler fields are turned on from time to time to slow down the prisoners. Prisoners are divided into cells. For a while the story moves to the Warden's office and then back to the cells, Flock's one in particular. Then the setting goes outside the prison to the playing a game city governor following the news of the riot which spread all the way to a game field, police departments, TVs, etc. The whole city gets up, every house is alarmed, rockets and helicopters are everywhere in the state of anticipation of trouble. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the Jug a symbol of to the civilians in the outside world?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "bb1472ba897f44c49a4476a40f783490", "response_text": "To the outside world, the Jug is a symbol of the lack of organization and control in the specialist society. Unlike normal street brawls or bar-room fights within the individual classes, the civilians see the Jug as where all classes end up together. This fact is extremely dangerous, because it goes against the values and goals of a higher civilization that the specialization society tries so hard to maintain. While most of the bonds that people form with one another are in their specialization classes, people from the Jug do not have to uphold this same obligation. There is also fear that once these criminals break out of the Jug, the neatly organized class order will become disrupted, and a riot larger than any prison can handle will occur amongst the people in the outside world. In the story, many already begin to prepare for the riots that will inevitably happen when the criminals break out of the Jug. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "3fd1710d5e11448d91be457d9d9ef139", "response_text": "The Jug is a symbol of anarchy to the outside world. They are the lowest of the low in society. They scare the outside world so much because they break the rules of the civilisation which has been created. The prisoners all live and work together, despite their status in the outside world. It is a forgeign concept to those on the outside, who are forbidden to mingle with people of different classes. The Jug is also a symbol of how quickly you can get in trouble for trying to break the status quo. It is a symbol that is clearly used to incite fear into anyone who thinks of trying to pass as someone from a higher station to acquire a better job, or for two people of different sections who try to have a relationship together. It is a symbol above all of the consequences of not following the rules. \n"}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "d31a08f3170d4e348869164f77653cb9", "response_text": "The Jug is where all classes are grouped together. Outside of the Jug, the classes are completely separate and by that, they live in their own neighborhoods and perform separate jobs. The Jug represents a threat to the outside world because it breaks the standards that are followed. The outside world has constructed itself to be fit into neat compartmentations of society that separate individuals into different classes. Those classes do not exist in the Jug and could influence and thus threaten the operations of the outside world if the concept were to spread. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f29e0f48ffc84da08893b77b628173f8", "response_text": "The Jug is the corrupt sludge on which the whole city-state is based. All classes are cast together in the Jug. Therefore, a riot there affects every class in the city. All the civilians are filled with horror and seek ways for defense. Lots of rockets and helicopters are immediately sent to the prison after this notice of possible riot as it must be prevented by all means. Aircraftswomen are scared knowing how the wipes are towards their kind and rush for weapons. The anxiety of the governor shows the level of danger as he sends such great forces to the prison. To keep the city-state alive there can be no mixing between classes. The riot would break this essential class division. And as we know from the other parts of the text, specialization was the most important thing for people by then. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61090", "uid": "12d5d378cd2c491bb92252c61e7ffdb1", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "CALL HIM NEMESIS\n \n\n By DONALD E. WESTLAKE\n \n\n Criminals, beware; the Scorpion is on your trail! Hoodlums fear his fury—and, for that matter, so do the cops!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n The man with the handkerchief mask said, \"All right, everybody, keep tight. This is a holdup.\"\n \n There were twelve people in the bank. There was Mr. Featherhall at his desk, refusing to okay a personal check from a perfect stranger. There was the perfect stranger, an itinerant garage mechanic named Rodney (Rod) Strom, like the check said. There were Miss English and Miss Philicoff, the girls in the gilded teller cages. There was Mister Anderson, the guard, dozing by the door in his brown uniform. There was Mrs. Elizabeth Clayhorn, depositing her husband's pay check in their joint checking account, and with her was her ten-year-old son Edward\n(Eddie) Clayhorn, Junior. There was Charlie Casale, getting ten dollars dimes, six dollars nickels and four dollars pennies for his father in the grocery store down the street. There was Mrs. Dolly Daniels, withdrawing money from her savings account again. And there were three bank robbers.\n \n The three bank robbers looked like triplets. From the ground up, they all wore scuffy black shoes, baggy-kneed and unpressed khaki trousers, brown cracked-leather jackets over flannel shirts, white handkerchiefs over the lower half of their faces and gray-and-white check caps pulled low over their eyes. The eyes themselves looked dangerous.\n \n The man who had spoken withdrew a small but mean-looking thirty-two calibre pistol from his jacket pocket. He waved it menacingly. One of the others took the pistol away from Mister Anderson, the guard, and said to him in a low voice, \"Think about retirement, my friend.\" The third one, who carried a black satchel like a doctor's bag, walked quickly around behind the teller's counter and started filling it with money.\n \n It was just like the movies.\n \n The man who had first spoken herded the tellers, Mr. Featherhall and the customers all over against the back wall, while the second man stayed next to Mr. Anderson and the door. The third man stuffed money into the black satchel.\n \n The man by the door said, \"Hurry up.\"\n \n The man with the satchel said, \"One more drawer.\"\n \n The man with the gun turned to say to the man at the door, \"Keep your shirt on.\"\n \n That was all Miss English needed. She kicked off her shoes and ran pelting in her stocking feet for the door.\n \n \n\n \n The man by the door spread his arms out and shouted, \"Hey!\" The man with the gun swung violently back, cursing, and fired the gun. But he'd been moving too fast, and so had Miss English, and all he hit was the brass plate on Mr. Featherhall's desk.\n \n The man by the door caught Miss English in a bear hug. She promptly did her best to scratch his eyes out. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson went scooting out the front door and running down the street toward the police station in the next block, shouting, \"Help! Help! Robbery!\"\n \n The man with the gun cursed some more. The man with the satchel came running around from behind the counter, and the man by the door tried to keep Miss English from scratching his eyes out. Then the man with the gun hit Miss English on the head. She fell unconscious to the floor, and all three of them ran out of the bank to the car out front, in which sat a very nervous-looking fourth man, gunning the engine.\n \n Everyone except Miss English ran out after the bandits, to watch.\n \n Things got very fast and very confused then. Two police cars came driving down the block and a half from the precinct house to the bank, and the car with the four robbers in it lurched away from the curb and drove straight down the street toward the police station. The police cars and the getaway car passed one another, with everybody shooting like the ships in pirate movies.\n \n There was so much confusion that it looked as though the bank robbers were going to get away after all. The police cars were aiming the wrong way and, as they'd come down with sirens wailing, there was a clear path behind them.\n \n Then, after the getaway car had gone more than two blocks, it suddenly started jouncing around. It smacked into a parked car and stopped. And all the police went running down there to clap handcuffs on the robbers when they crawled dazedly out of their car.\n \n \"Hey,\" said Eddie Clayhorn, ten years old. \"Hey, that was something, huh, Mom?\"\n \n \"Come along home,\" said his mother, grabbing his hand. \"We don't want to be involved.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"It was the nuttiest thing,\" said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. \"An operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their getaway car, you know what I mean?\"\n \n Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. \"They always slip up,\" he said.\n\"Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up.\"\n \n \"Yes, but their tires .\"\n \n \"Well,\" said Pauling, \"it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed whatever was handiest.\"\n \n \"What I can't figure out,\" said Stevenson, \"is exactly what made those tires do that. I mean, it was a hot day and all, but it wasn't that hot. And they weren't going that fast. I don't think you could go fast enough to melt your tires down.\"\n \n Pauling shrugged again. \"We got them. That's the important thing.\"\n \n \"Still and all, it's nutty. They're free and clear, barrelling out Rockaway toward the Belt, and all at once their tires melt, the tubes blow out and there they are.\" Stevenson shook his head. \"I can't figure it.\"\n \n \"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,\" suggested Pauling. \"They picked the wrong car to steal.\"\n \n \"And that doesn't make sense, either,\" said Stevenson. \"Why steal a car that could be identified as easily as that one?\"\n \n \"Why? What was it, a foreign make?\"\n \n \"No, it was a Chevvy, two-tone, three years old, looked just like half the cars on the streets. Except that in the trunk lid the owner had burned in 'The Scorpion' in big black letters you could see half a block away.\"\n \n \"Maybe they didn't notice it when they stole the car,\" said Pauling.\n \n \"For a well-planned operation like this one,\" said Stevenson, \"they made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn't make any sense.\"\n \n \"What do they have to say about it?\" Pauling demanded.\n \n \"Nothing, what do you expect? They'll make no statement at all.\"\n \n The squad-room door opened, and a uniformed patrolman stuck his head in. \"The owner of that Chevvy's here,\" he said.\n \n \"Right,\" said Stevenson. He followed the patrolman down the hall to the front desk.\n \n The owner of the Chevvy was an angry-looking man of middle age, tall and paunchy. \"John Hastings,\" he said. \"They say you have my car here.\"\n \n \"I believe so, yes,\" said Stevenson. \"I'm afraid it's in pretty bad shape.\"\n \n \"So I was told over the phone,\" said Hastings grimly. \"I've contacted my insurance company.\"\n \n \"Good. The car's in the police garage, around the corner. If you'd come with me?\"\n \n \n\n \n On the way around, Stevenson said, \"I believe you reported the car stolen almost immediately after it happened.\"\n \n \"That's right,\" said Hastings. \"I stepped into a bar on my route. I'm a wine and liquor salesman. When I came out five minutes later, my car was gone.\"\n \n \"You left the keys in it?\"\n \n \"Well, why not?\" demanded Hastings belligerently. \"If I'm making just a quick stop—I never spend more than five minutes with any one customer—I always leave the keys in the car. Why not?\"\n \n \"The car was stolen,\" Stevenson reminded him.\n \n Hastings grumbled and glared. \"It's always been perfectly safe up till now.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. In here.\"\n \n Hastings took one look at his car and hit the ceiling. \"It's ruined!\" he cried. \"What did you do to the tires?\"\n \n \"Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup.\"\n \n Hastings leaned down over one of the front tires. \"Look at that! There's melted rubber all over the rims. Those rims are ruined! What did you use, incendiary bullets?\"\n \n Stevenson shook his head. \"No, sir. When that happened they were two blocks away from the nearest policeman.\"\n \n \"Hmph.\" Hastings moved on around the car, stopping short to exclaim,\n\"What in the name of God is that? You didn't tell me a bunch of kids had stolen the car.\"\n \n \"It wasn't a bunch of kids,\" Stevenson told him. \"It was four professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in a bank holdup.\"\n \n \"Then why did they do that ?\"\n \n Stevenson followed Hastings' pointing finger, and saw again the crudely-lettered words, \"The Scorpion\" burned black into the paint of the trunk lid. \"I really don't know,\" he said. \"It wasn't there before the car was stolen?\"\n \n \"Of course not!\"\n \n Stevenson frowned. \"Now, why in the world did they do that?\"\n \n \"I suggest,\" said Hastings with heavy sarcasm, \"you ask them that.\"\n \n Stevenson shook his head. \"It wouldn't do any good. They aren't talking about anything. I don't suppose they'll ever tell us.\" He looked at the trunk lid again. \"It's the nuttiest thing,\" he said thoughtfully....\n \n That was on Wednesday.\n \n The Friday afternoon mail delivery to the Daily News brought a crank letter. It was in the crank letter's most obvious form; that is, the address had been clipped, a letter or a word at a time, from a newspaper and glued to the envelope. There was no return address.\n \n The letter itself was in the same format. It was brief and to the point:\n \n Dear Mr. Editor:\n \n The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The Scorpion fights crime. Crooks and robbers are not safe from the avenging Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS!\n \n \n Sincerely yours, THE SCORPION\n \n The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It didn't rate a line in the paper.\n \n \n\n II\n \n The bank robbery occurred in late June. Early in August, a Brooklyn man went berserk.\n \n It happened in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay. This particular area of Canarsie was a residential neighborhood, composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins.\n \n Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home, brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand.\n \n As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom.\n \n Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the house at nine o'clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and\n\"stop acting like a child.\" Neighbors reported to the police that they heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, \"Go away! Can't you let a man sleep?\"\n \n At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence, a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the hand and shoulder.\n \n Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming out the front door of the house, crying for the police and shouting,\n\"Murder! Murder!\" At this point, neighbors called the police. One neighbor additionally phoned three newspapers and two television stations, thereby earning forty dollars in \"news-tips\" rewards.\n \n \n\n \n By chance, a mobile television unit was at that moment on the Belt Parkway, returning from having seen off a prime minister at Idlewild Airport. This unit was at once diverted to Canarsie, where it took up a position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work with a Zoomar lens.\n \n In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house, firing at anything that moved.\n \n The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the house.\n \n The show lasted for nearly an hour. There were policemen everywhere, and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr. Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway. Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge anyone present to hand-to-hand combat.\n \n The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken. Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again.\n \n The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and dramatically.\n \n Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell barrel first onto the lawn.\n \n Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall into the arms of the waiting police.\n \n They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was shouting: \"My hands! My hands!\"\n \n They looked at his hands. The palms and the palm-side of the fingers were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder.\n \n Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The neighbors went home and telephoned their friends.\n \n On-duty policemen had been called in from practically all of the precincts in Brooklyn. Among them was Detective-Sergeant William Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy individual was led away, and then strolled over to look at the rifle. He touched the stock, and it was somewhat warm but that was all.\n \n He picked it up and turned it around. There, on the other side of the stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, \"The Scorpion.\"\n \n \n\n \n You don't get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both more imaginative than most—\"You gotta be able to second-guess the smart boys\"—and to be a complete realist—\"You gotta have both feet on the ground.\" If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks.\n \n The realist side of the captain's nature was currently at the fore.\n\"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?\" he demanded.\n \n \"I'm not sure,\" admitted Stevenson. \"But we've got these two things. First, there's the getaway car from that bank job. The wheels melt for no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk. Then, yesterday, this guy Higgins out in Canarsie. He says the rifle all of a sudden got too hot to hold, and he's got the burn marks to prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. 'The Scorpion'.\"\n \n \"He says he put that on there himself,\" said the captain.\n \n Stevenson shook his head. \"His lawyer says he put it on there. Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense.\"\n \n \"He put it on there himself, Stevenson,\" said the captain with weary patience. \"What are you trying to prove?\"\n \n \"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?\"\n \n \"They were defective,\" said Hanks promptly.\n \n \"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the trunk?\"\n \n \"How do I know?\" demanded the captain. \"Kids put it on before the car was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows? What do they say?\"\n \n \"They say they didn't do it,\" said Stevenson. \"And they say they never saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it'd been there.\"\n \n The captain shook his head. \"I don't get it,\" he admitted. \"What are you trying to prove?\"\n \n \"I guess,\" said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, \"I guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind.\"\n \n \"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are you trying to hand me?\"\n \n \"All I know,\" insisted Stevenson, \"is what I see.\"\n \n \"And all I know,\" the captain told him, \"is Higgins put that name on his rifle himself. He says so.\"\n \n \"And what made it so hot?\"\n \n \"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you think made it hot?\"\n \n \"All of a sudden?\"\n \n \"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him.\"\n \n \"How come the same name showed up each time, then?\" Stevenson asked desperately.\n \n \"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?\"\n \n \"But there's no explanation—\" started Stevenson.\n \n \"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just gave you the explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty idea—like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch. Remember?\"\n \n \"I remember,\" said Stevenson.\n \n \"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson,\" the captain advised him.\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" said Stevenson....\n \n The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a crank letter to the Daily News :\n \n Dear Mr. Editor,\n \n You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.\n \n \n Sincerely yours, THE SCORPION\n \n Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the same place, and forgotten.\n \n \n\n III\n \n Hallowe'en is a good time for a rumble. There's too many kids around for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you're picked up carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you're on your way to a Hallowe'en party and you're in costume. You're going as a JD.\n \n The problem was this schoolyard. It was a block wide, with entrances on two streets. The street on the north was Challenger territory, and the street on the south was Scarlet Raider territory, and both sides claimed the schoolyard. There had been a few skirmishes, a few guys from both gangs had been jumped and knocked around a little, but that had been all. Finally, the War Lords from the two gangs had met, and determined that the matter could only be settled in a war.\n \n The time was chosen: Hallowe'en. The place was chosen: the schoolyard. The weapons were chosen: pocket knives and tire chains okay, but no pistols or zip-guns. The time was fixed: eleven P.M. And the winner would have undisputed territorial rights to the schoolyard, both entrances.\n \n The night of the rumble, the gangs assembled in their separate clubrooms for last-minute instructions. Debs were sent out to play chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of the approach of cops and to keep out any non-combatant kids who might come wandering through.\n \n Judy Canzanetti was a Deb with the Scarlet Raiders. She was fifteen years old, short and black-haired and pretty in a movie-magazine, gum-chewing sort of way. She was proud of being in the Auxiliary of the Scarlet Raiders, and proud also of the job that had been assigned to her. She was to stand chicken on the southwest corner of the street.\n \n Judy took up her position at five minutes to eleven. The streets were dark and quiet. Few people cared to walk this neighborhood after dark, particularly on Hallowe'en. Judy leaned her back against the telephone pole on the corner, stuck her hands in the pockets of her Scarlet Raider jacket and waited.\n \n At eleven o'clock, she heard indistinct noises begin behind her. The rumble had started.\n \n At five after eleven, a bunch of little kids came wandering down the street. They were all about ten or eleven years old, and most of them carried trick-or-treat shopping bags. Some of them had Hallowe'en masks on.\n \n They started to make the turn toward the schoolyard. Judy said, \"Hey, you kids. Take off.\"\n \n One of them, wearing a red mask, turned to look at her. \"Who, us?\"\n \n \"Yes, you! Stay out of that street. Go on down that way.\"\n \n \"The subway's this way,\" objected the kid in the red mask.\n \n \"Who cares? You go around the other way.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Listen, lady,\" said the kid in the red mask, aggrieved, \"we got a long way to go to get home.\"\n \n \"Yeah,\" said another kid, in a black mask, \"and we're late as it is.\"\n \n \"I couldn't care less,\" Judy told them callously. \"You can't go down that street.\"\n \n \"Why not?\" demanded yet another kid. This one was in the most complete and elaborate costume of them all, black leotards and a yellow shirt and a flowing: black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. \"Why can't we go down there?\" this apparition demanded.\n \n \"Because I said so,\" Judy told him. \"Now, you kids get away from here. Take off.\"\n \n \"Hey!\" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. \"Hey, they're fighting down there!\"\n \n \"It's a rumble,\" said Judy proudly. \"You twerps don't want to be involved.\"\n \n \"Hey!\" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume again. And he went running around Judy and dashing off down the street.\n \n \"Hey, Eddie!\" shouted one of the other kids. \"Eddie, come back!\"\n \n Judy wasn't sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase the one kid who'd gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would come running along after her. She didn't know what to do.\n \n A sudden siren and a distant flashing red light solved her problems.\n\"Cheez,\" said one of the kids. \"The cops!\"\n \n \"Fuzz!\" screamed Judy. She turned and raced down the block toward the schoolyard, shouting, \"Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it's the fuzz!\"\n \n But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the schoolyard.\n \n The guys from both gangs were dancing. They were jumping around, waving their arms, throwing their weapons away. Then they all started pulling off their gang jackets and throwing them away, whooping and hollering. They were making such a racket themselves that they never heard Judy's warning. They didn't even hear the police sirens. And all at once both schoolyard entrances were full of cops, a cop had tight hold of Judy and the rumble was over.\n \n \n\n \n Judy was so baffled and terrified that everything was just one great big blur. But in the middle of it all, she did see the little kid in the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street.\n \n And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault.\n \n \n\n \n Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was impatient as well. \"All right, Stevenson,\" he said. \"Make it fast, I've got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn't this comic-book thing of yours again.\"\n \n \"I'm afraid it is, Captain,\" said Stevenson. \"Did you see the morning paper?\"\n \n \"So what?\"\n \n \"Did you see that thing about the gang fight up in Manhattan?\"\n \n Captain Hanks sighed. \"Stevenson,\" he said wearily, \"are you going to try to connect every single time the word 'scorpion' comes up? What's the problem with this one? These kid gangs have names, so what?\"\n \n \"Neither one of them was called 'The Scorpions,'\" Stevenson told him. \"One of them was the Scarlet Raiders and the other gang was the Challengers.\"\n \n \"So they changed their name,\" said Hanks.\n \n \"Both gangs? Simultaneously? To the same name?\"\n \n \"Why not? Maybe that's what they were fighting over.\"\n \n \"It was a territorial war,\" Stevenson reminded him. \"They've admitted that much. It says so in the paper. And it also says they all deny ever seeing that word on their jackets until after the fight.\"\n \n \"A bunch of juvenile delinquents,\" said Hanks in disgust. \"You take their word?\"\n \n \"Captain, did you read the article in the paper?\"\n \n \"I glanced through it.\"\n \n \"All right. Here's what they say happened: They say they started fighting at eleven o'clock. And they just got going when all at once all the metal they were carrying—knives and tire chains and coins and belt buckles and everything else—got freezing cold, too cold to touch. And then their leather jackets got freezing cold, so cold they had to pull them off and throw them away. And when the jackets were later collected, across the name of the gang on the back of each one had been branded 'The Scorpion.'\"\n \n \"Now, let me tell you something,\" said Hanks severely. \"They heard the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn't been part of the gang that had been fighting. But they were caught before they could get out of the schoolyard. If the squad cars had showed up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn't have had anything in it but weapons and jackets, and the kids would have been all over the neighborhood, nice as you please, minding their own business and not bothering anybody. That's what happened. And all this talk about freezing cold and branding names into jackets is just some smart-alec punk's idea of a way to razz the police. Now, you just go back to worrying about what's happening in this precinct and forget about kid gangs up in Manhattan and comic book things like the Scorpion, or you're going to wind up like Wilcox, with that refrigerator business. Now, I don't want to hear any more about this nonsense, Stevenson.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" said Stevenson.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "0918340a3d5b4c4ab394b2b3a512fafa", "response_text": "The story opens up on a bank robbery. Three men, wearing identical outfits and masks, walk in and threaten the citizens in the bank, raising a weapon. As the men are taking money from behind the counter, a woman, Miss English, makes a run for the door. She is shot at but missed, caught by one of the men at the door, and another citizen, Mr. Anderson, manages to escape and call for help. The men flee the bank and hop into a stolen car, just missing the incoming police. As the men get away, the car suddenly malfunctions and crashes into another car, and they are eventually caught by the police. Detective Stevenson discusses the incident with Detective Pauling, and he is perplexed by how the tires of the stolen car seemed to melt instantly, and how the words \"The Scorpion\" were branded into the car. The owner of the stolen car, John Hastings, arrives, and he confirms that the words were not on the car before it was stolen. Two days later, the Daily News receives a crank letter, addressed from \"The Scorpion\" and explaining that he fights crime, threatening criminals. The letter was not published. About a month after the robbery, another incident occurs in Brooklyn, where Jerome Higgins murders his wife and injures his sister after spending days in his bedroom. Police and cameramen arrive at his home, where a standoff occurs for an hour before Higgins suddenly throws his rifle and runs outside, his hands burned severely. Stevenson finds the rifle and sees \"The Scorpion\" burned into the side of it. Stevenson goes to Captain Hanks, questioning the similarities between the two events, and Hanks dismisses his conspiracies. The Daily Mail receives another letter, but still does not publish it. On Halloween, two gangs, the Challengers and the Scarlet Raiders, plan a rumble over territory. Judy Canzanetti is a lookout for the Scarlet Raiders, and she is guarding the street when a group of children approach her. Judy warns them to leave, but one of the children goes around her and runs down the street. Suddenly, the police arrive, and Judy warns the gang, but then sees them jumping around and throwing their weapons and jackets. Again, the words \"The Scorpion\" are found on the jackets of both gangs. Stevenson brings this up to Hanks again, but he denies it and tells him to stop bringing the theory up."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "4c6f633c44ee4565925589e76b394d3e", "response_text": "The story begins in a bank. It is under control of three bank robbers, who have taken nine other people in the bank hostage. One man escapes out the door, shouting for help. The robbers quickly run outside to meet their getaway driver, where they speed off. They are followed by police. The getaway car reaches ahead until the car crashes, and the police clap handcuffs on the robbers, taking them to the station. \nBack in the station Detective-Sergeant Stevenson discusses with his colleague what happened. The tires of the getaway car seemed to have melted. The car was normal, apart from the words \"the scorpion\", burned in big black letters on the trunk lid. They meet the owner of the stolen car at the station, who tells them that he never put that sign on the car. That was on Wednesday. On Friday, the Daily News is sent a crank letter from someone signed \"the scorpion\" who tells the paper to warn their readers that \"the scorpion fights crime\" and that criminals are not safe.\nJerome Higgins, a man from Brooklyn goes crazy and kills his wife and injures his sister with a gun. Both neighbours and police surround the house after his sister Mrs.Strober escapes the house. inside, Higgins goes ballistic, shooting at random. That is until Higgins runs out of the house, his hands and shoulder having severe burns. He is taken to get his wounds treated, and then to jail. On the gun, it is burned into the wood \"The Scorpion\". \nThe Sergeant and his Captain discuss these cases. Stevenson thinks that they must be connected, but the Captain tells Stevenson to stop looking into this fantasy, as they have nothing in common, and it's a mere coincidence. The Daily News received another letter of warning that was never published. \nIt is Halloween night. The gangs \"The Challengers\" and \"The Scarlet Raiders\" are getting ready for a fight. The two leaders of the gang have agreed to a knife fight over a schoolyard for territory. Judy Canzanetti is sent out by the Scarlet Raiders as a lookout for any kids or cops going by. She sees a group of kids, who she tries to divert, but when one of them escapes and runs in the direction of the fight, she is caught off guard. That is until she hears sirens, and goes to warn the gang. Before she gets there though, all the members of the two gangs jump around, throwing their weapons on the ground and taking off their jackets. It is explained later on by Steavenson that their weapons all of a sudden became freezing cold, as did their jackets, with \"the scorpion\" burned into the backs of them. The captain once again tells Stevenson to let this \"nonsense\" go, and it's nothing more than a coincidence. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "9db353c0e87e453a83f419f3df149006", "response_text": "The story starts with a bank robbery in late June. There are twelve people in the bank when it is robbed. The three robbers, who look like triplets, all wear the same outfits. One man draws a pistol while the other one takes the guard's pistol, Mr. Anderson. The last one takes a black satchel bag and fills it with money. Then, they join the fourth robber in a stolen car while the police chase them. It seems that they will get away, but the tires melt, which gives the police the opportunity to apprehend them. On Wednesday, Detective-Sergeant Stevenson finds it very strange, but Detective-Sergeant Pauling tells him it is common for plans to have these flaws. Stevenson mentions that the car has 'The Scorpion' burned into it just as the owner arrives. John Hastings says that he reported his car as soon as it was stolen. Stevenson is surprised that he would leave his keys in it, but Hastings says it is usually safe for him because he is a wine and liquor salesman. Hastings is angry at the police for melting his tires, but Stevenson says the police had no part in that. Both of them are confused by the writing on the car since it was not there before. On Friday, the Daily News receives a letter from The Scorpion that warns the readers of the paper because it fights crime. However, the letter is ignored and filed into the wastebasket instead. The second incident happens in early August when a Brooklyn man named Jerome Higgins goes berserk after failing a Civil Service exam for the third time. The crime is in Canarsie, in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay. Mrs. Higgins and his sister, Mrs. Thelma Stodbetter, try to wake him up; Mister Higgins kills his wife and injures his sister with a hunting rifle. He then goes on a rampage, barricading himself in the house and shooting at anything that moves. Policemen, firemen, neighbors, ambulance attendants, and even two cameramen from the mobile unit are present. After one hour, Higgins plans to shoot at the camera, but he suddenly throws his rifle away. He then complains about his hands, which are severely burned, and Stevenson finds the words 'The Scorpion' present again. Precinct Captain Hanks tells him that his idea of an external force fighting crime out there is silly, while the Daily News receives a second letter from The Scorpion. The third case details a Hallowe'en rumble in a schoolyard. Judy Canzanetti is made to stand chicken, and she tells a group of kids in Hallowe'en masks to stay away from the schoolyard. The kid named Eddie dashes down the street, and the cops soon appear after. Stevenson tries to bring up how strange it is for both gangs to have 'The Scorpion' on their jackets when the conflict was a territorial war. Hanks refutes his points and tells him to stop worrying about any Scorpion nonsense."}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "b8a27c98c4ed4570b33a89dcaf95fc9c", "response_text": "A bank is being robbed by three similar looking men. Picking a moment, one of the hostages, Miss English, rushes out, but she is stopped, while another captive, Mr. Anderson, manages to escape and call the police. The robbers hit Miss English into unconsciousness and run away. Police cars come and go in the wrong way, but surprisingly manage to capture the robbers after all. The stupid mistake of the robbers seems suspicious as the car's tires melted for no reason and the stolen car was very noticeable with \"The Scorpion\" written in the back. When the car owner comes, he is very angry and upset, and he mentions the inscription wasn't there before the robbery. Soon, a letter from \"The Scorpion\" is received by a newspaper, saying that the sender will keep fighting crime. About one month later, a clerk murders his wife from a rifle after going berserk. This man, Mr. Higgins, barricades himself at home and fires outside in defense, while his sister runs to the police and the neighbors call. After an hour of no success in arresting the man, he runs out himself with his hands being terribly burnt. The same detective who led the first case, Stevenson, comes to the scene, and sees an engraving \"The Scorpion\" on the rifle. Higgins' lawyer claims the inscription was put by his client, while the least denies it, which the lawyer uses to proclaim him insane. Stevenson holds on to someone else making those inscriptions while Captain Hanks denies the version. Stevenson keeps posing questions making the case strange, but Hanks tries to close the case with explaining everything as primitively as possible. Hanks orders Stevenson to forget his ideas of someone pretending to be a superhero and even threatens him reminding about a precedent. Another warning letter to the readers comes from \"The Scorpion\" to the newspaper, but it's not printed again. Another story takes place on Halloween, two gangs meet to fight for a school yard with knifes and chains. A fifteen year old girl Judy stands chicken on the corner during the fight and sees a bunch of kids heading home, she says them to go another way, but one kid sees the rumble and rushes there. Suddenly the cops come and the gangs do not hear Judy's warning, everyone is arrested. \"The Scorpion\" appears on the participants' jackets after the fight. Turns out the fight didn't happen as all the metallic weapons and leather jackets suddenly got extremely cold to hold. Hanks again finds an explanation - the kids threw all of these away not tore arrested. He again tells Stevenson to stop with this nonsense from the superhero books. "}]}, {"question_text": "What pattern does Stevenson notice in the crimes that makes him suspicious?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "0918340a3d5b4c4ab394b2b3a512fafa", "response_text": "In all three incidents that take place in the story, the criminals were stopped and caught by the police. They all seemed to be mysteriously burned in one way or another: the tires on the car melted off, Higgins' hands were burned by the rifle, and the jackets and weapons of the gang members seemed to have the same effect. Additionally, all three events were tagged by \"The Scorpion\": the words were branded on the car, the rifle, and the jackets."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "4c6f633c44ee4565925589e76b394d3e", "response_text": "There is a very odd pattern that Stevenson notices in the crimes that makes him suspicious. In all the crimes mentioned in the story, there has been the words \"The Scorpion\" left behind on some piece of evidence relating to the crime by an unknown source. There is also the connection of heat in all three cases. In the bank robbery case, the tires melt without explanation, and \"the scorpion\" is burned onto the outside of the car. \nIn the murder case, the gun which Mr Higgins holds burns his hands and his shoulder, and the words are left burned into the wooden part of the gun. \nIn the incident involving the two gangs, their weapons and jackets become increasingly cold, up to the point where they can no longer touch them. The words \"the scorpion\" and imprinted on the back of their jackets. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "9db353c0e87e453a83f419f3df149006", "response_text": "Stevenson notices that shortly after all of the criminals are arrested, the mark of ‘The Scorpion’ is left behind. In the bank robbery, the writing is burned into the lid of the car. In the Brooklyn rampage incident, it is burned onto the wood stock of Mister Higgin’s hunting rifle. In the schoolyard incident, the word is written on the back of all the jackets of the two gangs. These patterns make him suspicious because although there is no evidence of any external interference, the word appears whenever the criminals’ plans have been thwarted and the police have arrived. The words also do not seem to be written by the criminals themselves either. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "b8a27c98c4ed4570b33a89dcaf95fc9c", "response_text": "Each crime is very different - a bank robbery, a domestic murder and a kids gangs fight. Nevertheless, they bare linked with an inscription \"The Scorpion\" appearing on some attributes and weird things preventing the crimes. First, well-organized robbers make a stupid mistake of picking a noticeable car and their tires burn for no cause, then a rifle gets hot all of a sudden and burns the hands holding it. In the end, weapons and jackets become impossible to hold as they are extremely cold. Thus, the thee crimes are stopped. And the same inscription is told by everyone not to have been there before. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "0918340a3d5b4c4ab394b2b3a512fafa", "response_text": "The story takes place in New York City. The first scene takes place in a bank, where a police station is a few blocks away. The second crime takes place in Canarsie, a part of Brooklyn, at the home of Jerome Higgins, which is located in a residential neighborhood. The third crime takes place on Halloween in Manhattan, this time in a schoolyard, a neutral territory up for grabs between the Scarlet Raiders and the Challengers."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "4c6f633c44ee4565925589e76b394d3e", "response_text": "There are multiple settings in this story. The first part of this story is set in a bank, where the hostages are ousted against the back wall. That is until the action is taken out onto the street, where a high speed car chase and shootout take place between the police and the perpetrators. \nIn the next part of the story, we see the precaint. Detective Stevenson takes the Chevy owner to the police garage around the corner. \nAfter this, the story moves to Southeast Brooklyn, to the home of Jerome Higgins, who after locking himself in his bedroom, shot his wife and sister, injuring one and killing the other. The house is surrounded on the street by neighbours and police. \nIn the final setting of the story, we see a schoolyard, which the Challengers and Scarlet Raiders are fighting for the right to control over. The rumble takes place on Halloween night. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "9db353c0e87e453a83f419f3df149006", "response_text": "The bank has a desk for Mr. Featherhall and gilded teller cages in the first crime. Mr. Featherhall leads everybody to the back wall when the bank is being robbed. There is also a brass plate on his desk. Outside, a precinct house is a block and a half from the bank. There is also a police station down the street that the robbers drive towards. The car that the criminals steal is a two-tone Chevvy that looks like half the cars on the streets. At the precinct house, there is a squadroom and a front desk connected by a hallway. \n\nThe second crime is located in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn located near Jamaica Bay. The residential area is primarily composed of one or two family houses. The Higgins house is described to have a bedroom with a door that locks. The mobile unit arrives from Belt Parkway during the incident after seeing the prime minister off at Idlewild airport. \n\nThe final incident is located in a schoolyard. The schoolyard is a block wide, with entrances on two streets. The Challenger gang claims the street on the North as their territory, while the Scarlet Raider gang claims the street on the south as theirs. Both sides also have claims on the schoolyard. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "b8a27c98c4ed4570b33a89dcaf95fc9c", "response_text": "The story begins in a bank being robbed by three men dressed in the same way and holding hostages. They run away in a stolen car, which is very typical for the city, but has a noticeable inscription \"The Scorpion\" in the back. In the police department the robbery is discussed, the car owner comes and they go to the police garage to look at his car. Another crime takes place in Higgins' apartment, where a man. killed his wife and barricaded himself. The police is outside, the windows are open and the man shoots everyone from there. Suddenly, he gives in with his hands burning. He is taken to the police. There a dialogue between Hanks and Stevenson takes place. The third scene is on a school yard during Halloween, two gangs are fighting, a girl stands chicken. The police comes and manages to. arrest everyone. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Stevenson and Hanks?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "0918340a3d5b4c4ab394b2b3a512fafa", "response_text": "Stevenson and Hanks have a tense relationship. Though they are both in high positions at the police precinct, Hanks is the Captain, Stevenson's superior. This power dynamic is evident throughout the story, particularly when Stevenson tries to bring up his theories and suspicions about The Scorpion. Instead of hearing him out, Hanks refuses to listen, becoming increasingly frustrated and calling Stevenson's thoughts childlike nonsense. Despite this, Stevenson is still determined to get his idea through to Hanks."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "4c6f633c44ee4565925589e76b394d3e", "response_text": "There are multiple settings in this story. The first part of this story is set in a bank, where the hostages are ousted against the back wall. That is until the action is taken out onto the street, where a high speed car chase and shootout take place between the police and the perpetrators. \nIn the next part of the story, we see the precaint. Detective Steavenson takes the Chevy owner to the police garage around the corner. \nAfter this, the story moves to Southeast Brooklyn, to the home of Jerome Higgins, who after locking himself in his bedroom, shot his wife and sister, injuring one and killing the other. The house is surrounded on the street by neighbours and police. \nIn the final setting of the story, we see a schoolyard, which the Challengers and Scarlet Raiders are fighting for the right to control over. The rumble takes place on Halloween night. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "9db353c0e87e453a83f419f3df149006", "response_text": "Hanks is the Precinct Captain, while Stevenson works under him as a Detective-Sergeant. Hanks and Stevenson share a good working relationship; however, Hank gets annoyed whenever Stevenson brings up his theories about “The Scorpion” and thinks of them as nonsense. He refutes every point realistically, saying that Higgins burned the words onto the rifle himself. When Stevenson brings up the earlier robbery incident, Hanks refuses to accept those observations and says Stevenson’s points are similar to that of a comic book. During the schoolyard incident, Hank is extremely annoyed at Stevenson trying to connect more points to ‘The Scorpion’ and tells him that the children just had a silly brawl. He also warns Stevenson to stop thinking about these foolish ideas and return to doing his job in the precinct. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "b8a27c98c4ed4570b33a89dcaf95fc9c", "response_text": "Stevenson and Hanks are both important people in the police with years of experience. They have completely different views on the described crimes. Stevenson wants to check every possibility, something doesn't adds up for him and he wants to keep investigating. He is determined to find out the truth and he is passionate about it, he is also emotional in proving his point and thinks a lot about the cases. Hanks simply wants to close the cases as fast as possible and Stevenson's guesses irritate him. He is not interested in other possibilities and has rather realistic explanations. He uses his position and authority to threaten Stevenson into shutting up and stopping irritated Hanks."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is \"The Scorpion\" and why are they significant?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "0918340a3d5b4c4ab394b2b3a512fafa", "response_text": "The Scorpion is a mysterious figure, self-proclaimed to be fighting crime, as stated in the crank letters to the Daily Mail. The true identity of The Scorpion is unknown, and no one has ever seen him. However, The Scorpion is a powerful force in the story, as he ends up being responsible for the capturing of several criminals. The Scorpion makes his presence known by tagging his signature at different crime scenes through branding, but the characters in the story, especially Stevenson, are determined to know who he is."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "4c6f633c44ee4565925589e76b394d3e", "response_text": "The Scorpion is an unknown vigilante, who seeks to fight crime, with some mysterious super power. They send messages to the daily news, asking them to warn their readers that they will be after any criminals. It seems as though whoever they are, they have the ability to control heat in objects. They melt the tires of the Chevy, they heat the gun to such an intense level that it burns Mr. Higgins' hands, and they cool the weapons and jackets of the two hangs so much that they have to get rid of both. Detective Stevenson thinks that the scorpion is all the same force, affecting these three cases, but his boss, Captain Hanks, doesn't see one. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "9db353c0e87e453a83f419f3df149006", "response_text": "“The Scorpion” is an anonymous bringer of justice. Their identity is never revealed, but they send warning letters to the Daily News explaining their intentions of stopping crime and helping the police arrest the criminals to bring justice. They are significant because the crimes could have gotten out of hand without them. In the first case, it looked as though the robbers would get away, but “The Scorpion” managed to stop them in time for the police to come. They can also help stop crime a lot faster than the police. Furthermore, “The Scorpion” also becomes an object of interest for Stevenson and leads him to start following these patterns. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "b8a27c98c4ed4570b33a89dcaf95fc9c", "response_text": "\"The Scorpion\"'s identity is not exposed. It is a person or an organization which decided to take the mission of fighting crime. He is like a modern superhero dealing with any kind of crime. He stops the criminals and makes them surrender to the police. After every intervention he leaves an inscription saying \"The Scorpion\" as a mark of his intervention. He also sends letters to a newspaper warning people about his existence. He is significant as he is connected to every crime described and stays the main mystery of the story, being also the reason of disputes between Hanks and Stevenson."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61228", "uid": "b50ed1fe89ac4c60ac91617e561af258", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE BIG HEADACHE\n \n\n BY JIM HARMON\n \n\n What's the principal cause of headaches? Why, having a head, of course!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n I\n \n \"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to cooperate in the experiment?\" Ferris asked eagerly.\n \n \"How are you going to go about forcing him, Doctor?\" Mitchell inquired.\n\"He outweighs you by fifty pounds and you needn't look to me for help against that repatriated fullback.\"\n \n Ferris fingered the collar of his starched lab smock. \"Guess I got carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a quick, dramatic test. We've had it if he turns us down.\"\n \n \"I know,\" Mitchell said, exhaling deeply. \"Somehow the men with the money just can't seem to understand basic research. Who would have financed a study of cyclic periods of the hedgehog? Yet the information gained from that study is vital in cancer research.\"\n \n \"When we prove our results that should be of enough practical value for anyone. But those crummy trustees didn't even leave us enough for a field test.\" Ferris scrubbed his thin hand over the bony ridge of his forehead. \"I've been worrying so much about this I've got the ancestor of all headaches.\"\n \n Mitchell's blue eyes narrowed and his boyish face took on an expression of demonic intensity. \"Ferris, would you consider—?\"\n \n \"No!\" the smaller man yelled. \"You can't expect me to violate professional ethics and test my own discovery on myself.\"\n \n \" Our discovery,\" Mitchell said politely.\n \n \"That's what I meant to say. But I'm not sure it would be completely ethical with even a discovery partly mine.\"\n \n \"You're right. Besides who cares if you or I are cured of headaches? Our reputations don't go outside our own fields,\" Mitchell said. \"But now Macklin—\"\n \n Elliot Macklin had inherited the reputation of the late Albert Einstein in the popular mind. He was the man people thought of when the word\n\"mathematician\" or even \"scientist\" was mentioned. No one knew whether his Theory of Spatium was correct or not because no one had yet been able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but looked in his late thirties, with the build of a football player. The government took up a lot of his time using him as the symbol of the Ideal Scientist to help recruit Science and Engineering Cadets.\n \n For the past seven years Macklin—who was the Advanced Studies Department of Firestone University—had been involved in devising a faster-than-light drive to help the Army reach Pluto and eventually the nearer stars. Mitchell had overheard two coeds talking and so knew that the project was nearing completion. If so, it was a case of Ad astra per aspirin .\n \n The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health.\n \n Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild stroke ... or at least a vascular spasm of a cerebral artery. It was known that he suffered from the vilest variety of migraine. A cycle of the headaches had caused him to be absent from his classes for several weeks, and there were an unusual number of military uniforms seen around the campus.\n \n \n\n \n Ferris paced off the tidy measurements of the office outside the laboratory in the biology building. Mitchell sat slumped in the chair behind the blond imitation wood desk, watching him disinterestedly.\n \n \"Do you suppose the Great Man will actually show up?\" Ferris demanded, pausing in mid-stride.\n \n \"I imagine he will,\" Mitchell said. \"Macklin's always seemed a decent enough fellow when I've had lunch with him or seen him at the trustees meetings.\"\n \n \"He's always treated me like dirt,\" Ferris said heatedly. \"Everyone on this campus treats biologists like dirt. Sometimes I want to bash in their smug faces.\"\n \n Sometimes, Mitchell reflected, Ferris displayed a certain lack of scientific detachment.\n \n There came a discreet knock on the door.\n \n \"Please come in,\" Mitchell said.\n \n Elliot Macklin entered in a cloud of pipe smoke and a tweed jacket. He looked more than a little like a postgraduate student, and Mitchell suspected that that was his intention.\n \n He shook hands warmly with Mitchell. \"Good of you to ask me over, Steven.\"\n \n Macklin threw a big arm across Ferris' shoulders. \"How have you been, Harold?\"\n \n Ferris' face flickered between pink and white. \"Fine, thank you, doctor.\"\n \n Macklin dropped on the edge of the desk and adjusted his pipe. \"Now what's this about you wanting my help on something? And please keep the explanation simple. Biology isn't my field, you know.\"\n \n Mitchell moved around the desk casually. \"Actually, Doctor, we haven't the right to ask this of a man of your importance. There may be an element of risk.\"\n \n The mathematician clamped onto his pipe and showed his teeth. \"Now you have me intrigued. What is it all about?\"\n \n \"Doctor, we understand you have severe headaches,\" Mitchell said.\n \n Macklin nodded. \"That's right, Steven. Migraine.\"\n \n \"That must be terrible,\" Ferris said. \"All your fine reputation and lavish salary can't be much consolation when that ripping, tearing agony begins, can it?\"\n \n \"No, Harold, it isn't,\" Macklin admitted. \"What does your project have to do with my headaches?\"\n \n \"Doctor,\" Mitchell said, \"what would you say the most common complaint of man is?\"\n \n \"I would have said the common cold,\" Macklin replied, \"but I suppose from what you have said you mean headaches.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Headaches,\" Mitchell agreed. \"Everybody has them at some time in his life. Some people have them every day. Some are driven to suicide by their headaches.\"\n \n \"Yes,\" Macklin said.\n \n \"But think,\" Ferris interjected, \"what a boon it would be if everyone could be cured of headaches forever by one simple injection.\"\n \n \"I don't suppose the manufacturers of aspirin would like you. But it would please about everybody else.\"\n \n \"Aspirins would still be used to reduce fever and relieve muscular pains,\" Mitchell said.\n \n \"I see. Are you two saying you have such a shot? Can you cure headaches?\"\n \n \"We think we can,\" Ferris said.\n \n \"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?\" Macklin asked. \"I know that much about the subject.\"\n \n \"There are a number of different causes for headaches—nervous strain, fatigue, physical diseases from kidney complaints to tumors, over-indulgence—but there is one effect of all of this, the one real cause of headaches,\" Mitchell announced.\n \n \"We have definitely established this for this first time,\" Ferris added.\n \n \"That's fine,\" Macklin said, sucking on his pipe. \"And this effect that produces headaches is?\"\n \n \"The pressure effect caused by pituitrin in the brain,\" Mitchell said eagerly. \"That is, the constriction of blood vessels in the telencephalon section of the frontal lobes. It's caused by an over-production of the pituitary gland. We have artificially bred a virus that feeds on pituitrin.\"\n \n \"That may mean the end of headaches, but I would think it would mean the end of the race as well,\" Macklin said. \"In certain areas it is valuable to have a constriction of blood vessels.\"\n \n \"The virus,\" Ferris explained, \"can easily be localized and stabilized. A colony of virus in the brain cells will relax the cerebral vessels—and only the cerebral vessels—so that the cerebrospinal fluid doesn't create pressure in the cavities of the brain.\"\n \n The mathematician took the pipe out of his mouth. \"If this really works, I could stop using that damned gynergen, couldn't I? The stuff makes me violently sick to my stomach. But it's better than the migraine. How should I go about removing my curse?\" He reinserted the pipe.\n \n \"I assure you, you can forget ergotamine tartrate,\" Ferris said. \"Our discovery will work.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Will work,\" Macklin said thoughtfully. \"The operative word. It hasn't worked then?\"\n \n \"Certainly it has,\" Ferris said. \"On rats, on chimps....\"\n \n \"But not on humans?\" Macklin asked.\n \n \"Not yet,\" Mitchell admitted.\n \n \"Well,\" Macklin said. \"Well.\" He thumped pipe ashes out into his palm.\n\"Certainly you can get volunteers. Convicts. Conscientious objectors from the Army.\"\n \n \"We want you,\" Ferris told him.\n \n Macklin coughed. \"I don't want to overestimate my value but the government wouldn't like it very well if I died in the middle of this project. My wife would like it even less.\"\n \n Ferris turned his back on the mathematician. Mitchell could see him mouthing the word yellow .\n \n \"Doctor,\" Mitchell said quickly, \"I know it's a tremendous favor to ask of a man of your position. But you can understand our problem. Unless we can produce quick, conclusive and dramatic proof of our studies we can get no more financial backing. We should run a large-scale field test. But we haven't the time or money for that. We can cure the headaches of one person and that's the limit of our resources.\"\n \n \"I'm tempted,\" Macklin said hesitantly, \"but the answer is go. I mean\n' no '. I'd like to help you out, but I'm afraid I owe too much to others to take the rest—the risk, I mean.\"\n \n Macklin ran the back of his knuckles across his forehead. \"I really would like to take you up on it. When I start making slips like that it means another attack of migraine. The drilling, grinding pain through my temples and around my eyeballs. The flashes of light, the rioting pools of color playing on the back of my lids. Ugh.\"\n \n Ferris smiled. \"Gynergen makes you sick, does it, doctor? Produces nausea, eh? The pain of that turns you almost wrong side out, doesn't it? You aren't much better off with it than without, are you? I've heard some say they preferred the migraine.\"\n \n Macklin carefully arranged his pipe along with the tools he used to tend it in a worn leather case. \"Tell me,\" he said, \"what is the worst that could happen to me?\"\n \n \"Low blood pressure,\" Ferris said.\n \n \"That's not so bad,\" Macklin said. \"How low can it get?\"\n \n \"When your heart stops, your blood pressure goes to its lowest point,\" Mitchell said.\n \n A dew of perspiration had bloomed on Macklin's forehead. \"Is there much risk of that?\"\n \n \"Practically none,\" Mitchell said. \"We have to give you the worst possibilities. All our test animals survived and seem perfectly happy and contented. As I said, the virus is self-stabilizing. Ferris and I are confident that there is no danger.... But we may be wrong.\"\n \n Macklin held his head in both hands. \"Why did you two select me ?\"\n \n \"You're an important man, doctor,\" Ferris said. \"Nobody would care if Mitchell or I cured ourselves of headaches—they might not even believe us if we said we did. But the proper authorities will believe a man of your reputation. Besides, neither of us has a record of chronic migraine. You do.\"\n \n \"Yes, I do,\" Macklin said. \"Very well. Go ahead. Give me your injection.\"\n \n Mitchell cleared his throat. \"Are you positive, doctor?\" he asked uncertainly. \"Perhaps you would like a few days to think it over.\"\n \n \"No! I'm ready. Go ahead, right now.\"\n \n \"There's a simple release,\" Ferris said smoothly.\n \n Macklin groped in his pocket for a pen.\n \n \n\n II\n \n \"Ferris!\" Mitchell yelled, slamming the laboratory door behind him.\n \n \"Right here,\" the small man said briskly. He was sitting at a work table, penciling notes. \"I've been expecting you.\"\n \n \"Doctor—Harold—you shouldn't have given this story to the newspapers,\" Mitchell said. He tapped the back of his hand against the folded paper.\n \n \"On the contrary, I should and I did,\" Ferris answered. \"We wanted something dramatic to show to the trustees and here it is.\"\n \n \"Yes, we wanted to show our proof to the trustees—but not broadcast unverified results to the press. It's too early for that!\"\n \n \"Don't be so stuffy and conservative, Mitchell! Macklin's cured, isn't he? By established periodic cycle he should be suffering hell right now, shouldn't he? But thanks to our treatment he is perfectly happy, with no unfortunate side effects such as gynergen produces.\"\n \n \"It's a significant test case, yes. But not enough to go to the newspapers with. If it wasn't enough to go to the press with, it wasn't enough to try and breach the trustees with. Don't you see? The public will hand down a ukase demanding our virus, just as they demanded the Salk vaccine and the Grennell serum.\"\n \n \"But—\"\n \n The shrill call of the telephone interrupted Mitchell's objections.\n \n Ferris excused himself and crossed to the instrument. He answered it and listened for a moment, his face growing impatient.\n \n \"It's Macklin's wife,\" Ferris said. \"Do you want to talk to her? I'm no good with hysterical women.\"\n \n \"Hysterical?\" Mitchell muttered in alarm and went to the phone.\n \n \"Hello?\" Mitchell said reluctantly. \"Mrs. Macklin?\"\n \n \"You are the other one,\" the clear feminine voice said. \"Your name is Mitchell.\"\n \n She couldn't have sounded calmer or more self-possessed, Mitchell thought.\n \n \"That's right, Mrs. Macklin. I'm Dr. Steven Mitchell, Dr. Ferris's associate.\"\n \n \"Do you have a license to dispense narcotics?\"\n \n \"What do you mean by that, Mrs. Macklin,\" Mitchell said sharply.\n \n \"I used to be a nurse, Dr. Mitchell. I know you've given my husband heroin.\"\n \n \"That's absurd. What makes you think a thing like that?\"\n \n \"The—trance he's in now.\"\n \n \"Now, Mrs. Macklin. Neither Dr. Ferris or myself have been near your husband for a full day. The effects of a narcotic would have worn off by this time.\"\n \n \"Most known narcotics,\" she admitted, \"but evidently you have discovered something new. Is it so expensive to refine you and Ferris have to recruit new customers to keep yourselves supplied?\"\n \n \"Mrs. Macklin! I think I had better talk to you later when you are calmer.\"\n \n Mitchell dropped the receiver heavily. \"What could be wrong with Macklin?\" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone.\n \n Ferris frowned, making quotation marks above his nose. \"Let's have a look at the test animals.\"\n \n Together they marched over to the cages and peered through the honeycomb pattern of the wire. The test chimp, Dean, was sitting peacefully in a corner scratching under his arms with the back of his knuckles. Jerry, their control in the experiment, who was practically Dean's twin except that he had received no injection of the E-M Virus, was stomping up and down punching his fingers through the wire, worrying the lock on the cage.\n \n \"Jerry is a great deal more active than Dean,\" Mitchell said.\n \n \"Yes, but Dean isn't sick. He just doesn't seem to have as much nervous energy to burn up. Nothing wrong with his thyroid either.\"\n \n They went to the smaller cages. They found the situation with the rats, Bud and Lou, much the same.\n \n \"I don't know. Maybe they just have tired blood,\" Mitchell ventured.\n \n \"Iron deficiency anemia?\"\n \n \"Never mind, doctor. It was a form of humor. I think we had better see exactly what is wrong with Elliot Macklin.\"\n \n \"There's nothing wrong with him,\" Ferris snapped. \"He's probably just trying to get us in trouble, the ingrate!\"\n \n \n\n \n Macklin's traditional ranch house was small but attractive in aqua-tinted aluminum.\n \n Under Mitchell's thumb the bell chimbed dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum .\n \n As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely undisturbed, perhaps slightly curious.\n \n The door unlatched and swung back.\n \n \"Mrs. Macklin,\" Mitchell said quickly, \"I'm sure we can help if there is anything wrong with your husband. This is Dr. Ferris. I am Dr. Mitchell.\"\n \n \"You had certainly better help him, gentlemen.\" She stood out of the doorway for them to pass.\n \n Mrs. Macklin was an attractive brunette in her late thirties. She wore an expensive yellow dress. And she had a sharp-cornered jawline.\n \n The Army officer came out into the hall to meet them.\n \n \"You are the gentlemen who gave Dr. Macklin the unauthorized injection,\" he said.\n \n It wasn't a question.\n \n \"I don't like that 'unauthorized',\" Ferris snapped.\n \n The colonel—Mitchell spotted the eagles on his green tunic—lifted a heavy eyebrow. \"No? Are you medical doctors? Are you authorized to treat illnesses?\"\n \n \"We weren't treating an illness,\" Mitchell said. \"We were discovering a method of treatment. What concern is it of yours?\"\n \n The colonel smiled thinly. \"Dr. Macklin is my concern. And everything that happens to him. The Army doesn't like what you have done to him.\"\n \n Mitchell wondered desperately just what they had done to the man.\n \n \"Can we see him?\" Mitchell asked.\n \n \"Why not? You can't do much worse than murder him now. That might be just as well. We have laws to cover that.\"\n \n The colonel led them into the comfortable, over-feminine living room. Macklin sat in an easy chair draped in embroidery, smoking. Mitchell suddenly realized Macklin used a pipe as a form of masculine protest to his home surroundings.\n \n On the coffee table in front of Macklin were some odd-shaped building blocks such as were used in nursery schools. A second uniformed man—another colonel but with the snake-entwined staff of the medical corps in his insignia—was kneeling at the table on the marble-effect carpet.\n \n The Army physician stood up and brushed his knees, undusted from the scrupulously clean rug.\n \n \"What's wrong with him, Sidney?\" the other officer asked the doctor.\n \n \"Not a thing,\" Sidney said. \"He's the healthiest, happiest, most well-adjusted man I've ever examined, Carson.\"\n \n \"But—\" Colonel Carson protested.\n \n \"Oh, he's changed all right,\" the Army doctor answered. \"He's not the same man as he used to be.\"\n \n \"How is he different?\" Mitchell demanded.\n \n The medic examined Mitchell and Ferris critically before answering. \"He used to be a mathematical genius.\"\n \n \"And now?\" Mitchell said impatiently.\n \n \"Now he is a moron,\" the medic said.\n \n \n\n III\n \n Mitchell tried to stop Colonel Sidney as he went past, but the doctor mumbled he had a report to make.\n \n Mitchell and Ferris stared at Colonel Carson and Macklin and at each other.\n \n \"What did he mean, Macklin is an idiot?\" Mitchell asked.\n \n \"Not an idiot,\" Colonel Carson corrected primly. \"Dr. Macklin is a moron. He's legally responsible, but he's extremely stupid.\"\n \n \"I'm not so dumb,\" Macklin said defensively.\n \n \"I beg your pardon, sir,\" Carson said. \"I didn't intend any offense. But according to all the standard intelligence tests we have given you, your clinical intelligence quotient is that of a moron.\"\n \n \"That's just on book learning,\" Macklin said. \"There's a lot you learn in life that you don't get out of books, son.\"\n \n \"I'm confident that's true, sir,\" Colonel Carson said. He turned to the two biologists. \"Perhaps we had better speak outside.\"\n \n \"But—\" Mitchell said, impatient to examine Macklin for himself. \"Very well. Let's step into the hall.\"\n \n Ferris followed them docilely.\n \n \"What have you done to him?\" the colonel asked straightforwardly.\n \n \"We merely cured him of his headaches,\" Mitchell said.\n \n \"How?\"\n \n Mitchell did his best to explain the F-M Virus.\n \n \"You mean,\" the Army officer said levelly \"you have infected him with some kind of a disease to rot his brain?\"\n \n \"No, no! Could I talk to the other man, the doctor? Maybe I can make him understand.\"\n \n \"All I want to know is why Elliot Macklin has been made as simple as if he had been kicked in the head by a mule,\" Colonel Carson said.\n \n \"I think I can explain,\" Ferris interrupted.\n \n \"You can?\" Mitchell said.\n \n Ferris nodded. \"We made a slight miscalculation. It appears as if the virus colony overcontrols the supply of posterior pituitary extract in the cerebrum. It isn't more than necessary to stop headaches. But that necessary amount of control to stop pain is too much to allow the brain cells to function properly.\"\n \n \"Why won't they function?\" Carson roared.\n \n \"They don't get enough food—blood, oxygen, hemoglobin,\" Ferris explained. \"The cerebral vessels don't contract enough to pump the blood through the brain as fast and as hard as is needed. The brain cells remain sluggish, dormant. Perhaps decaying.\"\n \n The colonel yelled.\n \n Mitchell groaned. He was abruptly sure Ferris was correct.\n \n \n\n \n The colonel drew himself to attention, fists trembling at his sides.\n\"I'll see you hung for treason! Don't you know what Elliot Macklin means to us? Do you want those filthy Luxemburgians to reach Pluto before we do? Macklin's formula is essential to the FTL engine. You might just as well have blown up Washington, D.C. Better! The capital is replaceable. But the chances of an Elliot Macklin are very nearly once in a human race.\"\n \n \"Just a moment,\" Mitchell interrupted, \"we can cure Macklin.\"\n \n \"You can ?\" Carson said. For a moment Mitchell thought the man was going to clasp his hands and sink to his knees.\n \n \"Certainly. We have learned to stabilize the virus colonies. We have antitoxin to combat the virus. We had always thought of it as a beneficial parasite, but we can wipe it out if necessary.\"\n \n \"Good!\" Carson clasped his hands and gave at least slightly at the knees.\n \n \"Just you wait a second now, boys,\" Elliot Macklin said. He was leaning in the doorway, holding his pipe. \"I've been listening to what you've been saying and I don't like it.\"\n \n \"What do you mean you don't like it?\" Carson demanded. He added, \"Sir?\"\n \n \"I figure you mean to put me back like I used to be.\"\n \n \"Yes, doctor,\" Mitchell said eagerly, \"just as you used to be.\"\n \n \" With my headaches, like before?\"\n \n Mitchell coughed into his fist for an instant, to give him time to frame an answer. \"Unfortunately, yes. Apparently if your mind functions properly once again you will have the headaches again. Our research is a dismal failure.\"\n \n \"I wouldn't go that far,\" Ferris remarked cheerfully.\n \n Mitchell was about to ask his associate what he meant when he saw Macklin slowly shaking his head.\n \n \"No, sir!\" the mathematician said. \"I shall not go back to my original state. I can remember what it was like. Always worrying, worrying, worrying.\"\n \n \"You mean wondering,\" Mitchell said.\n \n Macklin nodded. \"Troubled, anyway. Disturbed by every little thing. How high was up, which infinity was bigger than what infinity—say, what was an infinity anyway? All that sort of schoolboy things. It's peaceful this way. My head doesn't hurt. I've got a good-looking wife and all the money I need. I've got it made. Why worry?\"\n \n Colonel Carson opened his mouth, then closed it.\n \n \"That's right, Colonel. There's no use in arguing with him,\" Mitchell said.\n \n \"It's not his decision to make,\" the colonel said. \"He's an idiot now.\"\n \n \"No, Colonel. As you said, he's a moron. He seems an idiot compared to his former level of intelligence but he's legally responsible. There are millions of morons running around loose in the United States. They can get married, own property, vote, even hold office. Many of them do. You can't force him into being cured.... At least, I don't think you can.\"\n \n \"No, I can't. This is hardly a totalitarian state.\" The colonel looked momentarily glum that it wasn't.\n \n Mitchell looked back at Macklin. \"Where did his wife get to, Colonel? I don't think that even previously he made too many personal decisions for himself. Perhaps she could influence him.\"\n \n \"Maybe,\" the colonel said. \"Let's find her.\"\n \n \n\n \n They found Mrs. Macklin in the dining room, her face at the picture window an attractive silhouette. She turned as the men approached.\n \n \"Mrs. Macklin,\" the colonel began, \"these gentlemen believe they can cure your husband of his present condition.\"\n \n \"Really?\" she said. \"Did you speak to Elliot about that?\"\n \n \"Y-yes,\" Colonel Carson said, \"but he's not himself. He refused the treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence.\"\n \n She nodded. \"If those are his wishes, I can't go against them.\"\n \n \"But Mrs. Macklin!\" Mitchell protested. \"You will have to get a court order overruling your husband's wishes.\"\n \n She smoothed an eyebrow with the third finger of her right hand. \"That was my original thought. But I've redecided.\"\n \n \"Redecided!\" Carson burst out almost hysterically.\n \n \"Yes. I can't go against Elliot's wishes. It would be monstrous to put him back where he would suffer the hell of those headaches once again, where he never had a moment's peace from worry and pressure. He's happy now. Like a child, but happy.\"\n \n \"Mrs. Macklin,\" the Army man said levelly, \"if you don't help us restore your husband's mind we will be forced to get a court order declaring him incompetent.\"\n \n \"But he is not! Legally, I mean,\" the woman stormed.\n \n \"Maybe not. It's a borderline case. But I think any court would give us the edge where restoring the mind of Elliot Macklin was concerned. Once he's certified incompetent, authorities can rule whether Mitchell and Ferris' antitoxin treatment is the best method of restoring Dr. Macklin to sanity.\"\n \n \"I doubt very much if the court would rule in that manner,\" she said.\n \n The colonel looked smug. \"Why not?\"\n \n \"Because, Colonel, the matter of my husband's health, his very life, is involved.\"\n \n \"There is some degree of risk in shock treatments, too. But—\"\n \n \"It isn't quite the same, Colonel. Elliot Macklin has a history of vascular spasm, a mild pseudostroke some years ago. Now you want to give those cerebral arteries back the ability to constrict. To paralyze. To kill. No court would give you that authority.\"\n \n \"I suppose there's some chance of that. But without the treatment there is no chance of your husband regaining his right senses, Mrs. Macklin,\" Mitchell interjected.\n \n Her mouth grew petulant. \"I don't care. I would rather have a live husband than a dead genius. I can take care of him this way, make him comfortable....\"\n \n Carson opened his mouth and closed his fist, then relaxed. Mitchell led him back into the hall.\n \n \"I'm no psychiatrist,\" Mitchell said, \"but I think she wants Macklin stupid. Prefers it that way. She's always dominated his personal life, and now she can dominate him completely.\"\n \n \"What is she? A monster?\" the Army officer muttered.\n \n \"No,\" Mitchell said. \"She's an intelligent woman unconsciously jealous of her husband's genius.\"\n \n \"Maybe,\" Carson said. \"I don't know. I don't know what the hell to tell the Pentagon. I think I'll go out and get drunk.\"\n \n \"I'll go with you,\" Ferris said.\n \n Mitchell glanced sharply at the little biologist.\n \n Carson squinted. \"Any particular reason, doctor?\"\n \n \"To celebrate,\" Ferris said.\n \n The colonel shrugged. \"That's as good a reason as any.\"\n \n On the street, Mitchell watched the two men go off together in bewilderment.\n \n \n\n IV\n \n Macklin was playing jacks.\n \n He didn't have a head on his shoulders and he was squatting on a great curving surface that was Spacetime, and his jacks were Earth and Pluto and the rest of the planets. And for a ball he was using a head. Not his head. Mitchell's. Both heads were initialed \"M\" so it was all the same.\n \n \n\n \n Mitchell forced himself to awaken, with some initial difficulty.\n \n He lay there, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, listening to his heart race, and then convulsively snatched the telephone receiver from the nightstand. He stabbed out a number with a vicious index finger.\n \n After a time there came a dull click and a sleepy answer.\n \n \"Hello?\" Elliot Macklin said.\n \n Mitchell smiled to himself. He was in luck; Macklin had answered the phone instead of his wife.\n \n \"Can you speak freely, doctor?\" Mitchell asked.\n \n \"Of course,\" the mathematician said. \"I can talk fine.\"\n \n \"I mean, are you alone?\"\n \n \"Oh, you want to know if my wife is around. No, she's asleep. That Army doctor, Colonel Sidney, he gave her a sedative. I wouldn't let him give me anything, though.\"\n \n \"Good boy,\" the biologist said. \"Listen, doctor—Elliot—El, old son. I'm not against you like all the others. I don't want to make you go back to all that worrying and thinking and headaches. You believe me, don't you?\"\n \n There was a slight hesitation.\n \n \"Sure,\" Macklin said, \"if you say so. Why shouldn't I believe you?\"\n \n \"But there was a hesitation there, El. You worried for just a second if I could have some reason for not telling you the truth.\"\n \n \"I suppose so,\" Macklin said humbly.\n \n \"You've found yourself worrying—thinking—about a lot of other problems since we left you, haven't you? Maybe not the same kind of scientific problem. But more personal ones, ones you didn't used to have time to think about.\"\n \n \"If you say so.\"\n \n \"Now, you know it's so. But how would you like to get rid of those worries just as you got rid of the others?\" Mitchell asked.\n \n \"I guess I'd like that,\" the mathematician replied.\n \n \"Then come on over to my laboratory. You remember where it's at, don't you?\"\n \n \"No, I—yes, I guess I do. But how do I know you won't try to put me back where I was instead of helping me more?\"\n \n \"I couldn't do that against your wishes. That would be illegal!\"\n \n \"If you say so. But I don't guess I can come anyway. The Army is watching me pretty close.\"\n \n \"That's alright,\" Mitchell said quickly. \"You can bring along Colonel Carson.\"\n \n \"But he won't like you fixing me up more.\"\n \n \"But he can't stop me! Not if you want me to do it. Now listen to me—I want you to come right on over here, El.\"\n \n \"If you say so,\" Macklin said uncertainly.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "26e0391c309243e8b3c8bf848e98419e", "response_text": "Ferris and Mitchell discuss the struggles they are experiencing with their research. They are eager to test their new research and want the test subject to be Elliot Macklin, a well-known and attractive scientist with a reputation akin to Albert Einstein. Macklin experiences migraines and the two believe that their injection shot could cure them. The two want Macklin to participate because it could ensure that their research will have strong financial support.\n\nMacklin soon enters their laboratory and begins to ask about what they’re looking to do with their research. Ferris and Mitchell discuss their theory with Macklin and how their supposed cure works. They mention to Macklin, to his dismay, that it has only been tested on animals. Macklin is skeptical and considers the injection too risky and initially does not agree to take the treatment. \n\nMacklin begins to start experiencing a migraine. As he suffers through a migraine, Ferris and Mitchell use the opportunity to try again to convince him to participate in the research. They further emphasize the very minimal potential risk. Macklin finally agrees to take the injection due to the immense pain he is experiencing. \n\nLater on, Mitchell is upset with Ferris for sharing their unverified results with the press. Ferris exclaims to Mitchell that the experiment with Macklin was a success and that he should not be concerned. The phone rings and Ferris answers it but quickly passes it to Mitchell. Macklin’s wife is on the phone accusing them of giving her husband heroin as Macklin appears to be in a trance. The doctors are concerned by the news and decide to check on the test animals. They do not find anything of concern with the test animals and go to Macklin’s house. Ferris does not seem worried to Mitchell as they wait to be let into the house. When they enter the house, an army Colonel meets them and expresses his unhappiness with their actions. \n\nAs the group heads into the living room, they greet an army physician that tells them that medically there is nothing wrong with Macklin’s health the only difference is that Macklin is no longer a mathematical genius. The three go into the hallway and discuss how the experiment most likely went wrong. The Colonel becomes upset because Macklin was very important to many missions because of his invaluable research. Mitchell suddenly exclaims that he thinks that Macklin can be cured. \n\nHowever, Macklin overhears the possibility of a cure and protests receiving the treatment. The Colonel is upset at Macklin’s reaction and tries to convince Macklin’s wife to force him to be cured. Macklin’s wife does not wish to go against her husband’s wishes. They leave the house without convincing Macklin or his wife. Later on, Mitchell wakes up and calls Macklin. Mitchell attempts to get Macklin to trust him and goes about luring Macklin back to the laboratory by saying that he can help with the new types of worries that Macklin experiences. \n"}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "2e192dfa2c3b4c6896ef02ea70bd4613", "response_text": "Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Ferris are preparing to test out their new medical breakthrough on world renowned scientist, Dr. Macklin. Their new injection that they have discovered will potentially cure Macklin of his incessant migraines, which plague the genius' daily life. Macklin is famed for being at the forefront of the research team that is almost finished developing a faster than light drive, to help the US army reach Pluto. The only thing in the way of the completion of this project could be Macklin's headaches. Mitchell and Ferris ask Macklin if he would like to be the trial patient for their new antidote, which they only have funding to test out on one person. The antidote consists of a virus that is injected into a specific spot in the brain, blocking off oxygen from entering, curing the patient of any headaches. After walking Macklin through the science behind it and Macklin signing some waivers, they deliver the treatment to him. \nThe next day, Ferris gives the story of their success with the Doctor to the newspapers, that is until they get a call form Macklin's wife. She tells him that her husband seems to be high on a form of heroin. To this the two scientists protest, but then go to check on their previous animal test subjects to see their state. All the animals tested appear fine, yet subdued. They decide to go and check up on Macklin. \nThey arrive at his house to meet a colonel at the door, who invites them into the living room, where Macklin is sitting. He has just been evaluated by the doctor, and it turns out that the vaccine has reduced his brain capacity, to the point where he is now a \"moron\". The oxygen that the brain has been denied has made Macklin stupid, almost childlike. The two scientists propose they can fix this quite easily, and they just need to reverse the treatment they gave him, which would return him to his original state. Both Macklin and his wife refuse this. Macklin wants to live a life without pain, and the thoughts about the universe that would keep him up worrying, late at night. His wife tells the men that she doesn't want to go against her husband's wishes, and if the US government wants to take the pair to court over it, so that Macklin might regain full consciousness and continue with his work on the Pluto project, the court would side in her and her husband's favour. \nThe men leave, defeated. That is until Mitchell wakes up in the middle of the night, and calls Macklin, convincing him that it's in his best interest to come to his lab, so that he might make him better. The colonel has given his wife a sedative, so she won't wake up. Macklin leaves to unknowingly go to have his treatment reversed. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "b9bdd47815ac4daa8dcc6cb6392f5c39", "response_text": "The story starts with Steven Mitchell and Harold Ferris arguing over the candidate that they should test their discovery on. While Ferris suggests Mitchell to be the candidate, Mitchell points out that it wouldn’t be ethical. He suggests that Elliot Macklin, the late Albert Einstein, has more reputation and his migraine is well known. He is the perfect candidate they have. After a knock on the door, Mitchell and Ferris invite Macklin inside. They introduce the injection and claim that his headache can be cured forever with this one simple injection. Macklin notices that they have not yet tested this on a human being, but they assert that it worked fine on rats and chimps. They explain their situation to Macklin, which is a lack of time and money. They have the resources to cure one person. However, Macklin is still suspicious of the injection. Mitchell and Ferris assure that there is practically no possibility of getting a low enough blood pressure to stop the heart. Along with another attack of the migraine, Macklin gives them permission to inject. \n\nMacklin’s wife calls and blames them for giving her husband heroin. Being confused, Mitchell and Ferris look at the test animals and realize that the ones with injections are much more calmer and have less energy. They go to see Macklin. Macklin has become the healthiest, happiest person, but he also becomes a moron, namely not very intelligent. After Mitchell explains that he has the antitoxin to fix him, Carson demands them to give it to Macklin. However, Macklin refuses. He used to be worried all the time, but now he is peaceful. Since he is legally responsible, he can definitely refuse the antitoxin. Thus, they go to Mrs. Macklin, hoping that she will be able to persuade Macklin to take the antitoxin. She also refuses. Later, Mitchell calls Macklin pointing out that he is still doing a lot of thinking. Mitchell tells him that he can get rid of them if he wants. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "bafe2015f135476683d1328fd4e13307", "response_text": "Ferris and Mitchell are two biologists that are in the process of developing a cure to the common headache. They want to test their cure on Elliot Macklin, a well-known genius mathematician who suffered from a stroke and is victim to periodic migraines. Macklin arrives, and the two inform him of their plan. They want to create a cure to the headache using an injection of a virus that attacks pituitrin, which causes migraines. They have had no confirmation of success of their cure on humans, only animals, so there is uncertainty with their experiment. Macklin initially tells them that there is too much of a risk, and that too many people rely on him for him to take the risk. However, after some consideration, Macklin agrees to take the injection. Later on, Mitchell scolds Ferris after learning that he had released the story to the press, despite the results not being confirmed yet. They then receive a call from Macklin's wife, hsyterically accusing them of giving Macklin narcotics and claiming that he has been put under a trance. Ferris and Mitchell visit Macklin, where they meet a team of Army doctors and officials, and find Macklin to be in a mellow, relaxed state. The army doctor claims that Macklin is happy and healthy, but that the injection has caused him to become dumber due to a miscalculation. Ferris and Mitchell suggest fixing the issue by wiping out the virus, but Macklin refuses, not wanting to return to his previous state. They ask Mrs. Macklin, who wants to support her husband's best interests. The two suspect that she is jealous of Macklin's genius and wants to keep him subdued in his current condition. One night, Mitchell wakes and calls Macklin, asking him to come to his lab to fix him. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "26e0391c309243e8b3c8bf848e98419e", "response_text": "The story begins with the two doctors, Ferris and Mitchell, discussing their research in a laboratory in the biology building. Macklin comes into their office to discuss their potential cure for headaches. It is in the office that Macklin agrees and is administered the experimental cure. \n\nLater, Mitchell is angry at Ferris and goes to scold him in the laboratory. After they receive a concerning call from Macklin’s wife, the two examine their test animals kept in cages. With no significant revelations found, they head to Macklin’s house. \n\nMacklin’s house is described as a traditional ranch style home. At the house, they see Macklin sitting in a very femininely decorated living room. Ferris, Mitchell, and the Colonel have discussions throughout the house about the possibility of a cure and how they might be able to get Macklin to take the cure. They leave the house without any success. \n\nThe next section of the story begins with Mitchell waking up in his bed where he suddenly calls Macklin in an attempt to lure him back to the laboratory.  \n"}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "2e192dfa2c3b4c6896ef02ea70bd4613", "response_text": "The story moves through two settings. At the beginning of the story, Mitchell and Ferris are in their lab on a university campus. The lab is situated in the biology building. There is a wooden desk and a chair. There are cages where they keep their animal test subjects.\nThe setting then moves to Macklin's house. It is a traditional, small ranch house, covered in aqua aluminium. There is a living room with an easy chair, covered in embroidery and a coffee table. There is a hallway outside the living room which leads to a dining room. In the dining room is a picture window. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "b9bdd47815ac4daa8dcc6cb6392f5c39", "response_text": "Mitchell and Ferris’s office are in the biology building. There is a blond imitation wood desk in front of the chair in the office, which is connected to the laboratory. There is a work table and a folded paper on top of it. The room also has a telephone. There are cages of test animals, including a twin chimp and two rats. Macklin has is a small traditional ranch house in aqua-tinted aluminum. The door has a doorbell that rings. Inside, the living room is very feminine, it has a chair filled with embroidery. There is also a coffee table and a marble-effect carpet. And Macklin’s wife stands in the dining room area. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "bafe2015f135476683d1328fd4e13307", "response_text": "The first part of the story takes place in the office lab of Ferris and Mitchell, located on the campus of Firestone University. Their lab contains several cages of animals that they have experimented on, including chimps and rats. When the two receive news that their experiment has backfired, they visit Macklin at his ranch house, small but uniquely decorated in an overly feminine manner. The living room is covered in embroidery and has a marble carpet. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe Elliot Macklin and his established health issues?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "26e0391c309243e8b3c8bf848e98419e", "response_text": "It is well-known that Macklin succumbs to migraines from time to time in his life. Physically, Macklin is very fit and is regarded as having a built, athletic frame. However, internally he does suffer from various ailments. His migraine symptoms involve incorrectly substituting words with others, overstimulation of color and light between his eyes, and a concrete pain through his temples. In addition to the migraines, Macklin has a history of vascular spasms. He had even experienced a pseudo stroke in the past. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "2e192dfa2c3b4c6896ef02ea70bd4613", "response_text": "Elliot Macklin is a Doctor of science. He is renowned to be as intelligent as Albert Einstein. He is described as being in his fifties, yet having the appearance of one in his thirties. He created the Theory of Spatium. For the past seven years, Macklin has worked in the advanced studies department of Firestone university, creating a faster than light speed drive. It is believed that a number of years ago, he suffered a mild stroke. He has to deal with never-ending, terrible migraines every day. His health issues have been life threatening at times, something which Mrs Macklin uses to back up her argument to let her husband remain treated. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "b9bdd47815ac4daa8dcc6cb6392f5c39", "response_text": "Elliot Macklin, the late Albert Einstein, has a great reputation as Mathematician and Scientist. The government even uses him as the symbol of Ideal Scientist. He has been involved in helping the Army reach Pluto and other stars. His headache is also well known. He has a record of chronic migraine, and had to be absent from classes. He had a mild stroke before. When he has headaches, the reputation and lavish salary do not really help. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "bafe2015f135476683d1328fd4e13307", "response_text": "Elliot Macklin is a genius mathematician and scientist in his fifties, though he looks much younger and has an athletic build. He is responsible for his Theory of Spatium and is aiding the Army in developing an expedition to Pluto. Despite his genius, Macklin had suffered a stroke to his cerebral artery. Because of this, Macklin periodically suffers with severe migraines, enough for him to not be able to function. The migraines also affect his speaking. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the experiment and the mechanisms of how it works.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "26e0391c309243e8b3c8bf848e98419e", "response_text": "Ferris and Mitchell believe they have an injection that can cure headaches forever. They acknowledge during their initial discussion with Macklin that there is a potential risk with the injection, but they heavily downplay the risk. From their research, the two doctors believe that the over-production in the pituitary gland creates a pressure effect that constricts blood vessels in a section of the frontal lobe. Their injection is synthetically made that is meant to feed on the pituitrin that causes the pressure effect. They believe their virus is safe because it is able to target a specific area and remain stabilized within the brain cells. \n\nAfter they give Macklin the injection, they later receive news that he has become a moron and is no longer a mathematical genius. The injection was successful in stopping the pain but in doing so it stopped the brain cells from functioning properly because the vessels cannot pump the necessary amount of blood through the brain to maintain an active and alert mind. \n"}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "2e192dfa2c3b4c6896ef02ea70bd4613", "response_text": "The experiment is used to try and eliminate headaches. Headaches are said to cause pressure to pituitrin in the brain. It is a constriction of blood vessels in the front of the brain. This is caused by an overproduction of the pituitary gland. The two men have created a virus that feeds on this pituitrin. The localised virus will relax the cerebral vessels, so that the cerebrospinal fluid won't create pressure in the cavities of the brain. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "b9bdd47815ac4daa8dcc6cb6392f5c39", "response_text": "Since headaches are caused by over-productions of the pituitary gland, which will constrict the blood vessels leading to pressure differences in the brain. Because the virus created by them feeds on pituitrin, the pressure effect can be eliminated. The experiment is to inject the right amount of virus into the body so that the brain cells will relax the pressure effect. Moreover, since the virus can be easily localized and stabilized, it will only affect the cerebral vessels. Other cavities of the brain will not be effected. However, in reality, there is a miscalculation and the amount of control needed in stopping the pain is too much for the brain cells to still function properly. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "bafe2015f135476683d1328fd4e13307", "response_text": "The experiment that Ferris and Mitchell have come up with aims to cure headaches permanently. They plan to do so by targeting pituitrin, the main cause of constricting blood vessels that cause headaches. The cure is in the form of an injection containing a virus. This virus would feed on pituitrin and put an end to headache production. The virus can be stabilized, and is only designed to target the necessary vessels without interfering with other functions of the brain."}]}, {"question_text": "How do people react to the choice of using the cure?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "26e0391c309243e8b3c8bf848e98419e", "response_text": "When Macklin overhears the possibility of receiving a cure to return him back to his previous state before the injection, he protests that he does not want to receive a cure. He does not want to reverse the injection because he remembers how awful the migraines were and refuses to return back to his original state where he has to experience them. He recollects how he was always worrying back then. He is perfectly content with living in a peaceful existence as he has all the money he could want and an attractive wife. \n\nThe Colonel is shocked at Macklin’s revelation and is upset when he realizes he cannot force Macklin to be cured. The Colonel, Ferris, and Mitchell go to Macklin’s wife to try to convince her to get him to be cured. The Colonel is desperate as he wants to use Macklin’s intelligence since it is such a great advantage for the country. \n\nMacklin’s wife supports her husband’s decision because she recognizes the pain and suffering Macklin has experienced. She is glad that he can be peaceful and happy, even if he is childish. \n\nFerris seems unphased and is overall happy to celebrate that the injection did work to cure headaches. Mitchell still wants to attempt to convince Macklin to take the cure. \n"}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "2e192dfa2c3b4c6896ef02ea70bd4613", "response_text": "Each character in the story reacts differently to Macklin's choice to go through with Ferris and Mitchell's cure for migraines. Macklin himself is thrilled with the outcome. He is happy he no longer has the worries of his day to day life that he used to have. Now he can just lead a happy, healthy life with his wife. His wife feels the same way, but for more complicated reasons. She is addicted to controlling her husband, and she sees this as an opportunity to do this completely now, as he has the wits of a child. The colonel is enraged by the fact that the virus has turned Macklin's brain to mush. Macklin is the US government's biggest asset, and he fears what they will do if Macklin doesn't go back to the way he was. Mitchell is remorseful for what the virus has done to Macklin, and goes about finding a way to convince Macklin to reverse the effects. Ferris, while completely on board with the idea of returning Macklin to normal, is happy that the experiment was not a complete failure. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "b9bdd47815ac4daa8dcc6cb6392f5c39", "response_text": "Macklin first reacted with a surprise. He take the pipe out from his mouth and is quite delight that he can stop taking the gynergen. However, after hearing that it has not been tested on humans, he believes that there are too much risk involved and refuses to take the injection. After they assure that there is practically no possibility of getting a low blood pressure to the point that the heart stops and along with another attack of the migraine, Macklin gives them permission to inject, immediately. Later Mrs. Macklin calls and blames them for giving his husband heroin, and orders them to make him better. But later, she does not want to go against Macklin’s wish of staying in the current state. Carson has always wanted Macklin to become normal again since the Army still need his intelligence. However, there is nothing he can do since Macklin is still in a legally responsible state.  "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "bafe2015f135476683d1328fd4e13307", "response_text": "Macklin is initially hesitant about receiving the cure, but eventually agrees to it out of desperation for his migraines to end. However, the rest of the people around him are not as receptive, especially once the side effects settle in causing Macklin to become less intelligent. Macklin's wife is in distress, convinced that Ferris and Mitchell have given him narcotics. The Army officers and doctors do not approve of the injection either, holding the two scientists responsible for any potential harm done to Macklin and demanding that they reverse it immediately. However, Macklin does not mind the effects of the cure, and prefers it to his old experiences. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61081", "uid": "154791568c1e4105b00585fc835d69fb", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "CINDERELLA STORY\n \n\n By ALLEN KIM LANG\n \n What a bank! The First Vice-President was a cool cat—the elevator and the money operators all wore earmuffs—was just as phony as a three-dollar bill!\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n I\n \n The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious bank indeed. \"I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really swing,\" said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. \"Your last boss says you come on real cool in the secretary-bit.\"\n \n \"He was a very kind employer,\" Orison said. She tried to keep from staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.\n \n Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. \"What color bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?\" he asked.\n \n \"Beg pardon?\"\n \n \"What kinda salary you bucking for?\" he translated, bouncing up and down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.\n \n \"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position,\" Miss McCall said.\n \n \"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor,\" Mr. Wanji said.\n\"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?\" He caught Orison's look of bewilderment. \"One each, a Franklin and a Grant,\" he explained further. She still looked blank. \"Sister, you gonna work in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a hunnerd-fifty a week, doll.\"\n \n \"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji,\" Orison said. It was indeed.\n \n \"Crazy!\" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with athletic vigor. \"You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around this tomb, girlwise.\" He took her arm and led her toward the bank of elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. \"Lift us to five, Mac,\" Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,\n\"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs, now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.\n \n The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked \"In\" and \"Out\" basket.\n\"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey,\" Mr. Wanji said.\n \n \"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?\" Orison asked.\n \n The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the \"In\" basket.\n\"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it,\" he said. \"When you get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to read. Okay?\"\n \n \"It seems a rather peculiar job,\" Orison said. \"After all, I'm a secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me with the Bank's operation?\"\n \n \"Don't bug me, kid,\" Mr. Wanji said. \"All you gotta do is read that there paper into this here microphone. Can do?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. \"While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union, coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take care of these details now? Or would you—\"\n \n \"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems best to you, kid,\" Mr. Wanji said.\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall, girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the \"In\" basket, unfolded it to discover the day's Wall Street Journal , and began at the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk, nodding his head as he listened. \"You blowing real good, kid,\" he said.\n\"The boss is gonna dig you the most.\"\n \n Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then took off upstairs in the elevator.\n \n \n\n \n By lunchtime Orison had finished the Wall Street Journal and had begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a fantastic novel of some sort, named The Hobbit . Reading this peculiar fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her, the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a microphone for an invisible audience.\n \n Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny into this curiousest of banks.\n \n Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude. Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together, eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed, finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book, reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed, silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.\n \n What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association. Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought. She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.\n \n Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs, several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji: Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she thought.\n \n \n\n \n In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results of her first day's spying.\n \n No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her? Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs had her phone tapped.\n \n \"Testing,\" a baritone voice muttered.\n \n Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. \"Beg pardon?\" she said.\n \n \"Testing,\" the male voice repeated. \"One, two, three; three, two, one. Do you read me? Over.\"\n \n Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.\n \n The room was empty.\n \n \"Testing,\" the voice repeated.\n \n \"What you're testing,\" Orison said in a firm voice, \"is my patience. Who are you?\"\n \n \"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12,\" the male voice said. \"Do you have anything to report, Miss McCall?\"\n \n \"Where are you, Monitor?\" she demanded.\n \n \"That's classified information,\" the voice said. \"Please speak directly to your pillow, Miss McCall.\"\n \n Orison lay down cautiously. \"All right,\" she whispered to her pillow.\n \n \"Over here,\" the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow beside her.\n \n Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. \"A radio?\" she asked.\n \n \"Of a sort,\" Monitor J-12 agreed. \"We have to maintain communications security. Have you anything to report?\"\n \n \"I got the job,\" Orison said. \"Are you ... in that pillow ... all the time?\"\n \n \"No, Miss McCall,\" the voice said. \"Only at report times. Shall we establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time, every day?\"\n \n \"You make it sound so improper,\" Orison said.\n \n \"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall,\" the monitor said.\n\"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today.\"\n \n Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. \"That's about it, so far,\" she said.\n \n \"Good report,\" J-12 said from the pillow. \"Sounds like you've dropped into a real snakepit, beautiful.\"\n \n \"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?\" Orison asked.\n \n \"Native optimism,\" the voice said. \"Good night.\" J-12 signed off with a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.\n \n Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by registered mail.\n \n \n\n II\n \n At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current Wall Street Journal , Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not wearing earmuffs. \"My name,\" the stranger said, \"is Dink Gerding. I am President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our little family.\"\n \n \"I'm Orison McCall,\" she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight? So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three? Maybe higher heels?\n \n \"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall,\" Dink Gerding said. He took the chair to the right of her desk.\n \n \"It's nothing,\" Orison said, switching off the microphone.\n \n \"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important,\" he said.\n \n \"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well,\" Orison said.\n \n \"You'll be reading silently before long,\" Mr. Gerding said. He smiled, as though this explained everything. \"By the way, your official designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here and dictate it?\"\n \n \"Please do,\" Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.\n \n \"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?\" Mr. Gerding asked, as though following her train of thought.\n \n \"No, sir,\" she said. \"Though I've been associated with a rather large financial organization.\"\n \n \"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used to them,\" he said. \"Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy your using it.\"\n \n \"Dink?\" she asked. \"And I suppose you're to call me Orison?\"\n \n \"That's the drill,\" he said. \"One more question, Orison. Dinner this evening?\"\n \n Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and still so young. \"We've hardly met,\" she said.\n \n \"But we're on a first-name basis already,\" he pointed out. \"Dance?\"\n \n \"I'd love to,\" Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march, playing, from the elevator.\n \n \"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your personnel form correctly.\" He stood, lean, all bone and muscle, and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European. Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a curtsy? Orison wondered.\n \n \"Thank you,\" she said.\n \n He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome, to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink, saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them. Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.\n \n \n\n \n Orison finished the Wall Street Journal by early afternoon. A page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of yesterday's Congressional Record . She launched into the Record , thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. \"You read so well , darling,\" someone said across the desk.\n \n Orison looked up. \"Oh, hello,\" she said. \"I didn't hear you come up.\"\n \n \"I walk ever so lightly,\" the woman said, standing hip-shot in front of the desk, \"and pounce ever so hard.\" She smiled. Opulent, Orison thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.\n \n \"I'm Orison McCall,\" she said, and tried to smile back without showing teeth.\n \n \"Delighted,\" the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. \"I'm Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends.\"\n \n \"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?\"\n \n \"So kind of you, darling,\" Auga Vingt said, \"but I shan't have time to visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker. One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know.\"\n \n \"Thanks,\" Orison said.\n \n \"Common courtesy,\" Miss Vingt explained. \"Also, darling, I'd like to draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little eyes scratched out. Word to the wise, n'est-ce pas ?\"\n \n \"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly,\" Orison said, rolling her Wall Street Journal into a club and standing. \"Darling.\"\n \n \"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here. You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of annoyance. Understand me, darling?\"\n \n \"You make it very clear,\" Orison said. \"Now you'd best hurry back to your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone.\"\n \n \"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right off?\" Auga asked. \"Well, ta-ta.\" She turned and walked to the elevator, displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba motion.\n \n The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male, stepped off. \"Good morning, Mr. Gerding,\" Miss Vingt said, bowing.\n \n \"Carry on, Colonel,\" the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed, he stepped up to Orison's desk. \"Good morning. Miss McCall,\" he said.\n \n \"What is this?\" Orison demanded. \"Visiting-day at the zoo?\" She paused and shook her head. \"Excuse me, sir,\" she said. \"It's just that ... Vingt thing....\"\n \n \"Auga is rather intense,\" the new Mr. Gerding said.\n \n \"Yeah, intense,\" Orison said. \"Like a kidney-stone.\"\n \n \"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company family, Miss McCall,\" he said. \"I'm Kraft Gerding, Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's spike-topped Pickelhauben ; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.\n \n \n\n \n Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and said, \"I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you, Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing business with pleasure.\"\n \n Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. \"I quit!\" she shouted. \"You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in finance, and listen to another word.\"\n \n \"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon,\" Kraft Gerding said, bowing again, a bit lower. \"Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end, dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to the wise....\"\n \n \" N'est-ce pas? \" Orison said. \"Well, Buster, here's a word to the foolish. Get lost.\"\n \n Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. \"Until we meet again?\"\n \n \"I'll hold my breath,\" Orison promised. \"The elevator is just behind you. Push a button, will you? And bon voyage .\"\n \n Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above fifth floor.\n \n First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding. Surely, Orison thought, recovering the Wall Street Journal from her wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits upper floors.\n \n Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. \" Wanji e-Kal, Datto. Dink ger-Dink d'summa. \"\n \n Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before replying, \"I'm a local girl. Try me in English.\"\n \n \"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall,\" the voice said. \"Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?\"\n \n \"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding.\" Orison clicked the phone down. What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk, she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could only fire her.\n \n Orison folded the paper and put it in the \"Out\" basket. Someone would be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going. The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her off the upstairs floors.\n \n But the building had a stairway.\n \n \n\n III\n \n The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.\n \n She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.\n \n Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut, its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs. Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the liquid. Then she screamed.\n \n \n\n \n The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling, leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the stairway door.\n \n Into a pair of arms.\n \n \"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall,\" Kraft Gerding said. Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder Gerding. \"It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders,\" he said. \"Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were we to toss you into one of these tanks....\" Orison struggled against her two sumo -sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the floor. \"... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within minutes.\"\n \n \"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire,\" one of the earmuffed sumo -wrestlers protested.\n \n \"Elder Compassion has no rank,\" Kraft Gerding said. \"Miss McCall, you must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders.\"\n \n \"Dink ... Dink!\" Orison shouted.\n \n \"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of damsels in distress,\" Kraft said. \"Someone, after all, has to mind the bank.\"\n \n \"I came to bring a message to Dink,\" Orison said. \"Let me go, you acromegalic apes!\"\n \n \"The message?\" Kraft Gerding demanded.\n \n \"Something about escudo green. Put me down!\"\n \n \n\n \n Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms around Orison.\n \n \"They can't harm you,\" he said. She turned to press her face against his chest. \"You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn your brain back on. All right, now?\"\n \n \"All right,\" she said, still trembling. \"They were going to throw me to the spiders.\"\n \n \"Kraft told you that?\" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the kneeling man. \"Stand up, Elder Brother.\"\n \n \"I....\"\n \n Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.\n \n \"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank.\" Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink through half-closed eyes. \"No? Then get out of here, all of you. Samma! \"\n \n Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.\n \n \"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison,\" Dink said. \"Why did you do it?\"\n \n \"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?\" Orison asked. She stood close to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. \"I had to see what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you that the escudo green is pale.\"\n \n \"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless,\" Dink said. \"Now, what is this thing you have about spiders?\"\n \n \"I've always been terrified of them,\" Orison said. \"When I was a little girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite for supper.\"\n \n \"Strange,\" Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. \"This is no spider, Orison,\" he said.\n \n She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped in the palm of his hand. \"These are Microfabridae, more nearly related to shellfish than to spiders,\" he said. \"They're stone-and-metal eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison.\" He extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature, flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around the bowl of his hand. \"Pretty little fellow, isn't he?\" Dink asked.\n\"Here. You hold him.\"\n \n \"I'd rather not,\" she protested.\n \n \"I'd be happier if you did,\" Dink said.\n \n \n\n \n Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.\n \n \"He's like a baby crawdad,\" Orison said.\n \n \"A sort of crustacean,\" Dink agreed. \"We use them in a commercial process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see.\"\n \n \"What do they do?\" Orison asked.\n \n \"That's still a secret,\" Dink said, smiling. \"I can't tell even you that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary.\"\n \n \"What's he doing now?\" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.\n \n \"They like gold,\" Dink explained, peering across her shoulder, comfortably close. \"They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison. We'd better get you down where you belong.\"\n \n Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring. It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. \"Strange, using crawdads in a bank,\" she said. She stood silent for a moment. \"I thought I heard music,\" she said. \"I heard it when I came in. Something like the sighing of wind in winter trees.\"\n \n \"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae,\" Dink said. \"They all sing together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices.\" He took her arm. \"If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world.\"\n \n Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness, storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.\n\"It's an ancient song,\" Dink said. \"The Microfabridae have been singing it for a million years.\" He released her, and opened a wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.\n\"Hold out your hands,\" he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.\n\"Throw our singers some supper for their song,\" he said.\n \n Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.\n\"They're so very strange,\" Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af155caa61514dd9b3bfe0a82a06500f", "response_text": "Orison McCall is applying for a job at the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. She is a government spy who has been selected from the Treasury Department to work at the bank. The man who she meets for the job is Mr. Wanji, the First Vice President. He dresses strangely compared to the regular banker. Mr. Wanji also speaks to Orison in strange slang and leaves her with the job of reading newspapers into a microphone. She takes her lunch break at noon, eats a tuna salad on whole-wheat, and returns to reading at her desk until five. Orison gets the job and notes that the bank is very bizarre. All of the workers wear earmuffs, and her only task is to read into a microphone. After her dinner, she goes home and waits to receive a call from Washington. At eleven-thirty, she receives a call from Monitor J-12 from the Department of Treasury. He asks Orison for a report but flirts with her slightly by calling her beautiful and kissing the microphone. The next morning, the bank President Dink Gerding personally welcomes her. She notes that he is as crazy as the rest of the bank, and he asks her out for dinner even though they have just met. Once Orison begins reading a copy of yesterday’s Congressional Record, Auga Vingt silently comes and introduces herself. She threatens Orison to stay away from Dink, to which Orison agrees and tells her to leave. Then, Kraft Gerding introduces himself to her, and she threatens to quit because of how crazy this bank is. Orison then receives a call from Wanji, and he tells her to tell Dink that escudo green is pale. Although she is banned from taking the elevator to the upper floor, she takes the stairs to the seventh floor instead and is greeted by the sight of millions of spiders in pink liquid. Kraft threatens to toss her into the tank, but then Dink comes and rescues her. He crashes his fist into Kraft’s jaw, and the perpetrators leave him and Orison alone. He explains to her that the creatures are Microfabridae and are more closely related to shellfish than spiders. She holds one, and Dink says that the company is raising them in secret because it does not have a patent. He lets her listen to the hymn of the Microfabridae and feed the tiny creatures. Orison swears that she can see Benjamin Franklin winking at her, but she believes it is nonsense. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "1beb2477563a425899279c3f978d3ad0", "response_text": "Orison is having an interview for the position of secretary in Taft Bank with its vice-president Mr. Wanji. The least is talking slang and wears furry earmuffs and a scarlet vest, not reminding a banker at all. Orison's job is to read into a microphone whatever she is given. After the first day, the new employee is feeling very confused with her tasks, her boss, everyone in the office wearing earmuffs and forbidden upper floors. Turns out she is to spy for Washington in this bank and she writes down her observations. Orison gets a food and a drink and heads home, waiting for a call from Washington. As she doesn't get it, she goes to bed and suddenly hears a voice.   They establish an every day time for the talks and Orison tell everything she saw. The person on the other end, J-12, flirts with her and hangs up. Next morning in the office orison meets the bank president, a handsome young man Dink Gerding. He praises her efforts and asks on a dinner that night. Later, an extravagant woman, Auga, comes in. She shortly warns orison against touching 'her' Dink, following it by serious threats. Right after Kraft Gerding, Dink's elder brother, comes to welcome Orison. He warns her against mixing work and pleasure as well, which makes Orison ask him to leave. Soon she gets a call from Mr. Wangi speaking a strange language. She decides to go up via stairway. On the seventh floor she finds a huge room full of tanks and sees green liquid with pink bubbles inside. The bubbles turn out to be millions of spiders and Orison screams rushing back. There she is captured by Kraft and two earmuffs, who ask about the reasons for her entering the room. Suddenly, Dink enters and frees her, he beats his brother, who knelt to Dink's rank, and everyone leaves except Orison and Dink. The least shows her Microfabridae and gives one to hold, explaining he is no spider, after Orison describes her intrusion as an act of curiosity. Dink embraces Orison and they listen for the singing of little creatures for a while, then they feed them and leave. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "343246a40e6545ad8b67f963563d1a49", "response_text": "The story talks about a spy named Miss Orison McCall, and her weird investigation object, the Taft Bank. In the beginning Orison tries to get a job in this bank. She is interviewed by the bank’s vice president, Mr. Wanji, who acts like a racetrack tout. Though Orison’s new job has a higher salary than the previous one, her job is very simple. She only has to read newspapers and fairy-tales to a microphone every day. After finishing a day of work at the Taft Bank, Orison reports what she saw to Washington. Since there has not been any calls, she decides to go to sleep. However, as she lies down, a radio in her pillow talks to her. She is surprised, but agrees to report to the pillow at 11:15 every day from then on. Easy work and high salary, suspicious earmuffs for some of the workers, restricted floors, they all make the bank seems oddly strange. The next day, Orison meets Mr. Dink Gerding who seems to have an interest in Orison and asks her out for dinner. Orison agrees. However, both Mr. Kraft, the elder brother of Dink, and Auga Vingt, who thinks that Dink is hers, warned Orison to keep a distance from Dink.\n\nLater, Mr. Wanji calls Orison and wants her to bring a message to Dink. This gives Orison a vague excuse to explore the higher floors. Through a stairway, Orison goes to the 6th floor, but the door is locked. The door to the 7th floor is not. She pushes through the door and enters. She first thinks that she sees Benjamin Franklin. She got so scared that she screams. Then, mistakenly thinks that the Microfabridae are spiders, which Orison was afraid of, she screams again. Then, the appearance of Kraft and two other men with earmuffs make Orison unable to leave. Kraft threatens Orison. Luckily, Dink appears and saves her from the situation. Orison learns about Microfabridae, which are useful for a secret developing commercial process. Whereas, they are secretly fed by the bank because of the problem of patent."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "fa10b8a659364c9dabed9bfe9f2bbefc", "response_text": "Orizon McCall has an interview with Vice-President, Mr. Wanji of the Taft National Bank and Trust Company for the new position of secretary in the company. He takes her inside the elevator of the building, where he tells her she is not to go past the fifth floor of the building. He takes her to her office on the fifth floor where she will be working. He tells her that her job is to read the paper, as well as different books into a microphone. It is then revealed that the real reason for Orizon's application for this position was to spy on the bank for the government. Mr. Wanji leaves her. Orizon reads into the microphone all morning, then breaks for lunch. She sees more men with earmuffs on the elevator, coming down from the upper floors. She comes back after lunch, and then heads home. \nOrizon arrives home in her apartment, where she waits for Washington to call her, asking for an initial report. At eleven thirty, she decides to go to bed, after having not received any call. Just then, an invisible voice breaks out in the room. It is coming from her pillow, a speaker hiding in it. It belongs to Monitor J-12 from the agency, asking her if she has anything to report. She briefs him on her findings from the day. The next day, Orizon is back in her office, where she meets the president of the bank, Dink Gerding. He tells her she is to be his confidential secretary. He asks her out to dinner and dancing, which she accepts. He leaves, getting in the elevator. Orizon is visited by Kraft Gerding, Dink's older brother, who also warns her not to get involved with Dink. \nOrizon continues to read, when half an hour later, she gets a call from Mr. Wanji. He tells her to pass on a message to Mr. Dink Gerding. She decides to use the excuse of passing on this message to Dink as a reason to explore the upper floors. She opens the door to an expansive room, flooded with light. There are steel tanks all around, filled with green fluid with tiny pink bubbles. She then realises that the pink bubbles are spiders. She screams, and backs into the arms of Kraft. His two men take her by the wrists. He threatens to throw her into the spider tanks if she doesn't tell him what she's doing there. She tells him she has a message for Dink. Dink enters the room, and the two men, including Dink's brother, drop to the floor. Dink goes to her, soothing her, then punches Kraft. He orders the three men to leave. He tells her that the spiders are not spiders at all. They are tiny frustrations called Microfabridae, who eat stone and metal. He tells her he can't explain what they do, as it's confidential. They listen as the tiny creatures sing. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af155caa61514dd9b3bfe0a82a06500f", "response_text": "The location is primarily set at the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. Orison’s office is on the fifth floor, and it is a tiny space just large enough to hold a single desk and two chairs. There is also a telephone, a microphone, and a double-decked basket. The basket is an “In” and “Out” basket for the papers she will read. There is also an elevator, and there are always operators in earmuffs present. Although she is not allowed onto the upper floors by elevator, the building has a staircase that leads up to the upper levels. The sixth floor is locked, but the seventh floor has a glass door that is painted black and a cellar-dark landing. Inside, there is a mass of fluorescent lamps on the ceiling and boarded shut windows. One hundred and eighty steel tanks line the floor. The tanks are half-full with greenish fluid and laced together by angel-hair, delicate white lattices sparkling with pink. \n\nFrom the outside of the building, there is a stand-up counter down the street to eat. There is also a restaurant near Orison’s apartment called the Windsor Arms, where she grabs a meal and a single Martini. Her apartment is described as having a place to shower in and a bed. There is also a pillow, and it is where Monitor J-12 communicates with her. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "1beb2477563a425899279c3f978d3ad0", "response_text": "The story starts in a cabinet in Taft Bank with Mr. Wanji, a weirdly dressed up for a banker man, talking to a new employee. Then the two move to the elevators with an operator wearing earmuffs similar to the ones Mr. Wanji has. They enter a tiny office with a single desk, a telephone and a microphone - Orison's new workplace. Later, she goes outside for lunch, meeting a couple more people with earmuffs on. her way from the office. She has lunch in a stand-up place down the street and returns to her tiny office. In the end of the day Orison heads home and stops in a restaurant for food and a drink. After she returns to her apartment waiting for a call from Washington. Home she hears a voice from an unknown monitor in her pillow. Next morning she comes to her office again and has a couple visitors. When they enter the elevator they all keep bowing making the atmosphere rather continental. She goes up through the stairway and enters a huge room on the seventh floor. There are a plenty of tanks and she sees green liquid with pink bubbles in one. The bubbles turn out to be spiders."}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "343246a40e6545ad8b67f963563d1a49", "response_text": "The story focuses on a strange bank which has a total of 14 floors including the basement. Apparently, people without earmuffs can only go to ground floor to fifth floor. Some people who have high ranks, like the President Mr. Dink Gerding and his elder brother Mr. Kraft Gerding can go to the higher floors. Also, this building has an elevator and a stairway. Different operators with earmuffs will be on duty in the elevator. The sixth floor cannot be visited by the stairway since it is locked, but the seventh floor can. On the seventh floor, the bank hides the Microfabridae for a developing commercial process. "}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "fa10b8a659364c9dabed9bfe9f2bbefc", "response_text": "The story is set in the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. Orizon is taken up to her office in a lift. Her office on on level five of the building. It is particularly small, having one single desk and two chairs. On the desk is a microphone. Adjacent to the microphone is a basket that is checked with \"in\" and \"out\". She gets off the elevator at the lobby to go for lunch. She eats lunch at the stand up counter down the street. She decides to explore the upper levels. When she arrives on level seven, she notices how dark it is. There is a glass door, painted black on the inside. The landing on the outside is pitch black. The huge room spread across the entire seventh floor, it's windows being worded shit. The ceiling is covered in fluorescent lamps. There are twelve rows on steel tanks, with nine tiers to each. Lacing between each tank are delicate strands of angel hair. There is a greenish fluid on each tank, with tiny pink bubbles. "}]}, {"question_text": "What are the Microfabridae, and what characteristics do their music have?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af155caa61514dd9b3bfe0a82a06500f", "response_text": "The Microfabridae are tiny, flesh-pink-colored creatures that resemble shellfish. They are stone and metal eaters. These creatures are completely harmless and have six microscopic legs. Orison notices that they feel like a legged grain of sand, crisp and hard. She finds that it is similar to a baby crawdad, to which Dink agrees that the Microfabridae are similar to a sort of crustacean. The creatures also take a liking to gold. \n\nWhen all of the Microfabridae sing together, it is a chorus of around twenty million voices. Orison notes that their singing sounds like the sighing of the wind in winter trees. When she listens to them sing again, it sounds like wilderness, storm, and danger. However, there also exists sounds of promises of peace and harbor that act as a counterpoint. She also hears the sound of waves and the crash of breakers against granite throughout this million-year-old song. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "1beb2477563a425899279c3f978d3ad0", "response_text": "At first, Orison considers them pink bubbles, then. they remind spiders, turns out they are closer to shellfish. They are harmless because they eat stone and metal. They are used for commercial processes, though the bank doesn't have a patent for their use. While they are working, they sing, and their music seems the most beautiful in the world. They eat something like sand - the mineral fish food. They are kept in secret on the sixth floor and their job remain unknown, though it seems that Orison saw Benjamin Franklin in the liquid of their tanks. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "343246a40e6545ad8b67f963563d1a49", "response_text": "Microfabridae are little pink creatures fed by the bank secretly on the 7th floor. The bank put them into tubs with greenish fluid. They are closer related to shellfish than to spiders, and they have six microscopic legs. Also, they feel crisp and hard to touch. Microfavridae are normally harmless, but when they discover calcium, stone or metal, especially gold, they will be attracted to eat it. When they work, they will sing together. When they are in the liquid, they will leap from the liquid like miniature porpoises to get food like sand in mid-air."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "fa10b8a659364c9dabed9bfe9f2bbefc", "response_text": "The Microfabridae are tiny little crustaceans that share a lot of the characteristics of spiders. They are small flesh coloured creatures that eat stone and metal. They are harmless to any living thing. The bank uses them in commercial processing. They have six, microscopic legs. Dink tells Orizon how they like gold, attracted to it by chemical tropism. Dink tells Orizon how the Microfabridae sing together while working. The theme of their music is of wildness, storm and danger, with counterpoints of peace and harbour. In their song Orizon can hear giant waves against granite rock. Behind this harshness, she can hear quiet tide pools. Dink tells her their song is ancient, they have been singing it for millions of years. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Dink Gerding, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af155caa61514dd9b3bfe0a82a06500f", "response_text": "Dink Gerding is the eccentric president of the bank. He is a tall, handsome man, and Orison assumes that he is around twenty-eight the first time she meets him. He has an older brother named Kraft, but he is higher in power than his brother. When Dink first meets Orison, he is courteous and personally welcomes her to the office. However, he is also rather confident. Dink casually asks her out for dinner despite never meeting her before, and he even offers to dance. However, it is noted that Dink has some form of military experience as a soldier. His shoulders are square, and the crisp clicking of his steps is similar to a military metronome. Nevertheless, Dink is protective of Orison; this is especially shown during the confrontation with his brother. He is also gentle to her around the Microfabridae and is extremely happy when she takes an interest in holding one. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "1beb2477563a425899279c3f978d3ad0", "response_text": "Dink Gerding is the president of Taft Bank. He is a tall handsome man, he is young and full of grace. He is confident and direct as he almost immediately asks Orison on a date, being very convincing. He has muscles and European manners. He also has some connection to military, probably a former soldier. He doesn't look like a bank president, he is respected by everyone and his appearance impresses Orison deeply. Dink is also the highest in rank, which is why everyone bows to him - they have some sort of hierarchy. Even his elder brother kneels to him and has to obey. Dink is rather mild, he saves Orison from his brother and tells as much as he could about the secret Microfabridae. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "343246a40e6545ad8b67f963563d1a49", "response_text": "Mr. Dink Gerding is the President of the bank, who has the highest rank. He does not wear earmuffs. To Orison’s mind, he is a handsome, tall, good-mannered and straightforward man. When Orison first meets him, Dink acts like a solider, such as his crisp clicking steps. Also, he does not hide his interest on Orison. Though they just meet and introduced themselves to each other, Dink directly asks Orison out for a dinner together."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "fa10b8a659364c9dabed9bfe9f2bbefc", "response_text": "Dink Gerding is the president of the bank where Orizon is spying on. He is a handsome, gentlemanly fellow, who walks with a very purposeful stride, his leather heels clicking as he walks. He bows at Orizon when they first meet, showing his old fashioned manners, something Orizon thinks he must've picked up in Europe, or perhaps more likely, the military. He looks to be around twenty eight, and very tall. Orizon notices how \"kooky\" he is due to his demeanour. He asks her to call him Dink instead of \"Sir\", unusual for a boss who has never met his employee. He then shows his forwardness by asking her out immediately. Later, when Orzion is being threatened by Kraft, Dink comes to her rescue. He holds Orizon, punching Kraft in the face, showing his chivalry. He is understanding when Orizon explains why she is on the upper floors, and shows his kindness when he helps her get over her fear of the Microfabridae. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Mr. Wanji, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af155caa61514dd9b3bfe0a82a06500f", "response_text": "Mr. Wanji is the Vice-President of the bank and the first person Orison meets. His fashion choice is not the same as a public picture banker. When she first applies for her job, he wears a hound’s-tooth check suit and a scarlet vest. He also wears a pair of furry green earmuffs even though it is not cold. To top off his outfit, he matches it with a pair of rough-leather desert boots. Orison does not know his ethnicity, but she guesses if he is Oriental based on his name. He speaks strangely too, and Orison finds herself unable to understand him unless he says in plain English. It is a very casual form of speech with lots of slang mixed in. Later, when he calls Orison, he speaks in a completely different language. Mr. Wanji is loud and carefree, as he did not hesitate to give Orison more money than supposedly her last job paid. When she asks him about tax numbers and social security information, he waves it off as if it is nothing. He is very carefree, too, sending Orison to deliver a message to Dink when she is supposed not ever be allowed to the upper floors. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "1beb2477563a425899279c3f978d3ad0", "response_text": "Mr. Wanji is the vice-president of Taft Bank. He is dressed up in a weird way, nothing like a banker - scarlet vest, hound's-tooth suit, furry green earmuffs. He talks in some sort of a jargon and doesn't want to bother himself with additional tasks, he is rather relaxed. He talks some strange unknown language with other workers. Dink considers him careless. He seems not strict and indifferent, his talk is emotional and contented, overall he seems funny. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "343246a40e6545ad8b67f963563d1a49", "response_text": "Mr. Wanji is the First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. He is also the one who interviews Miss Orison McCall and gives her the job of reading newspapers and story books. He is an energetic man who talks like a racetrack tout. Also, Mr. Wanji does not like to deal with small details, so he gives Orison much freedom to decide things like lunch union, withholding tax, and social security. He is careless as well. He called Orison by mistake, so he directly let Orison to tell Dink a message. But he does not tell her where to find Dink, which gave Orison a vague excuse to explore the upper floors that she is restricted to enter."}, {"worker_id": "106", "uid": "fa10b8a659364c9dabed9bfe9f2bbefc", "response_text": "Mr. Wanji is the Vice President of William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. He is very unusual in the way he dresses. The way he speaks is even more peculiar, it being something like English, but not quite, almost like he speaks in code. He calls Orizon ``baby\", noting how attractive she is, obviously showing his built in misogyny through his objectification of a female employee. He then later calls Orizon, once again speaking in even stranger code, asking her to relay a message to Dink. He is a very mysterious and zany character. \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "52844", "uid": "85f1cb3284c1463d817896a25e15e073", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE LONG REMEMBERED THUNDER\n \n \n BY KEITH LAUMER\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n He was as ancient as time—and as strange as his own frightful battle against incredible odds!\n \n \n\n I\n \n In his room at the Elsby Commercial Hotel, Tremaine opened his luggage and took out a small tool kit, used a screwdriver to remove the bottom cover plate from the telephone. He inserted a tiny aluminum cylinder, crimped wires and replaced the cover. Then he dialed a long-distance Washington number and waited half a minute for the connection.\n \n \"Fred, Tremaine here. Put the buzzer on.\" A thin hum sounded on the wire as the scrambler went into operation.\n \n \"Okay, can you read me all right? I'm set up in Elsby. Grammond's boys are supposed to keep me informed. Meantime, I'm not sitting in this damned room crouched over a dial. I'll be out and around for the rest of the afternoon.\"\n \n \"I want to see results,\" the thin voice came back over the filtered hum of the jamming device. \"You spent a week with Grammond—I can't wait another. I don't mind telling you certain quarters are pressing me.\"\n \n \"Fred, when will you learn to sit on your news breaks until you've got some answers to go with the questions?\"\n \n \"I'm an appointive official,\" Fred said sharply. \"But never mind that. This fellow Margrave—General Margrave. Project Officer for the hyperwave program—he's been on my neck day and night. I can't say I blame him. An unauthorized transmitter interfering with a Top Secret project, progress slowing to a halt, and this Bureau—\"\n \n \"Look, Fred. I was happy in the lab. Headaches, nightmares and all. Hyperwave is my baby, remember? You elected me to be a leg-man: now let me do it my way.\"\n \n \"I felt a technical man might succeed where a trained investigator could be misled. And since it seems to be pinpointed in your home area—\"\n \n \"You don't have to justify yourself. Just don't hold out on me. I sometimes wonder if I've seen the complete files on this—\"\n \n \"You've seen all the files! Now I want answers, not questions! I'm warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!\"\n \n \n\n \n Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street and turned in at a yellow brick building with the words ELSBY MUNICIPAL POLICE cut in the stone lintel above the door. Inside, a heavy man with a creased face and thick gray hair looked up from behind an ancient Underwood. He studied Tremaine, shifted a toothpick to the opposite corner of his mouth.\n \n \"Don't I know you, mister?\" he said. His soft voice carried a note of authority.\n \n Tremaine took off his hat. \"Sure you do, Jess. It's been a while, though.\"\n \n The policeman got to his feet. \"Jimmy,\" he said, \"Jimmy Tremaine.\" He came to the counter and put out his hand. \"How are you, Jimmy? What brings you back to the boondocks?\"\n \n \"Let's go somewhere and sit down, Jess.\"\n \n In a back room Tremaine said, \"To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there's more.\"\n \n Jess nodded. \"I heard you were with the guv'ment.\"\n \n \"It won't take long to tell; we don't know much yet.\" Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of \"fixes\" on the point of origin. He passed a sheet of paper across the table. It showed a set of concentric circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings.\n \n \"I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. The rings themselves represent the diffraction pattern—\"\n \n \"Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I'll take your word for it.\"\n \n \"The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this section. I'm not sure of a damn thing, but I think that transmitter's near here. Now, have you got any ideas?\"\n \n \"That's a tough one, Jimmy. This is where I should come up with the news that Old Man Whatchamacallit's got an attic full of gear he says is a time machine. Trouble is, folks around here haven't even taken to TV. They figure we should be content with radio, like the Lord intended.\"\n \n \"I didn't expect any easy answers, Jess. But I was hoping maybe you had something ...\"\n \n \"Course,\" said Jess, \"there's always Mr. Bram ...\"\n \n \"Mr. Bram,\" repeated Tremaine. \"Is he still around? I remember him as a hundred years old when I was kid.\"\n \n \"Still just the same, Jimmy. Comes in town maybe once a week, buys his groceries and hikes back out to his place by the river.\"\n \n \"Well, what about him?\"\n \n \"Nothing. But he's the town's mystery man. You know that. A little touched in the head.\"\n \n \"There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember,\" Tremaine said. \"I always liked him. One time he tried to teach me something I've forgotten. Wanted me to come out to his place and he'd teach me. I never did go. We kids used to play in the caves near his place, and sometimes he gave us apples.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"I've never seen any harm in Bram,\" said Jess. \"But you know how this town is about foreigners, especially when they're a mite addled. Bram has blue eyes and blond hair—or did before it turned white—and he talks just like everybody else. From a distance he seems just like an ordinary American. But up close, you feel it. He's foreign, all right. But we never did know where he came from.\"\n \n \"How long's he lived here in Elsby?\"\n \n \"Beats me, Jimmy. You remember old Aunt Tress, used to know all about ancestors and such as that? She couldn't remember about Mr. Bram. She was kind of senile, I guess. She used to say he'd lived in that same old place out on the Concord road when she was a girl. Well, she died five years ago ... in her seventies. He still walks in town every Wednesday ... or he did up till yesterday anyway.\"\n \n \"Oh?\" Tremaine stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. \"What happened then?\"\n \n \"You remember Soup Gaskin? He's got a boy, name of Hull. He's Soup all over again.\"\n \n \"I remember Soup,\" Tremaine said. \"He and his bunch used to come in the drug store where I worked and perch on the stools and kid around with me, and Mr. Hempleman would watch them from over back of the prescription counter and look nervous. They used to raise cain in the other drug store....\"\n \n \"Soup's been in the pen since then. His boy Hull's the same kind. Him and a bunch of his pals went out to Bram's place one night and set it on fire.\"\n \n \"What was the idea of that?\"\n \n \"Dunno. Just meanness, I reckon. Not much damage done. A car was passing by and called it in. I had the whole caboodle locked up here for six hours. Then the sob sisters went to work: poor little tyke routine, high spirits, you know the line. All of 'em but Hull are back in the streets playin' with matches by now. I'm waiting for the day they'll make jail age.\"\n \n \"Why Bram?\" Tremaine persisted. \"As far as I know, he never had any dealings to speak of with anybody here in town.\"\n \n \"Oh hoh, you're a little young, Jimmy,\" Jess chuckled. \"You never knew about Mr. Bram—the young Mr. Bram—and Linda Carroll.\"\n \n Tremaine shook his head.\n \n \"Old Miss Carroll. School teacher here for years; guess she was retired by the time you were playing hookey. But her dad had money, and in her day she was a beauty. Too good for the fellers in these parts. I remember her ridin by in a high-wheeled shay, when I was just a nipper. Sitting up proud and tall, with that red hair piled up high. I used to think she was some kind of princess....\"\n \n \"What about her and Bram? A romance?\"\n \n \n\n \n Jess rocked his chair back on two legs, looked at the ceiling, frowning. \"This would ha' been about nineteen-oh-one. I was no more'n eight years old. Miss Linda was maybe in her twenties—and that made her an old maid, in those times. The word got out she was setting her cap for Bram. He was a good-looking young feller then, over six foot, of course, broad backed, curly yellow hair—and a stranger to boot. Like I said, Linda Carroll wanted nothin to do with the local bucks. There was a big shindy planned. Now, you know Bram was funny about any kind of socializing; never would go any place at night. But this was a Sunday afternoon and someways or other they got Bram down there; and Miss Linda made her play, right there in front of the town, practically. Just before sundown they went off together in that fancy shay. And the next day, she was home again—alone. That finished off her reputation, as far as the biddies in Elsby was concerned. It was ten years 'fore she even landed the teaching job. By that time, she was already old. And nobody was ever fool enough to mention the name Bram in front of her.\"\n \n Tremaine got to his feet. \"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your ears and eyes open for anything that might build into a lead on this, Jess. Meantime, I'm just a tourist, seeing the sights.\"\n \n \"What about that gear of yours? Didn't you say you had some kind of detector you were going to set up?\"\n \n \"I've got an oversized suitcase,\" Tremaine said. \"I'll be setting it up in my room over at the hotel.\"\n \n \"When's this bootleg station supposed to broadcast again?\"\n \n \"After dark. I'm working on a few ideas. It might be an infinitely repeating logarithmic sequence, based on—\"\n \n \"Hold it, Jimmy. You're over my head.\" Jess got to his feet. \"Let me know if you want anything. And by the way—\" he winked broadly—\"I always did know who busted Soup Gaskin's nose and took out his front teeth.\"\n \n \n\n II\n \n Back in the street, Tremaine headed south toward the Elsby Town Hall, a squat structure of brownish-red brick, crouched under yellow autumn trees at the end of Sheridan Street. Tremaine went up the steps and past heavy double doors. Ten yards along the dim corridor, a hand-lettered cardboard sign over a black-varnished door said\n\"MUNICIPAL OFFICE OF RECORD.\" Tremaine opened the door and went in.\n \n A thin man with garters above the elbow looked over his shoulder at Tremaine.\n \n \"We're closed,\" he said.\n \n \"I won't be a minute,\" Tremaine said. \"Just want to check on when the Bram property changed hands last.\"\n \n The man turned to Tremaine, pushing a drawer shut with his hip. \"Bram? He dead?\"\n \n \"Nothing like that. I just want to know when he bought the place.\"\n \n The man came over to the counter, eyeing Tremaine. \"He ain't going to sell, mister, if that's what you want to know.\"\n \n \"I want to know when he bought.\"\n \n The man hesitated, closed his jaw hard. \"Come back tomorrow,\" he said.\n \n Tremaine put a hand on the counter, looked thoughtful. \"I was hoping to save a trip.\" He lifted his hand and scratched the side of his jaw. A folded bill opened on the counter. The thin man's eyes darted toward it. His hand eased out, covered the bill. He grinned quickly.\n \n \"See what I can do,\" he said.\n \n It was ten minutes before he beckoned Tremaine over to the table where a two-foot-square book lay open. An untrimmed fingernail indicated a line written in faded ink:\n \n \"May 19. Acreage sold, One Dollar and other G&V consid. NW Quarter Section 24, Township Elsby. Bram. (see Vol. 9 & cet.)\"\n \n \"Translated, what does that mean?\" said Tremaine.\n \n \"That's the ledger for 1901; means Bram bought a quarter section on the nineteenth of May. You want me to look up the deed?\"\n \n \"No, thanks,\" Tremaine said. \"That's all I needed.\" He turned back to the door.\n \n \"What's up, mister?\" the clerk called after him. \"Bram in some kind of trouble?\"\n \n \"No. No trouble.\"\n \n The man was looking at the book with pursed lips. \"Nineteen-oh-one,\" he said. \"I never thought of it before, but you know, old Bram must be dern near to ninety years old. Spry for that age.\"\n \n \"I guess you're right.\"\n \n The clerk looked sideways at Tremaine. \"Lots of funny stories about old Bram. Useta say his place was haunted. You know; funny noises and lights. And they used to say there was money buried out at his place.\"\n \n \"I've heard those stories. Just superstition, wouldn't you say?\"\n \n \"Maybe so.\" The clerk leaned on the counter, assumed a knowing look.\n\"There's one story that's not superstition....\"\n \n Tremaine waited.\n \n \"You—uh—paying anything for information?\"\n \n \"Now why would I do that?\" Tremaine reached for the door knob.\n \n The clerk shrugged. \"Thought I'd ask. Anyway—I can swear to this. Nobody in this town's ever seen Bram between sundown and sunup.\"\n \n \n\n \n Untrimmed sumacs threw late-afternoon shadows on the discolored stucco facade of the Elsby Public Library. Inside, Tremaine followed a paper-dry woman of indeterminate age to a rack of yellowed newsprint.\n \n \"You'll find back to nineteen-forty here,\" the librarian said. \"The older are there in the shelves.\"\n \n \"I want nineteen-oh-one, if they go back that far.\"\n \n The woman darted a suspicious look at Tremaine. \"You have to handle these old papers carefully.\"\n \n \"I'll be extremely careful.\" The woman sniffed, opened a drawer, leafed through it, muttering.\n \n \"What date was it you wanted?\"\n \n \"Nineteen-oh-one; the week of May nineteenth.\"\n \n The librarian pulled out a folded paper, placed it on the table, adjusted her glasses, squinted at the front page. \"That's it,\" she said. \"These papers keep pretty well, provided they're stored in the dark. But they're still flimsy, mind you.\"\n \n \"I'll remember.\" The woman stood by as Tremaine looked over the front page. The lead article concerned the opening of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. Vice-President Roosevelt had made a speech. Tremaine leafed over, reading slowly.\n \n On page four, under a column headed County Notes he saw the name Bram:\n \n Mr. Bram has purchased a quarter section of fine grazing land, north of town, together with a sturdy house, from J. P. Spivey of Elsby. Mr. Bram will occupy the home and will continue to graze a few head of stock. Mr. Bram, who is a newcomer to the county, has been a resident of Mrs. Stoate's Guest Home in Elsby for the past months.\n \n \"May I see some earlier issues; from about the first of the year?\"\n \n The librarian produced the papers. Tremaine turned the pages, read the heads, skimmed an article here and there. The librarian went back to her desk. An hour later, in the issue for July 7, 1900, an item caught his eye:\n \n A Severe Thunderstorm. Citizens of Elsby and the country were much alarmed by a violent cloudburst, accompanied by lightning and thunder, during the night of the fifth. A fire set in the pine woods north of Spivey's farm destroyed a considerable amount of timber and threatened the house before burning itself out along the river.\n \n The librarian was at Tremaine's side. \"I have to close the library now. You'll have to come back tomorrow.\"\n \n Outside, the sky was sallow in the west: lights were coming on in windows along the side streets. Tremaine turned up his collar against a cold wind that had risen, started along the street toward the hotel.\n \n A block away a black late-model sedan rounded a corner with a faint squeal of tires and gunned past him, a heavy antenna mounted forward of the left rear tail fin whipping in the slipstream. Tremaine stopped short, stared after the car.\n \n \"Damn!\" he said aloud. An elderly man veered, eyeing him sharply. Tremaine set off at a run, covered the two blocks to the hotel, yanked open the door to his car, slid into the seat, made a U-turn, and headed north after the police car.\n \n \n\n \n Two miles into the dark hills north of the Elsby city limits, Tremaine rounded a curve. The police car was parked on the shoulder beside the highway just ahead. He pulled off the road ahead of it and walked back. The door opened. A tall figure stepped out.\n \n \"What's your problem, mister?\" a harsh voice drawled.\n \n \"What's the matter? Run out of signal?\"\n \n \"What's it to you, mister?\"\n \n \"Are you boys in touch with Grammond on the car set?\"\n \n \"We could be.\"\n \n \"Mind if I have a word with him? My name's Tremaine.\"\n \n \"Oh,\" said the cop, \"you're the big shot from Washington.\" He shifted chewing tobacco to the other side of his jaw. \"Sure, you can talk to him.\" He turned and spoke to the other cop, who muttered into the mike before handing it to Tremaine.\n \n The heavy voice of the State Police chief crackled. \"What's your beef, Tremaine?\"\n \n \"I thought you were going to keep your men away from Elsby until I gave the word, Grammond.\"\n \n \"That was before I knew your Washington stuffed shirts were holding out on me.\"\n \n \"It's nothing we can go to court with, Grammond. And the job you were doing might have been influenced if I'd told you about the Elsby angle.\"\n \n Grammond cursed. \"I could have put my men in the town and taken it apart brick by brick in the time—\"\n \n \"That's just what I don't want. If our bird sees cops cruising, he'll go underground.\"\n \n \"You've got it all figured, I see. I'm just the dumb hick you boys use for the spade work, that it?\"\n \n \"Pull your lip back in. You've given me the confirmation I needed.\"\n \n \"Confirmation, hell! All I know is that somebody somewhere is punching out a signal. For all I know, it's forty midgets on bicycles, pedalling all over the damned state. I've got fixes in every county—\"\n \n \"The smallest hyperwave transmitter Uncle Sam knows how to build weighs three tons,\" said Tremaine. \"Bicycles are out.\"\n \n Grammond snorted. \"Okay, Tremaine,\" he said. \"You're the boy with all the answers. But if you get in trouble, don't call me; call Washington.\"\n \n \n\n \n Back in his room, Tremaine put through a call.\n \n \"It looks like Grammond's not willing to be left out in the cold, Fred. Tell him if he queers this—\"\n \n \"I don't know but what he might have something,\" the voice came back over the filtered hum. \"Suppose he smokes them out—\"\n \n \"Don't go dumb on me, Fred. We're not dealing with West Virginia moonshiners.\"\n \n \"Don't tell me my job, Tremaine!\" the voice snapped. \"And don't try out your famous temper on me. I'm still in charge of this investigation.\"\n \n \"Sure. Just don't get stuck in some senator's hip pocket.\" Tremaine hung up the telephone, went to the dresser and poured two fingers of Scotch into a water glass. He tossed it down, then pulled on his coat and left the hotel.\n \n He walked south two blocks, turned left down a twilit side street. He walked slowly, looking at the weathered frame houses. Number 89 was a once-stately three-storied mansion overgrown with untrimmed vines, its windows squares of sad yellow light. He pushed through the gate in the ancient picket fence, mounted the porch steps and pushed the button beside the door, a dark panel of cracked varnish. It was a long minute before the door opened. A tall woman with white hair and a fine-boned face looked at him coolly.\n \n \"Miss Carroll,\" Tremaine said. \"You won't remember me, but I—\"\n \n \"There is nothing whatever wrong with my faculties, James,\" Miss Carroll said calmly. Her voice was still resonant, a deep contralto. Only a faint quaver reflected her age—close to eighty, Tremaine thought, startled.\n \n \"I'm flattered you remember me, Miss Carroll,\" he said.\n \n \"Come in.\" She led the way to a pleasant parlor set out with the furnishings of another era. She motioned Tremaine to a seat and took a straight chair across the room from him.\n \n \"You look very well, James,\" she said, nodding. \"I'm pleased to see that you've amounted to something.\"\n \n \"Just another bureaucrat, I'm afraid.\"\n \n \"You were wise to leave Elsby. There is no future here for a young man.\"\n \n \"I often wondered why you didn't leave, Miss Carroll. I thought, even as a boy, that you were a woman of great ability.\"\n \n \"Why did you come today, James?\" asked Miss Carroll.\n \n \"I....\" Tremaine started. He looked at the old lady. \"I want some information. This is an important matter. May I rely on your discretion?\"\n \n \"Of course.\"\n \n \"How long has Mr. Bram lived in Elsby?\"\n \n \n\n \n Miss Carroll looked at him for a long moment. \"Will what I tell you be used against him?\"\n \n \"There'll be nothing done against him, Miss Carroll ... unless it needs to be in the national interest.\"\n \n \"I'm not at all sure I know what the term 'national interest' means, James. I distrust these glib phrases.\"\n \n \"I always liked Mr. Bram,\" said Tremaine. \"I'm not out to hurt him.\"\n \n \"Mr. Bram came here when I was a young woman. I'm not certain of the year.\"\n \n \"What does he do for a living?\"\n \n \"I have no idea.\"\n \n \"Why did a healthy young fellow like Bram settle out in that isolated piece of country? What's his story?\"\n \n \"I'm ... not sure that anyone truly knows Bram's story.\"\n \n \"You called him 'Bram', Miss Carroll. Is that his first name ... or his last?\"\n \n \"That is his only name. Just ... Bram.\"\n \n \"You knew him well once, Miss Carroll. Is there anything—\"\n \n A tear rolled down Miss Carroll's faded cheek. She wiped it away impatiently.\n \n \"I'm an unfulfilled old maid, James,\" she said. \"You must forgive me.\"\n \n Tremaine stood up. \"I'm sorry. Really sorry. I didn't mean to grill you. Miss Carroll. You've been very kind. I had no right....\"\n \n Miss Carroll shook her head. \"I knew you as a boy, James. I have complete confidence in you. If anything I can tell you about Bram will be helpful to you, it is my duty to oblige you; and it may help him.\" She paused. Tremaine waited.\n \n \"Many years ago I was courted by Bram. One day he asked me to go with him to his house. On the way he told me a terrible and pathetic tale. He said that each night he fought a battle with evil beings, alone, in a cave beneath his house.\"\n \n Miss Carroll drew a deep breath and went on. \"I was torn between pity and horror. I begged him to take me back. He refused.\" Miss Carroll twisted her fingers together, her eyes fixed on the long past. \"When we reached the house, he ran to the kitchen. He lit a lamp and threw open a concealed panel. There were stairs. He went down ... and left me there alone.\n \n \"I waited all that night in the carriage. At dawn he emerged. He tried to speak to me but I would not listen.\n \n \"He took a locket from his neck and put it into my hand. He told me to keep it and, if ever I should need him, to press it between my fingers in a secret way ... and he would come. I told him that until he would consent to see a doctor, I did not wish him to call. He drove me home. He never called again.\"\n \n \"This locket,\" said Tremaine, \"do you still have it?\"\n \n Miss Carroll hesitated, then put her hand to her throat, lifted a silver disc on a fine golden chain. \"You see what a foolish old woman I am, James.\"\n \n \"May I see it?\"\n \n She handed the locket to him. It was heavy, smooth. \"I'd like to examine this more closely,\" he said. \"May I take it with me?\"\n \n Miss Carroll nodded.\n \n \"There is one other thing,\" she said, \"perhaps quite meaningless....\"\n \n \"I'd be grateful for any lead.\"\n \n \"Bram fears the thunder.\"\n \n \n\n III\n \n As Tremaine walked slowly toward the lighted main street of Elsby a car pulled to a stop beside him. Jess leaned out, peered at Tremaine and asked:\n \n \"Any luck, Jimmy?\"\n \n Tremaine shook his head. \"I'm getting nowhere fast. The Bram idea's a dud, I'm afraid.\"\n \n \"Funny thing about Bram. You know, he hasn't showed up yet. I'm getting a little worried. Want to run out there with me and take a look around?\"\n \n \"Sure. Just so I'm back by full dark.\"\n \n As they pulled away from the curb Jess said, \"Jimmy, what's this about State Police nosing around here? I thought you were playing a lone hand from what you were saying to me.\"\n \n \"I thought so too, Jess. But it looks like Grammond's a jump ahead of me. He smells headlines in this; he doesn't want to be left out.\"\n \n \"Well, the State cops could be mighty handy to have around. I'm wondering why you don't want 'em in. If there's some kind of spy ring working—\"\n \n \"We're up against an unknown quantity. I don't know what's behind this and neither does anybody else. Maybe it's a ring of Bolsheviks ... and maybe it's something bigger. I have the feeling we've made enough mistakes in the last few years; I don't want to see this botched.\"\n \n The last pink light of sunset was fading from the clouds to the west as Jess swung the car through the open gate, pulled up under the old trees before the square-built house. The windows were dark. The two men got out, circled the house once, then mounted the steps and rapped on the door. There was a black patch of charred flooring under the window, and the paint on the wall above it was bubbled. Somewhere a cricket set up a strident chirrup, suddenly cut off. Jess leaned down, picked up an empty shotgun shell. He looked at Tremaine. \"This don't look good,\" he said. \"You suppose those fool boys...?\"\n \n He tried the door. It opened. A broken hasp dangled. He turned to Tremaine. \"Maybe this is more than kid stuff,\" he said. \"You carry a gun?\"\n \n \"In the car.\"\n \n \"Better get it.\"\n \n Tremaine went to the car, dropped the pistol in his coat pocket, rejoined Jess inside the house. It was silent, deserted. In the kitchen Jess flicked the beam of his flashlight around the room. An empty plate lay on the oilcloth-covered table.\n \n \"This place is empty,\" he said. \"Anybody'd think he'd been gone a week.\"\n \n \"Not a very cozy—\" Tremaine broke off. A thin yelp sounded in the distance.\n \n \"I'm getting jumpy,\" said Jess. \"Dern hounddog, I guess.\"\n \n A low growl seemed to rumble distantly. \"What the devil's that?\" Tremaine said.\n \n Jess shone the light on the floor. \"Look here,\" he said. The ring of light showed a spatter of dark droplets all across the plank floor.\n \n \"That's blood, Jess....\" Tremaine scanned the floor. It was of broad slabs, closely laid, scrubbed clean but for the dark stains.\n \n \"Maybe he cleaned a chicken. This is the kitchen.\"\n \n \"It's a trail.\" Tremaine followed the line of drops across the floor. It ended suddenly near the wall.\n \n \"What do you make of it. Jimmy?\"\n \n A wail sounded, a thin forlorn cry, trailing off into silence. Jess stared at Tremaine. \"I'm too damned old to start believing in spooks,\" he said. \"You suppose those damn-fool boys are hiding here, playing tricks?\"\n \n \"I think.\" Tremaine said, \"that we'd better go ask Hull Gaskin a few questions.\"\n \n \n\n \n At the station Jess led Tremaine to a cell where a lanky teen-age boy lounged on a steel-framed cot, blinking up at the visitor under a mop of greased hair.\n \n \"Hull, this is Mr. Tremaine,\" said Jess. He took out a heavy key, swung the cell door open. \"He wants to talk to you.\"\n \n \"I ain't done nothin,\" Hull said sullenly. \"There ain't nothin wrong with burnin out a Commie, is there?\"\n \n \"Bram's a Commie, is he?\" Tremaine said softly. \"How'd you find that out, Hull?\"\n \n \"He's a foreigner, ain't he?\" the youth shot back. \"Besides, we heard....\"\n \n \"What did you hear?\"\n \n \"They're lookin for the spies.\"\n \n \"Who's looking for spies?\"\n \n \"Cops.\"\n \n \"Who says so?\"\n \n The boy looked directly at Tremaine for an instant, flicked his eyes to the corner of the cell. \"Cops was talkin about 'em,\" he said.\n \n \"Spill it, Hull,\" the policeman said. \"Mr. Tremaine hasn't got all night.\"\n \n \"They parked out east of town, on 302, back of the woodlot. They called me over and asked me a bunch of questions. Said I could help 'em get them spies. Wanted to know all about any funny-actin people around hers.\"\n \n \"And you mentioned Bram?\"\n \n The boy darted another look at Tremaine. \"They said they figured the spies was out north of town. Well, Bram's a foreigner, and he's out that way, ain't he?\"\n \n \"Anything else?\"\n \n The boy looked at his feet.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "ca6954aa341f44a4ad84599dcfa6aa19", "response_text": "With pressure coming from Fred, who elected him into this investigation, Tremaine first goes to the police station to meet his friend who works here so that he can get familiar with the town and learn about unusual activities and strange events if there are any. Jess, the police officer, is surprised to see Tremaine coming back to this town. Tremaine asks Jess if he has any idea of a transmitter in this area, however, Jess does not seem really interested in the transmitters as he think drawing is a beer advertisement. Afterwards, Jess tells Tremaine about the old man Bram who seems to have lived in this town forever. He is the mystery man of the town. As a foreigner who no one knows much about, he seems strange. Knowing that Bram has lived on the same property since as long as anyone could remember, he goes to the Municipal Office of Records to check the last time that there was a change of hands on Bram’s property.  \n\nThen Tremaine goes to the Elsby Public Library, checking for the newspapers around the time when Bram bought the property. On his way back to the hotel that he is staying at, he notices Grammond’s men. But Tremaine has told Grammond to keep his men away from this town for now. Apparently, Grammond didn’t listen, Tremaine is afraid that with the police searching around the town, the person they are looking for will sense that something is off, and will hide before they are able to find him/her.\n\nDesiring to learn more about this old man, Jess has also mentioned to Tremaine that Linda Carroll had been with Bram for a while when Carroll was in her twenties, which is a few decades ago. So then Tremaine goes to Carroll’s house hoping to learn more about the mysterious man Bram. Then after he left Carroll’s house, he goes to Bram’s house together with Jess. Shots were fired, the house is empty, but Bram is not there. They go straight to Hull Gaskin to ask questions since he did set fire on Bram’s place before. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "26cb4561eac9454ea8f98fac0a8ddd55", "response_text": "Tremaine, a former hyperwave lab worker, dials Washington from a hotel room in his old hometown. On the other end Fred, an appointive official, is impatiently waiting for Tremaine to catch the transmitter who intervened with their Top Secret project. Jimmy Tremaine visits an old acquaintance Jess in a local police department, the former shares details of his secret mission and asks whether Jess has any idea who can be the transmitter. Jess says everyone around is bad with technologies, but Mr. Bram is a mystery man, so it could be him. The man is a foreigner but he has been living in the town for so long that no one knows when and where he came from. Not long ago his house was set on fire by a bunch of kids, nothing serious. Jess tells a story about the past: a local beauty by then, Miss Carol, wanted nothing to do with locals and set her trap for Mr. Bram. They left a party together and the next morning she was back alone. Her reputation was destroyed, she never married and now works as a teacher. Tremaine heads towards the Elsby Town Hall, he learns that Bram bought his property in 1901. Then in the local public library he finds an article concerning this purchase, then he sees an article of July 7, 1900 regarding a severe thunderstorm. Near the hotel he notices a car and heads after the police to ask Grammond, the chief, to keep the police away from the hotel so as not to scare off the intermitter. Grammond is offended by being kept ignorant. Further, Jimmy heads to Miss Carol's and asks questions about Mr. Bram, she can't answer them for sure and a tear drops from her eye. Soon, she decides to tell about the night at Bram's place back in the years : he told he fought evil every night, went downstairs for the whole night and left her alone. Then he gave her a locket and said to press in a particular way if he is ever needed. Miss Carol considered him crazy and never met me again. She says Bram fears thunder and gives Jimmy the locket. Jess picks Jimmy up to look for Bram who hasn't shown up recently. The two enter the deserted house with Tremaine's gun, they see blood in the kitchen making up a trail. They go back to talk to Hull, a boy who set Bram's house on fire recently. Turns out he considered Bram a spy as he is a foreigner and a communist, and the boy heard the boys were looking for spies. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "791b2b3c348249568498c852f8fa1ce1", "response_text": "Jimmy Tremaine works for the government, conducting a secret operation about implementing hyperwaves in the military. An interfering transmission had recently been detected tampering with the hyperwaves, and when tracked down, the source seems to come from Elsby, Tremaine's hometown. Fred, Tremaine's superior, orders Tremaine to figure out where the transmission is coming from before he interferes his own way. Tremaine visits Elsby's police station, where he meets Jess. Tremaine tells Jess about the transmission and asks if he has any ideas or leads on the situation. Jess is stumped, but notes that Mr. Bram is an odd character at Elsby, who has been there for an unusually long amount of time. Curious about Mr. Bram, Tremaine goes to the Office of Record, where he bribes the man at the counter to tell him the year that Mr. Bram purchased his home, which is revealed to be 1901. The clerk also tells Tremaine that no one has seen Bram between sundown and sunup. Tremaine then visits the library, where he finds an article about Bram purchasing the house, as well as an account of a thunderstorm that occurred there a year before the purchase. On his way back from the library, Tremaine sees a police car speeding off, and he follows. He gets in contact with the State Police Chief, who does not approve of being left out of Tremaine's investigation. Tremaine speaks to Miss Carroll, known to have had a history with Bram. She tells Tremaine about her encounter with Bram and how he kept her in a cave under his house for the night, and she never spoke to him again. She also tells Tremaine that Bram is afraid of thunder. As Tremaine walks back to his room, Jess finds him and asks how the investigation is going, and Tremaine replies that he is stumped. Jess suggests that they visit Bram's house together, and the two enter and see an empty gun shell. They find blood in the kitchen. Jess and Tremaine then visit a police station where they find Hull Gaskin, who admits to shooting Bram after some cops prompted him to help catch spies. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "c45c051fb4aa4e1dbde23868e9f6dc2b", "response_text": "Tremaine calls Fred from his hotel room and gives him an update on his progress. Fred expresses his frustration with the progress and complains that General Margrave has been breathing down his neck about the case. Tremaine tells Fred to be confident in him and Fred ends by yelling that he wants the transmitter and for someone to pay. Tremaine eventually leaves his hotel room and heads towards the local police station. At the station, Tremaine greets Jess once he enters the building. The two go to have a private conversation where Tremaine tries to get Jess’s help with a case. Jess tells Tremaine what he knows about Bram from what he’s heard and what he’s seen. It is clear that Bram lives a very private life. \n\nOnce his conversation with Jess finishes, Tremaine goes to the Municipal office of Records at the town hall. He has to bribe a reluctant man in the office to let him look for the information that he needs. He is able to find out information about Bram’s property and then leaves to go to the library to gather more information. At the library, Tremaine looks through old newspapers. He learns from one newspaper about a severe thunderstorm that affected the Bram property.  \n\nBack at his hotel room, Tremaine has a tense phone call with Fred. When it ends, he pours himself a glass of scotch. After finishing his drink, he goes to Miss Carroll’s nearby house Tremaine asks her about Bram. She is unable to give him many details about Bram. However, Miss Carroll does willingly detail her personal relationship with Bram. Carroll mentions that Bram gave her a locket and to use it to contact him if she ever needed his help. Tremaine asks for the locket and she hands it over to him. She mentions that she remembers how Bram was afraid of thunder. With all the information that he could gather from Miss Carroll, Tremaine leaves her house.\n\nUpon leaving Miss Carroll’s house, Jess pulls up to Tremaine on the street in his car and they decide to go check on Bram as he hasn’t been seen in a while. The two get out of their car once they reach the property and inspect the outside of the house. They become alert by the suspicious state of the house, especially because of the empty shotgun shell that they find, so they retrieve a gun from the car for their safety. They start hearing strange noises once they enter the house, causing them both to become uneasy. Inside the kitchen, they spot a suspicious trail of blood and hear another strange sound. They decide to go to the police station to ask Hull Gaskin – one of the teens arrested for setting fire to Bram’s property- some questions. Hull says that he was approached by cops asking him to help them find spies. He says he told them about Bram because he’s a foreigner.  \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What information has Tremaine gathered about Bram?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "ca6954aa341f44a4ad84599dcfa6aa19", "response_text": "Tremaine learns from Jess that Bram is the mystery man of the Elsby town. He is a foreigner to the town despite the fact that he has similar appearances as the rest of the town. People do not know where he is from, when he started living in the town, and not even his full name, but there are still many conspiracies about him. The clerk at the Municipal Office of Record is confident that Bram has never been seen between sundown and sunup. He also tells Tremaine that the property that Bram currently lives on was purchased by him in 1901. Tremaine learns from the newspapers that the same property was accidentally caught on fire from a thunderstorm about a year before the transaction was made between Bram and J. P. Spivey. Interestingly, from Jess, Tremaine also learns that Hull and his friends started a fire on Bram’s place some time ago. \n\nTremaine acknowledged the relationship between the young Bram and young Linda Carroll. Carroll explains to Tremaine how he told her that there is a cave beneath his house. And every night he has to fight evil beings that are right below his house. He went downstairs for the night and by the time he came up, it was dawn. Later, he handed her a locket which allows her to ask him to come simply by pressing it in a certain way. Moreover, Carroll tells Tremaine that he is afraid of thunder. Furthermore, after Bram has gone missing, Tremaine learns from Hull that Bram is a Commie. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "26cb4561eac9454ea8f98fac0a8ddd55", "response_text": "Mr. Bram is a foreigner which is rare in the town. He came such a long time ago that no one knows when and where from. From the record, Tremaine finds out Bram bought his house soon after his arrival in the year 1901, so he should be in his nineties now. A year before the purchase a severe thunderstorm took place. Bram is never seen at night. He is a mystic figure and there are legends about his house. He courted Miss Carol, who is an unmarried old lady. He told her he fought evil every night in his house downstairs. She also says he is afraid of thunder. He gave her a locket to touch in a particular way to call him and she considers him crazy. Local boys consider him a spy and a communist. Now he disappeared. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "791b2b3c348249568498c852f8fa1ce1", "response_text": "Bram remains a mystery is Elsby, but Tremaine has gathered some information about him. Jess tells him that Bram has been at Elsby for a long time, and has outlived some residents abnormally. The clerk at the Record Office helps Tremaine gather more information about Bram's house, and tells Tremaine that Bram has never been spotted overnight. Miss Carroll tells Tremaine about her encounter with Bram, and also tells him that he is afraid of thunder."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "c45c051fb4aa4e1dbde23868e9f6dc2b", "response_text": "Tremaine gathers different information from different people throughout the story. From Jess, Tremaine gathers information about Bram’s routines. According to Jess, Bram comes into town about once a week to buy his groceries, specifically on Wednesdays. It’s not known where Bram is from but it is assumed that he is a foreigner. Jess tells Tremaine that recently some delinquent kids set Bram’s place on fire and Bram has not been seen since the incident. \n\nFrom the worker at the Municipal Office of Record, he finds out when Bram bought his property. The clerk continues to tell him some rumors about Bram, such as Bram’s place supposedly being haunted and having money buried on the property. \n\nAt the library, Tremaine is able to learn more information about Bram from old newspapers. He learns who originally owned the property and how Bram was a newcomer to the area. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Bram and Carroll?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "ca6954aa341f44a4ad84599dcfa6aa19", "response_text": "From Jess, Tremaine learns that the school teacher, Linda Carroll had a relationship with Bram while they were young. Carroll’s family is quite wealthy and she was very beautiful. People in the town was not really up to her standards. Bram is a foreigner and does not really like social events. However, apparently, Carroll went off together with Bram one day afternoon with almost the whole town there. Then the next day Bram was not by her side, she came back by herself. This made her reputation really bad and she could not even be hired as a teacher for 10 years afterwards. From Carroll, Tremaine learns another story. She seems to not know Bram well. She confirms that she and Bram was in a relationship. And after Bram invited her to his place one day, he explains that he has to fight evil beings below his house every night. After they arrived at his house, she was left in the carriage for the whole night while he was below the house until dawn. Thus she decided to not talk to him when him came to see her in the carriage again. He gave her a locket where a pattern of tapping would allow him to get to her if she ever needs him. Interestingly, she also tells Tremaine that Bram is afraid of the thunder."}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "26cb4561eac9454ea8f98fac0a8ddd55", "response_text": "Back in the years, when Carol was in her twenties and Bram a couple years older, he courted her. She was the prettiest young lady in town, unmarried as all locals were too good for her. She was determined to get this foreigner and even made a plan. He was a handsome young man, not a social type of a person, but he was somehow dragged to a shiny. He left together with Carol in the evening, took her to his house and scared her on the way. He talked about fighting evil every night and some other crazy things and disappeared downstairs. She waited outside the whole night and was scared of his madness, she had no intention of listening to him. He gave her a locket which would summon him if used in the right way. They never met again. The memories are still painful for Carol, her reputation was destroyed and she stayed unmarried. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "791b2b3c348249568498c852f8fa1ce1", "response_text": "In the past, Bram and Carroll had pursued a romantic relationship. He had courted her and taken her to his house, where he scared her by telling her that he fights with evil beings in his house and then locking her beneath the kitchen. The next morning, Bram gave Carroll a locket to keep. Carroll refused to speak to Bram again, telling him that he needed to seek a doctor. The two had not spoken since, but it is revealed that Carroll kept the locket Bram had given her since. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "c45c051fb4aa4e1dbde23868e9f6dc2b", "response_text": "Jess tells Tremaine how something romantic happened between Carroll and Bram. However, from his knowledge, it did not end well and Carroll’s reputation was ruined from the events. \n\nFrom Miss Carroll’s own words, she says that her experience with Bram was a bad one. He took her out on a date but began to act strange and talking as if he was crazy. He disappeared, running down a set of stays. Meanwhile, she stayed alone in the car all night. In the morning when he reappeared, she refused to speak with him and told him she would not associate with him until he got help. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Tremaine and Jess?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "ca6954aa341f44a4ad84599dcfa6aa19", "response_text": "Jess is a police officer at the Elsby town where both Jess and Tremaine grew up. They have not seen each other in a very long time. Jess is surprised to see Tremaine showing up at Elsby again after being away for such a long time. Tremaine has explained to Jess that he is here to figure out the location of a transmitter. While Jess does not seem to be interested in the transmitters, he tells Tremaine about Bram. He explains to him that Bram is quite mysterious, which lead Tremaine to investigate on Bram’s properties. He informs Tremaine about Bram’s relationship with Linda Carroll, and then Tremaine pays her a visit and asks about Bram. Tremaine asks Jess to not tell anyone what they’ve discussed, but pretend that he is a tourist. Later, Jess asks Tremaine to find Bram together after pulling a car next to him on the street. Realizing that Bram is not home and the house seemed suspicious with blood and shotgun shell, they go to question Hull who is being held at the police station. Since Jess works at the police station, he can easily have Tremaine ask Hull questions. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "26cb4561eac9454ea8f98fac0a8ddd55", "response_text": "The two used to live in the same town - Elsby. They share some childhood memories. They haven't seen each other for so long that Jess doesn't even recognize Jimmy at first. Their communication is friendly though they don't seem to have been close friends. Jess is older and he still lives in the town so he knows much more about it. Jimmy trusts him enough to tell about his secret mission, he believes Jess. can help. They cooperate throughout the story and help each other - Jess tells curious stories that may help, Jimmy accompanies him to the dark house with a gun. Jess has being hearing about Jimmy's work for the government these years. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "791b2b3c348249568498c852f8fa1ce1", "response_text": "Tremaine, having grown up in Elsby, has a history with Jess, but Jess does not recognize him right away due to the amount of time that has passed. However, the two hit it off again automatically, and have a trusting relationship to each other. They act as partners, and Tremaine fills Jess in on his mission. Jess gives Tremaine any possible information, eager to help him. The two also have a candid relationship, shown when Jess asks Tremaine why the state police is not allowed to interfere with the investigation. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "c45c051fb4aa4e1dbde23868e9f6dc2b", "response_text": "Jess is a police officer. When Jess reminds him who he is, it appears that the two have a friendly relationship where they have known each other for a while. They appear to be familiar with each other. They are probably friends as Jesses uses the nickname Jimmy when referring to Tremaine. Later in the story, Jess helps Tremaine search Bram’s property. It shows that they have a close relationship and that Tremaine trusts Jess. Tremaine is very private about the case and does not want many people to know his intentions in town, but he willingly tells Jess because he trusts him. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "ca6954aa341f44a4ad84599dcfa6aa19", "response_text": "The story takes place in the late twentieth century in a town in America named Elsby. It starts out in Tremaine’s hotel room, after he is pressured, he goes to Elsby Municipal Police to find Jess. We follow Tremaine to the Municipal Office of Record and the Elsby Public Library to find out more information regarding the property that Bram owns currently, the mystery man in the town. Then he visits Linda Carroll’s house to learn more about Bram, but she does not seem to know much either. Later we follow Jess and Tremaine to Bram’s house since Jess is concerned that he still have not seen Bram. At Bram’s house, they do not find him, but there is blood and other suspicious objects. They believe that they have to find Hull in the police station. The story ends with Hull, Jess and Tremaine inside the police station at where Hull is being held. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "26cb4561eac9454ea8f98fac0a8ddd55", "response_text": "The story begins in a room at the Elsby Commercial Town. A secret phone call takes place there. From the hotel Tremaine goes to the nearby municipal police. A huge policeman is sitting there behind the counter. The two move to the back room to talk. From there the main character heads toward the Elsby Town Hall, a squat brick building. Up the steps and behind the double-doors there is a dim corridor leading to \"municipal office of record\". There is a man over the counter who finds the data in a huge old book put on the table. In the late-afternoon Tremaine goes to the Public Library, where a paper-dry woman shows him the requested old newspapers from the shelves, they are to be handled carefully. Jimmy returns to the hotel, takes his car and follows the police past the Elsby city limits. He returns to his room and makes a call. Then he pays a visit to Miss Carol in her old mansion. Tremaine enters a pleasant parlor with old furniture. Jess picks him up and they drive to Mr. Bram's house. The place looks dark and dangerous, it looks as if it was empty for a week or so. Yelps and wails are heard from time to time, there is a trace of blood in the kitchen. The two return to the station and visit Hull's cell."}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "791b2b3c348249568498c852f8fa1ce1", "response_text": "The story takes place in Elsby, a small, old town where a mysterious transmission has been detected. The story opens at Elsby Commercial Hotel, where Tremaine stays. Then, he visits multiple buildings throughout. The first place Tremaine visits is the police station, then the office of record, then the library. The buildings are described as run-down and discolored, indicative of their age. Tremaine then visits Miss Carroll's place, a large mansion with overgrown vines. Finally, Jess and Tremaine investigate Bram's house, a dark, abandoned-looking house."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "c45c051fb4aa4e1dbde23868e9f6dc2b", "response_text": "The story begins with Tremaine in his hotel room at the Elsby Commercial hotel. Tremaine leaves the hotel room and walks along Commerce Street towards the Elsby Municipal Police building. After talking with Jess at the police station, Tremaine leaves and heads towards the Municipal Office of Record. \n\nAfter finding out some information about Bram’s property at the Municipal Office of Record, Tremaine leaves to go to the library. It is not late in the afternoon. Once the library is closing, Tremaine leaves the building. When he’s outside, he bundles himself up in reaction to the cold weather. He heads back to his hotel but suddenly stops when a car speeds past him. He begins to run after the car until he gets to his own and then chases after the car in his car. After catching up with the car and finding out its purpose, he returns to his hotel room. \n\nAfter having a tense conversation with Fred on the phone, he again leaves his hotel room and walks outside. He walks through old houses until he comes upon a large, three-stories structure and enters its front gate. It’s Miss Carroll’s house. She lets him in and invites him to sit down in her leaving room. \n\nTremaine gathered as much information as he could about Bram from Miss Carroll and then leaves her house. When he walks outside, he notices a car pulling up and it stops by him. It’s Jess driving the car. They both then go to Bram’s property to inspect it themselves. They get to Bram’s property and when inspecting the outside of the house, they find an empty shotgun shell. After retrieving a gun from Jess’s car, they enter Bram’s house. They spot a trail of blood in the kitchen. While inspecting the house, they hear a lot of strange noises. Wanting to learn more information, they go to the jail to talk with one of the teenagers arrested for setting fire on Bram’s property. \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63890", "uid": "2b1974aa89d84beba30498b970bc0365", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "A PLANET NAMED JOE\n \n\n By S. A. LOMBINO\n \n There were more Joes on Venus than you could shake a ray-gun at. Perhaps there was method in Colonel Walsh's madness—murder-madness—when he ordered Major Polk to scan the planet for a guy named Joe.\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Colonel Walsh had a great sense of humor. I hated his guts ever since we went through the Academy together, but he had a great sense of humor.\n \n For example, he could have chosen a Second Looie for the job on Venus. He might even have picked a Captain. But he liked me about as much as I liked him, and so he decided the job was just right for a Major. At least, that's what he told me.\n \n I stood at attention before his desk in the Patrol Station. We were somewhere in Area Two on Earth, takeoff point for any operations in Space II. The duty was fine, and I liked it a lot. Come to think of it, the most I ever did was inspect a few defective tubes every now and then. The rest was gravy, and Colonel Walsh wasn't going to let me get by with gravy.\n \n \"It will be a simple assignment, Major,\" he said to me, peering over his fingers. He held them up in front of him like a cathedral.\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" I said.\n \n \"It will involve finding one man, a Venusian native.\"\n \n I wanted to say, \"Then why the hell don't you send a green kid on the job? Why me?\" Instead, I nodded and watched him playing with his fingers.\n \n \"The man is a trader of sorts. Rather intelligent.\" He paused, then added, \"For a native, that is.\"\n \n I had never liked Walsh's attitude toward natives. I hadn't liked the way he'd treated the natives on Mars ever since he'd taken over there. Which brought to mind an important point.\n \n \"I always figured Venus was under the jurisdiction of Space III, sir. I thought our activities were confined to Mars.\"\n \n He folded his fingers like a deck of cards and dropped them on his desk as if he were waiting for me to cut.\n \n \"Mmmm,\" he said, \"yes, that's true. But this is a special job. It so happens this Venusian is the one man who can help us understand just what's happening on Mars.\"\n \n I tried to picture a Venusian understanding Mars and I didn't get very far.\n \n \"He's had many dealings with the natives there,\" Walsh explained. \"If anyone can tell us the reasons for the revolt, he can.\"\n \n If Walsh really wanted to know the reasons for the revolt, I could give them to him in one word: Walsh. I had to laugh at the way he called it \"revolt.\" It had been going on for six months now and we'd lost at least a thousand men from Space II. Revolt.\n \n \"And this man is on Venus now?\" I asked for confirmation. I'd never been to Venus, being in Space II ever since I'd left the Moon run. It was just like Walsh to ship me off to a strange place.\n \n \"Yes, Major,\" he said. \"This man is on Venus.\"\n \n At the Academy he had called me Fred. That was before I'd reported him for sleeping on Boiler Watch. He'd goofed off on a pile of uranium that could've, and almost did, blow the barracks sky-high that night. He still thought it was my fault, as if I'd done the wrong thing by reporting him. And now, through the fouled-up machinery that exists in any military organization, he outranked me.\n \n \"And the man's name, sir?\"\n \n \"Joe.\" A tight smile played on his face.\n \n \"Joe what?\" I asked.\n \n \"Just Joe.\"\n \n \"Just Joe?\"\n \n \"Yes,\" Walsh said. \"A native, you know. They rarely go in for more than first names. But then, it should be simple to find a man with a name like Joe. Among the natives, I mean.\"\n \n \"I don't know, sir.\"\n \n \"A relatively simple assignment,\" Walsh said.\n \n \"Can you tell me anything else about this man? Physical appearance? Personal habits? Anything?\"\n \n Walsh seemed to consider this for a moment. \"Well, physically he's like any of the other Venusians, so I can't give you much help there. He does have a peculiar habit, though.\"\n \n \"What's that?\"\n \n \"He has an affinity for Terran cigarettes.\"\n \n I sighed. \"Well, it's not very much to go on.\"\n \n \"You'll find him,\" Walsh said, grinning. \"I'm sure of it.\"\n \n \n\n \n The trip to Venus came off without a hitch. I did a lot of thinking on that trip. I thought about Mars and the revolt there. And I thought about Colonel Leonard Walsh and how he was supposed to be quelling that revolt. Ever since Walsh had taken command, ever since he'd started pushing the natives around, there'd been trouble. It was almost as if the whole damned planet had blown up in our faces the moment he took over. Swell guy, Walsh.\n \n Venus was hotter than I'd expected it to be. Much too hot for the tunic I was wearing. It smelled, too. A funny smell I couldn't place. Like a mixture of old shoe and after-shave. There were plants everywhere I looked. Big plants and small ones, some blooming with flowers I'd never seen before, and some as bare as cactus.\n \n I recognized a blue figure as one of the natives the pilot had told me about. He was tall, looking almost human except that everything about him was elongated. His features, his muscles, everything seemed to have been stretched like a rubber band. I kept expecting him to pop back to normal. Instead, he flashed a double row of brilliant teeth at me.\n \n I wondered if he spoke English. \"Hey, boy,\" I called.\n \n He ambled over with long-legged strides that closed the distance between us in seconds.\n \n \"Call me Joe,\" he said.\n \n I dropped my bags and stared at him. Maybe this was going to be a simple assignment after all. \"I sure am glad to see you, Joe,\" I said.\n \n \"Same here, Toots,\" he answered.\n \n \"The guys back in Space II are searching high and low for you,\" I told him.\n \n \"You've got the wrong number,\" he said, and I was a little surprised at his use of Terran idiom.\n \n \"You are Joe, aren't you? Joe the trader?\"\n \n \"I'm Joe, all right,\" he said. \"Only thing I ever traded, though, was a pocketknife. Got a set of keys for it.\"\n \n \"Oh,\" I said, my voice conveying my disappointment. I sighed and began wondering just how I should go about contacting the Joe I was looking for. My orders said I was to report to Captain Bransten immediately upon arrival. I figured the hell with Captain Bransten. I outranked him anyway, and there wasn't much he could do if I decided to stop for a drink first.\n \n \"Where's the Officer's Club?\" I asked the Venusian.\n \n \"Are you buying information or are you just curious?\"\n \n \"Can you take me there?\" I asked.\n \n \"Sure thing, Toots.\" He picked up my bags and started walking up a heavily overgrown path. We'd probably walked for about ten minutes when he dropped my bags and said, \"There it is.\"\n \n The Officer's Club was a plasteel hut with window shields that protected it from the heat of the sun. It didn't look too comfortable but I really wanted that drink. I reached into my tunic and slipped the native thirty solars.\n \n He stared at the credits curiously and then shrugged his shoulders. \"Oh well, you're new here. We'll let it go.\"\n \n He took off then, while I stared after him, wondering just what he'd meant. Had I tipped him too little?\n \n I shrugged and looked over at the Officer's Club. From the outside it looked as hot as hell.\n \n On the inside it was about two degrees short of that mark. I began to curse Walsh for taking me away from my nice soft job in Space II.\n \n There wasn't much inside the club. A few tables and chairs, a dart game and a bar. Behind the bar a tall Venusian lounged.\n \n I walked over and asked, \"What are you serving, pal?\"\n \n \"Call me Joe,\" he answered.\n \n He caught me off balance. \"What?\"\n \n \"Joe,\" he said again.\n \n A faint glimmer of understanding began to penetrate my thick skull.\n\"You wouldn't happen to be Joe the trader? The guy who knows all about Mars, would you?\"\n \n \"I never left home,\" he said simply. \"What are you drinking?\"\n \n That rat! That dirty, filthy, stinking, unprincipled....\n  But then, it should be simple to find a man with a name like Joe. Among the natives, I mean.\n \n \n Sure. Oh sure. Real simple. Walsh was about the lowest, most contemptible....\n \n \"What are you drinking, pal?\" the Venusian asked again.\n \n \"Skip it,\" I said. \"How do I get to the captain's shack?\"\n \n \"Follow your nose, pal. Can't miss it.\"\n \n I started to pick up my bag as another Venusian entered. He waved at the bartender.\n \n \"Hello, Joe,\" he said. \"How's it going?\"\n \n \"Not so hot, Joe,\" the bartender replied.\n \n I listened in fascination. Joe, Joe, Joe. So this was Walsh's idea of a great gag. Very funny. Very....\n \n \"You Major Polk, sweetheart?\" the Venusian who'd just come in asked.\n \n \"Yes,\" I said, still thinking of Colonel Walsh.\n \n \"You better get your butt over to the captain's shack,\" he said. \"He's about ready to post you as overdue.\"\n \n \"Sure,\" I said wearily. \"Will you take my bags, please?\"\n \n \"Roger,\" he answered. He picked up the bags and nodded at the bar.\n \n \"So long, Joe,\" he said to the bartender.\n \n \"See you, Joe,\" the bartender called back.\n \n \n\n \n Captain Bransten was a mousey, unimpressive sort of man. He was wearing a tropical tunic, but he still resembled a wilted lily more than he did an officer.\n \n \"Have a seat, Major,\" he offered. He reached for a cigarette box on the desk and extended it to me. He coughed in embarrassment when he saw it was empty. Quickly, he pressed a button on his desk and the door popped open. A tall, blue Venusian stepped lithely into the room.\n \n \"Sir?\" the Venusian asked.\n \n \"We're out of cigarettes, Joe,\" the Captain said. \"Will you get us some, please?\"\n \n \"Sure thing,\" the Venusian answered. He smiled broadly and closed the door behind him.\n  Another Joe , I thought. Another damned Joe.\n \n \n \"They steal them,\" Captain Bransten said abruptly.\n \n \"Steal what?\" I asked.\n \n \"Cigarettes. I sometimes think the cigarette is one of the few things they like about Terran culture.\"\n \n So Walsh had taken care of that angle too. He does have a peculiar habit, though. He has an affinity for Terran cigarettes. Cigarettes was the tip I should have given; not solars.\n \n \"All right,\" I said, \"suppose we start at the beginning.\"\n \n Captain Bransten opened his eyes wide. \"Sir?\" he asked.\n \n \"What's with all this Joe business? It may be a very original name but I think its popularity here is a little outstanding.\"\n \n Captain Bransten began to chuckle softly. I personally didn't think it was so funny. I tossed him my withering Superior Officer's gaze and waited for his explanation.\n \n \"I hadn't realized this was your first time on Venus,\" he said.\n \n \"Is there a local hero named Joe?\" I asked.\n \n \"No, no, nothing like that,\" he assured me. \"It's a simple culture, you know. Not nearly as developed as Mars.\"\n \n \"I can see that,\" I said bitingly.\n \n \"And the natives are only now becoming acquainted with Terran culture. Lots of enlisted men, you know.\"\n \n I began to get the idea. And I began to appreciate Walsh's doubtful ancestry more keenly.\n \n \"It's impossible to tell exactly where it all started, of course,\" Bransten was saying.\n \n I was beginning to get angry. Very angry. I was thinking of Walsh sitting back in a nice cozy foam chair back on Earth.\n \n \"Get to the point, Captain!\" I barked.\n \n \"Easy, sir,\" Bransten said, turning pale. I could see that the Captain wasn't used to entertaining Majors. \"The enlisted men. You know how they are. They'll ask a native to do something and they'll call him Joe. 'Hey, Joe, give me a hand with this.' Or 'Listen, Joe, how'd you like to earn some cigarettes?' Do you follow?\"\n \n \"I follow, all right,\" I said bitterly.\n \n \"Well,\" Bransten went on, \"that sort of thing mushrooms. The natives are a simple, almost childish people. It appealed to them—the Joe business, I mean. Now they're all Joe. They like it. That and the cigarettes.\"\n \n He cleared his throat and looked at me apologetically as if he were personally responsible for Venusian culture. In fact, he looked as if he were responsible for having put Venus in the heavens in the first place.\n \n \"Do you understand, Major? Just a case of extended idiom, that's all.\"\n \n Just a case of extended idiot , I thought. An idiot on a wild goose chase a hell of a long way from home.\n \n \"I understand perfectly,\" I snapped. \"Where are my quarters?\"\n \n Bransten asked a Venusian named Joe to show me my quarters, reminding me that chow was at thirteen hundred. As I was leaving, the first Venusian came back with the cigarettes Bransten had ordered.\n \n I could tell by the look on his face that he probably had half a carton stuffed into his pockets. I shrugged and went to change into a tropical tunic.\n \n I called Earth right after chow. The Captain assured me that this sort of thing was definitely against regulations, but he submitted when I twinkled my little gold leaf under his nose.\n \n Walsh's face appeared on the screen. He was smiling, looking like a fat pussy cat.\n \n \"What is it, Major?\" he asked.\n \n \"This man Joe,\" I said. \"Can you give me any more on him?\"\n \n Walsh's grin grew wider. \"Why, Major,\" he said, \"you're not having any difficulties, are you?\"\n \n \"None at all,\" I snapped back. \"I just thought I'd be able to find him a lot sooner if....\"\n \n \"Take your time, Major,\" Walsh beamed. \"There's no rush at all.\"\n \n \"I thought....\"\n \n \"I'm sure you can do the job,\" Walsh cut in. \"I wouldn't have sent you otherwise.\"\n \n Hell, I was through kidding around. \"Look....\"\n \n \"He's somewhere in the jungle, you know,\" Walsh said.\n \n I wanted to ram my fist into the screen, right smack up against those big white teeth. Instead, I cut off the transmission and watched the surprised look on his face as his screen went blank millions of miles away.\n \n He blinked at the screen, trying to realize I'd deliberately hung up on him.\n \n \"Polk!\" he shouted, \"can you hear me?\"\n \n I smiled, saw the twisted hatred on his features, and then the screen on my end went blank, too.\n  He's somewhere in the jungle, you know.\n \n \n I thanked Captain Bransten for his hospitality and went back to my quarters.\n \n As I saw it, there were two courses for me to follow.\n \n One: I could say the hell with Walsh and Venus. That would mean hopping the next ship back to Earth.\n \n It would also mean disobeying the direct order of a superior officer. It might mean demotion, and it might mean getting bounced out of the Service altogether.\n \n Two: I could assume there really was a guy name Joe somewhere in that jungle, a Joe separate and apart from the other Joes on this planet, a trader Joe who knew the Martians well. I could always admit failure, of course, and return empty handed. Mission not accomplished. Or, I might really find a guy who was trader Joe.\n \n I made my decision quickly. I wanted to stay in the Service, and besides Walsh may have been on the level for the first time in his life. Maybe there was a Joe here who could help us on Mars. If there was I'd try to find him. It was still a hell of a trick though.\n \n I cursed Walsh again and pushed the buzzer near my bed.\n \n A tall Venusian stepped into the room.\n \n \"Joe?\" I asked, just to be sure.\n \n \"Who else, boss?\" he answered.\n \n \"I'm trying to locate someone,\" I said. \"I'll need a guide to take me into the jungle. Can you get me one?\"\n \n \"It'll cost you, boss,\" the Venusian said.\n \n \"How much?\"\n \n \"Two cartons of cigarettes at least.\"\n \n \"Who's the guide?\" I asked.\n \n \"How's the price sound?\"\n \n \"Fine, fine,\" I said impatiently. And the Captain had said they were almost a childish people!\n \n \"His name is Joe,\" the Venusian told me. \"Best damn guide on the planet. Take you anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do. Courageous. Doesn't know the meaning of fear. I've known him to....\"\n \n \"Skip it,\" I said, cutting the promotion short. \"Tell him to show up around fifteen hundred with a complete list of what we'll need.\"\n \n The Venusian started to leave.\n \n \"And Joe,\" I said, stopping him at the door, \"I hope you're not overlooking your commission on the deal.\"\n \n His face broke into a wide grin. \"No danger of that, boss,\" he said.\n \n When he was gone I began figuring out a plan of action. Obviously, I'd just have to traipse through the jungle looking for a guy named Joe on a planet where everyone was named Joe. Everybody, at least, but the Captain, the small garrison attached to the Station, and me.\n \n \n\n \n I began wondering why Walsh had gone to so much trouble to get rid of me. The job, as I saw it, would take a hell of a long time. It seemed like a silly thing to do, just to get even with a guy for something that had happened years ago. He surely must have realized that I'd be back again, sooner or later. Maybe he had another little junket all set for me.\n \n Or maybe he didn't expect me to come back.\n \n The thought hadn't occurred to me before this, and I began to consider it seriously. Walsh was no good, rotten clear through. He was failing at the job of keeping Mars in hand, and he probably realized that a few more mistakes on his part would mean the end of his career with Space II. I chuckled as I thought of him isolated in some God-forsaken place like Space V or Space VII. This probably bothered him a lot, too. But what probably bothered him more was the fact that I was next in command. If he were transferred, I'd be in charge of Space II, and I could understand how much that would appeal to Walsh.\n \n I tried to figure the thing out sensibly, tried to weigh his good points against his bad. But it all came back to the same thing. A guy who would deliberately go to sleep on Boiler Watch with a ton of uranium ready to blast a barracks to smithereens if it wasn't watched, would deliberately do just about anything.\n \n Sending me off on a wild goose chase after a character named Joe may have been a gag. But it may have been something a little grimmer than a gag, and I made up my mind to be extremely careful from here on in.\n \n The guide arrived at fifteen hundred on the dot. He was tall, elongated, looked almost like all the other Venusians I'd seen so far.\n \n \"I understand you need a Grade A guide, sir,\" he said.\n \n \"Are you familiar with the jungle?\" I asked him.\n \n \"Born and raised there, sir. Know it like the back of my hand.\"\n \n \"Has Joe told you what the payment will be?\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. A carton and a half of cigarettes.\"\n \n I thought about Joe deducting his commission and smiled.\n \n \"When can we leave?\"\n \n \"Right away, sir. We won't need much really. I've made a list of supplies and I can get them in less than an hour. I suggest you wear light clothing, boots, and a hat.\"\n \n \"Will I need a weapon?\"\n \n He looked at me, his eyes faintly amused. \"Why, what for, sir?\"\n \n \"Never mind,\" I said. \"What's your name, by the way?\"\n \n He lifted his eyebrows, and his eyes widened in his narrow face. He was definitely surprised.\n \n \"Joe,\" he said. \"Didn't you know?\"\n \n \n\n \n When we'd been out for a while I discovered why Joe had suggested the boots and the hat. The undergrowth was often sharp and jagged and it would have sliced my legs to ribbons were they not protected by the high boots. The hat kept the strong sun off my head.\n \n Joe was an excellent guide and a pleasant companion. He seemed to be enjoying a great romp, seemed to love the jungle and take a secret pleasure in the work he was doing. There were times when I couldn't see three feet ahead of me. He'd stand stock still for a few minutes, his head barely moving, his eyes darting from one plant to another. Then he'd say, \"This way,\" and take off into what looked like more impenetrable jungle invariably to find a little path leading directly to another village.\n \n Each village was the same. The natives would come running out of their huts, tall and blue, shouting, \"Cigarettes, Joe? Cigarettes?\" It took me a while to realize they were addressing me and not my guide.\n \n Everybody was Joe. It was one beautiful, happy, joyous round of stinking, hot jungle. And I wasn't getting any nearer my man. Nor had I any idea how I was supposed to find him. I began to feel pretty low about the whole affair.\n \n Joe, on the other hand, enjoyed every moment of the trip. In each village he greeted the natives cheerfully, told them stories, swapped gossip and jokes. And when it was time to leave, he would say goodbye to all his friends and we would plunge into the twisted foliage again.\n \n His spirits were always high and he never failed to say the right thing that would give a momentary lift to my own depressed state of mind. He would talk for hours on end as we hacked our way through the jungle.\n \n \"I like Venus,\" he said once. \"I would never leave it.\"\n \n \"Have you ever been to Earth?\" I asked.\n \n \"No,\" Joe replied. \"I like Terrans too, you understand. They are good for Venus. And they are fun.\"\n \n \"Fun?\" I asked, thinking of a particular species of Terran: species Leonard Walsh.\n \n \"Yes, yes,\" he said wholeheartedly. \"They joke and they laugh and ... well, you know.\"\n \n \"I suppose so,\" I admitted.\n \n Joe smiled secretly, and we pushed on. I began to find, more and more, that I had started to talk freely to Joe. In the beginning he had been just my guide. There had been the strained relationship of employer and employee. But as the days lengthened into weeks, the formal atmosphere began to crumble. I found myself telling him all about Earth, about the people there, about my decision to attend the Academy, the rigid tests, the grind, even the Moon run. Joe was a good listener, nodding sympathetically, finding experiences in his own life to parallel my own.\n \n And as our relationship progressed from a casual one to a definitely friendly one, Joe seemed more enthusiastic than ever to keep up our grinding pace to find what we were looking for.\n \n Once we stopped in a clearing to rest. Joe lounged on the matted greenery, his long body stretched out in front of him, the knife gleaming in his belt. I'd seen him slash his way through thick, tangled vines with that knife, his long, muscular arms powerfully slicing through them like strips of silk.\n \n \"How far are we from the Station?\" I asked.\n \n \"Three or four Earth weeks,\" he replied.\n \n I sighed wearily. \"Where do we go from here?\"\n \n \"There are more villages,\" he said.\n \n \"We'll never find him.\"\n \n \"Possibly,\" Joe mused, the smile creeping over his face again.\n \n \"A wild goose chase. A fool's errand.\"\n \n \"We'd better get started,\" Joe said simply.\n \n I got to my feet and we started the march again. Joe was still fresh, a brilliant contrast to me, weary and dejected. Somehow, I had the same feeling I'd had a long time ago on my sixteenth birthday. One of my friends had taken me all over the city, finally dropping me off at my own house where the whole gang was gathered for a surprise party. Joe reminded me of that friend.\n \n \"There's a village ahead,\" he said, and the grin on his face was large now, his eyes shining.\n \n \n\n \n Something was missing here. Natives. There were no natives rushing out to greet us. No cries of \"Cigarettes? Cigarettes?\" I caught up with Joe.\n \n \"What's the story?\" I whispered.\n \n He shrugged knowingly and continued walking.\n \n And then I saw the ship, nose pointing into space, catching the rays of the sun like a great silver bullet.\n \n \"What...?\" I started.\n \n \"It's all right,\" Joe said, smiling.\n \n The ship looked vaguely familiar. I noticed the crest of Space II near the nose, and a lot of things became clear then. I also saw Walsh standing near one of the huts, a stun gun in his hand.\n \n \"Hello, Major,\" he called, almost cheerfully. The gun didn't look cheerful, though. It was pointed at my head.\n \n \"Fancy meeting you here, Colonel,\" I said, trying to match his joviality. Somehow it didn't quite come off.\n \n Joe was walking beside me, waving at the colonel, beaming all over with happiness.\n \n \"I see you found your man,\" Walsh said.\n \n I turned rapidly. Joe nodded and kept grinning, a grin that told me he was getting a big kick out of all this. Like a kid playing a game.\n \n I faced Walsh again. \"Okay, what's it all about, pal?\"\n \n \"Colonel,\" Walsh corrected me. \"You mustn't forget to say Colonel, Major .\" He emphasized my rank, and he said it with a sort of ruthless finality.\n \n I waited. I could see he was just busting to tell me how clever he'd been. Besides, there wasn't much I could do but wait. Not with Walsh pointing the stun gun at my middle.\n \n \"We've come a long way since the Academy, haven't we, Major?\"\n \n \"If you mean in miles,\" I said, looking around at the plants, \"we sure have.\"\n \n Walsh grinned a little. \"Always the wit,\" he said drily. And then the smile faded from his lips and his eyes took on a hard lustre. \"I'm going to kill you, you know.\" He said it as if he were saying, \"I think it'll rain tomorrow.\"\n \n Joe almost clapped his hands together with glee. He was really enjoying this. Another of those funny Terran games.\n \n \"You gave me a powerful handicap to overcome,\" Walsh said. \"I suppose I should thank you, really.\"\n \n \"You're welcome,\" I said.\n \n \"It wasn't easy living down the disgrace you caused me.\"\n \n \"It was your own damn fault,\" I said. \"You knew what you were doing when you decided to cork off.\"\n \n Beside me, Joe chuckled a little, enjoying the game immensely.\n \n \"You didn't have to report me,\" Walsh said.\n \n \"No? Maybe I should have forgotten all about it? Maybe I should have nudged you and served you orange juice? So you could do it again sometime and maybe blow up the whole damn Academy!\"\n \n Walsh was silent for a long time. When he spoke his voice was barely audible. The heat was oppressive, as if it were concentrated on this little spot in the jungle, focusing all its penetration on a small, unimportant drama.\n \n I could hear Joe breathing beside me.\n \n \"I'm on my way out,\" Walsh rasped. \"Finished, do you understand?\"\n \n \"Good,\" I said. And I meant it.\n \n \"This Mars thing. A terrible fix. Terrible.\"\n \n Beside me, a slight frown crossed Joe's face. Apparently he couldn't understand the seriousness of our voices. What had happened to the game, the fun?\n \n \"You brought the Mars business on yourself,\" I told Walsh. \"There was never any trouble before you took command.\"\n \n \"The natives,\" he practically shouted. \"They ... they....\"\n \n Joe caught his breath sharply, and I wondered what Walsh was going to say about the natives. Apparently he'd realized that Joe was a native. Or maybe Joe's knife had something to do with it.\n \n \"What about the natives?\" I asked.\n \n \"Nothing,\" Walsh said. \"Nothing.\" He was silent for a while.\n \n \"A man of my calibre,\" he said then, his face grim. \"Dealing with savages.\" He caught himself again and threw a hasty glance at Joe. The perplexed frown had grown heavier on Joe's face. He looked at the colonel in puzzlement.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "e0294bdceda64c64aa14173c25a683d8", "response_text": "Major Polk is given orders by his Boss, Colonel Walsh, to go to Venus in search of a man named Joe. Mars is in open revolt against the Colonel and the system that he runs, and Walsh tells Polk that there is a man on Venus who will be able to solve the problem of the revolt, as he spent time on Mars, and knows the natives. The Major and the Colonel hate each other, and it's clear from the get-go that the Colonel is setting the Major up for a trap. He tells Polk that the man's name is Joe, and that he has an affinity for Terran cigarettes. The Major travels to Venus to find this man, and complete the mission. When he arrives though, it becomes clear to him soon that every native Venusian is named Joe, and they all love cigarettes. Polk calls the Major from the office on Venus, asking for extra information, but the Colonel gives none. He has screwed him. The Major decides to look for this man regardless, as returning to Earth without having completed the mission could mean a demotion or a loss of job. He hires a guide to take him through the jungle terrain of Venus, obviously named Joe. As they spend weeks traveling through the jungle together they quickly become friends. They stop at various villages together, where they meet the locals, they chat on their walks and the Major tells Joe all about his past. After a few weeks, they arrive at a village, where a starship and the Colonel are waiting for them. He has a gun pointer and Polk, informing him he plans on killing him, because Polk ratted on Walsh when they were in the academy together about dozing off while he was on watch over a tank filled with uranium. Just before he goes to shoot the Major, he starts insulting the locals of Mars, and then natives in general. Joe becomes visibly upset. The story ends, and it's presumed that Joe will save the Major. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "118887f2b275426e8294d3bff5eb460b", "response_text": "Colonel Walsh has appointed Major Polk for a mission on Venus. The two hate each other strongly due to a history at the Academy and Walsh's totalitarian nature towards natives on Mars. The Colonel tells Major Polk that he is to find a specific Venusian native named Joe, who is experienced in trading and loves cigarettes. Major Polk arrives on Mars and immediately meets a Venusian named Joe, but he soon realizes that it is not the man in question. The Major goes into the Officer's Club, where the Venusian bartender is also named Joe. Perplexed, the Major realizes that every native on Venus is named Joe. He meets with Captain Bransten, who tells him that since becoming in contact with Terran men, the Venusians had picked up their mannerisms and behaviors, including their love for cigarettes. Major Polk realizes that the Colonel has sent him on a goose chase, in impossible search of a man. Major Polk calls the Colonel, who smugly assures him that he can find the man in the jungle. The Major decides to play along with Walsh's trick and find a man for the mission. He meets a Venusian tour guide to take him through the jungle, who he gradually befriends as they visit several villages. With still no luck finding the right Joe, Major Polk soon encounters Walsh aboard his ship flying above him. Walsh tells Polk that he will kill him, recalling the time Polk reported him at the Academy. He then expresses his frustration with dealing with the natives on Mars."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "702a9af2da8244d589b8603effad8003", "response_text": "The story begins with the Major being told by Colonel Walsh that he is going to be sent to find a man on Venus. The Colonel says that the man is a Venusian native that holds very valuable information about Mars. He says the man is named Joe and that he likes cigarettes. The Major tries to gather more information but the Colonel only gives him vague answers with a grin on his face. So, with his orders, the Major heads to Venus. When he steps off the ship, he is greeted by a man named Joe. He is shocked because he initially believes it could be the Joe he needs. However, he soon realizes that it is not the correct Joe and asks to be directed to the Officer’s Club. Once he gets inside and goes to the bar, the bartender introduces himself as Joe. \n\nThe Major realizes that Walsh played a trick on him. He’s upset at Walsh for sending him on a petty, retaliatory trip. Frustrated, he heads to the Captain’s shack, where he asks why everyone is named Joe. The Captain chuckles in response and replies that it’s an unoriginal culture. Joe grows angry upon learning this. He’s taken to his sleeping quarters after the meeting. He calls the Colonel and asks for more information on the Joe he’s meant to find. The Colonel finds amusement knowing that Polk has realized his predicament. All the Colonel offers up to the Major is that Joe is somewhere in the jungle. In response, he asks for a guide to take him. As he’s waiting, he thinks of the Colonel’s intentions and how he should respond. The Major decides to go along with the trip and do his best. Once he meets his guide, they head off through the jungle. \n\nHis guide takes him through the jungle, proving to be helpful and useful. They find themselves going from village to village with days turning into weeks spent in the jungle searching for a specific Joe. Joe smiles at some of the Major’s complaints of the tedious nature of the journey in an unusual way during their journey. They eventually reach another village and Joe smiles very wide when he delivers the news to Major Polk. The Major notices that there are no natives in the new village. He sees the Colonel standing near a ship with a stun gun pointed at him. It also seems like Joe knew that the Colonel would be there. Walsh tells the Major that he is going to kill him. As they tensely converse with each other, Joe chuckles and is excited with glee during the conversation. However, when Mars is mentioned, Joe stops being excited and a frown starts to form on his face. Walsh begins to shout hateful words about natives when he realizes that Joe is a native. Joe changes his attitude and looks at the Colonel in confusion. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "dec55d2339144394a363251b352d3edb", "response_text": "The story starts with Colonel Walsh assigning Major Polk the job of finding a man named Joe on Venus to help them with the revolt on Mars. Despite the fact that he has never been to Venus and Venus is not even in their jurisdiction, Colonel Walsh calls it a simple assignment and asks the Major to travel to Venus. After arriving on Venus, he immediately encounters a boy called Joe. However, this Joe is not the person that he is looking for. Before reporting to Captain Bransten, the Major decides to stop for a drink. He asks Joe to take him there. Somehow, this Joe realizes that the Major is new to this place after he tips him. After arriving at the bar, he meets two more Joes talking to each other, calling each other Joe. Neither is the one that the Major needs to find. Later, he learns from the Captain that the name Joe is just a culture here on Venus, and the natives all like cigarettes. This makes the Major furious since those are two of the few characteristics provided by Colonel Walsh. After chow, the Major calls Walsh, who is on Earth. After getting the information that this Joe is in the jungle, he asks a Joe to find him a guide for going into the jungle. Then, Major begins to realize that maybe Colonel Walsh didn’t want him back since he is the next in line for command. He decides to be more careful. Following the guide, the Major walks from village to village, searching the natives for that particular Joe. The Major and the guide get close and become friend. However, the next village they visit does not have any natives, only Colonel Walsh. And Colonel is there to kill the Major."}]}, {"question_text": "Why do the Colonel and the Major hate each other?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "e0294bdceda64c64aa14173c25a683d8", "response_text": "The Colonel and the Major seemed as if they were acquaintances before they first fell out. The Colonel had called the Major, by his first name, Fred. Now, he only calls him Major, as a mark of disrespect, since the colonel somehow outranks him. The Colonel also demands that Polk use his proper title, as a way of putting him down. They initially fell out because one night, while the Colonel was supposed to be on boiled watch, guarding the uranium in a tank beneath the barracks, he fell asleep on duty. The entire barracks could've been blown up. The Major had to report him to their superiors. This meant that the colonel's career took a big hit, and he had to fight his way back into the ranks. He felt as if the Major betrayed him, and ratted him out. Now, the Colonel is in charge of Mars, where he has caused a revolt based on his shocking treatment of the natives. His prejudice towards the native people of Venus and Mars is another reason the Major hates him. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "118887f2b275426e8294d3bff5eb460b", "response_text": "The Colonel and the Major attended the Academy together, and the two have despised each other since. At the Academy, Major Polk had reported the Colonel for falling asleep on duty, risking severe damage. Major Polk also holds reservations about the Colonel because of Walsh's treatment of natives, specifically on Mars after conquering the planet. He understands why there is a revolt against Walsh on Mars, given the way he degrades its natives. Colonel Walsh still holds reservations towards Major Polk since he reported him."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "702a9af2da8244d589b8603effad8003", "response_text": "Colonel Walsh and Major Polk have hated each other ever since they both went through the Academy at the same time. The Major does not like Walsh’s attitude towards natives, especially how he treats them. From this, it is able to be discerned that Walsh has a very unfavorable attitude towards natives and regularly insults or hurts them. He also does not believe that the Colonel is understanding the severity of the current military situation. The Major also believes that Walsh does a bad job of managing the planet. The hatred that the Colonel has towards the Major is because the Major reported him for sleeping on the job while they were both at the Academy. The Major defends his reporting of the Colonel by arguing that the Colonel was supposed to be watching a uranium supply that was very dangerous and could have killed many people. \n\nThe Colonel appears to be threatened by the Major because he would be next in line of command if the Colonel is ousted from his position. The Colonel acknowledges that he is possibly failing at his job with the Mars issue and does not want to be demoted and for Major Polk to take over his job. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "dec55d2339144394a363251b352d3edb", "response_text": "The Major and Colonel were in the same Academy. But one time, the Colonel fell asleep on Boiler Watch. There was a pile of uranium that could’ve blown up the whole Academy. When the Major caught this he reported him. But apparently, the Colonel still thinks that it is the Major’s fault for reporting him. The Major also dislikes the way that the Colonel treats the natives. He calls them savages. The Colonel sends the Major to Venus and tells him a non-description of a man that he needs to find. This annoys the Major. He gets angry especially when he finds out that the description is completely useless since every man here names Joe and likes cigarette. The Colonel actually sends the Major here to kill him. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the main setting of the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "e0294bdceda64c64aa14173c25a683d8", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is the planet Venus. The planet is described as being extremely hot, and having the scent of an old shoe and after shave. There are plants everywhere, of all sizes and varieties, some with strange and wonderful flowers. There is a station for Space II, which includes The Officers Club: a small shack which functions as a bar, and The Captain's Shack. The world is covered in thick jungle, which is impossible to orient unless you're a local. The floor of the jungle is filled with sharp undergrowth that would shred your feet. In the jungle are little hidden pathways that lead to small villages, where native Venusians live. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "118887f2b275426e8294d3bff5eb460b", "response_text": "The story mainly takes place on the planet Venus, its climate primarily consisting of thick jungles and rainforests. Major Polk describes the planet as very hot with a strange smell, with unfamiliar plants. The natives on Venus are tall, blue, human looking figures. Major Polk first visits the Officer's Club, a tiny hut. Later in the story, Major Polk is guided through the jungles of Venus by Joe, which are described as impenetrable and humid."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "702a9af2da8244d589b8603effad8003", "response_text": "The story begins on Earth. Major Polk is at the Patrol Station in Area Two on Earth to meet with the Colonel. Major Polk is assigned to find a man on Venus by the Colonel. So, he heads to Venus. The Major describes the planet as incredibly hot and uncomfortable. It also has a smell that isn’t easily discernible. There are large and small plants with unusual flowers dotted all over the place. The first place that the Major goes to on Venus is the Officer’s Club, a hut with window shields meant to protect from the heat. Nevertheless, the place was still very hot inside. Inside there were some seating, basic bar games, and the bar where a Venusian bartender stood. Once he leaves the bar, he heads to the Captain’s shack to find more information on the situation. Eventually leaving the Captain’s shack, he goes to his sleeping quarters. After finding a guide, the Major and his guide head off into the jungle in search of a Joe. They go through a thick jungle, encountering different villages along the way. The jungle is so thick that occasionally, the guide has to use a knife to cut through the brush. After weeks, they make it to one particular village where the Major spots a ship that catches the rays of the sun. The Colonel is standing near the ship with a gun pointed at Major Polk. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "dec55d2339144394a363251b352d3edb", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is on Venus, where the temperature is very hot and has a strange smell. The whole planet is filled with plants, big and small, blooming and bare. There is a heavily overgrown path that leads to the Officer’s Club. The bar has pastel hut and window shields for protection against the sun. The bar has some chairs and tables, a dart game, and a bar. Captain Bransten’s office has a desk and there is a button on the desk that would call for a Venusian. There is also a screen for calling Earth. The Major’s quarter also has a buzzer near his bed. The jungle is filled with plants, and sometimes even fogs. The villages have natives and huts that they live in. Later in the village where there is no natives, there is only a ship that has the crest of Space II. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Major Polk and his guide, Joe?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "e0294bdceda64c64aa14173c25a683d8", "response_text": "The relationship between the two characters starts off as one of business. Polk hires Joe to show him through the jungle. Joe is described as the best that there is, as he has lived there all his life. The two set off immediately for the jungle. As they journey through the forest, they begin to talk. Polk finds that he really enjoys the company of the Venusian. He likes that Joe always seems to be happy, and knows just what to say to cheer Polk up. He admires that he's so friendly to the locals, and immediately chats and laughs with them. Polk soon begins speaking freely to Joe, telling him about his past, as Joe would listen with the sympathetic ear. They found that they hsa a lot in common. This is why it was shocking to discover that Joe was in fact working for the Colonel the whole time, leading Polk right to him, and right to his death. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "118887f2b275426e8294d3bff5eb460b", "response_text": "The relationship between Major Polk and Joe initially starts out as strictly professional, with Joe guiding him through the jungle. As the trip progresses the two become companions, speaking to each other casually. Major Polk notes the passion Joe has for the jungle and how much he enjoys the trip, and says that Joe provides a refreshing and uplifting presence throughout the trip. The two eventually begin telling each other about their own lives, sharing stories and becoming friends."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "702a9af2da8244d589b8603effad8003", "response_text": "At the beginning of their time together, Joe the guide seems to be very helpful to Polk. He recommends the supplies the Major would need to have a more comfortable journey in the jungle and they prove to be very useful during their adventure. During their time together, the Major observes that Joe seems to really enjoy his job. Days into their journey, the Major is feeling very dejected by not making any progress while Joe seems to be very content. It appears Joe is always in a good mood and is not influenced by the Major’s emotionally discontent. The Major notes that the relationship started off as an employer and employee constrained type but it soon became very friendly and developed to where they were sharing stories with each other. The Major increasingly talks freely with his guide. \n\nWhile the relationship appeared to be very friendly during the journey in the jungle, it appears that Major Polk should have not trusted the guide. The guide appears to have already known that the Colonel would be in a clearing waiting with a stun gun for Polk as he laughs during the beginning of their encounter. It becomes clearer that Joe planned this with the Colonel, and thus betraying the friendly relationship he made with Polk. However, Joe’s attitude begins to change as he responds with a confused look towards the Colonel’s remarks about natives and Mars. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "dec55d2339144394a363251b352d3edb", "response_text": "Major Polk has a formal relationship with his guide in the beginning. He would pay the guide, Joe, cigarettes and he would simply follow Joe as he finds his way through the jungle. Later, they started to talk more freely as the journey progresses. It was much less formal but more casual as the time went by. The Major starts to talk about Earth, the Academy, the Moon run, etc. And Joe is a great listener. Thus, they become friends. "}]}, {"question_text": "How does the Major find out that all the natives are called Joe, and why do they like cigarettes?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "106", "uid": "e0294bdceda64c64aa14173c25a683d8", "response_text": "When the Major first arrives, he meets a man named Joe. He is a native. The Major thinks that he may have found his man already, but when he asks him if he's a trader, which would match the description that the colonel gave him, the native tells him that he's never traded anything in his life. He then keeps meeting natives, all of whom are named Joe. He asks the Captain why all the Venusians are named Joe. The captain explains that it's because when the men of the Terran space program arrived they used their slang with the locals, all calling them Joe. The men would tell them that if they did a job for them, they would get a pack of cigarettes. Because the Venusians had no names of their own before this, eventually the name \"Joe\" stuck, and everyone on the planet answered to it. They also kept an affinity for cigarettes. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "118887f2b275426e8294d3bff5eb460b", "response_text": "When the Major lands on Venus, the first native he comes across introduces himself as Joe. Thinking that he had found the man he was assigned to find, the Major is pleased, but he then realizes that the man is not the right one. As the Major goes through Venus, he begins to notice that every Venusian native addresses the other as \"Joe\", and he realizes that they all share the same name. Captain Bransten then informs the Major of the phenomenon. When Terran men were enlisted on Venus, they would often call the natives \"Joe\" as a nickname, and reward them with cigarettes. Eventually, the natives caught on and began to adapt this behavior into their own culture. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "702a9af2da8244d589b8603effad8003", "response_text": "Once Major Polk meets the bartender, it is the second person that he meets on the planet named Joe. He realizes from this second encounter that the Colonel had set him up by sending him on an impossible mission. \n\nHis first hint that the natives like cigarettes are when the Captain offers him a cigarette as soon as he sits down in his office. The Captain says that the Venusians steal them during their conversation. The Captain explains that it is a part of the native Venusian culture to like cigarettes. He further realizes how important cigarettes are to natives when he is told the price for a guide can be paid with cigarette cartons. When they go through each village during their time in the jungle, the natives consistently ask for cigarettes. \n"}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "dec55d2339144394a363251b352d3edb", "response_text": "The Major first encounters three Venusian natives, all with the name Joe. Even the server of Captain Bransten is named Joe. Thus he asks the Captain about this popular name. Because the enlisted man would call the native Joe, they like the name. Thus they are all called Joe. The Captain also reveals that the natives like the cigarettes because the enlisted men keep on asking them if they want to earn some cigarettes. The natives seem to only like these two things about Terran culture. This makes the Major realize that the tips given to one of the Joe that led him to the bar should have been cigarettes. Moreover, the Captain also notes that the natives like to steal the cigarettes."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63527", "uid": "61b1f0821fac4c93b72b8962424df984", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "COSMIC YO-YO\n \n\n By ROSS ROCKLYNNE\n \n \n \"Want an asteroid in your backyard? We supply cheap. Trouble also handled without charge.\" Interplanetary Hauling Company. (ADVT.)\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Bob Parker, looking through the photo-amplifiers at the wedge-shaped asteroid, was plainly flabbergasted. Not in his wildest imaginings had he thought they would actually find what they were looking for.\n \n \"Cut the drive!\" he yelled at Queazy. \"I've got it, right on the nose. Queazy, my boy, can you imagine it? We're in the dough. Not only that, we're rich! Come here!\"\n \n Queazy discharged their tremendous inertia into the motive-tubes in such a manner that the big, powerful ship was moving at the same rate as the asteroid below—47.05 miles per second. He came slogging back excitedly, put his eyes to the eyepiece. He gasped, and his big body shook with joyful ejaculations.\n \n \"She checks down to the last dimension,\" Bob chortled, working with slide-rule and logarithm tables. \"Now all we have to do is find out if she's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! But there couldn't be two asteroids of that shape anywhere else in the Belt, so this has to be it!\"\n \n He jerked a badly crumpled ethergram from his pocket, smoothed it out, and thumbed his nose at the signature.\n \n \"Whee! Mr. Andrew S. Burnside, you owe us five hundred and fifty thousand dollars!\"\n \n Queazy straightened. A slow, likeable smile wreathed his tanned face.\n\"Better take it easy,\" he advised, \"until I land the ship and we use the atomic whirl spectroscope to determine the composition of the asteroid.\"\n \n \"Have it your way,\" Bob Parker sang, happily. He threw the ethergram to the winds and it fell gently to the deck-plates. While Queazy—so called because his full name was Quentin Zuyler—dropped the ship straight down to the smooth surface of the asteroid, and clamped it tight with magnetic grapples, Bob flung open the lazarette, brought out two space-suits. Moments later, they were outside the ship, with star-powdered infinity spread to all sides.\n \n In the ship, the ethergram from Andrew S. Burnside, of Philadelphia, one of the richest men in the world, still lay on the deck-plates. It was addressed to: Mr. Robert Parker, President Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., 777 Main Street, Satterfield City, Fontanaland, Mars. The ethergram read:\n  Received your advertising literature a week ago. Would like to state that yes I would like an asteroid in my back yard. Must meet following specifications: 506 feet length, long enough for wedding procession;\n98 feet at base, tapering to 10 feet at apex; 9-12 feet thick; topside smooth-plane, underside rough-plane; composed of iron ore, tungsten, quartz crystals, and cinnabar. Must be in my back yard before 11:30 A.M. my time, for important wedding June 2, else order is void. Will pay $5.00 per ton.\n \n \n \n\n \n Bob Parker had received that ethergram three weeks ago. And if The Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., hadn't been about to go on the rocks (chiefly due to the activities of Saylor & Saylor, a rival firm) neither Bob nor Queazy would have thought of sending an answering ethergram to Burnside stating that they would fill the order. It was, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chance there was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worries would be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid, using their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. For there are literally millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt, and they had been out in space only three weeks.\n \n The \"asteroid in your back yard\" idea had been Bob Parker's originally. Now it was a fad that was sweeping Earth, and Burnside wasn't the first rich man who had decided to hold a wedding on top of an asteroid. Unfortunately, other interplanetary moving companies had cashed in on that brainstorm, chiefly the firm of the Saylor brothers—which persons Bob Parker intended to punch in the nose some day. And would have before this if he hadn't been lanky and tall while they were giants. Now that he and Queazy had found the asteroid, they were desperate to get it to its destination, for fear that the Saylor brothers might get wind of what was going on, and try to beat them out of their profits. Which was not so far-fetched, because the firm of Saylor & Saylor made no pretense of being scrupulous.\n \n Now they scuffed along the smooth-plane topside of the asteroid, the magnets in their shoes keeping them from stepping off into space. They came to the broad base of the asteroid-wedge, walked over the edge and\n\"down\" the twelve-foot thickness. Here they squatted, and Bob Parker happily clamped the atomic-whirl spectroscope to the rough surface. By the naked eye, they could see iron ore, quartz crystals, cinnabar, but he had the spectroscope and there was no reason why he shouldn't use it. He satisfied himself as to the exterior of the asteroid, and then sent the twin beams deep into its heart. The beams crossed, tore atoms from molecules, revolved them like an infinitely fine powder. The radiations from the sundered molecules traveled back up the beams to the atomic-whirl spectroscope. Bob watched a pointer which moved slowly up and up—past tungsten, past iridium, past gold—\n \n Bob Parker said, in astonishment, \"Hell! There's something screwy about this business. Look at that point—\"\n \n Neither he nor Queazy had the opportunity to observe the pointer any further. A cold, completely disagreeable feminine voice said,\n \n \"May I ask what you interlopers are doing on my asteroid?\"\n \n Bob started so badly that the spectroscope's settings were jarred and the lights in its interior died. Bob twisted his head around as far as he could inside the \"aquarium\"—the glass helmet, and found himself looking at a space-suited girl who was standing on the edge of the asteroid \"below.\"\n \n \"Ma'am,\" said Bob, blinking, \"did you say something?\"\n \n Queazy made a gulping sound and slowly straightened. He automatically reached up as if he would take off his hat and twist it in his hands.\n \n \"I said,\" remarked the girl, \"that you should scram off of my asteroid. And quit poking around at it with that spectroscope. I've already taken a reading. Cinnabar, iron ore, quartz crystals, tungsten. Goodbye.\"\n \n \n\n \n Bob's nose twitched as he adjusted his glasses, which he wore even inside his suit. He couldn't think of anything pertinent to say. He knew that he was slowly working up a blush. Mildly speaking, the girl was beautiful, and though only her carefully made-up face was visible—cool blue eyes, masterfully coiffed, upswept, glinting brown hair, wilful lips and chin—Bob suspected the rest of her compared nicely.\n \n Her expression darkened as she saw the completely instinctive way he was looking at her and her radioed-voice rapped out, \"Now you two boys go and play somewhere else! Else I'll let the Interplanetary Commission know you've infringed the law. G'bye!\"\n \n She turned and disappeared.\n \n Bob awoke from his trance, shouted desperately, \"Hey! Wait! You! \"\n \n He and Queazy caught up with her on the side of the asteroid they hadn't yet examined. It was a rough plane, completing the rigid qualifications Burnside had set down.\n \n \"Wait a minute,\" Bob Parker begged nervously. \"I want to make some conversation, lady. I'm sure you don't understand the conditions—\"\n \n The girl turned and drew a gun from a holster. It was a spasticizer, and it was three times as big as her gloved hand.\n \n \"I understand conditions better than you do,\" she said. \"You want to move this asteroid from its orbit and haul it back to Earth. Unfortunately, this is my home, by common law. Come back in a month. I don't expect to be here then.\"\n \n \"A month!\" Parker burst the word out. He started to sweat, then his face became grim. He took two slow steps toward the girl. She blinked and lost her composure and unconsciously backed up two steps. About twenty steps away was her small dumbbell-shaped ship, so shiny and unscarred that it reflected starlight in highlights from its curved surface. A rich girl's ship, Bob Parker thought angrily. A month would be too late!\n \n He said grimly, \"Don't worry. I don't intend to pull any rough stuff. I just want you to listen to reason. You've taken a whim to stay on an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But to us—to me and Queazy here—it means our business. We got an order for this asteroid. Some screwball millionaire wants it for a backyard wedding see? We get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it! If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. Don't we, Queazy?\"\n \n Queazy said simply, \"That's right, miss. We're in a spot. I assure you we didn't expect to find someone living here.\"\n \n The girl holstered her spasticizer, but her completely inhospitable expression did not change. She put her hands on the bulging hips of her space-suit. \"Okay,\" she said. \"Now I understand the conditions. Now we both understand each other. G'bye again. I'm staying here and—\" she smiled sweetly \"—it may interest you to know that if I let you have the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than death! So that's that.\"\n \n Bob recognized finality when he saw it. \"Come on, Queazy,\" he said fuming. \"Let this brat have her way. But if I ever run across her without a space-suit on I'm going to give her the licking of her life, right where it'll do the most good!\"\n \n He turned angrily, but Queazy grabbed his arm, his mouth falling open. He pointed off into space, beyond the girl.\n \n \"What's that?\" he whispered.\n \n \"What's wha— Oh! \"\n \n Bob Parker's stomach caved in. A few hundred feet away, floating gently toward the asteroid, came another ship—a ship a trifle bigger than their own. The girl turned, too. They heard her gasp. In another second, Bob was standing next to her. He turned the audio-switch to his headset off, and spoke to the girl by putting his helmet against hers.\n \n \"Listen to me, miss,\" he snapped earnestly, when she tried to draw away. \"Don't talk by radio. That ship belongs to the Saylor brothers! Oh, Lord, that this should happen! Somewhere along the line, we've been double-crossed. Those boys are after this asteroid too, and they won't hesitate to pull any rough stuff. We're in this together, understand? We got to back each other up.\"\n \n The girl nodded dumbly. Suddenly she seemed to be frightened.\n\"It's—it's very important that this—this asteroid stay right where it is,\" she said huskily. \"What—what will they do?\"\n \n \n\n \n Bob Parker didn't answer. The big ship had landed, and little blue sparks crackled between the hull and the asteroid as the magnetic clamps took hold. A few seconds later, the airlocks swung down, and five men let themselves down to the asteroid's surface and stood surveying the three who faced them.\n \n The two men in the lead stood with their hands on their hips; their darkish, twin faces were grinning broadly.\n \n \"A pleasure,\" drawled Wally Saylor, looking at the girl. \"What do you think of this situation Billy?\"\n \n \"It's obvious,\" drawled Billy Saylor, rocking back and forth on his heels, \"that Bob Parker and company have double-crossed us. We'll have to take steps.\"\n \n The three men behind the Saylor twins broke into rough, chuckling laughter.\n \n Bob Parker's gorge rose. \"Scram,\" he said coldly. \"We've got an ethergram direct from Andrew S. Burnside ordering this asteroid.\"\n \n \"So have we,\" Wally Saylor smiled—and his smile remained fixed, dangerous. He started moving forward, and the three men in back came abreast, forming a semi-circle which slowly closed in. Bob Parker gave back a step, as he saw their intentions.\n \n \"We got here first,\" he snapped harshly. \"Try any funny stuff and we'll report you to the Interplanetary Commission!\"\n \n It was Bob Parker's misfortune that he didn't carry a weapon. Each of these men carried one or more, plainly visible. But he was thinking of the girl's spasticizer—a paralyzing weapon. He took a hair-brained chance, jerked the spasticizer from the girl's holster and yelled at Queazy. Queazy got the idea, urged his immense body into motion. He hurled straight at Billy Saylor, lifted him straight off the asteroid and threw him away, into space. He yelled with triumph.\n \n At the same time, the spasticizer Bob held was shot cleanly out of his hand by Wally Saylor. Bob roared, started toward Wally Saylor, knocked the smoking gun from his hand with a sweeping arm. Then something crushing seemed to hit him in the stomach, grabbing at his solar plexus. He doubled up, gurgling with agony. He fell over on his back, and his boots were wrenched loose from their magnetic grip. Vaguely, before the flickering points of light in his brain subsided to complete darkness, he heard the girl's scream of rage—then a scream of pain.\n \n What had happened to Queazy he didn't know. He felt so horribly sick, he didn't care. Then—lights out.\n \n \n\n \n Bob Parker came to, the emptiness of remote starlight in his face. He opened his eyes. He was slowly revolving on an axis. Sometimes the Sun swept across his line of vision. A cold hammering began at the base of his skull, a sensation similar to that of being buried alive. There was no asteroid, no girl, no Queazy. He was alone in the vastness of space. Alone in a space-suit.\n \n \"Queazy!\" he whispered. \"Queazy! I'm running out of air!\"\n \n There was no answer from Queazy. With sick eyes, Bob studied the oxygen indicator. There was only five pounds pressure. Five pounds! That meant he had been floating around out here—how long? Days at least—maybe weeks! It was evident that somebody had given him a dose of spastic rays, enough to screw up every muscle in his body to the snapping point, putting him in such a condition of suspended animation that his oxygen needs were small. He closed his eyes, trying to fight against panic. He was glad he couldn't see any part of his body. He was probably scrawny. And he was hungry!\n \n \"I'll starve,\" he thought. \"Or suffocate to death first!\"\n \n He couldn't keep himself from taking in great gulps of air. Minutes, then hours passed. He was breathing abnormally, and there wasn't enough air in the first place. He pleaded continually for Queazy, hoping that somehow Queazy could help, when probably Queazy was in the same condition. He ripped out wild curses directed at the Saylor brothers. Murderers, both of them! Up until this time, he had merely thought of them as business rivals. If he ever got out of this—\n \n He groaned. He never would get out of it! After another hour, he was gasping weakly, and yellow spots danced in his eyes. He called Queazy's name once more, knowing that was the last time he would have strength to call it.\n \n And this time the headset spoke back!\n \n Bob Parker made a gurgling sound. A voice came again, washed with static, far away, burbling, but excited. Bob made a rattling sound in his throat. Then his eyes started to close, but he imagined that he saw a ship, shiny and small, driving toward him, growing in size against the backdrop of the Milky Way. He relapsed, a terrific buzzing in his ears.\n \n He did not lose consciousness. He heard voices, Queazy's and the girl's, whoever she was. Somebody grabbed hold of his foot. His\n\"aquarium\" was unbuckled and good air washed over his streaming face. The sudden rush of oxygen to his brain dizzied him. Then he was lying on a bunk, and gradually the world beyond his sick body focussed in his clearing eyes and he knew he was alive—and going to stay that way, for awhile anyway.\n \n \"Thanks, Queazy,\" he said huskily.\n \n Queazy was bending over him, his anxiety clearing away from his suddenly brightening face.\n \n \"Don't thank me,\" he whispered. \"We'd have both been goners if it hadn't been for her. The Saylor brothers left her paralyzed like us, and when she woke up she was on a slow orbit around her ship. She unstrapped her holster and threw it away from her and it gave her enough reaction to reach the ship. She got inside and used the direction-finder on the telaudio and located me first. The Saylors scattered us far and wide.\" Queazy's broad, normally good-humored face twisted blackly. \"The so and so's didn't care if we lived or died.\"\n \n Bob saw the girl now, standing a little behind Queazy, looking down at him curiously, but unhappily. Her space-suit was off. She was wearing lightly striped blue slacks and blue silk blouse and she had a paper flower in her hair. Something in Bob's stomach caved in as his eyes widened on her.\n \n The girl said glumly, \"I guess you men won't much care for me when you find out who I am and what I've done. I'm Starre Lowenthal—Andrew S. Burnside's granddaughter!\"\n \n \n\n \n Bob came slowly to his feet, and matched Queazy's slowly growing anger.\n \n \"Say that again?\" he snapped. \"This is some kind of dirty trick you and your grandfather cooked up?\"\n \n \"No!\" she exclaimed. \"No. My grandfather didn't even know there was an asteroid like this. But I did, long before he ordered it from you—or from the Saylor brothers. You see—well, my granddad's about the stubbornest old hoot-owl in this universe! He's always had his way, and when people stand in his way, that's just a challenge to him. He's been badgering me for years to marry Mac, and so has Mac—\"\n \n \"Who's Mac?\" Queazy demanded.\n \n \"My fiancé, I guess,\" she said helplessly. \"He's one of my granddad's protégés. Granddad's always financing some likely young man and giving him a start in life. Mac has become pretty famous for his Mercurian water-colors—he's an artist. Well, I couldn't hold out any longer. If you knew my grandfather, you'd know how absolutely impossible it is to go against him when he's got his mind set! I was just a mass of nerves. So I decided to trick him and I came out to the asteroid belt and picked out an asteroid that was shaped so a wedding could take place on it. I took the measurements and the composition, then I told my grandfather I'd marry Mac if the wedding was in the back yard on top of an asteroid with those measurements and made of iron ore, tungsten, and so forth. He agreed so fast he scared me, and just to make sure that if somebody did find the asteroid in time they wouldn't be able to get it back to Earth, I came out here and decided to live here. Asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them, by common law.... So I had everything figured out—except,\" she added bitterly, \"the Saylor brothers! I guess Granddad wanted to make sure the asteroid was delivered, so he gave the order to several companies.\"\n \n Bob swore under his breath. He went reeling across to a port, and was gratified to see his and Queazy's big interplanetary hauler floating only a few hundred feet away. He swung around, looked at Queazy.\n \n \"How long were we floating around out there?\"\n \n \"Three weeks, according to the chronometer. The Saylor boys gave us a stiff shot.\"\n \n \" Ouch! \" Bob groaned. Then he looked at Starre Lowenthal with determination. \"Miss, pardon me if I say that this deal you and your granddad cooked up is plain screwy! With us on the butt end. But I'm going to put this to you plainly. We can catch up with the Saylor brothers even if they are three weeks ahead of us. The Saylor ship and ours both travel on the HH drive—inertia-less. But the asteroid has plenty of inertia, and so they'll have to haul it down to Earth by a long, spiraling orbit. We can go direct and probably catch up with them a few hundred thousand miles this side of Earth. And we can have a fling at getting the asteroid back!\"\n \n Her eyes sparkled. \"You mean—\" she cried. Then her attractive face fell. \"Oh,\" she said. \" Oh! And when you get it back, you'll land it.\"\n \n \"That's right,\" Bob said grimly. \"We're in business. For us, it's a matter of survival. If the by-product of delivering the asteroid is your marriage—sorry! But until we do get the asteroid back, we three can work as a team if you're willing. We'll fight the other problem out later. Okay?\"\n \n She smiled tremulously. \"Okay, I guess.\"\n \n Queazy looked from one to another of them. He waved his hand scornfully at Bob. \"You're plain nuts,\" he complained. \"How do you propose to go about convincing the Saylor brothers they ought to let us have the asteroid back? Remember, commercial ships aren't allowed to carry long-range weapons. And we couldn't ram the Saylor brothers' ship—not without damaging our own ship just as much. Go ahead and answer that.\"\n \n Bob looked at Queazy dismally. \"The old balance-wheel,\" he groaned at Starre. \"He's always pulling me up short when I go off half-cocked. All I know is, that maybe we'll get a good idea as we go along. In the meantime, Starre—ahem—none of us has eaten in three weeks...?\"\n \n Starre got the idea. She smiled dazzlingly and vanished toward the galley.\n \n \n\n \n Bob Parker was in love with Starre Lowenthal. He knew that after five days out, as the ship hurled itself at breakneck speed toward Earth; probably that distracting emotion was the real reason he couldn't attach any significance to Starre's dumbbell-shaped ship, which trailed astern, attached by a long cable.\n \n Starre apparently knew he was in love with her, too, for on the fifth day Bob was teaching her the mechanics of operating the hauler, and she gently lifted his hand from a finger-switch.\n \n \"Even I know that isn't the control to the Holloway vacuum-feeder, Bob. That switch is for the—ah—the anathern tube, you told me. Right?\"\n \n \"Right,\" he said unsteadily. \"Anyway, Starre, as I was saying, this ship operates according to the reverse Fitzgerald Contraction Formula. All moving bodies contract in the line of motion. What Holloway and Hammond did was to reverse that universal law. They caused the contraction first—motion had to follow! The gravitonic field affects every atom in the ship with the same speed at the same time. We could go from zero speed to our top speed of two thousand miles a second just like that!\"\n \n He snapped his fingers. \"No acceleration effects. This type of ship, necessary in our business, can stop flat, back up, ease up, move in any direction, and the passengers wouldn't have any feeling of motion at—Oh, hell!\" Bob groaned, the serious glory of her eyes making him shake. He took her hand. \"Starre,\" he said desperately, \"I've got to tell you something—\"\n \n She jerked her hand away. \"No,\" she exclaimed in an almost frightened voice. \"You can't tell me. There's—there's Mac,\" she finished, faltering. \"The asteroid—\"\n \n \"You have to marry him?\"\n \n Her eyes filled with tears. \"I have to live up to the bargain.\"\n \n \"And ruin your whole life,\" he ground out. Suddenly, he turned back to the control board, quartered the vision plate. He pointed savagely to the lower left quarter, which gave a rearward view of the dumbbell ship trailing astern.\n \n \"There's your ship, Starre.\" He jabbed his finger at it. \"I've got a feeling—and I can't put the thought into concrete words—that somehow the whole solution of the problem of grabbing the asteroid back lies there. But how? How? \"\n \n Starre's blue eyes followed the long cable back to where it was attached around her ship's narrow midsection.\n \n She shook her head helplessly. \"It just looks like a big yo-yo to me.\"\n \n \"A yo-yo?\"\n \n \"Yes, a yo-yo. That's all.\" She was belligerent.\n \n \"A yo-yo !\" Bob Parker yelled the word and almost hit the ceiling, he got out of the chair so fast. \"Can you imagine it! A yo-yo!\"\n \n He disappeared from the room. \"Queazy!\" he shouted. \" Queazy, I've got it! \"\n \n \n\n \n It was Queazy who got into his space-suit and did the welding job, fastening two huge supra-steel \"eyes\" onto the dumbbell-shaped ship's narrow midsection. Into these eyes cables which trailed back to two winches in the big ship's nose were inserted, welded fast, and reinforced.\n \n The nose of the hauler was blunt, perfectly fitted for the job. Bob Parker practiced and experimented for three hours with this yo-yo of cosmic dimensions, while Starre and Queazy stood over him bursting into strange, delighted squeals of laughter whenever the yo-yo reached the end of its double cable and started rolling back up to the ship. Queazy snapped his fingers.\n \n \"It'll work!\" His gray eyes showed satisfaction. \"Now, if only the Saylor brothers are where we calculated!\"\n \n They weren't where Bob and Queazy had calculated, as they had discovered the next day. They had expected to pick up the asteroid on their mass-detectors a few hundred thousand miles outside of the Moon's orbit. But now they saw the giant ship attached like a leech to the still bigger asteroid—inside the Moon's orbit! A mere two hundred thousand miles from Earth!\n \n \"We have to work fast,\" Bob stammered, sweating. He got within naked-eye distance of the Saylor brothers' ship. Below, Earth was spread out, a huge crescent shape, part of the Eastern hemisphere vaguely visible through impeding clouds and atmosphere. The enemy ship was two miles distant, a black shadow occulting part of the brilliant sky. It was moving along a down-spiraling path toward Earth.\n \n Queazy's big hand gripped his shoulder. \"Go to it, Bob!\"\n \n Bob nodded grimly. He backed the hauler up about thirty miles, then sent it forward again, directly toward the Saylor brothers' ship at ten miles per second. And resting on the blunt nose of the ship was the\n\"yo-yo.\"\n \n There was little doubt the Saylors' saw their approach. But, scornfully, they made no attempt to evade. There was no possible harm the oncoming ship could wreak. Or at least that was what they thought, for Bob brought the hauler's speed down to zero—and Starre Lowenthal's little ship, possessing its own inertia, kept on moving!\n \n It spun away from the hauler's blunt nose, paying out two rigid lengths of cable behind it as it unwound, hurled itself forward like a fantastic spinning cannon ball.\n \n \"It's going to hit!\"\n \n The excited cry came from Starre. But Bob swore. The dumbbell ship reached the end of its cables, falling a bare twenty feet short of completing its mission. It didn't stop spinning, but came winding back up the cable, at the same terrific speed with which it had left.\n \n \n\n \n Bob sweated, having only fractions of seconds in which to maneuver for the \"yo-yo\" could strike a fatal blow at the hauler too. It was ticklish work completely to nullify the \"yo-yo's\" speed. Bob used exactly the same method of catching the \"yo-yo\" on the blunt nose of the ship as a baseball player uses to catch a hard-driven ball in his glove—namely, by matching the ball's speed and direction almost exactly at the moment of impact. And now Bob's hours of practice paid dividends, for the \"yo-yo\" came to rest snugly, ready to be released again.\n \n All this had happened in such a short space of time that the Saylor brothers must have had only a bare realization of what was going on. But by the time the \"yo-yo\" was flung at them again, this time with better calculations, they managed to put the firmly held asteroid between them and the deadly missile. But it was clumsy evasion, for the asteroid was several times as massive as the ship which was towing it, and its inertia was great. And as soon as the little ship came spinning back to rest, Bob flung the hauler to a new vantage point and again the \"yo-yo\" snapped out.\n \n And this time—collision! Bob yelled as he saw the stern section of the Saylor brothers' ship crumple like tissue paper crushed between the hand. The dumbbell-shaped ship, smaller, and therefore stauncher due to the principle of the arch, wound up again, wobbling a little. It had received a mere dent in its starboard half.\n \n Starre was chortling with glee. Queazy whispered, \"Attaboy, Bob! This time we'll knock 'em out of the sky!\"\n \n The \"yo-yo\" came to rest and at the same moment a gong rang excitedly. Bob knew what that meant. The Saylor brothers were trying to establish communication.\n \n Queazy was across the room in two running strides. He threw in the telaudio and almost immediately, Wally Saylor's big body built up in the plate. Wally Saylor's face was quivering with wrath.\n \n \"What do you damned fools think you're trying to do?\" he roared.\n\"You've crushed in our stern section. You've sliced away half of our stern jets. Air is rushing out! You'll kill us!\"\n \n \"Now,\" Bob drawled, \"you're getting the idea.\"\n \n \"I'll inform the Interplanetary Commission!\" screamed Saylor.\n \n \" If you're alive,\" Bob snarled wrathfully. \"And you won't be unless you release the asteroid.\"\n \n \"I'll see you in Hades first!\"\n \n \"Hades,\" remarked Bob coldly, \"here you come!\"\n \n He snapped the hauler into its mile-a-second speed again, stopped it at zero. And the \"yo-yo\" went on its lone, destructive sortie.\n \n For a fraction of a second Wally Saylor exhibited the countenance of a doomed man. In the telaudio plate, he whirled, and diminished in size with a strangled yell.\n \n The \"yo-yo\" struck again, but Bob Parker maneuvered its speed in such a manner that it struck in the same place as before, but not as heavily, then rebounded and came spinning back with perfect, sparkling precision. And even before it snugged itself into its berth, it was apparent that the Saylor brothers had given up. Like a wounded terrier, their ship shook itself free of the asteroid, hung in black space for a second, then vanished with a flaming puff of released gravitons from its still-intact jets.\n \n The battle was won!", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "386d46cd588944c0b01e5474b324d330", "response_text": "Bob Parker, the President of Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., sells asteroids to wealthy people on earth. Clients ask for asteroids with size parameters and specifications, and Bob finds them in space and hauls them to earth. His company is almost bankrupt because a rival company, Saylor & Saylor, stole his idea and now offers the same services. Bob receives mail from Mr. Andrew S. Burnside with a request for an asteroid that he would like to use in an upcoming wedding.\n\nBob and his partner Queazy set out to find the perfect asteroid for Mr. Burnside, although they know it’s a longshot. Fairly quickly, they find one that looks perfect. The men land on the asteroid, and Bob deploys his atomic-whirl spectroscope to test it. Suddenly, a beautiful woman interrupts him and demands that they leave the asteroid. She pulls out her spasticizer gun before telling them that they can have it in a month after she’s gone. Bob explains that they are desperate, but the girl retorts that her fate is worse than death if she leaves.\n\nSuddenly, the Saylor brothers’ ship appears, and Bob tells the girl that they have to fight this enemy together. Wally and Billy Saylor, along with three other men, jump out of the ship. Bob tells them that Mr. Burnside has ordered this asteroid, and the Saylor brothers say that they received the same order. Bob quickly grabs the girl’s spasticizer while Queazy throws his body at Billy. However, Wally manages to shoot the gun out of Bob’s hand and attack him. Bob is knocked unconscious in the scuffle. \n\nWhen Bob wakes up, he is completely alone, floating in space. He panics because he has very little oxygen left. Finally, he hears Queazy’s voice explaining that the girl used her ship’s technology to find them both. The mystery girl introduces herself as Starre Lowenthal, the granddaughter of Mr. Burnside. She concedes that this entire mission was fake. She told her grandfather that she would only marry her fiance Mac if he could get this particular asteroid, and then she made plans to conquer and protect the asteroid so it could not be supplied for the wedding. \n\nBob is confident that they can reach the Saylor brothers before they bring the asteroid back to earth, but his plan does nothing to protect Starre from marrying a man she doesn’t love. She agrees to help Bob and Queazy. Within five days, Bob realizes he is in love with Starre. \n\nStarre compares her small ship to a yo-yo, and Bob gets an idea - they will use Starre’s ship like a yo-yo to retrieve the asteroid from the Saylor brothers. Once the team catches up to the Saylor brothers, Bob flings Starre’s ship at the asteroid several times, and Wally calls them to tell them that they might die as a result of the damage their ship has sustained. Bob makes it clear that they have no intention of stopping, and the Saylor brothers release the asteroid. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "38148264500c4d498709d1786b411d94", "response_text": "Bob Parker and his business partner Quentin \"Queazy\" Zuyler fly through an asteroid belt searching for one with exact specifications in terms of size and mineral composition requested by a wealthy client, Andrew S. Burnside. Bob and Queazy operate the Interplanetary Hauling Company, which provides the innovative service of delivering an asteroid to the client's home. Bob had invented this service, but his business is suffering thanks to strong-arming by their main competitor, the Saylor Brothers. They need to find Mr. Burnside's asteroid because the payout of $550,000 will save their business. When Bob and Queazy discover an appropriate asteroid, they land and survey the surface to check its dimensions and mineral composition. However, they are interrupted by a beautiful young woman who confirms the composition of the asteroid but demands they leave at once or else she will alert the Interplanetary Commission that they have broken the law. When Bob sees her dumbbell-shaped spaceship, he realizes she comes from wealth and becomes obstinate; he shares with her the importance of this asteroid to his business. While the woman acknowledges his situation, she says if she leaves the asteroid, she will face \"a fate worse than death!\" As they finish their conversation, the Saylor Brothers' ship arrives, and Bob informs the woman that they must stick together to stand against them. Bob argues with Wally and Billy Saylor and eventually he and Queazy attack the two brothers. In the ensuing fight, the Saylors use the woman's paralyzing spasticizer to disable the three rivals and leave them scattered and stranded to die in space. When Bob awakens, he realizes he is running out of air, but soon Queazy retrieves him in their ship with the woman's dumbbell ship in tow; the woman had saved Queazy and together they tracked down Bob. The woman reveals her name is Starre Lowenthal, and she is Andrew S. Burnside's granddaughter. She explains she had concocted a scheme to avoid having to marry her fiance, Mac, who was a protégé of her grandfather's: She said she would marry Mac if they could hold a wedding atop an asteroid with very unique specifications. Her grandfather then commissioned Bob's company as well as the Saylor's to ensure such an asteroid would be discovered. And Starre came to the asteroid to ensure that if someone did find it, they wouldn't be able to take it back with them. Although Bob is in love with Starre, he still needs the money for his business, so he decides to pursue the Saylor Brothers and retrieve the asteroid after all; he assures Starre that they will deal with her marriage issue later. Making use of his ship's ability to accelerate and decelerate extremely fast, Bob attaches Starre's ship to theirs and uses it as a kind of yo-yo to threaten and disable the Saylor Brothers' ship. They relinquish the asteroid, and Bob, Queazy, and Starre win the day."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "83005f1ecc264d7fbb6bd1c7d05004c2", "response_text": "Bob Parker and Quentin Zuyler (Queazy) are co-pilots of a ship that has been on a mission for three weeks to locate a valuable asteroid. One of the richest men in the world, Andrew S. Burnside, of Philadelphia, has requested that Bob specifically source an asteroid for his backyard of an exact dimension and composition for a wedding on June 2nd. Having weddings on asteroids in backyards had become a fad among the richest people on Earth.\nWhen they land on the asteroid, they put on spacesuits and begin exploring and testing its composition. They’re startled by a woman who is squatting on the asteroid and claiming she is protected by law to remain there. She is certain about not wanting the asteroid to move from its position, and even pulls a weapon (a spasticizer) on Bob to try to prove her point when he tries to plead with her that his livelihood depends on them taking the asteroid back to Earth. Just as Bob and Queazy were turning to leave the asteroid, the Saylor brothers landed on it.\nThe Saylor brothers were a rival operation to Bob and Queazy, and Bob says they are known for being rough to get their way. They landed on the asteroid with three other men, claimed they also had a direct order from Mr. Burnside for the asteroid, and began an attack on Bob and Queazy. Bob made a diversion with the woman’s paralyzing weapon, Queazy threw Billy Saylor off the asteroid into space, and Wally Saylor shot the weapon out of Bob’s hand. \nBob was unconscious after the fight and woke up spinning in outer space running out of oxygen. With his last breath he called for Queazy on the intercom and was swiftly rescued by both he and the woman and revived to life. The woman revealed herself to be Andrew S. Burnside's granddaughter,  Starre Lowenthal. She was squatting on the asteroid to try to stop its delivery to Earth. She told her grandfather that she would only marry the man he set her up with, Mac, if it was atop this exact asteroid - thinking that there was no way it was possible for it to be found, and if by small chance it was she would scare those people away.\n \nBob tells Starre they can still intercept the Saylor brothers’ ship since they have to take a long slow orbit back to Earth while his ship can go direct because it’s not towing an asteroid. Along the five day journey to Earth, Bob and Starre fall in love with each other, but Starre seems determined that she would have to keep her promise to marry Mac if the asteroid is delivered. They hook up Starre’s dumbbell shaped spaceship that they are towing like a yo-yo and use it to bludgeon the Saylor brothers’ ship, causing them to release the asteroid and jet away into outer space, leaving Bob, Queasy and Starre in possession.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "9f842112a409486c92a9c5da495e500f", "response_text": "Bob Parker and his partner Queazy are searching for an asteroid of exact proportions to meet a client’s demand. This job is very important because their company, Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., is in dire straits and likely to go under without the significant payday this asteroid will bring: $550,000. The client who requested an asteroid this size wants it for a wedding in his backyard by 11:30 am on June 2; otherwise, the order is void. Parker started the “asteroid in your backyard” promotion, but since then, other companies have been offering the same service. Most notably, competition from Saylor & Saylor is hurting his business. Parker and Queazy locate the perfect asteroid that meets the exact specifications of the request, only to find that someone else, a beautiful young woman, already has laid claim to it. She orders them to leave and threatens to report them to the Interplanetary Commission or to shoot them with her spasticizer. Parker explains why the asteroid is so important to them, and the girl explains that if they take it, she will meet a fate worse than death. Then suddenly, the Saylors’ ship comes into view and lands. Billy and Wally Saylor alight along with three other men, threatening Parker. So Parker tells them that he has an ethergram from Mr. Burnsides ordering this specific asteroid, but Wally announces that they also have the order. Bob grabs the girl’s spasticizer while Queazy grabs Billy Saylor and hurls him into space. But Wally shoots the spasticizer out of Bob’s hand, and someone hits Bob hard and knocks him out.\n\tWhen Bob regains consciousness, he is almost out of oxygen. He calls out for Queazy with his last breath, and Queazy responds and brings the ship to pick him up. The girl had rescued Queazy. She introduces herself as Starre Lowenthal, Mr. Burnside’s granddaughter. Her grandfather wants her to marry Mac andwouldn’tt take no for an answer, so finally Starre told him she would marry Mac if he could find an asteroid with specific dimensions and containing the minerals she specified. Bob knows the way the Saylors will have to take the asteroid into Earth’s orbit and knows they can catch up to them. He tells Starre they have to do that to say the business, but they will work out her problem, too. \n\tAfter five days, Bob is in love with Starre, and she knows it. He starts to tell her, but she stops him because of Mac and the bargain she has to live up to. Bob says he thinks her ship is the solution, and she says it’s just a big yo-yo. As Bob thinks about this, he devises a way to use her ship as a yo-yo to attack the Saylors’ ship. They catch up to the Saylors and attack them with Starre’s ship until the Saylors release the asteroid and fly away.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What role do the Saylor brothers play in the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "386d46cd588944c0b01e5474b324d330", "response_text": "The Saylor brothers, Wally and Billy, are Bob Parker’s enemies. Bob was the first person with the unique idea to sell asteroids to wealthy people on earth, and his business would have been very successful if the Saylor brothers did not poach his idea and begin stealing his clients. Bob worries about the Saylor brothers from the beginning of the story, and he acknowledges that they do not always play by the rules. If Wally and Billy can make a buck by inconveniencing or cheating someone else, they will do it. The brothers are not only intimidating in terms of their business prowess; they are also described as giant when compared to Bob. \n\nQueasy and Bob have a legitimate order from Mr. Burnside for the asteroid, and they have no idea that the Saylor brothers have received the same order. Yet, they still worry that somehow, someway, their enemies will hear about the potential to make half a million dollars and try to steal their opportunity out from under them. Within moments of setting eyes on their spaceship, Bob tells Starre that they have to fight the Saylor brothers together. He doesn’t know her at all, and she actually just pulled a gun on him, but he so deeply mistrusts Wally and Billy that it’s worth it to take a chance on Starre.\n\nOf course, Bob turns out to be right. The second the Saylor brothers get a chance to potentially kill Bob, Queazy, and Starre, they take it. Bob floats in space, unconscious, for several weeks before Starre eventually finds Queazy and Bob, and they give him oxygen and food. Bob is truly close to death before his friends save him in the knick of time, and the Saylor brothers would be perfectly fine with that outcome. \n\nWally and Billy give Bob all the motivation in the world to try and steal the asteroid back, and Bob is determined to catch up with his rivals and make it work somehow. When he comes up with his yo-yo idea using Starre’s ship, he shows zero empathy for the Saylor brothers. During his attempts to retrieve the rock, he seriously damages the brothers’ ship, and they have the gall to call him and attempt to make him feel guilty about their desperate state. Bob, however, cannot be swayed. He knows that he found the asteroid first and that the brothers purposefully cast him out into space to die. His determination saves the day when the Saylor brothers are forced to dispatch Mr. Burnside’s asteroid. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "38148264500c4d498709d1786b411d94", "response_text": "Wally and Billy Saylor are boorish twin brothers who operate a company, Saylor & Saylor, that competes with The Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Company operated by Bob and Queazy. The Saylors have cashed in on Bob's \"asteroid in your back yard\" idea like many other companies on Earth, only they have been more successful. Thanks to their lack of business scruples, the Saylors have nearly put Bob and Queazy out of business. Because of this, Bob worries about them taking the asteroid that will net his company $550,000 if they catch wind of his arrangement. Unfortunately, the Saylors have also been hired by the same wealthy client that hired Bob and Queazy because the asteroid request was so unusual and specific, the client wanted to make sure it could be found in time for his granddaughter's wedding. Soon after Bob and Queazy meet the granddaughter, who is making temporary camp on the asteroid to avoid getting married, the Saylors arrive and paralyze the three of them in order to take the asteroid back to Earth and cash in for themselves. After they awaken and reunite, Bob, Queazy, and the granddaughter Starre, race after the Saylors and use Starre's ship as a yo-yo projectile. They damage the Saylors' ship and threaten to kill them so that they will release the asteroid. The Saylors threaten to call the Interplanetary Commission, but Bob is persistent, and he slams their ship again, causing them to give up the asteroid."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "83005f1ecc264d7fbb6bd1c7d05004c2", "response_text": "The Saylor brothers are the antagonists of the story. They have an interplanetary moving company in competition with Bob and Queazy, and are known to be violent in getting their way. \nBecause Mr. Burnside was so desperate to have his granddaughter’s wedding go on, he put the order out to both companies for this exact asteroid, causing the Saylor brothers to come into conflict with Bob and Queazy (who were also trying to deliver it to Earth), and Starre (who was desperate for it to not be delivered to Earth since she didn’t want to get married). The Saylor brothers and three other men violently force all of them off the asteroid and into outer space to die and hurry off to Earth with the asteroid, which is the climax of the story.\nUltimately, Bob, Queasy, and Starre get justice by retrieving the asteroid after they intercept the Saylor brothers and attack their ship using a yo-yo method with Starre’s spaceship they are towing, forcing the Saylor brothers to retreat into outer space.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "9f842112a409486c92a9c5da495e500f", "response_text": "The Saylor brothers provide the conflict and competition that drives Bob Parker and Queazy to search the galaxy for an asteroid with the particular specifications Burnside requests. The Saylors are less-than-honest competitors with Bob’s Interplanetary and Hauling Company. While Bob Parker came up with the “asteroid in your backyard” concept, his competitors, especially the Saylors, soon offer the same service. Bob’s company is on the verge of collapse and must fill Mr. Burnside’s order if it is to survive. In desperation, they take on Burnsides’s almost impossible order. When they find the asteroid, it is occupied by a young girl who turns out to be Burnside’s granddaughter. As they talk with her to try to negotiate for the asteroid, the Saylor brothers arrive, trying to take the asteroid. In the fighting that ensues, the Saylors knock Queazy, Bob, and Starre unconscious, leaving them for dead, and take the asteroid. Bob is unconscious for three weeks, and when he comes to, he is down to five pounds of oxygen. Fortunately, Starre and Queazy find him and save him. Then they set sail for tracking down the Saylor brothers. When they find them, they attack the Saylors’ ship with Starre’s ship, using it like a yo-yo. The Saylors contact Bob to let him know they are losing air and that he is going to kill them; however, they refuse to turn over the asteroid. When Bob hits them again with the yo-yo, they finally give up, release the asteroid, and sail away.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe Bob's relationship with Starre.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "386d46cd588944c0b01e5474b324d330", "response_text": "Bob Parker is taken with Starre Lowenthal from the moment she appears in front of him. Starre wears a spacesuit when Bob and Queazy land on her asteroid and begin conducting tests to see if it’s a good fit for Mr. Burnside, and although Bob can’t get a look at her entire appearance, he is immediately attracted to her blue eyes, beautiful brown hair, and full lips. The fact that Starre is curt and demanding does not change his innate attraction to her. Bob does not get offended by Starre’s refusal to hold a real conversation with him; he just keeps trying. Even Starre’s decision to pull out her spasticizer and aim it at the men doesn’t truly deter Bob. He continues to try and convince her that his economic well-being depends on the asteroid. The only time he becomes annoyed with the beautiful girl is when he sets eyes on her perfect ship and assumes that she is already plenty wealthy. Still, he chooses not to attack nor namecall, he simply uses reason to convince her that the asteroid is more useful to him.\n\nMoments later, when the Saylor brothers show up at Starre’s asteroid, Starre already has a good feeling about Bob and Queazy. That’s why, when Wally and Billy attack the trio, it is Starre that uses her dumbbell-shaped ship to locate the men and save their lives. Bob and Queazy end up owing everything to the beautiful brunette. Without her, their corpses would be floating through space. \n\nThe first time that Bob sees Starre after she saves his life, he notices the paper flower in her hair and the pretty blue outfit she’s wearing. He can’t take his eyes off of her, and his feelings towards her do not change when she admits that she essentially set them up. She is Mr. Burnside’s granddaughter, and she never intended to let anyone find the perfect asteroid and haul it back to earth. She set up a deal with her grandfather that she knew he couldn’t follow through with. Starre does not want to marry Mac, the man that she’s engaged to, and that’s why she was living on the perfect asteroid that Mr. Burnside ordered from Bob and the Saylor brothers. \n\nAlthough Bob has every right to be angry with Starre, he completely falls in love with her on their mission to recollect the asteroid that the Saylor brothers stole from them. He tries to convince her not to marry Mac, but she acknowledges that she must hold up her end of the bargain with her grandfather. Unfortunately, Bob can’t have it both ways. If he wants to save his company from going under, he needs the asteroid, and if he fulfills Mr. Burnside’s order, Starre must marry Mac. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "38148264500c4d498709d1786b411d94", "response_text": "When Bob first meets Starre on the asteroid, he is struck by her physical beauty, but the two of them do not get along. Starre reveals that the asteroid's mineral composition is exactly what Bob had been looking for to fulfill his client's request. However, Starre orders Bob to leave and says he can come back in a month. Although Bob doesn't know this yet, Starre wants to stay there for a month in order to avoid having to get married to her grandfather's protégé Mac and send away anyone who might come and try to take the asteroid back to her grandfather. Starre and Bob mostly have a strained relationship until they are both attacked by the Saylor Brothers and left for dead; Starre proves she is more than the spoiled, rich girl Bob thinks she is when she uses her own ship to save Queazy and then Bob. As they track the Saylor Brothers, Bob slowly falls in love with Starre, who seems to have an interest in Bob, too; however, she feels compelled by her obligation to her grandfather to marry Mac. Although Bob is unhappy that she cannot reciprocate his feelings, he still devises a plan to take down the Saylors and promises Starre they will come up with a plan to help her avoid the marriage. Starre seems pleased by this and encourages Bob as he implements his plan of attack against the Saylor Brothers."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "83005f1ecc264d7fbb6bd1c7d05004c2", "response_text": "Starre Lowenthal is Andrew S. Burnside's granddaughter. She is the cause of her and Bob meeting, since she was the one who ordered this exact asteroid to be delivered to Earth before her wedding - not thinking it would ever actually happen.\nShe rescues both Bob and Queazy after the Saylor brothers attempt to kill all of them by paralyzing them and tossing them into outer space. Starre is crestfallen that she now has to marry Mac, who her grandfather has been pestering her for years to wed. She thought she had the perfect plan to get out of it, but it had all fallen apart when the Saylor brothers were also given the order for the asteroid by her eager grandfather wanting to see the marriage go through. \nDuring the five day journey back to Earth together to intercept the Saylor brothers, Starre and Bob fall in love with each other. Starre provides the idea to make a yo-yo out of her spaceship, and they work happily together with Queazy to get the work done. Bob and Starre are equally elated when the Saylor brothers release the asteroid, though it is unclear what the future for them together holds.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "9f842112a409486c92a9c5da495e500f", "response_text": "When Bob first sees Starre, he is struck by her beauty, but despite her plight, he is determined to take the asteroid to Earth and collect her grandfather’s fee that he needs so badly. Initially, Starre is antagonistic to Bob and Queazy because she is staying on the asteroid to claim it and prevent anyone from taking it. If her grandfather gets hold of it, she will have to marry Mac, a fate she considers worse than death. After the Saylors’ attack on all three of them, Starre and Queazy rescue Bob just as his oxygen is running out. They save his life, and it isn’t long before Bob is in love with her. Starre realizes this, and just before Bob can profess his feelings, she stops him because she will have to keep her word and marry Mac if the asteroid is delivered on time. When Bob devises a way to use Starre’s ship like a yo-yo to attack the Saylors’ ship, he also tells Starre that they will work on a solution to her problem, too. It seems that Bob will try to collect Burnsides’ payment for delivery of the asteroid but somehow prevent Starre from having to marry Mac. \n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Why is the mission to secure Mr. Burnside’s asteroid so important to Bob and Queazy?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "386d46cd588944c0b01e5474b324d330", "response_text": "Bob and Queazy are willing to risk their lives to try and get the asteroid back from Wally and Billy Saylor because their economic survival depends on it. Bob is the president of Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., and his rivals, the Saylor brothers, have put his business in serious jeopardy. Although his novel idea to sell asteroids to wealthy earthmen originally made him some cash, it wasn’t long before other companies got wind of his genius idea and started offering the same service. If the Saylor brothers keep beating Bob and Queazy to the punch, the men will no longer be in business.\n\nWhen Starre demands that Bob and Queazy leave her asteroid since she is the common law owner, both men try to explain to her why they desperately need the rock. The potential to make $550,000 means everything to Bob because his failure to secure that capital means that he and Queazy will lose their business and slave away for the rest of their lives as glass factory workers. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "38148264500c4d498709d1786b411d94", "response_text": "Bob Parker created the idea of the \"asteroid in your back yard\", and since then it has become a fad sweeping Earth. As a result, a number of moving companies have emerged as competitors to Bob's Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., primarily Saylor & Saylor. The Saylor brothers engage in unscrupulous business practices and have crippled Bob's business to the point of desperation. Therefore, Bob and his business partner Queazy need to fulfill Mr. Burnside's extremely specific wedding-asteroid request for his granddaughter; successful completion of the order would net their company $550,000 and save them from financial ruin. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "83005f1ecc264d7fbb6bd1c7d05004c2", "response_text": "This mission to secure Mr. Burnside’s asteroid is so important to Bob and Queazy because it will pay them $5.00 per ton, which they estimate will net them $550,000. They look for it for three weeks before finding it, demonstrating how valuable this job is to them.\nSecuring the asteroid is also a point of pride for them, as they feel their business is threatened by the rival Saylor brothers, and the success of this mission would demonstrate their claim in the business of interplanetary deliveries.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "9f842112a409486c92a9c5da495e500f", "response_text": "Securing Mr. Burnside’s asteroid is critical for Bob’s business to survive. He is having financial difficulty due to stiff competition, particularly from the Saylor brothers. The $550,000 from Mr. Burnside will help prevent his company from going bankrupt and going out of business. Burnside’s order for an asteroid in his back yard is quite specific: it must be 506 feet long, 98 feet at the base and tapering to 10 feet at the apex, 9-12 feet thick, a smooth plane on the top side and a rough plane underneath. It must also be composed of iron ore, tungsten, quartz crystals, and cinnabar. It has to be in Burnside’s back yard before 11:30 am on June 2. The order is so specific that normally Bob and Queazy would not have accepted it, but since the business is about to fold, they are desperate and willing to try to fill it. When they find the asteroid in just three weeks, it seems they have had an incredible stroke of good luck, until the Saylor brothers show up to claim it, too. Filling the Burnsides order is a matter of life or death for Bob and Queazy’s company, and they are prepared to do everything humanly possible to collect the asteroid and take to Earth.\n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does Bob Parker almost die?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "386d46cd588944c0b01e5474b324d330", "response_text": "Bob Parker almost dies after the Saylor brothers find Starre’s asteroid and decide that although Bob and Queazy landed on it first, they want to be the ones to fulfill Mr. Burnside’s order. Bob tries to defend his turf with Starre’s spasticizer, but Wally is able to shoot the gun out of his hands. Bob is unable to defend himself from the ginormous Saylor brothers after he loses Starre’s weapon, and he is beaten in the stomach and thrown into space to float with little oxygen and zero sustenance. He remains isolated, drifting through space, for three weeks before his friend Queazy and Starre are able to locate him. He describes the sensation as “being buried alive.” At the time that he is found, he has only a few short days of oxygen left until he will choke to death. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "38148264500c4d498709d1786b411d94", "response_text": "Soon after Bob and Queazy meet Starre Lowenthal on the asteroid, Wally and Billy Saylor arrive to claim the asteroid for themselves and deliver it to Mr. Burnside. When Bob realizes both companies have received orders from Mr. Burnside, he threatens to report the brothers to the Interplanetary Commission since he arrived at the asteroid first and the law dictates ownership goes to whoever arrived first. Then, Bob grabs Starre's paralyzing spasticizer and signals to Queazy, who quickly throws Billy Saylor into space. Wally shoots the spasticizer from Bob's hand, and Bob knocks Wally's gun away. At the same time, Bob feels a sudden crushing pain and hears Starre screaming before he blacks out. When Bob awakens later, he discovers he is alone in the vastness of space and running out of air. The Saylor brothers have taken the asteroid and left him there to die, separated from Queazy and Starre. He realizes he has only five pounds of air pressure left, and he had been shot by spastic rays. However, his state of suspended animation likely kept him alive long enough to be saved by Queazy and Starre because his body didn't require as much oxygen."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "83005f1ecc264d7fbb6bd1c7d05004c2", "response_text": "Bob Parker almost dies while fighting with the Saylor brothers on the asteroid that he was ordered to deliver by Mr. Burnside. The Saylor brothers are known for using rough force to get their way, and after Bob wakes up unconscious and running out of air (only five pound of pressure left) spinning alone in outer space, he concludes that he must have been given a dose of spastic rays that effected his muscles in an extreme way that caused him to go into suspended animation with very low oxygen demand. \nHe had been floating like that for three weeks before he regained consciousness at the last possible moment before he was going to die alone, and was then rescued by Queazy and Starre after calling on the intercom one last time. His narrow rescue gives him added purpose in retaliating against the Saylor brothers to retrieve the asteroid, which may ultimately win him his love, Starre.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "9f842112a409486c92a9c5da495e500f", "response_text": "Bob Parker almost dies after the face-to-face encounter with the Saylor brothers on the asteroid. When he grabs Starre’s spasticizer to use against them, Wally shoots it out of his hand. Someone hits Bob so hard that he is knocked unconscious and off the asteroid so that he is floating in space. When he regains consciousness, he is down to 5 pounds of oxygen, and as this supply dwindles, he grows weaker, knowing that he is dying either of oxygen deprivation or starvation from being unconscious for so long. Just as his oxygen runs out, Bob curses the Saylor brothers and calls out to Queazy one last time--and Queazy responds. He and Starre locate Bob, and they provide him with oxygen. Queasy explains they would both be dead if not for Starre; she was knocked unconscious, too, but came to and made her way to her ship. She used the direction-finder on the telaudio to locate Queazy and pick him up. Then when they got Bob’s signal, they found him, too. \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51249", "uid": "b7171edacda943a3b5671b0da2e8a0ba", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Spacemen Die at Home\n \n \n By EDWARD W. LUDWIG\n \n Illustrated by THORNE\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!\n \n\n \n Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.\n \n Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....\n \n It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos, were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born.\n \n For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.\n \n The first graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important, because we were the first .\n \n We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had never really existed.\n \n But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us with pride in their eyes.\n \n A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. \"... these boys have worked hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility.\"\n \n The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.\n \n Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time, for I was thinking:\n  He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the first!\n \n \n \n\n \n Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n \n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n \n \"My folks.\"\n \n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n\"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart.\n \n Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the Lunar Lady , a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White Sands.\n \n I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.\n \n My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It wasn't surprising. The Lunar Lady was in White Sands now, but liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.\n  It doesn't matter , I told myself.\n \n Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n \n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big.\n \n And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by the sons of Earth.\n  They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.\n \n \n I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.\n \n \n\n \n At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge, babbling wave.\n \n Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.\n \n His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear rows.\n \n But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n \n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n \n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as good spacemen should!\"\n \n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again, walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm with some silent melody.\n \n And you, Laura, were with him.\n \n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"\n \n I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n \n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for the past year.\"\n \n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an introduction of Charlie.\n \n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.\n \n And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I knew, would find them ugly.\n \n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first to reach the Moon!\"\n \n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n \n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're planning to see the town tonight.\"\n \n \"Why don't you both come with us?\" you asked. \"Our folks have their own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room. Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the Moon?\"\n \n Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian fizzes and Plutonian zombies.\n \n But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.\n \n \"We'd really like to come,\" I said.\n \n \n\n \n On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor should look.\n \n \"Ben,\" he called, \"don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two months to decide.\"\n \n \"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n \n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben? Did he make you an offer?\"\n \n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching astrogation. What a life that would be! Imagine standing in a classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n \n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n \n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n \n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n \n \" Used to want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n \n You bit your lip, not answering.\n \n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n \n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben. We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n \n \"Yes?\"\n \n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n \n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to say, Mickey?\"\n \n \"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n \n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my knees with the blast of a jet.\n \n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have a good weekend.\"\n \n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n'copter.\n \n \"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\n \n \n\n \n I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course. They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things, deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or housework.\n \n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.\n \n At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, \"Only hit Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic. Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough, the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that. Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot.\"\n \n That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.\n \n Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night, to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally streaked up from White Sands.\n \n We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:\n\"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's sort of funny.\"\n \n \"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a spaceman then.\"\n \n \"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?\"\n \n I smiled and shook my head. \"If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson.\"\n \n You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.\n \n There was silence.\n \n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n \n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking, Laura?\"\n \n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n \n \"I could never hate you.\"\n \n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I lived for months, just thinking about it.\n \n \"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles, and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting before you get to them, and afterward they're not really.\"\n \n I frowned. \"And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think maybe I haven't grown up yet?\"\n \n Anxiety darkened your features. \"No, it'd be good to be a spaceman, to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it worth the things you'd have to give up?\"\n \n I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, \"Give up what ?\"\n \n Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.\n \n All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.\n \n Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on the stars.\n \n Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that I'd never noticed before.\n  You can go into space , I thought, and try to do as much living in ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally alone, never finding a home.\n \n  Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous dust.\n \n \n \"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"\n \n \"It's all right,\" I said, clenching my fists. \"You made sense—a lot of sense.\"\n \n \n\n \n The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin, tight coughs.\n \n Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. \"I'm leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought maybe you'd like to have 'em.\"\n \n I scowled, not understanding. \"Why, Charlie? What for?\"\n \n He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. \"Oh, it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years. That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky. Some of these days, I won't be so lucky.\"\n \n I tried to laugh. \"You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie.\"\n \n He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. \"Maybe. Anyway, I'm gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the Space Rat , just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a look inside. I'll probably be there.\"\n \n He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.\n \n \"Not used to this Earth air,\" he muttered. \"What I need's some Martian climate.\"\n \n Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered, too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were drugged.\n \n I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n \n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n \n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n \n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n \n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n \n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill the doubt worming through my brain.\n \n But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was gone.\n \n \n\n \n That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy, books, a home-made video.\n \n I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy. I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched their children grow to adulthood.\n \n I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams, I hadn't realized I was different.\n  My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\n \n \n Mickey noticed my frown.\n \n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n \n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n \n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"\n \n \"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the Odyssey , the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me, too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n \n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n \n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n \n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as much as I loved the stars.\n \n And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure, I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\n \n \n\n \n Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n \n One morning I thought, Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\n \n \n All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n \n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I want you to be my wife.\"\n \n You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face flushed.\n \n Then you murmured, \"I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me to marry a spaceman or a teacher?\"\n \n \"Can't a spaceman marry, too?\"\n \n \"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see, Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for maybe two months, maybe two years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?\"\n \n Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. \"I wouldn't have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years, then teach.\"\n \n \"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n \n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears glittering in your eyes.\n \n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened on the Cyclops . There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it was—\"\n \n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n \n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"\n \n That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me sleep.\n  You've got to decide now , I told myself. You can't stay here. You've got to make a choice.\n \n \n The teaching job was still open. The spot on the Odyssey was still open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the way to Pluto.\n  You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.\n \n  Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a line in a history book.\n \n \n I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, \"Get the hell out of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get out there on the Odyssey where you belong. We got a date on Mars, remember? At the Space Rat , just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\"\n \n That's what he'd say.\n \n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n \n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\n \n \n\n \n Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who could be sending me a message.\n \n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping, automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n \n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n\"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n \n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n \n Charles Taggart was dead.\n \n Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.\n \n My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie! The audiogram had lied!\n \n I pressed the stud again. \"... regret to inform you of death of Charles ...\"\n \n I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken voice droned on.\n \n You ran to it, shut it off. \"I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—\"\n \n Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze. The metallic words had told the truth.\n \n I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at Charlie's faded tin box.\n \n Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god, a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.\n \n \n\n \n This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space. It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters instead of children, a medal instead of a home.\n  It'd be a great future , I thought. You'd dream of sitting in a dingy stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky, stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first sign of lung-rot.\n \n \n To hell with it!\n \n I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.\n \n I accepted that job teaching.\n \n \n\n \n And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping, and the house is silent.\n \n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am writing this.\n \n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they could tell me what he could not express in words.\n \n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n \n A wedding ring.\n \n In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife. Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n \n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a man's dream.\n \n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was kind—but that doesn't matter now.\n \n Do you know why he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n \n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother, brothers, the planets his children.\n \n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes after you reach it. But how can one ever be sure until the journey is made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a star and think, I might have gone there; I could have been the first ?\n \n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?\n \n Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n \n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n \n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe on Mars, the Space Rat , just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n \n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n \n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "85e20d36291f4c3eb3be04fdbf2fdf4b", "response_text": "After studying for six years, Ben sits at his U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight graduation. Next to Ben is Mickey, his best friend who also plans to go into deep space. Ben is an orphan, and he wonders if the only person he invited, Charlie Taggart, is there. Ben met Charlie, an accomplished spaceman, when he was a boy, and Charlie took him under his wing. When Ben connects with Charlie after the ceremony, he worries about his gaunt face and terrible cough. \n\nBen then meets Laura, Mickey’s sister. There is an undeniable and instant connection between them. Charlie only has 24 hours to spend with Ben before he has to report back for duty, and although he wants to have some drinks with Ben alone, Laura invites them both over, and Ben can’t help but say yes.\n\nMoments later, Dean Dawson reminds Ben about an offer to teach at the Academy. Mickey takes this opportunity to admit to Ben that he will be working as a Supervisor at White Sands Port. Ben is disappointed to hear that Mickey has chosen to live a boring life, but Mickey insists that he does not want to die in his 30s. \n\nAfter dinner at Mickey’s house, Laura and Ben take a walk together. Laura asks about Charlie’s life before he was a spaceman, but Ben doesn’t have answers for her. He doesn’t know anything about Charlie’s past. Ben looks at Laura and realizes that she has feelings for him, too. When she suggests that a career in deep space may not be worth what Ben would be leaving behind, Ben finds himself at a crossroads. Should he live his dream  or should he settle down with the woman he loves and live an ordinary life?\n\nThe next morning, Charlie gives Ben an old tin with souvenirs inside, and then tells him to meet him at the Space Rat, a little cafe on Mars, when he gets there. Ben still hasn’t chosen a career path and decides to stay with Mickey and Laura and their family until he does. He experiences forty days of happiness with his love, Laura, and forty nights of indecision about which career to choose. Ben asks Laura to marry him, but she says she can’t unless he decides to stay on earth. \n\nThe next day, Ben receives a message informing him that Charlie has died from lung-rot, a disease he got in space. When Ben looks in Charlie’s tin and finds useless trinkets, he decides  to take the teaching job so that he does not live a similarly meaningless life. However, hours later, he looks in the tin again and finds a wedding ring. Ben surmises that Charlie wanted to tell him to take the chance on space, and he believes it’s the right decision to make. He can’t live his life without knowing what the stars look like, even if that means he can’t have Laura too. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "135f12f8d4f047789db372879fa69d6c", "response_text": "Spacemen Die at Home is a story in the form of a letter written from Ben to Laura, explaining his decision to leave her behind on Earth. It all begins in June of 1965 in New Mexico when the first class of the U.S. Academy of Interplentary Flight is finally graduating after six years. These 25 students were trained to take on interplanetary flight and space exploration, so they can continue to discover the outer planets. Robert Chandler gave a speech detailing why these brave men were so important to modern society, as women were not allowed to become space explorers. Mickey and Ben, graduates and friends, sat next to each other during the ceremony. Mickey struggles to find his family in the crowd, and Ben reveals that he was orphaned after his parents died in a rocket crash. A spaceman named Charlie Taggart (Stardust Charlie) raised him instead. He was one of the oldest spacemen ever, having travelled for nearly 25 years, and was the Chief Jetman on the Lunar Lady. \nAfter the ceremony, Ben runs into Charlie and sees how much he’s aged in just a year. He looks ill and drugged, but he still asks Ben to celebrate with him. Before Ben can respond, Mickey and his sister Laura came up to him. He is instantly attracted to her and feels a connection. Ben was supposed to spend the weekend with Mickey and his family, but now that Charlie’s in town he feels conflicted. Both Ben and Charlie decide to join them, despite Charlie not being a family man. Dean Dawson, an academy professor, approaches Ben and reminds him of his job offer at the Academy. Ben turns him down laughing, until Mickey reveals that he is not going to space anymore. Instead, he’ll be the Cargo Supervisor of White Sands Sport. After an awkward dinner together, Laura and Ben went stargazing and spoke of Charlie and the draw of space. Laura hints at loving Ben, but doesn’t say it outright. Charlie left the next day, but left Ben some of his possessions. He knows he hasn’t got much time in this universe, but he goes back to Mars anyways. \nWith several job options to choose from, Ben decides to stay at Mickey’s house for the timebeing. He stays for 40 days and nights, spending much of his time with Laura. He asked Laura to marry him, but she says she’d only marry him if he were a teacher, not a spaceman. Ben was faced with a serious conundrum. The next day he received word that Charlges Taggart died of lung-rot, and Ben broke down. Ben sifted through Charlie’s possessions and decided to take on a the teaching gig for Dawson. However, after looking through the box again, he found a wedding ring. Seeing himself in Charlie, Ben decided to fly to the stone cafe on Mars called the Space Rat where Stardust Charlie said he’d be waiting for him. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "36695036dc4a4779b90033922ea594e9", "response_text": "Nearly the entire story is a recollection of the narrator, Ben, as he writes a letter to his love, Laura, who he is leaving behind for his dreams of becoming a spaceman.\nIn June of 1995, Ben and Mickey are sitting together during their graduation ceremony from the first class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight, looking at out at the audience for their guests. Mickey is cheerful and generally accepts the world with a smile. Ben’s invited guest, Charlie Taggart, is a pioneering spaceman of 25 years who he thinks of as a parental figure since his parents died in a strato-jet crash when he was four. Ben and Mickey both spot their guests, and there is a contrasting moment between Ben’s orphaned upbringing and Mickey’s family.\nCharlie looks different from the other guests, with scars on his face, and a missing button on his suit - known for doing things his own way. Charlie is a veteran of the explorer Everson's first trip to the Moon, and he had spent his life in space. Mickey introduces Ben to his sister, Laura, after the ceremony. Since Mickey has invited Ben to spend the weekend with them, Laura goes a step further to also invite Charlie, which they both accept. Charlie leaves after one night, gifting Ben a tin box of “souvenirs” from his life, foreshadowing his imminent passing.\nAlthough Ben and Mickey both graduated from the school of interplanetary flight, they have both been offered terrestrial jobs. Ben was offered a job teaching Astrogation at the Academy by Dean Dawson. No doubt very prestigious, but Ben dreams of being the first to visit new planets with Mickey. Mickey awkwardly reveals he had a change of heart, citing that spacemen have short lives because of the demands and danger. Mickey was offered a Cargo Supervisor role at the White Sands Port that he accepted because he will “live a lot longer” there.\nBen is deeply uncertain about his future, accepting Mickey’s offer to stay until he figures it out. During the forty days and forty nights he spends with them he falls in love with Laura and contemplates a family life on Earth with her - even proposing marriage to her - but his desire to be a spaceman remains a barrier to them being together. After Ben learns of Charlie’s death (at “home” on Mars), he remembers the box Charlie gave him. At first he thinks it’s pitiful that there are trinkets in place of the family Charlie might have had on Earth, and makes a decision to take the teaching job and remain on Earth in a safe life with Laura. \nProcessing the contents of the box further, seeing a wedding ring Charlie left for the marriage he couldn’t have due to his life in space, Ben is inspired to again chase his dream in space. He leaves behind the wedding ring and a note (the story) for Laura to find in the morning when he is gone.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "953982fb7f034f29b94098ca62a33764", "response_text": "This story is a letter from Ben to Laura, and starts with Ben's retelling of his graduation day from the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight, with inspiring quotes from the guest speaker about how important spacemen are to society. Ben and his friend Mickey looked around for the one person Ben had invited: Charlie Taggart, aka \"Spaceman Charlie\". They spotted him, and Ben was relieved; the three of them went out afterwards to celebrate along with Mickey's sister, Laura. Ben explained that he'd been offered a teaching job at The Academy but wanted to join an exploratory crew. After getting to the helicopter, Ben eventually met Laura and Charlie's parents--simple people who were happy to live on Earth and not be going anywhere any time soon. Charlie did his best to interact with these new people, even though he told some disturbing stories. Laura and Ben headed to the terrace to look for rockets and talked about Charlie; Laura had a lot of questions about his past. They shared a quiet moment, appreciating each other, before Laura made a comment about the desire to go to the stars might be a disappointment: if they weren't what they seemed, maybe they would never be enough. She asked Ben if he really wanted to give up everything he could have, making Ben sad. The next morning, Charlie returned to work and left a box of belongings with Ben; it was only then when Ben became worried about the coughing he'd noticed over the past day, and his glassy eyes and stiff movements. Before they could talk, Charlie was gone. Later, in Mickey's room, Ben reflected on how his childhood was different from that of other children, after his parents died in a rocket crash. It was after this that he realized he wasn't sure if he wanted to stay or to go, and agreed to stay with Mickey's family until he made a decision about what to do. He spent most of the time with Laura, and after forty days of this he proposed to her, prompting her to ask what he wanted to do for his job. She didn't want to marry someone who would be absent, or someone in such a dangerous profession, but would feel better if he stayed and worked as a teacher, because she loved him too.  It was the next day that Ben got the news that Charlie had died from lung-rot. Shocked, he looked through the box of belongings that Charlie had left him, and after seeing what little Charlie had left behind in terms of meaningful connections, he called The Academy to accept the teaching job. In the end, though, Ben recognized that he would never be happy without trying to explore the stars, so he tells Laura he will not be around when she wakes up because he has to see what's out there, and takes Laura's wedding ring and that of Charlie's wife with him, as mementos. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is peoples' perception of spacemen?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "85e20d36291f4c3eb3be04fdbf2fdf4b", "response_text": "Ben experiences a lot of anxiety at his graduation from the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight because of the high expectations he perceives that the audience has of the 25 men who are graduating. The students have spent the last six years of their lives dedicating themselves to learning about minerals, metals, colonization, and space travel for the sake of helping the people on Earth. The class of 1995 is the first of its kind, and the family members and friends who attend the graduation understandably have very high hopes for the graduates. The graduation speaker is Robert Chandler, a spaceman who landed a rocket on Mars and created the first colony there. He has also traveled to Venus twice. For most laymen, accomplishing something as adventurous as landing on other planets is unthinkable, and the men graduating are the next in line to make such unthinkable journeys. \n\nBen looks out over the crowds of people and thinks to himself that these strangers are looking at him as if he’s some sort of god. He knows that they expect the world from him and his fellow graduates, and he worries that he won’t be able to deliver on such incredible promises. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "135f12f8d4f047789db372879fa69d6c", "response_text": "Spacemen are highly valued and, in some ways, superior members of society. Only a very small group of people were selected to attend the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight, which shows how selective and exclusive these members of society are. Although their work is valued and fawned over, those who work in space are often killed early on in their careers. The mortality rate is extremely high in this job and increases with every trip taken. With such a dangerous reputation, the family members of spacemen see the darker side of it: solitude, fear, and sadness. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "36695036dc4a4779b90033922ea594e9", "response_text": "Ben reflects on the pressures of being a spaceman during graduation, that there is a lot expected from them; such as making “a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth.” \nAs Ben and Mickey talk about their futures, Mickey reveals he is no longer going to become a spaceman because their lives are short. Mickey reveals for the first time in the story the dangers of the job, the exposure to uncertainty and hazards, and the demands it places on a human body.\nAlthough it is a high pressure, dangerous job, being a spaceman is romanticized through Ben’s childhood dream while he ultimately commits to see through at the end of the story. The allure of adventure in space and seeing the unknown for himself is a stronger draw than a safe life of certainty on Earth.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "953982fb7f034f29b94098ca62a33764", "response_text": "In the speech that Robert Chandler gave to the first graduating class of the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight, he reminded the students that the six years of training would pay off for society, and that these spacemen would retrieve metals and minerals that the people of Earth needed, find new land, and inspire others, all of which were necessary things for the society. However, Ben and Mickey know it can be a dangerous profession: Mickey explains that on the more dangerous missions, where one is one of the first on a planet, you're lucky to live five to ten years. This is important because Laura has this knowledge when she talks to Ben about their possible future together. She knows that he could die, their children could be exposed to dangerous radiation, and he would likely always be looking for the next adventure instead of coming home to her. In general, the spacemen are appreciated for their services to the society but there is some understanding of the limitations on the types of meaningful personal connections they are able to make."}]}, {"question_text": "What role does Charlie Taggart play in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "85e20d36291f4c3eb3be04fdbf2fdf4b", "response_text": "Charlie Taggart, also known as Stardust Charlie, is a very important character in the story. Ben is orphaned at the age of four when his parents perished in a strato-jet crash. Within a few years, he meets Charlie, a successful spaceman, at the Long Island Spaceport. He follows him around, eager to learn everything he can about space, and Charlie eventually becomes the closest thing Ben has to a family member. \n\nAlthough Ben doesn’t know if Charlie will show up at his graduation, he is happy to see he has taken 24 hours off of work to come and celebrate with him. He worries, however, that Charlie looks very ill. He becomes even more concerned when Charlie leaves a small tin for Ben to look through after he leaves. Charlie admits that he has cheated death many times, and he knows he won’t be able to escape it forever. Ben remains hopeful that they will see each other again when Charlie tells him to meet him at the Space Rat, a cafe on Mars. \n\nAfter Ben receives word that Charlie died from lung-rot, he takes it as a sign that he should stay on earth and live an ordinary life with Laura as his wife. The trinkets in Charlie’s tin do not impress Ben or symbolize a life well-lived. Yet, hours later, Ben finds Charlie’s wedding ring and changes his mind about his entire life’s path. He knows that Charlie wanted to talk to him alone before he died, and he never gave him the chance to tell him about the same difficult decisions he had to make. Ben realizes that Charlie’s life may not be one that’s suitable for everyone, but it was certainly a life worth living. Charlie returned to space knowing that he was about to die because the planets and moons and stars were his reason for living. To Charlie, the sacrifices he made to be a spaceman were worth it, and Ben sees that he wants that for himself as well. \n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "135f12f8d4f047789db372879fa69d6c", "response_text": "Charlie Taggart or Charlie Stardust acts as a father figure and caregiver for Ben, one of the graduates of the U.S. Academy for Interplanetary Flight. Stardust Charlie has worked as a spaceman for nearly 25 years, one of the longest careers ever seen. His presence in Ben’s life furthered his love of space, and Charlie’s recommendation allowed Ben to attend the U.S. Academy for Interplanetary Flight. \nIn the end, Charlie dies of lung-rot right where he wanted to: in a stone cafe on Mars. Space was his home, not Earth. Charlie’s death causes a slight crisis for Ben when he has to decide if he should stay on Earth or take to the skies. At first, he decides to stay so he can marry Laura and live a long and happy life with her. He didn’t want to die alone like Charlie. However, after discovering a wedding ring hidden in Charlie’s possessions, he realizes that despite Charlie’s solitary lifestyle he was never truly alone. Space was his true home, and Ben decides that space truly can’t be that lonely if men like Charlie are out there flying around. He decides to leave Laura and all his domestic dreams behind on Earth and follow his mentor to Mars, so he can meet in the place where he took his last breath: the Space Rat on Mars. Ben realizes that no matter where he goes, he will always carry Charlie and Laura with him. Charlie’s presence and death acts as a catalyst in two of Ben’s major life decisions. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "36695036dc4a4779b90033922ea594e9", "response_text": "Charlie Taggart represents the childhood dream Ben has been working towards of becoming a spaceman and being the first to explore a new planet. Ben thinks of Charlie as the example of what future him would be like if he were to take the berth on the Odyssey. Charlie is also actively helping him to achieve that dream, as Ben remembers Charlie’s recommendation finally getting him in as a cadet to become a spaceman.\nCharlie acts as a guide in the story, made possible because Ben trusts him so deeply. Ben treats Charlie as family, even inviting him to his graduating ceremony as part of the first class of the US Academy of Interplanetary Flight. Ben thinks of him as a parent and a friend, since both of his parents are deceased.\nCharlie avoids being sentimental, and Ben doesn’t realize he is dying when he gives him a small metal box after his graduation. Ben doesn’t open it until after he learns of Charlie’s death - a shocking realization that immediately causes him to drop his dream of becoming a spaceman and choose a life on Earth with Laura. However, the sentimental items in Charlie’s box make Ben reconsider that decision. Thereby, guiding Ben’s life in a different direction.\nCharlie is an inspiration to Ben and he ultimately chooses to become a spaceman and leave the safe life with Laura on Earth (even though it pains him) because he has to see the moon and other planets for himself.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "953982fb7f034f29b94098ca62a33764", "response_text": "Charlie Taggart, aka \"Spaceman Charlie\", was a seasoned spaceman who had been to the moon and on a regular shuttle mission between the moon and New Mexico. Because Ben did not have family left alive, Charlie was the one person who Ben invited to his graduation; he had met him as a child, they got to know one another, and it was Charlie's recommendation that got Ben into the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. He had aged much in the year before Ben's graduation, but did show up to the ceremony, ready to celebrate with Ben. After a day of celebration, Charlie left a box of belongings with Ben as he went back to work. It was then that Ben started to worry about Charlie's health. After spending forty days with Mickey's family trying to decide what he wants, Ben got the news that Charlie had died from lung-rot. When Ben looked through Charlie's possessions, he realized that there was a lack of evidence of real human connection, and this pushed Ben to call The Academy and accept the teaching job so that he could be with Laura and not run away to the stars. At the same time, Ben reflected on the stories he had been told and the life Charlie had lived. Charlie had been married, but learned the hard way that he could not have both a family and the stars. Eventually, Ben decided to go into space instead of staying with Laura, but the only context he had for the decision was Charlie's stories. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does Ben's childhood affect him later in life?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "85e20d36291f4c3eb3be04fdbf2fdf4b", "response_text": "Ben becomes an orphan when he is just 4 years old. The first person he finds that he can trust and look up to is Charlie Taggart, who also happens to be a spaceman. From this point forward, Ben’s life revolves around reaching his dream of going to the stars. When he sits in his best friend Mickey’s childhood bedroom, he realizes that he never got to experience a “normal” childhood, and this probably impacted his life’s goals. The bedroom contains trophies, books, videos, and other treasures from typical childhoods. Ben sees that his life, filled with dorms, rules, and routines, completely lacked a warmth that he would have experienced if he had grown up with parents who loved him. All he had to rely on were his dreams for his future. He never got to experience the little moments of pleasure and togetherness that families have. Ben put all of his energy into becoming a spaceman because it would make him special, and it was something supremely important to work towards. He has no idea who he would be if his parents hadn’t died. "}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "135f12f8d4f047789db372879fa69d6c", "response_text": "When Ben was a child, his parents were tragically killed in a rocket crash, leaving him orphaned and alone. Although the story doesn’t reveal the exact circumstances or series of events, Ben eventually winds up in the hands of Charlie Taggert who looks after him as a father, mother, and brother. Charlie’s devotion to space inspires a love for it in Ben and sets him on the path to interplanetary flight. Without Ben’s parents dying, he may never have met Charlie or attended the U.S. Academy for Interplanetary Flight. \nAs well, his childhood prepared him for a life of solitude. He was not a family man by nature or by nurture, which made his ascent into space much easier. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "36695036dc4a4779b90033922ea594e9", "response_text": "Ben’s parents both died in a strato-jet crash when he was four, leaving him with no mother and father. He realizes while he is an invited guest staying with Mickey and Laura at their parent’s house after his graduation that they had a childhood different from his. Their childhood bedrooms and their upbringing was something that he all of a sudden felt he was lacking due to his experience growing up in dormitories with rules and regulations. He cites that his singular focus on his dream to be a spaceman didn’t allow him to stop and notice the things that he felt he missed in his childhood.\nThis childhood of separation from family, and attaching himself to a pioneering lone-wolf spaceman (Charlie) after pestering him while he was a child in a spaceport, led Ben to romanticize and want a life of opportunity to be the first to see new planets. That dream, and the independence he had known since childhood ultimately led him to choose a life in space instead of settle into a family on Earth with Laura.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "953982fb7f034f29b94098ca62a33764", "response_text": "One major event in Ben's childhood changed his life in a large number of ways. His parents died in a rocket crash when he was young, which caused two immediate effects: Ben's lack of parental figures in his life, which spurred his interest in Charlie and causes his childhood to be irregular in other ways, and Ben's general interest in rockets. In this way, rockets have affected him at various stages in life: he would have lived a very different life if they didn't exist, because his parents would not have died, but he would not have had them to attach his big dreams to either, which means that maybe he would have been perfectly happy staying on Earth with Laura in another version of events. He had to clutch onto his dreams as he was growing up because everything he saw was structure. As he put it, it was a \"cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and routines and rules\". His dreams of going to the stars, then, were his way of escaping this structure. He would never have applied to the U.S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight otherwise. "}]}, {"question_text": "How does Ben's relationship with Laura change over time?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "1", "uid": "85e20d36291f4c3eb3be04fdbf2fdf4b", "response_text": "When Ben meets Laura, Mickey’s sister, at his spaceman graduation, he feels an instant connection with her. He enjoys talking to her and wants to learn everything there is to know about her. Although he’s happy to see Charlie Taggart, the closest thing he has to a family member, he chooses spending time with Laura and her family over spending time with Charlie alone. He can’t help feeling drawn to her. \n\nAt first, Ben is completely oblivious to the feelings that Laura has for him, but after a walk under the stars together, he sees that she also sees a future with him. He has never before considered living on earth, getting married, owning a house, and settling for a “boring” life, but after she suggests that visiting the stars might just be like her trip to England, he wonders if she’s right. Maybe he has hyped up space travel so much and it will end up being a disappointment. Maybe Mickey is onto something, and sacrificing a normal life on earth where living to old age is expected is not a choice he should give up so easily. Ben desperately wants to be with Laura. He loves her just as much as he loves the stars. \n\nHe spends forty incredible days with the woman of his dreams, but in the end, it’s not enough to convince him to give up his lifelong dream of being a spaceman. Sure, he’s uncomfortable with the amount of pressure that’s put on him, and he recognizes that he will be risking his life every single day, but he can see that Charlie does not regret giving up the quiet homelife for the incredible adventures that await in space. Ben wants to be the first man to visit a planet or find a helpful mineral or create a useful colony, and his love for Laura cannot change his dreams.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "135f12f8d4f047789db372879fa69d6c", "response_text": "At first, Ben is infatuated with Laura and the dark flecks in her eyes. They grow closer and closer together as Ben’s stay in their house continues on. Between stargazing, conversing, swimming, and dancing, Ben and Laura quickly fell in love. When he asks her to marry him, however, things start to change. She says that she will marry Ben the teacher, but not Ben the spaceman. She does not want to be resigned to a life of solitude, fear, and separation. Ben is forced to make a choice then: Laura or his dreams of being an explorer. Although at first he decides to stay with Laura and become a teacher, he quickly changes his mind. In some ways, he has already married space and is as devoted to it as he was to Laura. He says in the end that he will always carry Laura and Charlie with him wherever he goes, though they may not be there with him physically. Although there was the potential for marriage, it seems that it was not meant to be. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "36695036dc4a4779b90033922ea594e9", "response_text": "Ben and Laura’s relationship moves quickly from the time they meet at Ben’s graduation until he decides to become a spaceman (about forty days later).\nBen meets Laura at his graduation ceremony as part of the first class of the US Academy of Interplanetary Flight. Laura is the sister of his fellow spaceman, Mickey, whom he has become close with during training. Laura learns about Ben before she meets him from the stories told to her by her brother Mickey. When they have Ben and Charlie to their parents house for the weekend, Ben and Laura spend an evening after dinner watching for crimson-tailed continental rockets taking off from White Sands port. It was then that Ben knew Laura liked him.\nMickey invites Ben to stay with them until he decides what to take as his next opportunity - a berth on the Odyssey spaceship with the potential to go to Pluto or a safe job teaching astrogation at the academy. He stays forty days and forty nights. During this time, he falls in love with Laura and proposes to her.\nTheir relationship changes when Laura questions what a life would be like married to Ben as a spaceman. She has fears about bearing children with a spaceman since there was an example of one family having a “monster” child after the father was exposed to radiation in space. She is worried about not seeing her husband for months or years at a time. Ben is torn between the woman he loves and the life he has been dreaming of since childhood to become a spaceman.\nUltimately Ben decides to be a spaceman and leaves Laura the wedding ring in Charlie’s tin box (that was from Charlie’s broken marriage after choosing life in space) as a token of his affection, and of the bittersweetness of having to leave behind a potentially happy life for his love of space. Perhaps Ben one day hopes to return and have Laura still waiting to marry him.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "953982fb7f034f29b94098ca62a33764", "response_text": "Laura is the sister of Ben's friend Mickey, whom he met at their graduation from The Academy. She invited Ben and Charlie to celebrate with her and Mickey after the ceremony, and gives away the fact that Mickey is no longer planning on signing up to be on a rocket with Ben, and wants a safer job. Ben realizes later that night that he and Laura have feelings for each other, so this is motivation for him to stay with Mickey's family while he sorts out what he wants to do. The two spend forty days together before Ben proposes to Laura, who has been trying to figure out what Ben wants for the entirety of their relationship. This is the entirety of their relationship as of the time of the story, starting with their realization of an attraction and an interest in each other and ending in a proposal (that was presumably accepted) and then a breaking-off of the relationship. They both want to be with one another, and Ben wants to get married no matter what, but Laura knows that he cannot live as a spaceman and as a caring and attentive husband to her, so he must choose. In this sense, Laura's outlook is very steady for their entire relationship, as she asked Ben on the first night they met if he really wanted to become a spaceman if it meant giving up everything he could have. A lot changes in the last day or so of Ben's stay with the family, as he receives news that Charlie passed away. It looking through Charlie's belongings that he recognizes that he can't have the space life and the meaningful personal connections he might want (at least of the sort he had with Laura at the time), which makes him come to a snap realization that he should accept the teaching job and stay on Earth. However, his eventually falls to his gut which tells him he would never be happy if he never tried to see the stars, and that his relationship with Laura has to end. Without Charlie's stories and belongings, Ben may not have realized that he would not be able to have the best of both worlds at the same time.\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51361", "uid": "6ed1a21290a74212ace47a00014d033c", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Birds of a Feather\n \n \n By ROBERT SILVERBERG\n \n Illustrated by WOOD\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine November 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo was no problem—they battled for the honor—but now I had to fight like a wildcat to keep a display from making a monkey of me!\n \n\n \n It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see and smell them with ease.\n \n My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist urge.\n \n \"Send them in one at a time,\" I told Stebbins. I ducked into the office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to begin.\n \n The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals happy wherever I go.\n \n Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding arrival. Stuff like this:\n  Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial, there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F. Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until\n2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches can be yours!\n \n \n \n\n \n Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind, the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the other species of the universe.\n \n The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, \"The first applicant is ready to see you, sir.\"\n \n \"Send him, her or it in.\"\n \n The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body. There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones, one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.\n \n \n\n \n His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. \"You are Mr. Corrigan?\"\n \n \"That's right.\" I reached for a data blank. \"Before we begin, I'll need certain information about—\"\n \n \"I am a being of Regulus II,\" came the grave, booming reply, even before I had picked up the blank. \"I need no special care and I am not a fugitive from the law of any world.\"\n \n \"Your name?\"\n \n \"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald.\"\n \n I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick cough. \"Let me have that again, please?\"\n \n \"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for Raymond.\"\n \n \"Of course, that's not the name you were born with.\"\n \n The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation, remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of an apologetic smile. \"My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see.\"\n \n \n\n \n The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.\n\"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?\"\n \n \"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day.\"\n \n \"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and transportation.\"\n \n The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping on one side, two on the other. \"Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I accept the terms!\"\n \n I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into the other office to sign him up.\n \n I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show; the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get to Earth. My conscience won't let me really exploit a being, but I don't believe in throwing money away, either.\n \n The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet, four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at anything short of top rate.\n \n Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.\n \n The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.\n \n \n\n \n It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in\n2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.\n \n Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down, a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.\n \n That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is, of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.\n \n We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms. My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.\n \n After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids, fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.\n \n It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some\n400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.\n \n \"One more specimen before lunch,\" I told Stebbins, \"to make it an even dozen.\"\n \n He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.\n \n He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look about him. He said, in level Terran accents, \"I'm looking for a job with your outfit, Corrigan.\"\n \n \"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only.\"\n \n \"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz XIII.\"\n \n \n\n \n I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line at getting bilked myself. \"Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known for my sense of humor. Or my generosity.\"\n \n \"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job.\"\n \n \"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as Earthborn as I am.\"\n \n \"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth,\" he said smoothly. \"I happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your circus?\"\n \n \"No. And it's not a circus. It's—\"\n \n \"A scientific institute. I stand corrected.\"\n \n There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on his ear without another word. Instead I played along. \"If you're from such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?\"\n \n \"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate back to colloquial speech.\"\n \n \"Very clever, Mr. Gorb.\" I grinned at him and shook my head. \"You spin a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb.\"\n \n He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, \"You're making a big mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect! Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—\"\n \n I pulled away from his yawning mouth. \"Good-by, Mr. Gorb,\" I repeated.\n \n \"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big attraction. I'll—\"\n \n \" Good-by, Mr. Gorb! \"\n \n He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to the door. \"I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you another chance.\"\n \n He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile. This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get a job!\n \n But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket home.\n \n I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.\n \n \n\n \n The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan, and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds. Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him officially.\n \n He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high, and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture, and growled, \"I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me immediately to a contract.\"\n \n \"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks.\"\n \n \"You will grant me a contract!\"\n \n \"Will you please sit down?\"\n \n He said sulkily, \"I will remain standing.\"\n \n \"As you prefer.\" My desk has a few concealed features which are sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of trouble.\n \n The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his warlike race.\n \n I said, \"You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males, because—\"\n \n \"You will hire me or trouble I will make!\"\n \n I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.\n \n The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. \"Yes, you have four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn! For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to the noble Clan Gursdrinn!\"\n \n At the key-word avenge , I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he didn't move. He bellowed, \"I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!\"\n \n \n\n \n I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and one of the most important of those principles is that I never let myself be bullied by anyone. \"I deeply regret having unintentionally insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?\"\n \n He glared at me in silence.\n \n I went on, \"Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon as a vacancy—\"\n \n \"No. You will hire me now.\"\n \n \"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to it.\"\n \n \"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!\"\n \n \"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—\"\n \n You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting all the others.\n \n I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left. They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw, but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was out in the hall.\n \n I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.\n \n \"Come here, you!\"\n \n \"Stebbins?\" I said gently.\n \n \"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he came running in—\"\n \n \"Please, please,\" squeaked the little alien pitifully. \"I must see you, honored sir!\"\n \n \"It isn't his turn in line,\" Stebbins protested. \"There are at least fifty ahead of him.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"All right,\" I said tiredly. \"As long as he's in here already, I might as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins.\"\n \n Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.\n \n \n\n \n The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at full volume.\n \n \"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with yourself.\"\n \n I said, \"I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a female now and—\"\n \n \"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?\"\n \n I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian entry. \"Yes, that's her name.\"\n \n The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. \"It is she! It is she!\"\n \n \"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—\"\n \n \"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress, she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life and my love.\"\n \n \"Funny,\" I said. \"When we signed her three years ago, she said she was single. It's right here on the chart.\"\n \n \"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry, languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You must take me to Earth!\"\n \n \"But—\"\n \n \"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner flame? I must bring her back! \"\n \n My face was expressionless. \"You don't really intend to join our organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?\"\n \n \"Yes, yes!\" wailed the Stortulian. \"Find some other member of my race, if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead lump of stone?\"\n \n \n\n \n It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel happy—not to mention footing the transportation.\n \n I said, \"I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience lie for you, can I?\"\n \n \"Well—\"\n \n \"Of course not.\" I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right along. \"Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up, I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your heart to me.\"\n \n \"I thought the truth would move you.\"\n \n \"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to me,\" I said piously.\n \n \"Then you will refuse me?\"\n \n \"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth.\"\n \n \"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?\"\n \n There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low trick like that on our female Stortulian.\n \n I said, \"I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is.\"\n \n The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, \"There is no hope then. All is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman.\"\n \n He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping. I watched him shuffle out. I do have some conscience, and I had the uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to commit suicide on my account.\n \n \n\n \n About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life started to get complicated again.\n \n Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.\n \n I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII stepped in.\n \n \"How did you get in here?\" I demanded.\n \n \"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way,\" he said cheerily.\n\"Change your mind about me yet?\"\n \n \"Get out before I have you thrown out.\"\n \n Gorb shrugged. \"I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I tell you that I am Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your staff.\"\n \n \"I don't care what your story is! Get out or—\"\n \n \"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second. Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours outside is . He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?\"\n \n I scowled at him. \"Too damn many.\"\n \n \"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead. I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan.\"\n \n I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of the office before I spoke. \"Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is, I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me. I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is that I'm not looking for any of those either. Now will you scram or—\"\n \n The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian, came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.\n \n \"Sorry, Chief,\" Stebbins gasped. \"I tried to keep him out, but—\"\n \n Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out with a roar. \"Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!\"\n \n \n\n \n Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.\n \n Heraal boomed, \"You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!\"\n \n \"Watch it, Chief,\" Stebbins yelled. \"He's going to—\"\n \n An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.\n \n Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.\n \n \"You are J. F. Corrigan?\" the leader asked.\n \n \"Y-yes.\"\n \n \"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint being—\"\n \n \"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the untimely death of an intelligent life-form,\" filled in the second of the Ghrynian policemen.\n \n \"The evidence lies before us,\" intoned the leader, \"in the cadaver of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several minutes ago.\"\n \n \"And therefore,\" said the third lizard, \"it is our duty to arrest you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than\n$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison.\"\n \n \"Hold on!\" I stormed. \"You mean that any being from anywhere in the Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and I'm responsible?\"\n \n \"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?\"\n \n \"Well, no, but—\"\n \n \"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman.\"\n \n \n\n \n Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000 per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.\n \n I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced arrival.\n \n The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a moment and turned to eye the newcomer.\n \n I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I did come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against crackpots.\n \n In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, \"Life is no longer worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me to do.\"\n \n I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers going down the drain. \"Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself! He's—\"\n \n Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.\n \n Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting himself off.\n \n He helped me up. \"Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get you.\"\n \n I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.\n \n \"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian psychology, Corrigan,\" Gorb said lightly. \"Suicide is completely abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who caused their trouble. In this case, you.\"\n \n \n\n \n I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a full-bodied laugh.\n \n \"Funny,\" I said.\n \n \"What is?\" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.\n \n \"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and killed himself , and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and pathetic damn near blew my head off.\" I shuddered. \"Thanks for the tackle job.\"\n \n \"Don't mention it,\" Gorb said.\n \n I glared at the Ghrynian police. \"Well? What are you waiting for? Take that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the local laws?\"\n \n \"The Stortulian will be duly punished,\" replied the leader of the Ghrynian cops calmly. \"But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian and the fine of—\"\n \n \"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know.\" I groaned and turned to Stebbins. \"Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out of this mess with our skins intact.\"\n \n \"Right, Chief.\" Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.\n \n Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.\n \n \"Hold it,\" the Wazzenazzian said crisply. \"The Consulate can't help you. I can.\"\n \n \"You?\" I said.\n \n \"I can get you out of this cheap.\"\n \n \" How cheap?\"\n \n Gorb grinned rakishly. \"Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?\"\n \n I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand, giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.\n \n \"Tell you what,\" I said finally. \"You've got yourself a deal—but on a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and the contract. Otherwise, nothing.\"\n \n Gorb shrugged. \"What have I to lose?\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "a7f565ae5ede4db6983127542cfd1675", "response_text": "Sometime after the year 2903, the narrator of the story, Mr. Corrigan, is having a recruiting day on the planet of Ghryne, which he privately calls MacTavish IV. Mr. Corrigan owns a popular zoo on Earth called the Corrigan Institute - the only place where humans can see other species of the universe. He recruits alien life forms to exhibit at the zoo, and relatively quickly signs eleven new specimens onto his current 690 that are under contract at the institute on earth. This is a viable business because the World Congress declared Earth off-bounds to aliens in 2903, and the only way aliens can now go to Earth is as exhibits in this zoo.\n\nAliens make great sacrifices to come interview with Mr. Corrigan, as it seems he offers them a good deal. Those under contract are required to remain on exhibit for less than one-third of each day and get paid $50 Galactic a week, with expenses and transportation included. \n\nHe interviews many different creatures through the day, with some being noteworthy and some not as much, being ushered away quickly by Mr. Corrigan’s assistant Stebbins. \n\nA Stortulian who claims his wife ran away to the Corrigan Institute, leaving him alone and unable to remarry due to his customs, pleads with Corrigan to let him go to Earth or at the very least to send her back. Mr. Corrigan is slightly frazzled by the story, but ultimately asks the Stortulian to leave, feeling sad and that he may commit suicide upon leaving and losing hope for his wife to return.\nVallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV, was another notable interview. He stormed in and demanded to be signed to contract - and Mr. Corrigan preferred to make his own decisions. Herald felt insulted that the only four Kallerians at the institute were from the Clan Verdrokh, with no representation at all from his Clan Gursdrinn. Corrigan insisted he was unable to take another Kallerian, and apologized for insulting Clan Gursdrinn. This was enough to de-escalate physical violence, but Heraal was not pleased, and had to be escorted out of the room by Auchinleck and Ludlow who were summoned when Corrigan pushed a panic button under his desk.\nIn a surprise twist from what Corrigan had expected - the Stortulian to kill himself, and for Heraal to try to kill him - the opposite happens. Heraal storms in and stabs himself with his own sword, killing him instantly. The Stortulian returns and attempts to murder Mr. Corrigan, who is narrowly saved by being tackled by Gorb. The Ghrynian cops attempt to place a $100,000 fine on Corrigan for causing the death of a being (Heraal, who killed himself after being refused a contract). Gorb offers to get Corrigan out of the situation for $5000 and a contract to the institute, which is accepted.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "011f026b8e7f4821a9cc45e28768dac0", "response_text": "Mr. Corrigan, of the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science, is visiting MacTavish IV (Ghryne) in the Caledonia Cluster for a few days to hold interviews for new specimens to be featured in his zoo. All life forms, aside from Terra, were banned from ever visiting Earth since 2903, so the only way to get in is to be viewed for science, hence the zoo. The Institute has 690 specimens currently, encompassing 298 life-forms. He brings his men with him, Auchinleck, Stebbins, and Ludlow, to help calm the masses. His first applicant of the day walks in: a round creature with five eyed-arms and two legs. He introduces himself as Lawrence R. Fitzgerald of Regulus II, showing himself to be a Terraphile. Corrigan signs him on for half the normal pay and sends him on his way. A urisinoid from Aldebaran IX is next, but Corrigan has no need for another one. He signs a creature from Donovan’s Planet, since they are such crowd-pleasers, and nine more. He also turns down at least 87 other life-forms, only of which, a Vegan, he feels remorse about. \nHis last specimen before lunch seems to be an Earthman pulling a con. He calls himself Ildwar Gorb and claims he’s from Wazzenaxx XIII. Corrigan doesn’t believe his tale and sends him out, though Gorb promises he’ll change his mind before long. \nAfter lunch, trouble starts to arise. A Kallerian comes in and demands a place in his zoo, even though they already have four. Vallo Heraal of Clan Gursdrinn feels Corrigan has insulted his clan by only hiring members of Clan Verdrokh. Corrigan tries to calm him, but nothing can assuage his anger. He presses his trouble button, and his men come in and take Heraal away. \nA small alien runs into the room, sneaking past Stebbins, and begs to be brought to Earth so he can reunite with his soulmate, a previously hired Stortulian. She ran away from him when she got the opportunity to live on Earth, and, per Stortulian customs, the Stortulian was not allowed to remarry. \nCorrigan turns him down and continues on with his day until Gorb arrives again. He snuck past his men and offers himself as staff. Corrigan says no, but just then the Kallerian comes crashing in and commits hara-kiri, killing himself in front of the crowd. The police enter and claim Corrigan was the cause of his death since he had just filed a complaint against him. He can either be arrested or fined $100K. Next, the Stortulian walks back in and claims there is no reason to keep living. Unlike the Kallerian, he attempts to murder Corrigan by shooting his gun. However, Corrigan is shoved out of the way by Gorb. The Stortulian is arrested, and his actions are explained by Gorb. \nCorrigan decides to call his lawyer, but Gorb offers him a deal he can’t refuse. Five thousand dollars as well as a contract, and he’ll get Corrigan out of trouble. Corrigan agrees. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9042ed21496426ca1a5513382b0169f", "response_text": "J.F. Corrigan is the proprietor of the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science, a glorified Terran zoo that offers spectators a glimpse at several hundred species of non-terrestrial life forms from all over the galaxy. Corrigan prides himself on actually employing his exhibits rather than hunting them down. Because Earth had closed its borders in the 29th century to non-terrestrial visitors, getting a job at Corrigan's zoo is a popular way for non-terrestrials to visit the planet and make a decent living at the same time. Corrigan offers good pay, short hours, and cover transportation costs and other expenses. Although he is generous, he is also thrifty and not above conning the public in the name of advancing his business. Corrigan arrives at the planet Ghryne to interview potential new non-terrestrials for his exhibition assisted by his employees Stebbins, Auchinleck, and Ludlow. He interviews dozens of non-terrestrials from planets all over the galaxy, including Mr. Lawrence R. Fitzgerald, a self-described Terraphile from Regulus II who wants to go to Earth so badly he is willing to work for less pay. Next, Corrigan meets Ildwar Gorb, a non-terrestrial from Wazzenazz XIII who looks remarkably like a human and claims to communicate through telepathic projection. Because of this similarity, Corrigan suspects him of actually being an Earthman attempting to con him for a free ride back to Earth. He dismisses Gorb, who implores him to reconsider and promises to return. After Gorb leaves, a Kallerian named Vallo Heraal enters and demands Corrigan hire him immediately or he will cause trouble. Wary of the Kallerian's size and threats, Corrigan fingers the meshgun trigger hidden under his desk in case he needs to protect himself. After Auchinleck and Ludlow escort Heraal out of the room, a small Stortulian enters Corrigan's office and tells him he doesn't want to work for him necessarily, but he is seeking passage to Earth so he can be reunited with his wife, who is currently under Corrigan's employ at the Institute.  When Corrigan refuses, the Stortulian leaves, and Corrigan process several dozen more applicants. When Gorb reenters and offers to replace Stebbins due to his incompetent handling of the non-terrestrials waiting in line, Corrigan threatens to have him thrown out. At that moment, Heraal returns, brandishing a large sword, which he uses to kill himself in front of everyone. As Corrigan processes this turn of events, the Ghrynian police enter and charge Corrigan with Heraal's death which includes a $100,000 Galactic fine. Next, the Stortulian reenters and attempts to shoot Corrigan, who is saved by Gorb. Gorb offers to solve Corrigan's legal liability for the death of Heraal in exchange for $5,000 Galactic and a contract with the Corrigan Institute. Corrigan agrees to the arrangement, so long as Gorb upholds his end of the bargain first."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "ef88bf683be64fd68c6c988c624f28a9", "response_text": "J. F. Corrigan of Earth’s Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science is on the planet MacTavish IV (aka Ghryne by its natives) to recruit alien life forms as specimens for display in what is effectively a zoo. This is the only way aliens can visit Earth because in 2903 the World Congress declared Earth off-limits for non-terrestrials. Throughout the day, Corrigan interviews many colorful, interesting alien life forms, ultimately hiring about two dozen. His goal is to have a collection of at least one member of 500 different races and currently has 298. He rejects some applicants simply because he already has specimens of their type. One applicant, Gorb, looks and sounds like a human but claims to be from a plant named Wazzenazz XIII. Corrigan is convinced he is just a human and sends him on his way, but Gorb says he will be back to give Corrigan another chance. \nLater in the day, Corrigan has two troublesome interviews, the first with a distraught Kallerian named Vallo Heraal who wants to be hired because four other Kallerians have been hired from a different clan than his, and he feels his clan has been insulted. Corrigan apologizes for having unintentionally insulted Heraal’s clan but explains that he doesn’t need any more Kallerians now; he offers to give preference to Heraal’s clan when there is a vacancy. Unappeased, Heraal warns Corrigan that he will be sorry, and Corrigan sends for members of his team to escort him out. Next, a squirrely-looking Stortulian slips in, exclaiming that he must speak with Corrigan. The Stortulian explains that he is there because his wife is on Earth in Corrigan’s display. She left him because she wanted to go to Earth, and now he is lonely but forbidden by his customs to remarry. He doesn’t want to be hired but just wants passage to Earth to persuade his wife to return home. Corrigan patiently tells the Stortulian he can’t take him because it would be illegal. The Stortullian accepts defeat, saying he has no hope at all, and Corrigan has the distinct impression that the fellow is going to commit suicide. \nAt the end of the day, Gorb returns, asking Corrigan to hire him to work with his company. Heraal crashes in and tells Corrigan he has contacted the authorities and accused him of causing the death of a life-form before he kills himself. The police arrive to arrest Corrigan, but the Stortulian returns, again claiming his life isn’t worth living and fires a shot at Corrigan who is saved by the swift action of Gorb who pushes him out of the way.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Mr. Fitzgerald and what happens to him in the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "a7f565ae5ede4db6983127542cfd1675", "response_text": "Lawrence Raymond Fitzgerald is a being of Regulus II, who is a self-procclaimed Terrophile, who changed his name to a famous human’s which pleases Mr. Corrigan.\nMr. Fitzgerald had a very deep voice, and was a yellow-green spherical shape the size of a basketball, with two double-kneed legs and five double-elbowed arms. He had size eyes, one with no eyelid right at the top of his head, and a mouth with no teeth.\nHe was fortunate to be in-demand for the zoo - Mr. Corrigan saying that he needed a Regulan - and is signed extremely quickly onto contract with Mr. Corrigan during his interview. He’ll be paid $50 Galactic per week on Earth, which is very pleasing for him.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "011f026b8e7f4821a9cc45e28768dac0", "response_text": "Mr. Fitzgerald is a Regulan, an alien with two legs, five arms covered with eyes and two elbows, and of a chartreuse-y color. His shape is similar to a basketball, and his face features one eyeball and a large toothless mouth. He introduces himself as Lawrence R. Fitzgerald, the R standing for Raymond, and says he came from Regulus II. He chose a Terra name to show how dedicated he is to Earth. He calls himself a Terraphile. \nMr. Fitzgerald wants to be a member of Corrigan’s Institute so he can live on Earth, and Mr. Corrigan can see that clear as day. He offers him half the pay that everyone else normally receives, and Mr. Fitzgerald accepts it happily. He will be able to see Earth after all, but he was scammed. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9042ed21496426ca1a5513382b0169f", "response_text": "Lawrence R. Fitzgerald is a Regulan from the planet Regulus II in the Caledonia Cluster. He is a round, yellowish-green creature about the size of a big basketball. He stands on two spindly double-kneed legs and has five double-elbowed arms spaced around his body. Fitzgerald has a large, toothless mouth and five eyes above each arm. At the top of his head is an eye without an eyelid. He is a little bit shy and nervous and speaks in a deep, respectful voice when Mr. Corrigan interviews him for an exhibition position with his zoo. Fitzgerald demonstrates his knowledge of the requirements and benefits of the position and accepts the lower pay of $50 Galactic per week purely because he considers himself a Terraphile and wants nothing more than to see Earth. In fact, he loves Earth so much that he shed his Regulan name and took on the name of Lawrence Raymond Fitzgerald. The Regulan gesture for an apologetic smile involves closing the eyes and turning around 360-degrees, which Fitzgerald does when he reveals the truth about his name to Mr. Corrigan. Corrigan is so pleased with Mr. Fitzgerald that he hires him immediately for the show, and Fitzgerald claps his many hands in celebration."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "ef88bf683be64fd68c6c988c624f28a9", "response_text": "Lawrence Raymond Fitzgerald is the first alien that Corrigan interviews. He is a creature from Regulus II, a basketball-sized, yellow-green globular being with five double-elbowed arms, two double-kneed legs, five eyes, and a gaping, toothless mouth. Fitzgerald boldly declares that he is a Terraphile and has changed his name for that reason. He also states that he needs no special care and is not a fugitive from any world law, showing that he would not be a burden if he is hired. He says he understands the terms, which involve being placed on exhibition for a maximum of one-third of each sidereal Terran day in exchange for transportation and expenses, terms that he is happy to accept. Corrigan hires him on the spot for $50 Galactic per week, which is half their usual rate. Fitz, of course, doesn’t know this, but is thrilled to be hired and accepts the offer immediately. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Gorb and what happens to him in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "a7f565ae5ede4db6983127542cfd1675", "response_text": "Ildwar Gorb is a human-looking alien of the planet Wazzenazz XIII in the Crab Nebula. He claims to have never been within “a dozen parsecs of Earth,” but to look so human-like due to an evolutionary fluke. As he is interviewing with Mr. Corrigan, he says he is not actually speaking, but is a telepathic that communicates in symbols that are translated into the colloquial speech of the person he is interacting with.\nHe appeals to Mr. Corrigan to be exhibited as a specimen, but when Corrigan in unconvinced Gorb isn’t just a regular human trying to fool him, he also tries to appeal to him to hire him as a member of his human staff. This is also a no, since Mr. Corrigan would be breaking the law to do so if he was an alien.\nGorb throws himself at Mr. Corrigan to tackle him and save his life from a murder attempt by the Stortulian. This gesture buys him enough goodwill for Corrigan to accept his offer to get him out of the trouble with the Ghrynian cops. He will do the job for $5000 and a contract to the Corrigan Institute - ultimately getting him what he wanted in the first place.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "011f026b8e7f4821a9cc45e28768dac0", "response_text": "Gorb is a tall, thin humanoid or man with blue eyes and sandy hair. Despite being well-dressed and clean, Mr. Corrigan still claims he was shabby-looking. He introduces himself as Ildwar Gorb and claims he’s from the planet Wazzenazz XIII. Mr. Corrigan immediately believes he is simply an Earthman who ran out of money and is trying to find passage home. However, Gorb continues on, claiming Wazzenazz XIII is home to a race of people similar to that of Earth, and that he doesn’t speak English, he’s in fact telepathic. He asks to be a specimen in Corrigan’s zoo, but he refuses and sends him away. \nLater in the story, Gorb arrives again, having sneaked back his guard, and asks to join his staff if he can’t be a specimen. Corrigan admits Stebbins is lack-luster, but still turns him down. After the Kallerian kills himself and Mr. Corrigan is charged guilty, Gorb bides his time and waits for his moment to step in. When the Stortulian arrives and attempts to murder Mr. Corrigan, Gorb saves his life by pushing him out of the way of the blast. Gorb explains the difference between Kallerian and Stortulian cultures to a wide-eyed Mr. Corrigan and once again offers his services. He claims he can get Mr. Corrigan out of the legal mess for only a $5,000 fee and a contract to be a specimen in his zoo. Mr. Corrigan hesitantly agrees. \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9042ed21496426ca1a5513382b0169f", "response_text": "Ildwar Gorb is a non-terrestrial from the planet Wazzenazz XIII, a small planet in the Crab Nebula. He is tall and thin with pale blue eyes, dirty-blond hair, and he strongly resembles an Earthman; he even speaks in Terran accents and has human-like teeth. When he first meets Corrigan, he is clean and well-dressed, but Corrigan notes he looks a bit shabby. Although he has never been anywhere close to Earth, he tells Corrigan his race is identical to the human race and speaks through telepathic projection, and he is looking for a job with Corrigan's zoo, which he calls a \"circus.\" Corrigan is attracted to his glib personality, but he denies him a job because he believes he is an Earthman attempting to con him for a free trip back to Earth. When Gorb leaves, he implores Corrigan to reconsider and tells him he will be back. After several dozen interviews pass, Gorb returns and asks if Corrigan will give him Stebbins' job considering his incompetence in handling bothersome aliens throughout the day. When Corrigan again refuses, Gorb stays in his office as Heraal kills himself in front of them, the Ghrynian policemen enter and charge Corrigan with his death, and the Stortulian comes back and tries to shoot Corrigan. However, Gorb tackles Corrigan to the floor to prevent him from being shot. He predicted the Stortulian's action as he is familiar with their species, and he offers to help Corrigan out of his liability for the death of Heraal in exchange for $5,000 Galactic and a contract with the Institute. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "ef88bf683be64fd68c6c988c624f28a9", "response_text": "Gorb is a human who wants to return to Earth but seemingly can’t afford to do so. He knows how to take advantage of situations, so he tries three approaches to get Corrigan to hire him and take him to Earth. First, he poses as an alien species from a planet called Wazzenazz XIII in the Crab Nebula. Gord is tall and slender with blue eyes and dirty blond hair. He is neat and clean, but his appearance is somewhat shabby, suggesting he might be down on his luck. He claims his name is Ildwar Gorb and that he represents the only humanlike race in the galaxy beyond Earth. He tries to con Corrigan, explaining his humanlike appearance as an evolutionary fluke and his English as telepathic symbols that Corrigan translates into English. Corrigan sees through the ruse, though, and refuses to hire Gorb. Gorb leaves Corrigan’s office saying he’ll give Corrigan another chance.\n\tThat afternoon, Gorb returns to Corrigan’s office, this time setting aside his alien story and presenting himself as a human applying for a place on Corrigan’s staff. He points out that he is familiar with alien life-forms, having lived in the outworlds for half of his life. Gorb says that he would have been able to stop the aliens who unexpectedly entered Corrigan’s office and suggests Corrigan fire Stebbins and hire him in his place. \n\tGorb is present when Heraal returns and commits suicide in Corrigan’s office, and when the police arrive telling Corrigan that they are arresting him for contributing to the untimely death of an intelligent life-form, he hears the police pronounce Corrigan’s penalty of either two years in prison or a fine of $100,000 Galactic. When the Stortulian arrives and tries to shoot Corrigan, Gorb anticipates his action and tackles Corrigan, knocking him to the floor, so that the Stortulian’s shot misses. Afterward, Gorb demonstrates his knowledge of alien life when he explains that Stortulians despise suicide, and when a Stortulian believes someone has caused him trouble, he kills the person who caused the trouble. Gorb also tells Corrigan that he can help him get out of his situation for only $5,000 Galactic and a specimen contract. Corrigan decides that Gorb might be able to help him better than the Terran Consulate, so he accepts Gorb’s offer contingent on Gorb’s success of getting him out of his arrest and fine.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Mr. Corrigan and what is his personality like?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "a7f565ae5ede4db6983127542cfd1675", "response_text": "Mr. Corrigan was an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system prior to the year 2903, when the World Congress made it illegal for aliens to travel to the planet Earth. He seized a business opportunity to open Corrigan’s Institute and collect aliens as scientific specimens, charging humans money to see them on Earth. This turned out to be a very lucrative business, and the zoo was very popular.\n\nMr. Corrigan tries to be fair to those he is interviewing, but is having an exceptionally hard day that is straining his patience. He does not allow himself to be swayed or pushed around by the sad stories (the Stortulian) or the demands (Heraal) of those in the interviews. He is resolved in his assumptions, and is truly shocked when the outcome of who would commit suicide and who would attempt to kill him is revealed.\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "011f026b8e7f4821a9cc45e28768dac0", "response_text": "Mr. Corrigan is an Earthman and the presumed founder of the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science. He travels between planets in order to find rare specimens and bring them back to Earth to showcase in his zoo. He is a businessman at heart and does not feel much or any remorse when turning desperate aliens down. He is also a conman and easily scams Mr. Fitzgerald out of half of his pay after seeing how eager he was to experience Earth. Mr. Corrigan is always looking for the easy way out, but he’s still aware of the dangers he faces. He keeps an array of weapons hidden beneath his desk in case of a violent specimen as well as a distress button if things were to go south. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9042ed21496426ca1a5513382b0169f", "response_text": "Mr. J.F. Corrigan is the proprietor of Corrigan's Institute of Morphological Science, a Terran zoo exhibiting non-terrestrial beings from around the universe. Starting out as an impoverished carnival man working in the Betelgeuse system, Corrigan had taken advantage of the isolationism of the late 29th century to establish his zoo and become a successful businessman. Corrigan claims to not want to exploit the non-terrestrials he employs as displays in his zoo, but he also doesn't want to pay them top dollar for their services. He prides himself on not hunting non-terrestrial and instead prefers to attract them by offering good pay, short hours, expenses, and transportation costs; in addition, he calls himself a \"man of principles\" and advertises about the thrill of show business and romance of life on Earth. Because Corrigan is willing to con the public--he calls himself \"a straightforward double-dealer\"--he believes he understands a con when he sees one, which is why he initially rejects Gorb's interview for a job. Corrigan is used to dealing with species from all over the galaxy, and he is prepared for trouble, so he has a meshgun trigger concealed below his desk and never allows himself to be bullied. In case he needs back up, he also employs Stebbins, who manages the line of non-terrestrials for Corrigan to interview, as well as Auchinleck and Ludlow. One of Corrigan's driving principles in dealing with non-terrestrials is to never make a business decision based upon sentiment as demonstrated by his dealings with the Stortulian. However, this interaction shows that he does feel empathy for those affected by his decisions."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "ef88bf683be64fd68c6c988c624f28a9", "response_text": "J.F. Corrigan is a businessman and owner of the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science. An astute businessman who also manipulates and uses others, he has built a lucrative “institute” that is really just a zoo that exhibits odd-looking aliens. Before his current position, Corrigan was a lowly carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. After the World Congress ruled Terra off-limits for aliens in 2903, Corrigan concocted his business plan. His goal is to display representatives of 500 extraterrestrial species. Corrigan can “read” his interviewees and take advantage of them for his own benefit. For example, when he realizes how eager Mr. Fitzgerald is to see Earth, he hires him for half of what he usually pays, knowing that Fitzgerald’s eagerness will prevent him from realizing the offer takes advantage of him. \n\tThroughout the day of interviews, Corrigan assesses the applicants in terms of their value to him. While he doesn’t mind taking advantage of them, he doesn’t go so far as to cheat them. He is a bit of a con-man himself, hiring Mr. Fitz for half his going rate and placating Heraal with a less-than-heartfelt apology and promise to give members of his clan preference the next time they need to hire a Kallerian. Yet he won’t do anything that blatantly breaks the law such as transporting a Stortulian to Earth when the alien isn’t one of his hirees. He has a limited conscience; when he fears that the Stortulian will commit suicide, he feels bad about it, but he also doesn’t do anything to prevent it. His pragmatism and business acumen override his emotions, preventing him from caving to the creature’s requests, even if it means the creature will commit suicide. Corrigan is also sharp enough to spot a con; he recognizes Gorb for what he is: an Earthman using any means possible to obtain a paid trip to Earth. When Gorb comes across as glib and appealing despite his preposterous story, Corrigan recognizes the man’s similarity to himself. Corrigan acknowledges that he is a double-dealer yets describes himself as a man of principles. Because he is a con man, he is cynical of others. Corrigan is also a manipulator who says what others want to hear (such as calling the planet Ghryne by its native name) because he knows this is a way to win their trust.\n\tCorrigan likes to think of himself as a man who has principles, but some of those principles are the ones that ensure good business decisions rather than the values regarding what is right or wrong. He also thinks of himself as a man with a conscience who doesn’t exploit beings, but that is exactly what he does. He believes that because he pays his employees and they are volunteering to be placed on exhibit, he isn’t exploiting them.\n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the settings the story takes place in.", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "a7f565ae5ede4db6983127542cfd1675", "response_text": "The story takes place during a single day in Mr. Corrigan’s rented office on the planet Ghryne some time after the year 2903. His office has a desk, chairs for his interviewees to sit in, and a sign advertising that extraterrestrials are wanted. There is a waiting room outside the office, and applicants are buzzed in by Corrigan’s assistant.\n\nOn this planet, there is a strong desire for aliens to want to go on exhibit on Earth. Mr. Corrigan profits from having them on display, and is willing to go through long and stressful interview days to hand select his specimens. His desire is to have at least 500 different alien races in his collection.\n\nThere is frequent reference to the location of the Corrigan Institute on Earth, though it is never visited in the story. The Institute is very popular with humans, and has 690 specimens, representing 298 different types of aliens.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "011f026b8e7f4821a9cc45e28768dac0", "response_text": "Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg takes place on what is commonly called Ghryne, or it’s more formal name MacTavish IV. This planet is in the Caledonia cluster and currently the home of Mr. Corrigan’s interviews. The Caledonia cluster is one of the many crossroads of interstellar travel, so it features many specimens from a variety of planets. The story mostly takes place in Mr. Corrigan’s office, featuring a desk and a few chairs for his specimens to sit in. He hides weapons beneath his desk in case of a scary situation, as well as a distress button. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9042ed21496426ca1a5513382b0169f", "response_text": "The story takes place in the 30th century primarily on Ghryne, whose official Terran name is MacTavish IV, a planet in the Caledonia Cluster, which includes other planets such as Aldebaran IX, Regulus II, Donovan's Planet, Stortul XII, and more. Ghryne is in the heart of the Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet, and Mr. Corrigan holds his interviews here for his Corrigan Institute from Thirdday to Fifthday of Tenthmonth. Having been declared off-limits for non-terrestrial beings by the World Congress in 2903, Earth is now an exclusive place to be, which heightens the appeal and romance of working and visiting there. The Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science is a Terran zoo that exhibits non-terrestrial beings from all over the universe. With 690 specimens representing 298 different intelligent life-forms, the ultimate goal of the zoo is to present at least one member of at least 500 different races. Corrigan has a desk equipped with a meshgun trigger that keeps him safe in the event a non-terrestrial becomes hostile towards him."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "ef88bf683be64fd68c6c988c624f28a9", "response_text": "The story takes place sometime in the early 30th century as Corrigan’s ad announces this recruiting trip is his last in the Caledonia Cluster until 2937. Days and months are named by their sequence in the week or year, hence, Thirdday, Fifthday, and Tenmonth. In 2903, the World Congress ruled that aliens were forbidden on Earth unless they were there as a specimen of a scientific collection. This exception is what allows Corrigan to conduct his lucrative business. Most of the story is set In the rented Corrigan office on the planet MacTavis (IV), or Ghryne according to its residents. All of the action takes place on this planet, although there are a few references to Earth. MacTavis (IV) is an ideal planet for Corrgan’s interviews since this planet is at the interstellar crossroads, making it easily accessible for aliens from across the Caledonia Cluster to respond to Corrigan’s ad for alien species to be transported to Earth for display. The planet has the features of a civilization, including city districts organized into blocks, office buildings, and hotels. There is a police department that quickly responds to emergencies and has set penalties for infractions against the law. Ghryne uses the Galactic monetary system. Corrigan’s office has a modern executive set-up where he works in an inner office while his assistants manage his appointments. He has a button he can push to alert his team that they need to escort someone away from his office. Corrigan also has a meshgun mounted under his desk that he can fire in the event of an emergency.  \n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51203", "uid": "45e6eefc1a9f40be83f2b22b2ffbe47b", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "A Coffin for Jacob\n \n \n By EDWARD W. LUDWIG\n \n Illustrated by EMSH\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader?\n \n\n \n Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.\n \n His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.\n \n Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, Martians or Venusians.\n \n Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it was the dead man's hand.\n \n \" Coma esta, senor? \" a small voice piped. \" Speken die Deutsch? Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet? \"\n \n Ben looked down.\n \n The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.\n \n \"I'm American,\" Ben muttered.\n \n \"Ah, buena ! I speak English tres fine, senor . I have Martian friend, she tres pretty and tres fat. She weigh almost eighty pounds, monsieur . I take you to her, si ?\"\n \n Ben shook his head.\n \n \n\n \n He thought, I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.\n \n \n \"It is deal, monsieur ? Five dollars or twenty keelis for visit Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—\"\n \n \"I'm not buying.\"\n \n The dirty-faced kid shrugged. \"Then I show you to good table,— tres bien . I do not charge you, senor .\"\n \n The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.\n \n \n\n \n They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed Earthmen—merchant spacemen.\n \n They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed tombstones.\n \n Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO\n 2\n -breathing Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.\n \n They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape. They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.\n \n Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club against the stone booths.\n  Keep walking , Ben told himself. You look the same as anyone else here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.\n \n \n The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.\n \n \"Here we are, monsieur ,\" piped the Martian boy. \"A tres fine table. Close in the shadows.\"\n \n Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.\n \n He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.\n \n The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of their cirillas or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and forgotten grandeur.\n \n For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He thought, What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world? Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me, felt the challenge of new worlds?\n \n \n He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the faces of the Inn's other occupants.\n  You've got to find him , he thought. You've got to find the man with the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.\n \n \n \n\n \n The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and about forty and he hated spacemen.\n \n His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes.\n \n Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips spitting whiskey-slurred curses.\n \n Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle from a corner of the gaping mouth.\n \n You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind.\n \n It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.\n \n \"Spacemen,\" he muttered, \"are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you see's spacemen.\"\n \n He was a neatly dressed civilian.\n \n Ben smiled. \"If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here.\"\n \n \"The name's Cobb.\" The man hiccoughed. \"Spacemen in their white monkey suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a little tin god.\" He downed a shot of whiskey.\n \n Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the Odyssey's junior astrogation officer. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.\n \n He'd sought long for that key.\n \n \n\n \n At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents' death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books.\n \n At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.\n \n And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey —the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond.\n \n Cobb was persistent: \"Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?\"\n  The guy's drunk , Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three stools down the bar.\n \n Cobb followed. \"You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like people to call you a sucker.\"\n \n Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and held him there.\n \n \"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!\"\n \n Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and without warning, it welled up into savage fury.\n \n His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of life.\n \n He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.\n \n Ben knew that he was dead.\n \n Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as, a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.\n \n He ran.\n \n \n\n \n For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.\n \n At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the city.\n \n He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette. A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone above him through Luna City's transparent dome.\n \n He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run. Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.\n  You can do two things , he thought.\n  You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.\n \n  But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by peeking through electric fences of spaceports.\n \n  Or—\n \n \n There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.\n \n And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a red-bearded giant.\n  So , Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth.\n \n \n After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?\n \n \n\n \n He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new personnel even more so.\n \n Ben Curtis made it to Venus.\n \n There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.\n \n But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways obscure the dead face?\n \n So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.\n \n \"You look for someone, senor ?\"\n \n He jumped. \"Oh. You still here?\"\n \n \" Oui. \" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. \"I keep you company on your first night in Hoover City, n'est-ce-pas ?\"\n \n \"This isn't my first night here,\" Ben lied. \"I've been around a while.\"\n \n \"You are spacemen?\"\n \n Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. \"Here. Take off, will you?\"\n \n Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. \" Ich danke, senor. You know why city is called Hoover City?\"\n \n Ben didn't answer.\n \n \"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner, monsieur ?\"\n \n Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.\n \n \" Ai-yee , I go. You keep listen to good Martian music.\"\n \n The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.\n \n Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a face with a red beard.\n \n A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.\n \n He needed help.\n \n But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The Martian kid, perhaps?\n \n Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of white. He tensed.\n \n Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.\n \n His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.\n \n And then he saw another and another and another.\n \n Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a wheel with Ben as their focal point.\n  You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!\n \n \n \n\n \n Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded, realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been turned on.\n \n The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.\n \n Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.\n \n Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward, falling.\n \n The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.\n \n A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in Ben's direction.\n \n \"Curtis!\" one of the policemen yelled. \"You're covered! Hold it!\"\n \n Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into which the musicians had disappeared.\n \n A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall ahead of him crumbled.\n \n He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the mildly stunning neuro-clubs.\n \n Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit. Another second , his brain screamed. Just another second—\n \n \n Or would the exits be guarded?\n \n He heard the hiss.\n \n It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.\n \n \n\n \n He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of his body.\n \n He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and body overpowered him.\n \n In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice yell, \"Turn on the damn lights!\"\n \n Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that someone had seized it.\n \n A soft feminine voice spoke to him. \"You're wounded? They hit you?\"\n \n \"Yes.\" His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.\n \n \"You want to escape—even now?\"\n \n \"Yes.\"\n \n \"You may die if you don't give yourself up.\"\n \n \"No, no.\"\n \n He tried to stumble toward the exit.\n \n \"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way.\"\n \n Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight flicked on.\n \n Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his vision—if he still had vision.\n \n \"You're sure?\" the voice persisted.\n \n \"I'm sure,\" Ben managed to say.\n \n \"I have no antidote. You may die.\"\n \n His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection, massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender at once.\n \n \"Anti ... anti ...\" The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced from his throat. \"No ... I'm sure ... sure.\"\n \n He didn't hear the answer or anything else.\n \n \n\n \n Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.\n \n He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders, hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to transfer itself to his own body.\n \n For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered constantly above him—a face, he supposed.\n \n He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was a deep, staccato grunting.\n \n But he heard someone say, \"Don't try to talk.\" It was the same gentle voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. \"Don't talk. Just lie still and rest. Everything'll be all right.\"\n  Everything all right , he thought dimly.\n \n There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.\n \n Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:\n \n \"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food.\" Or, \"Close your eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better.\"\n  Better , he'd think. Getting better....\n \n \n At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The mist brightened, then dissolved.\n \n He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.\n \n Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.\n \n \"You are better?\" the kind voice asked.\n \n \n\n \n The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.\n \n \"I—I am better,\" he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. \"I am going to live?\"\n \n \"You will live.\"\n \n He thought for a moment. \"How long have I been here?\"\n \n \"Nine days.\"\n \n \"You took care of me?\" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her sleep-robbed eyes.\n \n She nodded.\n \n \"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?\"\n \n \"Yes.\"\n \n \"Why?\"\n \n Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.\n \n \"Why?\" he asked again.\n \n \"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow.\"\n \n A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.\n\"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?\"\n \n He lay back then, panting, exhausted.\n \n \"You have nothing to worry about,\" the girl said softly. Her cool hand touched his hot forehead. \"Rest. We'll talk later.\"\n \n His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.\n \n When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon or afternoon—or on what planet.\n \n He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless void.\n \n The girl entered the room.\n \n \"Hi,\" she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less prominent. Her face was relaxed.\n \n She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise to a sitting position.\n \n \"Where are we?\" he asked.\n \n \"Venus.\"\n \n \"We're not in Hoover City?\"\n \n \"No.\"\n \n He looked at her, wondering. \"You won't tell me?\"\n \n \"Not yet. Later, perhaps.\"\n \n \"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?\"\n \n \n\n \n She shrugged. \"We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these can be had for a price.\"\n \n \"You'll tell me your name?\"\n \n \"Maggie.\"\n \n \"Why did you save me?\"\n \n Her eyes twinkled mischievously. \"Because you're a good astrogator.\"\n \n His own eyes widened. \"How did you know that?\"\n \n She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. \"I know everything about you, Lieutenant Curtis.\"\n \n \"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—\"\n \n \"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four, you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation. Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?\"\n \n Fascinated, Ben nodded.\n \n \"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the Odyssey . You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture. You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the Blast Inn.\"\n \n He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. \"I—don't get it.\"\n \n \"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we have many friends.\"\n \n He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.\n \n \"I'm sorry,\" she said. \"I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon.\"\n \n \"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk again.\"\n \n She lowered her gaze. \"I hope you'll be able to.\"\n \n \"But you don't think I will, do you?\"\n \n \"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now. Rest.\"\n \n He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.\n \n \"Just one more question,\" he almost whispered.\n \n \"Yes?\"\n \n \"The man I killed—did he have a wife?\"\n \n She hesitated. He thought, Damn it, of all the questions, why did I ask that?\n \n \n Finally she said, \"He had a wife.\"\n \n \"Children?\"\n \n \"Two. I don't know their ages.\"\n \n She left the room.\n \n \n\n \n He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side, his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.\n \n He sat straight up, his chest heaving.\n \n The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly trimmed red beard !\n \n Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his brain.\n \n The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.\n \n And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a chilling wail in his ears.\n \n His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed, the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping relentlessly toward him.\n \n He awoke still screaming....\n \n A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a question already formed in his mind.\n \n She came and at once he asked, \"Who is the man with the red beard?\"\n \n She smiled. \"I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You were looking for him, weren't you?\"\n \n \"Who is he?\"\n \n She sat on the chair beside him.\n \n \"My husband,\" she said softly.\n \n He began to understand. \"And your husband needs an astrogator? That's why you saved me?\"\n \n \"We need all the good men we can get.\"\n \n \"Where is he?\"\n \n She cocked her head in mock suspicion. \"Somewhere between Mercury and Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his ship returns, I'll be going to him.\"\n \n \"Why aren't you with him now?\"\n \n \"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how we operate?\"\n \n He told her the tales he'd heard.\n \n \n\n \n She nodded. \"There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole. The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies.\"\n \n \"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one.\"\n \n \"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people like yourself and Jacob.\"\n \n \"Jacob? Your husband?\"\n \n She laughed. \"Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it? Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either.\"\n \n She lit a cigarette. \"Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies.\"\n \n \"Don't the authorities object?\"\n \n \"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining it, that's our business.\"\n \n She pursed her lips. \"But if they guessed how strong we are or that we have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different. There probably would be a crackdown.\"\n \n Ben scowled. \"What happens if there is a crackdown? And what will you do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't ignore you then.\"\n \n \"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It could be us, you know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up your own.\"\n \n \n\n \n Ben stiffened. \"And that's why you want me for an astrogator.\"\n \n Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. \"If you want to come—and if you get well.\" She looked at him strangely.\n \n \"Suppose—\" He fought to find the right words. \"Suppose I got well and decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me go?\"\n \n Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment, then fear. \"I don't know. That would be up to Jacob.\"\n \n He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion that had coursed through her.\n \n \"The only thing that matters, really,\" she murmured, \"is your walking again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?\"\n \n \"Okay,\" he said.\n \n When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.\n \n He was like two people, he thought.\n \n Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.\n \n He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:\n \n \"A Space Officer Is Honest\" \"A Space Officer Is Loyal.\" \"A Space Officer Is Dutiful.\"\n \n Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts, mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it prisoner for half a million years.\n \n Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2418299adb5540d7a8f9d87b9e5e0f01", "response_text": "Ben Curtis enters a dark gin mill followed by the dead man and a boy offers him a wench. Ben denies and follows to a table past drinking men from different planets and a policeman, whose presence makes Ben anxious. He is followed by the dead man everywhere and has to find some red-bearded man to escape the dead man. A week ago Ben met a drunk man Cobb in a bar and they had a fight which led to Cobb's death by accident. Ben ran and didn't give in not to end his space career. He starts searching for the red-bearded man on Venus who led a group of renegade spacemen. In the gin mill Ben gets hopeless and is surrounded by the police, he runs again. He is paralyzed by the police but a woman who doesn't have an antidote helps him escape. He wakes up and can't talk, the woman massages him and looks after. When Ben gains consciousness he asks questions, he is not in Hoover city any longer but still on Venus. Turns out the woman knows a lot about her patient and saved him with a use of money. She doesn't know if he is to walk again but he will live. Ben learns the dead man had a family and they haunt him in nightmares. He also sees a photo of a red-bearded man, and it turns out the woman is his wife and they need an astrogator. She tells about her husband, his team and goal. Ben understands he won't be let go if he denies the job. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "17cc12ae998944819b41659b8e90874c", "response_text": "The story begins with Ben Curtis entering Blast Inn. A boy catches him and brings him to a table that is close in the shadows after passing through a narrow aisle and a white-uniformed officer. Sitting at the table, Ben tells himself that he needs to find the man with red beard. He wants to escape from the images of a dead man. Later we learn that Ben murdered this man. Ben was celebrating in a bar when Cobb, a man in the bar insulted him. While Ben tries to reason with him, he expressed his dissatisfaction about spacemen. Ben has always wanted to be spacemen. He moved down three stools but the drunk man won’t stop. Thus he tried to leave. But he continued and called him a sucker. Getting furious, Ben hits the man. The man’s head hits the edge of the bar and he dies. Ben ran away, trying to find the group of renegade spacemen made up of misfits and rejectees. Back in Blast Inn, he suddenly sees the Security Policeman. They are coming for him. As he tries to run, the police try to hit him with neuro-pistols. As he is about to go unconscious, a female holds onto his hand. After he regains conscious, he realizes that the girl who grabbed him has been taking care of him for the past nine days that he was unconscious. At first, she refuses to answer his questions, but she knows everything about him. Later he learns that she is the red bearded man’s wife. She saves him because he is an astrogator and a good man. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "2c8e0788b54942b68281a01d0b8a0b5a", "response_text": "Spaceman Ben Curtis walks into the Blast Inn, a dive bar in the Venusian Hoover City. He is approached by a young Martian boy, who brings him to a table where a Martian orchestra plays aside them. In the bar, Ben is anxious and paranoid, particularly upon noticing a few Hoover City police officers. While he sits, Ben is unable to shake the image of a dead man next to him, who is a man named Cobb. Prior to Ben's arrival to Venus, he had stepped into a bar in Luna City, where an intoxicated Cobb was rambling about spacemen and how he despises them. Out of rage and personal offense, Ben punched Cobb in the chin, who died on impact after falling. Ben immediately fled to Venus in search of a red-bearded giant, the leader of a renegade space crew, who was his only hope in survival and job security after the murder. Still seated at the table, the Martian boy continues prodding Ben, who gives him a coin to shoo him off. He soon notices the space policemen from before closing in on him, raising weapons, and he attempts to escape the bar but is shot. Becoming unconscious, Ben hears the voice of a woman, who leads him out of the exit and helps him escape. He then awakes, unable to see clearly, but being cared for and fed. After nine days, he is able to see the woman clearly, who introduces herself as Maggie, and she tells him that they are no longer in Hoover City. She then discloses all the information she has on Ben, including his desire to find the red-bearded man. Ben asks her if Cobb had a wife and kids, which she confirms. As Ben scans the room, he notices a photo of the red-bearded man, and he slips into sleep, where he is again haunted by visions of Cobb. Ben asks Maggie how she knows the man, and she reveals that he is her husband, and that they saved Ben because they were in need of an astrogator. Maggie tells him about the renegade crew, and how they plan on relocating to an asteroid to avoid the authorities. Ben is overwhelmed and fearful of the prospect, but Maggie encourages him to get rest, and he reflects on his future and his duty."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "fb49f598c19b4ab29098294e20cd03a1", "response_text": "The story begins with Ben Curtis, an officer of the Space Corps and astrogator, leaving the Blast Inn on Venus. When he gets to the Venusian gin mill, a Martian kid tries to sell him various things to pique his interest. Ben indicates that he is not interested in any of the offers and the kid eventually leads him to a table that is partially hidden. The location of his table is intentional because he does not want to be seen. Ben becomes deep in thought at the table, intent on finding a man described as having a red beard. \n\nWhile at the table, he also thinks about the events that transpired over the last week when he arrived in Luna City from White Sands. Ben had gone to a bar to celebrate his arrival to Luna City when Cobb drunkenly accosted him. Cobb purposefully tried to anger Ben and eventually was successful in doing so after a particularly poignant threat. In a quick and anger-filled response, Ben struck Cobb causing Cobb to crack his head against the edge of the bar and die. Ben flew to Venus in response to the incident, which explains how he currently arrived in a Venusian bar. \n\nHis thoughts are interrupted when he notices policemen entering the bar. The police quickly find Ben and begin to use deadly neuro-pistols. He begins to run and is eventually hit by one of the blasts from the neuro-pistols. As he realizes he is losing consciousness, an unknown pair of hands guided him towards a different exit. Ben passes out from the blast and wakes up in a room. For 9+ days, he goes in and out of sleep in this room while he recovers from his injuries. Maggie, the woman who helped him escape, is the one helping him recover from his injuries. She knows a lot of information about him and his background. \n\nWhile still recovering, Ben notices that on one side of the bed, there is a picture on a bureau in the far corner of the room that shows a portrait of a red-bearded man. He gets really excited at this new revelation. He asks Maggie about the red-bearded man and she confesses that he is her husband and then explains what he does and why she brought Ben with her. Jacob’s group needs an astrogator and want Ben to join them. While Maggie shows that she would be confused if Ben chose not to join the group, she seems to truly be concerned with his recovery. \n\nWhen Maggie leaves the room, Ben reflects on words found in a book from his childhood that talk about the morals of a Space Officer. He acknowledges how very few are able to get the job in the SpaceCorps. The story ends with implications that Ben will choose his moral values and choose not to join Jacob’s group. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2418299adb5540d7a8f9d87b9e5e0f01", "response_text": "The story begins in the Blast Inn, a dim gin mill with a sense of evil. The huge room is obscure with smoke and full of people from different planets drinking and smoking. Ben's table is in the shadows far away, a lonely Martian orchestra is playing. Then the story goes to one week ago, a bar on Earth and a fight. There was a chase then through the rocket front alleys with a thousand stars above. Ben fled to Venus. In the gin mill's shadow, the light is suddenly on, the orchestra leaves and Ben is surrendered to the police. He runs and wakes up in a place he can't see. He is with a woman who looks after him, the room is small with a small window with infinite whiteness outside. He was moved to a different city on Venus. Soon, there turns out to be a photo of a red-bearded man in the room. Nightmares and memories haunt Ben in this room. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "17cc12ae998944819b41659b8e90874c", "response_text": "The story first takes place at the Blast Inn. There are big rooms, a bar and some tables. There is also music playing in the background. Blast Inn has drab concrete walls and debris-strewn floor. There is a rear exit. Later, on Venus, inside the small room in the dome building, there is an unpainted ceiling. The walls are broken and there is a single, round window. There is also a blanket. Outside the window, there is only a translucent and infinite whiteness. The room has a plain chair. On the corner of the room, there is a tri-dimensional photo of the red-bearded man. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "2c8e0788b54942b68281a01d0b8a0b5a", "response_text": "The first part of the story takes place in the Blast Inn, a bar located in Hoover City on Venus. The bar is described as dark and smoky, with an ominous and mysterious aura. In the bar, a Martian orchestra plays music, and the room is occupied with Venusians, Earthmen, and Martians. When Ben is wounded by the space officials, he is taken to a room by Maggie, still on Venus but outside of Hoover City. The room is comfortable and small, but colorless. It contains a bureau with a photo of Jacob on it. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "fb49f598c19b4ab29098294e20cd03a1", "response_text": "The story begins with Ben Curtis standing in the doorway of the Blast Inn on Venus. He walks towards a Venusian gin mill where a Martian kid seats him at a table in a secluded area. The story details that Ben ended up on Venus after accidentally killing a man on Earth. He begins to run from the bar once policemen began to come after him to arrest him. As he’s making his exit, an unfamiliar person guides him towards a hidden exit. After losing consciousness, from the policeman’s blast hitting him during his escape, he wakes up in a room. The room does not give him any indication of the time of day it is nor the name of the planet. In the room, Maggie really comes to aid his recovery. On a bureau in a far corner of the room is a rock portrait of Jacob, the red-bearded man and Maggie’s husband. "}]}, {"question_text": "What do we know about the red-bearded man and his operations?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2418299adb5540d7a8f9d87b9e5e0f01", "response_text": "The man is the leader of renegade spacemen who operate from the Solar System's frontiers and are not outlaws. The man is almost a myth. Right now the man is exploring new parts of space and is building a new base. The team is huge and the base has moved from Venus towards the Pole for a while, planning to move to an asteroid later. Half the team are wanted but their livings are still honest. The man is banned from Earth and brings cargo to the frontiers and the authorities close their eyes. They want to go further than the System itself and need a good astrogator like Ben out there."}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "17cc12ae998944819b41659b8e90874c", "response_text": "The red-bearded man is named Jacob. He is said to run an operation of renegade spacemen. They have supposedly hit the asteroids while no legal ships has made pass Mars. He is currently exploring between Mercury and Pluto because he wants to build a new base for them. His operation was based on Venus, but because the place is getting to civilized, they need to move to a new home on an asteroid. While the group is filled with people wanted by the IBI, but they are people that makes honest livings. They unload cargo to ports like Hoover City and take on supplies. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "2c8e0788b54942b68281a01d0b8a0b5a", "response_text": "We know that the red-bearded man is named Jacob, and he is the leader of a renegade space crew, made up of misfits and rejects. The space crew transports cargoes of minerals to and from planets, and they advance to another location time after time to avoid authorities catching up with them. After Venus, the next planned location is on the Asteroid belt, which requires advanced navigation and astrogation, which is why Jacob seeks Ben Curtis for help."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "fb49f598c19b4ab29098294e20cd03a1", "response_text": "We know that Maggie is the wife of the red-bearded man Jacob. Jacob is the leader of a group of about a thousand. They own about a dozen ships. They have changed their bases many times depending on threatening circumstances. If they see trouble, they move on to the next place. The previous base was near the Pole on Venus. Venus was the base after the group was exiled from Mars. Venus is now no longer able to be the group’s home because it is becoming more and more civilized. So, the group has decided that the new base is going to be on an asteroid. The operation of Jacob and his group is mining. They mine almost pure uranium and tungsten, materials that are scarce on both Earth and Mars. They then sell the materials. "}]}, {"question_text": "What do we know about Ben's life before the murder in the bar?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2418299adb5540d7a8f9d87b9e5e0f01", "response_text": "Ben lost his parents at four in a a crash in space and has wanted to be a spaceman ever since. All his life he has been passionate about space. He graduated from an academy as an astrogation major and was a great student. After one month he signed aboard the ship called Odyssey. The bar fight occurred when he was celebrating his successful flight and he was proud of his uniform yet considering it a key for everything - the idea he had for a long time before. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "17cc12ae998944819b41659b8e90874c", "response_text": "Ben is orphaned at four because his parents are killed in a strato-jet crash. At the age of five, he watched the night sky for the Moon rockets. He obtaind his first telescope at the age of 10. He had many astronomy and rocketry books. At the age of 16, he spent every weekend at the Long Island Spaceport. He attended the Boys Town until 19 years old. Then he graduated from the Academy at White Sands in June. He majors in Astrogation and was the second highest in his class. Then he was accepted as junior astrogation officer for the Odyssey. He was celebrating for his flight from Roswell to Luna City when he murdered Cobb in the bar. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "2c8e0788b54942b68281a01d0b8a0b5a", "response_text": "Ben became an orphan at the age of four after his parents died in a strato-jet accident. He then became interested in space and the sky, buying a telescope and converting a shed at his boarding school into an astronomy hideout. Ben majored in astrogation at the Academy of White Sands with the second highest position in his class, where he became an astrogation officer on the Odyssey and had since been an acclaimed spaceman."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "fb49f598c19b4ab29098294e20cd03a1", "response_text": "Both of Ben’s parents died in a strato-jet cash when he was very young. After their death when he was about five years old, he would regularly watch the night sky hoping to see Moon rockets. He acquired his first telescope at the age of ten. By fourteen, Ben had a large collection of astronomy and rocketry books that could fill a shed. When he was 16, he would often hike from the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. The trips to Long Island Spaceport would inspire him to apply to the U.S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. It is clear from his early life that from a young age Ben was fascinated and interested in space and rocketry. "}]}, {"question_text": "What images keep haunting Ben?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "105", "uid": "2418299adb5540d7a8f9d87b9e5e0f01", "response_text": "Ben is haunted with the image of a dead man. In a bar a man, Cobb, picked a fight with Ben claiming that spacemen suck. Ben soon surrendered to his anger and hit the man, who died by accident. Now Ben is followed everywhere by the scary rage of the dead man with blood in his mouth. Ben is even more upset when he learns that Cobb had a wife and two kids. The whole family haunts Ben in nightmares. He is constantly scared of being found as well and deprived of being a spaceman. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "17cc12ae998944819b41659b8e90874c", "response_text": "The dead man that Ben killed keeps haunting him. Ben would see the drunk man with his lips spitting whiskey-slurred curses. His face has a pop-eyed masked of surprise. His face is white and frozen because of the sudden death; his eyes staring and blood dripping from the corner of the mouth of the dead man. After he learns that the man has a wife and two kids, he sees the man again. He is cursing, accusing him. Ben hears the children crying in the night.  "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "2c8e0788b54942b68281a01d0b8a0b5a", "response_text": "The image of Cobb haunts Ben after the murder. Ben cannot escape visions of his face, as it appeared when he punched him. He sees his bloody jaw, shocked face, and glassy-eyed stare as he sits in the bar, and he describes Cobb's image as having a dead Siamese twin. When Ben is rescued by Maggie, he still sees Cobb's image as he sleeps, this time with the cries of his two children haunting him."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "fb49f598c19b4ab29098294e20cd03a1", "response_text": "The dead man that haunts Ben is named Cobb. Cobb is described as being short and heavier set. He is no longer alive, as his body is for sure buried outside of Luna City. He haunts Ben because Ben is the one that killed him. When Ben sees him, the image of Cobb is one with large eyes with a piercing stare and trickles of blood leaving his open mouth. As the story develops and Ben learns that Cobb had two children and a wife, he starts to hear children crying at night. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61053", "uid": "8e5272316c5a41deaf2086911d240fdd", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "TOLLIVER'S ORBIT\n \n\n was slow—but it wasn't boring. And it would get you there—as long as you weren't going anywhere anyhow!\n \n \n By H. B. FYFE\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.\n \n \"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?\" he demanded.\n\"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me.\"\n \n The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a million miles distant.\n \n \"Try not to be simple—for once!\" growled Jeffers. \"A little percentage here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on the estimates.\"\n \n \"You asked any of them lately?\" Tolliver prodded.\n \n \"Now, listen ! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the beginning, most of them. They know what it's like. D'ya think they don't expect us to make what we can on the side?\"\n \n Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.\n \n \"You just don't listen to me ,\" he complained. \"You know I took this piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I can't quit.\"\n \n Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.\n \n \"Aw, it's not like that,\" the manager muttered. \"You can ease out whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your account?\"\n \n Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting his eye.\n \n \"All right, then!\" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. \"If you want it that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!\"\n \n \"You can't fire me,\" retorted the pilot pityingly. \"I came out here on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?\"\n \n \"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,\" grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. \"We'll see how long you keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in your quarters and see if the company calls that hazardous duty!\"\n \n \"Doesn't matter,\" answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. \"The hazardous part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months.\"\n \n He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.\n  Looks like a little vacation , he thought, unperturbed. He'll come around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's their risk.\n \n \n \n\n \n Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was \"Tuesday\" by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long journey around Jupiter.\n \n His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to specify the type of craft to be piloted.\n \n On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.\n \n He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.\n \n The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore when he found the assignment unchanged by \"Friday.\" Even the reflection that it was payday was small consolation.\n \n \"Hey, Johnny!\" said a voice at his shoulder. \"The word is that they're finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside.\"\n \n Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.\n \n \"What do you mean?\"\n \n \"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the Javelin .\"\n \n \"What's wrong with that?\" asked Tolliver. \"Outside of the way they keep handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean.\"\n \n \"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!\"\n \n Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.\n \n She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy sweater, like a spacer.\n \n \"Sorry to keep you waiting,\" she said, sliding into the seat beside Tolliver. \"By the way, just call me Betty.\"\n \n \"Sure,\" agreed Tolliver thinking, Ohmigod! Trying already to be just one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer, or does he just know where bodies are buried?\n \n \n \"They were making dates,\" said the girl. \"Were they ribbing me, or is it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?\"\n \n \"It's true enough,\" Tolliver assured her. \"We need people out here, and it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time making the entire trip.\"\n \n \n\n \n He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.\n \n \"How is it here?\" asked the girl. \"They told me it's pretty rough.\"\n \n \"What did you expect?\" asked Tolliver. \"Square dances with champagne?\"\n \n \"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me see much else.\"\n \n \"You never can tell,\" said the pilot, yielding to temptation. \"Any square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous.\"\n  I'll be sorry later , he reflected, but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.\n \n \n \"Yeah,\" he went on, \"right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions from the city to the spaceport.\"\n \n \"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a mission ?\"\n \n Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.\n \n \"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!\" he warned portentously. \"Many a man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this mission!\"\n \n \"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?\"\n \n \"I'll tell you some day,\" Tolliver promised darkly. \"This moon can strike like a vicious animal.\"\n \n \"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!\"\n \n \"I was thinking of the mountain slides,\" said the pilot. \"Not to mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an unarmored tractor.\"\n \n \"You use armored vehicles?\" gasped the girl.\n \n She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity, the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.\n \n \"Those slides,\" he continued. \"Ganymede's only about the size of Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!\"\n  Say, that's pretty good! he told himself. What a liar you are, Tolliver!\n \n \n He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite, taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John Tolliver, driver of \"missions\" across the menacing wastes between dome and port.\n \n In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.\n \n \"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive,\" he said bravely, edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. \"Made my pile. No use pushing your luck too far.\"\n \n His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience prickled.\n  I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight , he resolved. It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to know better.\n \n \n \n\n \n Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking in without knocking.\n \n \"Jeffers,\" he announced, \"this is ... just call her Betty.\"\n \n The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.\n \n \"Miss Koslow!\" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.\n\"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all, Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is: your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?\"\n \n \"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers,\" snapped the girl, in a tone new to Tolliver. \"We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had enough rope.\"\n \n Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had told en route from the spaceport.\n \n \"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?\" Jeffers stammered.\n \n He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.\n \n \"Mr. Jeffers,\" said the girl, \"I may look like just another spoiled little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday. I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about holding on to it.\"\n \n Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older. Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.\n \n \"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede. I have some authority, though. And you look like the source of the trouble to me.\"\n \n \"You can't prove anything,\" declared Jeffers hoarsely.\n \n \"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as fired!\"\n \n The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about \"just landed.\" After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end to come in without a countdown.\n \n Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers' headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief, and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large enough.\n \n \"No stupid questions!\" Jeffers ordered. \"Lock these two up while I think!\"\n \n Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.\n \n \"Where should we lock—?\" the fellow paused to ask.\n \n Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.\n \n In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.\n \n \"I told you no questions!\" bawled Jeffers.\n \n The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his desk to assist.\n \n \n\n \n Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had been spent in carrying him there.\n \n He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of departing footsteps and then by silence.\n \n After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.\n \n He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.\n \n \"I'm sorry about that,\" murmured Betty.\n \n Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him anyway.\n \n \"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner,\" remarked the girl.\n \n \"Thanks for letting me know in time,\" said Tolliver.\n \n The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.\n \n \"What can we use to get out of here?\" he mused.\n \n \"Why should we try?\" asked the girl. \"What can he do?\"\n \n \"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?\"\n \n \"Your paycheck,\" said Betty. \"As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount, it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be Jeffers.\"\n \n Tolliver groaned.\n \n \"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and seemed to blame you for it.\"\n \n \"Sure!\" grumbled the pilot. \"He thinks I told you he was grafting or smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal accident!\"\n \n \"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?\" asked Betty after a startled pause.\n \n \"Nothing,\" retorted Tolliver. \"Except that there are some. There are rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him that bad over a little slack managing?\"\n \n The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.\n \n There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of discarded records.\n \n \"Better than nothing at all,\" he muttered.\n \n He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.\n \n \"What do you think you're up to?\" asked Betty with some concern.\n \n \"This plastic is tough,\" said Tolliver, \"but it will bend with enough heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!\"\n \n He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.\n \n \"You know,\" he reflected, \"it might be better for you to stay here. He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by yourself.\"\n \n \"I'll come along with you, Tolliver,\" said the girl.\n \n \"No, I don't think you'd better.\"\n \n \"Why not?\"\n \n \"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it.\"\n \n \"Let's not argue about it,\" said Betty, a trifle pale but looking determined. \"I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?\"\n \n Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his heel hard at the corner below the hinge.\n \n The plastic yielded.\n \n \"That's enough already, Tolliver,\" whispered the girl. \"We can crawl through!\"\n \n \n\n \n Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide, for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.\n \n \"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here,\" muttered Tolliver.\n \n \"Why do you want them?\"\n \n \"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks with some good lie that will keep me from getting through.\"\n \n After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after donning a suit himself.\n \n \"That switch under your chin,\" he said, touching helmets so she could hear him. \"Leave it turned off. Anybody might be listening!\"\n \n He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through, then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.\n \n He caught up and touched helmets again.\n \n \"Just act as if you're on business,\" he told her. \"For all anyone can see, we might be inspecting the dome.\"\n \n \"Where are you going?\" asked Betty.\n \n \"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers can't be running everything !\"\n \n \"Is there any way to get to a TV?\" asked the girl. \"I ... uh ... Daddy gave me a good number to call if I needed help.\"\n \n \"How good?\"\n \n \"Pretty official, as a matter of fact.\"\n \n \"All right,\" Tolliver decided. \"We'll try the ship you just came in on. They might have finished refueling and left her empty.\"\n \n They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to look their way.\n \n Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.\n \n From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the interior dome.\n \n Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.\n \n \"This time,\" he said, \"the air will really start to blow, so get through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite a lead before the alarms go off.\"\n \n Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.\n \n As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through the small opening.\n \n Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.\n  They'll find it, all right , Tolliver reminded himself. Don't be here when they do!\n \n \n He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the nearest outcropping of rock.\n \n It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.\n \n Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the face-plate made him think better of it.\n  By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned , he consoled himself.\n \n \n\n \n It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the spaceship.\n \n There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.\n \n \"That's all right,\" Tolliver told the girl. \"We can get in with no trouble.\"\n \n It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting downward again.\n \n \"In fact, we have to get in to stay out of trouble,\" he said to Betty.\n \n He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.\n \n It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.\n \n \n\n \n In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat, glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.\n \n \"Leave the suit on,\" he ordered, getting in the first word while she was still shaking her head. \"It will help a little on the takeoff.\"\n \n \"Takeoff!\" shrilled Betty. \"What do you think you're going to do? I just want to use the radio or TV!\"\n \n \"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these dials!\"\n \n He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments, doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He warned her the trip might be long.\n \n \"I told you not to come,\" he said at last. \"Now sit back!\"\n \n He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.\n \n In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck, and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.\n \n \"That wasn't so bad,\" Betty admitted some time later. \"Did you go in the right direction?\"\n \n \"Who knows?\" retorted Tolliver. \"There wasn't time to check everything . We'll worry about that after we make your call.\"\n \n \"Oh!\" Betty looked helpless. \"It's in my pocket.\"\n \n Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter. When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about making contact.\n \n It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a uniform.\n \n \"Space Patrol?\" whispered Tolliver incredulously.\n \n \"That's right,\" said Betty. \"Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me.\"\n \n Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and wondering what was behind it all.\n \n When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the Patrolman.\n \n \n\n \n For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to go down after.\n  They really sent her out to nail someone , Tolliver realized. Of course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might have got me killed!\n \n \n \"We do have one trouble,\" he heard Betty saying. \"This tractor driver, Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed.\"\n \n Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her sweater.\n \n \"Actually, I have a fine idea,\" he informed the officer coldly. \"I happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control. If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later on this channel.\"\n \n \"Miss Koslow?\" repeated the spacer. \"Did she tell you—well, no matter! If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately.\"\n \n He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended than reassured at discovering his status.\n \n \"This 'Miss Koslow' business,\" he said suspiciously. \"He sounded funny about that.\"\n \n The girl grinned.\n \n \"Relax, Tolliver,\" she told him. \"Did you really believe Daddy would send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever was gypping him?\"\n \n \"You ... you...?\"\n \n \"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—\"\n \n \"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,\" Tolliver finished for her. \"I guess it's better this way,\" he said meditatively a moment later.\n \n \"Oh, come on ! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're going?\"\n \n \"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be picked up.\"\n \n He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.\n \n \"We'll just have to ride it out,\" he said sympathetically. \"The ship is provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow.\"\n \n \"I didn't expect to so soon.\"\n \n \"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack the case in about three hours on Ganymede.\"\n \n \"Great!\" muttered Betty. \"What a lucky girl I am!\"\n \n \"Yes,\" admitted Tolliver, \"there are problems. If you like, we might get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV.\"\n \n \"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet,\" she commented sourly.\n \n \"The main problem is whether you can cook.\"\n \n Betty frowned at him.\n \n \"I'm pretty good with a pistol,\" she offered, \"or going over crooked books. But cook? Sorry.\"\n \n \"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do.\"\n \n \"I'll think about it,\" promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the deck.\n \n Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it too.\n  After a while , he promised himself, I'll explain how I cut the fuel flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just orbiting Ganymede!", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8c343deb053741e1aa02ad9c0ef26824", "response_text": "The story begins as Johnny Tolliver argues with Jeffers, the manager of Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways, about how he doesn’t want to be involved with whatever he is doing. This makes Jeffers angry, knowing that he cannot fire Tolliver, he decides to make Tolliver’s job extremely boring. Thus, for the next few days, he simply hang around the garage, with nothing to do. Then on Friday, he gets assigned to take the creeper outside. He picks Betty up, where he told her about the dangers of Ganymede such as the volcanic puffballs and the mountain slides, he explains his high pay for driving unarmored tractor by mentioning that if he survives the six month, he will retire. However, Tolliver understand that this is completely a lie. After they go to see Jeffers, Betty states that she will not work with them, and them fires Jeffers. Jeffers order his men to lock Betty and Tolliver up. After Tolliver wakes up, they decided to escape. Betty told Tolliver about how she was able to figure out that there’s something wrong – his extremely high paycheck. After crawling through the hole by bending plastic, they finds spacesuits in the storeroom. Finally, they are able to escape by taking off on an economy orbit for Earth. After contacting with Space Patrol, Tolliver finds it odd when he says “Miss Koslow.” Questioning Betty, she admits that she works for a private investigating firm. Then, in the end, Tolliver is going to cut the fuel flow to see if Betty will suspect anything, since they are just orbiting Ganymede. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "a8647ca10ec442cba5bda82634b374bd", "response_text": "Johnny Tolliver meets with his superior, Jeffers. Jeffers is the manager of the Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways. Tolliver is very unhappy with Jeffers and is roughly expressing his frustration to him. Their conversation does not end well and Jeffers is clear that he will retaliate against Tolliver’s demands. Tolliver leaves the room grunting about how Jeffers and his men can steal the Great Red Spot off of Jupiter at their own risk. \n\nOver the next few days, Tolliver grows frustrated that he is not being assigned anything. One day, he does get an assignment. He is meant to pick up a home office relative coming in from the Javelin. Tolliver picks up a woman named Betty and transports her. Very early on he appears not to like her and decides to scare her and make it seem that there is danger at every corner. They arrive at their destination and Tolliver leads Betty to Jeffers office. Tolliver barges into Jeffers office, with Betty in tow, to purposefully upset Jeffers. Jeffers is angered at Tolliver’s arrival, but excitedly greets Betty. However, his warm greeting is not returned by Betty. Betty quickly accuses him of wrongdoings and wants him to leave his position. At first he is too stunned to speak. He quickly recovers and orders some men to lock both Tolliver and Betty in a room. Tolliver tries to fight against one of the guards meant to imprison him. His success does not last long and he finds himself in an empty office next to the warehouse building. Tolliver quickly begins to plot their escape. Betty decides to join him in escaping the room. \n\nThey are able to leave the room and go through the warehouse where they find spacesuits to wear. Making their way outside of the warehouse, Tolliver uses the knife that came with the spacesuit to slash a section out of the dome. They step through the section and walk normally to not attract attention to themselves. Tolliver suggests they go find her ship to make a call to the emergency number that Betty was given. In their process, they escape the dome and into the almost vacuum air of Ganymede’s surface and run to Betty’s ship. As they get closer to Betty’s ship, Tolliver notices a tractor headed towards them. They hurry onto the ship. Tolliver quickly readies the ship for takeoff to Betty’s surprise. Betty grabs a memo from her pocket inside the spacesuit to give Tolliver the number to call. Once the call is connected, Betty requests assistance to arrest Jeffers and co-conspirators. Tolliver becomes suspicious during her call with Space Patrol and she eventually tells him that she is not actually Koslow’s daughter. Eventually, the ship takes off. \n\nTolliver tells Betty that he is taking them back to Earth but the journey will take 6 months. However, thinking to himself, Tolliver wonders when Betty will catch on that they will just be orbiting Ganymede and not the path she thinks. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "d1e82aee0b964768aee54ef0f0e092a8", "response_text": "Johnny Tolliver is a space pilot from Earth to Jupiter and all the way round who works to get enough money for an engineering degree. His superior, Jeffers, tries to get him involved in the sneaky deals of stealing some cargo meant to be transported to Earth. Tolliver refuses as he wants to return clean and as fast as possible to Earth. Jeffers can't fire him and Tolliver feels safe. For the next few days Johnny has nothing to do as he is made to drive a tractor and doesn't have any assignments. Then he gets word he will be assigned to drive a tractor with some home-office relative, who has a lot of bags as a cargo, which is a simple waste of fuel. The relative is a young girl named Betty who tries to behave like a spacer, like all those relatives do, though they only spend a couple months in space doing nothing. Betty wants to learn traffic routing and she doesn't see Johnny's drive from the city to the spaceport on Ganymede as a mission. That scorn makes the man mad and he tells that the trips are dangerous and many men had died on those drives. Tolliver makes up those lies to scare the girl and diminish her arrogance and scorn, and to impress her in some way, he also shows his significant payment. Then, Tolliver leads subdued Betty to Jeffers, who treats her with utmost respect and sweetness remembering who her father is. The girl though takes a threatening tone claiming she will be in charge of her father's company one day and that she has learned what's going wrong on Ganymede, so Jeffers is as good as fired. Jeffers then calls three men in to lock Betty and Tolliver up. Jeffers believes Tolliver has told everything to Betty and she learns from Johnny that he was asked to join the smuggling gang. Tolliver manages to heat and open the door, Betty follows and they approach a storeroom for spacesuits. The two put them on and pretend to be inspecting domes, they get into a low gravity field to reach the ship she arrived in. Tolliver confesses in exaggerating the dangers on the way, then they get into the ship and to the control room, and Johnny plans to take off while Betty was simply going to use her connection on radio or TV. Tolliver and Betty take off and the phone number she has turns out to be Space Patrol. Johnny realizes throughout the dialogue that the person on the other end was waiting for the girl's report to know who to arrest. Betty turns out to be Koslow's daughter but a private investigator. The ship Tolliver and Betty are on is orbiting Ganymede, but the former convinces the girl they are on a long way to Earth. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "e820fffa8ece488593ffede2784c4256", "response_text": "Johnny Tolliver is a space pilot, working for the Ganymedan branch at Koslow Spaceways. He sits in the office of his supervisor, Jeffers, who has invited him to take part in a scheme where he steals parts of ships' cargoes in order to make profit. Tolliver is skeptical and uncomfortable with this operation, and he refuses. Though Jeffers cannot fire him, because he is on contract, he takes Tolliver off his assigned orbit. The next day, Tolliver finds that instead of being assigned a ship, he has the mundane job of driving a tractor from domes to the spaceport. The job drags on for the next three days when Tolliver is informed that he has the job of escorting a home-office relative to the city. The relative is a young girl named Betty, whom Tolliver immediately perceives as naive and arrogant. To entertain himself on the drive, Tolliver makes up stories about the dangers of Ganymede and his job as a daredevil tractor driver, showing Betty his paycheck. They arrive into the city, and Tolliver leads Betty to Jeffers' office at her request. Jeffers greets Betty, addressing her as Miss Koslow, indicating that she is the daughter of the boss of Koslow Spaceways, to which Tolliver is surprised and secretly regrets the embellished stories he told her. Betty immediately orders Jeffers to be fired out of suspicions of mismanagement. Jeffers, sure that Betty had found out about his side scheme, locks up Tolliver and Betty in an empty office room. Tolliver manages to escape by using fire to bend the plastic door, and Betty insists on joining him. The two find spare spacesuits and get into disguise while they make their way to a spaceship. Tolliver cuts a slit into the dome over the establishment and they squeeze through, running to the spaceport. As they reach the ship, Tolliver notices a tractor headed their way, and he rushes Betty inside. Tolliver quickly launches the ship into orbit despite Betty's protests. Betty then phones Space Patrol, given access by her father, and informs the officer to arrest Jeffers and that the ship they are on has been sent on a six-month orbit. When Betty signs off, it is revealed to Tolliver that she is not actually Koslow's daughter, but a private investigator impersonating her in order to get information on who was stealing from the company. Tolliver informs Betty that they will be on the ship for a while, not telling her that they would be orbiting Ganymede the entire time."}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to Betty throughout the story", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8c343deb053741e1aa02ad9c0ef26824", "response_text": "Betty first disguises as the president’s daughter. She is five feet four, and her hair was a shade too blonde; she has blue eyes and is wearing gray slacks with a heavy sweater. She comes to Ganymedan to learn about traffic routing as well as business management of local branches. Betty is shocked by the exaggerated description that Tolliver gives on the tractor about how dangerous Ganymedan is. Once she arrives in the office, she fires Jeffers stating that she knows that he has been doing. Making Jeffers very angry, he locks her along with Tolliver into the empty office. There, Betty follows Tolliver to escape to the control room. Once she is told that they will take off, she refuses. But, in order to escape, Tolliver takes off the ship into an economy orbit for Earth anyway. Betty finally makes the microphone call to Space Patrol, telling them to capture Jeffers. From the way that the other side of the phone reacted to Tolliver calling Betty Miss Koslow, Tolliver realizes that something’s off. Then Betty tells him that she actually works for a private investigating firm, and her name is Betty Hanlon. Betty "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "a8647ca10ec442cba5bda82634b374bd", "response_text": "Betty arrives to the dome area and is picked up by Tolliver. During the tractor ride back to the dome from her ship, Tolliver attempts to scare her and makes the area sound incredibly dangerous. During their ride, Betty tells Tolliver why she has been sent to this branch. Betty states that her dad wants her to learn the traffic routing and the business management within a local branch of Koslow Spaceways. When they arrive at the air lock, scared from Tolliver’s stories, she asks Tolliver to guide her to manager’s office. Once she reaches Jeffers office, she immediately accuses him of being crooked and wants him gone from his position. One of her first hints came from when she saw Tolliver’s paycheck and its value. She explains to Jeffers that she may look innocent but she is smart and details how she has evidence that he is doing his job improperly. \n\nJeffers responds and orders both Tolliver and Betty to be locked up. They end up in an empty office near a warehouse building. When Tolliver begins to plan his escape from the room, Betty insists on joining Tolliver much to his dismay. They exit on Ganymede’s surface where Betty proves to have trouble running on the ice in a low gravity environment. After successfully grabbing spacesuits to wear and escaping the warehouse, Betty tells Tolliver that she can get significant help from an emergency number she was given by her father. She just needs to find a TV to make the call. They exit the dome and run across the ice to make it towards Betty’s ship. On the ship, Tolliver learns that the woman’s name is actually Betty Hanlon and not the daughter of Koslow. \n\nEventually, Tolliver guides the ship through take off and explains to Betty that they will be on a long orbit path of 6 months. Betty is upset about the return to Earth and the length of the journey. She admits to Tolliver that she is better handling a pistol than being able to cook. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "d1e82aee0b964768aee54ef0f0e092a8", "response_text": "Betty meets Tolliver on Ganymede in the beginning of the story. He drives her from the city to the spaceport in a tractor. Betty behaves like a typical daughter of a home-office: she tries to speak and behave like a spacer, wears a spacesuit and wants to understand how everything around works to be useful. She scorns Tolliver's job and doesn't consider it serious until he scares her with exaggerated stories and shows his significant paycheck. Then he takes the girl to Jeffers, who treats her with utmost sweetness. There Betty directly accuses Jeffers of his manipulations and says he'll be fired. For this statement she gets locked up together with Tolliver, who manages to escape, and Betty follows him. The two put on the spacesuits and get into a spaceship which takes off due ton Tolliver. From there the girl calls Space Patrol and asks them to help arrest Jeffers, it turns out she is an investigator, not a daughter of the high-standing man. The story ends with her being on the ship with Tolliver for unknown amount of time. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "e820fffa8ece488593ffede2784c4256", "response_text": "Betty arrives at Ganymede, where she is escorted by Johnny Tolliver into the city. On the way there, Tolliver tells her stories of his job as a driver and of the dangerous nature of Ganymede, and shows her his paycheck, making Betty suspicious of mismanagement. Betty requests to meet Jeffers, and she threatens to fire him upon her suspicions. She is then taken and locked up by Jeffers into an empty office, and Tolliver is able to escape. Betty decides to join Tolliver, and the two run to the spaceship. On the ship, Betty calls Space Patrol and orders Jeffers to be arrested. Betty, now stuck in orbit with Tolliver, informs him that she is not actually the daughter of Koslow, but a private investigator."}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to Jeffers throughout the story", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8c343deb053741e1aa02ad9c0ef26824", "response_text": "Jeffers is the manager of the Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways. He is operating something sneaky all through the colony. When he tries to make Tolliver join him, he refuses. But Jeffers cannot legally fire him, thus he decides to make him do some very boring works as a driver of airtight tractor, which is used between the dome city and the spaceport. Then after learning that Betty knows about what he is doing and wants to fire him, he is very shocked. He orders three men to lock Betty and Tolliver up. Later, Jeffers and his partners goes to the headquarters building, plotting their next moves. Tolliver assumes that Jeffers has already warned the garage and airlocks about the two, so that they cannot escape. Finally, when Betty reaches Space Patrol through the microphone, she told them to arrest Jeffers. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "a8647ca10ec442cba5bda82634b374bd", "response_text": "The story begins with Tolliver expressing his discontent in a meeting with Jeffers. Jeffers at first tries to appease Tolliver and then changes his attitude. He threatens Tolliver multiple times in an attempt to subdue his anger. \n\nLater on, Tolliver barges into Jeffers office in an attempt to annoy Jeffers. He is successful in doing so. Once Jeffers notices Betty, his attitude changes and he greets her warmly and with excitement. However, very quickly Betty shows her disdain towards Jeffers. He is uncertain as to why she is upset with him and appears to blame Tolliver. After Betty details her accusations, Jeffers is quick to defend himself and even quicker to anger and go into action. He orders people to lock both Tolliver and Betty up. \n\nIt is implied that Betty called a group that will come in and arrest Jeffers for his actions and remove him from his post. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "d1e82aee0b964768aee54ef0f0e092a8", "response_text": "The story starts with Jeffers trying to persuade Johnny to join his gang in stealing and reselling a part of the valuable cargo. He threatens Johnny as the least refuses to. The further refusal makes Jeffers put Johnny to some boring job such as driving tractors with relative of home-office. Later, Jeffers meets Betty, a daughter of a very influential man. He treats her sweetly until she accuses him of his crimes. Then he calls for his men to lock up the girl and Tolliver in order to give him time to think. Jeffers plots the next moves and orders to watch out for the prisoners. After a while, Betty calls Space Patrol to request arresting Jeffers. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "e820fffa8ece488593ffede2784c4256", "response_text": "The story begins in Jeffers' office, where he meets with his employee, Johnny Tolliver, and offers him a part in his scheme where he steals from his cargo ships for profit. Tolliver refuses to join, and Jeffers then lays Tolliver off his space pilot assignment, and instead places him to drive tractors. A few days later, Jeffers is met by Tolliver and Betty in his office. Jeffers happily greets Betty as Miss Koslow, but Betty instead threatens to have Jeffers fired. Afraid of being found out, Jeffers captures the two and keeps them in an office. However, they soon escape and Jeffers is ordered to be arrested."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the equipments used throughout the story", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8c343deb053741e1aa02ad9c0ef26824", "response_text": "Firstly, Tolliver takes Betty towards Jeffers’ office on a tractor since it can go through the frozen surface of Ganymede. Then later, when Betty and Tolliver were put in the empty office, Tolliver uses a lighter to light up the mess of discarded records so that the plastic can be bent. Later, inside the storage room, Tolliver finds some spacesuits for the two to wear. Then finally, when they gets to the control room, they gets onto the acceleration seat. Using the ship, the two fly into the economy orbit for Earth in order to escape. In the end, Betty uses the scanner and microphone to make a call to the Space Patrol so that they will arrest Jeffers. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "a8647ca10ec442cba5bda82634b374bd", "response_text": "Tolliver is a pilot, but while at the Ganymede branch he drives a tractor. One of the equipment used during the story is the automatic flight. An automatic flight allows loaded ships to take a slow and economical orbit using automatic signaling equipment towards Earth. As the loaded ship gets closer to Earth, it is boarded by pilots that land the ship. Another piece of equipment mentioned are spacesuits. The spacesuits involve valves and seals and microphones for people to communicate with each other in the spacesuits. The communication is activated by a switch under the chin on the helmet of the spacesuit. They also come with a heavy knife. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "d1e82aee0b964768aee54ef0f0e092a8", "response_text": "Various types of transportation are used throughout the story - tractors to travel on Ganymede between the city and the spaceport, spaceships requiring a lot of fuel and economy orbits which require less fuel but take much longer to get to the place. In a storeroom there are plenty spacesuits, some of which need replacement. Knives are standard suit equipment. Spaceships are equipped with airlocks, ladders and switch-cover. In the control room there is an acceleration seat, a button to set off, a radio and TV, with a screen to see the other side of the call. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "e820fffa8ece488593ffede2784c4256", "response_text": "Tolliver is first assigned to use an airtight tractor to transport to and from the spaceport. This tractor is like a regular one, but built specifically to trek across Ganymede with its gravity. When Tolliver and Betty are locked into Jeffers' office, he uses a lighter and paper to bend the plastic of the door. Then, he uses a knife to cut through the plastic of the dome. Finally, Tolliver and Betty board a ship, where the orbit is automatically preset in order to preserve fuel. The ship, which Tolliver knows how to operate, is airlocked. Betty uses a transmitter to contact Space Patrol."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "103", "uid": "8c343deb053741e1aa02ad9c0ef26824", "response_text": "First, the story starts inside Jeffers’ office where the two argues. From the office window, the transparent domes of Ganymede’s can be seen. There is also a chair and a door which is the exit from the room. Then at the empty office next to the warehouse building, Tolliver wakes up. There is an old table and half a dozen plastic crates in the empty office. The plastic crates contain a mess of discarded records. There is also a doorway. The doorway is plastic and can be bended when applied heat. Outside of the room, there’s a storeroom, which has spacesuits inside them. Many of the spacesuits are unpacked while some are standing ready for emergencies. The control room has an acceleration seat. There is a board that has the condition of the ship. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "a8647ca10ec442cba5bda82634b374bd", "response_text": "The story begins with Johnny Tolliver and Jeffers in Jeffers office at the Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways. The office was encapsulated in a transparent dome. Jupiter was more than half a million miles away from the surface of Ganymede. The story begins on a Monday, according to the calendar to match the week long journey it took to go around Jupiter. When Tolliver does get an assignment, it is to take the tractor to bring a home office relative to the airlock at their destination. He does so and brings Betty, the home office relative, to Jeffers office. \n\nAfter Jeffers orders them locked up, they find themselves in an office next to the warehouse building. Tolliver begins to plan their escape and is successfully in getting the door open. Tolliver and Betty walk through to the end of the adjoining warehouse building and find spacesuits in a storeroom for them to wear. After putting on their spacesuits, they leave the warehouse. Tolliver and Betty cut through different layers of the dome and make their way on to the Ganymedan surface. As they get onto the Ganymedan surface, they run across the ice towards Betty’s ship. They climb a ladder and go through an airlock to board the ship and then head to the control room. Tolliver guides the ship to take off and tells Betty that they will be spending 6 months there. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "d1e82aee0b964768aee54ef0f0e092a8", "response_text": "The story opens with Johnny sitting at the desk with his superior on Ganymede. Then Johnny walks out living the door open. Next day he comes to the bulletin board to see his tasks. In a couple of days he is ordered to drive a home-office relative. He loads trunks and bags into his tractor and drives a girl from her dome. He maneuvers out of it and heads toward the city domes. The gravity is light all around. The two walk again into Jeffers' office. Then they find themselves on the floor of an empty locked office in a warehouse building. There is only a table and some plastic crates. When they escape, the two head to a storeroom for spacesuits. Through a rear door they go out, cross an open lane between buildings and reach the main dome. They squeeze inside where there is air pressure and low gravity, so it's extremely hard to run there. They open a spaceship airlock and get in through a ladder.  In the control room there is an acceleration seat, a button to set off, a radio and TV, with a screen to see the other side of the call. The ship sets off to the orbit of Ganymede. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "e820fffa8ece488593ffede2784c4256", "response_text": "The story takes place on Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. The climate of the moon is cold and vast, with very low gravity. The beginning of the story takes place in Jeffers' office. Tolliver gets the job of driving a tractor to and from Ganymede's spaceport, where different parts of the moon are covered by transparent domes. Later in the story, Tolliver and Betty are trapped in an empty office room with only a table, crates, and papers. They escape and run on the surface of Ganymede into a spaceship."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51656", "uid": "16e2ceab511c4d65bac86a60099d78f6", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd never make it unless he somehow managed to\n \n\n PICK A CRIME\n \n \n By RICHARD R. SMITH\n \n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy instead of straight.\n \n \"Hank said you wanted to see me,\" she said when she stopped beside Joe's table.\n \n \"Yeah.\" Joe nodded at the other chair. \"Have a seat.\" He reached into a pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. \"I want you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes.\"\n \n The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.\n\"What's the job?\"\n \n \"Tell you later.\" He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring it down his throat.\n \n \"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?\"\n \n \"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon.\" As the liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.\n \n \"Trying to get drunk?\" the girl inquired. \"Are you crazy?\"\n \n \"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room and board for a month while they give me a treatment.\"\n \n It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do. The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted, but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.\n \n Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.\n \n The girl laughed. \"If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like everyone else?\"\n \n As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal Tendencies.\n \n \n\n \n When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and show it upon request.\n \n \"I'm sorry,\" the girl said. \"I didn't know you were a DCT.\"\n \n \"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score. When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man, street-cleaner, ditch-digger—\"\n \n On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.\n \n Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, \"That's what I want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!\"\n \n The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. \"Say! You really got big plans, don't you?\"\n \n He smiled at her admiration. It was something big to plan a crime. A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting, blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.\n \n No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could afford the CPA hospitals.\n \n The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.\n \n And, ironically, a man who did commit a crime was a sort of hero. He was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money. And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.\n \n \"Well,\" the girl said. \"I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten. Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes.\"\n \n \"Okay. Let's go.\"\n \n \n\n \n The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door, down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.\n \n She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped her blouse and skirt.\n \n He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away, her body poised like a wrestler's. \"What's the big idea?\"\n \n \"Scream,\" Joe said. \"Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.\"\n \n The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc., were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the CPA had once again functioned properly.\n \n The girl shook her head vigorously. \"Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?\"\n \n \"What's the matter?\" Joe complained. \"I'm not asking you to do anything wrong.\"\n \n \"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in the WSDA!\"\n \n Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in those new techniques.\n \n The girl was still shaking her head. \"Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my rank if you were convicted of—\"\n \n \"Do I have to make you scream?\" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced toward the girl.\n \n \"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey! Stop it! \"\n \n Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body, and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.\n \n \n\n \n The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it. There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed in on him.\n \n \n\n \n When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, \"Okay. Snap out of it.\"\n \n He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.\n \n Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men to high political positions were women.\n \n Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly, likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.\n \n \"Where's the girl?\" Joe asked.\n \n \"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—\"\n \n \"Okay,\" Joe said. \"I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted rape. I confess.\"\n \n Hendricks smiled. \"Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again.\" He reached out and turned a dial on his desk top. \"We had a microphone hidden in that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys. You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in alleys!\"\n \n Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of machines on the walls, \" Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you. \" And then the girl's voice, \" Sorry, buddy. Can't help— \"\n \n He waved his hand. \"Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy.\"\n \n \n\n \n Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was slouched in a chair. \"Give me your CPA ID.\"\n \n Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime. Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly once again. That meant the CPA had once again prevented crime, and the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt to prevent crimes by punishment. If it did, that would be a violation of the New Civil Rights.\n \n Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.\n \n When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before. And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a DCT First Class.\n \n \"You've graduated,\" Hendricks said coldly. \"You guys never learn, do you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know what that means?\"\n \n Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.\n\"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers. You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently at Walt's Tavern.\n \n \"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone, so they can be the first ones to yell ' Police! ' They'll watch you because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever did prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and they'd be famous.\"\n \n \"Lay off,\" Joe said. \"I got a headache. That girl—\"\n \n Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. \"You listen, Joe. This is interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next to you, standing next to you.\n \n \"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through binoculars and—\"\n \n \"Lay off!\"\n \n \n\n \n Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.\n \n \"And the kids are the worst,\" Hendricks continued. \"They have Junior CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the day you die, because you're a freak!\"\n \n Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced the floor.\n \n \"And it doesn't end there , Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—\"\n \n \"Okay, goddam it! Stop it! \"\n \n Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief and lit a cigarette.\n \n \"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and criminals ... to hate them as nothing has ever been hated before. Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—\"\n \n Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. \" Favor , did you say? The day you do me a favor—\"\n \n Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. \"Not entirely a favor. I want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time.\"\n \n \"I couldn't leave if I wanted to,\" Joe said. \"I'm flat broke. Thanks to your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job.\"\n \n \n\n \n Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended them. \"I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a little at a time.\"\n \n Joe waved the money away. \"Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any crime.\"\n \n \"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself.\"\n \n \"Umm.\"\n \n \"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't have to be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your criminal tendencies and—\"\n \n \"Go to those head-shrinkers ?\"\n \n Hendricks shrugged again. \"Have it your way.\"\n \n Joe laughed. \"If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you make me go?\"\n \n \"Violation of Civil Rights.\"\n \n \"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime.\"\n \n \"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?\" Hendricks walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.\n\"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices, but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.\n \n \"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe, pick a name and go out and rob him.'\" He laughed nervously. \"If I did that, I'd be committing a crime myself!\"\n \n He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket again and wiped sweat from his face. \"Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room.\"\n \n Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering him a crime!\n \n Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and address and memorized it: John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.\n \n \n When Hendricks came back, Joe said, \"Thanks.\"\n \n \"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything.\"\n \n \n\n \n When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake.\n \n Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went. Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns, alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.\n \n If the words \"Let's see a movie\" were received in the Brain, they were discarded. But if the words \"Let's roll this guy\" were received, the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in someone's pocket at forty yards.\n \n Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place of business for years.\n \n Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount of it would kill a human.\n \n The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.\n \n And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and their aim was infallible.\n \n \n\n \n It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of the devices had cost even less.\n \n And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH. If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.\n \n It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.\n \n Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment\n204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.\n \n The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204, he could see that the wall on either side of it was new . That is, instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.\n \n When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.\n \n Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.\n \n \n\n \n He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.\n \n He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear. The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run, but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription, To John with Love . His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.\n \n Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, \" Thief! Police! Help! \"\n \n He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him; cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.\n \n When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.\n \n \n\n \n He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, \"Hey. Wake up. Hey!\"\n \n He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute he was still having the nightmare.\n \n \"I just saw your doctor,\" Hendricks said. \"He says your treatment is over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift.\"\n \n As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.\n \n During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in himself.\n \n He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.\n \n Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back. Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change: Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now, even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred. They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it altogether.\n \n \"Come here and take a look at your public,\" said Hendricks.\n \n Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks, cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day. But now—another change in him—\n \n He put the emotion into words: \"I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I don't.\"\n \n \"Hero!\" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded like a bull snorting. \"You think a successful criminal is a hero? You stupid—\"\n \n He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. \"You think those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're an ex -criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get your autograph.\"\n \n Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero, what was he ?\n \n \n\n \n It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered some more.\n \n Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired old lady with tears in her eyes said, \"Thank heaven it was only a watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son.\" And then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total confusion.\n \n What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an ex-murderer came out.\n \n In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled himself with the thought, People are funny. Who can understand 'em?\n \n \n Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward Hendricks and said, \"Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll be able to get a good job now.\"\n \n \"That's why I met you at the hospital,\" Hendricks said. \"I want to explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did you a favor.\"\n \n Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!\n \n \"You robbed Gralewski's apartment,\" Hendricks said. \"Gralewski is a CPA employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—\"\n \n \"Well, it's still a favor.\"\n \n Hendricks' face hardened. \"Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an Ex .\"\n \n \n\n \n The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies, it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it wanted you to be.\n \n \"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted,\" Hendricks continued. \"You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it. You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in your head is going to say, Work! Work! Exes always get good jobs because employers know they're good workers.\n \n \"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might want to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an illustration....\"\n \n Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in his arm froze before it moved it an inch.\n \n And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head, Unlawful to strike someone except in self-defense .\n \n He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him, the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain returned, and the mental voice whispered, Unlawful to curse .\n \n He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and the voice, Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure .\n \n \"See what I mean?\" Hendricks asked. \"A century ago, you would have been locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner or later to not even think about doing anything wrong.\"\n \n \n\n \n He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.\n\"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal.\"\n \n \"I think it's a lousy, filthy system.\" Joe's head was still tingling with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he wanted to do and now ....\n \n Hendricks laughed. \"You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean, wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for freaks like yourself, criminals are—\"\n \n \"Let me out!\" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming the door behind him before the car stopped completely.\n \n He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated him back.\n \n He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and voice prevented him.\n \n It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "4a91673a3a10486c98bb515c6c5eb6b8", "response_text": "Joe is at a bar and hands a girl $50 to complete a task for him without telling her what it is yet. He makes small talk to the girl telling her that he is trying to get drunk but he can’t because his drinks are watered down by the CPA robot bartenders. Joe informs the girl that he is assigned a DCT (Dangerous Criminal Tendencies) designation on his CPA ID card. Joe leads the girl to an alley to move his plan into motion. His plan is for her to say that he attempted to rape her because attempted rape is a crime under CPA rules. The girl states that she does not want to go along with that plan because she will lose her rank in the Women’s Self-Defense Association, which is a branch of the CPA. Joe still persists and tries to make her scream. The girl in turn successfully defends herself against him and causes his head to strike the hard concrete floor. He loses consciousness of her actions. \n\nJoe wakes up in the police commissioner’s office. Joe’s plan does not work because the CPA had microphones monitoring the alley so they already know that the plan was not real. Joe then proceeds to confess to a conspiracy when presented with the evidence the CPA has gathered. As a result of these actions, Joe’s new designation on his CPA ID card has the words ‘Dangerous Criminal Tendencies’ in all caps and in a large, red font printed on his card. It also added that he was a DCT First Class owner. Hendricks lectures Joe about his new designation, but Joe does not care to hear him. The commissioner tries to convince Joe to leave New York or to use the free psychology service. \n\nHendricks explains that he cannot think of a way to help Joe without committing a crime himself. In an unexpected move, Hendricks offers Joe a seemingly available victim and their address. Joe memorizes the available information and goes to the address to commit a crime. Joe enters the apartment and takes a watch. He then shouts outside a window that there is a thief. Joe proceeds to run down to the street and is caught by a police helicopter and handcuffed. \n\nJoe eventually wakes up after months of treatment in a hospital and is picked up by Hendricks. He goes through the large crowd waiting to meet him upon exiting the hospital and has an uneasy feeling about the interactions. He is confused by the reaction of the crowd. Hendrick says that it was a fake apartment that Joe went to and is one that the police use for special cases like his when a person refuses to find a solution. Joe becomes upset because he realizes that he has become a prisoner in his own body because of the treatment from the CPA and he has great contempt for the results. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "75ccf4b290d648e68cae7a3a6123dd37", "response_text": "A girl goes up to Joe Harper's table in a tavern and says that Hank said that Joe wanted to see her. He gives her fifty dollars and tells her that he wants her to do a quick job for him. Joe has been trying to get drunk all afternoon because he will get free room and board for a month from the AAA. The girl wonders why he doesn't just get a job but hands her his CPA ID card. She sees that he has Dangerous Criminal Tendencies, which she then realizes why. The CPA does not punish criminals and focuses more on preventing crime. Therefore, criminals who get convicted are sent to hospitals where all criminal tendencies are removed from the mind by psychologists, shock treatments, encephalographic devices, and many other devices. However, these criminals are also hailed as heroes once they have left the treatment program. The girl agrees to his plan, and they go to the alley. He rips her clothes off and tells her to accuse him of rape. However, she cannot agree to the plan because she is a sergeant of the Women's Self-Defense Association (WSDA). He doesn't want to hear it but, she sends him flying through the air. Commissioner Hendricks speaks to him when he wakes up at the police commissioner's office, and Joe confesses to conspiracy. The crime has been prevented, but his new ID card now has DCT written in even larger red font. This signifies him as a DCT First Class, which means that many other amateur cops will begin to watch him in hopes that he will commit a crime. He further taunts Joe and says that all sorts of people on the street will ask about him and that his life is over because he is a freak. When Joe says that he is broke, Hendricks offers to loan him some money. Although both want to see Joe convicted, Hendricks cannot directly help him because it is either a Violation of Civil Rights or will cause him to commit a crime. However, as soon as Hendricks leaves to get water, Jon flips through Hendricks' book and finds somebody to rob. He goes to John Gralewski's apartment to steal a watch and is arrested promptly by the police. The story then goes to Hendricks telling Jon to wake up and that his treatment is now over. Jon says that he does not feel like a hero, while Hendricks tells him that they only admire him because he will never commit another crime again. When they get inside the car, Hendricks tells Jon that he will have the job he has always wanted now, but the treatment has written a set of laws in his mind that prevents him from committing crimes. Joe now realizes how lousy this system is and wants out of it, but it is too late. He demands to get out of the car and realizes he has become a prisoner with himself. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "995d1bce82834a66800fc72e066c59c6", "response_text": "A relatively beautiful girl sits down at Joe's table in the bar and gets paid for some future job. Joe tells her he is trying to get drunk, but the robot-bartender keeps watering his drink as being drunk is illegal. The plan is to join AAA and to live there for free for a month, but there are clever robots in every bar in New York. The girl suggests finding a job and learns that Joe had Dangerous Criminal Tendencies (DCT), which is visible in his ID card. Joe wants the girl to help him commit a crime which is almost impossible as CPA prevents every crime by various means. Those few who succeed are not punished but given treatment in hospitals after which they become perfect employees wanted by every company. Joe and the girl go out into the alley and the man asks her to scream to make everything look like an attempted rape. Nevertheless, the girl refuses as she was taught self-defense and is a sergeant, a rank she doesn't want to lose. When Joe tries anyway, the girl beats him down and police comes soon. They had a hidden microphone nearby and don't believe in the attempted rape story. Conspiracy is not considered a crime and Joe's ID has a larger DCT inscription now - a first class one. This means more cops will watch him as a hobby, as well as neighbors and other people. Hendricks, the police officer, suggests Joe gets the free treatment and then shows a small book with the contacts of nor properly protected people, listed in order to fix that blind spots. After leaving the book on the table, the officer goest to the nest room to get some water, and leaves Joe with the opportunity. Soon, Joe visits one of the listed apartments, an old building with an unreported new room. Joe steals a watch from there and screams for help, then runs and gets caught. After a while, Joe wakes up from a nightmare and sees Hendricks, who announces the end of treatment. The treatment lasted for months and made Joe feel more relaxed but nothing more. A huge crowd is waiting outside to cheer the ex-criminal for his newly gained honesty and inability to commit crime. A woman in the crowd blesses Joe for not committing a murder, which confuses him, as ex-murderers are even more cheered. Then Hendricks explains that he didn't do Joe a favor but such help in crimes is to prevent huger damages from those who refuse free treatment and want to be Exes, as they see those as heroes. Turns out an Ex has to work harder than other people and they still want to commit crime but the laws sound in their heads and prevent it causing pain. CPA is everywhere. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "d117045cdd864f44a2607c19adc9c839", "response_text": "The story begins with Joe paying a girl fifty dollars, asking her to do a job for him. He does not describe what the job is, but mentions that it will only takes a few minutes. Joe tries to get drunk, but is unsuccessful because the CPA robots prevent anyone from getting too drunk. Then we learn that the CPA is a system that prevents crimes from occurring. It has been very successful. Only a few hundred of crimes has occurred in the past year. Those that did commit a crime are considered heroes, and they are not punished because they outsmarted the system. Instead, they will be put in a CPA hospital for treatments. Afterward, they will be provided with some of the most paid jobs. Joe and the girl goes into the alleyway where he attempts to rape her. She tells him that he cannot do this. But he continues because he wants to get the treatment for a nice job. But because the girl refuses to corporate, she hits him and he drops to the ground. He wakes up in the police commissioner’s office where his conspiracy is revealed through a hidden speaker in the alley. His CPA card is changed to a First Class DCT. After Commissioner Hendricks explains the troubles he will have as a First Class, Hendricks reveals the address to an unprotected property. Then Joe decides to rob the place. After stealing a watch, he purposely let himself get caught. When he wakes up again, his treatment at the CPA hospital is over. As he gets ready to go home, Hendricks tells him about the truth of the treatment: he simply cannot break any rules because his brain does not let him. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the CPA and what does it do?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "4a91673a3a10486c98bb515c6c5eb6b8", "response_text": "The CPA is meant to prevent crime and not punish crime. It stands for Crime Prevention Association. The CPA organization has made crime nearly impossible through various methods of surveillance and intelligence gathering. The crime was not punished by the CPA but addressed by sending the person to a hospital for expensive treatment to correct and remove the deviance from the person’s mind. A CPA ID card is required to be carried by everyone and when asked, a person has to present the ID card. Being drunk is illegal according to the rules of the CPA. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "75ccf4b290d648e68cae7a3a6123dd37", "response_text": "The Crime Prevention Association is an organization that stops crime. Instead of capturing criminals, the goal of the Association is to prevent the crime from ever happening. They implement thousands of crime-prevention methods and devices. There are many amateur cops who constantly follow criminals around in hopes of catching them in the act so that they may be hailed a hero and given a promotion. Hendricks even explains that the kids have junior CPA clubs, where they record the criminals in little cardboard boxes. They will also follow the criminals around until they die. There are millions of microphones hidden by the CPA everywhere, and any threatening messages are sent to the CPA Brain. The CPA Brain is a monster electronic calculator that can alert police helicopters of any threatening messages, and there are also many hidden TVs and metal detectors. For Arson, heat detectors exist too, and chemical poisoning has made it impossible for people to get poisoned. There are shock treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy, and a dozen other treatments to reform criminals. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "995d1bce82834a66800fc72e066c59c6", "response_text": "The CPA is Crime Prevention Organization. It fights crime by all means and reduces its rates to a very small level. They put microphones and detectors everywhere to hear the conspiracies. They place robots as bartenders to control the level of alcohol in visitors to prevent them being drunk. They make all the women learn self-defense. The organization's made crime almost impossible and they do not punish for it, but prevent. All who tried to commit a crime are given free treatment. The CPA hospitals treat those few criminals for free and make them unable to commit any further crime. CPA seems to be everywhere, those who tell about the crime are highly rewarded. Neon signs, TV, radio and other means constantly remind people that crime is filth. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "d117045cdd864f44a2607c19adc9c839", "response_text": "The CPA, Crime Prevention Association, is a system that detects different kinds of crimes and prevents them from happening. Thousands of robots and devices make crimes impossible. The association will not punish any crime, instead, the criminal will be send to a CPA hospital for some treatments that will result in getting the best jobs. The CPA also hands out ID cards that states one’s tendency to commit crimes. The CPA has robot bartenders that can detect the drunkenness of a person and prevent anyone from actually getting drunk. There is WSDA teaching judo and jujitsu to women. There are spy cameras and speakers in each alley and street watching every person all the time to prevent all kinds of crimes. The CPA Brain will catch sentences that indicate crimes and watch them more carefully. There are heat-detectors, gun and knife detector, chemical detectors, etc. The CPA brainwashes people, making them believe that crimes are filthy. The treatment will make the criminal’s brain catch every attempt that he or she tries to commit a crime and prevents it from happening. "}]}, {"question_text": "Why does Joe hire the girl?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "4a91673a3a10486c98bb515c6c5eb6b8", "response_text": "Joe hires the girl because he wants to commit a crime and be caught by the CPA. He reasons that if he commits a crime and is caught he will be treated and then labelled as an “Ex” criminal. This designation would allow him to get whatever job he desired, an actual good job. An “Ex” criminal is treated as a type of hero because they are viewed as cured and incapable of ever committing a crime again, thus they are the most trustworthy person in society. Joe hires the girl to use her to pretend that he tried to rape her. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "75ccf4b290d648e68cae7a3a6123dd37", "response_text": "Joe hires the girl because he wants her to help him commit a crime. He believes that by falsely accusing him of rape, he will be convicted as a criminal sooner and be hailed as a hero. He desperately does not want the DCT title on his ID card anymore because it will not give him any sort of career advancement. He believes that committing a crime and having himself reformed will lead to others seeing him as a hero. This will also open more pathways career-wise as reformed criminals are generally seen as more responsible and trustworthy. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "995d1bce82834a66800fc72e066c59c6", "response_text": "Joe has Dangerous Criminal Tendencies which is stated in his ID card. Because of that he can not get any normal job except a garbage man or something like that. He plans to commit a real crime to receive treatment and become an ex-criminal. Being an Ex means being honest and clean, which provides multiple job opportunities and people consider Exes heroes as not many can succeed in committing crimes. The least is because the CPA, Crime Prevention Association, has managed to control almost everything and prevent almost every crime. Joe pays the girl to play a rape victim and to scream for help, so that he gets arrested. The girl though is a sergeant who is capable of self-defense, so she can't be possibly raped. The police hear his plan through a microphone and make him a first-class DCT instead. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "d117045cdd864f44a2607c19adc9c839", "response_text": "Joe wants to be caught with a crime so that he can have the treatment at the CPA hospital. He hires the girl because he wants to commit the crime of attempting to rape her. He desires the treatment because he is currently a DCT Second Level. With this identity, he cannot find any good jobs due to the high level of criminal tendency. Instead, only jobs such as street-cleaning, ditch-digger are open to him. But he wants a satisfying job with a great salary. Thus, he has to receive the treatment because everyone who has received the treatment does not commit crimes. They get the good jobs. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the different levels of DCT and what effects they have on a person.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "4a91673a3a10486c98bb515c6c5eb6b8", "response_text": "DCT affects a lot of a person’s social life and work abilities. To inquire about a job opening, a person has to show their ID. Establishments are not likely to hire a person with a DCT designation unless it is for a garbage truck job, a street-cleaner positioner, or other less desirable work options. They do not leave a person in a socially favorable view as people judge those with DCT designation poorly. \n\nA DCT First Class designation means that the person’s case will be made public. People are interested in crime because it is a complete rarity in current society. The commissioner says that people will follow him wherever he goes and just watches him because they want to be the first one to call for the police when he commits a crime. A person with a first class designation will not have any privacy when out and about. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "75ccf4b290d648e68cae7a3a6123dd37", "response_text": " In the story, the levels of DCT are First Class and Second Class. Second Class DCT ID holders have DCT written on their ID cards. It also affects how they can find a job too. Jon is unable to find any sort of employment beyond being a garbage man, street-cleaner, and ditch digger. He is also broke too and cannot find any sort of stability. The First Class DCT holders have “DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES” written on their ID cards in red and even larger text. Being a First Class DCT means that their case histories will be turned over to newspapers, other amateur cops, and even children. Everybody will keep a constant eye on the person, and many of the cops want the DCT in question to commit a crime, so they will become famous for stopping it. The rest of society will also continue to hate these First Class members. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "995d1bce82834a66800fc72e066c59c6", "response_text": "There are different levels of DCT which depend on the number of conspiracies. A DCT First Class is the highest level, the people who have it are under constant attention. Amateur cops spend their free time following such DCTs to be the first to prevent their crimes and get rewards. Common people watch. DCTs out of curiosity and spy on them as committing a crime is rare. DCTs, especially first class ones, are therefore never alone. They can't get any normal job, the higher the class is, the smaller are the chances. The kids follow DCT everywhere as they are in CPA junior clubs, the kids have no shame and they follow DCTs for their whole life. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "d117045cdd864f44a2607c19adc9c839", "response_text": "The DCT Second Class cannot find any good jobs since there is a criminal tendency. Instead, only jobs such as street-cleaning, ditch-digger are opened to him. But he wantss a satisfying job with a great salary. The First Class will have their case history printed on newspapers. Anyone can look up their record and hopes that the First Class person will commit some crime. They are always followed and watched and spied. Strangers will spit on them, insult them. They are considered freaks and aliens. Once they commit crimes again, they will be brought into the CPA hospital for some treatments that will forever prevent them from committing crimes. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the setting of the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "104", "uid": "4a91673a3a10486c98bb515c6c5eb6b8", "response_text": "This story takes place in New York City. It begins in a bar with Joe drinking and attempting to get drunk on watered-down alcohol. A girl comes up to him to talk about what he is hiring her to do. The two leave the bar and go down a hall into an alleyway where Joe tries to enact his plan of fake committing a crime. When Joe wakes up after losing consciousness, he is in the police commissioner’s office. When Joe leaves the commissioner’s office, he goes to the subway and heads to John Gralewski’s apartment on Orange St. The apartment has a new wall that is clean compared to other walls caked with dirt and stains. He notices that the building is old with wide hallways. After Joe is caught by the police, he is taken to the hospital for his treatment that lasts months. When Joe wakes up, he sees that there is a crowd of people outside of the hospital waiting to meet him. Joe leaves the hospital in a car with Hendricks but becomes so upset that he eventually exits the car and stands on the sidewalk where he comes to his realization of his imprisonment in his own body. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "75ccf4b290d648e68cae7a3a6123dd37", "response_text": "The story is set in New York in the United States. The girl and Jon initially meet in a tavern with tables, and there are robot CPA bartenders serving drinks. Then, Jon and her go to a dark alleyway, where he attempts to get her to frame him for rape. When he wakes up in the police commissioner’s office, the place is devoid of any furniture except for a desk and chairs. The walls are lined with television screens, electronic calculators, and many other machines that are a part of New York’s mechanical police force. There is also a slot for old ID cards to be accepted and print new ones. In the next room, there is also a water cooler. Jon goes through the subway briefly, and the darkened city makes him feel ill because it means that the CPA could be hiding anywhere. There are huge atomic power plants scattered around the country to control the advanced system and supply endless electricity for only four dollars a year. When he reaches apartment 204 at 2141 Orange Street, there is a dimly-lit hallway and new walls. The building is old, and the owner had constructed a wall across the hall. Although it is supposed to be wired with CPA burglarproof devices, the owner has not paid for it. There is also a cubbyhole, but the room itself is barely large enough for a bed, chair, and bureau. The place has old underwear and magazines in the bureau; however, there is a watch buried underneath the pile. At the hospital, there is a large window to look out of. There is a large crowd below the hospital steps; many ask for Joe’s autograph, give him gifts, or take photos. The car that rides is robot-chauffeured, and they later pass by a CPA playground. There are girls and boys playing while CPA psychologists stand on the side. Later, the car drops him off at a sidewalk and goes back into the sea of traffic. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "995d1bce82834a66800fc72e066c59c6", "response_text": "The story starts at a table in the bar with a robot bartender. Then Joe takes the girl outside into an alley through a hall and a back door. There are hidden microphones and police come soon. Joe is taken to the police commissioner's office - a large room almost unfurnished with a huge amount of machines along the walls. Wen the officer leaves to the next room, Joe takes a look at the small book with names and addresses and goes out. He goes to the subway through the dark city which makes him uneasy. Then he reaches apartment 204 at 2141 Orange street in New York. The building is old and dim but the apartment room is new. The place is small, just enough for a bed, chair and bureau. There is nothing to steal except underwear and old magazines, but Joe finds a watch soon. He runs out and is caught by police, who handcuff him in a helicopter. A couple months later Joe wakes up in a hospital after the end of his treatment. A huge crowd is waiting outside, and it takes a long while to get through it. Joe and Hendricks get into the least's robot-chauffeured car and pass various CPA sites until Joe exits on the street, unable to handle all that has happened. "}, {"worker_id": "103", "uid": "d117045cdd864f44a2607c19adc9c839", "response_text": "The story starts in a bar which has robot bartenders that prevent people from getting drunk. There is a jukebox on the side of the room and there is a dance floor. There are tables and chairs in the bar. A door from the bar leads into a hall. And leaving the hall, there is an alley. The alley has hidden speakers. The floor in the alley is very hard. The police commissioner’s office is large; it does not have any furniture but a desk and chairs. The wall is attached with controls of television screens, calculators, and machines. There is also a desk top. Across the room there is slot for the ID cards. There is also a book. There are subways on the street. The building that has the unprotected room is old and the hall is wide. The room is small and has a bed, chair, the bureau and a window. The bureau has underwear, old magazines, and a watch."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61097", "uid": "cc5949d34ad34950b1ec2167f26bbebf", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE FROZEN PLANET\n \n\n By Keith Laumer\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n \"It is rather unusual,\" Magnan said, \"to assign an officer of your rank to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.\"\n \n Retief sat relaxed and said nothing. Just before the silence grew awkward, Magnan went on.\n \n \"There are four planets in the group,\" he said. \"Two double planets, all rather close to an unimportant star listed as DRI-G 33987. They're called Jorgensen's Worlds, and in themselves are of no importance whatever. However, they lie deep in the sector into which the Soetti have been penetrating.\n \n \"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned that the Soetti plan a bold step forward. Since they've met no opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\"\n \n Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned.\n \n \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\"\n \n Magnan drew a large folder from his desk.\n \n \"A show of resistance at this point is necessary. Unfortunately, Jorgensen's Worlds are technologically undeveloped areas. They're farmers or traders. Their industry is limited to a minor role in their economy—enough to support the merchant fleet, no more. The war potential, by conventional standards, is nil.\"\n \n Magnan tapped the folder before him.\n \n \"I have here,\" he said solemnly, \"information which will change that picture completely.\" He leaned back and blinked at Retief.\n \n \n\n \n \"All right, Mr. Councillor,\" Retief said. \"I'll play along; what's in the folder?\"\n \n Magnan spread his fingers, folded one down.\n \n \"First,\" he said. \"The Soetti War Plan—in detail. We were fortunate enough to make contact with a defector from a party of renegade Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by the Theory group.\" He wrestled a third finger down. \"Lastly; an Utter Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration field into a potent weapon—a development our systems people have been holding in reserve for just such a situation.\"\n \n \"Is that all?\" Retief said. \"You've still got two fingers sticking up.\"\n \n Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away.\n \n \"This is no occasion for flippancy, Retief. In the wrong hands, this information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave this building.\"\n \n \"I'll carry it, sealed,\" Retief said. \"That way nobody can sweat it out of me.\"\n \n Magnan started to shake his head.\n \n \"Well,\" he said. \"If it's trapped for destruction, I suppose—\"\n \n \"I've heard of these Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said. \"I remember an agent, a big blond fellow, very quick on the uptake. A wizard with cards and dice. Never played for money, though.\"\n \n \"Umm,\" Magnan said. \"Don't make the error of personalizing this situation, Retief. Overall policy calls for a defense of these backwater worlds. Otherwise the Corps would allow history to follow its natural course, as always.\"\n \n \"When does this attack happen?\"\n \n \"Less than four weeks.\"\n \n \"That doesn't leave me much time.\"\n \n \"I have your itinerary here. Your accommodations are clear as far as Aldo Cerise. You'll have to rely on your ingenuity to get you the rest of the way.\"\n \n \"That's a pretty rough trip, Mr. Councillor. Suppose I don't make it?\"\n \n Magnan looked sour. \"Someone at a policy-making level has chosen to put all our eggs in one basket, Retief. I hope their confidence in you is not misplaced.\"\n \n \"This antiac conversion; how long does it take?\"\n \n \"A skilled electronics crew can do the job in a matter of minutes. The Jorgensens can handle it very nicely; every other man is a mechanic of some sort.\"\n \n Retief opened the envelope Magnan handed him and looked at the tickets inside.\n \n \"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not start any long books.\"\n \n \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan said.\n \n Retief stood up. \"If I hurry, maybe I can catch the cartoon.\"\n \n \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds; don't get yourself interned.\"\n \n \"I'll tell you what,\" Retief said soberly. \"In a pinch, I'll mention your name.\"\n \n \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\"\n \n \"They'll never guess,\" Retief said. \"I'll pose as a gentleman.\"\n \n \"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n \n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking out a needler, is there?\"\n \n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n \n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n \n \"Please yourself.\"\n \n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\n \n \n\n II\n \n Retief put down the heavy travel-battered suitcase and leaned on the counter, studying the schedules chalked on the board under the legend\n\"ALDO CERISE—INTERPLANETARY.\" A thin clerk in a faded sequined blouse and a plastic snakeskin cummerbund groomed his fingernails, watching Retief from the corner of his eye.\n \n Retief glanced at him.\n \n The clerk nipped off a ragged corner with rabbitlike front teeth and spat it on the floor.\n \n \"Was there something?\" he said.\n \n \"Two twenty-eight, due out today for the Jorgensen group,\" Retief said.\n\"Is it on schedule?\"\n \n The clerk sampled the inside of his right cheek, eyed Retief. \"Filled up. Try again in a couple of weeks.\"\n \n \"What time does it leave?\"\n \n \"I don't think—\"\n \n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is it due out?\"\n \n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n \n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that thumb to you the hard way.\"\n \n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye, closed his mouth and swallowed.\n \n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n \n Retief looked at him.\n \n \"Some ... ah ... VIP's required accommodation,\" he said. He hooked a finger inside the sequined collar. \"All tourist reservations were canceled. You'll have to try to get space on the Four-Planet Line ship next—\"\n \n \"Which gate?\" Retief said.\n \n \"For ... ah...?\"\n \n \"For the two twenty-eight for Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said.\n \n \"Well,\" the clerk said. \"Gate 19,\" he added quickly. \"But—\"\n \n Retief picked up his suitcase and walked away toward the glare sign reading To Gates 16-30 .\n \n \"Another smart alec,\" the clerk said behind him.\n \n \n\n \n Retief followed the signs, threaded his way through crowds, found a covered ramp with the number 228 posted over it. A heavy-shouldered man with a scarred jawline and small eyes was slouching there in a rumpled gray uniform. He put out a hand as Retief started past him.\n \n \"Lessee your boarding pass,\" he muttered.\n \n Retief pulled a paper from an inside pocket, handed it over.\n \n The guard blinked at it.\n \n \"Whassat?\"\n \n \"A gram confirming my space,\" Retief said. \"Your boy on the counter says he's out to lunch.\"\n \n The guard crumpled the gram, dropped it on the floor and lounged back against the handrail.\n \n \"On your way, bub,\" he said.\n \n Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and went to his knees.\n \n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n \n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n \n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n \n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven. The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the floor. It was expensive looking baggage.\n \n Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall, florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n \n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n \n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n \n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n \n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr. Tony's room.\"\n \n \"I don't know Mr. Tony. He'll have to bull his way into other quarters.\"\n \n \"We'll see about you, mister.\" The man turned and went out. Retief sat on the bunk and lit a cigar. There was a sound of voices in the corridor. Two burly baggage-smashers appeared, straining at an oversized trunk. They maneuvered it through the door, lowered it, glanced at Retief and went out. The thick-necked man returned.\n \n \"All right, you. Out,\" he growled. \"Or have I got to have you thrown out?\"\n \n Retief rose and clamped the cigar between his teeth. He gripped a handle of the brass-bound trunk in each hand, bent his knees and heaved the trunk up to chest level, then raised it overhead. He turned to the door.\n \n \"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the far wall of the corridor and burst.\n \n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n \n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n \n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\n \n \n\n \n Five minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n \n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye stared at Retief.\n \n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated.\n \n The thick-necked man edged past him, looked at Retief and snorted,\n\"That's him, sure.\"\n \n \"I'm captain of this vessel,\" the first man said. \"You've got two minutes to haul your freight out of here, buster.\"\n \n \"When you can spare the time from your other duties,\" Retief said,\n\"take a look at Section Three, Paragraph One, of the Uniform Code. That spells out the law on confirmed space on vessels engaged in interplanetary commerce.\"\n \n \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\"\n \n Two big men edged into the cabin, looking at Retief.\n \n \"Go on, pitch him out,\" the captain snapped.\n \n Retief put his cigar in an ashtray, and swung his feet off the bunk.\n \n \"Don't try it,\" he said softly.\n \n One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and stepped forward, then hesitated.\n \n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n \n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's possessions right on the deck.\"\n \n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n \n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n\"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n \n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The Captain's voice prevailed.\n \n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n \n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.\n \n The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come out.\"\n \n \n\n III\n \n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n \n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional glances Retief's way.\n \n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n \n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n \n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"\n \n \"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n \n \"I see your point.\"\n \n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n \n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n \n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties, look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n \n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a glass. \"Here's to you.\"\n \n \"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em. Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert. You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n \n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n \n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need anything, holler.\"\n \n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct, there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.\n \n Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n \n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n \n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n \n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n \n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.\n \n \"I don't think I want my coffee,\" he said. He looked at the thug. \"You drink it.\"\n \n The thug squinted at Retief. \"A wise hick,\" he began.\n \n With a flick of the wrist, Retief tossed the coffee into the thug's face, then stood and slammed a straight right to the chin. The thug went down.\n \n Retief looked at Mr. Tony, still standing open-mouthed.\n \n \"You can take your playmates away now, Tony,\" he said. \"And don't bother to come around yourself. You're not funny enough.\"\n \n Mr. Tony found his voice.\n \n \"Take him, Marbles!\" he growled.\n \n The thick-necked man slipped a hand inside his tunic and brought out a long-bladed knife. He licked his lips and moved in.\n \n Retief heard the panel open beside him.\n \n \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance; a well-honed french knife lay on the sill.\n \n \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\"\n \n Thick-neck lunged and Retief hit him square in the face, knocking him under the table. The other man stepped back, fumbling a power pistol from his shoulder holster.\n \n \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said.\n \n \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared, white-faced.\n \n \"Put that away, you!\" he yelled. \"What kind of—\"\n \n \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum later.\"\n \n \"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my charter to consider.\"\n \n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n \n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the slob.\"\n \n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n \n The panel opened.\n \n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n \n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.\n \n \"Sure, Mister. Anything else?\"\n \n \"I'll think of something,\" Retief said. \"This is shaping up into one of those long days.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said.\n\"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They won't mess with me.\"\n \n \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked.\n \n \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more smoked turkey?\"\n \n \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\"\n \n \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was yer age.\"\n \n \"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's Worlds like?\"\n \n \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the Jorgies live on Svea; that's the least froze up. Man don't enjoy eatin' his own cookin' like he does somebody else's.\"\n \n \"That's where I'm lucky, Chip. What kind of cargo's the captain got aboard for Jorgensen's?\"\n \n \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says. Don't know what we even run in there for.\"\n \n \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\"\n \n \"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You ain't got another one of them cigars, have you?\"\n \n \"Have one, Chip. I guess I was lucky to get space on this ship.\"\n \n \"Plenty o' space, Mister. We got a dozen empty cabins.\" Chip puffed the cigar alight, then cleared away the dishes, poured out coffee and brandy.\n \n \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said.\n \n Retief looked at him questioningly.\n \n \"You never seen a Sweaty? Ugly lookin' devils. Skinny legs, like a lobster; big chest, shaped like the top of a turnip; rubbery lookin' head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\"\n \n \"I've never had the pleasure,\" Retief said.\n \n \"You prob'ly have it perty soon. Them devils board us nigh ever trip out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\"\n \n There was a distant clang, and a faint tremor ran through the floor.\n \n \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\"\n \n Ten minutes passed before bootsteps sounded outside the door, accompanied by a clicking patter. The doorknob rattled, then a heavy knock shook the door.\n \n \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\"\n \n \"Unlock it, Chip.\" The chef opened the door.\n \n \"Come in, damn you,\" he said.\n \n A tall and grotesque creature minced into the room, tiny hoof-like feet tapping on the floor. A flaring metal helmet shaded the deep-set compound eyes, and a loose mantle flapped around the knobbed knees. Behind the alien, the captain hovered nervously.\n \n \"Yo' papiss,\" the alien rasped.\n \n \"Who's your friend, Captain?\" Retief said.\n \n \"Never mind; just do like he tells you.\"\n \n \"Yo' papiss,\" the alien said again.\n \n \"Okay,\" Retief said. \"I've seen it. You can take it away now.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Don't horse around,\" the captain said. \"This fellow can get mean.\"\n \n The alien brought two tiny arms out from the concealment of the mantle, clicked toothed pincers under Retief's nose.\n \n \"Quick, soft one.\"\n \n \"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and I'm tempted to test it.\"\n \n \"Don't start anything with Skaw; he can clip through steel with those snappers.\"\n \n \"Last chance,\" Retief said. Skaw stood poised, open pincers an inch from Retief's eyes.\n \n \"Show him your papers, you damned fool,\" the captain said hoarsely. \"I got no control over Skaw.\"\n \n \n\n \n The alien clicked both pincers with a sharp report, and in the same instant Retief half-turned to the left, leaned away from the alien and drove his right foot against the slender leg above the bulbous knee-joint. Skaw screeched and floundered, greenish fluid spattering from the burst joint.\n \n \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates aboard, don't bother to call.\"\n \n \"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring at the figure flopping on the floor.\n \n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in Terrestrial space.\"\n \n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n \n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close and sniffed.\n \n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n \n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n \n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"\n \n \"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back. We know their secret now.\"\n \n \"What secret? I—\"\n \n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die easy; that's the secret.\"\n \n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n \n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien gingerly into the hall.\n \n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"\n \n \"You don't scare us, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Him and Mr. Tony and all his goons. You hit 'em where they live, that time. They're pals o' these Sweaties. Runnin' some kind o' crooked racket.\"\n \n \"You'd better take the captain's advice, Chip. There's no point in your getting involved in my problems.\"\n \n \"They'd of killed you before now, Mister, if they had any guts. That's where we got it over these monkeys. They got no guts.\"\n \n \"They act scared, Chip. Scared men are killers.\"\n \n \"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try nothin' close to port.\"\n \n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n \n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much. You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n \n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\n \n \n\n IV\n \n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n \n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n \n \"Come on in.\"\n \n The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n \n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening, then turned to Retief.\n \n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n \n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n \n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give some orders to the Mate.\"\n \n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n \n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"\n \n \"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a gun?\"\n \n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n \n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n \n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n \n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's cabin?\"\n \n \n\n \n \"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who comes down the passage?\"\n \n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain looked up from his desk, then jumped up.\n \n \"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n \n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n \n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n \n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n \n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\" he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n \n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n \n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n \n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to change course.\"\n \n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.\n \n \"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n \n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n \n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n \n \"You busted it, you—\"\n \n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n \n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n \n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley hoods.\"\n \n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n \n \"Tell him.\"\n \n The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\" he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped the mike and looked up at Retief.\n \n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n \n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n \n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with a sick friend.\"\n \n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n \n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n \n Retief settled himself in a chair.\n \n \"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n \n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n \n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n \n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n \n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up. With this.\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "37fc0aac8bf04a208d02ecda8ea5ac91", "response_text": "Councillor Magnan dispatches Retief on a mission to deliver information to Jorgensen’s Worlds, notifying them that the aliens, the Soettis, are planning to attack them and to deliver a battle plan and the instructions for converting their anti-acceleration field into a powerful weapon to defend themselves. As a precaution, Retief checks out a needler to take with him. At the airport, he is told that the flight to Jorgensen’s World is fully booked and that he should try again in a couple of weeks; by then, the alien invasion will be over. Under pressure, the clerk tells Retief that the ship is booked for a VIP, and all tourist reservations are canceled. Retief goes to the gate for the flight and punches the ticket taker, forcing his way onto the airship. \n\tRetief makes his way to a room full of expensive luggage and is discovered by Mr. Tony, the man who has claimed the room. When Mr. Tony’s henchmen try to force Retief out of the room, he hefts a large trunk at them and then tosses all the luggage into the hallway. Next, the Captain appears and tries to throw Retief off the ship, but Retief claims the right of the passage under Section Three, Paragraph One of the Uniform Code. The henchmen and the Captain give up for now.\n\tAt dinner, the wait staff ignore Retief, but the chef, Chip, provides him with an excellent meal. Chip dislikes the Captain and Mr. Tony, but he knows they won’t replace him because of his excellent culinary skills. Chip befriends Retief and explains the situation to him. He doesn’t know exactly what the Captain and Mr. Tony are up to, but they make frequent trips to Jorgensen’s Worlds and cut off all tourist travel to the planet. They travel to Jorgensen’s Worlds every few weeks but never pick up any cargo. They allow the Soettis, the aliens who are planning an attack on the Worlds, to board the ships and inspect them because the Soettis are in control of the travel lanes to the planet.\n\tWhen Skaw, a Soetti, demands Retief’s travel papers, Retief attacks him and kills him. The Captain is terrified that the Soettis will kill all of them, and Retief urges him to show some backbone. Retief knows the Soettis won’t make a big deal of the death because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves on the eve of their launch against the Worlds. \n\tLater, Chip informs Retief that the Captain has ordered a change of course to skip Jorgensen’s Worlds and travel on to Alabaster. Retief must reach the Jorgensen’s population ASAP with news of the impending alien attack, so he goes to the Captain’s cabin, catching him off guard, and makes him change the orders for the crew, keeping the ship on track to the Worlds. To prevent the Captain from changing the order, Retief stays with him in his cabin and uses the threat of his needler as a deterrent.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5ff504bd39244e459e6f9872d3a369dc", "response_text": "Councillor Magnan assigns Retief on a mission to Jorgensen's Worlds to warn and prepare them for an attack by the Soetti, an alien species characterized by their long legs, turnip-shaped torsos, snapper arms, and aggressive infiltration of Terrestrial space. Since Jorgensen's Worlds are underdeveloped technologically, Magnan wants Retief to help the Jorgies convert their anti-acceleration field into a powerful weapon for their defense. Retief has four weeks to complete his mission. Magnan has booked him a space flight as far as Aldo Cerise, and he warns Retief prior to departure to look out for the Soetti, who are patrolling the customs areas into Jorgensen's Worlds. Retief brings a gun with him in case he encounters trouble. When he arrives to check in to his flight, the clerk informs him that his flight is full, and he has no chance of boarding. Retief finds out the gate number and goes there, knocking out a guard in order to make his way onto the ship. When Retief locates his cabin, he discovers a tall man named Mr. Tony and his henchman, a short, thick-necked man named Marbles are already there. Mr. Tony orders his henchman to remove Retief, but Retief throws his luggage out into the corridor and closes the door. A few minutes later, Marbles returns with the ship's captain and orders Retief to leave the ship. Again, Retief refuses, and the captain's henchmen avoid escalation having seen Retief's previous aggression with Mr. Tony's luggage. At dinner later, the waiters refuse to serve Retief, and he sees the Captain dining with Mr. Tony and his henchmen. Retief meets the ship's chef Chip, who serves him food. Meanwhile, four of Mr. Tony's henchmen come to Retief's table to find out why he wants to go to Jorgensen's Worlds. When Marbles pulls a knife, Chef Chip offers Retief a knife of his own, but he simply punches Marbles in the face, knocking him out. Another thug pulls a gun on Retief, but the Captain defuses the situation, thinking about his career. After everyone leaves, Chip informs Retief that the Captain has a shady business arrangement with Mr. Tony wherein he ferries unknown cargo instead of tourists to Jorgensen's World with frequent visits from the Soetti. Before the conversation has ended, the Captain arrives with a Soetti named Skaw, who wants to question Retief. When Retief refuses to show Skaw his papers, Skaw moves in for the attack, and Retief breaks his slender leg. Skaw flops about the floor until he dies. Horrified, the Captain worries the other Soetti will react violently, but Retief orders him to show them the body of Skaw and some guns, predicting they will retreat. Later, Chip informs Retief that Mr. Tony is deeply upset about Skaw's death, considering they were close business partners; he also tells him the captain has ordered a course-change to bypass Jorgensen's Worlds and head straight to Alabaster. Retief finds the captain and strong-arms him into maintaining his course to Jorgensen's Worlds."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6d1309b785b34bdfb771bf0a7f172789", "response_text": "Magnan, a Councillor of the Corps, assigns an officer of high rank, Retief, on a dangerous courier mission to stop the forceful takeover of the Terrestrial occupied space of Jorgensen's Worlds (a cluster of four planets around a star) by the Soetti. Magan suggests a show of force against the Soetti is necessary, and details that he has acquired their war plan and weapon schematics. The Soetti will attack the Jorgensen’s Worlds in less than four weeks and are already patrolling the trade lanes into them, making Retief’s entry sketchy even while hiding his Corps credentials. Magnan gives him a ticket departing in four hours to the Aldo Cerise to start Retief’s trip. However, Retief has to punch out an attendant to actually get on this ship because his ticket has been voided by “VIPs” booking the train up to capacity and bumping him off. Retief goes to his originally assigned cabin, but it is already full of expensive luggage. Two men tell him it’s Mr.Tony’s room and that he needs to leave. The Captain shows up and tries to tell Retief to leave as well, but Retief cites the Uniform Code law that protects confirmed space on interplanetary vessels. \nRetief meets the chef, Chip, in the dining car as he watches the red-haired Captain eat with a table of men, including Mr. Tony. One of the “thugs” dining with the Captain dips a cigar into Retief’s coffee while walking past, and Retief throws the coffee on him and punches him in the chin. Mr. Tony calls on one of his men, Marbles, to take out Retief and he attacks. Chip offers Retief a knife, but he doesn’t take it. The Captain urges them to stop fighting saying he has his “charter to consider”.\nChip brings Retief a meal in his cabin, and tells him that the Captain and Mr. Tony are in a crooked business arrangement and haven’t let any tourists into Jorgensen's World in 6-8 months. They only make quick stops and never pick up any cargo. The passengers currently aboard are headed to Alabaster. The Soetti board the vessel, and one of them, Skaw, appears at Retief’s cabin with the Captain and demands his papers. Skaw threatens Retief with snapping claws, but Retief refuses and breaks his leg, which leaks green fluid and kills Skaw. \nThe Soetti don’t retaliate when Skaw’s body is returned to them, but the thugs and Mr. Tony are very angry with the Captain, and force him to pass by Jorgensen’s Worlds and go straight to Alabaster. Retief goes to the Captain’s quarters and tries to get him to return to the original course. The Captain initially refuses, but Retief slams his fingers in a drawer and the Captain obliges. It will be 18 hours to Jorgensen’s Worlds and Retief asks Chip to bring him pots of coffee to keep him awake as he stays with the Captain to ensure he stays on course under threat of shooting him with his 2mm needler weapon.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "99a56fcc57304a0c9fe6563ecde8e7b5", "response_text": "The story opens with Magnan debriefing Retief about the Soetti, who are planning to seize Jorgensen's Worlds. Retief is to be tasked with getting to Jorgensen's Worlds before the arrival of the Soetti to equip the people of Jorgensen's Worlds with advanced weaponry and a battle plan to defend themselves. Retief boards a ship on Aldo Cerise without a boarding pass and claims a room that is meant for a man named Mr. Tony. Mr. Tony calls his associates and they attempt to remove Retief from his room but are unsuccessful. As they travel towards Jorgensen's Worlds, it becomes clear that the ship is under the control of Mr. Tony, who has some sort of shady dealings with the Soetti. Retief learns this with the aid of the ship's cook, Chip. A Soetti named Skaw appears and attempts to find out more about Retief and his purpose for being on the ship, but Retief kills Skaw. The captain then attempts to change the course of the ship, but Retief forces him to stay the course towards Jorgensen's Worlds."}]}, {"question_text": "Who are the Soettis, and what is their significance?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "37fc0aac8bf04a208d02ecda8ea5ac91", "response_text": "The Soettis are involved in some kind of illegal activity with the Captain and Mr. Tony. The Soettis, nicknamed Sweaties, by humans who dislike them, are an alien species who have been moving deep into the sector where the Jorgensen’s Worlds are located. The Soettis are unattractive creatures with skinny legs like a lobster’s and a big chest shaped somewhat like a turnip. They have rubbery heads, and you can see their pulse beating when they get upset. They have tiny arms with toothed pincers at the ends and threaten humans with them. These pincers are incredibly strong and can cut through steel. \nIt has been learned that they are planning to seize Jorgensen’s Worlds by force, a move of open aggression against Terrestrial territory that cannot be overlooked. The headquarters where Retief works has obtained the Soetti War Plan from a defector of Terrestrials who have actually been providing advice to the Soettis, so the plan is for Retief to travel personally to Jorgensen’s Worlds to provide them with this information and also with the schematics that will enable them to convert their anti-acceleration field into a powerful weapon to protect the planets. Reaching the Jorgensen’s Worlds will be challenging because the Soettis are on patrol in the trade lanes where the airships travel to the Worlds. The Soettis look down on Terrestrials and try to assert themselves over them. The Soettis can speak English, so they can communicate with the Terrestrials.\nThe Captain is afraid of the Soettis and worries that when Retief harms Skaw, the Soetties will kill all of the humans. Retief intends for Skaw to go back and tell the other Soettis that they can no longer enter the Terrestrials’ airships and search them. When Skaw dies, the Captain is certain they are done for, but Retief tells him to bluff and show guns when they return the body, and the Soettis will back down. Surprisingly, the Soettis don’t say anything about Skaw’s death, but Mr. Tony is furious. Retief thinks it is good to know that the Soettis are easy to kill.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5ff504bd39244e459e6f9872d3a369dc", "response_text": "The Soetti are a hostile alien species that have been infiltrating Terrestrial space. Councillor Magnan and his associates have uncovered their plot to seize Jorgensen's Worlds and assign Retief to travel to the underdeveloped planets to help prepare a defense.  The Soetti are tall creatures with skinny legs, big chests, and round, bulbous torsos. Their heads look rubbery and pulse when they are angry. Soettis have two small arms with pincers for hands that are sharp enough to cut through steel. Magnan warns Retief to be on the lookout for Soettis when he boards his flight for Jorgensen's Worlds, since they tend to patrol the customs areas. They also seem to have some kind of business arrangement with the Captain of the ship that ferries to Jorgensen's World and Mr. Tony, a space thug who employs a number of strong men like Marbles to rough up passengers to Jorgensen's Worlds who might get too curious. Chip informs Retief that the Soetti frequently board the ship, although he is not clear as to their purpose. A Soetti named Skaw confronts Retief and asks to see his papers. When Retief refuses the request, Skaw moves in to attack him. Retief discovers a Soetti weakness when he breaks Skaw's slender leg, spilling greenish blood, and ultimately killing Skaw. Retief demonstrates to the Captain how this can be used as leverage against the hostile aliens."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6d1309b785b34bdfb771bf0a7f172789", "response_text": "Soettis are an alien race of lobster-like crustaceans with skinny legs, big chests and rubbery heads that show their beating pulse. They patrol the trade lanes into the Jorgensen’s Worlds and one of them, Skaw, boards the merchant vessel that Retief is riding on, acting as if he is a Customs Patrol officer. Skaw is tall with tiny hoof-like feet, and a loose mantle that flaps around knobby knees. He wears a metal helmet. Retief easily breaks the joint of one of Skaw’s legs which then leaks green fluid and kills Skaw.\nThey are significant to the story because they are the enemies that Retief is being sent on a Corps mission to clear from the Jorgensen’s Worlds where they are mounting a hostile takeover of Terrestrial space. After Retief discovers how easy they are to kill, he knows he can exploit this weakness to succeed on his mission to reclaim Jorgensen's Worlds for Terrestrials.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "99a56fcc57304a0c9fe6563ecde8e7b5", "response_text": "The Soettis are an aggressive species that is attempting to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force. They are much more technologically advanced than the Jorgensen's Worlds, especially when it comes to weaponry. The Soetti look different than the other characters in the story, with skinny legs like lobsters, and big chests that look like turnips. They have hoof-like feet as well. In Retief's quest to defend Jorgensen's Worlds, he finds that they have some kind of shady dealings with Mr. Tony aboard the transport ship from Aldo Cerise."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe Jorgensen’s Worlds and their significance.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "37fc0aac8bf04a208d02ecda8ea5ac91", "response_text": "Jorgensen’s Worlds are a group of four planets, or actually two double planets, and are located close to an unimportant star known as DRI-G 33987. These planets are freezing cold and are undeveloped and mostly populated with farmers and traders. They have a small amount of industry, just enough to support their merchant fleet. However, the governing body in this sector of space has received word that an alien race, the Soetti, has plans to seize Jorgensen’s Worlds. The governing body isn’t going to sit by and let the aliens take over Terrestrial-occupied territory. Retief is on a mission to deliver information to Jorgensen’s Worlds that will enable them to defend themselves from the alien attack, providing them with the Soettis War Plan, a battle plan for the planets, and the schematics that will enable them, in a matter of minutes, to convert their anti-acceleration fields into a powerful weapon. Reaching Jorgensen’s Worlds will be challenging because the Soetti are patroling the trade lanes to the planet. Their successful defense against the Soetti hinges on Retief’s reaching the planets in time for them to make the conversions before the aliens' attack."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5ff504bd39244e459e6f9872d3a369dc", "response_text": "Jorgensen's Worlds consist of four cold planets: Two double planets that hover near a star called DRI-G 33987. The people who live on Jorgensen's Worlds are called \"Jorgies\" and most of them live on Svea because it is the least-frozen among the four planetes. Technologically underdeveloped, Jorgensen's Worlds make their industries in farming and trading and have nothing in the way of defense against hostile attack. The Soetti plan to seize Jorgensen's Worlds as part of their efforts to continue infiltrating Terrestrial space; this plan was revealed to Councillor Magnan and his associates by a defector from a group of Terrestrials who had been working with the Soetti. Councillor Magnan sends Retief on the four-day trip to help them convert their anti-acceleration field into a powerful weapon that may be used to defend themselves against the Soetti. Tourism to Jorgensen's Wolrds has recently come to a stand-still, but a ship piloted by the Captain and occupied by Mr. Tony, his henchmen, and the attendant Soetti ferries frequently to the planets carrying a mystery cargoload. The Captain wants to avoid stopping at Jorgensen's Worlds when he realizes Retief is slowly uncovering the plot, so he orders a course-change to Alabaster. But Retief stops him."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6d1309b785b34bdfb771bf0a7f172789", "response_text": "There are four planets in Jorgensen’s Worlds. Two sets of double planets that are close to star DRI-G 33987. Chip, the chef on the merchant vessel that Retief is riding, describes that one of them is as cold as hell and the other three are colder. Most of the population lives on the warmest of the planets, Svea. Jorgensen's Worlds are technologically undeveloped, populated by mostly farmers or traders, with industry playing only a minor economic role that barely supports the Merchant Fleet to make runs to them. They are significant because they are within Terrestrial space and an alien race, the Soetti, are trying to claim them by hostile takeover which Retief is sent by the Corps to stop. The Jorgensen's Worlds have essentially no ability to defend themselves since they don't have an armed force, so they can only be saved by the Corps."}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "99a56fcc57304a0c9fe6563ecde8e7b5", "response_text": "Jorgensen's Worlds is the name used for four planets grouped around a star named DRI-G 33987. These worlds are colder than most other planets, with Svea being the least cold. Jorgensen's Worlds are inhabited by farmers and traders. They are technologically underdeveloped, especially when it comes to weapons and defense. Many of the inhabitants of Jorgensen's Worlds are mechanics. Jorgensen's Worlds are significant because they are the target of the Soetti, who hope to take the worlds by force. This is in open opposition to the organization for which Retief works, and he is given the mission of delivering advanced weaponry and knowledge to the people of Jorgensen's Worlds in order to protect it."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Chip, and what is his significance?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "37fc0aac8bf04a208d02ecda8ea5ac91", "response_text": "Chip is the chef on the airship that is traveling to Jorgensen’s Worlds. His role as chef enables him to have contact with the Captain, crew, and passengers, which makes him extremely valuable to Retief. In addition, he likes Retief since he stands up to Mr. Tony and the Captain, neither of whom Chip can stand. When the serving staff ignore Retief, Chip serves Retief and later continues serving him meals in his room. When Retief is threatened by one of Mr. Tony’s goons wielding a knife, Chip passes a knife from the kitchen to Retief to defend himself. Most importantly, Chip shares his wealth of knowledge with Retief and assists him. Chip informs Retief that Mr. Tony and the Captain are involved in some kind of crooked business deal with each other, adding that there haven’t been any tourist to Jorgensen’s Worlds for the last six to eight months. He also tells Retief about the Soettis boarding the ship and searching it. At the end of the story when Retief is holding the Captain in his cabin to prevent him from changing the orders and bypassing Jorgensen’s Worlds, Chip keeps an eye on what is going on with the rest of the passengers to report back to Retief. Without Chip’s help, Retief might not have been as successful in thwarting the Captain and Mr. Tony’s plan to bypass Jorgensen’s Worlds.\n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5ff504bd39244e459e6f9872d3a369dc", "response_text": "Chip is the chef on the ship that ferries passengers and cargo to planet clusters like Jorgensen's Worlds and even further into Terrestrial space to planets like Alabaster. Friendly and helpful to Retief, Chip speaks to him through a panel in the wall that he slides open and closed whenever he is ready to serve food or dish out some useful information. Chip cannot stand the Soetti, whom he calls \"Sweaties\", because of their condescension and harassment. He also doesn't like the Captain of the ship, Mr. Tony, or any of his henchmen. When the waiters in the dining area ignore Retief, Chip whips him up a thirty-two-ounce Delmonico with mushrooms and garlic butter as well as some coffee with brandy and baked Alaska. When Marbles threatens retief with a knife, Chip offers Retief a french knife through his sliding panel in order to defend himself. Later, Chip helps Retief again by providing him information about Mr. Tony's business relationship with Skaw and the Captain's order to change course for Alabaster. While Retief holds the Captain at gunpoint to prevent him from following through on that order, Chip keeps watch in the corridor. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6d1309b785b34bdfb771bf0a7f172789", "response_text": "Chip is the chef on the Merchant Vessel that Retief has boarded to travel to Jorgensen’s Worlds to prepare them for the Soetti attack. Chip is significant because he is the guide of the story, giving Retief key information to make decisions, such as that the Captain is engaged in crooked business with Mr. Tony and the thugs, and that vessel is changing course unexpectedly to pass by the Jorgensen’s Worlds which would jeopardize Retief’s mission entirely. Chip is friendly to Retief from their first meeting and supportive of his mission since he does not trust the Soetti and he thinks they look at men like worms. Chip takes liberties to deliver food to Retief in his room, which allows them to have private conversations about the Captain and Mr.Tony, and will support Retief with coffee during the 18 hours he has to stay awake to watch the Captain and ensure he stays on course to Jorgensen's Worlds."}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "99a56fcc57304a0c9fe6563ecde8e7b5", "response_text": "Chip is the ship's cook and happens to be the best cook in the Merchant Service. Chip doesn't care for the captain of the ship or the Soetti, who he derisively calls the \"Sweaties.\" Chip is considerably older than Retief but he sympathizes with the younger man when the waiters of the ship refuse to wait on him and he feeds Retief. Chip feeds Retief then goes so far as to assist him in fighting the Soetti that comes on board named Skaw. It is through Chip that Retief finds out the situation on the ship and uncovers that Mr. Tony is working with the Soetti."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between the Captain and Mr. Tony?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "2", "uid": "37fc0aac8bf04a208d02ecda8ea5ac91", "response_text": "Mr. Tony is a tall, florid man with expensive clothes and a massive paunch. He is also used to getting his way. The Captain and Mr. Tony are involved in an illegal deal with the Soettis, so the two men are business associates, although they don’t much like each other. Together, they have cut off all tourism to Jorgensen’s Worlds for the past six to eight months; the airlines won’t provide any bookings for passengers; however, the Captain’s airship has at least a dozen empty rooms. Mr. Tony has several henchmen working for him who do his “dirty business” of roughhandling anyone who interferes with Mr. Tony’s business. Whatever their business is, it involves frequent trips to Jorgensen’s Worlds without taking any cargo there. Mr. Tony seems to hold power over the Captain.\n\tThe Captain is a thin, leathery-skinned man who wears white ducks, a blue turtleneck, and a peaked cap that he tilts rakishly over one eye. He isn’t a very strong person or leader. He tries to get Mr. Tony’s men to throw Retief off the ship, but they refuse to do so when Retief warns them not to try and when they realize he is the person who picked up Mr. Tony’s trunk and threw it. The Captain has ordered Retief to get off the ship but backs down when the men refuse to touch Retief. He apparently tells the wait staff in the restaurant to refuse service to Retief because they all ignore him. And when the Captain warns Mr. Tony’s henchmen not to shoot Retief on his airship because it could threaten his charter, one of them talks back and tells him he won’t need it for long. Retief has the distinct impression that Mr. Tony has something on the Captain that forces the Captain to cooperate with him and places him at a lower level than Mr. Tony.  \n"}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "5ff504bd39244e459e6f9872d3a369dc", "response_text": "The Captain and Mr. Tony are friends, which Retief discovers when he sees them dining together and occasionally glancing over at his table as the waiters ignore him. Chip fills him in on their close business association, which includes an arrangement to ferry some unknown cargo to Jorgensen's Worlds. Mr. Tony is a VIP guest on the Captain's ship and takes Retief's room, but Retief kicks him out, which draws the ire of Mr. Tony and his henchmen. It appears that Mr. Tony is a thug whose men work as guards of whatever cargo is being transported to Jorgensen's Worlds. The Captain and Mr. Tony are also working with the Soetti, who visit the ship during each flight, according to Chip. Although the exact details of their plot are never revealed, Retief assumes it has something to do with the Soetti's overall plan to seize Jorgensen's Worlds in their overall infiltration of Terrestrial space. Although the Captain and Mr. Tony are friendly, the Captain is concerned about his charter, and he draws the line when Mr. Tony's men come for Retief with a gun. He calls off his henchman and leaves."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "6d1309b785b34bdfb771bf0a7f172789", "response_text": "The Captain is operating a Merchant Vessel transiting between Earth and distant worlds to deliver and retrieve passengers and cargo. However, he has fallen into crooked business with Mr. Tony, who is a violent ring leader closely connected with the Soettis who are trying to violently take control of the Terrestrial space of Jorgensen’s Worlds. For the last 6-8 months they have not delivered any tourists to Jorgensen's Worlds, and never pick up any cargo, which is highly suspicious. \nMr. Tony deals closely with the Soettis, and is very upset when the Soetti Skaw is killed and the body has to be returned to them. Skaw boards the Merchant Vessel to check Retief’s papers even though he has no authority, and Retief kills him by breaking his leg joint which leaks green fluid. Mr. Tony and one of his “thugs”, Marbles, yell at the Captain for half an hour in his cabin after this incident and force him to change course to not stop at Jorgensen’s Worlds, demonstrating that Mr. Tony has control over the Captain in their relationship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "99a56fcc57304a0c9fe6563ecde8e7b5", "response_text": "The captain has given up control of the ship to Mr. Tony and has basically become one of his underlings. This is most evident when the captain attempts to throw Retief out of Mr. Tony's room and when he attempts to reroute the ship to Alabaster when Retief beats up Mr. Tony's goons. Chip says that the captain has a crooked business agreement with Mr. Tony, but it becomes clear later in the story that the business agreement is really controlled by the Soetti. The captain says he has no control over Skaw, the Soetti that comes aboard the ship, and becomes very nervous when Retief kills Skaw. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61139", "uid": "7842df416dc341eba207272ca2af02d3", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE MADMAN FROM EARTH\n \n\n BY KEITH LAUMER\n \n\n You don't have to be crazy to be an earth diplomat—but on Groac it sure helps!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n I\n \n \"The Consul for the Terrestrial States,\" Retief said, \"presents his compliments, et cetera, to the Ministry of Culture of the Groacian Autonomy, and with reference to the Ministry's invitation to attend a recital of interpretive grimacing, has the honor to express regret that he will be unable—\"\n \n \"You can't turn this invitation down,\" Administrative Assistant Meuhl said flatly. \"I'll make that 'accepts with pleasure'.\"\n \n Retief exhaled a plume of cigar smoke.\n \n \"Miss Meuhl,\" he said, \"in the past couple of weeks I've sat through six light-concerts, four attempts at chamber music, and god knows how many assorted folk-art festivals. I've been tied up every off-duty hour since I got here—\"\n \n \"You can't offend the Groaci,\" Miss Meuhl said sharply. \"Consul Whaffle would never have been so rude.\"\n \n \"Whaffle left here three months ago,\" Retief said, \"leaving me in charge.\"\n \n \"Well,\" Miss Meuhl said, snapping off the dictyper. \"I'm sure I don't know what excuse I can give the Minister.\"\n \n \"Never mind the excuses,\" Retief said. \"Just tell him I won't be there.\" He stood up.\n \n \"Are you leaving the office?\" Miss Meuhl adjusted her glasses. \"I have some important letters here for your signature.\"\n \n \"I don't recall dictating any letters today, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said, pulling on a light cape.\n \n \n\n \n \"I wrote them for you. They're just as Consul Whaffle would have wanted them.\"\n \n \"Did you write all Whaffle's letters for him, Miss Meuhl?\"\n \n \"Consul Whaffle was an extremely busy man,\" Miss Meuhl said stiffly.\n\"He had complete confidence in me.\"\n \n \"Since I'm cutting out the culture from now on,\" Retief said, \"I won't be so busy.\"\n \n \"Well!\" Miss Meuhl said. \"May I ask where you'll be if something comes up?\"\n \n \"I'm going over to the Foreign Office Archives.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl blinked behind thick lenses. \"Whatever for?\"\n \n Retief looked thoughtfully at Miss Meuhl. \"You've been here on Groac for four years, Miss Meuhl. What was behind the coup d'etat that put the present government in power?\"\n \n \"I'm sure I haven't pried into—\"\n \n \"What about that Terrestrial cruiser? The one that disappeared out this way about ten years back?\"\n \n \"Mr. Retief, those are just the sort of questions we avoid with the Groaci. I certainly hope you're not thinking of openly intruding—\"\n \n \"Why?\"\n \n \"The Groaci are a very sensitive race. They don't welcome outworlders raking up things. They've been gracious enough to let us live down the fact that Terrestrials subjected them to deep humiliation on one occasion.\"\n \n \"You mean when they came looking for the cruiser?\"\n \n \"I, for one, am ashamed of the high-handed tactics that were employed, grilling these innocent people as though they were criminals. We try never to reopen that wound, Mr. Retief.\"\n \n \"They never found the cruiser, did they?\"\n \n \"Certainly not on Groac.\"\n \n Retief nodded. \"Thanks, Miss Meuhl,\" he said. \"I'll be back before you close the office.\" Miss Meuhl's face was set in lines of grim disapproval as he closed the door.\n \n \n\n \n The pale-featured Groacian vibrated his throat-bladder in a distressed bleat.\n \n \"Not to enter the Archives,\" he said in his faint voice. \"The denial of permission. The deep regret of the Archivist.\"\n \n \"The importance of my task here,\" Retief said, enunciating the glottal dialect with difficulty. \"My interest in local history.\"\n \n \"The impossibility of access to outworlders. To depart quietly.\"\n \n \"The necessity that I enter.\"\n \n \"The specific instructions of the Archivist.\" The Groacian's voice rose to a whisper. \"To insist no longer. To give up this idea!\"\n \n \"OK, Skinny, I know when I'm licked,\" Retief said in Terran. \"To keep your nose clean.\"\n \n Outside, Retief stood for a moment looking across at the deeply carved windowless stucco facades lining the street, then started off in the direction of the Terrestrial Consulate General. The few Groacians on the street eyed him furtively, veered to avoid him as he passed. Flimsy high-wheeled ground cars puffed silently along the resilient pavement. The air was clean and cool.\n \n At the office, Miss Meuhl would be waiting with another list of complaints.\n \n Retief studied the carving over the open doorways along the street. An elaborate one picked out in pinkish paint seemed to indicate the Groacian equivalent of a bar. Retief went in.\n \n A Groacian bartender was dispensing clay pots of alcoholic drink from the bar-pit at the center of the room. He looked at Retief and froze in mid-motion, a metal tube poised over a waiting pot.\n \n \"To enjoy a cooling drink,\" Retief said in Groacian, squatting down at the edge of the pit. \"To sample a true Groacian beverage.\"\n \n \"To not enjoy my poor offerings,\" the Groacian mumbled. \"A pain in the digestive sacs; to express regret.\"\n \n \"To not worry,\" Retief said, irritated. \"To pour it out and let me decide whether I like it.\"\n \n \"To be grappled in by peace-keepers for poisoning of—foreigners.\" The barkeep looked around for support, found none. The Groaci customers, eyes elsewhere, were drifting away.\n \n \"To get the lead out,\" Retief said, placing a thick gold-piece in the dish provided. \"To shake a tentacle.\"\n \n \"The procuring of a cage,\" a thin voice called from the sidelines. \"The displaying of a freak.\"\n \n \n\n \n Retief turned. A tall Groacian vibrated his mandibles in a gesture of contempt. From his bluish throat coloration, it was apparent the creature was drunk.\n \n \"To choke in your upper sac,\" the bartender hissed, extending his eyes toward the drunk. \"To keep silent, litter-mate of drones.\"\n \n \"To swallow your own poison, dispenser of vileness,\" the drunk whispered. \"To find a proper cage for this zoo-piece.\" He wavered toward Retief. \"To show this one in the streets, like all freaks.\"\n \n \"Seen a lot of freaks like me, have you?\" Retief asked, interestedly.\n \n \"To speak intelligibly, malodorous outworlder,\" the drunk said. The barkeep whispered something, and two customers came up to the drunk, took his arms and helped him to the door.\n \n \"To get a cage!\" the drunk shrilled. \"To keep the animals in their own stinking place.\"\n \n \"I've changed my mind,\" Retief said to the bartender. \"To be grateful as hell, but to have to hurry off now.\" He followed the drunk out the door. The other Groaci released him, hurried back inside. Retief looked at the weaving alien.\n \n \"To begone, freak,\" the Groacian whispered.\n \n \"To be pals,\" Retief said. \"To be kind to dumb animals.\"\n \n \"To have you hauled away to a stockyard, ill-odored foreign livestock.\"\n \n \"To not be angry, fragrant native,\" Retief said. \"To permit me to chum with you.\"\n \n \"To flee before I take a cane to you!\"\n \n \"To have a drink together—\"\n \n \"To not endure such insolence!\" The Groacian advanced toward Retief. Retief backed away.\n \n \"To hold hands,\" Retief said. \"To be palsy-walsy—\"\n \n The Groacian reached for him, missed. A passer-by stepped around him, head down, scuttled away. Retief backed into the opening to a narrow crossway and offered further verbal familiarities to the drunken local, who followed, furious. Retief backed, rounded a corner into a narrow alley-like passage, deserted, silent ... except for the following Groacian.\n \n Retief stepped around him, seized his collar and yanked. The Groacian fell on his back. Retief stood over him. The downed native half-rose; Retief put a foot against his chest and pushed.\n \n \"To not be going anywhere for a few minutes,\" Retief said. \"To stay right here and have a nice long talk.\"\n \n \n\n II\n \n \"There you are!\" Miss Meuhl said, eyeing Retief over her lenses. \"There are two gentlemen waiting to see you. Groacian gentlemen.\"\n \n \"Government men, I imagine. Word travels fast.\" Retief pulled off his cape. \"This saves me the trouble of paying another call at the Foreign Ministry.\"\n \n \"What have you been doing? They seem very upset, I don't mind telling you.\"\n \n \"I'm sure you don't. Come along. And bring an official recorder.\"\n \n Two Groaci wearing heavy eye-shields and elaborate crest ornaments indicative of rank rose as Retief entered the room. Neither offered a courteous snap of the mandibles, Retief noted. They were mad, all right.\n \n \"I am Fith, of the Terrestrial Desk, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Consul,\" the taller Groacian said, in lisping Terran. \"May I present Shluh, of the Internal Police?\"\n \n \"Sit down, gentlemen,\" Retief said. They resumed their seats. Miss Meuhl hovered nervously, then sat on the edge of a comfortless chair.\n \n \"Oh, it's such a pleasure—\" she began.\n \n \"Never mind that,\" Retief said. \"These gentlemen didn't come here to sip tea today.\"\n \n \"So true,\" Fith said. \"Frankly, I have had a most disturbing report, Mr. Consul. I shall ask Shluh to recount it.\" He nodded to the police chief.\n \n \"One hour ago,\" The Groacian said, \"a Groacian national was brought to hospital suffering from serious contusions. Questioning of this individual revealed that he had been set upon and beaten by a foreigner. A Terrestrial, to be precise. Investigation by my department indicates that the description of the culprit closely matches that of the Terrestrial Consul.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl gasped audibly.\n \n \"Have you ever heard,\" Retief said, looking steadily at Fith, \"of a Terrestrial cruiser, the ISV Terrific , which dropped from sight in this sector nine years ago?\"\n \n \"Really!\" Miss Meuhl exclaimed, rising. \"I wash my hands—\"\n \n \"Just keep that recorder going,\" Retief snapped.\n \n \"I'll not be a party—\"\n \n \"You'll do as you're told, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said quietly. \"I'm telling you to make an official sealed record of this conversation.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl sat down.\n \n Fith puffed out his throat indignantly. \"You reopen an old wound, Mr. Consul. It reminds us of certain illegal treatment at Terrestrial hands—\"\n \n \"Hogwash,\" Retief said. \"That tune went over with my predecessors, but it hits a sour note with me.\"\n \n \"All our efforts,\" Miss Meuhl said, \"to live down that terrible episode! And you—\"\n \n \"Terrible? I understand that a Terrestrial task force stood off Groac and sent a delegation down to ask questions. They got some funny answers, and stayed on to dig around a little. After a week they left. Somewhat annoying to the Groaci, maybe—at the most. If they were innocent.\"\n \n \"IF!\" Miss Meuhl burst out.\n \n \"If, indeed!\" Fith said, his weak voice trembling. \"I must protest your—\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Save the protests, Fith. You have some explaining to do. And I don't think your story will be good enough.\"\n \n \"It is for you to explain! This person who was beaten—\"\n \n \"Not beaten. Just rapped a few times to loosen his memory.\"\n \n \"Then you admit—\"\n \n \"It worked, too. He remembered lots of things, once he put his mind to it.\"\n \n Fith rose; Shluh followed suit.\n \n \"I shall ask for your immediate recall, Mr. Consul. Were it not for your diplomatic immunity, I should do more—\"\n \n \"Why did the government fall, Fith? It was just after the task force paid its visit, and before the arrival of the first Terrestrial diplomatic mission.\"\n \n \"This is an internal matter!\" Fith cried, in his faint Groacian voice.\n\"The new regime has shown itself most amiable to you Terrestrials. It has outdone itself—\"\n \n \"—to keep the Terrestrial consul and his staff in the dark,\" Retief said. \"And the same goes for the few terrestrial businessmen you've visaed. This continual round of culture; no social contacts outside the diplomatic circle; no travel permits to visit out-lying districts, or your satellite—\"\n \n \"Enough!\" Fith's mandibles quivered in distress. \"I can talk no more of this matter—\"\n \n \"You'll talk to me, or there'll be a task force here in five days to do the talking,\" Retief said.\n \n \"You can't!\" Miss Meuhl gasped.\n \n Retief turned a steady look on Miss Meuhl. She closed her mouth. The Groaci sat down.\n \n \"Answer me this one,\" Retief said, looking at Shluh. \"A few years back—about nine, I think—there was a little parade held here. Some curious looking creatures were captured. After being securely caged, they were exhibited to the gentle Groaci public. Hauled through the streets. Very educational, no doubt. A highly cultural show.\n \n \"Funny thing about these animals. They wore clothes. They seemed to communicate with each other. Altogether it was a very amusing exhibit.\n \n \"Tell me, Shluh, what happened to those six Terrestrials after the parade was over?\"\n \n \n\n \n Fith made a choked noise and spoke rapidly to Shluh in Groacian. Shluh retracted his eyes, shrank down in his chair. Miss Meuhl opened her mouth, closed it and blinked rapidly.\n \n \"How did they die?\" Retief snapped. \"Did you murder them, cut their throats, shoot them or bury them alive? What amusing end did you figure out for them? Research, maybe? Cut them open to see what made them yell....\"\n \n \"No!\" Fith gasped. \"I must correct this terrible false impression at once.\"\n \n \"False impression, hell,\" Retief said. \"They were Terrans! A simple narco-interrogation would get that out of any Groacian who saw the parade.\"\n \n \"Yes,\" Fith said weakly. \"It is true, they were Terrestrials. But there was no killing.\"\n \n \"They're alive?\"\n \n \"Alas, no. They ... died.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl yelped faintly.\n \n \"I see,\" Retief said. \"They died.\"\n \n \"We tried to keep them alive, of course. But we did not know what foods—\"\n \n \"Didn't take the trouble to find out, either, did you?\"\n \n \"They fell ill,\" Fith said. \"One by one....\"\n \n \"We'll deal with that question later,\" Retief said. \"Right now, I want more information. Where did you get them? Where did you hide the ship? What happened to the rest of the crew? Did they 'fall ill' before the big parade?\"\n \n \"There were no more! Absolutely, I assure you!\"\n \n \"Killed in the crash landing?\"\n \n \"No crash landing. The ship descended intact, east of the city. The ... Terrestrials ... were unharmed. Naturally, we feared them. They were strange to us. We had never before seen such beings.\"\n \n \"Stepped off the ship with guns blazing, did they?\"\n \n \"Guns? No, no guns—\"\n \n \"They raised their hands, didn't they? Asked for help. You helped them; helped them to death.\"\n \n \"How could we know?\" Fith moaned.\n \n \"How could you know a flotilla would show up in a few months looking for them, you mean? That was a shock, wasn't it? I'll bet you had a brisk time of it hiding the ship, and shutting everybody up. A close call, eh?\"\n \n \"We were afraid,\" Shluh said. \"We are a simple people. We feared the strange creatures from the alien craft. We did not kill them, but we felt it was as well they ... did not survive. Then, when the warships came, we realized our error. But we feared to speak. We purged our guilty leaders, concealed what had happened, and ... offered our friendship. We invited the opening of diplomatic relations. We made a blunder, it is true, a great blunder. But we have tried to make amends....\"\n \n \"Where is the ship?\"\n \n \"The ship?\"\n \n \"What did you do with it? It was too big to just walk off and forget. Where is it?\"\n \n The two Groacians exchanged looks.\n \n \"We wish to show our contrition,\" Fith said. \"We will show you the ship.\"\n \n \"Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said. \"If I don't come back in a reasonable length of time, transmit that recording to Regional Headquarters, sealed.\" He stood, looked at the Groaci.\n \n \"Let's go,\" he said.\n \n \n\n \n Retief stooped under the heavy timbers shoring the entry to the cavern. He peered into the gloom at the curving flank of the space-burned hull.\n \n \"Any lights in here?\" he asked.\n \n A Groacian threw a switch. A weak bluish glow sprang up.\n \n Retief walked along the raised wooden catwalk, studying the ship. Empty emplacements gaped below lensless scanner eyes. Littered decking was visible within the half-open entry port. Near the bow the words 'IVS Terrific B7 New Terra' were lettered in bright chrome duralloy.\n \n \"How did you get it in here?\" Retief asked.\n \n \"It was hauled here from the landing point, some nine miles distant,\" Fith said, his voice thinner than ever. \"This is a natural crevasse. The vessel was lowered into it and roofed over.\"\n \n \"How did you shield it so the detectors didn't pick it up?\"\n \n \"All here is high-grade iron ore,\" Fith said, waving a member. \"Great veins of almost pure metal.\"\n \n Retief grunted. \"Let's go inside.\"\n \n Shluh came forward with a hand-lamp. The party entered the ship.\n \n Retief clambered up a narrow companionway, glanced around the interior of the control compartment. Dust was thick on the deck, the stanchions where acceleration couches had been mounted, the empty instrument panels, the litter of sheared bolts, scraps of wire and paper. A thin frosting of rust dulled the exposed metal where cutting torches had sliced away heavy shielding. There was a faint odor of stale bedding.\n \n \"The cargo compartment—\" Shluh began.\n \n \"I've seen enough,\" Retief said.\n \n Silently, the Groacians led the way back out through the tunnel and into the late afternoon sunshine. As they climbed the slope to the steam car, Fith came to Retief's side.\n \n \"Indeed, I hope that this will be the end of this unfortunate affair,\" he said. \"Now that all has been fully and honestly shown—\"\n \n \"You can skip all that,\" Retief said. \"You're nine years late. The crew was still alive when the task force called, I imagine. You killed them—or let them die—rather than take the chance of admitting what you'd done.\"\n \n \"We were at fault,\" Fith said abjectly. \"Now we wish only friendship.\"\n \n \"The Terrific was a heavy cruiser, about twenty thousand tons.\" Retief looked grimly at the slender Foreign Office official. \"Where is she, Fith? I won't settle for a hundred-ton lifeboat.\"\n \n \n\n \n Fith erected his eye stalks so violently that one eye-shield fell off.\n \n \"I know nothing of ... of....\" He stopped. His throat vibrated rapidly as he struggled for calm.\n \n \"My government can entertain no further accusations, Mr. Consul,\" he said at last. \"I have been completely candid with you, I have overlooked your probing into matters not properly within your sphere of responsibility. My patience is at an end.\"\n \n \"Where is that ship?\" Retief rapped out. \"You never learn, do you? You're still convinced you can hide the whole thing and forget it. I'm telling you you can't.\"\n \n \"We return to the city now,\" Fith said. \"I can do no more.\"\n \n \"You can and you will, Fith,\" Retief said. \"I intend to get to the truth of this matter.\"\n \n Fith spoke to Shluh in rapid Groacian. The police chief gestured to his four armed constables. They moved to ring Retief in.\n \n Retief eyed Fith. \"Don't try it,\" he said. \"You'll just get yourself in deeper.\"\n \n Fith clacked his mandibles angrily, eye stalks canted aggressively toward the Terrestrial.\n \n \"Out of deference to your diplomatic status, Terrestrial, I shall ignore your insulting remarks,\" Fith said in his reedy voice. \"Let us now return to the city.\"\n \n Retief looked at the four policemen. \"I see your point,\" he said.\n \n Fith followed him into the car, sat rigidly at the far end of the seat.\n \n \"I advise you to remain very close to your consulate,\" Fith said. \"I advise you to dismiss these fancies from your mind, and to enjoy the cultural aspects of life at Groac. Especially, I should not venture out of the city, or appear overly curious about matters of concern only to the Groacian government.\"\n \n In the front seat, Shluh looked straight ahead. The loosely-sprung vehicle bobbed and swayed along the narrow highway. Retief listened to the rhythmic puffing of the motor and said nothing.\n \n \n\n III\n \n \"Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said, \"I want you to listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you. I have to move rapidly now, to catch the Groaci off guard.\"\n \n \"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about,\" Miss Meuhl snapped, her eyes sharp behind the heavy lenses.\n \n \"If you'll listen, you may find out,\" Retief said. \"I have no time to waste, Miss Meuhl. They won't be expecting an immediate move—I hope—and that may give me the latitude I need.\"\n \n \"You're still determined to make an issue of that incident!\" Miss Meuhl snorted. \"I really can hardly blame the Groaci. They are not a sophisticated race; they had never before met aliens.\"\n \n \"You're ready to forgive a great deal, Miss Meuhl. But it's not what happened nine years ago I'm concerned with. It's what's happening now. I've told you that it was only a lifeboat the Groaci have hidden out. Don't you understand the implication? That vessel couldn't have come far. The cruiser itself must be somewhere near by. I want to know where!\"\n \n \"The Groaci don't know. They're a very cultured, gentle people. You can do irreparable harm to the reputation of Terrestrials if you insist—\"\n \n \"That's my decision,\" Retief said. \"I have a job to do and we're wasting time.\" He crossed the room to his desk, opened a drawer and took out a slim-barreled needler.\n \n \"This office is being watched. Not very efficiently, if I know the Groaci. I think I can get past them all right.\"\n \n \"Where are you going with ... that?\" Miss Meuhl stared at the needler.\n\"What in the world—\"\n \n \"The Groaci won't waste any time destroying every piece of paper in their files relating to this thing. I have to get what I need before it's too late. If I wait for an official Inquiry Commission, they'll find nothing but blank smiles.\"\n \n \"You're out of your mind!\" Miss Meuhl stood up, quivering with indignation. \"You're like a ... a....\"\n \n \"You and I are in a tight spot, Miss Meuhl. The logical next move for the Groaci is to dispose of both of us. We're the only ones who know what happened. Fith almost did the job this afternoon, but I bluffed him out—for the moment.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl emitted a shrill laugh. \"Your fantasies are getting the better of you,\" she gasped. \"In danger, indeed! Disposing of me! I've never heard anything so ridiculous.\"\n \n \"Stay in this office. Close and safe-lock the door. You've got food and water in the dispenser. I suggest you stock up, before they shut the supply down. Don't let anyone in, on any pretext whatever. I'll keep in touch with you via hand-phone.\"\n \n \"What are you planning to do?\"\n \n \"If I don't make it back here, transmit the sealed record of this afternoon's conversation, along with the information I've given you. Beam it through on a mayday priority. Then tell the Groaci what you've done and sit tight. I think you'll be all right. It won't be easy to blast in here and anyway, they won't make things worse by killing you. A force can be here in a week.\"\n \n \"I'll do nothing of the sort! The Groaci are very fond of me! You ... Johnny-come-lately! Roughneck! Setting out to destroy—\"\n \n \"Blame it on me if it will make you feel any better,\" Retief said, \"but don't be fool enough to trust them.\" He pulled on a cape, opened the door.\n \n \"I'll be back in a couple of hours,\" he said. Miss Meuhl stared after him silently as he closed the door.\n \n \n\n \n It was an hour before dawn when Retief keyed the combination to the safe-lock and stepped into the darkened consular office. He looked tired.\n \n Miss Meuhl, dozing in a chair, awoke with a start. She looked at Retief, rose and snapped on a light, turned to stare.\n \n \"What in the world—Where have you been? What's happened to your clothing?\"\n \n \"I got a little dirty. Don't worry about it.\" Retief went to his desk, opened a drawer and replaced the needler.\n \n \"Where have you been?\" Miss Meuhl demanded. \"I stayed here—\"\n \n \"I'm glad you did,\" Retief said. \"I hope you piled up a supply of food and water from the dispenser, too. We'll be holed up here for a week, at least.\" He jotted figures on a pad. \"Warm up the official sender. I have a long transmission for Regional Headquarters.\"\n \n \"Are you going to tell me where you've been?\"\n \n \"I have a message to get off first, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said sharply.\n\"I've been to the Foreign Ministry,\" he added. \"I'll tell you all about it later.\"\n \n \"At this hour? There's no one there....\"\n \n \"Exactly.\"\n \n Miss Meuhl gasped. \"You mean you broke in? You burgled the Foreign Office?\"\n \n \"That's right,\" Retief said calmly. \"Now—\"\n \n \"This is absolutely the end!\" Miss Meuhl said. \"Thank heaven I've already��\"\n \n \"Get that sender going, woman!\" Retief snapped. \"This is important.\"\n \n \"I've already done so, Mr. Retief!\" Miss Meuhl said harshly. \"I've been waiting for you to come back here....\" She turned to the communicator, flipped levers. The screen snapped aglow, and a wavering long-distance image appeared.\n \n \"He's here now,\" Miss Meuhl said to the screen. She looked at Retief triumphantly.\n \n \"That's good,\" Retief said. \"I don't think the Groaci can knock us off the air, but—\"\n \n \"I have done my duty, Mr. Retief,\" Miss Meuhl said. \"I made a full report to Regional Headquarters last night, as soon as you left this office. Any doubts I may have had as to the rightness of that decision have been completely dispelled by what you've just told me.\"\n \n Retief looked at her levelly. \"You've been a busy girl, Miss Meuhl. Did you mention the six Terrestrials who were killed here?\"\n \n \"That had no bearing on the matter of your wild behavior! I must say, in all my years in the Corps, I've never encountered a personality less suited to diplomatic work.\"\n \n \n\n \n The screen crackled, the ten-second transmission lag having elapsed.\n\"Mr. Retief,\" the face on the screen said, \"I am Counsellor Pardy, DSO-1, Deputy Under-secretary for the region. I have received a report on your conduct which makes it mandatory for me to relieve you administratively, vice Miss Yolanda Meuhl, DAO-9. Pending the findings of a Board of Inquiry, you will—\"\n \n Retief reached out and snapped off the communicator. The triumphant look faded from Miss Meuhl's face.\n \n \"Why, what is the meaning—\"\n \n \"If I'd listened any longer, I might have heard something I couldn't ignore. I can't afford that, at this moment. Listen, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief went on earnestly, \"I've found the missing cruiser.\"\n \n \"You heard him relieve you!\"\n \n \"I heard him say he was going to, Miss Meuhl. But until I've heard and acknowledged a verbal order, it has no force. If I'm wrong, he'll get my resignation. If I'm right, that suspension would be embarrassing all around.\"\n \n \"You're defying lawful authority! I'm in charge here now.\" Miss Meuhl stepped to the local communicator.\n \n \"I'm going to report this terrible thing to the Groaci at once, and offer my profound—\"\n \n \"Don't touch that screen,\" Retief said. \"You go sit in that corner where I can keep an eye on you. I'm going to make a sealed tape for transmission to Headquarters, along with a call for an armed task force. Then we'll settle down to wait.\"\n \n Retief ignored Miss Meuhl's fury as he spoke into the recorder.\n \n The local communicator chimed. Miss Meuhl jumped up, staring at it.\n \n \"Go ahead,\" Retief said. \"Answer it.\"\n \n A Groacian official appeared on the screen.\n \n \"Yolanda Meuhl,\" he said without preamble, \"for the Foreign Minister of the Groacian Autonomy, I herewith accredit you as Terrestrial Consul to Groac, in accordance with the advices transmitted to my government direct from the Terrestrial Headquarters. As consul, you are requested to make available for questioning Mr. J. Retief, former consul, in connection with the assault on two peace keepers and illegal entry into the offices of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.\"\n \n \"Why, why,\" Miss Meuhl stammered. \"Yes, of course. And I do want to express my deepest regrets—\"\n \n \n\n \n Retief rose, went to the communicator, assisted Miss Meuhl aside.\n \n \"Listen carefully, Fith,\" he said. \"Your bluff has been called. You don't come in and we don't come out. Your camouflage worked for nine years, but it's all over now. I suggest you keep your heads and resist the temptation to make matters worse than they are.\"\n \n \"Miss Meuhl,\" Fith said, \"a peace squad waits outside your consulate. It is clear you are in the hands of a dangerous lunatic. As always, the Groaci wish only friendship with the Terrestrials, but—\"\n \n \"Don't bother,\" Retief said. \"You know what was in those files I looked over this morning.\"\n \n Retief turned at a sound behind him. Miss Meuhl was at the door, reaching for the safe-lock release....\n \n \"Don't!\" Retief jumped—too late.\n \n The door burst inward. A crowd of crested Groaci pressed into the room, pushed Miss Meuhl back, aimed scatter guns at Retief. Police Chief Shluh pushed forward.\n \n \"Attempt no violence, Terrestrial,\" he said. \"I cannot promise to restrain my men.\"\n \n \"You're violating Terrestrial territory, Shluh,\" Retief said steadily.\n\"I suggest you move back out the same way you came in.\"\n \n \"I invited them here,\" Miss Meuhl spoke up. \"They are here at my express wish.\"\n \n \"Are they? Are you sure you meant to go this far, Miss Meuhl? A squad of armed Groaci in the consulate?\"\n \n \"You are the consul, Miss Yolanda Meuhl,\" Shluh said. \"Would it not be best if we removed this deranged person to a place of safety?\"\n \n \"You're making a serious mistake, Shluh,\" Retief said.\n \n \"Yes,\" Miss Meuhl said. \"You're quite right, Mr. Shluh. Please escort Mr. Retief to his quarters in this building—\"\n \n \"I don't advise you to violate my diplomatic immunity, Fith,\" Retief said.\n \n \"As chief of mission,\" Miss Meuhl said quickly, \"I hereby waive immunity in the case of Mr. Retief.\"\n \n Shluh produced a hand recorder. \"Kindly repeat your statement, Madam, officially,\" he said. \"I wish no question to arise later.\"\n \n \"Don't be a fool, woman,\" Retief said. \"Don't you see what you're letting yourself in for? This would be a hell of a good time for you to figure out whose side you're on.\"\n \n \"I'm on the side of common decency!\"\n \n \"You've been taken in. These people are concealing—\"\n \n \"You think all women are fools, don't you, Mr. Retief?\" She turned to the police chief and spoke into the microphone he held up.\n \n \"That's an illegal waiver,\" Retief said. \"I'm consul here, whatever rumors you've heard. This thing's coming out into the open, whatever you do. Don't add violation of the Consulate to the list of Groacian atrocities.\"\n \n \"Take the man,\" Shluh said.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "859d15ea77e145aab1af8b304e005f78", "response_text": "Following the departure of Consul Whaffle, Retief has taken over as Consul for the Terrestrial States with the Terrestrial Consulate General on the planet Groac. His administrative assistant, Miss Yolanda Meuhl, wants him to attend Groacian cultural events, but Retief is more interested in addressing the nine-year-old mystery of the disappearance of a Terrestrial cruiser, the ISV Terrific--an event which was followed by a coup d'etat enacted by the current Groacian government. Much to Miss Meuhl's dismay, Retief shirks his cultural duties and makes his way to the Foreign Office Archives, whereupon he is promptly barred from entering by a pale-featured Archivist speaking in the throat-bladder vibrations of the native Groacians. Because of the Archivist's insistence that \"outworlders\" cannot access the archives, Retief begins walking back to the Consulate and stops at a bar for a drink. At the, a drunken Groacian approaches Retief and threatens to cage him and put him on display as a freak. The bartender orders the drunken Groacian out of the bar, and Retief follows him, ultimately beating him up for information. When Retief returns to the Consulate, Miss Meuhl informs him that two angry Groaci await him in his office. One is Fith, an employee of the Terrestrial Desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the other is Shluh, a representative of the Internal Police. They are there to investigate reports that Retief has assaulted a Groacian national--an accusation Retief ignores in order to launch into his own accusations that the Groaci were engaged in a cover-up of the whereabouts of the ISV Terrific. Miss Meuhl continually interjects, expresses horror at Retief's claims, and apologizes to the Groacians on behalf of the Terrestrial Consulate. Despite the persistent denials of the Groacians, Retief continues his accusations, suggesting the coup d'etat was an effort to silence government officials with knowledge of the truth of what happened to the cruiser and its crew. Then he reveals what he discovered from the drunken Groacian: The crew of the ISV Terrific had been caged and paraded through the streets of Groac and then neglected until they died. Fith and Shluh finally admit the truth and offer to show Retief the hidden cruiser in order to show their contrition. When Retief sees the ship, he once again accuses the Groacians of attempting to mislead him, saying that this is a lifeboat, and he demands to see the actual ship. Fith has had enough and threatens to arrest Retief, who yields and goes back to the Consulate. There, Miss Meuhl is at her wits end. Retief orders her to barricade herself inside the office while he goes to the Foreign Ministry to gather more evidence. When he returns, Miss Meuhl informs him she has reported him to Regional Headquarters, and Retief learns he has been relieved of his post. Soon after, the Groacians appoint Miss Meuhl to his position, and Fith and Shluh enter to arrest him."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "22ed0051fe8d4216be3cb4e8190710a6", "response_text": "Consul Whaffle left the Terrestrial Consul three months prior, leaving Retief in charge. Retief is sick of the constant cultural events and lack of real progress, so he’s beginning to suspect the Groaci are hiding something. He turns down the latest invitation, offending his Administrative Assistant Miss Meuhl. She is horrified at his choices and at his questioning the Groaci’s motives. Retief wants to learn more about the Terrestrial cruiser, Terrific ISV, that crashed on Groac nine years ago. Miss Meuhl disapproves and believes the Groacian side of the story, but Retief is not convinced. He is turned down at the Archies, as he is an outsider. He leaves and decides to visit a bar and try the local drink. There, Retief is refused by the bartender as well, claiming his stomach can’t handle their drink. A drunk Groacian in the background whispers about putting Retief in a cage where he belongs. He follows the drunk after he gets thrown out and violently interrogates him.\nWhen Retief returns to his office, Miss Meuhl announces that there are two Groaci waiting for him. Fith and Shluh, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Internal Police respectively, have heard about the assaults on a Groacian. Retief asks Miss Meuhl to record their conversation. Retief admits to his questioning, but not before doing some of his own. He prods the two Groaci about the Terrific ISV cruiser and soon reveals that the drunk told him about the zoo-like parade of Terrestrials. Fith admits to the parade and tells them that the Terrestrials died afterward due to insufficient nutrition. The Groaci hid their blunder and lied to the Terrestrials about what truly happened. Retief asks them to take him to the cruiser, which they do. After they explore a little, Fith and Shluh ask him to keep his mouth shut. Retief refuses and says that this ship was the lifeboat, not the cruiser itself. Four armed Groaci surround Retief, but he talks his way out of the situation. \nHe returns to the Consulate and tells Miss Meuhl everything, warning her to prepare for the present crisis. She is still upset and defends the Groaci. He tells her to lock herself in the Consulate and wait for his return. If something were to happen, she is to send the recording and all his evidence to Regional Headquarters. He leaves to break into the Foreign Ministry. When he returns, he asks Miss Meuhl to fire up the sender, which she’d already done. She had reported him to the Regional Headquarters and all his misactions. Counsellor Pardy pops up on the screen and attempts to relieve Retief of his duties, but he quickly shuts it off. Retief says he found the missing cruiser but is interrupted by the local communicator. A Groacian promotes Miss Meuhl to Consul, and she lets in the so-called peace squad. They surround Retief, armed, and Miss Meuhl waives Retief’s diplomatic immunity. Shluh orders his men to take Retief. \n"}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "9b348a8582824644b70014ef5d74b953", "response_text": "At the Terrestrial Consulate General on the planet Groac, Retief has taken over for Consul Whaffle who left three months prior. Administrative Assistant Miss Yolanda Meuhl used to serve Consul Whaffle, and is not pleased with how Retief is handling things. Retief dictates a response declining a prestigious invitation to a Groacian event to Miss Meuhl, and she warns he will offend them. This is not Retief’s only controversy. He also questions the coup d'etat of the present government and the disappearance of the Terrestrial cruiser, ISV Terrific, nine years ago, which are considered topics to be avoided by Miss Meuhl. Retief is denied entry into the Foreign Office Archives to investigate, and steps into a local bar. A drunkard Groacian calls Retief a freak and then is escorted out by two other customers. Retief follows the drunk out to the street and pins him down to the ground to have a “long talk”.\nBack in Retief’s consulate office, two angry Groacian officials, Fith, of the Terrestrial Desk, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Shluh, of the Internal Police, accuse Retief of beating the drunkard. Retief has Miss Meuhl officially record the conversation and pivots to ask what happened to the Terrestrial cruiser, ISV Terrific, that disappeared nine years ago. Fith is offended and calls for Retief to be fired. Retief presses on to ask why the government fell after the visit of a Terrestrial investigation task force after the incident. He notices the Groacians are covering something up - not letting Terrestrials have social contacts outside the diplomatic circle and never speaking of a parade of six Terrestrials hauled through the streets after the vessel disappeared. Fith admits that six Terrans were captured and they fell ill and died because the Groacians didn’t know what to feed them. Fith admits the ship descended intact East of the city, and that they didn’t realize they had done something terrible until the Terran warships came. So they covered their mistake, purging their guilty leaders, concealing what happened, and offering Terrans diplomatic relations.  Fith and Shluh take Retief to see the ship in a cavern, however, it is not the real ISV Terrific. The Terrific was a twenty thousand ton ship, and this one is only a small lifeboat. Fith becomes furious. Shluh and four constables escort Retief back to the city and ban him from leaving or questioning Groacian government matters. \nRetief decides to find what happened to the real Terrific before they destroy all the Archives’ paperwork. He instructs Miss Meuhl to lock herself in the consulate office. She reports Retief to Regional Headquarters. When Retief returns, he wants to send his findings to Regional Headquarters, but when they reconnect, Counsellor Pardy, DSO-1, Deputy Under-secretary for the region fires Retief. Miss Meuhl answers a call from the Groacians who accredit her as the new Terrestrial Consul to Groac (Retief’s role). She lets armed Groacian’s into the consulate and waives diplomatic immunity for Retief. A total betrayal that shocks Retief."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c41eb690db154c64ab4ab86b68e93ea0", "response_text": "Consul Retief for the Terrestrial States is serving on the Groac planet, having replaced the previous consul, Mr. Whaffle, three months ago. His Administrative Assistant, Miss Meuhl, tries to tell him how to do his job, indicating what he can and cannot do. She is defensive of the Groacians, calling them sensitive, cultured, innocent, and gentle yet unsophisticated. She professes deep shame at the way they were treated by the investigators. She has been working in the consulate for four years and considers herself much more knowledgeable than Retief. There was a Terrestrial ship, the ISV Terrific, that went missing in their sector nine years ago, and while the Terrestrials held an investigation and questioned the Groacians, they did not get satisfactory answers. Retief is trying to get those answers.\nTo determine what happened, Retief first tries the Archives and local museum, but Terrestrials are denied entry here. From there, he makes his way to a bar. While the bartender refuses him service, a drunken Groacian calls out for a cage to put Retief in, referring to him as a zoo animal or a freak. When the bartender has the drunk taken out of the bar, Retief follows and beats him to get more information. Later, two government men, Fith from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Shluh from the Internal Police, show up at the consulate to question Retief about the beating. He turns their questioning into his own interrogation about the missing ship from nine years ago and the reason for the change in their government right after the investigators left Groac. Retief confronts them with his knowledge that the Terrestrials were put in cages and paraded through the streets and demands to know what happened to them. Fith admits this happened and claims the humans grew ill and died since the Groacians didn’t really know how to keep them alive.\nFith also relates that the government was changed after the inquiry to get rid of the leaders who were involved. To try to cover and make up for their mistakes, they then reached out to the Terrestrials to establish a diplomatic relationship. When Retief asks to see the ship, Fith and Shluh show him a ship hidden in a cavern, but Retief realizes it isn’t the ISV. He confronts the men about this, and they end their cooperation with him. Fith warns Retief to stay close to the consulate.\nKnowing that he has little time left, that night Retief breaks into the Foreign Ministry to find evidence and answers to his questions; he is sure they will destroy this information soon. When he returns to the consulate, Miss Meuhl has filed a report against him with the Regional Headquarters, having him relieved of duty and making her acting Consul. Fith and Shluh show up to question Retief about the break-in, and he claims diplomatic immunity, but Miss Meuhl waives his immunity.  \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the setting of the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "859d15ea77e145aab1af8b304e005f78", "response_text": "The story takes place on the planet Groac, which is populated by the native Groaci. The Groaci is a skinny, pale species with a throat-bladder that vibrates when speaking with a glottal dialect in an unusual syntax. They are a sensitive race, according to Miss Meuhl, and they hide their heads and hurry along at any sign of trouble. Consul Retief has an office in the Terrestrial Consulate General and attends cultural events such as light-concerts, chamber music, and folk-art festivals. Retief suggests that these events are mere distractions from more underhanded business happening on the planet, which explains why visas are handed out for only a few terrestrial businessmen, traveling to outlying districts is forbidden, and social contacts must be limited to the diplomatic circle. Groac also has a moon that foreigners cannot visit. In addition to the Consulate General, other important government agencies exist including the Foreign Office Archives, the Ministry of Culture of the Groacian Autonomy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Internal Police (called \"peace-keepers\"). Close to the Consulate General is the bar where Retief goes, seeking a cold drink and information. The bartender stands in the bar-pit and dispenses a Groacian beverage he insists is poisonous to foreigners due to its lead content. Retief brandishes a thick gold piece to act as a filter. Later, Fith and Shluh lead Retief to a crevasse nine miles from the supposed landing point of the ISV Terrific. Due to the large veins of high-grade iron ore, Terrestrial investigators had been unable to detect the cruiser's presence, which had been disguised by a roof of heavy timbers. Retief enters the cruiser via a narrow companionway and sees dust all over the deck, stanchions, instrument panels, sheared bolts, and scraps of wire and paper strewn about the control compartment. "}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "22ed0051fe8d4216be3cb4e8190710a6", "response_text": "The story takes place on the planet Groac inhabited by the Groaci. Previously undiscovered by humans, the Groaci had their first contact with an alien species just nine years prior to the story beginning. The Groaci use ground cars to travel, though they may be considered flimsy. With a cool temperature and clean air, Groac isn’t a terrible place to live. There are mountainous caverns in the terrain as well, and one serves as the hiding spot for the lost Terrific ISV. Retief visits several places and buildings on Groac, including the Consul, their Ministry of Affairs, and a bar, showing their culture does not differ entirely from Terrestrials. The Groaci are often called simple people, however. They have several cultural events, such as folk festivals, chamber choirs, and light concerts. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "9b348a8582824644b70014ef5d74b953", "response_text": "The Madman From Earth is set on the planet of Groac, where the Terrans have had a Terrestrial Consulate General for less than nine years. The consulate contains offices for the Ministry of Culture of the Groacian Autonomy staff like Retief and Miss Meuhl as well as their living quarters. Relations between the Terrans and the Groacians have been peaceful, but there are some subjects that are off limits to discuss with the Groacians, such as the disappearance of a Terran ship, ISV Terrific, nine years ago. Retief is the new Consul, and is planning on digging into this controversial topic directly with the Groacians, creating a very tense atmosphere.\nIn the city, there are windowless stucco facades on the buildings lining the street, and  the Groacians avoid the Terrans as they pass. There are high-wheeled ground cars and the environment has clean and cool air. Retief enters a Groacian bar that serves clay pots of an alcoholic drink that could harm humans from a pit in the center of the room. When Retief is escorted out of the city by Fith and Shluh, they take him to a natural crevasse with thick veins of high-grade iron ore in the rock that they claim the vessel, ISV Terrific, was lowered into and then it was covered with a roof to avoid detection. The land around the city is dusty like a desert, and Terrans are generally forbidden from traveling through these areas or visiting Groac’s satellite, which is part of their cover-up of what happened to the ISV Terrific."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c41eb690db154c64ab4ab86b68e93ea0", "response_text": "The story takes place on the planet inhabited by the Groacians, specifically in the Terrestrial Consulate, a bar, and a cavern. The Consul for the Terrestrial States has been open on the planet for almost nine years, opening not long after the ISV Terrific B7 New Terra Terrestrial cruiser went missing in the sector. The Consul is in a building protected by a safelock and communicates with the Regional Headquarters via a video communication system. The Consul has a needle gun for protection and keeps food and water on hand; it has quarters in the building for the staff as well.\n\tGroac is civilized and orderly. The Groacians have an Archives and museum for their local history, but it is off-limits to Terrestrials. Buildings have deeply carved, windowless stucco facades lining the streets, and Groacs travel by flimsy, high-wheeled ground cars. The air on the planet is clean and cool. Carvings over the doorways of buildings indicate the businesses housed within; one such business is a bar. The bar features a bar pit at the center of the room, and drinks are served in clay pots. They have culture, too, with light concerts, chamber music, and folk-art festivals. There is a Foreign Office that handles foreign matters and maintains files regarding its dealings.\n\tThe Groaci, however, have a deep dislike of Terrestrials. They avoid them on the streets, refuse service, and drunkenly slur insults at them. The Groaci government was overhauled after an investigation of a missing cruiser; after this, the Terrestrial consul was established. \n\tRetief is taken to a cavern to see the ISV Terrific, but it turns out not to be the real ISV Terrific. The Groaci authorities claim they hauled it there, nine miles from where it landed, placing it in a natural crevasse and roofing it over with high-grade iron ore. The ship has curving flanks and a space-burned hull. The instrument panels are empty, bolts have been sheared, scraps of paper and wire are lying around. Cutting torches have been used to remove the heavy shielding.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who are Fith and Shluh and what are their roles in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "859d15ea77e145aab1af8b304e005f78", "response_text": "Fith is a Groacian who works with the Terrestrial Desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His associate, Shluh, is the police chief of the Internal Police. While both are Groacians, they speak to Retief in a lisping Terran and wear heavy eye-shields and elaborately-decorated crest ornaments indicating their rank. Fith does most of the talking as he attempts to convince Retief to cease his inquiries into the ISV Terrific, and Shluh is there primarily as a tool with which to threaten Retief. When the two Groacians first meet Retief, they accuse him of attacking a Groacian national, which Retief admits to, but he quickly reveals what the national confessed to him about the fate of ISV Terrific's crew. Although Miss Meuhl is sympathetic to the supposed sensitive nature of the Groaci, Retief distrusts them wholly, and when Fith and Shluh eventually confess to hiding the ISV Terrific, he further distrusts their sincerity of contrition and accuses them of showing him a lifeboat instead of the missing cruiser. This accusation infuriates Fith, who threatens to have Shluh's attending officers arrest Retief on the spot. Later, following Retief's break-in at the Foreign Ministry, Fith appoints Miss Meuh as Consul for the Terrestrial States and orders Shluh to arrest Retief."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "22ed0051fe8d4216be3cb4e8190710a6", "response_text": "Fith, of the Terrestrial Desk, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Shluh, Internal Police, show their rank through their ornamental uniforms and sturdy eye-shields. Fith and Shluh meet Retief after he has been accused of assaulting a Groacian civilian, which he readily admits to. Fith and Shluh accompany Retief on his journey of discovering the mystery of the ISV Terrific crash and human discovery on Groac. Although at first they try and hide what happened, Retief soon learns the truth about those Terrestrials. Fith reveals that all six of the Terrestrials used in the parade died due to malnourishment and the Groaci’s unfamiliarity with the needs of humans. Although Fith and Shluh help Retief in some ways, they also greatly hinder the process by attempting to keep this all under wraps. The story ends with Fith and Shluh along with many other Groaci police officers barging into the Consul’s office armed and ready to arrest Retief. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "9b348a8582824644b70014ef5d74b953", "response_text": "Fith is from the Terrestrial Desk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the planet Groac, and Shluh is an official of their Internal Police. They are first introduced when they show up to Retief's Terrestrial Consulate office on Groac to question him about a report of a drunkard who was beaten on the street. Fith’s role is largely to protect the interests of the planet Groac, who Retief is threatening with his offensive investigations into the disappearance of the ISV Terrific, which Groacians claim the Terrans falsely accuse them of capturing nine years ago. Although Fith admits to the cover up of the vessel, it appears he is concealing a much larger secret that Retief uncovers when he notices they are showing him only a small lifeboat from ISV Terrific and claiming that they know nothing further. Then, Fith and Shuhl become forceful and violent with Retief when he presses about the heavy cruising ship - the real ISV Terrific - that the small lifeboat came from. \nShluh commands the Internal Police, and enforces the wishes of Fith faithfully throughout the story. This is seen when Shluh and four of his constables apprehend Retief at the cavern and forcefully escort him back to the city, and again when they enter the Terran consulate armed to take Retief into custody.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c41eb690db154c64ab4ab86b68e93ea0", "response_text": "Fith works at the Terrestrial Desk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Shluh is the chief of the Internal Police. These authorities first deny Retief’s claims, then give him some information hoping to satisfy him, but ultimately turn against him and try to block his further investigation into the events nine years ago. When we first see them, the two men question Retief about his beating of the drunk Groacian from the bar, but Retief counters by asking them questions about the ISV Terrific. Retief reveals that the drunken man told him certain information, and Fith indicates he will ask for Retief’s recall and claims he would do more if Retief didn’t have diplomatic immunity. While Retief tells them what he knows and then inquires how the people from the ISV Terrific died, proffering several suggestions, Fith becomes so worked up that he begins answering the questions. He admits the humans died from illness but claims the Groacians tried to keep them alive but didn’t know how. He also asserts that the Groacians were unaware of the severity of their actions until the investigation was held. They were afraid to tell what had happened and hid the ship. When the investigators left, they replaced their government and opened diplomatic relations with the Terrestrials. To persuade Retief of their sincerity, Fith offers to show Retief the ship and takes him to a ship hidden in a cavern. However, Retief recognizes that the ship they show him is not the ISV Terrific and confronts Fith with this fact, leading Shluh to have his four armed constables surround Retief. Fith then warns Retief not to go far from the consulate and to drop his inquiries about the government. At the end of the story, the two men come to the consulate to remove Retief for questioning and respond to Miss Meuhl as Consul now. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the ISV Terrific in the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "859d15ea77e145aab1af8b304e005f78", "response_text": "The ISV Terrific, full name ISV Terrific B7 New Terra, was a Terrestrial cruiser gone missing nine years prior to the events of the story. The vessel landed on Groac and its crew was captured and paraded through the streets by the Groaci. The crew died of mysterious causes and the vessel was hidden in a cavern and undetectable by investigators thanks to large veins of high-grade iron ore under the planet's surface. After a Terrestrial investigation failed to uncover the cruiser, a Groacian coup d'etat replaced the government in the time before the establishment of the Terrestrial Consulate General. Fith and Shluh deny any wrongdoing related to the deaths of the crewmembers when Retief confronts them about the situation, insisting that the crew died because the Groaci were ignorant about the Terran diet. They do, however, admit that they hid the cruiser. When they lead Retief to the ship, he observes its state of disrepair: A thick layer of dust covers the deck, stanchions, acceleration couches, instrument panels, sheared bolts, and scraps of wire and paper strewn about the control compartment. Then, Retief accuses them of attempting to continue their deception by showing him a lifeboat instead of the actual cruiser. This enrages Fith. The disappearance of the ISV Terrific, the coup d'etat that followed, and the subsequent incompetent Terrestrial investigation had led Retief to conduct the investigation in the first place and ultimately reveal that the Groacians are trying to hide something more sinister."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "22ed0051fe8d4216be3cb4e8190710a6", "response_text": "The ISV Terrific is a Terrestrial spaceship that crashed on Groac nine years before the story begins. It is significant because it marks the first Terrestrial contact with the Groaci, in fact, the first alien contact at all. The crew of the ISV Terrific were captured and paraded through the streets like animals in a zoo. They all later died due to malnourishment and dehydration, or so the Groaci claim. The ISV Terrific is significant because it acts as the catalyst for much of the conflict in this story, as Retief sets down a path to discover the truth and reveal what was long ago covered up. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "9b348a8582824644b70014ef5d74b953", "response_text": "The ISV Terrific was a heavy, interplanetary cruising vessel, weighing about twenty thousand tons, that was mysteriously lost on the planet Groac nine years ago. When the Terrans questioned the Grocians about their vessel, the Groacians covered up the fact that the ship did land on their planet to the east of the city and there were humans that all died after falling ill because the Groacians did not understand what to feed them. \nThe ISV Terrific is significant in the story because it is Retief’s singular focus to solve its disappearance. Retief is highly suspicious of why his fellow colleagues at the consulate are afraid to investigate the incident any further.  The Groacians treat the incident as an embarrassment, as if the Terrans had wrongly accused them. But Retief is intent on getting to the bottom of it. At first, he is able to get some information from Fith, who admits to covering up the ship and the death of the humans that fell ill. When Retief arrives at the cavern that the Groacians have hidden the ship in, he uncovers a further mystery. The ship they show him is only a hundred-ton lifeboat of the ISV Terrific, marked 'IVS Terrific B7 New Terra’ on the bow. The real ISV Terrific is somewhere else.\nRetief does not give up on his quest, despite the threats of the Groacian officials, and pushes on into the night by breaking into the Archives to obtain the records from nine years ago to find out where the ISV Terrific is.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c41eb690db154c64ab4ab86b68e93ea0", "response_text": "The ISV Terrific is the reason for Retief’s appointment as Consul on Groac. The ship was a Terrestrial cruiser that went missing nine years ago in the Groaci sector of the galaxy. Consul Retief is trying to track down the ship and discover what happened to the passengers. He suspects that the ship crashed on the Groaci’s planet and that the Groaci killed the people on it. He is on a mission to answer these questions. He first asks Miss Meuhl what she knows about it. She refuses to discuss it, siding with the Groacis and defending them as a very sensitive race and stating she is ashamed of how they were treated when the investigation was conducted. Retief tries to enter the Archives and local museum to search for information but is denied entry. \nBut he stumbles on a clue in a bar when a drunken Groaci points at him and says they need to find a proper cage for him; Retief follows the drunk out of the bar and learns that the Groaci captured the passengers and caged, paraded, and exhibited them. Fith and Shluh admit that these Terrestrials died but that the Groaci tried to keep them alive but didn’t know what foods they ate. They fell ill one by one and died. The Groaci claim that they didn’t realize the significance of the humans until the warships came to investigate, and then the Groaci were afraid to say anything. Afterward, they got rid of their government, replaced it with a new one, hid the ship, and invited diplomatic relations with the Terrestrials. Fith and Shluh also reveal that the ship didn’t crash but landed intact and claim that the ship is hidden in a cavern now and offer to show it to Retief. However, Retief recognizes that the ship they show him is not the ISV Terrific  but is, instead, a lifeboat. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Retief breaks into the Foreign Ministry during the night and finds answers to his questions, but before he can transmit the information that he has learned, Miss Meuhl notifies the Regional Headquarters of his actions, having him removed as consul, and allows the Groaci into the consulate to take Retief into custody.\nThus, the ISV Terrific is the basis for interplanetary hostilities, the opening of a diplomatic channel between the Groacians and the Terrestrials, the overthrow of the Groaci government, and an unsolved mystery that could reopen hostilities when the truth of the matter is revealed.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Miss Meuhl and what is her role in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "859d15ea77e145aab1af8b304e005f78", "response_text": "Miss Yolanda Meuhl is the Administrative Assistant of The Consul for the Terrestrial States Retief, the replacement for Consul Whaffle who left the post three months prior. Miss Meuhl wears glasses, uses a dictyper, and takes her position at the Consulate extremely seriously. She faithfully executes her duties as an administrative assistant without question, which leads her to develop a blind trust in authority as well as the Groaci race, according to Retief.  Miss Meuhl considers the Groaci to be a sensitive race and defends them against Retief's constant accusations of misconduct. She threatens to report Retief to the Regional Headquarters when he continues to act against the guidelines set forth by the Corps. Her commitment to diplomatic relations ensures that she takes the side of the Groaci in nearly every matter; she even excuses when Fith and Shluh admit to hiding the Terrestrial cruiser. When Retief orders Miss Meuhl to lock herself inside the office while he goes to break into the Foreign Ministry, Miss Meuhl calls the Regional Headquarters and makes a full report of his actions. When he returns, Counsellor Pardy calls and relieves Retief of his post. Then, a Groacian official calls and appoints Miss Meuhl to the post vacated by Retief, which she accepts. She then allows the Groacian officials to enter the office in order to arrest Retief."}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "22ed0051fe8d4216be3cb4e8190710a6", "response_text": "Miss Meuhl is Retief’s secretary and administrative assistant at the Groac Embassy for Terrestrials. She is used to serving the former consul, Whaffle, who was happy to go along with all the cultural ploys and let her do much of the writing. Retief, however, takes things into his own hands and immediately starts investigating a covered-up crime. Miss Meuhl does not approve of his actions and argues with Retief throughout the entire story. In the end, Miss Meuhl essentially betrays his trust and allows the Groaci to take Retief away, making her the new Consul. She would rather side with them to keep the peace than discover the truth, a trait that Retief abhorred. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "9b348a8582824644b70014ef5d74b953", "response_text": "Miss Yolanda Meuhl, DAO-9 is the Administrative Assistant to the Terran diplomat within the Ministry of Culture of the Groacian Autonomy, stationed at the Terrestrial Consulate General of the planet Groac. She used to serve Consul Whaffle, who was replaced with Consul Retief three months ago. She is not happy about assisting Retief, who she feels is deeply unfit to be a diplomat. She objects to nearly everything that Retief does during the course of the story, and only obliges when the task might gain her some information she can use against Retief in the future. Such as when she obliges to record the conversation Retief has with Fith and Shuhl when they question him about the drunkard he beat up. Or when she accepts locking herself in their consulate office when Retief goes to investigate the whereabouts of the vessel Terrific against the will of the Groacian officials, so that she can transmit a report to get Retief dismissed to their Regional Headquarters. After she turns against Retief, she is assigned his position as Consul by the Regional Headquarters and plays the role of a villain when she immediately betrays Retief by waiving his diplomatic protections before the Groacian authorities."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "c41eb690db154c64ab4ab86b68e93ea0", "response_text": "Miss Meuhl is the Administrative Assistant to the Consul for the Terrestrial States on Groac. She has held that position for over four years and believes she knows better than Consul Retief, who has only been there three months, what he should do and say. She frequently references the previous Consul as an example of what Retief should do and how he should act. When Retief brings up questions about the replacement of the government and the Groacis’ role in the missing ISV Terrific, Miss Meuhl sides with the Groaci, stating that they are a very sensitive, cultured, gentle race and were treated very poorly during the inquiry that followed the disappearance of the ship. When Fith and Shluh arrive to question Retief about his role in beating a Groaci, she is appalled. She refuses to be a party to his conversation with the authorities until Retief forces her because he needs her to record the discussion. When Retief leaves with the authorities to see the ship, he trusts Miss Meuhl to transmit the recording to the Regional Headquarters if he doesn’t return in a reasonable amount of time. When Retief later continues his investigation under cover of night, he warns Miss Meuhl she is in danger and not to leave the consulate; he also warns her not to trust the Groaci. While he is gone, Miss Meuhl reports his activities to the Regional Headquarters, having him dismissed from his post and replaced by Miss Meuhl. When Groaci authorities arrive to question Retief, they already know that Miss Meuhl is in charge. She unlocks the safelock so that they can enter, and she revokes Retief’s diplomatic immunity and has them remove Retief from the office area. Miss Meuhl thwarts Retief every step of the way as he tries to learn the truth about the people who were on the ISV Terrific and ultimately gains his consulate post for herself.\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61380", "uid": "fa06f10cf16a4e05ad19496faeb2d53a", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION\n \n\n BY FREDERICK POHL\n \n\n Out in the great gas cloud of the Orion Nebula McCray found an ally—and a foe!\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared.\n \n As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings were made every hour of the long flight. He had read off the azimuth angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the locking mechanism visually. It was only a personal quaintness; he had done it a thousand times. And while he was looking at Betelgeuse, Rigel and Saiph ... it happened.\n \n The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched it.\n \n McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out.\n \n Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not quite utter silence.\n \n Somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as still as he could, listening; it remained elusive.\n \n Probably it was only an illusion.\n \n But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.\n \n It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on Starship Jodrell Bank to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in exasperation: \"If I could only see !\"\n \n He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like baker's dough, not at all resilient.\n \n A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.\n \n \n\n \n It was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the light? And what were these other things in the room?\n \n Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace meteorite striking the Jodrell Bank , an explosion, himself knocked out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational.\n \n How to explain a set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? A space-ax? Or the old-fashioned child's rocking-chair, the chemistry set—or, most of all, the scrap of gaily printed fabric that, when he picked it up, turned out to be a girl's scanty bathing suit? It was slightly reassuring, McCray thought, to find that most of the objects were more or less familiar. Even the child's chair—why, he'd had one more or less like that himself, long before he was old enough to go to school. But what were they doing here?\n \n Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light. But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n \n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings; from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse than what he already had.\n \n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his courage flowed back when he could see again.\n \n He stood still, thinking. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the Jodrell Bank with nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting one of the female passengers for coffee. Item, apart from being shaken up and—he admitted it—scared damn near witless, he did not seem to be hurt. Item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what had happened to him, but what had happened to the ship?\n \n He allowed that thought to seep into his mind. Suppose there had been an accident to the Jodrell Bank .\n \n He could, of course, be dead. All this could be the fantasies of a cooling brain.\n \n McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head he remembered what a spacesuit was good for.\n \n It held a radio.\n \n He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he said, \"calling the Jodrell Bank .\"\n \n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling Jodrell Bank .\n \n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n \n But there was no answer.\n \n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio, something more than a million times faster than light, with a range measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer, he was a good long way from anywhere.\n \n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n \n He reached for the microphone again—\n \n He cried aloud.\n \n The pinkish lights went out. He was in the dark again, worse dark than before.\n \n For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped his eyes before. The suit and the microphone were clear enough in the pinkish glimmer; but the hand—his own hand, cupped to hold the microphone—he had not seen at all. Nor his arm. Nor, in one fleeting moment of study, his chest.\n \n McCray could not see any part of his own body at all.\n \n \n\n II\n \n Someone else could.\n \n Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may contain food.\n \n Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\") Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.\n \n If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance, they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.\n \n Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot, hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of Inverse Squares.\n \n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\" which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a state of violent commotion.\n \n The probe team had had a shock.\n \n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth.\n \n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n\"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as Herrell McCray.\n \n \n\n \n Hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n \n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:\n \n \"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure. After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n \n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact, manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had provided for him.\n \n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage.\n \n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n \n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded one of the councilmen.\n \n \"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n \n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n \n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"\n \n The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n \n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n \n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you are to establish communication at once.\"\n \n \"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly; he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey for him—\" actually, what he said was more like, we've warmed the biophysical nuances of his enclosure —\"and tried to guess his needs; and we're frightening him half to death. We can't go faster. This creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n \n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures were intelligent.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"\n \n \"But in a way, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time, Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n \n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n \n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n \n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members drifting about him.\n \n Finally the councillor said, \"I speak for all of us, I think. If the Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do everything you can to establish communication with your subject.\"\n \n \"But the danger to the specimen—\" Hatcher protested automatically.\n \n \"—is no greater,\" said the councillor, \"than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies now .\"\n \n \n\n \n Hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily.\n \n It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible.\n \n Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough getting him here.\n \n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day.\n \n He returned quickly to the room.\n \n His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all.\n \n Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of fleeing again.\n \n But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their existence to their enemies—\n \n \"Hatcher!\"\n \n The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded.\n \n \"Wait....\"\n \n Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n \n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to show.\n \n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or merely a different sex?\"\n \n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.\n \n Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n\"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n \n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n \n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n \n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\n \n \n\n III\n \n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration.\n \n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed it.\n \n Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even himself.\n \n \"God bless,\" he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects on some strange property of the light.\n \n At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.\n \n He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.\n \n For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was, perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.\n \n McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no change.\n \n And yet, surely, it was warmer in here.\n \n He could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger now. He stood there, perplexed.\n \n A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply, amazement in its tone, \"McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you calling from?\"\n \n He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he cried. \"I'm in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—\"\n \n \"McCray!\" cried the tiny voice in his ear. \"Where are you? This is Jodrell Bank calling. Answer, please!\"\n \n \"I am answering, damn it,\" he roared. \"What took you so long?\"\n \n \"Herrell McCray,\" droned the tiny voice in his ear, \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank responding to your message, acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray....\"\n \n It kept on, and on.\n \n McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or—no. That was not it; they had heard him, because they were responding. But it seemed to take them so long....\n \n Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was it he called them? Two hours ago? Three?\n \n Did that mean—did it possibly mean—that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took hours to get a message to the ship and back?\n \n And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?\n \n \n\n \n Herrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the guesses of his \"common sense.\" When Jodrell Bank , hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into a position.\n \n If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's message implied; but it was not necessary to \"believe,\" only to act.\n \n McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report of his situation and his guesses. \"I don't know how I got here. I don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—\" he swallowed and went on—\"I'd estimate I am something more than five hundred light-years away from you at this moment. That's all I have to say, except for one more word: Help.\"\n \n He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to consider what to do next.\n \n He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm.\n \n Very warm, he thought tardily; and more than that. The halogen stench was strong in his nostrils again.\n \n Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps that pained him, uncontrollable. Chlorine or fluorine, one of them was in the air he had been breathing. He could not guess where it had come from; but it was ripping his lungs out.\n \n He flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could, daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. After a long time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears.\n \n He could see the fumes in the room now. The heat was building up.\n \n Automatically—now that he had put it on and so started its servo-circuits operating—the suit was cooling him. This was a deep-space suit, regulation garb when going outside the pressure hull of an FTL ship. It was good up to at least five hundred degrees in thin air, perhaps three or four hundred in dense. In thin air or in space it was the elastic joints and couplings that depolymerized when the heat grew too great; in dense air, with conduction pouring energy in faster than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down.\n \n McCray had no way of knowing just how hot it was going to get. Nor, for that matter, had the suit been designed to operate in a corrosive medium.\n \n All in all it was time for him to do something.\n \n \n\n \n Among the debris on the floor, he remembered, was a five-foot space-ax, tungsten-steel blade and springy aluminum shaft.\n \n McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could, do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned oven.\n \n \n\n Crash-clang! The double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white powdery residue.\n \n At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. Did he have an hour?\n \n But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest; it must have snapped the lock mechanism. The door shook and slid ajar. McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide.\n \n He was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare.\n \n McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them.\n \n The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them. Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the back of his neck.\n \n He tapped half-heartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not surprised when it proved as refractory as the door. Undoubtedly he could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of its contents when he was through; and there was the question of time.\n \n But his attention was diverted by a gleam from one of the benches. Metallic parts lay heaped in a pile. He poked at them with a stiff-fingered gauntlet; they were oddly familiar. They were, he thought, very much like the parts of a bullet-gun.\n \n In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen in survival locker, on the Jodrell Bank —and abruptly wished he were carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n \n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals all along:\n \n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank calling Herrell McCray....\"\n \n And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: \" Jodrell Bank! Where are you? Help!\"\n \n \n\n IV\n \n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n \n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher, it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n \n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n \n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n \n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight toward her.\"\n \n Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty, needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers. Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and death. He said, musing:\n \n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n \n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"\n \n Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well. Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with the female—\"\n \n \"But?\"\n \n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\n \n \n\n \n The woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n \n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.\n \n He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. There had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall.\n \n When he turned around again there was a door. It was oddly shaped and unlike the door he had hewn through, but clearly a door all the same, and it was open.\n \n McCray regarded it grimly. He went back in his memory with meticulous care. Had he not looked at, this very spot a matter of moments before? He had. And had there been an open door then? There had not. There hadn't been even a shadowy outline of the three-sided, uneven opening that stood there now.\n \n Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind it—\n \n Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.\n \n It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's, even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.\n \n He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.\n \n She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese.\n \n She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort; her face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he moved her.\n \n He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in.\n \n His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation;", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6", "response_text": "Herrell McCray is a navigator on the Starship Jodrell Bank heading for the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine when he is inexplicably abducted from his ship. He finds himself staring around a dark, silent room full of indeterminate objects. He believes he hears a faint voice in the distance, and suddenly a pinkish light illuminates his path of vision. He sees many familiar objects including a spacesuit, a child's rocking chair, a girl's bathing suit, and more; he wonders how he got there and why such objects are there with him. Three of the room's walls are made of a hard, organic compound, and from grates comprising the fourth wall pours a pungent air. As McCray's confidence returns, he wonders what happened to the Starship Jodrell Bank and begins to wonder if he is dead. When he remembers spacesuits come with radios, he tries contacting the ship to no avail and realizes he must be many lightyears away. Then, with sudden horror, he realizes that he cannot see his own body, and the room goes dark again. Outside the room, an alien named \"Hatcher\" runs a probe team tasked with observing McCray and running experiments on him in order to develop an understanding of the human species. Their \"probes\" are mandibles that can attach and detach from their round, jelly-like bodies and run errands and conduct scientific research. Hatcher makes his way to the supervising council of all probes to report the team's findings that McCray displayed \"paranormal powers\" when using his radio to establish contact with his ship. The council urges Hatcher to continue his studies with haste because a member of The Central Masses probe team has been captured by the Old Ones, an ancient species hostile to Hatcher's people. His team must put McCray through a series of tests in order to help them potentially discover a way to defend themselves against the Old Ones. As Hatcher considers the best way to establish communication with McCray without causing him harm, his assistant alerts him to the presence of a female human on the viewing console. Hatcher orders the assistant to bring her in as they may need another human in case McCray dies. Hours after his initial transmission was sent to the ship, McCray receives a response from the ship. He dispatches another transmission and begins to notice the room getting hotter as the air grows more toxic. Hatcher has started the survival portion of the test. McCray uses an ax to break his way out of the room and enters another dark room full of desks he assumes are some kind of workspaces for his captors. Suddenly, he hears a woman's voice crying out for the Jodrell Bank and makes his way toward her. Hatcher and his assistant discuss whether to abandon McCray and focus on the female since she appears to be more susceptible to communication, but they ultimately decide against it. McCray eventually finds the woman through a series of doors and hallways."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39", "response_text": "Herrell McCray is the navigator on Starship Jodrell Bank on a long haul flight from Earth to the colonies of Betelgeuse Nine. During a routine course check, he suddenly teleports into a dark and scary room filled with a strange melange of objects - from a spacesuit to a woman’s bathing suit. Some he recognizes from his early life, like a childhood rocking chair. He calls for help on the ultrawave radio of the spacesuit, but there is no answer, telling him he is a long way from anything since the range of the radio is hundreds of light-years. McCray is being observed from another room by an alien Probe Team led by Hatcher. They are watching McCray’s every action with fascination. They think he has paranormal powers when he operates the radio and they detect electromagnetic vibrations that are modified by his voice. Hatcher rushes to tell a councillor from the supervising council of all the alien probes about the discovery and he is ordered to establish contact with McCray immediately because they need allies in the race of Old Ones (their word for humans). Hatcher defends going at a slow pace since they have frightened McCray so deeply already, but the concillor does not budge since there has been an incident of one of their staff on the Central Masses probe team getting captured by their human subject. Hatcher’s people are capturing humans from Jodrell Bank because they detected it near their territory and were almost completely destroyed when they last encountered humans. They are now desperate to find ways to fight or escape them.\nBack in McCray’s observation room, he hears a faint voice responding from his ship via the spacesuit radio. This gives him hope, but also panic because he calculates that he must be more than five hundred light-years away from his ship for such a long lag. He radios back, but knows there will be no response for several more hours. The room suddenly gets very hot and a chlorine-like gas is being pumped in that burns his lungs. He quickly puts on the spacesuit which will keep him cool and filter the air, then picks up an axe and breaks out of the room into a hallway. He finds the parts of an antique bullet gun on a bench outside, and then hears a woman scream out to Jodrell Bank for help on his radio.\nThe heat and chlorine gas are a survival test, and McCray passes. McCray uses his radio to locate the woman. He notices that there is a new door where there was not one before. Hatcher has engineered this so that McCray will find the woman and they can study them communicating with each other. Hatcher thinks this is a step toward successful contact with humans. McCray finds the woman face down on the floor. She wears coveralls and he believes she may be Chinese. McCray wonders if she has asphyxiated by breathing the air in the room.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d", "response_text": "An unnamed alien race has abducted the navigator, Herrell McCray, from a ship to use him to help save their race. They plan to test his intelligence and then communicate with him, making him an ally to perhaps work as an intermediary between their race and the Old Ones. They call the human race the Old Ones, and many years ago, they had an encounter with them that left the aliens fleeing for their survival and ending up having to abandon their populated planet. The problem now is that the humans are sending out mapping parties that are getting dangerously close to where the aliens live now. The probe team observing McCray is led by Hatcher; his team observes everything McCray does and reports significant findings to the supervising council overall probe teams.\n\tAnother one of their probe teams has lost a member of their team to the Old Ones, and now the aliens are worried about what the Old Ones will learn and what they will do. For this reason, they are having to step up the pace of their work with McCray, even though Hatcher is worried about somehow harming him. They have tried working with other humans in the past, but they have all died during the stages of their tests.\n\tThe probe team acquires another test subject, a female, who begins calling out for help. McCray hears her and begins making his way to her. She is unconscious when he finds her, and he suspects that it is from breathing the air in the building. The aliens have not communicated with her either, yet, but believe they are beginning to establish the start of communication. They believe McCray and the female will communicate with each other, which might help them establish communication with McCray.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29", "response_text": "Herrel McCray, the navigator on the Jodrell Bank, wakes up to find himself in a dark room. He stumbles around for a bit before a pink glow lights up parts of the room. He sifts through the items on the floor, objects from Earth mostly, and looks at the metal walls. One of the three walls is made up of an organic plastic compound, but the rest are impenetrable. He sees a spacesuit and uses its microphone to emit a distress signal to Jodrell Bank. He hears nothing in response, meaning he must be hundreds of light-years away from them. Suddenly, the light goes out, but not before he realized he couldn’t see his reflection in the spacesuit. As he freaks out, the reader is introduced to Hatcher, the lead alien probe of the team observing Herrel. He and his probe team believe that Hatcher has paranormal powers because he differs so greatly from their blob-like race. Hatcher reports back to the supervising council and informs them of the Earthman’s doings, specifically his ability to speak through his throat. They order him to establish communication quickly, since the Central Masses Team just sent out the message that one of their probes is missing, presumably killed by their test subject. Hatcher thinks they’re moving too fast since their previous subjects didn’t survive. He goes to the eating room, removes his previous day’s digested food from his slit, and puts in new vegetation. His assistant sends him an image telepathically of another human, this time a woman, that they had just captured. Hatcher informs his team they must move into Stage Two. Herrell hears a click, feels the room get warmer, and smells something unpleasant. He turns on the light in the spacesuit and is relieved to see his body. Jodrell Bank calls him back, so he sends in a long message explaining his situation. He hears nothing back. He climbs into the spacesuit, realizing the air is toxic, and lets the spacesuit provide fresh air. He grabs an ax off the floor and uses it to break out of the poisonous room. Once out, he tries to open a cupboard in the new area but is unable to. He sees a pistol that had been taken apart before. Jodrell Bank calls back in, but this time a woman responds, calling for help. McCray communicates with her and tracks her using her descriptions. He runs around the compound, trying to find her, and eventually goes through a door that was previously unopened. He finally finds her, unconscious on the floor. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the setting of the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6", "response_text": "The story begins sometime during the Starship Jodrell Bank's Long Jump from Earth to the colonies surrounding Betegeuses Nine as it passes by Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Saiph. The rest of the action takes place in an unknown area of space within a \"great buried structure\" that is a massive labyrinth of dark rooms and hallways with unusual doors that seem to shift and change after passing through them. This is where Hatcher and his probe team observe McCray in his enclosure, which is no bigger than a prison cell, dark, and full of vaguely familiar objects: a spacesuit, a child's rocking chair, a chemistry set, a girl's bathing suit, an ax. Three of the walls are made of a hard, organic compound and the fourth is covered in grates from which a halogen-smelling air pours out into the room. Although everything is dark, Hatcher occasionally triggers a pinkish, halo-like light that allows McCray to examine his surroundings. Elsewhere in the structure is a place where the supervising council of all probes stays in permanent session, monitoring the work of all probe teams including the team at The Central Masses. When McCray breaks out of his initial enclosure, he finds himself in another dark room, large and bare. Using the beam from his suit lamp, he sees shelves, cupboard-like contraptions, and level surfaces that appeared to be waist-high workbenches attached to the walls and ceiling. He finds a gun on one of the benches. After finding the gun, he realizes the door he came through is gone; instead, there is an uneven, three-sided door he enters to find the unconscious woman on the other side."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39", "response_text": "The story is set in a time when humans have interstellar travel and are mapping new galaxies. They are feared by at least some of the aliens they have encountered, such as Hatcher’s people who were almost completely wiped out after their last human contact. The aliens are so fearful now that they have abandoned a planet as a decoy for the humans and are capturing humans off the Starship Jodrell Bank that they’ve detected in their galaxy to probe them and find out ways to fight or escape humans for good.\nWhen McCray is captured, he awakes in a strange room with three walls made of a hard organic compound, and one wall made of grates that a pungent halogen smell came out of. There is a dim pink light in the room, and it is filled with meaningful objects from McCray’s past and present that he thinks of like a creepy trophy room of his life. Importantly there is a modern spacesuit that saves his life when the aliens administer a survival test that heats the room and pumps in chlorine gas through the grates. Directly outside of this room is a sterile hallway and the rest of the testing facilities of the aliens. There are other rooms similar to his where other humans are being probed by the aliens, such as the woman he hears screaming through the radio of his space suit who is in a nearby room.\nHatcher, the alien in charge of conducting the Probe Team to make contact with the humans, observes them with his team of scientists and they take detailed notes on their actions that are reported to the supervisory council of probes in another nearby room.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d", "response_text": "The story is set in the spiral arm of the galaxy where the aliens who abduct McCray are living. McCray is abducted from the Starship Jodrell Bank where he is navigator as the ship is on a trip from Earth to the colonies in Betelgeuse Nine. McCray is on the ship one minute, and the next, he is in a completely dark room full of unidentifiable objects. Unknown to him, the objects have been selected by the aliens as ones that are on McCray’s ship to give him a homey setting. McCray has been trying to feel the objects and his surroundings to determine where he is. When he calls out in frustration because he can’t see, they light up a spacesuit that gives him enough illumination to see the objects that include a set of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a space-ax, an old fashioned children’s rocking chair, a chemistry set, and a girl’s bathing suit. Three of the walls, the floor, and the room's ceiling are an unusual substance, possibly cellulose. The fourth wall is grated like a ventilation system, and there is a faint smell of halogen gases lingering in the room. The spacesuit has a radio which McCray uses to contact his ship, but it doesn’t respond immediately. \n\tFrom another room, McCray is being observed by Hatcher and his probe team. Hatcher isn’t exactly male; his race doesn’t have them, but he isn’t female either. He is a three-foot sphere-shaped glob of jelly covered with a hard shell. His arms and legs are not attached but rather are snakelike structures that obey his brain. They work best close to the body but can work up to a fourth of a mile from it. Hatcher’s appendages are the calmest ones in the room.\n\tThe building where all this takes place is located underground. The supervising council is located in the same building, and Hatcher can move from his observation room to the council’s room in a matter of minutes. Due to the lag in transmission time and message reception, McCray believes he is somewhere around five hundred light-years away from his ship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29", "response_text": "The Five Hells of Orion by Frederick Pohl takes place on an unknown planet light-years away from the realm of human discovery. The probes, a blob-like alien race, have captured two humans and brought them back to their home to study and observe them. Herrel McCray wakes up to a dark prison cell filled with Earthly items, such as a book or a bathing suit. This tiny cell has three impenetrable walls, and then the fourth is made of something similar to plastic. He cuts into the fourth wall with an ax and escapes the room only to arrive in a new one. This one features cupboards with the same impenetrable surfaces and an antique pistol that had been previously taken apart. As Herrel makes his way through the story, the reader sees very little of the compound they’re keeping him in, as there is presumably not a lot of light. However, we do know the probes eat in an eating room that features a trough where they can dispose of their bodily fluids. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Hatcher and what is his role in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6", "response_text": "Hatcher is an alien of an unnamed race. He cannot be described as male because his race \"had no true males.\" He is three feet tall with a hard-shelled, circular body of jelly. His arms and legs are snakelike mandibles that can detach from his body, and he can control them with his brain from vast distances, although their effectiveness diminishes the further they travel from Hatcher's body. When they return to Hatcher's body, they rest in crevices in his skin. When he feeds, a slit appears at the bottom of his body and emits a thin, fetid fluid Hatcher throws away; he then places a nutrient-filled, kelp-like vegetable in the slit for sustenance. Hatcher is young, adventurous, scientifically gifted, knowledgeable, and enjoys playing sports. Although he does not feel the equivalent of human empathy, he also doesn't want harm to befall McCray and feels responsible for his proper care. Hatcher manages the probe team that observes McCray throughout the story, and he reports on McCray's behavior and his use of \"paranormal powers\" to the supervising council. Hatcher worries about hurrying to establish communication with McCray because he believes it will harm and perhaps even kill him, and later he wonders if communication is even possible at all with humans (later, he notes he is able to establish a minor level of communication with the female but wonders if others might be able to communicate with her). When Hatcher makes his report to the supervising council, they inform him of the return of the Old Ones, who have captured a member of The Central Masses Probe Team. He questions whether or not to tell his crew considering he was never explicitly told not to by the council. In many ways, Hatcher and McCray are similar although Hatcher is generally disgusted by the human body."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39", "response_text": "Hatcher is an alien from a race that was once nearly completely destroyed by humans (they call Old Ones) before. They are now probing humans from McCray’s ship, Starship Jodrell Bank, because they have detected the human mapping mission in the spiral arm of their galaxy and are afraid of another encounter. They are looking for ways to fight or to escape humans for good, and have abandoned one of their planets as a precautionary decoy to avoid an encounter.\nHatcher runs one of the alien Probe Teams, and McCray is one of his human subjects. Hatcher is an adventurous, young scientist who enjoys games and sports, and he is in a position of importance - reporting only to a Councillor of the supervising council of all probes. Hatcher is a three foot diameter sphere with a hard shell and jelly interior. He possesses arms and legs but they are not attached to the sphere of his body. He controls those appendages with his brain telepathically, such that they can be operating in one room when he is in another. He doesn’t want to harm his subjects, including McCray, because they are difficult to acquire. Hatcher doesn’t necessarily have emotions, but he can comprehend human feelings and knows when McCray is in distress during the experiments. Hatcher’s role is essential to his people making contact with humans and finding ways to deal with them so that they don’t have to continue living through generations of fear about being wiped out by them. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d", "response_text": "Hatcher leads the probe team observing Herrell McCray and testing him when he discovers that McCray has paranormal powers (which are actually his voice and the radio microphone). Once he realizes this, he immediately takes the news to the supervising council. After discussing the new information, the council orders Hatcher to establish communication with McCray immediately. They explain that the Central Masses team has just lost one of their probe team to the Old Ones, so the danger is even greater than before, and time is running out. Hatcher is reluctant to push McCray for fear of causing harm to him, but the council lets him know they are facing an emergency. Hatcher informs his team the council is ordering them to move to Stage Two. They increase the heat and pour a halogen gas into the room and watch as McCray uses the spacesuit for protection and breaks out of the room using the space-ax. This means that McCray has passed the first survival test. When the female subject cries out in pain, Hatcher watches with interest as McCray makes his way to her. He thinks that the female and McCray are communicating with each other. Hatcher’s team adds a door to the room McCray is in so that he can find the female, and Hatcher is pleased that McCray has made it this far in their test.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29", "response_text": "Hatcher is one of the probes and the leader of his particular study group. He is a three-foot-tall blob with detachable limbs. He eats through a slit lower on his body, which processes vegetation and then essentially pees it out. He is fairly young, but also very intelligent and capable. Hatcher acts as the commander over the team of probes that are testing and observing Herrel McCray. He, of course, reports to the Council who oversee several different probe operations. Hatcher does not want to kill the Earthmen and believes they are moving too fast with their tests. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the probes in the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6", "response_text": "Physically speaking, the probes refer to the snakelike mandibles that form the arms and legs of the alien race to which Hatcher belongs. These mandibles are able to detach themselves and travel vast distances away from the body, conducting experiments and running errands controlled remotely by the brain. When they return to the body, they settle into little grooves formed in the skin at the base of the globular host body. Hatcher manages the probe team responsible for observing McCray and running him through a series of tests. The supervising council oversees operations of all the various Probe Teams throughout the universe; the ultimate goal of all Probe Teams is to discover a way in which to defend their race against the hostile Old Ones who have recently resurfaced and captured a team member from The Central Masses Probe Team."}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39", "response_text": "The probes are significant because they are being conducted by an alien race in order to find a way to fight humans or to escape them. The threat of the humans (called Old Ones by the aliens) has loomed over the aliens for generations, and Hatcher describes that one encounter with them in the past had nearly completely destroyed their people. The only way they were able to escape was by abandoning one of their planets as a decoy and running away. When Hatcher’s people once again detected that there were humans on a mapping mission in their spiral arm of the galaxy, they formed Probe Teams to capture and study the humans. The success of the probes in establishing contact with the humans is essential to them understanding how to protect their people from the fear they live under.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d", "response_text": "The probes are being carried out in an effort to find an ally among the Old Ones (humans) in order to save the beings of Orion. They had an encounter with the Old Ones years ago, and their race had almost been destroyed. They had to run and hide, take a populated planet with them, and then abandon it. Now the Old Ones are sending out mapping teams near their planet, and they are running out of time. The Probe Teams are trying to find a way to combat the Old Ones or else run from them again. Time is growing shorter because now the Central Masses have taken someone from one of their probe teams, so they might be getting the information to destroy them. "}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29", "response_text": "The probes cause the main conflict in this story: the kidnapping and testing of two humans. The probes are worried that human domination will occur again and their species will be murdered or forced out of their homes. They plan to learn more about these humans, so they can destroy them, know their plans, or know when to run. The probes kidnap Herrel McCray from the Jodrell Bank and put him through a series of tests to better understand his race. Evidently, they have done this before, for Hatcher speaks of previous test subjects who all died during the first test. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Herrell McCray and what happens to him in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "8", "uid": "c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6", "response_text": "Herrell McCray is the navigator for the Starship Jodrell Bank whose mission is to reach the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. He is young, adventurous, gifted in science and technology, and enjoys playing baseball, poker, and 3D chess. When McCray finds himself inexplicably abducted and transported to a dark room in an unknown location, he is confused about how he ended up in that location and why he is surrounded by items that vaguely remind him of his childhood. He is grateful when a pinkish light offers some illumination, and he attempts to contact his ship using the radio on a spacesuit he finds in the room. Before the light goes out, he panics when he is not able to see any part of his body; he later realizes this was a trick of the light. McCray continues to attempt to make contact with the ship and hours go by before he receives a reply, which makes him realize he is possibly millions of lightyears away from it. As McCray realizes his room is slowly filling with toxic fumes, he uses an ax he finds to break free and tries to find a way to escape his unknown prison. As he navigates the unusual building, he finds a gun and eventually hears a transmission from an unknown woman who is also calling out for the ship. He makes his way through bizarre doors until he finds her face down on the ground. "}, {"worker_id": "10", "uid": "8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39", "response_text": "Herrell McCray is a navigator on the interstellar mapping vessel Jodrell Bank. He is a logical, mathematical thinker. During a routine course check on his way from Earth to the colonies of Betelgeuse Nine, he suddenly is no longer at his navigation station, but instead in a dark room that stinks of halogen compounds. The room is like a dark, scary, trophy room full of meaningful objects from McCray’s past and present. He has been captured by an alien race that is studying humans to try to make contact with them to determine how to fight or escape them, and they’ve put him in this room with artificial objects to try to make McCray calm so they can run tests. He tries the radio on a spacesuit in the room several times. He receives a message from his ship several hours later that gives him a glimmer of hope for rescue, but he calculates that he must be five hundred light years away from them to account for the hours-long lag between messages. When the room begins heating up and chlorine gas begins burning his lungs as the aliens administer a survival test, he quickly gets into the spacesuit and breaks out of the room with a large space axe. He passes the survival test without knowing it. He hears a woman scream for help on his radio and he realizes she is also in the facility and goes to her. He finds her unconscious, face down on the floor from possible asphyxiation.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d", "response_text": "Herrell McCray is the ship’s navigator on the Starship Jodrell Bank. On a routine mission from Earth to the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine, he visually confirms the navigation's locking mechanism when he suddenly finds himself in a completely dark room filled with various objects. He tries to explore the objects with his hands but in frustration, calls out that he wishes he could see, and there is a flicker of pinkish light from a spacesuit. With the light available to him, he looks at the other objects in the room: a set of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a space-ax, an old-fashioned child’s rocking chair, a chemistry set….The objects are somewhat familiar, many of which he had owned himself. Three walls are solid, but the fourth seems to be a grating, perhaps a ventilator. McCray recalls that spacesuits have radios, so he tries to contact his ship but receives no answer. He thinks about the speed of radio transmissions and realizes he must be far away from his ship not to receive an immediate reply. \n\tUnknown to McCray, he has been selected for observation and an experiment by a probe team. They are testing his intelligence and need to communicate with McCray to find an ally; otherwise, their species is in great danger. McCray decides to put the spacesuit on just as the room begins warming up and a gas starts coming into the room. Then he hears a transmission from his ship, but he realizes they can’t hear him when he responds to it. It dawns on him that the distance between him and his ship is so great that it takes two or three hours to transmit messages. After sending another message, he uses the space-ax to break through the door of the room because the gas is hurting his lungs. He finds himself in another room or hallway with what appear to be workbenches mounted at various heights. On one he sees the parts of a bullet-gun.\n\tNext, McCray hears a woman calling for help. He tries to determine the direction of her voice, and when he turns around, there is an open door where there wasn’t one earlier. McCray goes down a hall, finds another open door, and the woman is in there. She is unconscious, and McCray thinks it’s because she is breathing the air in the room.\n"}, {"worker_id": "6", "uid": "a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29", "response_text": "Herrel McCray is the navigator on the Jodrell Bank, heading to Betelgeuse Nine from Earth. McCray is an avid sportsman, enjoying games like poker, 3-D chess, and baseball. Herrel McCray suddenly wakes up in an unfamiliar, dark room. He does not remember how he got there, in fact, his last memories were of being aboard the Jodrell Bank. After stumbling around in the dark, a faint pink glow partially illuminates his surroundings. He sees a bunch of random items, like books, a bathing suit, and a rocking chair. There’s also a spacesuit, which he uses to attempt to communicate with his ship by accessing the microphone. No one responds to his cries though, and he notices that he is unable to see his hands in the reflection of the spacesuit. He screams and darkness falls again. Later, remembering another aspect of the handy-dandy spacesuit, Herrel flicks on the light inside of it and is now able to see the entire room. He is also able to see his own body again, which calms him down. He feels the temperature increase, smells a weird, halogenic-like scent, and hears a buzzing, but he ignores it as his spacesuit starts speaking. Someone aboard the Jodrell Bank is calling for him, so he responds, but there’s no answer. He realizes that he must be hundreds of light-years away for communication to be taking this long. Realizing there’s poison in the air, he steps inside the spacesuit to avoid suffocation. The suit cooled him and provided fresh air. He picks up an ax off the floor and uses it to chop down the door. He escapes his cell and explores the next room. Jodrell Bank calls in again, but this time a woman answers it, also calling for help. He tracked her voice and went through a previously-unopened door to find her. She’s unconscious, and he worries that she has breathed in the poisonous air. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "50869", "uid": "f652cec91f274d9e9ac15cfc30aeee9a", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "A Gleeb for Earth\n \n \n By CHARLES SHAFHAUSER\n \n Illustrated by EMSH\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n Not to be or not to not be ... that was the not-question for the invader of the not-world.\n \n\n \n Dear Editor:\n \n My 14 year old boy, Ronnie, is typing this letter for me because he can do it neater and use better grammar. I had to get in touch with somebody about this because if there is something to it, then somebody, everybody, is going to point finger at me, Ivan Smernda, and say, \"Why didn't you warn us?\"\n \n I could not go to the police because they are not too friendly to me because of some of my guests who frankly are stew bums. Also they might think I was on booze, too, or maybe the hops, and get my license revoked. I run a strictly legit hotel even though some of my guests might be down on their luck now and then.\n \n What really got me mixed up in this was the mysterious disappearance of two of my guests. They both took a powder last Wednesday morning.\n \n Now get this. In one room, that of Joe Binkle, which maybe is an alias, I find nothing but a suit of clothes, some butts and the letters I include here in same package. Binkle had only one suit. That I know. And this was it laying right in the middle of the room. Inside the coat was the vest, inside the vest the shirt, inside the shirt the underwear. The pants were up in the coat and inside of them was also the underwear. All this was buttoned up like Binkle had melted out of it and dripped through a crack in the floor. In a bureau drawer were the letters I told you about.\n \n Now. In the room right under Binkle's lived another stew bum that checked in Thursday ... name Ed Smith, alias maybe, too. This guy was a real case. He brought with him a big mirror with a heavy bronze frame. Airloom, he says. He pays a week in advance, staggers up the stairs to his room with the mirror and that's the last I see of him.\n \n In Smith's room on Wednesday I find only a suit of clothes, the same suit he wore when he came in. In the coat the vest, in the vest the shirt, in the shirt the underwear. Also in the pants. Also all in the middle of the floor. Against the far wall stands the frame of the mirror. Only the frame!\n \n What a spot to be in! Now it might have been a gag. Sometimes these guys get funny ideas when they are on the stuff. But then I read the letters. This knocks me for a loop. They are all in different handwritings. All from different places. Stamps all legit, my kid says. India, China, England, everywhere.\n \n My kid, he reads. He says it's no joke. He wants to call the cops or maybe some doctor. But I say no. He reads your magazine so he says write to you, send you the letters. You know what to do. Now you have them. Maybe you print. Whatever you do, Mr. Editor, remember my place, the Plaza Ritz Arms, is straight establishment. I don't drink. I never touch junk, not even aspirin.\n \n \n Yours very truly, Ivan Smernda\n \n \n\n \n Bombay, India June 8\n \n Mr. Joe Binkle Plaza Ritz Arms New York City\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n Greetings, greetings, greetings. Hold firm in your wretched projection, for tomorrow you will not be alone in the not-world. In two days I, Glmpauszn, will be born.\n \n Today I hang in our newly developed not-pod just within the mirror gateway, torn with the agony that we calculated must go with such tremendous wavelength fluctuations. I have attuned myself to a fetus within the body of a not-woman in the not-world. Already I am static and for hours have looked into this weird extension of the Universe with fear and trepidation.\n \n As soon as my stasis was achieved, I tried to contact you, but got no response. What could have diminished your powers of articulate wave interaction to make you incapable of receiving my messages and returning them? My wave went out to yours and found it, barely pulsing and surrounded with an impregnable chimera.\n \n Quickly, from the not-world vibrations about you, I learned the not-knowledge of your location. So I must communicate with you by what the not-world calls \"mail\" till we meet. For this purpose I must utilize the feeble vibrations of various not-people through whose inadequate articulation I will attempt to make my moves known to you. Each time I will pick a city other than the one I am in at the time.\n \n I, Glmpauszn, come equipped with powers evolved from your fragmentary reports before you ceased to vibrate to us and with a vast treasury of facts from indirect sources. Soon our tortured people will be free of the fearsome not-folk and I will be their liberator. You failed in your task, but I will try to get you off with light punishment when we return again.\n \n The hand that writes this letter is that of a boy in the not-city of Bombay in the not-country of India. He does not know he writes it. Tomorrow it will be someone else. You must never know of my exact location, for the not-people might have access to the information.\n \n I must leave off now because the not-child is about to be born. When it is alone in the room, it will be spirited away and I will spring from the pod on the gateway into its crib and will be its exact vibrational likeness.\n \n I have tremendous powers. But the not-people must never know I am among them. This is the only way I could arrive in the room where the gateway lies without arousing suspicion. I will grow up as the not-child in order that I might destroy the not-people completely.\n \n All is well, only they shot this information file into my matrix too fast. I'm having a hard time sorting facts and make the right decision. Gezsltrysk, what a task!\n \n Farewell till later.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Wichita, Kansas June 13\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n Mnghjkl, fhfjgfhjklop phelnoprausynks. No. When I communicate with you, I see I must avoid those complexities of procedure for which there are no terms in this language. There is no way of describing to you in not-language what I had to go through during the first moments of my birth.\n \n Now I know what difficulties you must have had with your limited equipment. These not-people are unpredictable and strange. Their doctor came in and weighed me again the day after my birth. Consternation reigned when it was discovered I was ten pounds heavier. What difference could it possibly make? Many doctors then came in to see me. As they arrived hourly, they found me heavier and heavier. Naturally, since I am growing. This is part of my instructions. My not-mother\n(Gezsltrysk!) then burst into tears. The doctors conferred, threw up their hands and left.\n \n I learned the following day that the opposite component of my not-mother, my not-father, had been away riding on some conveyance during my birth. He was out on ... what did they call it? Oh, yes, a bender. He did not arrive till three days after I was born.\n \n When I heard them say that he was straightening up to come see me, I made a special effort and grew marvelously in one afternoon. I was 36 not-world inches tall by evening. My not-father entered while I was standing by the crib examining a syringe the doctor had left behind. He stopped in his tracks on entering the room and seemed incapable of speech.\n \n Dredging into the treasury of knowledge I had come equipped with, I produced the proper phrase for occasions of this kind in the not-world.\n \n \"Poppa,\" I said.\n \n This was the first use I had made of the so-called vocal cords that are now part of my extended matrix. The sound I emitted sounded low-pitched, guttural and penetrating even to myself. It must have jarred on my not-father's ears, for he turned and ran shouting from the room.\n \n They apprehended him on the stairs and I heard him babble something about my being a monster and no child of his. My not-mother appeared at the doorway and instead of being pleased at the progress of my growth, she fell down heavily. She made a distinct thump on the floor.\n \n This brought the rest of them on the run, so I climbed out the window and retreated across a nearby field. A prolonged search was launched, but I eluded them. What unpredictable beings!\n \n I reported my tremendous progress back to our world, including the cleverness by which I managed to escape my pursuers. I received a reply from Blgftury which, on careful analysis, seems to be small praise indeed. In fact, some of his phrases apparently contain veiled threats. But you know old Blgftury. He wanted to go on this expedition himself and it's his nature never to flatter anyone.\n \n From now on I will refer to not-people simply as people, dropping the qualifying preface except where comparisons must be made between this alleged world and our own. It is merely an offshoot of our primitive mythology when this was considered a spirit world, just as these people refer to our world as never-never land and other anomalies. But we learned otherwise, while they never have.\n \n New sensations crowd into my consciousness and I am having a hard time classifying them. Anyway, I shall carry on swiftly now to the inevitable climax in which I singlehanded will obliterate the terror of the not-world and return to our world a hero. I cannot understand your not replying to my letters. I have given you a box number. What could have happened to your vibrations?\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Albuquerque, New Mexico June 15\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n I had tremendous difficulty getting a letter off to you this time. My process—original with myself, by the way—is to send out feeler vibrations for what these people call the psychic individual. Then I establish contact with him while he sleeps and compel him without his knowledge to translate my ideas into written language. He writes my letter and mails it to you. Of course, he has no awareness of what he has done.\n \n My first five tries were unfortunate. Each time I took control of an individual who could not read or write! Finally I found my man, but I fear his words are limited. Ah, well. I had great things to tell you about my progress, but I cannot convey even a hint of how I have accomplished these miracles through the thick skull of this incompetent.\n \n In simple terms then: I crept into a cave and slipped into a kind of sleep, directing my squhjkl ulytz & uhrytzg ... no, it won't come out. Anyway, I grew overnight to the size of an average person here.\n \n As I said before, floods of impressions are driving into my xzbyl ... my brain ... from various nerve and sense areas and I am having a hard time classifying them. My one idea was to get to a chemist and acquire the stuff needed for the destruction of these people.\n \n Sunrise came as I expected. According to my catalog of information, the impressions aroused by it are of beauty. It took little conditioning for me finally to react in this manner. This is truly an efficient mechanism I inhabit.\n \n I gazed about me at the mixture of lights, forms and impressions. It was strange and ... now I know ... beautiful. However, I hurried immediately toward the nearest chemist. At the same time I looked up and all about me at the beauty.\n \n Soon an individual approached. I knew what to do from my information. I simply acted natural. You know, one of your earliest instructions was to realize that these people see nothing unusual in you if you do not let yourself believe they do.\n \n This individual I classified as a female of a singular variety here. Her hair was short, her upper torso clad in a woolen garment. She wore ... what are they? ... oh, yes, sneakers. My attention was diverted by a scream as I passed her. I stopped.\n \n The woman gesticulated and continued to scream. People hurried from nearby houses. I linked my hands behind me and watched the scene with an attitude of mild interest. They weren't interested in me, I told myself. But they were.\n \n I became alarmed, dived into a bush and used a mechanism that you unfortunately do not have—invisibility. I lay there and listened.\n \n \"He was stark naked,\" the girl with the sneakers said.\n \n A figure I recognized as a police officer spoke to her.\n \n \"Lizzy, you'll just have to keep these crackpot friends of yours out of this area.\"\n \n \"But—\"\n \n \"No more buck-bathing, Lizzy,\" the officer ordered. \"No more speeches in the Square. Not when it results in riots at five in the morning. Now where is your naked friend? I'm going to make an example of him.\"\n \n That was it—I had forgotten clothes. There is only one answer to this oversight on my part. My mind is confused by the barrage of impressions that assault it. I must retire now and get them all classified. Beauty, pain, fear, hate, love, laughter. I don't know one from the other. I must feel each, become accustomed to it.\n \n The more I think about it, the more I realize that the information I have been given is very unrealistic. You have been inefficient, Joe. What will Blgftury and the others say of this? My great mission is impaired. Farewell, till I find a more intelligent mind so I can write you with more enlightenment.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Moscow, Idaho June 17\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n I received your first communication today. It baffles me. Do you greet me in the proper fringe-zone manner? No. Do you express joy, hope, pride, helpfulness at my arrival? No. You ask me for a loan of five bucks!\n \n It took me some time, culling my information catalog to come up with the correct variant of the slang term \"buck.\" Is it possible that you are powerless even to provide yourself with the wherewithal to live in this inferior world?\n \n A reminder, please. You and I—I in particular—are now engaged in a struggle to free our world from the terrible, maiming intrusions of this not-world. Through many long gleebs, our people have lived a semi-terrorized existence while errant vibrations from this world ripped across the closely joined vibration flux, whose individual fluctuations make up our sentient population.\n \n Even our eminent, all-high Frequency himself has often been jeopardized by these people. The not-world and our world are like two baskets as you and I see them in our present forms. Baskets woven with the greatest intricacy, design and color; but baskets whose convex sides are joined by a thin fringe of filaments. Our world, on the vibrational plane, extends just a bit into this, the not-world. But being a world of higher vibration, it is ultimately tenuous to these gross peoples. While we vibrate only within a restricted plane because of our purer, more stable existence, these people radiate widely into our world.\n \n They even send what they call psychic reproductions of their own selves into ours. And most infamous of all, they sometimes are able to force some of our individuals over the fringe into their world temporarily, causing them much agony and fright.\n \n The latter atrocity is perpetrated through what these people call mediums, spiritualists and other fatuous names. I intend to visit one of them at the first opportunity to see for myself.\n \n Meanwhile, as to you, I would offer a few words of advice. I picked them up while examining the \"slang\" portion of my information catalog which you unfortunately caused me to use. So, for the ultimate cause—in this, the penultimate adventure, and for the glory and peace of our world—shake a leg, bub. Straighten up and fly right. In short, get hep.\n \n As far as the five bucks is concerned, no dice.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Des Moines, Iowa June 19\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n Your letter was imponderable till I had thrashed through long passages in my information catalog that I had never imagined I would need. Biological functions and bodily processes which are labeled here\n\"revolting\" are used freely in your missive. You can be sure they are all being forwarded to Blgftury. If I were not involved in the most important part of my journey—completion of the weapon against the not-worlders—I would come to New York immediately. You would rue that day, I assure you.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Boise, Idaho July 15\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n A great deal has happened to me since I wrote to you last. Systematically, I have tested each emotion and sensation listed in our catalog. I have been, as has been said in this world, like a reed bending before the winds of passion. In fact, I'm rather badly bent indeed. Ah! You'll pardon me, but I just took time for what is known quaintly in this tongue as a \"hooker of red-eye.\" Ha! I've mastered even the vagaries of slang in the not-language.... Ahhh! Pardon me again. I feel much better now.\n \n You see, Joe, as I attuned myself to the various impressions that constantly assaulted my mind through this body, I conditioned myself to react exactly as our information catalog instructed me to.\n \n Now it is all automatic, pure reflex. A sensation comes to me when I am burned; then I experience a burning pain. If the sensation is a tickle, I experience a tickle.\n \n This morning I have what is known medically as a syndrome ... a group of symptoms popularly referred to as a hangover ... Ahhh! Pardon me again. Strangely ... now what was I saying? Oh, yes. Ha, ha. Strangely enough, the reactions that come easiest to the people in this world came most difficult to me. Money-love, for example. It is a great thing here, both among those who haven't got it and those who have.\n \n I went out and got plenty of money. I walked invisible into a bank and carried away piles of it. Then I sat and looked at it. I took the money to a remote room of the twenty room suite I have rented in the best hotel here in—no, sorry—and stared at it for hours.\n \n Nothing happened. I didn't love the stuff or feel one way or the other about it. Yet all around me people are actually killing one another for the love of it.\n \n Anyway.... Ahhh. Pardon me. I got myself enough money to fill ten or fifteen rooms. By the end of the week I should have all eighteen spare rooms filled with money. If I don't love it then, I'll feel I have failed. This alcohol is taking effect now.\n \n Blgftury has been goading me for reports. To hell with his reports! I've got a lot more emotions to try, such as romantic love. I've been studying this phenomenon, along with other racial characteristics of these people, in the movies. This is the best place to see these people as they really are. They all go into the movie houses and there do homage to their own images. Very quaint type of idolatry.\n \n Love. Ha! What an adventure this is becoming.\n \n By the way, Joe, I'm forwarding that five dollars. You see, it won't cost me anything. It'll come out of the pocket of the idiot who's writing this letter. Pretty shrewd of me, eh?\n \n I'm going out and look at that money again. I think I'm at last learning to love it, though not as much as I admire liquor. Well, one simply must persevere, I always say.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Penobscot, Maine July 20\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n Now you tell me not to drink alcohol. Why not? You never mentioned it in any of your vibrations to us, gleebs ago, when you first came across to this world. It will stint my powers? Nonsense! Already I have had a quart of the liquid today. I feel wonderful. Get that? I actually feel wonderful, in spite of this miserable imitation of a body.\n \n There are long hours during which I am so well-integrated into this body and this world that I almost consider myself a member of it. Now I can function efficiently. I sent Blgftury some long reports today outlining my experiments in the realm of chemistry where we must finally defeat these people. Of course, I haven't made the experiments yet, but I will. This is not deceit, merely realistic anticipation of the inevitable. Anyway, what the old xbyzrt doesn't know won't muss his vibrations.\n \n I went to what they call a nightclub here and picked out a blonde-haired woman, the kind that the books say men prefer. She was attracted to me instantly. After all, the body I have devised is perfect in every detail ... actually a not-world ideal.\n \n I didn't lose any time overwhelming her susceptibilities. I remember distinctly that just as I stooped to pick up a large roll of money I had dropped, her eyes met mine and in them I could see her admiration. We went to my suite and I showed her one of the money rooms. Would you believe it? She actually took off her shoes and ran around through the money in her bare feet! Then we kissed.\n \n Concealed in the dermis of the lips are tiny, highly sensitized nerve ends which send sensations to the brain. The brain interprets these impulses in a certain manner. As a result, the fate of secretion in the adrenals on the ends of the kidneys increases and an enlivening of the entire endocrine system follows. Thus I felt the beginnings of love.\n \n I sat her down on a pile of money and kissed her again. Again the tingling, again the secretion and activation. I integrated myself quickly.\n \n Now in all the motion pictures—true representations of life and love in this world—the man with a lot of money or virtue kisses the girl and tries to induce her to do something biological. She then refuses. This pleases both of them, for he wanted her to refuse. She, in turn, wanted him to want her, but also wanted to prevent him so that he would have a high opinion of her. Do I make myself clear?\n \n I kissed the blonde girl and gave her to understand what I then wanted. Well, you can imagine my surprise when she said yes! So I had failed. I had not found love.\n \n I became so abstracted by this problem that the blonde girl fell asleep. I thoughtfully drank quantities of excellent alcohol called gin and didn't even notice when the blonde girl left.\n \n I am now beginning to feel the effects of this alcohol again. Ha. Don't I wish old Blgftury were here in the vibrational pattern of an olive? I'd get the blonde in and have her eat him out of a Martini. That is a gin mixture.\n \n I think I'll get a hot report off to the old so-and-so right now. It'll take him a gleeb to figure this one out. I'll tell him I'm setting up an atomic reactor in the sewage systems here and that all we have to do is activate it and all the not-people will die of chain asphyxiation.\n \n Boy, what an easy job this turned out to be. It's just a vacation. Joe, you old gold-bricker, imagine you here all these gleebs living off the fat of the land. Yak, yak. Affectionately.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Sacramento, Calif. July 25\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n All is lost unless we work swiftly. I received your revealing letter the morning after having a terrible experience of my own. I drank a lot of gin for two days and then decided to go to one of these seance things.\n \n Somewhere along the way I picked up a red-headed girl. When we got to the darkened seance room, I took the redhead into a corner and continued my investigations into the realm of love. I failed again because she said yes immediately.\n \n The nerves of my dermis were working overtime when suddenly I had the most frightening experience of my life. Now I know what a horror these people really are to our world.\n \n The medium had turned out all the lights. He said there was a strong psychic influence in the room somewhere. That was me, of course, but I was too busy with the redhead to notice.\n \n Anyway, Mrs. Somebody wanted to make contact with her paternal grandmother, Lucy, from the beyond. The medium went into his act. He concentrated and sweated and suddenly something began to take form in the room. The best way to describe it in not-world language is a white, shapeless cascade of light.\n \n Mrs. Somebody reared to her feet and screeched, \"Grandma Lucy!\" Then I really took notice.\n \n Grandma Lucy, nothing! This medium had actually brought Blgftury partially across the vibration barrier. He must have been vibrating in the fringe area and got caught in the works. Did he look mad! His zyhku was open and his btgrimms were down.\n \n Worst of all, he saw me. Looked right at me with an unbelievable pattern of pain, anger, fear and amazement in his matrix. Me and the redhead.\n \n Then comes your letter today telling of the fate that befell you as a result of drinking alcohol. Our wrenchingly attuned faculties in these not-world bodies need the loathsome drug to escape from the reality of not-reality. It's true. I cannot do without it now. The day is only half over and I have consumed a quart and a half. And it is dulling all my powers as it has practically obliterated yours. I can't even become invisible any more.\n \n I must find the formula that will wipe out the not-world men quickly.\n \n Quickly!\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Florence, Italy September 10\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n This telepathic control becomes more difficult every time. I must pick closer points of communication soon. I have nothing to report but failure. I bought a ton of equipment and went to work on the formula that is half complete in my instructions. Six of my hotel rooms were filled with tubes, pipes and apparatus of all kinds.\n \n I had got my mechanism as close to perfect as possible when I realized that, in my befuddled condition, I had set off a reaction that inevitably would result in an explosion. I had to leave there immediately, but I could not create suspicion. The management was not aware of the nature of my activities.\n \n I moved swiftly. I could not afford time to bring my baggage. I stuffed as much money into my pockets as I could and then sauntered into the hotel lobby. Assuming my most casual air, I told the manager I was checking out. Naturally he was stunned since I was his best customer.\n \n \"But why, sir?\" he asked plaintively.\n \n I was baffled. What could I tell him?\n \n \"Don't you like the rooms?\" he persisted. \"Isn't the service good?\"\n \n \"It's the rooms,\" I told him. \"They're—they're—\"\n \n \"They're what?\" he wanted to know.\n \n \"They're not safe.\"\n \n \"Not safe? But that is ridiculous. This hotel is....\"\n \n At this point the blast came. My nerves were a wreck from the alcohol.\n \n \"See?\" I screamed. \"Not safe. I knew they were going to blow up!\"\n \n He stood paralyzed as I ran from the lobby. Oh, well, never say die. Another day, another hotel. I swear I'm even beginning to think like the not-men, curse them.\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Rochester, New York September 25\n \n Dear Joe:\n \n I have it! It is done! In spite of the alcohol, in spite of Blgftury's niggling criticism, I have succeeded. I now have developed a form of mold, somewhat similar to the antibiotics of this world, that, transmitted to the human organism, will cause a disease whose end will be swift and fatal.\n \n First the brain will dissolve and then the body will fall apart. Nothing in this world can stop the spread of it once it is loose. Absolutely nothing.\n \n We must use care. Stock in as much gin as you are able. I will bring with me all that I can. Meanwhile I must return to my original place of birth into this world of horrors. There I will secure the gateway, a large mirror, the vibrational point at which we shall meet and slowly climb the frequency scale to emerge into our own beautiful, now secure world. You and I together, Joe, conquerors, liberators.\n \n You say you eat little and drink as much as you can. The same with me. Even in this revolting world I am a sad sight. My not-world senses falter. This is the last letter. Tomorrow I come with the gateway. When the gin is gone, we will plant the mold in the hotel where you live.\n \n In only a single gleeb it will begin to work. The men of this queer world will be no more. But we can't say we didn't have some fun, can we, Joe?\n \n And just let Blgftury make one crack. Just one xyzprlt. I'll have hgutry before the ghjdksla!\n \n \n Glmpauszn\n \n \n\n \n Dear Editor:\n \n These guys might be queer drunk hopheads. But if not? If soon brain dissolve, body fall apart, how long have we got? Please, anybody who knows answer, write to me—Ivan Smernda, Plaza Ritz Arms—how long is a gleeb?", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c85226d86cf94433893692238d1e4cfe", "response_text": "A Gleeb for Earth is a collection of letters, signed by two characters - Ivan Smernda (a human on Earth who owns the Plaza Ritz Arms hotel in New York City) and Glmpauszn (an alien from a world that is entwined with Earth through a spiritual fringe). \nIvan dictates the first letter through his son Ronnie (14 years old) and sends it to the Editor of a print publication, feeling responsible for publicizing what he witnessed to save humanity. Ivan recounts an occurrence in the Plaza Ritz Arms where two alcoholic guests that he calls “stew bums”, Joe Binkle and Ed Smith (an alias for Glmpauszn), mysteriously disappeared, leaving their suits behind as if they had melted out of them. Ed had checked in with a mirror with a heavy bronze frame. After their disappearance, Ivan found only their clothes, the frame of the mirror in Ed’s room, and a stack of letters in the bureau in Joe’s room, which are the letters that tell the remaining story.\nThe vibrational plane of an alien world extends into Earth’s (which they call the not-world), allowing intrusive vibrations from Earth to semi-terrorize sentient alien vibrations. Human spiritual mediums can force psychic reproductions of themselves into the alien world, and conversely pull alien vibrations over the “fringe”. The aliens can’t tolerate it, and send Glmpauszn and Joe to take on human form and develop a chemical weapon to kill all humans.\nGlmpauszn crosses the fringe through a vibrational gateway that allows his consciousness to move into a newborn baby. Joe has already arrived in human form. Glmpauszn quickly grows the baby into an adult man. At three days old, he is 36 inches tall and talking, and a couple of days later is an adult man. Glmpauszn writes to Joe by controlling the minds of sleeping people around the world to pen the letters and then mail them to Joe at the Plaza Ritz Arms in New York City. He wonders why Joe won’t write to him, and can’t contact him spiritually, like normal, since Joe has fallen into alcoholism. Glmpauszn forgets to wear clothes and is nearly arrested, but escapes by becoming invisible. When Joe finally writes, it is to ask for money, enraging Glmpauszn who reports Joe’s actions to their boss, Blgftury. Glmpauszn becomes distracted by exploring human emotions like intimacy with women and love of money, which causes him to rob a bank and fill 18 rooms of a hotel with money. He also falls into alcoholism. Blgftury is accidentally summoned into a seance by a human medium who pulls Blgftury’s vibrations through the fringe (the very thing they are trying to stop from happening), and Glmpauszn is caught with a red-haired woman by his boss not doing his job. Glmpauszn finally develops a mold that can kill humans, and meets with Joe at the Plaza Ritz Arms with lots of gin that they consume before successfully returning to the vibrational frequency of their world, releasing the mold in the room.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "0ee7e5e19f5444b29790387160211461", "response_text": "\n\tThe story begins with a letter to the editor of a magazine describing two unusual incidents in a hotel in New York. In both cases, two men checked into the hotel and then mysteriously disappeared, leaving all of their belongings behind, including the clothes they were wearing. The man who owns the hotel doesn’t want to involve the police for fear of reprisals against him; therefore, he sends the letters to the magazine, hoping they will print them. \n\tThe rest of the story is a series of letters, all addressed to Joe Binkle but written in different handwritings and from other parts of the US and the world. They trace the progress of a being named Glmpauszn who, in the first letter, is preparing to be born so that he can enter human society. Once he is born, he grows quickly, and within days, he escapes the hospital and hides in a cave until he has grown into a man. At that point, he makes his way to a chemist to procure the chemicals he needs for his mission: to destroy humanity for encroaching on his world. He walks down the street trying to act normal, but a young lady sees him and begins screaming: he has forgotten to wear clothes. Glmpauszn blames part of his failure on Joe, who apparently is supposed to provide him with the background information he needs to succeed.\n\tGlmpauszn often comments that he has yet to receive a return letter from Joe, but when he does, he complains that Joe has asked him for a $5.00 loan. Glmpauszn refuses the loan initially, making much of the fact that Joe didn’t greet him or express pleasure at his arrival. Glmpauszn alludes to the fact that humans have encroached on their world through the use of mediums or spiritualists. \n\tGlmpauszn takes time to experience various aspects of humanity, including emotions and impressions, such as love of money, love, beauty, pain, etc. He thinks he is on the verge of love until he suggests a biological exploration of it and the women say yes, leading him to conclude it isn’t love. In the meantime, Glmpauszn drinks more and more and accidentally sets off an explosion in his hotel rooms. \n\tGlmpauszn keeps Joe up to date on what he is doing but complains about Blgrtury’s criticism and demands for reports. Finally, Glmpauszn tells Joe that he has successfully created a mold that will destroy humans by dissolving their brains and then their bodies. He also tells Joe to meet him at his original place of birth, and he will bring the gateway, a large mirror. The plan is to drink all the gin they have and then plant the mold in the hotel.\n\tThe hotel owner has read all the letters and wants to know if anyone can tell him how long a gleeb is, as several times in his letters, Glmpauszn refers to this length of time.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "461d6a004d694cb09b5b06532aba5a67", "response_text": "The story begins with a hotel owner, Ivan Smernda, writing to the editor of a magazine about two strange guests at his hotel. Ivan has found only their suits, some letters, and the frame of a mirror left over after their stay. Ivan has forwarded these letters he has found to the editors of the magazine. These letters tell a story of two alien visitors to Ivan's world that intend to destroy all of humanity because the vibrations from Ivan's world sometimes cross over into their world. The alien visitors become addicted to alcohol and human feelings, but ultimately they succeed in developing a mold that will spread across humanity and kill everyone."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9ccfbd0134146d68a93e26318eb6d47", "response_text": "This epistolary narrative begins with a letter to the editor of a paranormal-themed magazine. The letter's author, Ivan Smernda, owns a hotel called Plaza Ritz Arms, and recently two of his guests mysteriously vanished leaving behind several letters, a mirror frame without the mirror, and each of their suit of clothes, perfectly intact. The men are named Ed Smith and Joe Binkle, although Ivan guesses these are aliases. Ivan shares the men's letters with the editor in the hopes that they will be printed and serve as a warning for humanity. The first letter reveals Ed Smith's true name, which is Glmpauszn. Glmpauszn and Joe are Frequencies, ghost-like entities that exist in a spirit dimension adjacent to human reality. Due to the rise of humans using the services of mediums and fortune tellers to make contact with loved ones in the spirit world, the Frequencies feel terrorized. Glmpauszn has been sent to inhabit the human dimension, what he calls the \"not-world\", in order to find a way to destroy humanity and end its assault upon the vibrations of the Frequencies. Joe has already spent several \"gleebs\" (an unspecified amount of time) on Earth studying human ways in order to prepare Glmpauszn for his mission. They write to each other by possessing the minds and bodies of sleeping humans who can translate the language and write the letters. Glmpauszn details how he attuned himself to a human fetus and then sped up the growing process upon his birth, believing that the speed of his growth would impress his not-mother and not-father. Instead, he only frightens them both, and he runs away to a cave whereupon he accelerates his growth until he becomes an adult. As he begins to seek out a chemist to help him begin to plan the destruction of humanity, he runs into a woman who screams when she sees he is totally naked. Embarrassed, Glmpauszn lashes out at Joe, complaining that he has not prepared him sufficiently for his mission, and he must better learn human customs and emotions. He slowly adapts the forms and impressions of the human dimension. Not only does he love drinking hard liquor, but he also uses his invisibility power to rob a bank and fill his eighteen-room suite at the hotel with money. As Glmpauszn grows increasingly enamored with the human experience, he begins to neglect his mission, including reporting to his boss, Blgftury. Glmpauszn drinks excessively and starts to court women, seeking out the elusive feeling of love. One night he even attends a seance, and the medium summons Blgftury, who glares at him in anger. As Glmpauszn falls deeper into alcoholism, his neglect of the mission becomes so bad that he accidentally blows up his suite of rooms at the hotel. Eventually, he devises a kind of mold that can cause a fatal disease to spread throughout the planet. Mission accomplished, Glmpauszn suggests he and Joe rendezvous at Joe's hotel and return to their home dimension through the mirror gateway."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c85226d86cf94433893692238d1e4cfe", "response_text": "A Gleeb for Earth takes place on Earth, where the spiritual vibrations of human mediums and psychics are intruding upon and semi-terrorizing another world populated by sentient vibrational beings. The vibrational plane of the alien world extends just a tiny bit into Earth (referred to as the not-world by the aliens), and the fringe between the two allows for human psychics to intrude into the alien’s realm, or for human seance practises to summon alien vibrations on Earth in ways that are terrifying for the aliens. The aliens can’t tolerate these vibrational intrusions any longer and have embarked on a mission to destroy all life on Earth by having two of their own take the form of humans and develop a chemical weapon (a mold) to wipe them out.\nThe mission of Glmpauszn and Joe takes place on Earth between June 8th and September 25th of an unknown year. Glmpauszn mails letters from various international locations to Joe at the Plaza Ritz Arms in New York City by controlling the minds of unknown sleeping humans to pen what he spiritually dictates, and mail the letters without ever knowing they have done it. Glmpauszn’s physical location is not explicitly discussed, but it is possibly nearby to New York City since he does not mention the need for any long-distance or international travel in his letters. Both Glmpauszn and Joe become distracted from their mission at times by drugs, alcohol, stealing money using their invisibility, and the sensations of experiencing human emotions like love.\nThe Plaza Ritz Arms hotel in New York City is an especially important location in the story, because it is the final meeting place where Glmpauszn and Joe return to their vibrational realm through a mirror with a heavy bronze frame, leaving their clothes in heaps as if they had melted out of them, only the frame of the mirror, and the pile of letters from Glmpauszn to Joe that detail their entire mission on Earth.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "0ee7e5e19f5444b29790387160211461", "response_text": "The story is set in various locations on Earth. It begins and ends in the Plaza Ritz Arms Hotel in Rochester, New York, where two residents mysteriously disappear, leaving all of their belongings behind, including their one suit of clothes that appears to have just dropped off their bodies as they wore them. In between, the setting moves from place to place as Glmpauszn moves around, beginning in Bombay, India and moving to Wichita, Kansas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Moscow, Idaho; Des Moines, Iowa; Boise, Idaho; Penobscot, Maine; Sacramento, California; and Florence, Italy. "}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "461d6a004d694cb09b5b06532aba5a67", "response_text": "The story takes place at Ivan Smernda's hotel. The hotel is home to an alien that goes by the name \"Joe Binkle.\" Joe is an alcoholic and this consumption of alcohol has dulled his alien powers. The story also involves letters from an alien named Glmpauszn who went by the alias \"Ed Smith\" in this world. Glmpauszn has traveled to many different areas of the world in his quest to find something to destroy humanity once and for all. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9ccfbd0134146d68a93e26318eb6d47", "response_text": "Glmpauszn and Joe come from a dimension that can be described as a kind of spirit world. The population of this dimension are referred to as Frequencies and are individual fluctuations within a larger vibration flux. They are able to enter the human dimension, which they refer to as \"not-world\", by attuning their vibrations to the human frequency because the dimensions are loosely joined together through the vibrational plane. They return to their dimension by using a \"gateway\" hidden in a normal-looking mirror. When Glmpauszn is sent to figure out a way to destroy humanity, he rents a suite of eighteen rooms at a hotel and fills it with stolen money as well as tubes, pipes, and other kinds of apparatus intended to be used to build a weapon of some kind. Joe lives at the Plaza Ritz Arms in New York City, which is where Ivan Smernda discovers his clothes as well as Glmpauszn’s. Throughout the story, Glmpauszn writes to Joe from a number of locations including Florence, Italy, Rochester, New York, Sacramento, California, Penobscot, Maine, Moscow and Boise, Idaho, Des Moines, Iowa, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wichita, Kansas, and Bombay, India. However, he is never physically in any of these locations. Instead, he possesses people sleeping in these cities to write the letters for him in order to avoid detection. During his time in the human dimension, Glmpauszn visits a darkened seance room, a movie theater, a nightclub, a bank, a cave, and a hospital."}]}, {"question_text": "Why does Glmpauszn want to take the form of a person on Earth?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c85226d86cf94433893692238d1e4cfe", "response_text": "Glmpauszn’s consciousness takes the form of spiritual vibrations that can cross from his world into Earth’s, allowing him to take control of humans on Earth and even insert his consciousness into a human fetus. He describes Earth as a “weird extension of the Universe”, because from his perspective the vibrational plane of his world extends just a tiny bit into Earth (which he calls the not-world). This is unacceptable to his people since human spiritual mediums on Earth have been able to force psychic reproductions of themselves into his world, and conversely temporarily kidnap some individuals from his planet over the “fringe” between the two worlds, frightening them. The intrusive vibrations from Earth have semi-terrorized the sentient vibrations that make up the population of Glmpauszn’s world. Thus, Glmpauszn will now take on the form of a human on Earth and destroy the entirety of human existence to stop their intrusions.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "0ee7e5e19f5444b29790387160211461", "response_text": "Glmpauszn wants to take the form of a person on Earth to find a way to destroy the human race because humans are torturing his people, and he wants to be their liberator. The only way he can take the form of a person without arousing suspicion is to arrive as a newborn baby, which he does. The human world is intruding upon his world, which is terrorizing his people. While his world is on a higher plane with higher vibrations than the human world, sometimes the humans encroach on their world. At times, humans even send psychic reproductions of themselves into their world, causing agony and fright. This is accomplished through mediums and spiritualists. And to understand humans, Glmpauszn wants to experience their emotions. At the same time, Glmpauszn falls prey to the lure of alcohol and finds himself needing it to escape from the reality of the human world. In the end, he has created a mold that will destroy humans by dissolving the brain and then ruining the body. The mold will be planted in the hotel where Joe lives, and together, they will exit the human world through the mirror gateway.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "461d6a004d694cb09b5b06532aba5a67", "response_text": "Glmpauszn wishes to take the form of a human from Earth in order to avoid detection. Glmpauszn has been tasked with ending the human race so that they can no longer pull beings from their homeworld anymore and cause them great pain. Glmpauszn needs to travel to do this, and taking the form of a person on Earth means he can move freely, despite the fact that there is quite a learning curve in becoming disguised as a human."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9ccfbd0134146d68a93e26318eb6d47", "response_text": "Thanks to an increase in the number of humans using the services of mediums, fortune tellers, and séances, there has been substantial interference in the vibrational plane that connects the human dimension with the real of the Frequencies. The humans see this as a meaningful way to interact with deceased loved ones, while the Frequencies view this as an invasive practice that terrorizes their way of life. Glmpauszn has been sent from the Frequency realm to the human dimension in order to find a way to destroy humanity and restore peace to their society. By attuning himself to a human fetus, Glmpauszn believes he will be able to better disguise himself and avoid detection. He experiences growing pains as he works to assimilate to human customs and emotions. He struggles with alcoholism and begins dating women in order to find love. Glmpauszn grows to enjoy being human, but it also distracts him from his ultimate mission."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship like between Glmpauszn and Joe?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c85226d86cf94433893692238d1e4cfe", "response_text": "Glmpauszn is a sentient being from an alien world that takes the form of spiritual vibrations that are capable of controlling humans on Earth (which he refers to as the non-world), or entering the body of a human to take their form. He travels through a gateway (a vibrational point that alters the frequency of those who enter in the form of a mirror with a heavy bronze frame), allowing Glmpauszn to take on the frequency of a human and move his consciousness into a newborn baby. Once on Earth in newborn form, Glmpauszn quickly grows the body of the newborn baby into that of an adult man over a matter of days, and begins using the alias Ed Smith. He writes to Joe by vibrationaly controlling the minds of a variety of literate people around the world to pen the letters and then mail them to Joe at the Plaza Ritz Arms in New York City. The people he uses the mind of never become aware that they have written or mailed the letters.\nJoe (an alias name) is of the same world as Glmpauszn, and they are on a mission together to destroy all human life on Earth in order to stop the intrusive vibrations of Earth polluting their spiritually sentient world. There is a rocky start to their mission as Glmpauszn is not receiving any contact back from Joe who has become distracted by drugs and alcohol in his human form on Earth. Normally, Glmpauszn would be able to reach Joe through spiritual vibrations instead of letters, but Joe’s vibrations are very weak due to the substances he takes. Joe eventually does write to Glmpauszn, but only to ask for money, which greatly offends Glmpauszn who becomes furious with him for abandoning their mission. However, their relationship changes as Glmpauszn begins to experiment with the feelings of being human, and tries to feel love and consume alcohol. Glmpauszn starts to relate to Joe’s experience with alcohol, and they even decide to bring lots of gin to consume when they finally meet at the Plaza Ritz Arms to re-enter the gateway to their own world together after releasing the deadly mold that will kill all humans on Earth and complete their mission. They finish the mission triumphantly together, with Glmpauszn referring to them together in one of his final letters as conquerors and liberators for their world.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "0ee7e5e19f5444b29790387160211461", "response_text": "The relationship between Glmpauszn and Joe is much like that of brothers. Joe is like an older brother who gives Glmpauszn advice, but when Glmpauszn doesn’t like what Joe writes in his letters, he makes sure to send them on to Blgftury to “tell on him.” Glmpauszn relies on Joe’s information, based on his experience in the human world. In his first letter to Joe, though, Glmpauszn blames him for not responding to his vibrations, forcing Glmpauszn to communicate with Joe by mail. By his second letter, however, Glmpauszn is more sympathetic to complications that Joe must have encountered due to humans, although he still doesn’t understand why he hasn’t received letters in response to his own. \n       Interestingly, Glmpauszn tells Joe all about what he is doing but is less forthcoming with Blgftury. Yet Glmpauszn blames Joe for being inefficient in providing the information he needs to succeed in his mission. Interestingly, at one point, Glmpauszn complains that Joe has asked for a loan of $5.00, which Glmpauszn refuses until later. Glmpauszn confesses that he is trying to learn to love money as humans do and has been amassing large amounts of it; he agrees to loan Joe the $5.00 he requested earlier but only by sending it through the person writing the letter for him.\n\tLike a big brother, Joe gives Glmpauszn advice. He specifically advises him not to drink alcohol. By the time Glmpauszn receives this letter, he is already heavily imbibing and learning the impact of hangovers. Glmpauszn confesses that he needs the alcohol to escape from the reality of human life. He also acknowledges that it is dulling his abilities, including the ability to become invisible. For their final encounter, which will be when Glmpauszn launches his attack on humanity, he wants Joe to bring as much gin as he can, and he will do the same. Together, after all the gin is gone, Glmpauszn and Joe will return to their world through the gateway of the mirror.\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "461d6a004d694cb09b5b06532aba5a67", "response_text": "Glmpauszn writes Joe as a companion on this quest to destroy humanity, but his written communications only go one way as far as the reader can tell. Joe never writes back, but can communicate with Glmpauszn via psychic ability, or \"vibrations.\" Glmpauszn quickly sours on Joe as he realizes that Joe has lost most of his alien abilities due to being addicted to alcohol and obsessed with money. However, Glmpauszn comes around on his fellow alien as he falls victim to alcoholism and \"money-love\" himself."}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9ccfbd0134146d68a93e26318eb6d47", "response_text": "Glmpauszn and Joe are both Frequencies who have attuned themselves to different humans in order to disguise themselves and gather information that will assist them in a plot to destroy humanity. Joe has spent a significant amount of time longer on Earth than Glmpauszn, and therefore he has had more time to adapt to human customs and emotions. Joe lives in New York at Plaza Ritz Arms, a hotel where the two eventually rendezvous in order to return to their home dimension when they accomplish their mission.  Glmpauszn sends Joe a number of letters describing his slow adjustment to human form. Although Joe's communications are never explicitly shared, his replies to Glmpauszn are minimal and often unrelated  to the letter to which he's responding. For example, Joe asks Glmpauszn for five dollars in response to a letter about Glmpauszn's rocky entry into the human dimension. This anger Glmpauszn, and he is further incensed when he receives a nonsensical, insulting communication later. However, after Glmpauszn discovers alcohol, he begins to relate to Joe, who has also succumbed to the struggles of alcoholism. Eventually, Glmpauszn develops a mold that can eliminate humanity, and they rendezvous at Joe's hotel to make their re-entrance to the vibrational plane via the mirror gateway."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Blgftury and what happens to them in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "c85226d86cf94433893692238d1e4cfe", "response_text": "Blgftury is an alien of the same world as Glmpauszn and Joe, which is being semi-terrorized by intrusive vibrations from Earth (which they refer to as non-world) that pollute their world’s sentient frequency. Their world wishes to destroy all human life on Earth to become free from these intrusions. Blgftury is the boss of the other two, and Glmpauszn often refers to having to write reports for him begrudgingly to update on the status of the mission.\nBlgftury is not a supportive boss, because he wished to go on this mission himself. Glmpauszn describes that Blgftury gave him little praise, and even wrote thinly-veiled threats, in his response to Glmpauszn’s report on how he escaped the pursuit of the police when he was caught naked in public after forgetting humans need to put on clothes. Blgftury has the authority to take corrective action related to the mission, evidenced by how Glmpauszn doesn’t hesitate to forward him the letters from Joe that he finds offensive about asking for money and discussing “revolting bodily processes.” \nBlgftury has to pester Glmpauszn for reports when he begins to go off the plan and experiment with human feelings like falling in love and alcohol. Glmpauszn does finally successfully develop a mold that will kill all humans on Earth and sends detailed chemistry reports back to Blgftury on the subject. \nBlgftury spends a lot of time sending vibrations in the fringe area between Earth and their world, and by accident his vibrations are summoned by a spiritual medium into a white, shapeless cascade of light at a human seance gathering that Glmpauszn happens to be attending on Earth where he is fooling around with a red-headed woman in the corner of the room (flagrantly not doing the work of the mission) in full visibility to Blgftury. Blgftury responded with a pattern in his matrix that showed pain, anger, fear and amazement. Glmpauszn goes on to complete the mission and return with Joe to their home world without further interaction with Blgftury.\n"}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "0ee7e5e19f5444b29790387160211461", "response_text": "Blgftury is the being who supervises Glmpauszn and whom Glmpauszn seems to dislike and want to impress at the same time. Glmpauszn thinks that Blgftury’s criticism and threats are actually praise; he also thinks that Blgftury wanted to be the one to go on the expedition that Glmpauszn is on and is jealous that he didn’t get to. At the same time, Glmpauszn wants to impress Blgftury. And when Glmpauszn has a complaint against Joe, he forwards it to Blgftury so that he is aware of what Joe is doing, most likely to make himself look better. Glmpauszn grows annoyed with Blgftury’s requests for reports because he thinks he has other, more important things to do, such as exploring human emotions. To pacify Blgftury, Glmpauszn sends him reports about his experiments with chemistry that he plans to use to defeat humans, although he has not actually carried out these experiments. Glmpauszn doesn’t have much respect for Blgftury and envisions an incident where Blgftury is present as an olive and is eaten by the blonde girl. \nAt a seance that Glmpauszn attends, the medium actually brings Blgftury across when she is trying to bring over a woman’s grandmother. Blgftury looks angry and sees Glmpauszn, peering at him with an expression of pain, anger, fear, and amazement. At the end of the story, Glmpauszn has succeeded in his mission of creating a way to destroy the human race in the form of a mold. This mold will dissolve the brain and then cause the body to fall apart. Glmpauszn is pleased to have succeeded, and he dares Blgftury to make any criticism against what he has accomplished. \n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "461d6a004d694cb09b5b06532aba5a67", "response_text": "Blgftury is the alien in charge of this operation to destroy the \"not-world,\" which the reader would know better as Earth. Blgftury is concerned with the success of this mission and constantly badgers Glmpauszn for status reports. Blgftury appears briefly on Earth during a human seance, and this causes him great pain. Glmpauszn becomes quite annoyed with Blgftury, describing Blgftury's attempts to get updates about the mission as an annoyance. This is likely due to Glmpauszn becoming an alcoholic and being more interested in learning about human emotions like love instead of the mission at hand. "}, {"worker_id": "8", "uid": "e9ccfbd0134146d68a93e26318eb6d47", "response_text": "Blgftury is a fellow Frequency to whom Glmpauszn is supposed to send consistent status updates on his mission to develop a way to destroy humanity. Blgftury had wanted to complete the mission himself, and he is rarely complimentary, so his communications with Glmpauszn are often curt. At first, Glmpauszn warns Joe he has forwarded his inappropriate, insulting letters to Blgftury. As time goes on, however, Glmpauszn reveals a growing distaste and impatience for Blgftury's grumpiness, criticisms, and bureaucratic oversight. At one point, he even expresses a desire for Blgftury to enter the human dimension in the vibrational pattern of an olive so that his blonde date could eat him. When Glmpauszn attends a séance conducted by Mrs. Somebody, he is horrified to see an angry Blgftury summoned instead of Grandma Lucy. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "47841", "uid": "f87190dbea6944969c3d2dd2867a9b1f", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "The Haunted Fountain\n \n\n\n CHAPTER I\n \n An Unsolved Mystery\n \n “Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine, it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t anything that Judy can’t solve.”\n \n \n Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe she’d understand—understand any better than I do. Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no exception.”\n \n \n “You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t solve.”\n \n \n “Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”\n \n \n “Judy Dobbs, remember?”\n \n \n “Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved all those mysteries. I met you when the whole valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened by flood and you solved that—”\n \n \n “That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace, not me. He was the hero without even meaning to be. He was the one who rode through town and warned people that the flood was coming. I was off chasing a shadow.”\n \n \n “A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.\n“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”\n \n \n “It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.\n“I know now that keeping that promise not to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”\n \n \n “Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”\n \n \n “Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk about?”\n \n \n “You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or two before the flood, but what about the haunted\n house you moved into? You were the one who tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”\n \n \n “Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,\n“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but what she was or how she spoke to me is more than I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling. And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them. They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re stored in one end of the attic.”\n \n \n “Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and show up the spooks?”\n \n \n “I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”\n \n \n Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries, but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally told them, the summer before they met. Horace had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton Lee, who gave him his job with the Farringdon Daily Herald . He had turned in some interesting church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him\n the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.\n \n \n Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she confessed now as she reviewed everything that had happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact that her parents left her every summer while they went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they think she would do?\n \n \n “You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery series you like. When they’re finished there are plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how you love to read.”\n \n \n “I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”\n \n \n Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to have her.\n \n \n “You here again?” she had greeted her that summer, and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with yourself this time?”\n \n \n “Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say you have a whole stack of old magazines—”\n \n \n “In the attic. Go up and look them over if you can stand the heat.”\n \n \n Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so much as to escape to a place where she could have a good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth birthday. In another year she would have outgrown her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a vacation of her own. In another year she would be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands and solving a mystery to be known as the Ghost Parade .\n \n \n “A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling her, “and you solved everything.”\n \n \n But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen on a picture of a fountain.\n \n \n “A fountain with tears for water. How strange!” she remembered saying aloud.\n \n \n Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a fountain still caught and held rainbows like those she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. But all that was in the future. If anyone had told the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in their faces.\n \n \n “That tease!”\n \n \n For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so are you!”\n \n \n Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him. The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing, she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.\n \n \n “But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”\n \n \n A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother\n and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,\n“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people know your wishes instead of muttering them to yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”\n \n \n “Were they?” asked Lois.\n \n \n She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what Judy was telling them without interruption.\n \n \n “That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.\n“There weren’t any of them impossible.”\n \n \n And she went on to tell them how, the very next day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it. Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy had stared at them a moment and then climbed the steps to the pool.\n \n \n “Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.\n“Is this beautiful fountain real?”\n \n \n A voice had answered, although she could see no one.\n \n \n “Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely come true.”\n \n \n “A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”\n \n \n “Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will surely come true,” the voice had repeated.\n \n \n “But what is there to cry about?”\n \n \n “You found plenty to cry about back at your grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up there in the attic?”\n \n \n “Then you—you are the fountain!” Judy remembered exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It doesn’t have a voice.”\n \n \n “Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had said in a mysterious whisper.\n \n \n\n CHAPTER II\n \n If Wishes Came True\n \n “Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.\n“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any longer. What did you wish?”\n \n \n “Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming to that.”\n \n \n First, she told her friends, she had to think of a wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved away.\n \n \n “You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,\n and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before they vanished, and so I began naming the things I wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton, and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to think of others that my wishes started to come true.”\n \n \n “But what were they?” Lois insisted.\n \n \n Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful. Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything more.”\n \n \n “Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois asked.\n \n \n “Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep pets, and have a nice home, and—”\n \n \n “And your wishes all came true!”\n \n \n “Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That seemed impossible at the time, but the future did hold a sister for me.”\n \n \n “It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”\n \n \n “Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”\n \n \n “Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was enchanted?”\n \n \n Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so at the time. I wandered around, growing very drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain had been a dream.”\n \n \n “A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it wasn’t a flying carpet?”\n \n \n “No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”\n \n \n “All the year around?”\n \n \n Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,\n“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long way from June to December.”\n \n \n “Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too, and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens. I explored the garden all around the fountain.”\n \n \n “And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.\n \n \n “Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t you try to solve the mystery?”\n \n \n “I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if I had been older or more experienced. I really should have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine was your friend.”\n \n \n “I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.\n“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”\n \n \n “It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that things started happening so fast that I completely forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t believe I thought about it again until after we moved to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and saw the fountain on your lawn.”\n \n \n “The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,” Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”\n \n \n “You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll show you.”\n \n \n Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while Judy was telling them the story of the fountain. Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had tasted it too often while she was making it.\n \n \n “I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.\n \n \n Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously with cream.\n \n \n “Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine? He wants to explore the attic, too.”\n \n \n “He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.\n \n \n Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was removed. But there was still a door closing off the narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.\n \n \n “He can read my mind. He always knows where I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling noise came from the floor above.\n \n \n “Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid of,” Judy urged her friends.\n \n \n “Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,” confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing room at the top of the last flight of stairs.\n \n \n “So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious about black cats, but they are creepy. Does Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”\n \n \n “Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy. Pausing at still another door that led to the darker part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,\n“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody care to explore the past?”\n \n \n The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy relating still more of what she remembered about the fountain.\n \n \n “When I told Grandma about it she laughed and said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those you see on that high shelf by the window. I think she and Grandpa like the way they lived without any modern conveniences or anything.”\n \n \n “I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died the same winter, isn’t it?”\n \n \n “Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they wished neither of them would outlive the other. If they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes. Another could have been to keep the good old days, as Grandma used to call them. That one came true in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the past when they kept all these old things. That’s what I meant about turning back the clock.”\n \n \n “If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things were the way they used to be when I trusted Arthur—”\n \n \n “Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.\n \n \n Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed monster coming between her and her handsome husband, Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It is. It’s the very same one.”\n \n \n “But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!” Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”\n \n \n “I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home. But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way. If she did, she pretended not to.\n \n \n “Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”\n \n \n “I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.\n“Do you recognize it, too?”\n \n \n “I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little more closely the picture they had found. “It looks like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”\n \n \n “The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.\n“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny all the way to Farringdon.”\n \n \n “Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”\n \n \n “Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.\n“I never thought it led to a house, though. There isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents took?”\n \n \n “Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?” Lois suggested.\n \n \n\n CHAPTER III\n \n A Strange Encounter\n \n Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not to drive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over the hilltop. They were to park the car where no one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.\n \n \n “But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.\n \n \n “You’ll remember it, won’t you?”\n \n \n Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois both argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.\n \n \n “She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they started off in the blue car she was driving.\n \n \n It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed and said if they did find the fountain she thought she’d wish for one exactly like it.\n \n \n “Well, you know what your grandmother said about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. ��If you let people know about them instead of muttering them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”\n \n \n “Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur coat he gave me last year.”\n \n \n “Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.\n \n \n The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they had covered the distance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s wagon.\n \n \n “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had\n some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t explain what happened afterwards. When I woke up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse, wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”\n \n \n “How could they?” asked Lois.\n \n \n “Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautiful everything was before—”\n \n \n Again she broke off as if there were something she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.\n \n \n “Before what?” questioned Judy.\n \n \n “Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You were telling us how you woke up in the hammock, but you never did explain how you got back home,” Lorraine reminded her.\n \n \n “Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember driving home along this road. You see, I thought my grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise and would return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a house in sight.”\n \n \n “The Brandt house is just over the top of this next hill,” Lois put in.\n \n \n “I know. You told me that. Now I know why I couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally, I followed it. There’s something about a path in the woods that always tempts me.”\n \n \n “We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”\n \n \n “Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where the hammock was and then through an archway,” Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes peered out at me from unexpected places. I was actually scared by the time I reached the old tower. There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he was driving off without me.”\n \n \n “He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise, and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like that?”\n \n \n “I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.\n“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”\n \n \n “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.\n \n \n “Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s another car coming.”\n \n \n As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind Judy until the car had passed. The man driving it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered most of his hair.\n \n \n “What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”\n \n \n “I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there any more.”\n \n \n “Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do, can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.\n \n \n She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.\n \n \n Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond. The sky was gray with white clouds being driven across it by the wind.\n \n \n “There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can see it over to the left. It looks like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”\n \n \n “It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder what it is.”\n \n \n “I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But if there are new people living here they’ll never give us permission.”\n \n \n “We might explore it without permission,” Judy suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for the fountain.”\n \n \n “Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It won’t be enchanted. I told you—”\n \n \n “You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If you know anything about the people who live here now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise, I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”\n \n \n “I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember Roger Banning from school, don’t you? I’ve seen him around here. His family must have acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on the estate.”\n \n \n “Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places together.”\n \n \n “It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.\n“I was just out for a drive.”\n \n \n “You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better than that. I did know him slightly, but not from school. The boys and girls were separated and went to different high schools by the time we moved to\n Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a lot better. He was in our young people’s group at church.”\n \n \n “Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”\n \n \n “For what?” asked Judy.\n \n \n Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts to gossip.\n \n \n “Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important business people. I think he forged some legal documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary. It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.\n \n \n Now Judy did remember. It was something she would have preferred to forget. She liked to think she was a good judge of character, and she had taken Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would never stoop to crime.\n \n \n “I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,” Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look for it, or aren’t we?”\n \n \n “Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I just like to know what a tiger looks like before he springs at me,” Judy explained.\n \n \n “You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.\n \n \n “I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.\n Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve seen that character who drove down this road and, for some reason, you were afraid he would see you. Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”\n \n \n Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied evasively, “People don’t generally enter private estates without an invitation. That’s all.”\n \n \n “I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,\n“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused of trespassing.”\n \n \n “I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two dark-coated figures strode down the road toward them. “You drove right by a\n NO TRESPASSING\n sign, and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to meet us!”", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "e893fe3276424d6c87c243d362e6b7ff", "response_text": "Lois and Lorraine are having lunch at Judy’s house, speaking about how Judy nearly spoiled their double-wedding where they both became sisters under the name Farringdon-Petts by solving a mystery.  \nJudy starts telling the story of the haunted fountain. She discovered a photo of a spectacular fountain in her grandmother’s hot attic one summer as she was stuck there for two weeks while her parents went on vacation. She shed a tear onto the photo while recalling her sadness about not having friends or a sister, and imagined the fountain was a place for lonely girls to fill with their tears. Her grandmother overhears her speaking aloud her wishes and calls that she shouldn’t keep her wishes to herself, because “most of them aren’t so impossible.”\nJudy’s grandparents take her to the fountain in the photo and it speaks to Judy, directing her to shed a tear into it and make wishes. Judy sheds a tear thinking about how her only friend just moved out of town and then hurries through her wishes before the ripples disappear - to have lots of friends, a sister, to marry a G-man and to solve a lot of mysteries. All things that have come true in her life.\nAbruptly returning to Judy’s modern timeline, she takes Lois and Lorraine to the attic. They are spooked by Judy’s black cat, Blackberry, who makes sudden noises. Judy finds the photo and Lorraine recognizes the fountain is identical to one on her estate - yet it is in a different location. They surmise that it is in the woods on the edge of town that are part of the Brandt estate, and drive to it immediately.\nDuring their adventure, Judy recalls more of her fountain memory. Her grandparents didn’t know the Brandt’s well enough to pay them a visit, but instead stopped by the fountain on their way to drop off her grandmother’s hooked rugs at the estate further up the path. Judy was left behind napping in a hammock - told by her grandparents they were getting her a surprise, but they didn’t return. She followed a path to an old windowless tower, but got distracted by the sound of her grandfather's cart leaving. This is all she recalls, but there is evidently more to discover that will solve the mystery.\nThe trip to the fountain shakes the confidence of Lorraine in the back seat, who knows information about the new owners of the estate - Roger Banning - that she is withholding. Lois and Judy probe her about what she knows and why she ducked down to hide her face from a stranger passing in a car. Although Lorraine tells them about Roger, she does not reveal why she is afraid. Judy mentions knowing Roger’s pal Dick Hartwell, who is apparently in the Federal Penitentiary for forgery now. As they park and exit the car to walk to the fountain, two dark-coated strangers approach them. This is where the story ends.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "0209b31d71354c9ebf113cf2704ac86d", "response_text": "Judy, a woman known for solving mysteries and chasing ghosts, had her friends Lois and Lorraine over for lunch in the haunted house she had inherited from her family. When Judy was growing up, her parents would spend summers on vacation without her, so she did a lot of reading at her Grandmother Smeed's house. These were sad summers for her, but she would soon start to solve mysteries and find her own adventures. She mentioned her tears falling on a magazine with a picture of a fountain; she imagined it was full of tears of many girls and pondered the idea of an enchanted fountain. Her grandparents took her to see a fountain the next day, where she heard a voice that told her to make a wish and to cry into the fountain--the same fountain that was in the picture in the magazine. Judy's friends got more excited about the story, and it continued: she had to think of a wise wish, but reacted too quickly to think carefully. Her wishes did come true; she wanted lots of friends, a sister, to solve mysteries, and to marry a G-man. All of these things came true, and the fountain kept Judy captivated. She patiently explained to her friends that she hadn't tried to learn the secret of the fountain, and it didn't speak to her after the initial encounter. Judy had lost her appetite for her dessert but wanted to retrieve the photo of the fountain to see if Lois recognized it; they all went to the attic, bringing Blackberry the cat with them. Lorraine recognized the photo of the fountain, but it seemed to make her nervous. Lois didn't want to leave yet even though Lorraine was clearly uncomfortable and wanted to go, and thought she might recognize the fountain from the Brandt estate, so Lois and Judy decide it's worth checking out to see if it's the same one. Lorraine only agreed to join after they promised not to drive all the way up to the house, and to walk the last part of the way. After a twenty-minute drive, Judy talked more about what she remembered about the day she visited the garden; she'd fallen asleep in a hammock, and woke up to an empty garden. She headed towards a tower but found her grandfather's car before she encountered anyone. Through all of this, Lorraine hints that she knows more than she's letting on, and doesn't think things will be as Judy expected. This is when Judy picks up on Lorraine's reticence. Judy and Lois want to explore the old tower and look for the fountain, when Lois admits she knows Roger Banning has been around the area. Lucy and Lois push Lorraine to say more about why she isn't talking, and they want to know why she doesn't want to be recognized. The story ends in suspense as two people in dark coats are walking towards the three women."}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "aeb91fd9f187492aa88e98a0a0588895", "response_text": "Judy has invited her friends, Lois and Lorraine (who are sisters-in-law), to lunch at her home. She and her husband, Peter, live in a house she inherited from her grandmother. While Judy is out of the room, Lois asks Lorraine to tell Judy about something that is upsetting Lorraine, but Lorraine accuses Lois of always siding with Judy. On top of that, she claims that Judy almost ruined their double wedding. Judy enters at the end of the conversation, admitting that she has problems, too, and hasn’t been able to solve all the mysteries she has attempted. When Judy mentions a promise she made not to discuss the dam and that she should have told Arthur, Lorraine has a pained expression and asks them not to talk about him.\nLois changes the subject, praising Judy’s mystery-solving and ghost tracking abilities that she then explains sensibly; she asks Judy to tell them a story about one of her mysteries. Judy tells them about the haunted fountain that she saw when she was fifteen years old and spending part of the summer with her grandparents while her parents were on vacation. In the attic to look at some of her grandmother’s old magazines, Judy began feeling sorry for being left behind and started crying. Her tear fell onto a picture of a fountain, and she pretended it was filled with the tears of lonely girls. Aloud, she comments that would make the fountain enchanted and starts to say a wish when her grandmother interrupts to tell her that if she let people know her wishes, most of them wouldn’t be impossible to fulfill.\nThe next day, Judy’s grandparents took her to a fountain that looked just like the one in the magazine. Judy walked into it and heard a voice telling her that if she sheds a tear in the fountain and makes a wish, her wish will come true. But the voice admonishes her to wish wisely. So Judy thought about how lonely she had been since her best friend had moved away and wished for lots of friends and a sister, to marry a G-man, and to solve lots of mysteries, all of which have come true.   \nJudy shows her friends magazine with the fountain, and Lois realizes it looks like the fountain on the nearby Brandt estate. On a whim, the three women decide to drive there to look at it. Although Lorraine is less than enthusiastic about the venture, she goes along but insists they not drive all the way to the house. After they turn into the long drive, a car approaches with a memorable-looking man at the wheel. As they near the path to the fountain, Judy recalls that her grandfather started to drive off without her, and she assumed he was teasing her. Lorraine admits she knows the Brandts no longer own the estate and has seen a classmate, Roger Banning, nearby. Suddenly, two dark-coated figures approach them.\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "e8bfddf806624827bde18193cf92e805", "response_text": "Judy is enjoying dessert with her two friends Lorraine and Lois as she recounts a tale from her childhood in which she came across a magical fountain that granted her all of her wishes. This fountain has given Judy her husband, friends, and renown as a paranormal mystery solver. As they are in the home in which she discovered a picture of the magical fountain, the three ladies decide to go into the attic to dig up that picture. Upon seeing the picture of the fountain, Lorraine and Lois seem to know its location. The three ladies head there but it seems that Lorraine is hiding some secret connection with the fountain, and there are people there that don't seem to want them around the fountain."}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting for the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "e893fe3276424d6c87c243d362e6b7ff", "response_text": "The story opens at Judy’s house as she has Lois and Lorraine over for lunch. Judy’s lives in her grandparents' old house that she modernized with her husband, Peter. The house has an attic that is up a narrow set of stairs with a door at the top. They have a black cat named Blackberry that spooks her friends because it is creepy when it makes unexpected noises in the attic.\nWhen Judy is recalling the story of the fountain, the narrative bounces back and forth into their present reality as Lois and Lorraine ask questions.\nIn Judy’s recalled story, she is a young red-haired girl with no friends who spends two weeks in the summer with her grandparents at their home. They have a hot attic filled with keepsakes and old reading materials, most notably a picture of a fountain that Judy’s grandmother later brings her to. The fountain was centered in a deep, circular pool, and had steps leading up to it that were bordered with smaller fountains of lions with water spurting out of the mouths. Judy thinks it could be a beautiful location at any time of the year, surrounded by lush vegetation like rhododendrons and evergreens. From the fountain there was a path leading to a windowless old tower that was populated by cupids and gnomes that peered out at Judy.\nBack in modern day, when Judy, Lois and Lorraine go looking for the fountain, the tower is still visible, and Lorraine describes it as something out of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” The friends visit it on a day where the trees are leafless in the woods, making the rhododendrons appear vibrantly green, under a gray sky. They do not actually reach the fountain in the story, but they do pass several posted signs for “NO TRESPASSING” along the wooded road.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "0209b31d71354c9ebf113cf2704ac86d", "response_text": "The house that Judy lives in was inherited from her grandparents, and she now lives there with her husband Peter and their cat Blackberry. She has made some changes to the house, including in the staircases to the attic, but she has not yet gone through all of her grandmother's belongings so they take up a lot of the attic. Judy's friends consider the house haunted, but Judy insists that at least the attic is not. After the three leave the house to investigate where the fountain might be, they head into the woods where there is an uphill road leading to the Brandt estate. In this estate, there was an old water tower that was visible from the path the women were on, but the story ended before the women were able to confirm if the fountain was on this estate or not. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "aeb91fd9f187492aa88e98a0a0588895", "response_text": "The story takes place around the early 20th century in a town called Farringdon in the USA as Judy’s grandparents still drove a horse-led wagon, but Lois now drives a car, and Judy’s husband is employed by the FBI. The story begins at Judy’s house, which she inherited from her grandparents. While she is in the process of renovating the house, she still has her grandmother’s things in the attic, including the magazine with the picture of the fountain. Lois alludes to the fact that Judy has tracked down the ghosts in the attic and cellar of the house. The attic is where Judy found the magazine with the picture of the fountain on it that she is telling her friends about. When Judy saw the picture, she had never seen a fountain in person, although there is a fountain at the nearby turreted Farringdon-Petts mansion. After Judy shows the picture of the fountain to Lois and Lorraine, the two women recognize it as the fountain on the Brandt estate.\n        The fountain is part of the setting in the flashback in the story. Judy remembers visiting the fountain during June; it was centered in a deep, circular pool with steps leading to the fountain. Smaller fountains in the shapes of lions were beside the steps, and water spurted from their mouths. After leaving the fountain, Judy found a hammock in a beautiful garden encircled by rose trellises. There were also rhododendrons and evergreens in the garden. After waking from her nap in the hammock, Judy saw an old windowless tower and a path leading to it. She followed the trail, and all along it were cupid and gnome figures that seemed to be looking out at her, tucked into surprising places. Just as she reached the tower, she heard her grandfather leaving with the wagon.  \n\tThe rest of the story occurs in the present’s second setting, the Brandt estate. The drive off the main road is a narrow, gravel road uphill through the woods. An oncoming car driven by a swarthy man with hypnotic eyes startles them. Traveling on, they pass more evergreens and a hedge of rhododendron and can see the tower from the car. As Lois turns the car around, two figures in dark coats approach them.\n"}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "e8bfddf806624827bde18193cf92e805", "response_text": "Most of the story takes place in Judy's grandparents' house, which Judy currently owns and has modernized. The main focus of the first half of the story is on the house's attic, where Judy's grandmother's things are kept. The story also takes place in a car on the way to the Brandt estate, which is the location of the fountain. The characters wind up on the estate, but it is a private estate and there are people there who do not want them there. The story takes place in a time period that seems older, with a lot of pomp and propriety. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Judy and what is her personality like?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "e893fe3276424d6c87c243d362e6b7ff", "response_text": "Judy was a freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that spent two weeks every summer with her grandmother, Smeed, and grandfather while her parents went on vacation to a beach hotel they honeymooned at many years ago. Judy resented being left behind by her parents. However, during one summer with her grandparents, they took her to an enchanted fountain that Judy found a photo of in their attic. The fountain spoke to Judy and asked her to shed a tear into the fountain and make wishes. All of the things that Judy wished for in her life came true - to have a lot of friends, a sister, to marry a G-man and to solve a lot of mysteries. \nIn the telling of the story, Judy is older, married, and has a sister Lois (by way of Judy’s marriage to her brother), and another close friend like a sister, Lorraine (by way of her marrying into the same family as Lois - the Farringdon-Petts). Judy shows modesty by bringing up the mysteries she never solved when Lois and Lorraine shower her with compliments. Judy’s grandparents have since passed, but she lives in their home and keeps their belongings in the attic, showing her connection with family. \nJudy (maiden name Bolten) is married to Peter Dobbs, an FBI agent, and she prefers to discuss facts instead of gossiping about hear-say with Lois and Lorraine. Judy is diligent in asking questions about Lorraine’s behavior when she ducks down in the car to hide her face from a passing stranger, and probes her to tell the truth about knowing who the new owner of the Brandt estate is - Roger Banning. Her wit is sharp, and she comes across as determined and willing to take risks to solve her mysteries (like passing no trespassing signs in broad daylight after they have already been spotted by a stranger).\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "0209b31d71354c9ebf113cf2704ac86d", "response_text": "Judy is a woman known for her sharp detective abilities. She is married to Peter Dobbs, and took his last name when they married instead of keeping her maiden name, Bolton. She grew up rather lonely, not having many friends--the one friend she did have moved away. After she made a wish in an enchanted fountain, however, her life changed--she found friends, a sister, a dream husband, and a new ability to solve mysteries which brought her notoriety in the area. She is a very curious person who loves to read, which is why she was with the magazines in the attic at her grandmother's in the first place. She grew up interested in mystery books also, as evidenced by the books her father bought her, which likely led to her interest in solving mysteries of her own. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "aeb91fd9f187492aa88e98a0a0588895", "response_text": "Judy Dobbs, née Bolton, is friends with Lois and Lorraine and their friend and her sister-in-law Honey. She is married to Peter Dobbs, an employee of the FBI. Growing up an only child, Judy had only one best friend and was very lonely when her friend moved away. She also never got to go on family vacations; her parents would leave her with her grandparents while they went to the beach hotel where they had spent their honeymoon. Judy is a forthright, somewhat self-centered woman. She is very curious and has a habit of pursuing mysterious occurrences to discover what is behind them. When the voice in the fountain urged her to make wise wishes, Judy wished for just the things that have happened in her life, but Judy points out that her wishes didn’t come true until she started thinking of others. She also believes that as she goes through her grandmother’s belongings, she might be able to solve some of the mysteries about her grandparents’ lives. Judy is also analytical; she notices Lorraine’s tendency toward jealousy and Lorraine’s reaction to mentions of Arthur and suspects that Lorraine might be jealous about him. She also notices Lorraine’s reaction to the oncoming car, hiding herself behind Lois, and her reluctance to tell them what she knows about the Brandt estate and confronts her, asking for her reasons."}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "e8bfddf806624827bde18193cf92e805", "response_text": "Judy is the main character of the story and she has become famous for solving paranormal mysteries. Judy's drive to see the fountain that brought her all her good fortune is what drives the story forward and gets the characters into trouble. Judy seems like a privileged character who is thankful for that privilege. She's highly inquisitive, never wanting to let a mystery go unsolved. She is a content character, but much of the story's beginning is dedicated to describing how she was before she became content as a lonely, depressed younger girl in need of friends."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of tears in the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "e893fe3276424d6c87c243d362e6b7ff", "response_text": "Tears are the inciting event that connect Judy with the photo of the fountain as a tear rolls off her cheek and onto the photo as she thinks of her loneliness in her grandparents attic. Expressing her longing for friendship and a sister aloud sparks her grandmother to take her along to the fountain itself. When visiting the fountain, tears again become important because the fountain asks for a tear to be shed into it before wishes can be made.\nThe physical description of tears rolling onto a photograph or causing small ripples in the fountain that travel and dissipate are important visualizations that draw the reader into Judy’s story, and make her character feel real. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "0209b31d71354c9ebf113cf2704ac86d", "response_text": "Tears are first brought up when Judy is thinking about her summers that she spent in the attic at her grandmother's house, where she said she was reading but really needed some space to herself to cry. Her tears fell on a magazine that had a picture of a fountain, and she found it amusing that the fountain had tears as its source of water. She pretended that it was full of tears of many young girls, and her grandmother overheard her pondering this possible enchanted fountain, so they went to see a similar fountain the next day.  She cried into the fountain and her dreams eventually came true, changing the course of her life in many ways. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "aeb91fd9f187492aa88e98a0a0588895", "response_text": "Judy’s tears over her loneliness of losing her best friend and not going on vacation with her parents provide the catalyst for significant changes in her life. When her tears fall on the picture of the fountain, and her grandmother overhears her comment about the enchanted fountain and her wishes, it marks the beginning of life-changing events. Her grandparents take her to see the fountain on the Brandt estate, and there, she hears the voice telling her if she sheds a tear in the fountain, her wishes will come true. As she watches the ripples in the water caused by her tear, Judy quickly comes up with several wishes that ultimately come true; even the wish for a sister that seemingly would be impossible to fill comes true when she gains a sister-in-law. Her story about the fountain and her tears are the impetus for Lois’s push to visit the Brandt estate to see the fountain and for the women being caught trespassing on the property."}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "e8bfddf806624827bde18193cf92e805", "response_text": "Judy spills tears while she is first looking at the photograph of the fountain in a magazine. Judy is crying because her parents have left her with her grandmother Smeed, whom she finds a complete bore. The tears spill onto the magazine and seem to bring the fountain to life with the tears of all the lonely girls like Judy. Seeing the fountain in this way helps Judy make a connection with the fountain and draws her toward finding it the first time. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship like between Lois and Lorraine?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "10", "uid": "e893fe3276424d6c87c243d362e6b7ff", "response_text": "Lois and Lorraine became sisters by marriage as they both married into the Farringdon-Petts family in a double-wedding event. Judy (a sister to Lois by way of her marrying Lois’ brother, Peter Dobbs), nearly ruined the double-wedding trying to solve a mystery.\nLois is perhaps more forgiving to Judy, and Lorraine goes as far as to describe that Lois has always taken Judy’s side. Both Lois and Lorraine acknowledge that Judy is great at solving mysteries and try to lift her up when she is down on herself about the few that she couldn’t solve when they come over for lunch. \nLorraine becomes evasive and hides from view when the three of them go to the fountain together, concealing information about the new owners of the Brandt estate that Lois and Judy eventually get out of her by probing questions. This event shows Lois’ willingness to challenge Lorraine, and perhaps also supporting “Judy’s side” as Lois calls her out on earlier in the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "3", "uid": "0209b31d71354c9ebf113cf2704ac86d", "response_text": "Lois and Lorraine are sisters-in-law who want to look out for one another. Lois is excitable and very giggly, whereas Lorraine is a bit more mild-tempered and careful, less sure about having Blackberry the cat around. Lorraine is going through an emotional time when this story takes place, only admitting small bits of information at a time about how she doesn't trust Arthur anymore, but won't give up more detail when pushed. Judy found Lorraine to seem somewhat jealous, but both Judy and Lois seem to know that Lorraine is keeping something from them. On the other hand, Lois is very open and encourages the others to speak their minds to work through anything that might be bothering them. "}, {"worker_id": "2", "uid": "aeb91fd9f187492aa88e98a0a0588895", "response_text": "Lois and Lorraine are sisters-in-law who care for each other, although Lorraine can sometimes be difficult to get along with. Lois is the friendlier, perkier of the two, while Lorraine is brooding and distrusting. Lorraine has a jealous streak that interfered with the budding friendship between Lois and Judy, and even now, Lorraine complains that Lois always sides with Judy. She also holds grudges, as she brings up the point that Judy almost ruined their double wedding. Lorraine has a problem that appears to be related to her husband, and Lois thinks Lorraine should tell Judy about it because Judy is so good at solving problems and mysteries. When Judy mentions Arthur, Lorraine looks as though she is in pain and asks the others not to talk about him now. Later, she comments that she wishes she could go back in the past to the time when she trusted Arthur, and when they meet the oncoming car on the way to the Brandt estate, she hides herself from the driver. Lois encourages Lorraine to tell her what her problem is, but Lorraine won’t. All day, Lois engages in eager conversation, asking Judy questions as she tells her story, while Lorraine appears lost, glum, and hurt; Lorraine starts comments that she doesn’t finish and mysteriously seems to know more about the Brandt estate than she will tell the other two women."}, {"worker_id": "12", "uid": "e8bfddf806624827bde18193cf92e805", "response_text": "Lois and Lorraine appear to be sisters. At one point, Judy is recounting how she wished for a sister her age, and Lois squeezes Lorraine's hand, proclaiming that her future held a sister just like Judy's future held a sister. It isn't clear, however, if they are biological sisters or symbolic sisters. Judy is describing more of a symbolic relationship with a woman of her age, but Lois does not clarify if her relationship with Lorraine is by blood or simply by love like how Judy is describing. Either way, the two characters seem very close and care for one another deeply."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51330", "uid": "bf36ebc9c4a34302b907a0e5fa6010eb", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "I am a Nucleus\n \n \n By STEPHEN BARR\n \n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n No doubt whatever about it, I had the Indian sign on me ... my comfortably untidy world had suddenly turned into a monstrosity of order!\n \n \n \n When I got home from the office, I was not so much tired as beaten down, but the effect is similar. I let myself into the apartment, which had an absentee-wife look, and took a cold shower. The present downtown temperature, according to the radio, was eighty-seven degrees, but according to my Greenwich Village thermometer, it was ninety-six. I got dressed and went into the living room, and wished ardently that my wife Molly were here to tell me why the whole place looked so woebegone.\n \n What do they do, I asked myself, that I have left undone? I've vacuumed the carpet, I've dusted and I've straightened the cushions.... Ah! The ashtrays. I emptied them, washed them and put them back, but still the place looked wife-deserted.\n \n It had been a bad day; I had forgotten to wind the alarm clock, so I'd had to hurry to make a story conference at one of the TV studios I write for. I didn't notice the impending rain storm and had no umbrella when I reached the sidewalk, to find myself confronted with an almost tropical downpour. I would have turned back, but a taxi came up and a woman got out, so I dashed through the rain and got in.\n \n \"Madison and Fifty-fourth,\" I said.\n \n \"Right,\" said the driver, and I heard the starter grind, and then go on grinding. After some futile efforts, he turned to me. \"Sorry, Mac. You'll have to find another cab. Good hunting.\"\n \n If possible, it was raining still harder. I opened my newspaper over my hat and ran for the subway: three blocks. Whizzing traffic held me up at each crossing and I was soaked when I reached the platform, just in time to miss the local. After an abnormal delay, I got one which exactly missed the express at Fourteenth Street. The same thing happened at both ends of the crosstown shuttle, but I found the rain had stopped when I got out at Fifty-first and Lexington.\n \n \n\n \n As I walked across to Madison Avenue, I passed a big excavation where they were getting ready to put up a new office building. There was the usual crowd of buffs watching the digging machines and, in particular, a man with a pneumatic drill who was breaking up some hard-packed clay. While I looked, a big lump of it fell away, and for an instant I was able to see something that looked like a chunk of dirty glass, the size of an old-fashioned hatbox. It glittered brilliantly in the sunlight, and then his chattering drill hit it.\n \n There was a faint bang and the thing disintegrated. It knocked him on his back, but he got right up and I realized he was not hurt. At the moment of the explosion—if so feeble a thing can be called one—I felt something sting my face and, on touching it, found blood on my hand. I mopped at it with my handkerchief but, though slight, the bleeding would not stop, so I went into a drugstore and bought some pink adhesive which I put on the tiny cut. When I got to the studio, I found that I had missed the story conference.\n \n During the day, by actual count, I heard the phrase \"I'm just spitballing\" eight times, and another Madison Avenue favorite,\n\"The whole ball of wax,\" twelve times. However, my story had been accepted without change because nobody had noticed my absence from the conference room. There you have what is known as the Advertising World, the Advertising game or the advertising racket, depending upon which rung of the ladder you have achieved.\n \n The subway gave a repeat performance going home, and as I got to the apartment house we live in, the cop on the afternoon beat was standing there talking to the doorman.\n \n He said, \"Hello, Mr. Graham. I guess you must have just have missed it at your office building.\" I looked blank and he explained, \"We just heard it a little while ago: all six elevators in your building jammed at the same time. Sounds crazy. I guess you just missed it.\"\n \n Anything can happen in advertising, I thought. \"That's right, Danny, I just missed it,\" I said, and went on in.\n \n Psychiatry tells us that some people are accident-prone; I, on the other hand, seemed recently to be coincidence-prone, fluke-happy, and except for the alarm clock, I'd had no control over what had been going on.\n \n I went into our little kitchen to make a drink and reread the directions Molly had left, telling me how to get along by myself until she got back from her mother's in Oyster Bay, a matter of ten days. How to make coffee, how to open a can, whom to call if I took sick and such. My wife used to be a trained nurse and she is quite convinced that I cannot take a breath without her. She is right, but not for the reasons she supposes.\n \n I opened the refrigerator to get some ice and saw another notice: \"When you take out the Milk or Butter, Put it Right Back. And Close the Door, too.\"\n \n Intimidated, I took my drink into the living room and sat down in front of the typewriter. As I stared at the novel that was to liberate me from Madison Avenue, I noticed a mistake and picked up a pencil. When I put it down, it rolled off the desk, and with my eyes on the manuscript, I groped under the chair for it. Then I looked down. The pencil was standing on its end.\n \n \n\n \n There, I thought to myself, is that one chance in a million we hear about, and picked up the pencil. I turned back to my novel and drank some of the highball in hopes of inspiration and surcease from the muggy heat, but nothing came. I went back and read the whole chapter to try to get a forward momentum, but came to a dead stop at the last sentence.\n \n Damn the heat, damn the pencil, damn Madison Avenue and advertising. My drink was gone and I went back to the kitchen and read Molly's notes again to see if they would be like a letter from her. I noticed one that I had missed, pinned to the door of the dumbwaiter: \"Garbage picked up at 6:30 AM so the idea is to Put it Here the Night Before. I love you.\" What can you do when the girl loves you?\n \n I made another drink and went and stared out of the living room window at the roof opposite. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. They wheeled in a circle, hoping to be allowed to perch, but were not allowed to.\n \n Pigeons fly as a rule in formation and turn simultaneously, so that their wings all catch the sunlight at the same time. I was thinking about this decorative fact when I saw that as they were making a turn, they seemed to bunch up together. By some curious chance, they all wanted the same place in the sky to turn in, and several collided and fell.\n \n The man was as surprised as I and went to one of the dazed birds and picked it up. He stood there shaking his head from side to side, stroking its feathers.\n \n My speculations about this peculiar aerial traffic accident were interrupted by loud voices in the hallway. Since our building is usually very well behaved, I was astonished to hear what sounded like an incipient free-for-all, and among the angry voices I recognized that of my neighbor, Nat, a very quiet guy who works on a newspaper and has never, to my knowledge, given wild parties, particularly in the late afternoon.\n \n \"You can't say a thing like that to me!\" I heard him shout. \"I tell you I got that deck this afternoon and they weren't opened till we started to play!\"\n \n Several other loud voices started at the same time.\n \n \"Nobody gets five straight-flushes in a row!\"\n \n \"Yeah, and only when you were dealer!\"\n \n The tone of the argument was beginning to get ugly, and I opened the door to offer Nat help if he needed it. There were four men confronting him, evidently torn between the desire to make an angry exit and the impulse to stay and beat him up. His face was furiously red and he looked stunned.\n \n \"Here!\" he said, holding out a deck of cards, \"For Pete's sake, look at\n'em yourselves if you think they're marked!\"\n \n The nearest man struck them up from his hand. \"Okay, Houdini! So they're not marked! All I know is five straight....\"\n \n His voice trailed away. He and the others stared at the scattered cards on the floor. About half were face down, as might be expected, and the rest face up—all red.\n \n \n\n \n Someone must have rung, because at that moment the elevator arrived and the four men, with half frightened, incredulous looks, and in silence, got in and were taken down. My friend stood looking at the neatly arranged cards.\n \n \"Judas!\" he said, and started to pick them up. \"Will you look at that! My God, what a session....\"\n \n I helped him and said to come in for a drink and tell me all about it, but I had an idea what I would hear.\n \n After a while, he calmed down, but he still seemed dazed.\n \n \"Never seen anything to equal it,\" he said. \"Wouldn't have believed it. Those guys didn't believe it. Every round normal, nothing unusual about the hands—three of a kind, a low straight, that sort of thing and one guy got queens over tens, until it gets to be my deal. Brother! Straight flush to the king—every time! And each time, somebody else has four aces....\"\n \n He started to sweat again, so I got up to fix him another drink. There was one quart of club soda left, but when I tried to open it, the top broke and glass chips got into the bottle.\n \n \"I'll have to go down for more soda,\" I said.\n \n \"I'll come, too. I need air.\"\n \n At the delicatessen on the corner, the man gave me three bottles in what must have been a wet bag, because as he handed them to me over the top of the cold-meat display, the bottom gave and they fell onto the tile floor. None of them broke, although the fall must have been from at least five feet. Nat was too wound up in his thoughts to notice and I was getting used to miracles. We left the proprietor with his mouth open and met Danny, the cop, looking in at the door, also with his mouth open.\n \n \n\n \n On the sidewalk, a man walking in front of Nat stooped suddenly to tie his shoe and Nat, to avoid bumping him, stepped off the curb and a taxi swerved to avoid Nat. The street was still wet and the taxi skidded, its rear end lightly flipping the front of one of those small foreign cars, which was going rather fast. It turned sideways and, without any side-slip, went right up the stoop of a brownstone opposite, coming to rest with its nose inside the front door, which a man opened at that moment.\n \n The sight of this threw another driver into a skid, and when he and the taxi had stopped sliding around, they were face to face, arranged crosswise to the street. This gave them exactly no room to move either forward or backward, for the car had its back to a hydrant and the taxi to a lamp.\n \n Although rather narrow, this is a two-way street, and in no time at all, traffic was stacked up from both directions as far as the avenues. Everyone was honking his horn.\n \n Danny was furious—more so when he tried to put through a call to his station house from the box opposite.\n \n It was out of order.\n \n \n\n \n Upstairs, the wind was blowing into the apartment and I closed the windows, mainly to shut out the tumult and the shouting. Nat had brightened up considerably.\n \n \"I'll stay for one more drink and then I'm due at the office,\" he said.\n\"You know, I think this would make an item for the paper.\" He grinned and nodded toward the pandemonium.\n \n When he was gone, I noticed it was getting dark and turned on the desk lamp. Then I saw the curtains. They were all tied in knots, except one. That was tied in three knots.\n \n All right , I told myself, it was the wind. But I felt the time had come for me to get expert advice, so I went to the phone to call McGill. McGill is an assistant professor of mathematics at a university uptown and lives near us. He is highly imaginative, but we believe he knows everything.\n \n When I picked up the receiver, the line sounded dead and I thought, more trouble. Then I heard a man cough and I said hello. McGill's voice said, \"Alec? You must have picked up the receiver just as we were connected. That's a damn funny coincidence.\"\n \n \"Not in the least,\" I said. \"Come on over here. I've got something for you to work on.\"\n \n \"Well, as a matter of fact, I was calling up to ask you and Molly—\"\n \n \"Molly's away for the week. Can you get over here quick? It's urgent.\"\n \n \"At once,\" he said, and hung up.\n \n While I waited, I thought I might try getting down a few paragraphs of my novel—perhaps something would come now. It did, but as I came to a point where I was about to put down the word \"agurgling,\" I decided it was too reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan, and stopped at the letter\n\"R.\" Then I saw that I had unaccountably hit all four keys one step to the side of the correct ones, and tore out the page, with my face red.\n \n This was absolutely not my day.\n \n \n\n \n \"Well,\" McGill said, \"nothing you've told me is impossible or supernatural. Just very, very improbable. In fact, the odds against that poker game alone would lead me to suspect Nat, well as I know him. It's all those other things....\"\n \n He got up and walked over to the window and looked at the hot twilight while I waited. Then he turned around; he had a look of concern.\n \n \"Alec, you're a reasonable guy, so I don't think you'll take offense at what I'm going to say. What you have told me is so impossibly unlikely, and the odds against it so astronomical, that I must take the view that you're either stringing me or you're subject to a delusion.\" I started to get up and expostulate, but he motioned me back. \"I know, but don't you see that that is far more likely than....\" He stopped and shook his head. Then he brightened. \"I have an idea. Maybe we can have a demonstration.\"\n \n He thought for a tense minute and snapped his fingers. \"Have you any change on you?\"\n \n \"Why, yes,\" I said. \"Quite a bit.\" I reached into my pocket. There must have been nearly two dollars in silver and pennies. \"Do you think they'll each have the same date, perhaps?\"\n \n \"Did you accumulate all that change today?\"\n \n \"No. During the week.\"\n \n He shook his head. \"In that case, no. Discounting the fact that you could have prearranged it, if my dim provisional theory is right, that would be actually impossible. It would involve time-reversal. I'll tell you about it later. No, just throw down the change. Let's see if they all come up heads.\"\n \n I moved away from the carpet and tossed the handful of coins onto the floor. They clattered and bounced—and bounced together—and stacked themselves into a neat pile.\n \n I looked at McGill. His eyes were narrowed. Without a word, he took a handful of coins from his own pocket and threw them.\n \n These coins didn't stack. They just fell into an exactly straight line, the adjacent ones touching.\n \n \"Well,\" I said, \"what more do you want?\"\n \n \"Great Scott,\" he said, and sat down. \"I suppose you know that there are two great apparently opposite principles governing the Universe—random and design. The sands on the beach are an example of random distribution and life is an example of design. The motions of the particles of a gas are what we call random, but there are so many of them, we treat them statistically and derive the Second Law of Thermodynamics—quite reliable. It isn't theoretically hard-and-fast; it's just a matter of extreme probability. Now life, on the other hand, seems not to depend on probability at all; actually, it goes against it. Or you might say it is certainly not an accidental manifestation.\"\n \n \"Do you mean,\" I asked in some confusion, \"that some form of life is controlling the coins and—the other things?\"\n \n \n\n \n He shook his head. \"No. All I mean is that improbable things usually have improbable explanations. When I see a natural law being broken, I don't say to myself, 'Here's a miracle.' I revise my version of the book of rules. Something—I don't know what—is going on, and it seems to involve probability, and it seems to center around you. Were you still in that building when the elevators stuck? Or near it?\"\n \n \"I guess I must have been. It happened just after I left.\"\n \n \"Hm. You're the center, all right. But why?\"\n \n \"Center of what?\" I asked. \"I feel as though I were the center of an electrical storm. Something has it in for me!\"\n \n McGill grinned. \"Don't be superstitious. And especially don't be anthropomorphic.\"\n \n \"Well, if it's the opposite of random, it's got to be a form of life.\"\n \n \"On what basis? All we know for certain is that random motions are being rearranged. A crystal, for example, is not life, but it's a non-random arrangement of particles.... I wonder.\" He had a faraway, frowning look.\n \n I was beginning to feel hungry and the drinks had worn off.\n \n \"Let's go out and eat,\" I said, \"There's not a damn thing in the kitchen and I'm not allowed to cook. Only eggs and coffee.\"\n \n We put on our hats and went down to the street. From either end, we could hear wrecking trucks towing away the stalled cars. There were, by this time, a number of harassed cops directing the maneuver and we heard one of them say to Danny, \"I don't know what the hell's going on around here. Every goddam car's got something the matter with it. They can't none of them back out for one reason or another. Never seen anything like it.\"\n \n Near us, two pedestrians were doing a curious little two-step as they tried to pass one another; as soon as one of them moved aside to let the other pass, the other would move to the same side. They both had embarrassed grins on their faces, but before long their grins were replaced by looks of suspicion and then determination.\n \n \"All right, smart guy!\" they shouted in unison, and barged ahead, only to collide. They backed off and threw simultaneous punches which met in mid-air. Then began one of the most remarkable bouts ever witnessed—a fight in which fist hit fist but never anything else, until both champions backed away undefeated, muttering identical excuses and threats.\n \n \n\n \n Danny appeared at that moment. His face was dripping. \"You all right, Mr. Graham?\" he asked. \"I don't know what's going on around here, but ever since I came on this afternoon, things are going crazy. Bartley!\" he shouted—he could succeed as a hog-caller. \"Bring those dames over here!\"\n \n Three women in a confused wrangle, with their half-open umbrellas intertwined, were brought across the street, which meant climbing over fenders. Bartley, a fine young patrolman, seemed self-conscious; the ladies seemed not to be.\n \n \"All right, now, Mrs. Mac-Philip!\" one of them said. \"Leave go of my umbrella and we'll say no more about it!\"\n \n \"And so now it's Missus Mac-Philip, is it?\" said her adversary.\n \n The third, a younger one with her back turned to us, her umbrella also caught in the tangle, pulled at it in a tentative way, at which the other two glared at her. She turned her head away and tried to let go, but the handle was caught in her glove. She looked up and I saw it was Molly. My nurse-wife.\n \n \"Oh, Alec!\" she said, and managed to detach herself. \"Are you all right?\" Was I all right!\n \n \"Molly! What are you doing here?\"\n \n \"I was so worried, and when I saw all this, I didn't know what to think.\" She pointed to the stalled cars. \"Are you really all right?\"\n \n \"Of course I'm all right. But why....\"\n \n \"The Oyster Bay operator said someone kept dialing and dialing Mother's number and there wasn't anyone on the line, so then she had it traced and it came from our phone here. I kept calling up, but I only got a busy signal. Oh, dear, are you sure you're all right?\"\n \n I put my arm around her and glanced at McGill. He had an inward look. Then I caught Danny's eye. It had a thoughtful, almost suspicious cast to it.\n \n \"Trouble does seem to follow you, Mr. Graham,\" was all he said.\n \n When we got upstairs, I turned to McGill. \"Explain to Molly,\" I said.\n\"And incidentally to me. I'm not properly briefed yet.\"\n \n He did so, and when he got to the summing up, I had the feeling she was a jump ahead of him.\n \n \"In other words, you think it's something organic?\"\n \n \"Well,\" McGill said, \"I'm trying to think of anything else it might be. I'm not doing so well,\" he confessed.\n \n \"But so far as I can see,\" Molly answered, \"it's mere probability, and without any over-all pattern.\"\n \n \"Not quite. It has a center. Alec is the center.\"\n \n \n\n \n Molly looked at me with a curious expression for a moment. \"Do you feel all right, darling?\" she asked me. I nodded brightly. \"You'll think this silly of me,\" she went on to McGill, \"but why isn't it something like an overactive poltergeist?\"\n \n \"Pure concept,\" he said. \"No genuine evidence.\"\n \n \"Magnetism?\"\n \n \"Absolutely not. For one thing, most of the objects affected weren't magnetic—and don't forget magnetism is a force, not a form of energy, and a great deal of energy has been involved. I admit the energy has mainly been supplied by the things themselves, but in a magnetic field, all you'd get would be stored kinetic energy, such as when a piece of iron moves to a magnet or a line of force. Then it would just stay there, like a rundown clock weight. These things do a lot more than that—they go on moving.\"\n \n \"Why did you mention a crystal before? Why not a life-form?\"\n \n \"Only an analogy,\" said McGill. \"A crystal resembles life in that it has a definite shape and exhibits growth, but that's all. I'll agree this—thing—has no discernible shape and motion is involved, but plants don't move and amebas have no shape. Then a crystal feeds, but it does not convert what it feeds on; it merely rearranges it into a non-random pattern. In this case, it's rearranging random motions and it has a nucleus and it seems to be growing—at least in what you might call improbability.\"\n \n Molly frowned. \"Then what is it? What's it made of?\"\n \n \"I should say it was made of the motions. There's a similar idea about the atom. Another thing that's like a crystal is that it appears to be forming around a nucleus not of its own material—the way a speck of sand thrown into a supersaturated solution becomes the nucleus of crystallization.\"\n \n \"Sounds like the pearl in an oyster,\" Molly said, and gave me an impertinent look.\n \n \"Why,\" I asked McGill, \"did you say the coins couldn't have the same date? I mean apart from the off chance I got them that way.\"\n \n \"Because I don't think this thing got going before today and everything that's happened can all be described as improbable motions here and now. The dates were already there, and to change them would require retroactive action, reversing time. That's out, in my book. That telephone now—\"\n \n The doorbell rang. We were not surprised to find it was the telephone repairman. He took the set apart and clucked like a hen.\n \n \"I guess you dropped it on the floor, mister,\" he said with strong disapproval.\n \n \"Certainly not,\" I said. \"Is it broken?\"\n \n \"Not exactly broken , but—\" He shook his head and took it apart some more.\n \n \n\n \n McGill went over and they discussed the problem in undertones. Finally the man left and Molly called her mother to reassure her. McGill tried to explain to me what had happened with the phone.\n \n \"You must have joggled something loose. And then you replaced the receiver in such a way that the contact wasn't quite open.\"\n \n \"But for Pete's sake, Molly says the calls were going on for a long time! I phoned you only a short time ago and it must have taken her nearly two hours to get here from Oyster Bay.\"\n \n \"Then you must have done it twice and the vibrations in the floor—something like that—just happened to cause the right induction impulses. Yes, I know how you feel,\" he said, seeing my expression.\n\"It's beginning to bear down.\"\n \n Molly was through telephoning and suggested going out for dinner. I was so pleased to see her that I'd forgotten all about being hungry.\n \n \"I'm in no mood to cook,\" she said. \"Let's get away from all this.\"\n \n McGill raised an eyebrow. \"If all this, as you call it, will let us.\"\n \n In the lobby, we ran into Nat, looking smug in a journalistic way.\n \n \"I've been put on the story—who could be better?—I live here. So far, I don't quite get what's been happening. I've been talking to Danny, but he didn't say much. I got the feeling he thinks you're involved in some mystical, Hibernian way. Hello, McGill, what's with you?\"\n \n \"He's got a theory,\" said Molly. \"Come and eat with us and he'll tell you all about it.\"\n \n Since we decided on an air-conditioned restaurant nearby on Sixth Avenue, we walked. The jam of cars didn't seem to be any less than before and we saw Danny again. He was talking to a police lieutenant, and when he caught sight of us, he said something that made the lieutenant look at us with interest. Particularly at me.\n \n \"If you want your umbrella, Mrs. Graham,\" Danny said, \"it's at the station house. What there's left of it, that is.\"\n \n Molly thanked him and there was a short pause, during which I felt the speculative regard of the lieutenant. I pulled out a packet of cigarettes, which I had opened, as always, by tearing off the top. I happened to have it upside down and all the cigarettes fell out. Before I could move my foot to obliterate what they had spelled out on the sidewalk, the two cops saw it. The lieutenant gave me a hard look, but said nothing. I quickly kicked the insulting cigarettes into the gutter.\n \n When we got to the restaurant, it was crowded but cool—although it didn't stay cool for long. We sat down at a side table near the door and ordered Tom Collinses as we looked at the menu. Sitting at the next table were a fat lady, wearing a very long, brilliant green evening gown, and a dried-up sour-looking man in a tux. When the waiter returned, they preempted him and began ordering dinner fussily: cold cuts for the man, and vichyssoise, lobster salad and strawberry parfait for the fat lady.\n \n I tasted my drink. It was most peculiar; salt seemed to have been used instead of sugar. I mentioned this and my companions tried theirs, and made faces.\n \n \n\n \n The waiter was concerned and apologetic, and took the drinks back to the bar across the room. The bartender looked over at us and tasted one of the drinks. Then he dumped them in his sink with a puzzled expression and made a new batch. After shaking this up, he set out a row of glasses, put ice in them and began to pour.\n \n That is to say he tilted the shaker over the first one, but nothing came out. He bumped it against the side of the bar and tried again. Still nothing. Then he took off the top and pried into it with his pick, his face pink with exasperation.\n \n I had the impression that the shaker had frozen solid. Well, ice is a crystal, I thought to myself.\n \n The other bartender gave him a fresh shaker, but the same thing happened, and I saw no more because the customers sitting at the bar crowded around in front of him, offering advice. Our waiter came back, baffled, saying he'd have the drinks in a moment, and went to the kitchen. When he returned, he had madame's vichyssoise and some rolls, which he put down, and then went to the bar, where the audience had grown larger.\n \n Molly lit a cigarette and said, \"I suppose this is all part of it, Alec. Incidentally, it seems to be getting warmer in here.\"\n \n It was, and I had the feeling the place was quieter—a background noise had stopped. It dawned on me that I no longer heard the faint hum of the air-conditioner over the door, and as I started to say so, I made a gesture toward it. My hand collided with Molly's when she tapped her cigarette over the ashtray, and the cigarette landed in the neighboring vichyssoise.\n \n \"Hey! What's the idea?\" snarled the sour-looking man.\n \n \"I'm terribly sorry,\" I said. \"It was an accident. I—\"\n \n \"Throwing cigarettes at people!\" the fat lady said.\n \n \"I really didn't mean to,\" I began again, getting up. There must have been a hole in the edge of their tablecloth which one of my cuff buttons caught in, because as I stepped out from between the closely set tables, I pulled everything—tablecloth, silver, water glasses, ashtrays and the vichyssoise-à-la-nicotine—onto the floor.\n \n The fat lady surged from the banquette and slapped me meatily. The man licked his thumb and danced as boxers are popularly supposed to do. The owner of the place, a man with thick black eyebrows, hustled toward us with a determined manner. I tried to explain what had happened, but I was outshouted, and the owner frowned darkly.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "26b7ab68cba049ae80cd2efc54532e51", "response_text": "Alec Graham returns to his home from the office after a long day. His wife Molly has left, and he still feels that it looks wife-deserted even after doing many chores to clean it up. He recounts his bad day, having forgotten to set his alarm and rushing to the TV Studio that he writes for. The taxi driver refuses to take him to Madison and Fifty-fourth, and the rain has gotten worse. His hand continuously bleeds after passing by a big excavation site, and he misses his story conference. After hearing the same phrases numerous times and all six elevators being jammed, he is convinced that he is coincidence prone. Molly leaves him instructions on how to take care of himself, and he works on his novel. More of these events happen with pigeons colliding and somebody getting five straight-flushes in a row. Nat tells Alec about the strange occurrence as they get soda. The three bottles do not break after falling at least five feet, and Danny, the cop, is shocked. Outside, more strange events occur when Nat almost gets caught up with a swerving taxi. Once they return home, he immediately calls McGill, an assistant mathematics professor for some expert advice. Once McGill arrives, he says that all of the events are very improbable, which makes him inclined to believe that Alec is stringing him on or subject to delusion. They do an experiment involving coin-throwing, and all of the coins are arranged in a neat pile when Alec throws them. McGill asks him some more questions about any recent occurrences, but Alec suggests that they go outside to eat. Outside, the cars are being towed away, while two pedestrians are having trouble letting each other pass. Danny is confused by all that is happening. Alec also runs into Molly, stuck in a confused wrangle of umbrellas with two other women. She explains that somebody from their home had kept calling her mother’s number, so she came back to investigate. Back at the apartment, all of this is traced back to Alec as the center. McGill tries to explain what is possibly happening to Alec, but they are interrupted by the telephone repairman. Molly suggests they go out to a restaurant to eat, and Nat comes along. They pass by the car jam again, and the police lieutenant looks at Alec with interest. Even at the restaurant, Alec realizes that his Tom Collins drink is made with salt instead of sugar. When the bartender tries to remake the drink for them, the shaker has frozen solid. It happens again with a new shaker, and the waiter is extremely confused. When Alec’s hand collides with Molly’s cigarette, it goes into the neighboring lady’s vichyssoise. The two of them are displeased, and when Alec stands up, he ends up pulling all of the contents on their entire table onto the floor. The lady and the man are furious at Alec; even the owner has come to fix the situation. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "7e1ba8958e1644358e36be7e35c4b140", "response_text": "Alec returns to his apartment after a day at the office, feeling worn out and defeated. He recalls the events from earlier that day; he had forgotten to set his alarm clock, making him late for a conference at the advertising studio he works at. He had forgotten an umbrella and found himself in the pouring rain, where he caught a taxi only for it to not start. The subways had suffered delays as well. On his walk to the office, Alec passed by a construction site, where he was nicked by a piece of glass from an explosion. He ended up missing his conference, and on his way home, a cop tells him that the elevators in his office building had all broken down as soon as he left. Alec reflects on these events, perplexed by the accident-prone coincidences. He decides to write at his typewriter when he drops his pencil, finding that it has landed standing on its end. As he continues to be stunned by the events, he fixes a drink for himself, taking note of the several notes that his wife, Molly, had left him while she visits her mother. Alec then witnesses a card game between his neighbor, Nat, and a group of men, in which Nat draws five straight flushes. Alec invites Nat in after the heated game, and after breaking a soda, they go to the corner store to buy more, where the bottles fall through the bottom of the bag. As the two walk back to their apartment, Nat is nearly bumped into and he steps onto the curb, causing a severe accident between multiple cars. Nat later leaves to his office to write an article about the strange events, and Alec calls up McGill, a mathematics professor and friend. McGill comes to Alec's apartment, and he is suspicious that he may be delusional or lying, due to the impossible probability of the events occurring. McGill then tosses some change onto the floor, testing to see if they all land on heads; instead, the coins stack up on top of each other. McGill is also confused, trying to imagine an explanation, and Alec suggests that some form of life is controlling the events. The two go out for food and pass by three women who have their umbrellas tangled up together. One of the women turns out to be Molly, who says she returned after her mother had been receiving constant calls from Alec's phone with no one on the other end. They go back to the apartment and discuss the matter, as the telephone repairman arrives. After, the three go to a restaurant, and face more inconveniences, such as having salt in their drink instead of sugar. Alec then accidentally drops a cigarette onto a neighboring party, and the woman gets angry, as Alec somehow pulls their tablecloth and dinner onto the floor, angering many. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "924165d78218453ea3185c34df24497c", "response_text": "The story begins with Alec missing his wife’s presence as he feels lost without her aid in his life. He details how his commute to work was heavily hindered by unlucky transportation happenings and awful weather. When Alec leaves work and gets back to his apartment, he attempts to write a bit. In addition, he thinks over the strange coincidences that have happened during the day thus far. Upon hearing a loud commotion in his apartment building hallway, he goes to investigate. He finds his neighbor Nat in an argument with a group of men accusing Nat of cheating. In a fit of rage, one of the men hits the deck of cards that Nat is holding, causing them to be tossed to the floor. In another strange coincidence, half of the cards land face down but all the face-up cards are red. The group of men leave in confusion and Alec invites Nat into his apartment for a drink to cool down. \n\nAfter consuming most of the club soda, the two men leave to grab more club soda in a nearby deli. At the deli, another strange incident occurs. The 3 glasses of club soda fall through a thin plastic bag, 5 feet towards the ground and do not break when they should have broken due to the fall. The storekeeper is shocked but Alec shrugs off the weird incident. Nat and Alec return to his apartment where he notices more strange coincidences. Alec grows frustrated and decides to call his friend McGill to help him make sense of everything. McGill promptly comes over to Alec’s apartment to help. McGill gets to the apartment and Alec tries to explain all of the coincidences. McGill is understandably very skeptical and wants Alec to prove it for his own eyes. \n\nAlec is able to prove that something strange his happening with a demonstration that involves throwing coins to the floor. The coins are thrown and somehow clustered together into a perfectly stacked pile. McGill then begins to believe Alec. He is uncertain about the probability of the coincidences but refuses to attribute it to superstitious happenings and states that it is an unknown force. When the two leave to go get food, they see and meet up with Molly on the street and quickly return to the apartment to catch Molly up on the strange occurrences. After much discussion over what could be causing the day’s incidents, they decide to all go to get food. They order drinks at the restaurant, but mysteriously the shaker is causing the liquids to freeze. Molly notes how the restaurant is continuously becoming warmer, and later Alec mentally notes that he can no longer hear the sound of the air conditioner. While preparing to discuss the issue of the AC, Alec accidentally flips his cigarette onto another occupied table. This causes a heated argument with the other guests and the unapproving look from the owner of the restaurant towards Alec. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f9d835c77c914ddb9bc0cfca22c1947d", "response_text": "Alec, the narrator, had a very weird and exhausting day. In the morning he overslept work and hurried out. A rain storm started the subway was delayed and there was a huge excavation on his way. The drill working with clay hit something glittering inside and a little explosion happened. The narrator's face was slightly scratched and bleeding. His absence at the conference wasn't noticed. Back home Alec saw his wife's nots with directions all around as she left to attend to her mother. Then he tried to write his novel and came to a dead end, so he poured himself a drink and watched some pigeons being trained outside, when some traffic occurred and a couple birds fell. There were loud voices outside: four men confronted the narrator's neighbor, a shy guy named Nat. Then the man came in for a drink, and told Alec that he had miraculously won in cards a couple times in a row, and his partners believed he had cheated. The narrator and Nat went out for sodas in glass bottles, which fell and miraculously did not break. On the street, a pedestrian, who suddenly stopped in front of Nat, caused a series of accidents leading to a huge traffic jam. Back at Alec's place, the curtain was weirdly tied in three knots and he called his knowledgeable friend McGill to get a consultation. The man came and considered all of the day's weird events very improbable but not impossible. McGill offered to make a demonstration, so Alec threw a handful of coins which bounced together, stacking into a neat pile. McGill's coins created an exactly straight line. McGill stated that Alec was the center of the weird events and there must be some design in that. They went out to eat and the cars were wrecking all along their way, overwhelming the cops. Two people were unable to go past each other, they fought making the same motions and saying identical words. Many similar situations were happening all around. One of the women with intertwined umbrellas was Molly, the wife. Her mother's number was constantly dialed with no one on the line, and Alec's number was always busy, so Molly got worried. At that point Danny, the local policeman, started suspecting Alec. The three went out for dinner eventually and took Nat with them, who wanted to hear the story. Alec dropped his cigarettes out of the pack under the suspicious gaze of Danny and a lieutenant. In the restaurant the whole company got salty drinks which puzzled the bartender. When he tried to do the new ones, nothing came out of the shaker - everything inside turned into ice. The place suddenly started getting warmer and quieter. Alec's hand collided with Molly's and her cigarette fell into the dish of a perturbed lady at the nearby table. While standing up, Alec accidentally pulled everything from that table to the floor and the angry lady slapped him. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "26b7ab68cba049ae80cd2efc54532e51", "response_text": "The story is initially set in Alec’s home. There is a radio, Greenwich Village thermometer, and a living room. In the home, there is also carpet, cushions, and ashtrays for cigarettes. Alec also owns an alarm clock to help him wake up. In the living room, there is also a typewriter and a telephone. Alec tries to go to his conference in New York, but it is raining heavily, and the cab refuses to take him to his destination. However, the story also mentions the subway, which he takes. Alec’s stop is Fifty-first and Lexington. There is also mention of a big excavation site for a new building. On his way to the studio, he also stops at the drugstore. There are also at least six elevators in his building. Around the corner of the apartment, there is a delicatessen that sells soda. On the streets outside, cars are jamming into each other and have to be towed away. Later, the story is set in a restaurant near Sixth Avenue. The restaurant is crowded but cool, and there is a bar too. There is also background music and the faint hum of the air-conditioner, both that stop shortly after. \n"}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "7e1ba8958e1644358e36be7e35c4b140", "response_text": "The story takes place in New York City. Alec lives in Greenwich Village and works at an office on the Upper East Side, on Madison Avenue. Alec lives in an apartment complex in a comfortable home, containing a living room where he keeps his typewriter, a small kitchen, and a bedroom. Alec's living room window offers a view of the roof across from him. Throughout the story, Alec visits many different places. In addition to his office, he goes to a small corner store to purchase soda, as well as a restaurant near Sixth Avenue. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "924165d78218453ea3185c34df24497c", "response_text": "The main setting of the story is presumed to be in Manhattan in New York City. Alec goes to different parts of the city due to work, where he lives, and for food. His commute on the subway was fraught with troubles and he ends up missing a meeting at work, though his absence goes unnoticed. His wife, Molly, who was visiting her mother, finds him on the street surrounded by a bunch of commotion. Alec, his wife, and McGill return to Alec’s apartment to discuss what has been happening. After much discussion, they go out to eat. As more strange coincidences happen at the restaurant, Molly notes how it keeps getting warmer. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f9d835c77c914ddb9bc0cfca22c1947d", "response_text": "The story starts in Alec's apartment which looks wife-deserted as Molly, his wife, is visiting her mother. All around the apartment there are what-to-do notes from Molly. Alec rushes out for his job and it starts raining really bad outside. The cab doesn't move and he gets into the subway. Then he exits near his job, there is a huge excavation nearby, with men drilling clay and some spectators. Inside one piece of clay there is something shiny, like glass. Alec gets to his TV studio and soon takes the subway back home. At home he makes a drink in the kitchen and sits down in the living room with some papers which are supposedly his future novel and a typewriter. Weird events like a pencil standing straight and a tied in three knots curtain keep happening. From the window Alec sees a man exercising a flock of pigeons on the rooftop and a weird traffic occurs among the birds. Alec hears loud voices and opens the door to see his neighbor, Nat, being confronted by four men in the hallway. The two get into Alec's apartment and soon go out for sodas. At the delicatessen on the corner, Alec drops three bottles of water but they don't break. A series of accidents happen on the road outside and create an enormous traffic jam. Soon, Alec is alone in his apartment and invites his friend McGill to figure out the weird happenings. After a couple more very unprovable events they go out for food. The traffic outside is incredible, every car wrecks and pedestrians can't get past one another and fight. Molly appears among the women fighting over umbrellas and the three go back home. After a couple more weird events including the broken phone, they take Nat and go to a restaurant after all. The traffic on the street is still crazy. The restaurant is air-conditioned and noisy. The drinks are salty, and when the bartender tries to redo them, the liquid freezes, gathering many spectators. The air gets warmer and another accident creates a fight between Alec and a lady at the next table.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is McGill, and what are his traits?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "26b7ab68cba049ae80cd2efc54532e51", "response_text": "McGill is an assistant mathematics professor at a nearby university. He is friends with both Alec and Molly, even calling to ask about the both of them. He is considered to be highly imaginative, but they believe that he knows everything. Personality-wise, McGill is a very logical person. He believes that what Alec has told him is normally impossible, and the odds against it are very astronomical as well. Even when Alec shows him what has happened to him, he continues to pursue a logical explanation. However, despite these theories, he tries to approach these findings logically and tells Alec not to be superstitious when they initially discuss why this is happening to him. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "7e1ba8958e1644358e36be7e35c4b140", "response_text": "McGill works at a university as an assistant professor of mathematics. He is known to be extremely intelligent, as well as imaginative, as Alec describes him. McGill is eager to help Alec explain his improbable luck, both out of friendship and excitement by his passion for science. Though McGill is imaginative, he is also skeptical and not easily gullible, as shown when he is wary of Alec's legitimacy behind his claims. However, he can easily think outside of the box, and uses his knowledge of science to propose unheard possibilities."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "924165d78218453ea3185c34df24497c", "response_text": "McGill is a professor of mathematics at a nearby university. He lives near Alec and is appreciated for his intellectual advice. He is described as being very imaginative, but his advice is held in high regard. He is quick to help Alec after a simple phone call with no explanation of Alec’s need. When Alec explains the strange occurrences throughout the day, McGill is skeptical but willing to give Alec the benefit of the doubt. He routinely measures the likelihood of occurrences in an analytical manner that relies on probability. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f9d835c77c914ddb9bc0cfca22c1947d", "response_text": "McGill is an assistant professor of mathematics at a university, who lives near Alec. They have friendly relationship and casually meet. They are close enough for Alec to call and ask McGill to come straight away, who comes immediately. Alec and some other people from his company consider McGill very knowledgeable about all sort of things. He is open to anything and considers every possibility, even the impossible and supernatural as long as he doesn't have any other explanation. However, he believes this case to be very weird and improbable but not impossible - he has scientific approach to everything. He is interested in weird happenings and willing to find the answer. He believes only what he sees, and doesn't believe in miracles. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Molly, and what are her traits?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "26b7ab68cba049ae80cd2efc54532e51", "response_text": "Molly Graham is Alec’s wife. She cares a lot about her husband, leaving him notes with instructions on what to do when she is gone. She is also a former nurse and loves Alec greatly to do all of this for him. Molly also has a habit of smoking, which she began doing when they went to the restaurant. When she notices something is wrong at home, she comes back immediately even though her previous plan was to visit her mother at Oyster Bay. Personality-wise, Molly is also a logical thinker. When Alec explains the situation to her, she also tries to find reasoning for it and catches on pretty quickly. Molly is very observant as well, watching the events that involve Alec play out. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "7e1ba8958e1644358e36be7e35c4b140", "response_text": "Molly is Alec's wife, away in the first half of the story on a trip to her mother's. Molly is depicted as a caring and nurturing wife, shown particularly through the notes that she leaves Alec as he stays home alone. The notes, instructing Alec on housekeeping, also imply that Molly takes on a more dominant role in the household, knowing how to tend to a home and sustain the both of them. Molly is mainly concerned for Alec's well being regarding the unlucky events he is experiencing, asking if he feels alright and supporting him in searching for an explanation. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "924165d78218453ea3185c34df24497c", "response_text": "Molly is Alec’s wife. From the detailed instruction she leaves for him while she is visiting her mother, it is clear that Molly handles much of Alec’s life. She cooks for him, organizes his schedule, cleans for him, etc. Alec seems lost without Molly’s presence. It can be discerned that Molly has a caregiver type of relationship with Alec. She cares for him deeply and is easily concerned about his well-being. She boards a 2-hour train back to the train when she cannot reach him under unusual circumstances. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f9d835c77c914ddb9bc0cfca22c1947d", "response_text": "Molly is Alec's wife and a nurse. She treats Alec as her helpless patient, when she leaves, she places notes with directions for every simple action. So, she is even more attentive and thoughtful than she should be with a grown up man. She is very caring as she comes immediately as Alec's phone is busy. She is very anxious for him. She is clever and organized, she immediately evaluates the situation and shares her thoughts. She is friendly to everyone and they have very good relationship with Alec - he is very happy to see her and he missed her badly even during the ten days."}]}, {"question_text": "How do the strange coincidences that happen to Alec affect his mood throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "26b7ab68cba049ae80cd2efc54532e51", "response_text": "Alec is tired, upset, and confused about the strange coincidences relating to him. When he first goes home, he is extremely tired and compares his day to be the same as being beaten down. Judging from the events throughout his workday, he does not understand how they all relate to him and thinks of them as extremely weird coincidences. He even thinks of himself as being coincidence-prone. After the soda incident, however, he no longer finds it surprising after all that has happened to him. As the events build up, Alec slowly realizes that he is the center of it all, and he knows that he cannot get out of it. No matter how hard he tries, he directly interacts with or is nearby becomes strange coincidences. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "7e1ba8958e1644358e36be7e35c4b140", "response_text": "As the strange coincidences occur in the story, Alec becomes increasingly frustrated. However, instead of driving him to the point of rage, the frustration drives him to exhaustion. At the beginning of the story, Alec already describes himself as feeling beaten down due to the morning's events. He feels more and more defeated as the day goes on, but also becomes more and more perplexed and fascinated. By the end of the story, Alec feels both helpless due to his uncontrollable bad luck and eager to find an explanation for this rare scenario, seeking other people for help and validation."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "924165d78218453ea3185c34df24497c", "response_text": "For a large portion of the story, Alec is very casual about the strange coincidences that occur. He acknowledges them but does not fuss over them as much as those who also see them. When he is told that he just missed being stuck in his office building’s elevators, he brushes it off as another coincidence. He does the same when his pencil lands on the floor standing on its end. Towards the end of the story, he grows more aware of the coincidences and becomes frustrated with them. The story ends with him getting into a heated argument at a restaurant when it is assumed that he purposefully flew his cigarette at an occupied table. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "f9d835c77c914ddb9bc0cfca22c1947d", "response_text": "The first coincidences are just some bad luck as Alec thinks. When one oversleeps something important and is in a hurry, series of delaying events can happen as some bad luck. He is simply nervous about missing the conference, and tired of constant failures. It'[s also hard for him to live without his wife, his place looks wife-deserted which upsets him and this is the part of the reasons for his tardiness. When his absence isn't noticed, he returns home in a better mood and tries to write. Nothing helps though and Alec is stuck. Unnatural events start happening which distract him, at first, they simply surprise Alec. Later, they become more strong, often highly improbable - not breaking bottles, traffic, especially the three knots on the curtain. These ones look impossible to Alec and therefore scare him, so he calls McGill for a consultation. Further evidence convinces Alec in him being the center of a huge mess. He is confused and tries to hide his failures from the overseers."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "62619", "uid": "384bebda025848fbb1babfd3dfa1def2", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE AVENGER\n \n\n By STUART FLEMING\n \n \n Karson was creating a superman to fight the weird super-monsters who had invaded Earth. But he was forgetting one tiny thing—like calls to like.\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n Peter Karson was dead. He had been dead for some time now, but the dark blood was still oozing from the crushed ruin of his face, trickling down into his sodden sleeve, and falling, drop by slow drop, from his fingertips. His head was tilted over the back of the chair at a queer, unnatural angle, so that the light made deep pools of shadow where his eyes had been.\n \n  There was no sound in the room except for the small splashing the blood made as it dropped into the sticky pool on the floor. The great banks of machinery around the walls were silent. I knew that they would never come to life again.\n \n  I rose and walked over to the window. Outside, the stars were as before: tiny, myriad points of light, infinitely far away. They had not changed, and yet they were suddenly no longer friendly. They were cold and alien. It was I who had changed: something inside me was dead, like the machinery, and like Peter.\n \n  It was a kind of indefinable emptiness. I do not think it was what Peter called an emotion; and yet it had nothing to do with logic, either. It was just an emptiness—a void that could not be filled by eating or drinking.\n \n  It was not a longing. I had no desire that things should be otherwise than they were. I did not even wish that Peter were not dead, for reason had told me that he had to die. That was the end of it.\n \n  But the void was still there, unexplainable and impossible to ignore. For the first time in all my life I had found a problem that I could not solve. Strange, disturbing sensations stirred and whispered within me, nagging, gnawing. And suddenly—something moved on the skin of my cheek. I raised a hand to it, slowly.\n \n  A tear was trickling down my cheek.\n \n \n \n\n \n Young Peter Karson put the last black-print down and sighed with satisfaction. His dream was perfect; the Citadel was complete, every minutest detail provided for—on paper. In two weeks they would be laying the core, and then the metal giant itself would begin to grow, glittering, pulsing with each increment of power, until at last it lay finished, a living thing.\n \n Then there would remain only the task of blasting the great, shining ship out into the carefully-calculated orbit that would be its home. In his mind's eye he could see it, slowly wheeling, like a second satellite, about the Earth; endlessly gathering knowledge into its insatiable mechanisms. He could see, too, the level on level of laboratories and storerooms that filled its interlocking segments; the meteor deflectors, the air renewal system, the mighty engines at the stern—all the children of his brain.\n \n Out there, away from the muffling, distorting, damnable blanket of atmosphere, away from Earth's inexorable gravitational pull, would be a laboratory such as man had never seen. The ship would be filled with the sounds of busy men and women, wresting secrets from the reluctant ether. A new chemistry, a new physics; perhaps even a new biochemistry.\n \n A discordant note suddenly entered his fantasy. He looked up, conscious of the walls of his office again, but could see nothing unusual. Still, that thin, dark whisper of dread was at the back of his mind. Slowly, as if reluctantly compelled, he turned around to face the window at his back.\n \n There, outside the window, fifty stories up, a face was staring impassively in at him. That was the first impression he got; just a face, staring. Then he saw, with a queer, icy chill, that the face was blood-red and subtly inhuman. It tapered off into a formless, shriveled body.\n \n For a moment or an eternity it hung there, unsupported, the bulging eyes staring at him. Then it grew misty at the edges. It dissolved slowly away and was gone.\n \n \"Lord!\" he said.\n \n He stared after it, stunned into immobility. Down in the street somewhere, a portable video was shrilling a popular song; after a moment he heard the faint swish of a tube car going past. Everything was normal. Nothing, on examination, seemed to have changed. But the world had grown suddenly unreal.\n \n One part of his brain had been shocked into its shell. It was hiding from the thing that had hurt it, and it refused to respond. But the other part was going calmly, lucidly on, quite without his volition. It considered the possibility that he had gone temporarily insane, and decided that this was probable.\n \n Hardly knowing what he did, he found a cigarette and lit it. His hands were shaking. He stared at them dully, and then he reached over to the newsbox on his desk, and switched it on.\n \n There were flaring red headlines.\n \n Relief washed over him, leaving him breathless. He was horrified, of course, but only abstractedly. For the moment he could only be glad that what he had seen was terrible reality rather than even more terrible illusion.\n \n \n INVADERS APPEAR IN BOSTON. 200 DEAD\n \n Then lines of type, and farther down:\n \n \n 50 CHILDREN DISAPPEAR FROM PARIS MATERNITY CENTER\n \n He pressed the stud. The roll was full of them.\n \n \n MOON SHIP DESTROYED IN TRANSIT NO COMMUNICATION FROM ANTARCTICA IN 6 HOURS STRANGE FORCE DEFLECTS PLANES FROM SAHARA AREA WORLD POLICE MOBILIZING\n \n The item below the last one said:\n \n Pacifica, June 7—The World Police are mobilizing, for the first time in fifty years. The order was made public early this morning by R. Stein, Secretary of the Council, who said in part:\n \n \"The reason for this ... order must be apparent to all civilized peoples. For the Invaders have spared no part of this planet in their depredations: they have laid Hong Kong waste; they have terrorized London; they have destroyed the lives of citizens in every member state and in every inhabited area. There can be few within reach of printed reports or my words who have not seen the Invaders, or whose friends have not seen them.\n \n \"The peoples of the world, then, know what they are, and know that we face the most momentous struggle in our history. We face an enemy superior to ourselves in every way .\n \n \"Since the Invaders first appeared in Wood River, Oregon, 24 hours ago, they have not once acknowledged our attempts to communicate, or in any way taken notice of our existence as reasoning beings. They have treated us precisely as we, in less enlightened days, might have treated a newly-discovered race of lower animals. They have not attacked our centers of government, nor immobilized our communications, nor laid siege to our defenses. But in instance after instance, they have done as they would with us. They have examined us, dissected us, driven us mad, killed us with no discernable provocation; and this is more intolerable than any normal invasion.\n \n \"I have no fear that the people of Earth will fail to meet this challenge, for there is no alternative. Not only our individual lives are threatened, but our existence as a race. We must, and will, destroy the Invaders!\"\n \n Peter sank back in his chair, the full shock of it striking him for the first time.\n \n \" Will we?\" he asked himself softly.\n \n \n\n \n It was only two stories down the moving ramp to Lorelei Cooper's laboratory. Peter took it in fifteen seconds, running, and stumbled to a halt in front of the door marked \"Radiation.\" She had set her door mechanism to \"Etaoin Shrdlu,\" principally because he hated double-talk. He mouthed the syllables, had to repeat them because he put an accent in the wrong place, and squeezed through the door as soon as it opened far enough to admit him.\n \n Lorelei, beautiful in spite of dark-circled eyes and a smear of grease on her chin, looked up from a huge ledger at the end of the room. One blonde eyebrow arched in the quizzical expression he knew so well.\n \n \"What makes, Peter my love?\" she asked, and bent back to the ledger. Then she did a double-take, looked at his face intently, and said,\n\"Darling, what's wrong?\"\n \n He said, \"Have you seen the news recently?\"\n \n She frowned. \"Why, no—Harry and I have been working for thirty-six hours straight. Haven't seen anybody, haven't heard anything. Why?\"\n \n \"You wouldn't believe me. Where's your newsbox?\"\n \n She came around the desk and put her hands on his shoulders. \"Pete, you know I haven't one—it bores me or upsets me, depending on whether there's trouble or not. What—\"\n \n \"I'm sorry, I forgot,\" he said. \"But you have a scanner?\"\n \n \"Yes, of course. But really, Pete—\"\n \n \"You'll understand in a minute. Turn it on, Lorelei.\"\n \n She gazed at him levelly for a moment, kissed him impulsively, and then walked over to the video panel on the wall and swept a mountain of papers away from in front of it. She turned the selector dial to \"News\" and pressed the stud.\n \n A faint wash of color appeared on the panel, strengthened slowly, and suddenly leapt into full brilliance.\n \n Lorelei caught her breath.\n \n It was a street scene in the Science City of Manhattan, flooded by the warm spring sunshine. Down on the lowest level, visible past the transport and passenger tubes, the parks and moving ways should have been dotted with colorful, holiday crowds. The people were there, yes but they were flowing away in a swiftly-widening circle. They disappeared into buildings, and the ways snatched them up, and in a heartbeat they were gone.\n \n There were left only two blood-red, malignant monstrosities somehow defiling the air they floated in; and below them, a pitiful huddle of flesh no longer recognizable as human beings. They were not dead, those men and women, but they wanted to be. Their bodies had been impossibly joined, fused together into a single obscene, floundering mass of helpless protoplasm. The thin moaning that went up from them was more horrible than any cry of agony.\n \n \"The Invaders are here, citizens,\" the commentator was saying in a strangled voice. \"Stay off the streets. Hide yourselves. Stay off the streets....\" His voice droned on, but neither of them heard it.\n \n \n\n \n Lorelei buried her head on his chest, clutching at him desperately.\n\"Peter!\" she said faintly. \"Why do they broadcast such things?\"\n \n \"They have to,\" he told her grimly. \"There will be panics and suicides, and they know it; but they have to do it. This isn't like a war, where the noncombatants' morale has to be kept up. There aren't going to be any noncombatants, this time. Everybody in the world has to know about them, so that he can fight them—and then it may not be enough.\"\n \n The viewpoint of the teleo sender changed as the two red beings soared away from their victims and angled slowly up the street. Peter reached out to switch off the scanner, and froze. The girl felt his muscles tense abruptly, looked back at the scene. The Invaders were floating up the sloping side of a tall, pure white structure that dominated the rest.\n \n \"That's the Atlas building,\" she said unbelievingly. \"Us!\"\n \n \"Yes.\"\n \n Silently, they counted stories as the two beings rose. Forty-five ... forty-six ... forty-seven ... forty-eight. Inevitably, they halted. Then they faded slowly. It was impossible to say whether they had gone through the solid wall, or simply melted away.\n \n The man and woman clung together, waiting.\n \n There was a thick, oppressive silence, full of small rustlings and other faint sounds that were no longer normal. Then, very near, a man screamed in a high, inhuman voice. The screamed dwindled into a throaty gurgle and died, leaving silence again.\n \n Peter's lips were cold with sweat. Tiny nerves in his face and arms were jumping convulsively. His stomach crawled. He thrust the girl away from him and started toward the inner room.\n \n \"Wait here,\" he mouthed.\n \n She was after him, clinging to his arms. \"No, Peter! Don't go in there! Peter! \" But he pushed her away again, woodenly, and stalked forward.\n \n There was a space in the middle of the room where machinery had been cleared away to make room for an incompleted setup. Peter walked down the narrow aisle, past bakelite-sheathed mechanisms and rows of animal cages, and paused just short of it.\n \n The two red beings were there, formless bodies hazy in midair, the distorted, hairless skulls in profile, staring at something outside his range of vision.\n \n \n\n \n Peter forced himself forward another step. Little Harry Kanin, Lorelei's assistant, was crumpled in a corner, half supported by the broad base of an X-ray chamber. His face was flaccid and bloated. His glazed eyes, impassive yet somehow pleading, stared at nothingness straight ahead of him.\n \n The Invaders ignored Peter, staring expressionlessly down at Kanin. In a moment Peter realized what they were doing to him. He stood, paralyzed with horror, and watched it happen.\n \n The little man's body was sagging, ever so slowly, as if he were relaxing tiredly. His torso was telescoping, bit by bit; his spread legs grew wider and more shapeless, his cheeks caved in and his skull grew gradually flatter.\n \n When it was over, the thing that had been Kanin was a limp, boneless puddle of flesh. Peter could not look at it.\n \n There was a scream in his throat that would not come out. He was beyond fear, beyond agony. He turned to the still-hovering monsters and said in a terrible voice, \"Why? Why?\"\n \n The nearest being turned slowly to regard him. Its lips did not move, but there was a tiny sound in Peter's brain, a thin, dry whispering.\n \n The scream was welling up. He fought it down and listened.\n \n \" Wurnkomellilonasendiktolsasangkanmiamiamimami.... \"\n \n The face was staring directly into his, the bulging eyes hypnotic. The ears were small, no more than excresences of skin. The narrow lips seemed sealed together; a thin, slimy ichor drooled from them. There were lines in the face, but they were lines of age, not emotion. Only the eyes were alive.\n \n \" ... raswilopreatadvuonistuwurncchtusanlgkelglawwalinom.... \"\n \n \"I can't understand,\" he cried wildly. \"What do you want?\"\n \n \" ... morofelcovisyanmamiwurlectaunntous. \"\n \n He heard a faint sound behind him, and whirled. It was the first time he had realized that Lorelei had followed him. She stood there, swaying, very pale, looking at the red Invaders. Her eyes swiveled slowly....\n \n \" Opreniktoulestritifenrelngetnaktwiltoctpre. \"\n \n His voice was hoarse. \"Don't look! Don't—Go back!\" The horrible, mindless noise in his throat was almost beyond his power to repress. His insides writhed to thrust it out.\n \n She didn't see him. Her eyes glazed, and she dropped limply to the floor.\n \n The scream came out then. Before he knew, even, that he could hold it back no longer, his mouth was wide open, his muscles tensed, his fingernails slicing his palms. It echoed with unbelievable volume in the room. It was a scream to split eardrums; a scream to wake the dead.\n \n \n\n \n Somebody said, \"Doctor!\"\n \n He wanted to say, \"Yes, get a doctor. Lorelei—\" but his mouth only twitched feebly. He couldn't seem to get it to work properly.\n \n He tried again. \"Doctor.\"\n \n \"Yes?\" A gentle, masculine voice.\n \n He opened his eyes with an effort. There was a blurred face before him; in a moment it grew clearer. The strong, clean-shaven chin contrasted oddly with the haggard circles under the eyes. There was a clean, starched odor.\n \n \"Where am I?\" he said. He tried to turn his head, but a firm hand pressed him back into the sheets.\n \n \"You're in a hospital. Just lie quietly, please.\"\n \n He tried to get up again. \"Where's Lorelei?\"\n \n \"She's well, and you'll see her soon. Now lie quietly. You've been a very sick man.\"\n \n Peter sank back in the bed. The room was coming into focus. He looked around him slowly. He felt very weak, but perfectly lucid.\n \n \"Yes....\" he said. \"How long have I been here, Doctor?\"\n \n The man hesitated, looked at him intently. \"Three months,\" he said. He turned and gave low-voiced instructions to a nurse, and then went away.\n \n Peter's head began spinning just a little. Glass clinked from a metal stand near his head; the nurse bent over him with a glass half full of milky fluid. It tasted awful, but she made him drink it all.\n \n In a moment he began to relax, and the room got fuzzy again. Just before he drifted off, he said sleepily, \"You can't—fool me. It's been more —than three—months.\"\n \n He was right. All the nurses, and even Dr. Arnold, were evasive, but he kept asking them why he couldn't see Lorelei, and finally he wormed it out of them. It had been nine and a half months, not three, and he'd been in a coma all that time. Lorelei, it seemed, had recovered much sooner.\n \n \"She was only suffering from ordinary shock,\" Arnold explained.\n\"Seeing that assistant of hers—it was enough to knock anybody out, especially a woman. But you stood actual mental contact with them for approximately five minutes. Yes, we know—you talked a lot. It's a miracle you're alive, and rational.\"\n \n \"But where is she?\" Peter complained. \"You still haven't explained why I haven't been able to see her.\"\n \n Arnold frowned. \"All right,\" he said. \"I guess you're strong enough to take it. She's underground, with the rest of the women and children, and a good two-thirds of the male population. That's where you'll go, as soon as you're well enough to be moved. We started digging in six months ago.\"\n \n \"But why?\" Peter whispered.\n \n Arnold's strong jaw knotted. \"We're hiding,\" he said. \"Everything else has failed.\"\n \n Peter couldn't think of anything to say. Dr. Arnold's voice went on after a moment, musingly. \"We're burrowing into the earth, like worms. It didn't take us long to find out we couldn't kill them. They didn't even take any notice of our attempts to do so, except once. That was when a squadron of the Police caught about fifty of them together at one time, and attacked with flame guns and a new secret weapon. It didn't hurt them, but it annoyed them. It was the first time they'd been annoyed, I think. They blew up half a state, and it's still smoldering.\"\n \n \"And since then?\" Peter asked huskily.\n \n \"Since then, we've been burrowing. All the big cities.... It would be an impossible task if we tried to include all the thinly-populated areas, of course, but it doesn't matter. By the time we excavate enough to take care of a quarter of the earth's population, the other three-quarters will be dead, or worse.\"\n \n \"I wonder,\" Peter said shakily, \"if I am strong enough to take it.\"\n \n Arnold laughed harshly. \"You are. You've got to be. You're part of our last hope, you see.\"\n \n \"Our last hope?\"\n \n \"Yes. You're a scientist.\"\n \n \"I see,\" said Peter. And for the first time, he thought of the Citadel . No plan leaped full-born into his mind, but, maybe , he thought, there's a chance ....\n \n \n\n \n It wasn't very big, the thing that had been his shining dream. It lay there in its rough cradle, a globe of raw dura-steel not more than five hundred meters in diameter, where the Citadel was to have been a thousand. It wouldn't house a hundred scientists, eagerly delving into the hinterland of research. The huge compartments weren't filled with the latest equipment for chemical and physical experiment; instead, there was compressed oxygen there, and concentrated food, enough to last a lifetime.\n \n It was a new world, all by itself; or else it was a tomb. And there was one other change, one that you couldn't see from the outside. The solid meters of lead in its outer skin, the shielding to keep out cosmic rays, were gone.\n \n A man had just finished engraving the final stroke on its nameplate, to the left of the airlock— The Avenger . He stepped away now, and joined the group a little distance away, silently waiting.\n \n Lorelei said, \"You can't do it. I won't let you! Peter—\"\n \n \"Darling,\" he began wearily.\n \n \"Don't throw your life away! Give us time—there must be another way.\"\n \n \"There's no other way,\" Peter said. He gripped her arms tightly, as if he could compel her to understand by the sheer pressure of his fingers.\n\"Darling, listen to me. We've tried everything. We've gone underground, but that's only delaying the end. They still come down here, only not as many. The mortality rate is up, the suicide rate is up, the birth rate is down, in spite of anything we can do. You've seen the figures: we're riding a curve that ends in extinction fifty years from now.\n \n \"They'll live, and we'll die, because they're a superior race. We're a million years too far back even to understand what they are or where they came from. Besides them, we're apes. There's only one answer.\"\n \n She was crying now, silently, with great racking sobs that shook her slender body. But he went remorselessly on.\n \n \"Out there, in space, the cosmics change unshielded life. They make tentacles out of arms; or scales out of hair; or twelve toes, or a dozen ears—or a better brain. Out of those millions of possible mutations, there's one that will save the human race. We can't fight them , but a superman could. That's our only chance. Lorelei—darling—don't you see that?\"\n \n She choked, \"But why can't you take me along?\"\n \n He stared unseeingly past her wet, upturned face. \"You know why,\" he said bitterly. \"Those rays are strong. They don't only work on embryos; they change adult life forms, too. I have one chance in seven of staying alive. You'd have one chance in a million of staying beautiful. I couldn't stand that. I'd kill myself, and then humanity would die, too. You'd be their murderer.\"\n \n Her sobs gradually died away. She straightened slowly until he no longer had to support her, but all the vitality and resilience was gone out of her body. \"All right,\" she said in a lifeless voice. \"You'll come back, Peter.\"\n \n He turned away suddenly, not trusting himself to kiss her goodbye. A line from an old film kept echoing through his head. \" They'll come back—but not as boys !\"\n \n We'll come back, but not as men.\n \n We'll come back, but not as elephants.\n \n We'll come back, but not as octopi.\n \n \n\n \n He was trembling violently. He ran the last few steps, stumbled into the airlock, and pressed the stud that would seal the door behind him. We'll come back.... He heard the massive disk sink home, closing him off. Then he sank down on the floor of the airlock and put his head in shaking hands.\n \n After a while he roused himself, closed the inner door of the lock behind him, and walked down the long corridor into the control chamber. The shining banks of keys were there, waiting for his touch; he slumped down before them and listlessly closed the contact of the visiplate.\n \n He swung its field slowly, scanning for the last time the bare walls of the underground chamber, making sure that all the spectators had retired out of the way of the blast. Then his clawed fingers poised over the keys, hovered a moment, and thrust down.\n \n Acceleration pressed him deep into his chair. In the visiplate, the heavy doors that closed the tunnel above him flashed back, one by one. The energy-charged screen flickered off to let him pass, and closed smoothly behind him. The last doors, cleverly camouflaged, slipped back into place and then dwindled in the distance. It was done.\n \n He flashed on out, past the moon, past Mars, over the asteroid belt. The days merged into weeks, then months, and finally, far out, The Avenger curved into an orbit and held it. The great motors died, and the silence pressed in about him.\n \n Already he could feel the invisible rays burning resistlessly through his flesh as if it were water, shifting the cells of his body, working its slow, monstrous alchemy upon him. Peter waited until the changes were unmistakably evident in his skin and hair, and then he smashed all the mirrors in the ship.\n \n The embryos were pulsing with unnatural life, even in the suspended animation of their crystal cells. One by one he allowed them to mature, and after weeks or years destroyed the monstrosities that came from the incubators. Time went by, meaninglessly. He ate when he was hungry, slept when his driving purpose let him, and worked unceasingly, searching for the million-to-one chance.\n \n He stared sometimes through changed eyes at the tiny blue star that was Earth, wondering if the race he had left behind still burrowed in its worm-tunnels, digging deeper and deeper away from the sunlight. But after a time he ceased even to wonder.\n \n And one changeling-child he did not destroy. He fed knowledge to its eager brain, and watched it through the swift years, with a dawning hope....\n \n \n\n \n Peter closed the diary. \"The rest you know, Robert,\" he said.\n \n \"Yes,\" I told him. \"I was that child. I am the millionth mutation you were searching for.\"\n \n His eyes glowed suddenly in their misshapen sockets. \"You are. Your brain is as superior to mine as mine is to an anthropoid's. You solve instinctively problems that would take our mechanical computers hours of work. You are a superman.\"\n \n \"I am without your imperfections,\" I said, flexing my arms.\n \n He rose and strode nervously over to the window. I watched him as he stood there, outlined against the blazing galaxies. He had changed but little in the years that I had known him. His lank gray hair straggled over his sunken eyes; his cheeks were blobbed with excresences of flesh; one corner of his mouth was drawn up in a perpetual grin. He had a tiny sixth finger on his left hand.\n \n He turned again, and I saw the old scar on his cheek where I had once accidentally drawn one of my talons across his face.\n \n \"And now,\" he said softly, \"we will go home. I've waited so long—keeping the control chamber and the engine room locked away from you, not telling you, even, about Earth until now—because I had to be sure. But now, the waiting is over.\n \n \"They're still there, I'm sure of it—the people, and the Invaders. You can kill the Invaders, Robert.\"\n \n He looked at me, a little oddly, almost as if he had some instinctive knowledge of what was to come. But he went on swiftly, \"On Earth we had a saying: 'Fight fire with fire.' That is the way it will be with you. You are completely, coldly logical, just as they are. You can understand them, and so you can conquer them.\"\n \n I said, \"That is the reason why we will not go back to Earth.\"\n \n He stared at me, his jaw slack, his hands trembling. \"What—what did you say?\"\n \n I repeated it patiently.\n \n \"But why?\" he cried, sinking down into the chair before me. In an instant all the joy had gone out of him. I could not understand his suffering, but I could recognize it.\n \n \"You yourself have said it,\" I told him. \"I am a being of logic, just as the beings who have invaded your planet are. I do not comprehend the things which you call hate, fear, joy and love, as they do not. If I went to Earth, I would use your people to further my knowledge, just as the invaders do. I would have no reason to kill the invaders. They are more nearly kin to me than your people.\"\n \n \n\n \n Peter's eyes were dull, his limbs slumped. For a moment I thought that the shock had deranged his mind.\n \n His voice trembled when he said, \"But if I ask you to kill them, and not my people?\"\n \n \"To do so would be illogical.\"\n \n He waved his hands helplessly. \"Gratitude?\" he muttered.\n \n \"No, you don't understand that, either.\"\n \n Then he cried suddenly, \"But I am your friend, Robert!\"\n \n \"I do not understand 'friend,'\" I said.\n \n I did understand \"gratitude,\" a little. It was a reciprocal arrangement: I did what Peter wished, so long as I did not actively want to do otherwise, because he had done things for me. Very well, then we must not go back. It was very simple, but I knew that he could not comprehend it.\n \n I tried to explain it to him, however. But he only stared at me, with an expression on his face that I had never seen there before, and that, somehow, I did not like to see. It was disquieting, and so I hastened to the end that I knew was inevitable.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "68b25a55ece94644acbc50b3905aa760", "response_text": "Peter Karson has finished planning out the blueprint for the Citadel. He is excited to see it be built and go off into space to collect new information. Something suddenly snaps him out of his fantasy. Fifty stories above the window, there is a blood-red and subtly inhuman face staring back at him. The face slowly disappears, but he is stunned by the image. He then shakingly lights a cigarette and turns on the newsbox to see that an invader has appeared in Boston. More disasters are listed below, and the World Police announces that the Invaders have already begun terrorizing the world since they appeared twenty-four hours ago. Peter is doubtful that they can take down the Invaders and goes to Lorelei Cooper’s laboratory. Lorelei does not know what is happening because Harry and she have been working for thirty-six hours straight. She does not have a newsbox, but he tells her to turn on her scanner to see the news. The panel shows the Science City of Manhattan, but the Invaders have come and snatched up men and women. Slowly, two Invaders make their way to the Atlas building, where Peter and Lorelei are. He goes into the inner room, even though she yells at him not to go. The Invaders have reduced Harry to nothing but a puddle of flesh, and Peter begins to ask why they are doing this desperately. They whisper to him in a strange language; he suddenly realizes that Lorelei has followed him. She drops to the floor after looking at the Invaders, which makes Peter scream. When he awakes again, a doctor named Arnold tells him to lie back down and that he is in a hospital. Although Dr. Arnold initially tells him that he has been in the hospital for three months, he eventually finds out that it has already been nine and a half months since he went into his coma. All of the survivors are underground because nobody knew how to kill the Invaders. Peter is considered their last hope because he is a scientist, and he thinks back to his plan of the Citadel. The ship is built, and it is called The Avenger instead. Lorelei tries to plead with Peter, but he refuses and says that it must be him who finds a superman that can destroy the Invaders. He goes into space until the ship curves into orbit. Peter kills many of the changeling children, but he allows one to live. The child is named Robert and is considered to be a super-intelligent being. Peter is hopeful that the changeling can kill the Invaders, but Robert says he will not return to Earth. He explains that they are like kin to him, and he logically has no reason to kill him. Peter is shocked and tries to plead with Robert, but the superman does not understand emotions. Robert does not feel good about the expression on Peter’s face, and he hastens to an inevitable end. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "13e4195812ae4aaf9e3dc2e204c88832", "response_text": "Blood is dripping from a dead body in the room, Peter Karson. The story moves to the past, when young Peter finished the project of 'Citadel' - a spaceship to set off to an orbit. 'Citadel' was supposed to be a huge well-equipped laboratory, the first of its kind. While imagining the greatness of the creation, Peter felt dread and saw a face staring at him outside the window, fifty stories up. The face was scary and inhuman, the body hung without support for a while and then disappeared. Everything around was normal and Peter was worried he had gone mad. Then he saw the red headlines in the newspapers about appearing invaders and disappearing people. Cities worldwide were attacked and the World Police were mobilizing. The news proclaimed that the greatest enemy was to be faced and defeated. Peter rushed downstairs to Lorelei's laboratory, who had been working without breaks and hadn't seen the news. After Peter's agonized pleas, Lorelei turned on the news and saw a video of people becoming an unrecognizable joined mass, helpless and suffering. Then the two saw their own building in the news and halted. Peter went towards the inner room despite Lorelei's protests. He saw two aliens staring at Harry, Lorelei's assistant, and turning him into a boneless mess. Peter was so shocked that he screamed \"why?\" and heard some incomprehensible whisper in his head in response. Suddenly, Peter saw that Lorelei had followed him and her body dropped to the floor. Peter screamed inhumanely loudly and faded. He woke up in a hospital, the doctor said he had been very sick for three months and that Lorelei was fine. When Peter kept asking, he finally learned that he had been in a coma for more than nine months because of the rather long contact he had had with the invaders. Lorelei was simply shocked and recovered much faster. Arnold, the doctor, finally decided that Peter was strong enough to learn the truth and told about the part of humanity hiding underground as killing the aliens turned out to be impossible. Peter was needed as a scientist. His 'Citadel' project contained everything necessary to live a lifetime, it was a new independent world to save the rest of humanity. So, it was renamed 'The Avenger' and finished, as life underground was not a solution but a delay. Lorelei was in despair because of Peter boarding the ship and wanted to follow, but the rays were strong and even Peter had low chances of staying alive. When 'The Avenger' reached orbit, Peter felt the rays burning his flesh and smashed the mirrors to allow the embryos to mature. After a long time Peter told the story to Robert, the mutation-child with a superior brain who could destroy the invaders. Robert refused to go to Earth as his brain was logical and saw no reasons to destroy the Invaders. Peter didn't understand and the inevitable end approached. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "4991ed96ed744108a19c0d35dc2b278d", "response_text": "The story opens with the character Peter Karson dead, as the narrator, identity unknown, contemplates their emptiness after killing him. The narrator says that they do not regret doing so, but they are unable to explain their emotions as they feel a tear rolling down their cheek. The story then goes back to a younger Peter as he finishes his project, the development of the Citadel spaceship. He suddenly hears a strange whisper within his brain, and he turns around to see a face with a shriveled body staring at him through the window. The creature slowly dissolves and disappears, and Peter is left stunned. He finds breaking news of invasions all over the world, murdering hundreds of civilians. The invaders, according to Secretary of the Council, are from outer space, and the World Police is attempting to destroy them. Peter rushes downstairs to find Lorelei, his lover, in the laboratory. She is unaware of the news, and upon seeing footage of the gruesome attacks, she is shocked, and they soon see the invaders approaching their building from the television. Peter steps into another room, seeing the two creatures with their focus on Harry Kanin, Lorelei's assistant. To Peter's horror, Harry quickly becomes a limp pile of flesh. Peter confronts the creatures but only hears foreign whispers, as Lorelei drops to the floor behind him. Peter lets out a scream, and wakes up in a hospital. The doctor tells him that he has been there in a coma for over nine months, and that Lorelei had recovered from shock. The doctor then tells Peter that society has moved to living underground in order to avoid the invaders; Peter, as a scientist, is their last hope. Later, Peter approaches the newly crafted spaceship, titled The Avenger, which lacks the typical shield to protect one from cosmic rays. Lorelei begs Peter not to go, but he believes it is necessary, and too much of a risk for Lorelei to join him. He boards the ship with the mission to create a \"superman\" to ultimately defeat the invaders; the plan is to allow the cosmic rays to mutate several embryos on board, hopefully creating a strong enough being. As The Avenger leaves and goes into orbit, Peter begins feeling the effects of the rays as his skin and hair mutates. As time passes, he allows the embryos to develop, destroying all but one. He raises the embryo as it develops into a person, and the story jumps many years later, as the child becomes a man named Robert. Peter had raised Robert, with a superior brain and logical ability, to be the defeater of the invaders. Informing Robert of the plan to return back to Earth, Robert surprisingly refuses. Peter is taken aback, and Robert explains that he is not able to comprehend the emotions that would lead him to kill the invaders and save Earthmen. Peter begs helplessly, and Robert ultimately feels it inevitable to kill him. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "72390ad4618043a38ee6f05e56c34f24", "response_text": "The story begins with a young Peter Karson, a scientist, working on a ship. He finishes his work for the moment and turns on the news to discover horrifying imagery and chaos being reported. He runs to Lorelei Cooper’s laboratory to go share the disturbing news with her. Lorelei and Peter have a romantic relationship. He asks Lorelei to turn on the news and she is shocked by the imagery that is being detailed. Both Peter and Lorelei become stunned when they realize that the invaders to Earth are headed towards their building. They hold each other in stunned silence until they hear a scream from Lorelei’s assistant, Harry Kanin. Peter goes out to investigate and discovers the Invaders turning Harry’s body into nothing but flesh. Unbeknownst to Peter, Lorelei followed him and when the Invaders are done with Harry they begin to focus on her to Peter’s terror.\n\nPeter then wakes up in a hospital bed. After much prodding, he is eventually informed that he has been in a coma for a little over nine months. He is told that humans are losing the fight against the Invaders and have retreated to living underground. He is soon informed that he must gain back his strength because as a scientist he is much needed in the fight against the Invaders.\n\nThe story then goes into detail about how Peter has been chosen to go to space on the Avenger ship and raise a viable embryo that has successfully mutated due to cosmic rays. The resulting person will then be used to fight against the Invaders. He does this while orbiting space on the ship. He destroys the inappropriate creations and keeps one embryo that sees as potential. That would grow up to be Robert. Many years have passed as he raises Robert. Eventually, he tells Robert the story of how he was created and details the mission that he is meant to carry out. Robert has great brain prowess due to his mutations and Peter is hopeful that he will be able to successfully fight against the invaders.\n\nHowever, Robert soon informs Peter that he will not go through with the plan. He reasons that he does not experience emotion and has no reason to care for the humans on Earth. Peter is greatly upset as he realizes his life’s work failed and Earth will not be able to save. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "68b25a55ece94644acbc50b3905aa760", "response_text": "The story is first set inside Peter’s office. There is a window that he initially sees the Invader through. The window can see up to fifty stories high. There is also a desk with a newsbox on it, where he lights his cigarette. His office also has a chair. Many places worldwide are mentioned too, such as London, Hong Kong, Paris, and Boston. Lorelei’s laboratory is two stories down the moving ramp. It is behind a door marked “Radiation”, and there is also a door mechanism with a password set to “Etaoin Shrdlu”. Lorelei owns a scanner, a video panel on the wall that is initially covered in papers. There is also an inner room with an X-ray chamber. The building they are in is called the Atlas building. After Peter wakes from his coma, the story is set in a hospital underground. There is a metal stand and a bed for Peter to lie on. When he goes off with the mission to bring back a superman, the ship exits from the underground launch chamber and goes into space. Peter goes past the Moon, past Mars, and over the asteroid belt. From his distance, Earth is a tiny blue star. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "13e4195812ae4aaf9e3dc2e204c88832", "response_text": "The story begins in a silent room with only blood dripping from Peter Karson's dead body. The stars are visible from the window. Then the story goes back in time, to when Peter was a young scientist. He was completing the project of 'Citadel' on paper and imagining his creation. It was supposed to be a huge metal laboratory-spaceship. The ship was to have many levels of laboratories and storerooms, the meteor deflectors, the air renewal system and the mighty engines. Suddenly, Peter felt some kind of dread around, he looked out from the window of his office and saw a horrible creature fifty stories up. Then he took the newspapers from his newsboy and saw the headlines about the invaders. He rushed two floors down through the staircase to the radioactive laboratory, where Lorelei, his girlfriend, was working. She was in the forest corner with a huge ledger. The two went to the scanner to watch the news and suddenly saw their own building, a tall, pure white structure. The silence was oppressive. Peter moved towards the inner room and confronted the aliens. Then he woke up in a sort of hospital after a long coma, he couldn't understand where he was and for how long. All the major cities were destroyed. People were digging to hide underground, but it was a delay rather than a solution. A new ship 'The Avenger' was built following the model of 'Citadel'. 'The Avenger' wasn't that big as 'Citadel' was supposed to be, it was a steel globe with compressed oxygen and concentrated food enough for a lifetime. Peter boarded the ship and sealed the door, then he sank down on the floor, knowing his low chances of staying alive. He closed the inner door and walked to the control room. He turned the keys and was pressed into the chair. He passed the moon and Mars and reached orbit. He felt the rays burning him there and broke the windows. For years he watched the embryos grow until Robert, the needed mutation, appeared. Peter fed him with knowledge for years. Earth was a tiny blue star far away, where many more years passed. When Robert refused to save the Earth, everything came to an end. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "4991ed96ed744108a19c0d35dc2b278d", "response_text": "The beginning of the story takes place on Earth, in the Atlas building in the science city Manhattan. The building is a tall, white structure, with about fifty floors. The building contains both Peter's office, where he works on the Citadel, and Lorelei's laboratory, located two stories below. The laboratory contains several rooms, scattered with machinery and papers, with a video panel on the wall. After Peter's encounter with the invaders, he wakes up in a hospital, and he is then taken to the relocated city underground. The final part of the story takes place aboard The Avenger, a ship like others, except supplied with sufficient food and without cosmic ray shields. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "72390ad4618043a38ee6f05e56c34f24", "response_text": "The story begins in a laboratory in New York City where Peter is working on a ship in his part of the building. Upon seeing disturbing news on the TV, he runs to Lorelei’s lab which is further down into the building. The building they both work in is the Atlas building. After the Invaders attack their building and seemingly kill Lorelei, Peter wakes up in a hospital room. He is able to leave and meet up with Lorelei – who is actually alive- in an underground city once he recovers. Peter then goes on a mission to orbit space on the Avenger ship in hopes of finding an embryo that has mutated in a manner that could help save Earth. This process takes years and he reaches an old age completing this mission on the ship. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Peter and Lorelei?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "68b25a55ece94644acbc50b3905aa760", "response_text": "Peter and Lorelei are romantically involved with each other. When Lorelei sees Peter, she calls him “my love” and “darling.” She puts her hands on his shoulders too and kisses him impulsively as a sign of affection. Peter cares greatly about Lorelei, too, as she was the first person he went to find after seeing the news about the Invaders. When he tries to investigate, she clings to him and pleads for him not to go. However, she follows along too, and he is horrified at what might happen to her. After Lorelei passes out, Peter cannot help but let out a scream. Even when he wakes up from his coma, the first thing he thinks about is Lorelei and repeatedly asks where she is. Lorelei continues to beg Peter not to leave on The Avenger and asks him to reconsider. He does not want to go, but he tells her that it is the only solution. She cries, and he goes on remorselessly even though it hurts him. Lorelei wants to come along too; Peter cares too much and tells her that he could not stand seeing her change from somebody beautiful because of the rays. Although they say farewell to each other and Lorelei affirms that he will come back, Peter does not trust himself to kiss her goodbye. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "13e4195812ae4aaf9e3dc2e204c88832", "response_text": "Peter and Lorelei are in love. They care for each other a lot - Lorelei begs Peter not to go towards any danger, and he doesn't want her to follow. They are also very tender and find tranquility in each other. In face of danger they embrace each other or kiss. The two also work together in the same building within a two floors distance. They know each other's habits - the lock on the laboratory, the lack of newsboy at Lorelei's. Peter worries for her more than for himself, and losing his girlfriend means his own death to him, that's the reason he gives for her not to follow him to the orbit. He also considers Lorelei very beautiful even when tired, and her beauty matters a lot for him - he says he won't handle its loss on the spaceship."}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "4991ed96ed744108a19c0d35dc2b278d", "response_text": "Peter and Lorelei are romantically involved. Their relationship is loving and serious, which is apparent from their first interaction in the story as Peter meets her in the laboratory. Peter feels protective over Lorelei, especially given the recent invasions and dangers. When Lorelei appears to be hurt by the invaders, Peter lets out a shrilling scream and blacks out. The two are very close and cannot stand to be without each other, shown when Lorelei begs Peter to stay and not board The Avenger. However, out of love for Lorelei and concern for her safety, Peter leaves anyway."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "72390ad4618043a38ee6f05e56c34f24", "response_text": "Peter Karson and Lorelei are both scientists that work in the same building. They have a romantic relationship with each other. Lorelei is very keen on not being separated from Peter and is frightened every time he risks his life. Peter is a strong figure in their relationship and does his best to calm Lorelei, but also prepare her for the dangerous reality they face. He constantly tries to protect her as best as he can and prevent her from coming into harm’s way. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe The Avenger ship and its importance to the future of civilization.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "68b25a55ece94644acbc50b3905aa760", "response_text": "The Avenger ship is what is built from Peter’s shining dream. It is much smaller than his initial blueprint, a globe of raw-dura steel no more than five hundred meters in diameter. It cannot house a thousand scientists, and the huge compartments are not filled with the latest equipment for experiments. Instead, it is filled with compressed oxygen and concentrated food to last a lifetime. There is also a control room, engine room, airlock, and inner lock. The Avenger ship is essential because it is the key to finding a superman who can save human civilization. Since the Invaders have caused the remaining population to burrow underground, this ship carries all hopes for the future. Peter believes that there is a chance that one embryo will be genetically modified enough to become a changeling who can save humanity. That is why he is willing to take the chance on the ship and realize his dream, even if it is not the dream he initially had in mind. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "13e4195812ae4aaf9e3dc2e204c88832", "response_text": "'The Avenger' is built in accordance with the model of 'Citadel' but for other purposes. 'The Avenger' is not that huge, it's a steel globe with oxygen and food enough for a lifetime. It is also supposed tot ravel to that well-calculated orbit. There, the strong rays will help the embryos grow into mutations, one of which will defeat the invaders. The ship stays on the orbit for years with all the embryos and Peter, who broke the mirrors to raise the embryos under the rays. That one embryo, Robert, is like a superman, he follows only logic and has a superior brain,  same as the Invaders. The idea is that this superman is similar to Aliens but raised by humans, so he will help fight the Invaders. The plan goes wrong, when Robert refuses. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "4991ed96ed744108a19c0d35dc2b278d", "response_text": "The Avenger ship is the last hope for civilization in light of the fatal invasions; though society has moved underground, it does not keep them completely safe, and they will inevitably lose. However, the goal of The Avenger is to create a superhuman that can return to Earth and defeat the invaders. The ship will do so through mutation via cosmic rays, which are purposely allowed to beam through the ship. Aboard The Avenger are multiple embryos, all which will undergo different mutations, and Peter is responsible for monitoring their development and ultimately finding one fit enough to destroy the invaders on Earth."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "72390ad4618043a38ee6f05e56c34f24", "response_text": "The Avenger ship is built to feed and house someone for an extremely long time. It has great importance to the future of the human race on Earth because of the mission that Peter has been tasked with caring out while on the ship. Peter is meant to find an embryo that has been appropriately mutated by cosmic rays in space and then to raise that life to adulthood. The goal is to produce a person that has advantages over a normal human being. The thinking is that this new human would be able to successfully fight against the Invaders and save Earth. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Robert, and what are his traits in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "68b25a55ece94644acbc50b3905aa760", "response_text": "Robert is the one changeling child that Peter did not destroy. He is described to have an eager brain, and Peter keeps feeding knowledge to it. Robert also has a superior brain, capable of instinctively solving problems that would take mechanical computers hours of work. Physically, Robert also has talons. However, despite being a successful superman, Robert does not understand anything emotional. He refuses to go back to Earth to destroy the Invaders, citing that he is a being of logic. Robert says that he will use the people on Earth for his own gain, which the Invaders are already doing. Therefore, he finds it illogical when Peter asks him to kill the Invaders and not his people. Even when Peter says that he is his friend, Robert says he does not understand and believes that gratitude is a reciprocal arrangement. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "13e4195812ae4aaf9e3dc2e204c88832", "response_text": "Robert was raised on 'The Avenger'. He was one of many embryos brought by the ship into space to be raised under the strong rays. Such an upbringing causes mutations, and people planned to create a mutant similar to the Invaders - a superior logical brain, who can understand and conquer the Invaders. This was the only hope for the humanity to be saved as they couldn't defeat the Aliens with their own forces. Robert is that one right mutation, a superman. There was a flaw in the calculations though, as a coldly logical being Robert has no reasons for destroying the Aliens. He doesn't have feeling, so he doesn't have compassion towards the humans to help them. Moreover, as the Invaders are easy for him to understand, he is rather on their side. He cares for Peter as much as he can, but his gratitude can't overcome his lack of desire to do something. After Peter's death, he can't feel emotions either but he feels some emptiness inside, which shows he has developed some warmth towards Peter. This emptiness has no reasons and no solutions, which puzzles Robert for the first time in his life. "}, {"worker_id": "101", "uid": "4991ed96ed744108a19c0d35dc2b278d", "response_text": "Robert is the final embryo that Peter allows to develop on The Avenger. He has spent his entire life on the ship with Peter, and has absorbed knowledge through him for years. Consequently, and in tandem with the cosmic ray mutations, Robert's brain is superior and advanced, with the ability to solve any problem and think with perfect logic. Because of his advanced knowledge, Robert is unable to feel emotions, including love, hate, and fear. This leads Robert to not understand the mission that Peter has set out for him, and he refuses despite his intelligence."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "72390ad4618043a38ee6f05e56c34f24", "response_text": "Robert is the embryo that Peter selected to raise on the Avenger ship. He was deemed as having the best likelihood of successfully fighting against the Invaders due to his mutations. Unfortunately, he does not agree to complete the mission he was destined to complete. Peter describes him.  as being a superman as he is able to solve complex problems faster than even computers. Physically he is described as having talons. Mentally, he is coldly logical. He does experience emotions the same way as humans and does show loyalty to the human race. He does not understand nor like Peter’s reaction to the news that he will not be carrying out the mission to save Earth. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51129", "uid": "789a52aefc0c4b21a3192d97506074c2", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "A Gift From Earth\n \n \n By MANLY BANISTER\n \n Illustrated by KOSSIN\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n Except for transportation, it was absolutely free ... but how much would the freight cost?\n \n\n \n \"It is an outrage,\" said Koltan of the House of Masur, \"that the Earthmen land among the Thorabians!\"\n \n Zotul, youngest of the Masur brothers, stirred uneasily. Personally, he was in favor of the coming of the Earthmen to the world of Zur.\n \n At the head of the long, shining table sat old Kalrab Masur, in his dotage, but still giving what he could of aid and comfort to the Pottery of Masur, even though nobody listened to him any more and he knew it. Around the table sat the six brothers—Koltan, eldest and Director of the Pottery; Morvan, his vice-chief; Singula, their treasurer; Thendro, sales manager; Lubiosa, export chief; and last in the rank of age, Zotul, who was responsible for affairs of design.\n \n \"Behold, my sons,\" said Kalrab, stroking his scanty beard. \"What are these Earthmen to worry about? Remember the clay. It is our strength and our fortune. It is the muscle and bone of our trade. Earthmen may come and Earthmen may go, but clay goes on forever ... and with it, the fame and fortune of the House of Masur.\"\n \n \"It is a damned imposition,\" agreed Morvan, ignoring his father's philosophical attitude. \"They could have landed just as easily here in Lor.\"\n \n \"The Thorabians will lick up the gravy,\" said Singula, whose mind ran rather to matters of financial aspect, \"and leave us the grease.\"\n \n By this, he seemed to imply that the Thorabians would rob the Earthmen, which the Lorians would not. The truth was that all on Zur were panting to get their hands on that marvelous ship, which was all of metal, a very scarce commodity on Zur, worth billions of ken.\n \n \n\n \n Lubiosa, who had interests in Thorabia, and many agents there, kept his own counsel. His people were active in the matter and that was enough for him. He would report when the time was ripe.\n \n \"Doubtless,\" said Zotul unexpectedly, for the youngest at a conference was expected to keep his mouth shut and applaud the decisions of his elders, \"the Earthmen used all the metal on their planet in building that ship. We cannot possibly bilk them of it; it is their only means of transport.\"\n \n Such frank expression of motive was unheard of, even in the secret conclave of conference. Only the speaker's youth could account for it. The speech drew scowls from the brothers and stern rebuke from Koltan.\n \n \"When your opinion is wanted, we will ask you for it. Meantime, remember your position in the family.\"\n \n Zotul bowed his head meekly, but he burned with resentment.\n \n \"Listen to the boy,\" said the aged father. \"There is more wisdom in his head than in all the rest of you. Forget the Earthmen and think only of the clay.\"\n \n Zotul did not appreciate his father's approval, for it only earned him a beating as soon as the old man went to bed. It was a common enough thing among the brothers Masur, as among everybody, to be frustrated in their desires. However, they had Zotul to take it out upon, and they did.\n \n Still smarting, Zotul went back to his designing quarters and thought about the Earthmen. If it was impossible to hope for much in the way of metal from the Earthmen, what could one get from them? If he could figure this problem out, he might rise somewhat in the estimation of his brothers. That wouldn't take him out of the rank of scapegoat, of course, but the beatings might become fewer and less severe.\n \n \n\n \n By and by, the Earthmen came to Lor, flying through the air in strange metal contraptions. They paraded through the tile-paved streets of the city, marveled here, as they had in Thorabia, at the buildings all of tile inside and out, and made a great show of themselves for all the people to see. Speeches were made through interpreters, who had much too quickly learned the tongue of the aliens; hence these left much to be desired in the way of clarity, though their sincerity was evident.\n \n The Earthmen were going to do great things for the whole world of Zur. It required but the cooperation—an excellent word, that—of all Zurians, and many blessings would rain down from the skies. This, in effect, was what the Earthmen had to say. Zotul felt greatly cheered, for it refuted the attitude of his brothers without earning him a whaling for it.\n \n There was also some talk going around about agreements made between the Earthmen and officials of the Lorian government, but you heard one thing one day and another the next. Accurate reporting, much less a newspaper, was unknown on Zur.\n \n Finally, the Earthmen took off in their great, shining ship. Obviously, none had succeeded in chiseling them out of it, if, indeed, any had tried. The anti-Earthmen Faction—in any culture complex, there is always an \"anti\" faction to protest any movement of endeavor—crowed happily that the Earthmen were gone for good, and a good thing, too.\n \n Such jubilation proved premature, however. One day, a fleet of ships arrived and after they had landed all over the planet, Zur was practically acrawl with Earthmen.\n \n Immediately, the Earthmen established what they called\n\"corporations\"—Zurian trading companies under terrestrial control. The object of the visit was trade.\n \n In spite of the fact that a terrestrial ship had landed at every Zurian city of major and minor importance, and all in a single day, it took some time for the news to spread.\n \n The first awareness Zotul had was that, upon coming home from the pottery one evening, he found his wife Lania proudly brandishing an aluminum pot at him.\n \n \"What is that thing?\" he asked curiously.\n \n \"A pot. I bought it at the market.\"\n \n \"Did you now? Well, take it back. Am I made of money that you spend my substance for some fool's product of precious metal? Take it back, I say!\"\n \n \n\n \n The pretty young wife laughed at him. \"Up to your ears in clay, no wonder you hear nothing of news! The pot is very cheap. The Earthmen are selling them everywhere. They're much better than our old clay pots; they're light and easy to handle and they don't break when dropped.\"\n \n \"What good is it?\" asked Zotul, interested. \"How will it hold heat, being so light?\"\n \n \"The Earthmen don't cook as we do,\" she explained patiently. \"There is a paper with each pot that explains how it is used. And you will have to design a new ceramic stove for me to use the pots on.\"\n \n \"Don't be idiotic! Do you suppose Koltan would agree to produce a new type of stove when the old has sold well for centuries? Besides, why do you need a whole new stove for one little pot?\"\n \n \"A dozen pots. They come in sets and are cheaper that way. And Koltan will have to produce the new stove because all the housewives are buying these pots and there will be a big demand for it. The Earthman said so.\"\n \n \"He did, did he? These pots are only a fad. You will soon enough go back to cooking with your old ones.\"\n \n \"The Earthman took them in trade—one reason why the new ones are so cheap. There isn't a pot in the house but these metal ones, and you will have to design and produce a new stove if you expect me to use them.\"\n \n After he had beaten his wife thoroughly for her foolishness, Zotul stamped off in a rage and designed a new ceramic stove, one that would accommodate the terrestrial pots very well.\n \n And Koltan put the model into production.\n \n \"Orders already are pouring in like mad,\" he said the next day. \"It was wise of you to foresee it and have the design ready. Already, I am sorry for thinking as I did about the Earthmen. They really intend to do well by us.\"\n \n The kilns of the Pottery of Masur fired day and night to keep up with the demand for the new porcelain stoves. In three years, more than a million had been made and sold by the Masurs alone, not counting the hundreds of thousands of copies turned out by competitors in every land.\n \n \n\n \n In the meantime, however, more things than pots came from Earth. One was a printing press, the like of which none on Zur had ever dreamed. This, for some unknown reason and much to the disgust of the Lorians, was set up in Thorabia. Books and magazines poured from it in a fantastic stream. The populace fervidly brushed up on its scanty reading ability and bought everything available, overcome by the novelty of it. Even Zotul bought a book—a primer in the Lorian language—and learned how to read and write. The remainder of the brothers Masur, on the other hand, preferred to remain in ignorance.\n \n Moreover, the Earthmen brought miles of copper wire—more than enough in value to buy out the governorship of any country on Zur—and set up telegraph lines from country to country and continent to continent. Within five years of the first landing of the Earthmen, every major city on the globe had a printing press, a daily newspaper, and enjoyed the instantaneous transmission of news via telegraph. And the business of the House of Masur continued to look up.\n \n \"As I have always said from the beginning,\" chortled Director Koltan,\n\"this coming of the Earthmen had been a great thing for us, and especially for the House of Masur.\"\n \n \"You didn't think so at first,\" Zotul pointed out, and was immediately sorry, for Koltan turned and gave him a hiding, single-handed, for his unthinkable impertinence.\n \n It would do no good, Zotul realized, to bring up the fact that their production of ceramic cooking pots had dropped off to about two per cent of its former volume. Of course, profits on the line of new stoves greatly overbalanced the loss, so that actually they were ahead; but their business was now dependent upon the supply of the metal pots from Earth.\n \n About this time, plastic utensils—dishes, cups, knives, forks—made their appearance on Zur. It became very stylish to eat with the newfangled paraphernalia ... and very cheap, too, because for everything they sold, the Earthmen always took the old ware in trade. What they did with the stuff had been hard to believe at first. They destroyed it, which proved how valueless it really was.\n \n The result of the new flood was that in the following year, the sale of Masur ceramic table service dropped to less than a tenth.\n \n \n\n \n Trembling with excitement at this news from their book-keeper, Koltan called an emergency meeting. He even routed old Kalrab out of his senile stupor for the occasion, on the off chance that the old man might still have a little wit left that could be helpful.\n \n \"Note,\" Koltan announced in a shaky voice, \"that the Earthmen undermine our business,\" and he read off the figures.\n \n \"Perhaps,\" said Zotul, \"it is a good thing also, as you said before, and will result in something even better for us.\"\n \n Koltan frowned, and Zotul, in fear of another beating, instantly subsided.\n \n \"They are replacing our high-quality ceramic ware with inferior terrestrial junk,\" Koltan went on bitterly. \"It is only the glamor that sells it, of course, but before the people get the shine out of their eyes, we can be ruined.\"\n \n The brothers discussed the situation for an hour, and all the while Father Kalrab sat and pulled his scanty whiskers. Seeing that they got nowhere with their wrangle, he cleared his throat and spoke up.\n \n \"My sons, you forget it is not the Earthmen themselves at the bottom of your trouble, but the things of Earth. Think of the telegraph and the newspaper, how these spread news of every shipment from Earth. The merchandise of the Earthmen is put up for sale by means of these newspapers, which also are the property of the Earthmen. The people are intrigued by these advertisements, as they are called, and flock to buy. Now, if you would pull a tooth from the kwi that bites you, you might also have advertisements of your own.\"\n \n Alas for that suggestion, no newspaper would accept advertising from the House of Masur; all available space was occupied by the advertisements of the Earthmen.\n \n In their dozenth conference since that first and fateful one, the brothers Masur decided upon drastic steps. In the meantime, several things had happened. For one, old Kalrab had passed on to his immortal rest, but this made no real difference. For another, the Earthmen had procured legal authority to prospect the planet for metals, of which they found a good deal, but they told no one on Zur of this. What they did mention was the crude oil and natural gas they discovered in the underlayers of the planet's crust. Crews of Zurians, working under supervision of the Earthmen, laid pipelines from the gas and oil regions to every major and minor city on Zur.\n \n \n\n \n By the time ten years had passed since the landing of the first terrestrial ship, the Earthmen were conducting a brisk business in gas-fired ranges, furnaces and heaters ... and the Masur stove business was gone. Moreover, the Earthmen sold the Zurians their own natural gas at a nice profit and everybody was happy with the situation except the brothers Masur.\n \n The drastic steps of the brothers applied, therefore, to making an energetic protest to the governor of Lor.\n \n At one edge of the city, an area had been turned over to the Earthmen for a spaceport, and the great terrestrial spaceships came to it and departed from it at regular intervals. As the heirs of the House of Masur walked by on their way to see the governor, Zotul observed that much new building was taking place and wondered what it was.\n \n \"Some new devilment of the Earthmen, you can be sure,\" said Koltan blackly.\n \n In fact, the Earthmen were building an assembly plant for radio receiving sets. The ship now standing on its fins upon the apron was loaded with printed circuits, resistors, variable condensers and other radio parts. This was Earth's first step toward flooding Zur with the natural follow-up in its campaign of advertising—radio programs—with commercials.\n \n Happily for the brothers, they did not understand this at the time or they would surely have gone back to be buried in their own clay.\n \n \"I think,\" the governor told them, \"that you gentlemen have not paused to consider the affair from all angles. You must learn to be modern—keep up with the times! We heads of government on Zur are doing all in our power to aid the Earthmen and facilitate their bringing a great, new culture that can only benefit us. See how Zur has changed in ten short years! Imagine the world of tomorrow! Why, do you know they are even bringing autos to Zur!\"\n \n The brothers were fascinated with the governor's description of these hitherto unheard-of vehicles.\n \n \"It only remains,\" concluded the governor, \"to build highways, and the Earthmen are taking care of that.\"\n \n At any rate, the brothers Masur were still able to console themselves that they had their tile business. Tile served well enough for houses and street surfacing; what better material could be devised for the new highways the governor spoke of? There was a lot of money to be made yet.\n \n \n\n \n Radio stations went up all over Zur and began broadcasting. The people bought receiving sets like mad. The automobiles arrived and highways were constructed.\n \n The last hope of the brothers was dashed. The Earthmen set up plants and began to manufacture Portland cement.\n \n You could build a house of concrete much cheaper than with tile. Of course, since wood was scarce on Zur, it was no competition for either tile or concrete. Concrete floors were smoother, too, and the stuff made far better road surfacing.\n \n The demand for Masur tile hit rock bottom.\n \n The next time the brothers went to see the governor, he said, \"I cannot handle such complaints as yours. I must refer you to the Merchandising Council.\"\n \n \"What is that?\" asked Koltan.\n \n \"It is an Earthman association that deals with complaints such as yours. In the matter of material progress, we must expect some strain in the fabric of our culture. Machinery has been set up to deal with it. Here is their address; go air your troubles to them.\"\n \n The business of a formal complaint was turned over by the brothers to Zotul. It took three weeks for the Earthmen to get around to calling him in, as a representative of the Pottery of Masur, for an interview.\n \n All the brothers could no longer be spared from the plant, even for the purpose of pressing a complaint. Their days of idle wealth over, they had to get in and work with the clay with the rest of the help.\n \n Zotul found the headquarters of the Merchandising Council as indicated on their message. He had not been this way in some time, but was not surprised to find that a number of old buildings had been torn down to make room for the concrete Council House and a roomy parking lot, paved with something called \"blacktop\" and jammed with an array of glittering new automobiles.\n \n An automobile was an expense none of the brothers could afford, now that they barely eked a living from the pottery. Still, Zotul ached with desire at sight of so many shiny cars. Only a few had them and they were the envied ones of Zur.\n \n Kent Broderick, the Earthman in charge of the Council, shook hands jovially with Zotul. That alien custom conformed with, Zotul took a better look at his host. Broderick was an affable, smiling individual with genial laugh wrinkles at his eyes. A man of middle age, dressed in the baggy costume of Zur, he looked almost like a Zurian, except for an indefinite sense of alienness about him.\n \n \"Glad to have you call on us, Mr. Masur,\" boomed the Earthman, clapping Zotul on the back. \"Just tell us your troubles and we'll have you straightened out in no time.\"\n \n \n\n \n All the chill recriminations and arguments Zotul had stored for this occasion were dissipated in the warmth of the Earthman's manner.\n \n Almost apologetically, Zotul told of the encroachment that had been made upon the business of the Pottery of Masur.\n \n \"Once,\" he said formally, \"the Masur fortune was the greatest in the world of Zur. That was before my father, the famous Kalrab Masur—Divinity protect him—departed this life to collect his greater reward. He often told us, my father did, that the clay is the flesh and bones of our culture and our fortune. Now it has been shown how prone is the flesh to corruption and how feeble the bones. We are ruined, and all because of new things coming from Earth.\"\n \n Broderick stroked his shaven chin and looked sad. \"Why didn't you come to me sooner? This would never have happened. But now that it has, we're going to do right by you. That is the policy of Earth—always to do right by the customer.\"\n \n \"Divinity witness,\" Zorin said, \"that we ask only compensation for damages.\"\n \n Broderick shook his head. \"It is not possible to replace an immense fortune at this late date. As I said, you should have reported your trouble sooner. However, we can give you an opportunity to rebuild. Do you own an automobile?\"\n \n \"No.\"\n \n \"A gas range? A gas-fired furnace? A radio?\"\n \n Zotul had to answer no to all except the radio. \"My wife Lania likes the music,\" he explained. \"I cannot afford the other things.\"\n \n Broderick clucked sympathetically. One who could not afford the bargain-priced merchandise of Earth must be poor indeed.\n \n \"To begin with,\" he said, \"I am going to make you a gift of all these luxuries you do not have.\" As Zotul made to protest, he cut him off with a wave of his hand. \"It is the least we can do for you. Pick a car from the lot outside. I will arrange to have the other things delivered and installed in your home.\"\n \n \"To receive gifts,\" said Zotul, \"incurs an obligation.\"\n \n \"None at all,\" beamed the Earthman cheerily. \"Every item is given to you absolutely free—a gift from the people of Earth. All we ask is that you pay the freight charges on the items. Our purpose is not to make profit, but to spread technology and prosperity throughout the Galaxy. We have already done well on numerous worlds, but working out the full program takes time.\"\n \n He chuckled deeply. \"We of Earth have a saying about one of our extremely slow-moving native animals. We say, 'Slow is the tortoise, but sure.' And so with us. Our goal is a long-range one, with the motto, 'Better times with better merchandise.'\"\n \n \n\n \n The engaging manner of the man won Zotul's confidence. After all, it was no more than fair to pay transportation.\n \n He said, \"How much does the freight cost?\"\n \n Broderick told him.\n \n \"It may seem high,\" said the Earthman, \"but remember that Earth is sixty-odd light-years away. After all, we are absorbing the cost of the merchandise. All you pay is the freight, which is cheap, considering the cost of operating an interstellar spaceship.\"\n \n \"Impossible,\" said Zotul drably. \"Not I and all my brothers together have so much money any more.\"\n \n \"You don't know us of Earth very well yet, but you will. I offer you credit!\"\n \n \"What is that?\" asked Zotul skeptically.\n \n \"It is how the poor are enabled to enjoy all the luxuries of the rich,\" said Broderick, and went on to give a thumbnail sketch of the involutions and devolutions of credit, leaving out some angles that might have had a discouraging effect.\n \n On a world where credit was a totally new concept, it was enchanting. Zotul grasped at the glittering promise with avidity. \"What must I do to get credit?\"\n \n \"Just sign this paper,\" said Broderick, \"and you become part of our Easy Payment Plan.\"\n \n Zotul drew back. \"I have five brothers. If I took all these things for myself and nothing for them, they would beat me black and blue.\"\n \n \"Here.\" Broderick handed him a sheaf of chattel mortgages. \"Have each of your brothers sign one of these, then bring them back to me. That is all there is to it.\"\n \n It sounded wonderful. But how would the brothers take it? Zotul wrestled with his misgivings and the misgivings won.\n \n \"I will talk it over with them,\" he said. \"Give me the total so I will have the figures.\"\n \n The total was more than it ought to be by simple addition. Zotul pointed this out politely.\n \n \"Interest,\" Broderick explained. \"A mere fifteen per cent. After all, you get the merchandise free. The transportation company has to be paid, so another company loans you the money to pay for the freight. This small extra sum pays the lending company for its trouble.\"\n \n \"I see.\" Zotul puzzled over it sadly. \"It is too much,\" he said. \"Our plant doesn't make enough money for us to meet the payments.\"\n \n \"I have a surprise for you,\" smiled Broderick. \"Here is a contract. You will start making ceramic parts for automobile spark plugs and certain parts for radios and gas ranges. It is our policy to encourage local manufacture to help bring prices down.\"\n \n \"We haven't the equipment.\"\n \n \"We will equip your plant,\" beamed Broderick. \"It will require only a quarter interest in your plant itself, assigned to our terrestrial company.\"\n \n \n\n \n Zotul, anxious to possess the treasures promised by the Earthman, won over his brothers. They signed with marks and gave up a quarter interest in the Pottery of Masur. They rolled in the luxuries of Earth. These, who had never known debt before, were in it up to their ears.\n \n The retooled plant forged ahead and profits began to look up, but the Earthmen took a fourth of them as their share in the industry.\n \n For a year, the brothers drove their shiny new cars about on the new concrete highways the Earthmen had built. From pumps owned by a terrestrial company, they bought gas and oil that had been drawn from the crust of Zur and was sold to the Zurians at a magnificent profit. The food they ate was cooked in Earthly pots on Earth-type gas ranges, served up on metal plates that had been stamped out on Earth. In the winter, they toasted their shins before handsome gas grates, though they had gas-fired central heating.\n \n About this time, the ships from Earth brought steam-powered electric generators. Lines went up, power was generated, and a flood of electrical gadgets and appliances hit the market. For some reason, batteries for the radios were no longer available and everybody had to buy the new radios. And who could do without a radio in this modern age?\n \n The homes of the brothers Masur blossomed on the Easy Payment Plan. They had refrigerators, washers, driers, toasters, grills, electric fans, air-conditioning equipment and everything else Earth could possibly sell them.\n \n \"We will be forty years paying it all off,\" exulted Zotul, \"but meantime we have the things and aren't they worth it?\"\n \n But at the end of three years, the Earthmen dropped their option. The Pottery of Masur had no more contracts. Business languished. The Earthmen, explained Broderick, had built a plant of their own because it was so much more efficient—and to lower prices, which was Earth's unswerving policy, greater and greater efficiency was demanded. Broderick was very sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do.\n \n The introduction of television provided a further calamity. The sets were delicate and needed frequent repairs, hence were costly to own and maintain. But all Zurians who had to keep up with the latest from Earth had them. Now it was possible not only to hear about things of Earth, but to see them as they were broadcast from the video tapes.\n \n The printing plants that turned out mortgage contracts did a lush business.\n \n \n\n \n For the common people of Zur, times were good everywhere. In a decade and a half, the Earthmen had wrought magnificent changes on this backward world. As Broderick had said, the progress of the tortoise was slow, but it was extremely sure.\n \n The brothers Masur got along in spite of dropped options. They had less money and felt the pinch of their debts more keenly, but television kept their wives and children amused and furnished an anodyne for the pangs of impoverishment.\n \n The pottery income dropped to an impossible low, no matter how Zotul designed and the brothers produced. Their figurines and religious ikons were a drug on the market. The Earthmen made them of plastic and sold them for less.\n \n The brothers, unable to meet the Payments that were not so Easy any more, looked up Zotul and cuffed him around reproachfully.\n \n \"You got us into this,\" they said, emphasizing their bitterness with fists. \"Go see Broderick. Tell him we are undone and must have some contracts to continue operating.\"\n \n Nursing bruises, Zotul unhappily went to the Council House again. Mr. Broderick was no longer with them, a suave assistant informed him. Would he like to see Mr. Siwicki instead? Zotul would.\n \n Siwicki was tall, thin, dark and somber-looking. There was even a hint of toughness about the set of his jaw and the hardness of his glance.\n \n \"So you can't pay,\" he said, tapping his teeth with a pencil. He looked at Zotul coldly. \"It is well you have come to us instead of making it necessary for us to approach you through the courts.\"\n \n \"I don't know what you mean,\" said Zotul.\n \n \"If we have to sue, we take back the merchandise and everything attached to them. That means you would lose your houses, for they are attached to the furnaces. However, it is not as bad as that—yet. We will only require you to assign the remaining three-quarters of your pottery to us.\"\n \n The brothers, when they heard of this, were too stunned to think of beating Zotul, by which he assumed he had progressed a little and was somewhat comforted.\n \n \"To fail,\" said Koltan soberly, \"is not a Masur attribute. Go to the governor and tell him what we think of this business. The House of Masur has long supported the government with heavy taxes. Now it is time for the government to do something for us.\"\n \n \n\n \n The governor's palace was jammed with hurrying people, a scene of confusion that upset Zotul. The clerk who took his application for an interview was, he noticed only vaguely, a young Earthwoman. It was remarkable that he paid so little attention, for the female terrestrials were picked for physical assets that made Zurian men covetous and Zurian women envious.\n \n \"The governor will see you,\" she said sweetly. \"He has been expecting you.\"\n \n \"Me?\" marveled Zotul.\n \n She ushered him into the magnificent private office of the governor of Lor. The man behind the desk stood up, extended his hand with a friendly smile.\n \n \"Come in, come in! I'm glad to see you again.\"\n \n Zotul stared blankly. This was not the governor. This was Broderick, the Earthman.\n \n \"I—I came to see the governor,\" he said in confusion.\n \n Broderick nodded agreeably. \"I am the governor and I am well acquainted with your case, Mr. Masur. Shall we talk it over? Please sit down.\"\n \n \"I don't understand. The Earthmen....\" Zotul paused, coloring. \"We are about to lose our plant.\"\n \n \"You were about to say that the Earthmen are taking your plant away from you. That is true. Since the House of Masur was the largest and richest on Zur, it has taken a long time—the longest of all, in fact.\"\n \n \"What do you mean?\"\n \n \"Yours is the last business on Zur to be taken over by us. We have bought you out.\"\n \n \"Our government....\"\n \n \"Your governments belong to us, too,\" said Broderick. \"When they could not pay for the roads, the telegraphs, the civic improvements, we took them over, just as we are taking you over.\"\n \n \"You mean,\" exclaimed Zotul, aghast, \"that you Earthmen own everything on Zur?\"\n \n \"Even your armies.\"\n \n \"But why ?\"\n \n \n\n \n Broderick clasped his hands behind back, went to the window and stared down moodily into the street.\n \n \"You don't know what an overcrowded world is like,\" he said. \"A street like this, with so few people and vehicles on it, would be impossible on Earth.\"\n \n \"But it's mobbed,\" protested Zotul. \"It gave me a headache.\"\n \n \"And to us it's almost empty. The pressure of population on Earth has made us range the Galaxy for places to put our extra people. The only habitable planets, unfortunately, are populated ones. We take the least populous worlds and—well, buy them out and move in.\"\n \n \"And after that?\"\n \n Broderick smiled gently. \"Zur will grow. Our people will intermarry with yours. The future population of Zur will be neither true Zurians nor true Earthmen, but a mixture of both.\"\n \n Zotul sat in silent thought. \"But you did not have to buy us out. You had the power to conquer us, even to destroy us. The whole planet could have been yours alone.\" He stopped in alarm. \"Or am I suggesting an idea that didn't occur to you?\"\n \n \"No,\" said Broderick, his usually smiling face almost pained with memory. \"We know the history of conquest all too well. Our method causes more distress than we like to inflict, but it's better—and more sure—than war and invasion by force. Now that the unpleasant job is finished, we can repair the dislocations.\"\n \n \"At last I understand what you said about the tortoise.\"\n \n \"Slow but sure.\" Broderick beamed again and clapped Zotul on the shoulder. \"Don't worry. You'll have your job back, the same as always, but you'll be working for us ... until the children of Earth and Zur are equal in knowledge and therefore equal partners. That's why we had to break down your caste system.\"\n \n Zotul's eyes widened. \"And that is why my brothers did not beat me when I failed!\"\n \n \"Of course. Are you ready now to take the assignment papers for you and your brothers to sign?\"\n \n \"Yes,\" said Zotul. \"I am ready.\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "85ccc303499c42b4bb9cdcbb2e525a3c", "response_text": "The House of Masur is a family business in Zur, run by Koltan and his six sons. The business specializes in pottery and clay manufacturing for Zur. The family gathers as they deliberate the upcoming arrival of Earthmen. Some of the brothers express frustration that the Earthmen will be landing among the Thorabians rather than in Zur, disrupting their plan to steal the precious, scarce metals off their ship. Zotul, the youngest of the brothers, discourages the plan, saying that the Earthmen's ship is their only way of transport. After the meeting, Zotul ponders what other benefits the Earthmen could serve. The Earthmen eventually arrive at Zur, parading the streets and making speeches, and leaving shortly after. They return with multiple ships and establish corporations all over Zur. One day, Zotul's wife brings home a metal pot, which she had bought from Earthmen; she tells him that they are high in demand and that a new type of stove is essential to use them. Zotul protests, but later designs a ceramic stove, which becomes a successful development in their business. Earthmen continue introducing more technology to Zur, including a printing press and telegraphs. Zotul notes internally that though the business has made profit, it is dependent upon the pots from Earth. The business quickly begins declining, with sales dropping. They attempt to advertise their business, but advertisement has become fully occupied by Earth. After ten years, during which Koltan has passed on, the Masur business has dwindled. The brothers decide to go to the governor of Lor, who tells them that the developments are all beneficial, informing them of a new production of highways. The brothers are optimistic that they would be able to use their clay for the roads, but Earthmen begin using cement. The governor then refers the brothers to Earth's Merchandising Council, where Zotul meets Kent Broderick, where he expresses sympathy about the status of the Masur business and offers them the luxuries brought by Earthmen, completely free except for the cost of freight. The cost, however, is more than the brothers could ever afford, and so Broderick sets them up with a credit system, as well as a contract for the family to supply Earthmen with ceramic parts. The brothers enjoy their luxury, but it is short lived, as their contract expires and they find themselves in debt. Zotul then revisits the governor, who ends up being Broderick. Broderick informs Zotul that Earth has bought them, and every business in Zur, out, and that they own everything. Broderick tells Zotul that the family will work for Earth now, and that Earth will fully conquer Zur. "}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8eb731769bd14b73a580eda941e93a5a", "response_text": "The story is about a group of people on a planet called Zur. One day, they are visited by Earthmen who arrive in a ship made of valuable material. The Earthmen come with announcements that they only intend to provide the world of Zur with great things and that all will be well if the Zurian people cooperate. Soon, more Earthmen arrive on the planet. They land a ship in every city on Zur and begin trading basic items. When they trade, they take the Zurian version of their goods and destroy them. Zotul is forced to design new stoves for the new cookware. Zotul and his brothers are initially able to make a great profit selling their new ceramic stoves. \n\nThe Earthmen continue to bring new inventions that the Zurian population do not possess. They bring new communication devices like the printing press, then radios, and eventually television sets. Eventually, Zotul and his brother’s operations are unable to compete with the Earthmen’s goods. Their profits drop to abysmal levels in all of their industries. Zotul is told by his brothers to go make a formal complaint. He goes to the headquarters of the Merchandising Council where he meets Kent Broderick, the Earthman in charge of the Council. Broderick acts very nice to Zotul and appears to only have good intentions. Broderick promises to help Zotul and offers to give him many luxurious gifts that Zotul states he cannot afford. Broderick explains to Zotul that is of no issue and he can offer him credit. After only explaining the good parts of credit to Zotul, Zotul goes and convinces his brothers to sign up for the credit system. In addition, Broderick gives them a contract to manufacture some goods for the Earthmen. However, the contract does not last long and the Earthmen build their own plant. As a result, the House of Masur is unable to keep up with its debts. Zotul’s brothers express their anger and accuse Zotul of getting them into incredible poverty. In an effort to remedy the situation, Zotul goes to the Council House where he does not find Mr. Broderick but a man named Mr. Siwicki. Mr. Siwicki informs him that the Earthmen will repossess everything him and his brothers own if they do not pay their debts. Zotul’s brothers are so stunned by the news that they do not even beat him. In a last-ditch effort, Zotul goes to the governor’s palace for help. There he finds Broderick is now the governor. Broderick then informs Zotul that the Earthmen were slowly taking ownership of Zur away from the Zurian to then move in an attempt to peacefully take over the planet. The ultimate goal is to mix with the native population and then form a cohesive one. However, the Zurian caste system had to be first broken down. The story ends with Broderick asking if Zotul and his brothers are ready to willfully oblige to their assignments and Zotul replies yes. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "b9d52990ecdc4f82880d630fe95a5be4", "response_text": "\nKoltan of the House of Masur is furious that the Earthmen are coming to live amongst the Thorabians in the world of Zur while his brother, Zotul, is in favor of it. Kalrab Masur says that there is nothing to worry about because the Earthmen will eventually leave, but clay will go on forever. Morvan thinks that the Earthmen could have come to Lor, and Singula implies that the Thorabians would rob the Earthmen. Zotul tries to explain that they cannot take the Earthmen’s method of transport away from them, but the other brothers tell him to be quiet. The Earthmen arrive at Lor and are impressed with the city, and they communicate through interpreters. Some agreements between the Lorian government and the Earthmen are made. Although the anti-Earthmen Faction is happy that the Earthmen are gone, the visitors come back and establish corporations to engage in trade. When Zotul comes home, his wife Lania shows him an aluminum pot. She tells him that the Earthmen are selling these items cheap. She tells him that he will need to design a new ceramic stove for a dozen pots. He beats his wife but goes off to design the stove anyways; the Masurs begin to profit more than ever from the porcelain stoves. The Earthmen also bring other items such as the printing press, copper wire for telegraph lines, and plastic cutlery. The Masur family ceramics are slowly being replaced. Kalrab concludes that the items from Earth are the main reason.  The Earthmen begin to lay pipelines after the discovery of crude oil and natural gas. The Masur stove business is also gone after ten years; the brothers plan to protest to the governor of Lor. They see the Earthmen are building more structures, such as an assembly plant for radio receiving sets. The brothers want to rely on their tile business, but the Earthmen have begun manufacturing Portland cement. The governor is in support of the Earthmen, and they go to speak to Kent Broderick, who is in charge of the Merchandising Council. Broderick tells him that he will give the expensive Earth items to Zotul for the payment of freight charges on items. Broderick offers credit to him and his brothers as part of the Easy Payment Plan. All of the brothers sign. The brothers slowly go into debt, and the Earthmen build plants that cost lower to manufacture materials. They tell Zotul to speak with Broderick again, but Mr. Siwicki speaks to him instead and says that the brothers will need to assign the remaining three-quarters of their pottery. Koltan tells Zotul to see the governor, but the person is revealed to be Broderick. He says that they have taken over everything on Zur because Earth is too overcrowded. The future population will be a mixture of Zurians and Earthmen; he tells Zotul that he will have his job back but work for the Earthmen. Broderick then hands assignment papers for him and his brothers to sign. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "cd9119e7a4804f91ae5daa7572bb8971", "response_text": "The House of Masur owns a prosperous family business of pottery and consists of six brothers, each having their position in business according to their rank of age. The Earthmen come to the world of Zur, which enrages some members of the family. The younger brother, Zotul, is sympathetic to the Eartmen, but the youngest can’t speak up and he gets beaten. The Earthmen parade through Zur, proclaiming the intention to do great things and asking for cooperation. After a while, many more ships come from Earth to every Zurian city to establish \"corporations\" for trade. Zotul's wife buys a set of cheap aluminum pots at the market, which are being bought by all the housewives as they are better than those from clay. New pots require completely different stoves and Zotul has to design such. Koltan, the elder brother, puts the model into production as the demand is high. The Masurs flourish with the new business and depend on the metal pots from Earth, as the production of their own falls. The Earthmen keep introducing new things like telegraph lines and printing presses. The Earthmen find a great deal of metals, crude oil and natural gas, and sell it to the Zurians themselves. Further introduction of plastic utensils undermines the Masur's business completely. They head to the governor, who talks about the benefits of new culture and upcoming autos and highways. The Earthmen introduce cement and the hopes for tile business go down as well. The complaints are redirected to the Merchandising Council set by the Earthmen, where Zotul is met by Broderick. The man is sympathetic to the brothers’ poverty, but he can only grant Zotul a gas range, a gas-fired furnace and a car, a luxury only a few can afford and everyone envies. The goal of the Earthmen is to spread technology through the galaxy, so Broderick only asks Zotul to pay for the freight, which is a huge sum, and, therefore, can only be in credit for the family. Enchanted Zotul takes the credit papers for all his brothers to sign to get the same goods. Broderick also gives a contract for making ceramic parts for the cars, which will help the brothers pay off the credit. After signing the papers, the brothers enjoy the luxuries and receive one fourth of the ceramic profits. In three years the Earthmen cancel the contract, the family is poor and Zotul is forced to visit the council again as the Masurs can't pay. A new man threatens him with the court and asks to assign the rest of the business to the Earthmen. Zotul heads to the governor for support, but finds Broderick on his place, who tells the Masur's business is the last to be bought off. Earth is overcrowded, so the new planets are required to take over. Instead of painful wars, the Earthmen buy off other nations to work for them until both nations are equal and mixed. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Zotul and the rest of the brothers?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "85ccc303499c42b4bb9cdcbb2e525a3c", "response_text": "Each of the six brothers of the Masur business has their own specialty; a director, treasurer, vice-chief, sales manager, export chief, and Zotul, their designer. Despite their equal roles in the business, Zotul is the youngest brother, and for this reason is mistreated. In meetings and conferences, he is rarely allowed to speak without being scolded, and his input is never taken seriously. Zotul also experiences beatings by his brothers regularly. Even though Zotul experiences this treatment, the brothers still expect him to carry the weight of responsibilities for them, such as meeting with Broderick."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8eb731769bd14b73a580eda941e93a5a", "response_text": "Zotul and his 5 brothers have a hierarchal type of relationship. It does appear to be a loving nor welcoming familial relationship. Zotul is the youngest of his brothers and as tradition is expected to not talk unless spoken to and to enthusiastically agree with the decisions of his elders. Whenever Zotul does break these social traditions, he is physically beaten by his brothers. Zotul does not like the beatings but accepts them as another reality of his life. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "b9d52990ecdc4f82880d630fe95a5be4", "response_text": "Zotul and his brothers have a rocky relationship. Whenever the brothers are frustrated or upset, they beat him. They also tell him to stop speaking when his opinion is not needed. When it comes to business, however, the brothers get along. Koltan and Zotul work together to put the new ceramic stove into production. The brothers are also happy when Zotul brings them the papers to sign from Broderick, and they all enjoy the luxuries of the Easy Payment Plan. Whenever there is a problem, such as being unable to meet Payments, they will blame it all on Zotul and tell him to go deal with the problem. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "cd9119e7a4804f91ae5daa7572bb8971", "response_text": "The family is organized in a way of hierarchy, where age gives power. All of the brothers have positions and shares in business, also according to the age. As Zotul is the youngest, he has the least rank and importance. During the meetings he is supposed to listen with admiration to the eldest. He can't share his thoughts when he is not asked to. Otherwise, he is beaten badly, which scares him. He is also given all the orders and is used as a negotiator. He does all the time-consuming tasks like to complain. "}]}, {"question_text": "Where does the story take place?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "85ccc303499c42b4bb9cdcbb2e525a3c", "response_text": "The story takes place in Zur, a region within Lor, on a foreign planet. There is a neighboring region, Thorabia, often seen as a rival. Zur is initially a mellow city, made of clay and tile. However, once Earth begins overtaking Zur, the city becomes more crowded and filled with large, corporate buildings, made of cement and metal. Much of the story occurs within the office of the Masur family business, as well as the governor's building, and the office of the Merchandising Council."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8eb731769bd14b73a580eda941e93a5a", "response_text": "The story takes place on the world of Zur. On Zur, there are many different cities. At the beginning of the story, the House of Masur brothers and their father are sitting around a table discussing the Earthmen and their valuable ship. The city that the House of Masur resides in is known as Lor. The primary setting of the story is different locations or cities on the world of Zur. The Earthmen that visit take trips from Earth on their ships through space and reach Zur after multiple light-years of travel. The story happens over the course of ten place years. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "b9d52990ecdc4f82880d630fe95a5be4", "response_text": "The story takes place on the planet of Zur. The brothers live in the city of Lor, while one of their rival cities is Thorabia. The buildings in the city are all made of tile, and the ground is paved with tile too. Many of the appliances used by the citizens are made out of ceramic. When the Earthmen come, they fly in strange metal contraptions. Ten years later, one area of the city has been turned into a spaceport for Earthmen. There are also new plants opening up for radio receiving sets and cement. Pipelines are also added, connecting every major and minor area on the planet. The governor’s palace is located in the city as well. Eventually, all of the tiles are replaced with concrete because it is cheaper. Old buildings are torn down to make room for the concrete Council House and a roomy parking lot. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "cd9119e7a4804f91ae5daa7572bb8971", "response_text": "The story takes place on the planet of Zur, especially a city called Lor. It begins at the long, shining table of the Masur family. The family is wealthy and their pottery business is prosperous. The whole planet is uncivilized and lives in a hierarchical system. Soon a large metal ship comes from Earth and parades through the city, which stuns the local people. Many more ships come soon and step by step introduce the new technologies. At first, the markets are overflowed by aluminum pots, bought by every housewife. One of those appears in Zotul's house, and he designs a new stove for it, which is soon produced by the family business. Newspapers appear in every house, then telegraphs, radio, autos and ,any other things. The city gets urbanized and the people become poor as they try to obtain all the new technologies. Concrete houses are built, gas and metals are found. Soon the Earthmen buy off all the businesses and the planet starts reminding Earth."}]}, {"question_text": "How are the Earthmen able to expand on Zur?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "85ccc303499c42b4bb9cdcbb2e525a3c", "response_text": "The Earthmen first visit Zur as a small group, exploring the city and giving speeches declaring future prosperity for Zur. They return shortly after with more people, and establish corporations and a trade business. The Earthmen begin with small products, metal pots, but other businesses soon have to accommodate to Earth's goods. Earth quickly earns profit, with many Zurian businesses dependent on their production. They begin establishing more advanced forms of technology, such as printing, radio, and automobiles. The people of Zur are fascinated, and business booms even more. Eventually, Zur is completely remodeled with Earth products and services, driving other businesses to failure and resulting in the overtaking of the city."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8eb731769bd14b73a580eda941e93a5a", "response_text": "The Earthmen start by establishing small trading visits with the Zurian people. Once they have gained their trust in trade, they heavily accelerate the number of goods they trade. They establish themselves in every city on Zur to increase their visibility. They bring new communication methods such as the printing press, newspapers, radios, and television sets – all of which they control the supply. They build projects on the planet of Zur, like highways. They start their own manufacturing operations, successfully competing against and outpricing the native Zurian manufacturing operations. In addition, they lure the populace to be tempted by the new shiny luxury goods they bring and convince the Zurians to sign contracts that put them in debt that they can never realistically pay. They slowly but assuredly took over all of the industries on Zur so that they would have full economic control of the populace. Then they take over the leadership positions on the planet in another angle to obtain full control. The methods of the Earthmen is to ensure that the Zurians are either in debt to them, under their control, or how to work for them to survive. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "b9d52990ecdc4f82880d630fe95a5be4", "response_text": "The Earthmen are able to expand to Zur through advertising and selling their products. After signing some agreements, the Earthmen begin importing their materials to Zur. The Earthmen begin bringing products such as aluminum pots, but they eventually move onto even grander things such as the printing press. The purpose of this is to not only spread knowledge but also provide more means of advertising for their products. Eventually, they begin to set up radio stations to broadcast their products even more. Gas-fired ranges, furnaces, heaters, and later cars all drive many of the old ways of Zurian life to the ground. Broderick even tells Zotul that their goal is to buy out all of the companies and eventually become the ruling government on Zur. "}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "cd9119e7a4804f91ae5daa7572bb8971", "response_text": "From the beginning, the Earthmen put themselves as friendly mentors, willing to share their knowledge. The newly introduced goods are cheap and much better than the old ones. It disposes the Zurians towards the kind newcomers. The newspapers and telegraphs are free and gain popularity, while they advertise Earth goods all through the planet. As the time goes by, the Earthmen bring in more expensive and advanced technologies like autos, TVs, radios. People become dependent on those technologies, and as they break, they need to buy the new ones, everyone dreams of luxury cars, etc. At the same time the local businesses fail and poverty approaches. To be able to buy the new technologies, the Zurians get credits and work for the Earthmen to pay them off. Then the contracts are cancelled and the people have to sell their businesses. Therefore, the Earthmen gain control over the whole planet. "}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to Broderick in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "101", "uid": "85ccc303499c42b4bb9cdcbb2e525a3c", "response_text": "Broderick is an Earthman in charge of the Merchandising Council. He first meets with Zotul and hears his complaints about the failure of the Masur business due to Earth's expansion. Broderick, putting on a guise of sympathy, offers Zotul luxuries to enjoy with his family, in return for credit and their production of ceramics for automobiles. Broderick later moves up in hierarchy and becomes the governor of Zur, achieving power over all affairs. He meets Zotul again and gets the Masur family to work completely for him."}, {"worker_id": "104", "uid": "8eb731769bd14b73a580eda941e93a5a", "response_text": "Kent Broderick, an Earthman that was the head of the Council, meets Zotul at the headquarters of the Merchandising Council. He is very cordial and enthusiastic when he meets Zotul who has come to complain about the lost profits his family has experienced. Broderick communicates to Zotul that he sincerely wants to help him and Zotul would have brought the issue to his attention sooner. He gives Zotul and his brother contracts stating they the Earthmen will use their facility for some of their manufacturing purposes. This works out really well for the House of Masur until the Earthmen eventually build their own facility and manufacture the same product but in a cheaper manner, undercutting all profits the House of Masur could make. Even further, Broderick gets Zotul and his brothers to voluntarily go into debt so that they could own the luxurious items that the Earthmen were bringing to Zur. Eventually, Broderick becomes governor of Zur. When Zotul visits the governor’s palace and he sees Broderick, Broderick explains to him the purpose of the Earthmen’s actions. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "b9d52990ecdc4f82880d630fe95a5be4", "response_text": "\nKent Broderick starts off as an Earthman in charge of the Merchandising Council. He offers Zotul and his brothers the Easy Payment Plan after expressing false sympathy for the situation that their business is in. He asks Zotul why the brothers did not come to him sooner for a solution and begins to offer the Earth goods that they do not own in return for them to pay for the freight shipping. He is able to successfully manipulate Zotul into falling for the scheme. Later, it is revealed that Broderick has become the new governor. He tells Zotul that everything belongs to the Earthmen now and the future Zurians will intermarry with the people from Earth. He also convinces Zotul that everything will go back to normal again, except they will be working for Earth. \n"}, {"worker_id": "105", "uid": "cd9119e7a4804f91ae5daa7572bb8971", "response_text": "At first, Broderick appears as the Earthmen in charge of the Merchandising council. He is friendly and warmly cheerful, he listens attentively to Zotul's complaints and is sympathetic. He seems to do all he can to help the family, and carefully explain the possibilities, illustrating them in the most enchanting details. He is a great seller and he convinces Zotul very soon to take the credit. When Zotul comes a couple years later, Broderick can do nothing to help and pretends to be sympathetic and sorry again. In the end, he becomes the governor of Lor. He is happy to explain the plan to Zotul and appears sincere in the end. Broderick directly tells that all those actions were parts of a plan to own Zur. Then he patiently explains the reasons against war and the future plan. Mentioning the war makes him look painful from some experience. In the end, he is smiling again and cheers up Zotul as the plan is huge but good."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51305", "uid": "411a0ad5de844886845225228d2738cb", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Confidence Game\n \n \n By JIM HARMON\n \n Illustrated by EPSTEIN\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n I admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or going—but I know that if I stuck to the old man, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner!\n \n\n \n Doc had this solemn human by the throat when I caught up with him.\n \n \"Tonight,\" Doc was saying in his old voice that was as crackled and important as parchment, \"tonight Man will reach the Moon. The golden Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. Tonight is the night when this is to happen.\"\n \n \"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure, up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the teeth!\"\n \n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose, one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled, but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n \n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame, layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side. One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the greasy collar of the human.\n \n \"I hope you'll forgive him, sir,\" I said, not meeting the man's eyes.\n\"He's my father and very old, as you can see.\" I laughed inside at the absurd, easy lie. \"Old events seem recent to him.\"\n \n The human nodded, Adam's apple jerking in the angry neon twilight.\n\"'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. But Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl. Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\"\n \n I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for all I knew.\n \n \n\n \n Martians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated Martians. They were aliens . They weren't men like Doc and me.\n \n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we kept getting closer each of the times.\n \n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked flophouse doors.\n \n The tubercular clerk looked up from the gaudy comics sections of one of those little tabloids that have the funnies a week in advance.\n \n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he said mechanically.\n \n \"We'll use one bed,\" I told him. \"I'll give you twenty cents.\" I felt the round hard quarter in my pocket, sweaty hand against sticky lining.\n \n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he played it back for me.\n \n Doc was quivering against me, his legs boneless.\n \n \"We can always make it over to the mission,\" I lied.\n \n The clerk turned his upper lip as if he were going to spit. \"Awright, since we ain't full up. In ad vance.\"\n \n I placed the quarter on the desk.\n \n \"Give me a nickel.\"\n \n The clerk's hand fell on the coin and slid it off into the unknown before I could move, what with holding up Doc.\n \n \"You've got your nerve,\" he said at me with a fine mist of dew. \"Had a quarter all along and yet you Martian me down to twenty cents.\" He saw the look on my face. \"I'll give you a room for the two bits. That's better'n a bed for twenty.\"\n \n I knew I was going to need that nickel. Desperately. I reached across the desk with my free hand and hauled the scrawny human up against the register hard. I'm not as strong in my hands as Doc, but I managed.\n \n \"Give me a nickel,\" I said.\n \n \"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n\"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n \n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble and that did scare me. I had to get him alone.\n \n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\n \n \n\n \n The room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.\n \n I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n \n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I didn't need to.\n \n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered, uncovered floor.\n \n It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it an unreal distortion.\n \n Doc began to mumble louder.\n \n I knew I had to move.\n \n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I moved.\n \n I was bent double, but I got from the floor to the chair and found my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They were suddenly distinguishable.\n \n \n\n \n \" Outsider ... Thoth ... Dyzan ... Seven ... Hsan ... Beyond Six, Seven, Eight ... Two boxes ... Ralston ... Richard Wentworth ... Jimmy Christopher ... Kent Allard ... Ayem ... Oh, are ... see ....\"\n \n \n\n \n His voice rose to a meaningless wail that stretched into non-existence. The pen slid across the scribbled face of the notebook and both dropped from my numb hands. But I knew. Somehow, inside me, I knew that these words were what I had been waiting for. They told everything I needed to know to become the most powerful man in the Solar Federation.\n \n That wasn't just an addict's dream. I knew who Doc was. When I got to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was.\n \n I remembered that he was somebody very important whose name and work I had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc.\n \n Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high screaming tenor. I had to get out and get some. But I didn't have a nickel. Still, I had to get some.\n \n I crawled to the door and raised myself by the knob, slick with greasy dirt. The door opened and shut—there was no lock. I shouldn't leave Doc alone, but I had to.\n \n He was starting to cry. He didn't always do that.\n \n I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n \n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his lumpy skull.\n \n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)\n \n I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\n \n \n\n \n She was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back, drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the upper half of her legs.\n \n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that. It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n \n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they think you are blotto.\n \n \"Ma'am, could you help a man who's not had work?\" I kept my eyes down. I couldn't look a human in the eye and ask for help. \"Just a dime for a cup of coffee.\" I knew where I could get it for three cents, maybe two and a half.\n \n I felt her looking at me. She spoke in an educated voice, one she used, perhaps, as a teacher or supervising telephone operator. \"Do you want it for coffee, or to apply, or a glass or hypo of something else?\"\n \n I cringed and whined. She would expect it of me. I suddenly realized that anybody as clean as she was had to be a tourist here. I hate tourists.\n \n \"Just coffee, ma'am.\" She was younger than I was, so I didn't have to call her that. \"A little more for food, if you could spare it.\"\n \n I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much.\n \n \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\"\n \n I felt my face flushing red. \"You wouldn't want to be seen with a bum like me, ma'am.\"\n \n \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\"\n \n It was certainly unfair and probably immoral. But I had no choice whatever.\n \n \"Okay,\" I said, tasting bitterness over the craving.\n \n \n\n \n The coffee was in a thick white cup before me on the counter. It was pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands to feel its warmth.\n \n Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman sitting on the stool beside me. She had no right to intrude. This moment should be mine, but there she sat, marring it for me, a contemptible tourist .\n \n I gulped down the thick, dark liquid brutally. It was all I could do. The cramp flowed out of my diaphragm. I took another swallow and was able to think straight again. A third swallow and I felt—good. Not abnormally stimulated, but strong, alert, poised on the brink of exhilaration.\n \n That was what coffee did for me.\n \n I was a caffeine addict.\n \n Earth-norm humans sometimes have the addiction to a slight extent, but I knew that as a Centurian I had it infinitely worse. Caffeine affected my metabolism like a pure alkaloid. The immediate effects weren't the same, but the need ran as deep.\n \n I finished the cup. I didn't order another because I wasn't a pure sensualist. I just needed release. Sometimes, when I didn't have the price of a cup, I would look around in alleys and find cola bottles with a few drops left in them. They have a little caffeine in them—not enough, never enough, but better than nothing.\n \n \"Now what do you want to eat?\" the woman asked.\n \n I didn't look at her. She didn't know. She thought I was a human—an Earth human. I was a man , of course, not an alien like a Martian. Earthmen ran the whole Solar Federation, but I was just as good as an Earthman. With my suntan and short mane, I could pass, couldn't I? That proved it, didn't it?\n \n \"Hamburger,\" I said. \"Well done.\" I knew that would probably be all they had fit to eat at a place like this. It might be horse meat, but then I didn't have the local prejudices.\n \n I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every hour for the rest of my life.\n \n The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba, almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n \n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting for me.\n \n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n \n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I just felt it.\n \n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n \n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.\n \n \"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n \n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n \n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n \n I had a name, of course .\n \n \n\n \n Everybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that was my name.\n \n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n \n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help me .\"\n \n \"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n \n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n\"What do you think of this?\"\n \n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\n  Dear Acolyte R. I. S. :\n  Please send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\n \n  Name : ........................\n  Address : .....................\n \n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n \n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was trying to pull it out.\n \n I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five—if the lady didn't pay you.\"\n \n \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that bill out of your hand?\"\n \n I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant bar, smoothing it.\n \n I scooped up my change and walked out the door. There was no one on the sidewalk, only in the doorways.\n \n \n\n \n First I opened the door on an amber world, then an azure one. Neon light was coming from the chickenwire border of the room, from a window somewhere beyond. The wino on one side of the room was singing and the one on the other side was praying, same as before. Only they had changed around—prayer came from the left, song from the right.\n \n Doc sat on the floor in the half-darkness and he had made a thing .\n \n \n\n \n My heart hammered at my lungs. I knew this last time had been different. Whatever it was was getting closer. This was the first time Doc had ever made anything. It didn't look like much, but it was a start.\n \n He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom. His strong hands had unraveled some of the bed \"springs\"—metal webbing—and fashioned them to his needs. My orb-point pen had dissolved under his touch. All of them, useless parts, were made into a meaningful whole.\n \n I knew the thing had meaning, but when I tried to follow its design, I became lost.\n \n I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any hungry rats out of the walls.\n \n I knelt beside Doc.\n \n \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered.\n \n I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders?\n \n He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen, before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it.\n \n \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\"\n \n I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of concentration.\n \n The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most.\n \n \n\n \n The heavy-set man in the ornate armchair was saying, \"The bullet struck me as I was pulling on my boot....\"\n \n I was kneeling on the floor of a Victorian living room. I'm quite familiar with Earth history and I recognized the period immediately.\n \n Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these months—time travel.\n \n A thin, sickly man was sprawled in the other chair in a rumpled dressing gown. My eyes held to his face, his pinpoint pupils and whitened nose. He was a condemned snowbird! If there was anything I hated or held in more contempt than tourists or Martians, it was a snowbird.\n \n \"My clients have occasioned singular methods of entry into these rooms,\" the thin man remarked, \"but never before have they used instantaneous materialization.\"\n \n The heavier man was half choking, half laughing. \"I say—I say, I would like to see you explain this, my dear fellow.\"\n \n \"I have no data,\" the thin man answered coolly. \"In such instance, one begins to twist theories into fact, or facts into theories. I must ask this unemployed, former professional man who has gone through a serious illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place and time from which he comes.\"\n \n The surprise stung. \"How did you know?\" I asked.\n \n He gestured with a pale hand. \"To maintain a logical approach, I must reject the supernatural. Your arrival, unless hallucinatory—and despite my voluntary use of one drug and my involuntary experiences recently with another, I must accept the evidence of my senses or retire from my profession—your arrival was then super-normal. I might say super-scientific, of a science not of my or the good doctor's time, clearly. Time travel is a familiar folk legend and I have been reading an article by the entertaining Mr. Wells. Perhaps he will expand it into one of his novels of scientific romance.\"\n \n I knew who these two men were, with a tormenting doubt. \"But the other—\"\n \n \"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth. Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary state?\"\n \n \n\n \n He was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n \n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional creations.\"\n \n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"\n \n The other man was filling a large, curved pipe from something that looked vaguely like an ice-skate. \"Interesting. Perhaps if our visitor would tell us something of his age with special reference to the theory and practice of temporal transference, Doctor, we would be better equipped to judge whether we exist.\"\n \n There was no theory or practice of time travel. I told them all I had ever heard theorized from Hindu yoga through Extra-sensory Perception to Relativity and the positron and negatron.\n \n \"Interesting.\" He breathed out suffocating black clouds of smoke.\n\"Presume that the people of your time by their 'Extra-sensory Perception' have altered the past to make it as they suppose it to be. The great historical figures are made the larger than life-size that we know them. The great literary creations assume reality.\"\n \n I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n \n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal symptoms.\"\n \n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He was not really a snowbird.\n \n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.\n \n \"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\n \n \n\n \n Accepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened. My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n \n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\n \n \n\n \n She inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n \n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n \n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right. It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read this myself.\"\n \n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.\n \n \"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to kill, but painfully.\"\n \n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there was something else.\n \n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I told her.\n \n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n \n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n \n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable, North American Mounted Police.\n \n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"\n \n \"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical, topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n \n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n \n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n \n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I needed some coffee.\n \n \"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until he started obtaining books that did not exist .\"\n \n \n\n \n I didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair, snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the soothing liquid.\n \n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n \n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber. The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad, unreasonably happy.\n \n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.\n \n I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the thing on the floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n \n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n \n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It should serve as a point of reference.\"\n \n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes I wondered if they really could.\n \n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n \n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do you want?\"\n \n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n \n \"They always do,\" I told him.\n \n \"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n \n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n \n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n\"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but it was worth a try.\n \n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n \n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no matter how often I bathed. No words formed.\n \n \"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't that dirty.\"\n \n \n\n \n The blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the thing on the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and miss it.\n \n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n \n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n \n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n \n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n \n I was knocked to my knees.\n \n \"Kevin,\" the Martian said, \"drinking coffee represents a major vice only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings. Which are you? \"\n \n Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth.\n \n \" What is Doc's full name? \"\n \n I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said,\n\"Doctor Kevin O'Malley, Senior.\"\n \n From the bed, Doc said a word. \"Son.\"\n \n Then he disappeared.\n \n I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in search of what.\n \n \"He didn't use that,\" Andre said.\n \n So I was an Earthman, Doc's son. So my addiction to coffee was all in my mind. That didn't change anything. They say sex is all in your mind. I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I had now. That and the thing he left.\n \n \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the Book of Dyzan or the Book of Thoth or the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan or the Necronomican itself on human beings?\"\n \n \"But they don't exist,\" I said wearily.\n \n \"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books, the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic, without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex, even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a state of pure thought.\"\n \n \"The North American government has to have this secret, Kevin,\" the girl said. \"You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians.\"\n \n \n\n \n Andre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.\n \n I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel thing fall into anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.\n \n Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.\n \n I kicked the thing to pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time travel was rediscovered. Maybe we would be ready for it then. I knew we weren't now.\n \n Miss Casey leaned against my dirty chest and cried into it. I didn't mind her touching me.\n \n \"I'm glad,\" she said.\n \n Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?\n \n I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed it because I didn't want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose, direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really confident.\n \n Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material needs would not grow and roast coffee.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "06d8240dd7bb4a74a7b773fe9fac5b8d", "response_text": "John Kevin catches up with Doc, who has grabbed a human by the throat. He tells the human that man will reach the moon tonight, and the man agrees, so Doc will let him go. Kevin apologizes to the human and says that his father has trouble differentiating old events. They see Martian tourists approaching the corner, and Kevin recalls how he hates Martian tourists because they are aliens. The two go to a flophouse, where Kevin bargains with the clerk over the price of a room. He threatens the human but stops when he hears Doc mumbling. They go to the room, and he lays Doc out on the cot. Doc begins to mumble more, while Kevin begins to copy down the words in his notebook again. Kevin knows that what Doc is mumbling will make him the most powerful man in the Solar Federation, especially because Doc was once somebody extremely important. Doc then begins to cry, and Kevin decides to comfort him slightly. Kevin then meets a woman by the bus stop and asks her for a dime for coffee. He realizes that she is a human tourist and recalls how he hates tourists. She offers to buy him dinner too, and they go to get a coffee. Kevin is revealed to be a caffeine addict, and he tells the woman that he wants a hamburger. One hamburger becomes several, and he drinks a glass of milk. Kevin asks the woman for a few to take home, and she introduces herself as Miss Vivian Casey. Kevin tells her his name too, and she hands him a coupon from a magazine. When he comes back to his senses, the counterman is pulling a five-dollar bill from under his hand. When he goes back, Doc has made something. It is revealed that Kevin has been trying to get time travel from Doc for the past few months and sees a condemned snowbird. The two thin and heavy men talk to him, asking him to tell them where he came from. The doctor explains his condition and hands him a manuscript, and Kevin steps into the range of Miss Casey’s gun in real life. He asks her for coffee again, and she re-introduces herself as a North American Mounted Police member. She explains that Doc wanted to profit off of his time travel, but he did not have money. He wrestles the gun from her; suddenly, a Martian by the name of Andre appears. Andre makes Kevin realize that he is not a Centurian humanoid because he is the son of Doc. Kevin destroys the thing that Doc creates because he knows nobody is ready for time travel to be rediscovered. Miss Casey and Andre are relieved, while Kevin ponders why he destroyed the machine. He thinks it may be because of emotions or roast coffee. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a3561d99c15e47a188aacccef2ee2713", "response_text": "The story is set in the world of intergalactic life and tells us about Kevin, a poor Centurian humanoid, and Doc, a person whose real name and significance Kevin forgot, but still remembers him as someone somewhat important to him in the past and roams with him around North America. Kevin pulls Doc away from an unfamiliar man whose collar he grabbed and carefully walks him to a flophouse. He pays for the room after a small conflict with the clerk. Once inside, Kevin falls down from muscle pain and Doc starts mumbling something that Kevin subconsciously remembers to be of utter importance. After writing down everything he heard from the old man, Kevin leaves in a search for coffee. A woman on the street agrees to pay for his drink and food despite Kevin’s impoverished appearance -  we learn that he has a caffeine addiction that presents in a way more profound and serious way in Centurian men than in earthmen. She introduces herself as Vivian Casey and asks for a favor in return, handing him what seems to be a magazine coupon with some strange content. Suddenly Kevin becomes disoriented, Vivian disappears, leaving the money for the food in his fist. He pays for the bill, ordering some more to take with him, and comes back to Doc who has managed to create some strangely looking device from a bulb, a pen, and the bed carcass while Kevin was away. After kneeling beside Doc while the old man is murmuring something Kevin soon realizes that he is in a Victorian living room. He finally remembers that time travel was the reason why he considered Doc important. He meets two men that seem to be Sherlock Holmes and Dr.Watson. They briefly talk about time travel and after the doctor gives him his manuscript  Kevin finally goes back to his time only to find Miss Casey’s gun pointed at him. She turns out to be a constable and tells Kevin that Doc found a way to travel in time and decided to make money by getting rare books in the past, but apparently started bringing works that had never existed. Kevin throws coffee at Casey, disarming her, but instantly sees a Martian at his door. Andre, as he introduced himself, continues the story Casey started and claims that hundreds of people disappeared after receiving Doc’s books, but what’s even more important, these books, which never existed, can help humans reach a state of pure logic. During their conversation, Andre also helps Kevin remember that Doc is his father and Kevin himself is actually an earthman not a Centurian. Overwhelmed, Kevin quickly decides to break the time travel device and, thus, lose this knowledge for many years because he’s certain that neither Martians nor earthmen are truly ready for time travel."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "adf28c4e9adc4f4bbcf63cfd797f0fe5", "response_text": "The story introduces an initially unnamed protagonist, who accompanies a fellow named “Doc”, both of whom are men but not Earthmen, hence Centurians. Doc is first introduced as choking a human man, seemingly in a trance and talking about a man reaching the moon. The protagonist carefully removes the human from Doc’s hold and asks for forgiveness, claiming memory issues, and the pair move on to a cheap motel. While arguing for the cost of their stay, the clerk finds out that the protagonist had cheapened him despite having a quarter, and keeps the remaining nickel. \n\nThere, the protagonist lays Doc on the bed in the dirty room and as he begins to mumble, the protagonist begins to take notes amidst his own cramps and feelings of dirtiness. He soon remembers that the Doc holds the information to become a powerful man. However, his own pain wins out and the protagonist stumbles out of the room and encounters a clean, young woman, hoping to beg for a cup of coffee and she does, but only as she accompanies him in drinking coffee and eating several hamburgers. Introducing herself as Miss Vivian Casey and himself as John Kevin - the protagonist finally realizing his name - Casey presents Kevin with a coupon clipping from a magazine detailing a request for “The Scarlet Book”. As he reads it however, Kevin finds himself disoriented and the young woman gone. Kevin heads back to the room and finds that Doc has created an unnamed thing, which he finds trouble understanding its meaning. \n\nKevin suddenly finds himself in a Victorian living room with a man he labels as a snowbird, the latter who probes Kevin to reveal what time and place he has come from. Surprised, Kevin realizes that the information he was trying to get from Doc was time travel, and this Victorian snowbird had come to this conclusion as well. Through a length of discourse, Kevin describes what he knows about various Earth theories like yoga and relativity. Afterwards, he asks the doctor a question about his first manuscript and accepts the papers before finding himself back in the original timeline of this story, looking straight into Casey’s gun. \n\nMiss Casey turns out to be a policewoman, who after being handed the manuscript papers, reveals to Kevin that Doc has indeed figured out a method for time travel by obtaining rare editions of literature and books that did not exist for his clients. Aided by a Martian named Andre, it is revealed that hundreds of people have disappeared after receiving a book from the Doc and that Kevin was actually Doc’s son - and human. A dispute soon occurs between the three ending with Kevin destroying the time machine, hoping that the future rediscovery of time travel will be accompanied by the world’s readiness for it. In his ending thoughts - Kevin debates why he did that - for the human race’s purpose, or for the production of coffee. \n"}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e663afd356ca4eed92d8f32eb03c7030", "response_text": "When John Kevin caught up with Doc, a man was grabbing the collar of Doc. He took Doc from the man and walked him to a flophouse. When he got them a room to stay in, he tried to save some money from the only quarter. He needed that money to get something caffeinated after taking care of Doc. However, he failed, and the clerk took the money in the flophouse. After he recorded some notes for Doc’s mumbling, he went out to get food. He begged for a woman on the street for money, but the woman would only buy him food after watching him eat. He gulped some hamburgers and coffee when the woman watched him eat, bought some food after the women had left, and left for the flophouse to feed the Doc. John Kevin has trouble finding the memory of himself because of the side effects of time travel. He mistook himself as Kevin O’Malley, which is Doc’s name. He also mistakenly considered himself a Centurian, who regarded drinking coffee as a vice, when he was an Earthman. When the woman asked for his name, he introduced himself as Kevin because he thought Kevin O’Malley was his name. When John Kevin went back to the room, he saw Doc had made a thing by using the materials in the room.\n\nHe time-traveled to the Victorian era, where he saw two men sitting on chairs and chatting. During his stay in that era, he realized what he had been trying to know from Doc was time travel. He also realized that the man he talked to within the room, who he mistook as a snowbird, is Doc. After talking to the men, he received the first manuscript from them and returned to his own time, where he reencountered the woman, whose gun pointed at him. She revealed herself as a constable from the police, trying to tell Kevin the truth. But he rivaled against her. Then a Martian came, trying to do the same thing as the woman. From their saying, John Kevin realized his true identity as Doc’s son and knew the consequences of Doc’s use of time travel. Once he understood the situation, he destroyed the time machine because he didn’t want to live in a pure logical state, which is the outcome of using time travel to make fantasy reality.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Vivian Casey, and what are her characteristics?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "06d8240dd7bb4a74a7b773fe9fac5b8d", "response_text": "Vivian Casey is described as a pink and clean woman who smells of clean soap. Her hair is platinum, pulled straight back to draw her cheek-bones tighter. She has an appealing mouth; Kevin also notes that her body is lean, athletic, and feminine. She also wears a powder-blue dress that goes down to the lower-half of her legs. She speaks in an educated voice and is kind enough to take Kevin to get some food. Although he is annoyed she decided to tag along, she lets him order multiple hamburgers to satisfy his hunger. When she introduces herself, he assumes that she is a schoolteacher. Kevin later realizes that she did not pay for his dinner at all. Miss Casey then comes back with a tiny gun. She is shown to be proficient with the firearm, introducing her true identity as a Constable of the North American Mounted Police. She is also very intelligent, being fully aware of what Doc has tried to do in the past. Although she uses force to judo hold Kevin, she doesn’t put her heart into it. Finally, she is shown to be proud of Kevin when he does the right thing and destroys the time machine. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a3561d99c15e47a188aacccef2ee2713", "response_text": "Vivian Casey is a decently looking woman who agrees to pay for the drink and food of Kevin, a poor Centurian man who has been wandering around North America with Doc, someone who Kevin believes to be important to him. After Kevin uses the time travel device, that Doc has made while Kevin was away, and finally comes back from the Victorian era, Vivian waits for him with a gun and introduces herself as a constable of North American mounted Police. Apparently, she has been following Kevin and Doc, his father who found a method of time travel,  for a while and even got closer to him by pretending to be an innocent bystander when he was hungry and suffering withdrawal effects in the beginning of the story. When Kevin destroys the device she cries and admits that she’s glad he did that. Vivian seems to be a good constable who can understand people well, but she’s also sincere enough to accept her view on things. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "adf28c4e9adc4f4bbcf63cfd797f0fe5", "response_text": "Vivian Casey is first introduced to us as a clean young woman waiting at a bus stop, assumed by Kevin to be a schoolteacher and a tourist. She is approached by Kevin as he begs for a small amount of change to use to buy coffee. His request will only be fulfilled if she accompanies him, so Kevin reluctantly follows her as she buys him coffee and hamburgers. She is heavily emphasized as being clean and introduces herself to Kevin as Miss Vivian Casey with a bright smile. After providing him with food and drink, Casey requests a small favor from Kevin and presents him with a coupon clipping from a magazine that details a request for “The Scarlet Book”. \n\nWe see Miss Casey again as the protagonist reappears in front of her tiny gun, where it is revealed that she is not a schoolteacher nor a tourist but rather a North American Mounted Police. Her interaction with Kevin was intentional, as she had been tracking him and the Doc in order to stop the latter’s method of time travel. She plays a key role in helping Kevin unravel the truth about his identity and what the Doc was doing. In the scuffle to keep the time machine out of the hands of the Martians, she grabs Kevin in a judo hold which he quickly breaks and then  destroys the machine. She is seen at the end of the story crying into Kevin’s chest, relieved at its destruction. \n"}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e663afd356ca4eed92d8f32eb03c7030", "response_text": "Vivan Casey is a woman who offers food to Kevin when he begs for money to buy some food on the street. She is a constable from Northern American Mounted Police. She has a clean scent and pink, clean skin, with long, straight platinum hair. Her body is lean and healthy. She stands straight. She wore a powder-blue dress and a wrist purse when she met Kevin, who begged for food on the street. Her voice sounds educated. Her smile looks good. When she revealed her identity to Kevin, Kevin threw the coffee to her face, which splashed and dirtied her dress."}]}, {"question_text": "What are some of the harmful consequences caused by Doc’s use of time travel?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "06d8240dd7bb4a74a7b773fe9fac5b8d", "response_text": "Doc’s use of time travel has caused hundreds of people to disappear from North America a few months ago. He initially starts off using time travel to get rare editions of books and magazines in mint condition. However, he derails and starts getting books that do not exist. For many of his clients, they shortly ceased to exist after obtaining a book from Doc. Doc also had bought the entire stock of an ancient metaphysical order, which he then supplied to his clients. Books such as the Book of Dyzan, Book of Thoth, Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, and the Necromican were given away even if they do not exist in the present-day. These books are extremely harmful because they essentially instruct the human race on how to achieve a state of pure logic without requiring food, sex, or conflict. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a3561d99c15e47a188aacccef2ee2713", "response_text": "After finding a method to travel in time Doc, an earthly scholar, decided to make money by bringing rare book editions from different times to his clients. But once he started bringing books that have never existed his clients disappeared soon after receiving them - at least several hundred people in North America ceased to exist after getting their order from Doc. Furthermore, time traveling allowed the “unconscious racial mind” to construct new worlds and realities by creating new books that were able to teach humans how to reach the state of pure logic and therefore deprive them of all humanly characteristics. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "adf28c4e9adc4f4bbcf63cfd797f0fe5", "response_text": "Doc’s use of time travel has caused hundreds of people to disappear from North America - as if they ceased to exist. This occurred shortly after Doc gave them a book - books that were collected in metaphysical order and distributed to his liking. As a result, the interplay of time travel and bringing books and their knowledge in and out of existence has caused them to ultimately not exist, but still influence the unconscious mind into creating them. As such, it is revealed that the human mind has been able to understand and access the powers of ESP, telekinesis, etc as well as achieve states of pure logic and thought. Both immediate consequences, like the erasure of people’s existence, as well as existential consequences like the potential for the power of human minds to be accessed occurred because of his time travel. \n"}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e663afd356ca4eed92d8f32eb03c7030", "response_text": "Time travel allows the unconscious racial mind, a mind that knows the power of extrasensory perception, to go back in time and create books that do not exist before. These books allow the human race to teach itself how to turn the material body with desires into a pure logic state without the body, where they don’t need sex, food, or any material supply. Therefore, when Doc uses time travel to create those books and distribute them to people, people who received the books from Doc disappear. Their material existence vanishes. And Doc himself also reaches the state of pure logic, where his material existence disappears."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Kevin, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "06d8240dd7bb4a74a7b773fe9fac5b8d", "response_text": "Kevin initially believes that he is a Centurian who must carry Doc around in order to achieve something powerful from the man. He firmly believes him and Doc to be superior to the Earthmen and Martian tourists. Kevin is filthy, but he refuses to take a bath. He also has an addiction to caffeine, mistakenly believing that it is the side effect of being a Centurian. Although he looks down on humans, he is desperate enough to ask one for help and for some food. His fingernails are black-crowned and broken, while his teeth are of yellow ivory. He is also suntan and sprouts a short mane. Although he lies to Miss Casey and says his name is John Kevin, he realizes that his name is actually Kevin O’Malley. While Kevin does admit that he wants something from Doc, he also is clearly shown to care for the old man. It is later revealed that Doc is his father, Kevin O’Malley Sr. Even after Miss Casey reveals she is a member of the police, Kevin is still brave enough to throw the rest of the coffee in her face. Later, he realizes that he is actually an Earth human and not a Centurian. His caffeine addiction comes from the mind. Even though he cares for his father, Kevin does choose to make the right decision to destroy the time machine because he does not want humanity to become purely logical. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a3561d99c15e47a188aacccef2ee2713", "response_text": "Kevin is a Centurian humanoid who roams around North America with Doc, a man whom Kevin finds utterly important though he doesn’t exactly remember why. He has a strong caffeine addiction and doesn’t know a lot of facts about his life. Kevin cares about Doc even before he remembers that the man is his father. He aspires to get the knowledge of time travel from Doc, but later understands that his time is not ready for this yet and he cannot let two powerful empires fight for it and destroys the device. Kevin is lost and confused throughout the entire story, he’s sometimes judgmental and condescending but also kind and gentle.   \n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "adf28c4e9adc4f4bbcf63cfd797f0fe5", "response_text": "Kevin is the protagonist in this story, who is first introduced as accompanying the Doc as to gain some important information from him to become the most powerful person in the Solar Federation. He is described to be incessantly dirty - no matter how many baths he may take he can never be clean, and hence chooses not to be anymore. He is a self-proclaimed Centuarian, and like his kind, has a vice for caffeine which he fulfills with coffee or if desperate, with leftover droplets of soda. If he does not get enough caffeine, he becomes withdrawn with pain and behaves similar to an addict. Kevin has a disliking for Martians, tourists and Earth-humans, and is always sure to emphasize the distinction between him as a Man but not as a Earth-man. \n\nThroughout Kevin’s own time travel adventures and later interactions with Miss Casey, the policewoman, and the Martian Andre, he finds out that he is the Doctor, Kevin O’Malley Senior’s son, and is in fact human. As the story comes to a close, he plays an integral role in destroying the Doc’s time machine and hence halting science’s momentary progression on time travel. In some of his ending thoughts, he debates requesting Miss Casey’s help in stopping his addiction to caffeine while also wanting to ensure the continued production of coffee. \n"}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e663afd356ca4eed92d8f32eb03c7030", "response_text": "Kevin is the son of Doc, the son of a scholar who found the method of time travel and caused the disappearance of hundreds of people in Northern America. Kevin is dirty and addicted to caffeine. Kevin also introduced himself as John Kevin when he misremembered Doc’s name as his own. He is unsanitary and underfed. He is also addicted to rum or opium. His teeth are yellow, and his fingernails are filled with black dirt and broken. He never grows a beard. He staggers like a wino. He considered himself a Centurian, a humanoid species that sees drinking coffee as a vice. However, contrary to his memory, he was an Earthman, but he didn’t want to admit this fact. He didn’t want to be cured or told who he was.\n\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "06d8240dd7bb4a74a7b773fe9fac5b8d", "response_text": "The story first begins with Doc and Kevin going to a flophouse three doors down from where Doc has his confrontation. As they turn around the corner, many Martian tourists walk by. The flophouse door is fly-specked, and a tubercular clerk is sitting in a gaudy comics section. The room they later go to is six feet in all directions with five feet high walls. The other foot is finished in chickenwire; there is also a wino singing on the left, wino praying on the right, and a door with no lock. There is also a gray-brown cot that Kevin lays Doc on, and a light bulb for light. Kevin also sits in a chair; the floor is littered and uncovered. The knob of the door is slick with greasy dirt. Later, Kevin goes out to the streets. They go to a restaurant, where he sits at the counter with a cup of coffee. There is also a stool for Miss Casey to sit in next to his stool. As he leaves, he notices that there is nobody on the sidewalks. Kevin describes himself opening the door to an amber world and then an azure one. Neon light also comes from the chickenwire border of the room, from a window somewhere beyond. When Kevin brings back food to the flophouse, he mentions that there are rats in the walls. Inside his mind, one man sits on an ornate armchair. Another man is sprawled in the other chair. Later, as Kevin goes back to reality, the confrontation between Miss Casey, Andre, and him happens in the same room with Doc still on the cot. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a3561d99c15e47a188aacccef2ee2713", "response_text": "The story is set in the world where earthmen run a Solar Federation - it incorporates several different planets and population groups, including humans, Martians, Centurian humanoids, etc. Kevin, a Centurian man, and Doc, a nameless old earthman that Kevin remembers to be very important for something, walk to a flophouse. They get a small room which Kevin leaves shortly after on a search for food and coffee - he has a caffeine addiction. He meets a woman called Vivian at the bus stop and she agrees to pay for his food, leading him to a cafe. Later, he comes back to Doc who has managed to construct a device which is used for time travel as Kevin understands after he unexpectedly finds himself  in an old Victorian room. Coming back to his time and his room, Kevin meets Vivian, a North American constable, holding a gun and later, Andre, the representative of the Martians. After they tell him the truth about the consequences of time traveling and help him remember his identity, Kevin breaks the device, destroying the time travel knowledge for many years, as it seems to be the most prudent decision to him. \n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "adf28c4e9adc4f4bbcf63cfd797f0fe5", "response_text": "This story takes place in the Solar Federation in an unnamed town or city where Earth humans, Centuarians and Martians alike all interact with each other. Tourists seem to be prevalent as well as the protagonist moves around from various locations within the setting like the bus stop, the diner or restaurant, and the motel room. The story primarily takes place in the dirty motel room where it is first inhabited by the Doc on the single bed and the protagonist, Kevin, slipping in out and then later by the stand-off between the Doc, Kevin, Vivian Casey and Andre. \nDue to the existence of time travel in this story, the setting also changes momentarily for Kevin. In the middle of the story, he finds himself in a Victorian living room, which he is able to identify due to his familiarity with Earth’s history. In this temporary setting, he finds himself in the company of a thin, sickly man who sits in an ornate chair and another man filling a curved pipe with what looked like ice-skate. \n"}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e663afd356ca4eed92d8f32eb03c7030", "response_text": "The story occurs in Northern America. It is an era where three species exist together: Earth-norm humans, Centurian humanoids, and Martians. The earth government and the Martian government are rivals. The story begins with an Earthman, suffering from memory loss due to time travel, considered himself a Centurian. Throughout the whole story, he finally found out his dad, an Earthman known as Doc, had caused many people to disappear from Northern America due to the use of time travel. Time travel allows people to make things that do not exist come into existence by extrasensory perception. And the incident is caused by such an ability to create nonexistent things that would enable humans to achieve a pure immaterial logical state."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51337", "uid": "5b6d0e89cde040e28502e8595cfaa883", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE MAN OUTSIDE\n \n \n By EVELYN E. SMITH\n \n Illustrated by DILLON\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n No one, least of all Martin, could dispute that a man's life should be guarded by his kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?\n \n\n \n Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble that way.\n \n Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell him to call her \" Aunt Ninian \"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little too crazy for that.\n \n He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry instead of mopping up the floor with him.\n \n \"But I can't understand,\" he would say, keeping his face straight. \"Why do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin Conrad?\"\n \n \"Because he's coming to kill you.\"\n \n \"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing.\"\n \n Ninian sighed. \"He's dissatisfied with the current social order and killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it. You wouldn't understand.\"\n \n \"You're damn right. I don't understand. What's it all about in straight gas?\"\n \n \"Oh, just don't ask any questions,\" Ninian said petulantly. \"When you get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you.\"\n \n \n\n \n So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to think it was disgusting.\n \n \"So if you don't like it, clean it up,\" he suggested.\n \n She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.\n \n \"Hire a maid, then!\" he jeered.\n \n And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew how to give them the cold shoulder.\n \n One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so hard inside.\n \n But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step without hearing \"Fancy Pants!\" yelled after him.\n \n Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.\n \n \"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical application to go by,\" she told him.\n \n He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a spectator.\n \n When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again, Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.\n \n \"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in,\" she declared. \"Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here.\"\n \n And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle Raymond.\n \n From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.\n \n \n\n \n Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she was supposed to know better than he did.\n \n He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before, warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by more luxury than he knew what to do with.\n \n The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for Ninian didn't know much about meals.\n \n The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.\n \n Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.\n \n From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness. They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him, in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than actually doing anything with the hands.\n \n In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands; everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of normal living.\n \n It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth. They came from the future.\n \n \n\n \n When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had promised five years before.\n \n \"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an idealist,\" Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.\n \n Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun, and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.\n \n \"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets,\" Raymond continued. \"Which is distressing—though, of course, it's not as if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that, and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However, Conrad is so impatient.\"\n \n \"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work,\" Martin suggested.\n \n \"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!\" Raymond snapped. \"We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all. But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?\"\n \n He continued more mildly: \"However, even you ought to be able to understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food. All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how would they manage to live?\"\n \n \"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how do you live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for you,\" Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the past and think in the future.\n \n \"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult,\" Raymond said, \"but if you will persist in these childish interruptions—\"\n \n \"I'm sorry,\" Martin said.\n \n But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more frightening—his race had lost something vital.\n \n Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him, Raymond went on blandly: \"Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held accountable for his great-grandfather.\"\n \n \"How about a great-great-grandchild?\" Martin couldn't help asking.\n \n \n\n \n Raymond flushed a delicate pink. \"Do you want to hear the rest of this or don't you?\"\n \n \"Oh, I do!\" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.\n \n \"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always desperate for a fresh topic of conversation.\"\n \n Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas' assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back in time and \"eliminate!\" their common great-grandfather. In that way, there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.\n \n \"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem,\" Martin observed.\n \n Raymond looked annoyed. \"It's the adolescent way,\" he said, \"to do away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole society in order to root out a single injustice?\"\n \n \"Not if it were a good one otherwise.\"\n \n \"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather was such a good man, you know.\" Raymond's expressive upper lip curled. \"So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty worthless character.\"\n \n \"That would be me, I suppose,\" Martin said quietly.\n \n Raymond turned a deep rose. \"Well, doesn't that just go to prove you mustn't believe everything you hear?\" The next sentence tumbled out in a rush. \"I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you.\" He beamed at Martin.\n \n The boy smiled slowly. \"Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in eliminating me, then none of you would exist, would you?\"\n \n Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. \"Well, you didn't really suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer altruism, did you?\" he asked, turning on the charm which all the cousins possessed to a consternating degree.\n \n \n\n \n Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.\n \n \"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's assistants,\" Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,\n\"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us.\"\n  Induced , Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the use of the iron maiden.\n \n \"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here we are!\"\n \n \"I see,\" Martin said.\n \n Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. \"After all,\" he pointed out defensively, \"whatever our motives, it has turned into a good thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of course Ninian was a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—\"\n \n \"What did you do with them?\" Martin asked.\n \n But Raymond rushed on: \"Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge, we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale. Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are, the more eccentricity you can get away with. And,\" he added, \"I might as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this wretched historical stint.\"\n \n \"So Ninian's going,\" said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for him.\n \n \"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in exile,\" Raymond explained, \"even though our life spans are a bit longer than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat government.\" He looked inquisitively at Martin. \"You're not going to go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?\"\n \n \"No....\" Martin said hesitantly. \"Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference.\" That was the sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.\n \n Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. \"I knew you weren't a sloppy sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him, you know.\"\n \n Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. \"How do you plan to protect me when he comes?\"\n \n \"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course,\" Raymond said with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. \"And we've got a rather elaborate burglar alarm system.\"\n \n Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was dubious. \"Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this house , but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this time ?\"\n \n \"Never fear—it has a temporal radius,\" Raymond replied. \"Factory guarantee and all that.\"\n \n \"Just to be on the safe side,\" Martin said, \"I think I'd better have one of those guns, too.\"\n \n \"A splendid idea!\" enthused Raymond. \"I was just about to think of that myself!\"\n \n \n\n \n When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the very last.\n \n Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his descendants were exceedingly inept planners.\n \n Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques, carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise, Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—\"architecturally dreadful, of course,\" Raymond had said, \"but so hilariously typical\"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level aquarium.\n \n \"How about a moat?\" Martin suggested when they first came. \"It seems to go with a castle.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?\" Raymond asked, amused.\n \n \"No,\" Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, \"but it would make the place seem safer somehow.\"\n \n The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it, until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.\n \n During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of entertainment.\n \n \n\n \n \"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin,\" Raymond commented as he took his place at the head of the table, \"because, unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one just—well, drifts along happily.\"\n \n \"Ours is a wonderful world,\" Grania sighed at Martin. \"I only wish we could take you there. I'm sure you would like it.\"\n \n \"Don't be a fool, Grania!\" Raymond snapped. \"Well, Martin, have you made up your mind what you want to be?\"\n \n Martin affected to think. \"A physicist,\" he said, not without malice.\n\"Or perhaps an engineer.\"\n \n There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.\n \n \"Can't do that,\" Ives said. \"Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen. Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous.\"\n \n \"Might mess up our time frightfully,\" Bartholomew contributed, \"though, to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how.\"\n \n \"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over again, Bart!\" Raymond said impatiently. \"Well, Martin?\"\n \n \"What would you suggest?\" Martin asked.\n \n \"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly. Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of their times.\"\n \n \"Furthermore,\" Ottillie added, \"one more artist couldn't make much difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages.\"\n \n Martin couldn't hold back his question. \"What was I, actually, in that other time?\"\n \n There was a chilly silence.\n \n \"Let's not talk about it, dear,\" Lalage finally said. \"Let's just be thankful we've saved you from that !\"\n \n So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for the sake of an ideal.\n \n But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty pictures.\n \n \n\n \n Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the descendants cousin —next assumed guardianship. Ives took his responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not interested.\n \n \"Takes time,\" Ives tried to reassure him. \"One day they'll be buying your pictures, Martin. Wait and see.\"\n \n Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a change of air and scenery.\n \n \"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it. Tourists always like ruins best, anyway.\"\n \n So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht, which Martin christened The Interregnum . They traveled about from sea to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.\n \n The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters, largely because they could spend so much time far away from the contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on The Interregnum . He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through time.\n \n More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard ship, giving each other parties and playing an avant-garde form of shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of having got advance information about the results.\n \n Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.\n \n \n\n \n He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue of their distinguished ancestry.\n \n \"Rather feudal, isn't it?\" Martin asked.\n \n Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development. Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been deported.\n \n \"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds,\" Ives said as the two of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse of some ocean or other. \"People, too. Mostly lower classes, except for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering,\" he added regretfully, \"same as in your day.... Like now, I mean,\" he corrected himself. \"Maybe it is worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more. Bombed. Very thorough job.\"\n \n \"Oh,\" Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested, even.\n \n \"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong,\" Ives said, after a pause. \"Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—\" he smiled shamefacedly—\"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed, could I?\"\n \n \"I suppose not,\" Martin said.\n \n \"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except Conrad, and even he—\" Ives looked out over the sea. \"Must be a better way out than Conrad's,\" he said without conviction. \"And everything will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything, if it doesn't.\" He glanced wistfully at Martin.\n \n \"I hope so,\" said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he couldn't even seem to care.\n \n During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement. But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....\n \n He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.\n \n A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy about the entire undertaking.\n \n \"He died for all of us,\" Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over Ives, \"so his death was not in vain.\"\n \n But Martin disagreed.\n \n \n\n \n The ceaseless voyaging began again. The Interregnum voyaged to every ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell apart as the different oceans.\n \n \n\n \n All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust their elders.\n \n As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore, and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes that his other work lacked.\n \n When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way, he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the cousin's utter disgust.\n \n \"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you do,\" the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were scraping bottom now—advised.\n \n Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored. However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer understand.\n \n \"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?\" Martin idly asked the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.\n \n The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. \"Conrad's a very shrewd fellow,\" he whispered. \"He's biding his time—waiting until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!\"\n \n \"Oh, I see,\" Martin said.\n \n He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one conversation, anyhow.\n \n \"When he does show up, I'll protect you,\" the cousin vowed, touching his ray gun. \"You haven't a thing to worry about.\"\n \n Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. \"I have every confidence in you,\" he told his descendant. He himself had given up carrying a gun long ago.\n \n There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so The Interregnum voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long time. The Interregnum roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.\n \n \n\n \n Perhaps it was the traditionally bracing effect of sea air—perhaps it\n was the sheltered life—but Martin lived to be a very old man. He was a\n hundred and four when his last illness came. It was a great relief when\n the family doctor, called in again from the future, said there was no\n hope. Martin didn't think he could have borne another year of life.\n \n All the cousins gathered at the yacht to pay their last respects to\n their progenitor. He saw Ninian again, after all these years, and\n Raymond—all the others, dozens of them, thronging around his bed,\n spilling out of the cabin and into the passageways and out onto the\n deck, making their usual clamor, even though their voices were hushed.\n \n Only Ives was missing. He'd been the lucky one, Martin knew. He had\n been spared the tragedy that was going to befall these blooming young\n people—all the same age as when Martin had last seen them and doomed\n never to grow any older. Underneath their masks of woe, he could see\n relief at the thought that at last they were going to be rid of their\n responsibility. And underneath Martin's death mask lay an impersonal\n pity for those poor, stupid descendants of his who had blundered so\n irretrievably.\n \n \n\n \n There was only one face which Martin had never seen before. It wasn't\n a strange face, however, because Martin had seen one very like it in\n the looking glass when he was a young man.\n \n \"You must be Conrad,\" Martin called across the cabin in a voice that\n was still clear. \"I've been looking forward to meeting you for some\n time.\"\n \n The other cousins whirled to face the newcomer.\n \n \"You're too late, Con,\" Raymond gloated for the whole generation. \"He's\n lived out his life.\"\n \n \"But he hasn't lived out his life,\" Conrad contradicted. \"He's lived\n out the life you created for him. And for yourselves, too.\"\n \n For the first time, Martin saw compassion in the eyes of one of his\n lineage and found it vaguely disturbing. It didn't seem to belong there.\n \n \"Don't you realize even yet,\" Conrad went on, \"that as soon as he goes,\n you'll go, too—present, past, future, wherever you are, you'll go up\n in the air like puffs of smoke?\"\n \n \"What do you mean?\" Ninian quavered, her soft, pretty face alarmed.\n \n Martin answered Conrad's rueful smile, but left the explanations up to\n him. It was his show, after all.\n \n \"Because you will never have existed,\" Conrad said. \"You have no right\n to existence; it was you yourselves who watched him all the time,\n so he didn't have a chance to lead a normal life, get married, have\n children ....\"\n \n \n\n \n Most of the cousins gasped as the truth began to percolate through.\n \n \"I knew from the very beginning,\" Conrad finished, \"that I didn't\n have to do anything at all. I just had to wait and you would destroy\n yourselves.\"\n \n \"I don't understand,\" Bartholomew protested, searching the faces of the\n cousins closest to him. \"What does he mean, we have never existed?\n We're here, aren't we? What—\"\n \n \"Shut up!\" Raymond snapped. He turned on Martin. \"You don't seem\n surprised.\"\n \n The old man grinned. \"I'm not. I figured it all out years ago.\"\n \n At first, he had wondered what he should do. Would it be better to\n throw them into a futile panic by telling them or to do nothing? He\n had decided on the latter; that was the role they had assigned him—to\n watch and wait and keep out of things—and that was the role he would\n play.\n \n \"You knew all the time and you didn't tell us!\" Raymond spluttered.\n\"After we'd been so good to you, making a gentleman out of you instead\n of a criminal.... That's right,\" he snarled, \"a criminal! An alcoholic,\n a thief, a derelict! How do you like that?\"\n \n \"Sounds like a rich, full life,\" Martin said wistfully.\n \n What an exciting existence they must have done him out of! But then, he\n couldn't help thinking, he—he and Conrad together, of course—had done\n them out of any kind of existence. It wasn't his responsibility,\n though; he had done nothing but let matters take whatever course was\n destined for them. If only he could be sure that it was the better\n course, perhaps he wouldn't feel that nagging sense of guilt inside\n him. Strange—where, in his hermetic life, could he possibly have\n developed such a queer thing as a conscience?\n \n \"Then we've wasted all this time,\" Ninian sobbed, \"all this energy, all\n this money, for nothing!\"\n \n \"But you were nothing to begin with,\" Martin told them. And then,\n after a pause, he added, \"I only wish I could be sure there had been\n some purpose to this.\"\n \n He didn't know whether it was approaching death that dimmed his sight,\n or whether the frightened crowd that pressed around him was growing\n shadowy.\n \n \"I wish I could feel that some good had been done in letting you be\n wiped out of existence,\" he went on voicing his thoughts. \"But I know\n that the same thing that happened to your worlds and my world will\n happen all over again. To other people, in other times, but again. It's\n bound to happen. There isn't any hope for humanity.\"\n \n One man couldn't really change the course of human history, he told\n himself. Two men, that was—one real, one a shadow.\n \n Conrad came close to the old man's bed. He was almost transparent.\n \n \"No,\" he said, \"there is hope. They didn't know the time transmitter\n works two ways. I used it for going into the past only once—just this\n once. But I've gone into the future with it many times. And—\" he\n pressed Martin's hand—\"believe me, what I did—what we did, you and\n I—serves a purpose. It will change things for the better. Everything\n is going to be all right.\"\n \n \n\n \n Was Conrad telling him the truth, Martin wondered, or was he just\n giving the conventional reassurance to the dying? More than that, was\n he trying to convince himself that what he had done was the right\n thing? Every cousin had assured Martin that things were going to be all\n right.\n \n Was Conrad actually different from the rest?\n \n His plan had worked and the others' hadn't, but then all his plan had\n consisted of was doing nothing. That was all he and Martin had done ...\n nothing. Were they absolved of all responsibility merely because they\n had stood aside and taken advantage of the others' weaknesses?\n \n \"Why,\" Martin said to himself, \"in a sense, it could be said that I\n have fulfilled my original destiny—that I am a criminal.\"\n \n Well, it didn't matter; whatever happened, no one could hold him to\n blame. He held no stake in the future that was to come. It was other\n men's future—other men's problem. He died very peacefully then, and,\n since he was the only one left on the ship, there was nobody to bury\n him.\n \n The unmanned yacht drifted about the seas for years and gave rise to\n many legends, none of them as unbelievable as the truth.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3561073fc40741b88473fc08e7d90fc1", "response_text": "This story follows the life of Martin from a young boy living in a rough neighborhood to an old man dying aboard an unmanned ship. We first see Martin following the disappearance of his mother - and lack of a father - which are commonplace in the neighborhood he grows up in where the kids rarely attend school and their living conditions are poor. Martin is taken in by a young woman, Ninian, who instructs him to call her Aunt Ninian despite being identified as his future descendant. Ninian has traveled back in time to her great-great-grandfather - Martin - in order to protect him from his future son Conrad. Conrad, described as an idealist, is dismayed by the future generations exploitation of Earth and destructive social order that casts out anyone and everything that doesn't encompass the privileged and elite. To correct the wrongdoings of the future, Conrad plans to kill Martin. The rest of Conrad’s cousins intercept this plan and instead, all decide to travel into the past to accompany Martin and protect him from an assassination attempt. \n\nMartin’s formative years are accompanied by Ninian, Raymond and Ives where he picks up art as a career, forms impersonal relationships with his descendants and learns more about the past and future quality of life. As years pass with no threat of Conrad in sight, Martin begins to explore his world alongside Ives on a yacht named The Interregnum. Soon though, the cousins that come and go begin to blur together and Martin picks up a detached view of the world as his interest wanes in his sheltered life. Martin lives to a very old age, and on his deathbed aboard the yacht, he is surrounded by all his descendants besides Ives, who passed of sickness earlier before. It is at this moment that Conrad appears, seemingly to finish his murder plot. However, it is revealed that no action was required to be taken by Conrad, as his fellow cousins have already achieved the mission of erasing their lineage. By containing Martin to a sheltered life, the cousins prevented Martin from living his normal life with a wife and kids, thus removing the possibility of their existence in the past, present and future. Furthermore, it is revealed that Martin had come to the same conclusion years ago, and chose instead to keep quiet out of his disdain for his descendants. With the cousins horrified at the knowledge, Conrad reassures Martin that their inaction resulted in hope, and Martin ponders to wonder if the assurance was genuine as he peacefully dies alone on the boat. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "0784e4f29ffd49f8a1a30aa6951e2062", "response_text": "Martin’s mother disappears, but nobody is surprised because mothers usually disappear around these parts. Ninian comes to take care of him, and he has no father because he was born as a war baby. Martin thinks that the story about Ninian being from the future is a gag, and he likes to bait her because she ends up crying. Ninian, however, tells him that she is protecting him from her cousin Conrad who is coming to kill him in the future. His living conditions have improved, but Martin misses his old neighborhood where he could play with the other children. Ninian and her relatives only take care of him as if it is some unpleasant duty; he learns that nobody works with hands anymore in their world because it is all done by machinery. When Martin turns sixteen, Raymond tells him about Conrad and his idealist ideas of making living fairer for the exploited natives on other planets. Conrad blames his great-grandfather for discovering the super drive. Conrad then bribes one of Professor Farka’s assistants to reveal information about a time transmitter, and he plans to go back in time to eliminate the common ancestor. Raymond explains that they got plans from another assistant and a handicrafts enthusiast to build another gadget. They could guard over Martin day and night so Conrad could not attack. Raymond explains that Ninian is leaving, and Martin feels oddly desolate because of their time together. When she leaves, Ninian cries at her inadequacy; Martin and Raymond move to a luxurious mansion in a remote area that protects them from the Second Atomic War. The relatives come back to hold meetings; Martin thinks he wants to be a physicist or engineer, but the relatives insist that he should be a painter. Ives eventually takes over and displays his art in a museum, and he buys a yacht called The Interregnum to go traveling. He lives out the rest of his days on the yacht with the other descendants, but he does not care for them much. Ives explains that the future world is not that much better, and he isn’t even sure if Conrad is wrong. Ives, however, ends up dying from a chill. Eventually, Martin’s work is bought by a museum in Italy; he asks one cousin where Conrad is. He lies dying at one hundred and four as the relatives all come to visit. Conrad comes to visit too, and he explains to the other cousins that they will all disappear because Martin was never allowed to lead a normal life. After realizing that the other man knew all along, Raymond calls Martin a criminal, but Martin does not mind. Conrad tells him that their plan will benefit the future, but Martin is not sure if he is telling the truth or not. As Martin dies, he is the only one left on the ship because everybody else has disappeared. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "837518b16e9e4208ad9f984833a2ec42", "response_text": "The story describes the life of Martin, a young kid whose mother dies. When this happens, a new woman begins to take care of him. She, called Ninian, tells Martin that she comes from the future, and is there to take care of him. Throughout this, Martin doesn’t question the motives of his caretaker. Later, it is also revealed that she is a descendant of Martin. More and more descendants of Martin come to his time in order to take care of him, taking turns of about 5 years in doing so, and are referred to as cousins. One of the cousins also reveals that the reason that they are protecting him is because one of their cousins wants to kill him. This is because one of Martin’s descendants created a piece of equipment that allowed humans to travel through space, leading to humans taking advantage of native species of other planets for their own economic benefit. Conrad, the descendant who wanted to kill him, wants to stop humans from ever traveling through space. Martin continues this boring life, preparing for the eventual arrival of Conrad who wants to kill him. Throughout his boring and repetitive life, Martin begins to question the actions of his descendants. When eventually Martin is an old man and is going to die, all of his descendants get together to say goodbye. This is where Conrad finally made an appearance, and it is revealed that everything was part of Conrad’s plan, as living his repetitive life Martin never had the chance to have children, therefore stopping his descendant from inventing the equipment necessary for human space travel. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "ae0500e6163146dcaa2e25dfb8e7999e", "response_text": "The story tells about the life of a boy called Martin. At the beginning, he lives in a poor neighborhood with his mother, who disappears one day. Instead, he is now looked after by Ninian, who claims to be Martin’s descendant from the future who came here to protect him from Conrad - Ninian’s cousin. She hires private tutors for him and soon decides to move to a better neighborhood and live in a big well-furnished house. Occasionally, the other descendants, like Ives or Raymond, also visit them and talk about the future where almost nobody works, and everything is done by machinery. Martin turns sixteen when Raymond finally tells him the full story: Raymond's brother Conrad was disappointed by the fact that the humans of his time exploited the other life forms on the other planets to get food and resources. He decided to eliminate their common ancestor - Martin -  so that no space travel inventions would have existed. The others - cousins as he should call them - went back in time to save him and, consequently, save themselves. Martin also learns about the security system and the collection of weaponry they have to protect him. Soon Ninian leaves, and Martin, together with Raymond, moves into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. They talk about Martin’s future occupation. Though he prefers engineering or physics, they choose art to avoid any accidental premature inventions he can create since he is already familiar with the science of the future. Martin becomes a second-rate artist, and his new guardian - Ives - arrives. He decides to buy a yacht - The Interregnum - and see the rest of the world with Martin. Martin doesn’t develop any special feelings for his ancestors, except for Ives. Martin learns more about the future from him: only an enclave of a couple of million people left on Earth, and representatives of the lower classes got deported to the other planets and are being exploited; several worlds have already been made inhabitable. Ives admits that his brother is not completely wrong, but he still cannot let him destroy his life. \n\nOne winter, Ives rapidly dies from a severe chill in Tierra del Fuego after they stopped there for a bit. Years go by, and Martin loses any interest in life, sometimes painting the sea view from the yacht. They stop in Italy, and he sells two paintings. Wars force them to go to different hemispheres and the Arctic. Eventually, Martin turns a hundred and four when his last illness comes. Finally, Conrad appears. He shocks all the gathered ancestors by explaining that the sheltered life they had created for Martin didn’t allow him to live his own life, or at least, have kids. When he dies, everyone will disappear, too. Martin figured it out years ago. Conrad assures him that his deed leads to a better future because he has been there. Erasing the future all his ancestors came from, Martin peacefully dies on the yacht, which drifts for years about the seas. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between Martin and Ives?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3561073fc40741b88473fc08e7d90fc1", "response_text": "Cousin Ives enters Martin’s life when he is a little older, and is the third descendant to accompany him as his guardian. Out of all his descendants to assume guardianship, Martin forms the closest relationship with Ives. Rather than seeing Martin as a responsibility and duty, Ives sees Martin as an individual and seeks ways to connect and encourage his passions. For one, Ives buys a yacht named The Interregnum to which the pair take upon themselves to explore the current world in. They traveled across the waters and inland to see both the civilized and uncivilized world, with Martin taking it all in. \n\nWhen it was just the two of them, their relationship progressed further. Ives began to open up about the future world that he and his descendants come from and explain the nuances of the social order that rules. Ives is the first to explicitly and honestly describe the feudal and privileged social class that Martin’s descendants take part in, only due to their fortunate ancestry. Additionally, Ives is the only cousin to admit the potential truth in Conrad’s intentions, noting the dilemma between achieving moral good and selfishing maintaining their own good life. Martin even comments his confidence in Ives being able to see the obvious flaw in the cousins’ plans. However, during one winter, Ives fell ill to a severe chill and passed away before his own birth. After Ives’ death, Martin relently voyages across oceans and soon as they and the cousins blur, he begins to live detachedly. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "0784e4f29ffd49f8a1a30aa6951e2062", "response_text": "Martin shares a much better relationship with Ives than with the rest of the cousins. He is told to call Ives his cousin because he is older when Ives takes responsibility. Martin begins to paint more, and Ives arranges to have his works shown in a gallery. When there is little interest in his artwork, Ives reassures him that people will grow to enjoy them. Martin also thinks that Ives is the only one who tries to see him as an individual, even arranging a yacht to be bought so they can see the world. Martin likes spending time with Ives, and Ives also tells him about the world of the future. He explains to Martin that there is no poverty because only a couple million elusive and privileged people are left on the planet. Ives also explains that this system had been deliberately planned, leaving the lower class people and other planets’ natives to suffer. He also is not even sure that Conrad’s thinking is wrong, but he cannot bring himself to watch his way of life change. When Ives dies from his chill, Raymond makes a speech about his death not being in vain. Martin, however, disagrees. When Martin’s paintings are bought later by an Italian museum, he thinks back to what Ives had said before and feels uncomfortable. As Martin lies dying, he thinks about how Ives is lucky to have been spared the same tragedy as the young people surrounding him. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "837518b16e9e4208ad9f984833a2ec42", "response_text": "Ives is one of Martin's descendants who wants to protect him from the eventual arrival of Conrad to kill Martin. Ives and Martin have a very good relationship, as Ives tries to help Martin in his painting career. Ives also tells Martin of everything that has gone on in the future, and why Conrad wants to kill him. Martin would also contemplate life with Ives, and question the actions of the cousins. Ives also takes the effort to connect emotionally with Martin, which is when Ives dies it makes Martin very sad. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "ae0500e6163146dcaa2e25dfb8e7999e", "response_text": "Ives is the first so-called cousin who respects Martin and sees an individual in him. Ives seems to be smarter than the other cousins and is also more honest with him. He admits that the future is not as ideal as Raymond and Ninian claim. He says Conrad was not completely wrong about the unfairness of the future’s way of life, but Ives himself still lacks the moral courage to be like him. Martin likes Ives, and even after the cousin dies, he thinks about him when he is older. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the role of the ���cousins’ in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3561073fc40741b88473fc08e7d90fc1", "response_text": "The ‘cousins’ featured in this story are all direct descendants of Martin, identified to be great-great-granddaughters and -sons. Instructed to be called Aunts and Uncles by a young Martin and then later cousins by a mature Martin, they have rallied together to travel into the past in order to protect and guard Martin from an assassination attempt by Conrad. Conrad, a fellow cousin, is thought to be an idealist by his fellow cousins and adamantly wrong in his belief that the right thing to do is to erase their lineage in order to correct injustice in their future society. Despite the heroic protection of Martin, we find out that the cousins’ guardianship of Martin is selfish in nature. Aside from Ives, Martin holds largely impersonal relationships with his cousins, who appear to view Martin as a reluctant duty. Because of Conrad as a looming threat over Martin’s livelihood, a rotation of cousins traveling from the future assume guardianship over Martin and dictates his life in his hobbies or the information he knows - all to protect their own livelihood. \n\nAt Martin’s deathbed, we find out that the cousins have had the wrong idea this entire time. In their insistence at protecting Martin and shaping his life to what they created for him, they signed their own death warrant. In all their planning and supposed intelligence and worthiness, the cousins have failed to observe the flaw in the plan: that if Martin had no wife and no children, then their very existence would be naught. Their forced presence in Martin’s life had rid Martin’s potential exciting existence - and in return - Martin’s lackluster existence had rid the cousins of any kind of existence. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "0784e4f29ffd49f8a1a30aa6951e2062", "response_text": "The role of the ‘cousins’ in the story is to protect Martin from Conrad coming to kill him. When Conrad begins to idealize a better world, the ‘cousins’ realize that this will change their way of life forever. Therefore, they decide to go back in time and protect Martin, so there is no way for Conrad to kill him. They must protect Martin because the ‘cousins’ are Martin’s descendants from the future. The ‘cousins’ begin looking after Martin shortly after he is born, and they make him their responsibility to ensure that Conrad fails in his goals. The ‘cousins’ also use their vast family wealth to move him to a better neighborhood and hire tutors. Later, Raymond uses this money to move them to a remote mansion, where he continues to look after Martin. They even pool their resources to have him become an artist, and Ives later buys The Interregnum to go traveling. The ‘cousins’ are determined to change Martin’s fate from the future without even realizing that they end up destroying themselves because they have controlled his life for so long. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "837518b16e9e4208ad9f984833a2ec42", "response_text": "The cousins have a very important role in the story, as they took it upon themselves to save Martin’s life, and stop their other cousin from killing him. By doing this, they end up basically ruining Martin's life, as in their efforts to protect him they stopped him from having a normal and happy life. It can also be said that cousin Conrad was in the right, as he was willing to sacrifice his life in order to stop the disastrous actions of humans in the future. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "ae0500e6163146dcaa2e25dfb8e7999e", "response_text": "After one of the descendants - Conrad - seemingly pans to go back in time and kill his ancestor - Martin, his other relatives decide to defend him from Conrad. They create a sheltered life for him and start taking care of Martin at the very beginning of the story, changing their shifts after some years. They make Martin move to different houses and then to a yacht, where he spends the rest of his life. They choose a profession for him, explain the future to him, and remind him about Conrad. They completely changed his life, erasing the future he was supposed to have. Simultaneously, they unconsciously ruin their own existence because, as we learn at the end, their overprotection didn’t enable Martin to have a real life or a family with kids. Their unkind attitude towards Martin also doesn’t make him emotionally connected to them. And he doesn’t tell them about the mistake they made, eventually deciding that this version of the future probably should not exist."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of time in this story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3561073fc40741b88473fc08e7d90fc1", "response_text": "First, time is significant in this story as the main plotline to the cousins' interactions with Martin. With the future having time travel as a reality, characters in this story like Ninian are able to jump back and forth between the past - to bring Martin out of poverty and vulgar background - and the future to her present time. Although the characters in this story utilize time as an unchangeable and linear concept, we find out through hints in the story and at the final moment that time here is fluid and flexible. Anything that occurs in the past will affect the reality of the future. This is a startling pocket of truth that the cousins fail to realize until Martin’s deathbed - where they are horrified to find out that their selfish desire to protect their comfortable reality in the future had actually led to their own demise and ridded their entire existence. \n\nAdditionally, time is used to explore the ruling ideologies of the social class both in present and in future. Despite the cousins proclaiming the future world to be free of poverty and highly privileged, Ives reveals that the realities of both worlds are similar in having wars and want and suffering. Only, with the latter future world dealing with these unsavory characters in exiling them and maintaining a feudal class system. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "0784e4f29ffd49f8a1a30aa6951e2062", "response_text": "Time is very significant in this story because it relates to all characters. Conrad uses the time transmitter from Professor Farka to travel to the future to observe different possibilities. He also travels back one last time to see the dying Martin and tell him what they are doing for the universe’s interest. Martin’s descendants travel back in time to protect him from Conrad, but they control most of his life to the point where he has no free will. Martin, however, sees his time as abundant because he spends most of his time with his relatives anyways. They are the only people he ever interacts with, and he finds himself living a purposeless life with all of the free time that he has. However, time is also significant in that it is what eventually erases all of his descendants from the past, present, and future. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "837518b16e9e4208ad9f984833a2ec42", "response_text": "Time plays a significant role in this story. Time is what allowed Martin's descendant to invent space travel, and is what eventually led to Conrad trying to kill him. Also, the cousins used time travel in order to go back to Martin’s time and to try and protect him from Conrad’s actions. Another important thing about time is that the cousins never aged as they protected Martin, leading to them stuck forever protecting Martin, until Martin dies, after which they never existed. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "ae0500e6163146dcaa2e25dfb8e7999e", "response_text": "Time in this story becomes a very flexible notion, allowing Martin’s descendants to use time travel to find him in the past and protect Martin from Conrad, who wants to kill him, thus erasing the timeline in which humans use exploitation of other people and life forms. Thanks to time travel, Martin can meet his descendants and learn what the future looks like for humans. Their arrival changes his life, and initially, he becomes anxious and curious but eventually loses interest in everything around him because his sheltered existence deprives him of any real feelings, except for fear of Conrad. Their plan leads to the elimination of the future they came from, showing how changing the past events affects the future. "}]}, {"question_text": "Does Martin’s attitudes towards the cousins change throughout the story, and why?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3561073fc40741b88473fc08e7d90fc1", "response_text": "When Ninian initially arrives, Martin blatantly considers her to be dumb. Dumb to hire a cleaning maid, dumb to freak out over Martin’s absence at school, and dumb to hire a private tutor. Even with them moving to a different and more privileged neighborhood, he considers her dumb to go through all this effort to still remain conspicuous. \n\nAs the reasons behind the cousins’ presence in the past and guardianship over Martin is revealed, his sentiment towards them remains the same. It seems that Martin is able to catch onto the obvious flaw in the cousins’ plans quite early on, and yet with so many cousins slipping in and out, and despite their proclaimed intelligence, none of them are able to pick up on this flaw. The flaw being: with Martin having no children, their very existence becomes an impossibility. This is revealed at the end of the story where Martin is on his deathbed, noting that he had come to this conclusion many years before and had chosen not to say anything. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "0784e4f29ffd49f8a1a30aa6951e2062", "response_text": "Martin's attitude towards the cousins does not ever really change throughout the story. Initially, he thinks that Ninian is foolish and fun to bait because she wounds up crying. Although Ninian does her best to care for him, he knows that all of his relatives are only doing it out of their interest. They see him as a rather unpleasant duty, while he does not try to get to know them either. When Raymond talks to him, he looks down on Martin and tries to be superior. Even when they move on to the yacht later, Martin only associates with them to not seem rude. The only cousin he becomes fond of is Ives because Ives is the only one who sees Martin as an individual. Martin becomes used to having them around, but it becomes difficult to tell them apart because there are many. Most of them are only interested in fulfilling their responsibility, so he does not get to know them apart from Ives. Even when the cousins realize from Conrad what they have done by controlling Martin, he is not surprised by how inept his descendants are. He does not seem too regretful about what his descendants have done until the end. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "837518b16e9e4208ad9f984833a2ec42", "response_text": "At the beginning Martin believed the actions of his cousins, and everything they told him. While he got older and older, he started to see the flaws in the plans of his cousins. He understood that if they continued in that cycle then he would never live his life and have children. Even though he knew the flaws, he always followed what the cousins said, and never pointed out the flaws to them. He decided to follow the role that the cousins wanted him to follow. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "ae0500e6163146dcaa2e25dfb8e7999e", "response_text": "At the beginning of the story, Martin is curious about Ninian. But as other cousins arrive, he becomes less and less interested in them. They do not seem incredibly bright or eager to get to know him. They show that they are carrying out duty and never bother to be more considerate or show excitement. The only cousin that Martin likes is Ives because he tries to see Martin as an individual and is brighter than his other relatives. Martin’s cousins cut him off from the life he got used to and never allow him to make his own decisions. He is trapped in their plan to save their lives, and they don't try to be respectful or care about his desires. Even when he is dying, their faces show a sign of relief. In general, Martin never felt any love or compassion for his descendants."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "61052", "uid": "a1cd22cb2e5943b7bf7712977dd79153", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Spawning Ground\n \n\n By LESTER DEL REY\n \n\n They weren't human. They were something\n  \n more—and something less—they were,\n  \n in short, humanity's hopes for survival!\n \n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n  \n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n  \n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n  \n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n\n\n The Starship\n \n  Pandora\n \n creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled\n unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to\n be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from\n the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed\n through her hallways.\n \n\n Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was\n a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility\n had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his\n reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies\n were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the\n control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.\n \n\n Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he\n moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. \"Morning, Bob. You\n need a shave.\"\n \n\n \"Yeah.\" He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a\n hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. \"Anything new\n during the night?\"\n \n\n \"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways\n north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the\n clouds.\" The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody\n knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have\n an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. \"And\n our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them\n in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back.\"\n \n\n Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen\n in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training\n as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and\n Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.\n \n\n Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't\n seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous\n and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of\n their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each\n on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.\n \n\n But\n \n  something\n \n had happened to the exploration party fifteen years\n back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check\n up.\n \n\n He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun\n must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that\n wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,\n it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of\n fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest\n glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding\n animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the\n deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was\n completely hidden by the fog.\n \n\n There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals\n now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,\n trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....\n \n\n But there was no time.\n \n\n Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of\n deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign\n of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed\n already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened\n to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to\n report back.\n \n\n He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough\n of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by\n luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors\n originally.\n \n\n \"Bob!\" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. \"Bob, there are\n the kids!\"\n \n\n Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught\n his eye.\n \n\n The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic\n speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that\n moved there.\n \n\n He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just\n beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.\n \n\n Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.\n Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but\n Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.\n \n\n They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.\n Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.\n \n\n Then the mists cleared.\n \n\n Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.\n Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost\n eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited\n cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a\n momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the\n others forward.\n \n\n \"Get the jeeps out!\" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of\n the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was\n agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door\n back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in\n confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The\n jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and\n Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.\n \n\n There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was\n irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to\n the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the\n jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked\n up speed. The other two followed.\n \n\n There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;\n surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked\n horrible in a travesty of manhood.\n \n\n The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were\n racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung\n about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty\n miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in\n spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived\n downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.\n \n\n \"Follow the blobs,\" Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to\n leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the\n kids. But it was too late to go back.\n \n\n The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into\n a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he\n had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.\n \n\n Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own\n trail to confuse the pursuers.\n \n\n There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a\n glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse\n faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the\n windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the\n steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.\n \n\n The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The\n other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late\n to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or\n the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.\n \n\n A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.\n \n\n He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature\n seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.\n \n\n Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward\n against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot\n leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each\n shoulder.\n \n\n The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature\n leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving\n for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.\n \n\n The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted\n shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his\n hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his\n nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after\n the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy\n sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no\n further move, though it was still breathing.\n \n\n Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli\n was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to\n kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded\n onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster\n on another before heading back.\n \n\n \"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!\" Barker shook\n his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.\n \n\n \"I hope so,\" Gwayne told him. \"I want that thing to live—and you're\n detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign\n language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy\n and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the\n answer.\"\n \n\n Barker nodded grimly. \"I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien\n metabolism.\" He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat\n sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. \"Bob, it still\n makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was\n no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some.\"\n \n\n \"Troglodytes, maybe,\" Gwayne guessed. \"Anyhow, send for me when you get\n anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying\n our time here already.\"\n \n\n The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been\n picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were\n busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon\n as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less\n informative with retelling.\n \n\n If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save\n time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That\n was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed\n to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had\n been overcome by the aliens.\n \n\n It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the\n primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its\n fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told\n these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a\n little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship\n cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.\n \n\n Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find\n something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make\n remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.\n \n\n The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons\n into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to\n prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found\n a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life\n there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.\n \n\n But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had\n finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.\n \n\n It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would\n render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,\n man had to colonize.\n \n\n And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The\n explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the\n terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships\n began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve\n space.\n \n\n Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and\n four more months back.\n \n\n In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the\n footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some\n of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none\n would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was\n precious as a haven for the race.\n \n\n If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as\n it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.\n \n\n Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to\n strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.\n \n\n But how could primitives do what these must have done?\n \n\n He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of\n cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully\n laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human\n hand had been able to do for centuries.\n \n\n \"Beautiful primitive work,\" he muttered.\n \n\n Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. \"You can\n see a lot more of it out there,\" she suggested.\n \n\n He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were\n squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.\n They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?\n For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the\n ship to them?\n \n\n Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. \"How's the captive coming?\"\n \n\n Barker's voice sounded odd.\n \n\n \"Physically fine. You can see him. But—\"\n \n\n Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore\n at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not\n checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.\n \n\n There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling\n sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker\n seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.\n \n\n The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The\n thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make\n some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up\n unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.\n \n\n \"Haarroo, Cabbaan!\" the thing said.\n \n\n \"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?\"\n Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was\n taut with strain.\n \n\n The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on\n its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.\n \n\n \"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them,\" Barker cut in\n quickly. \"I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very\n well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds\n fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it\n gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain.\"\n \n\n Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize\n on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little\n English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.\n \n\n \"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest\n kid's dog have? How many were brown?\"\n \n\n The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the\n curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment\n spread out.\n \n\n Three. Seven. Zero.\n \n\n The answers were right.\n \n\n By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the\n twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a\n long time telling.\n \n\n When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in\n silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. \"Is it\n possible, Doc?\"\n \n\n \"No,\" Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. \"No. Not\n by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under\n the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about\n their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be\n a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the\n germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe\n the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims.\"\n \n\n Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped\n down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of\n monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as\n tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.\n \n\n The kids of the exploring party....\n \n\n Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,\n set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle\n as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the\n ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the\n ship again.\n \n\n He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had\n time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,\n however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off\n giving the gist of it to Jane.\n \n\n \"It was the blobs,\" he summarized it. \"They seem to be amused by men.\n They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy\n doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,\n all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.\n \n\n \"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the\n hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth\n food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper\n this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony\n where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never\n know.\"\n \n\n Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight\n years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth\n tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.\n Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new\n eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.\n \n\n She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must\n now be her home. Then she sighed. \"You'll need practice, but the others\n don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll\n believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been\n changed yet, have we?\"\n \n\n \"No,\" he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. \"No.\n They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back.\"\n \n\n She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only\n puzzlement in her face. \"Why?\"\n \n\n And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the\n same answer he had found for himself. \"The spawning ground!\"\n \n\n It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her\n seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve\n that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were\n becoming uncertain.\n \n\n Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of\n men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange\n children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back\n to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps\n some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next\n rise to culture a better one.\n \n\n \"We're needed here,\" he told her, his voice pleading for the\n understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. \"These people need\n as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.\n The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with\n a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or\n accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here.\"\n \n\n She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. \"Be\n fruitful,\" she whispered. \"Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an\n earth.\"\n \n\n \"No,\" he told her. \"Replenish the stars.\"\n \n\n But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.\n \n\n Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes\n again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they\n could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them\n through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond\n numbering.\n \n\n Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the\n children of men!", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "433c25c82cc749389b26ea9f22686d22", "response_text": "The Starship Pandora lands on a planet where an exploring ship and a rescue group disappear. Captain Gwayne was ordered to come and inspect the lost ships for a week. They prolong their stay because of a discovery of the carefully buried ship whose parts were exposed by a landslide and detected by a metal locator a few days ago. When two cadets, Kaufman and Pinelli, and one member, Doctor Barker, approach to examine the buried ship, a horde of mysterious creatures come to them. The leader of mysterious creatures, tall and man-like, kidnaps the two cadets with his members and runs away. Captain Gwayne and other crew members ride on jeeps and chase after the monsters. When they catch up to the mysterious leader, the cadets are sitting on each shoulder of the leader without harm. Captain Gwayne and Doctor Barker collaborate to defeat the leader and bring it back to the ship.\n\nAfter bringing back the captive, Captain Gwayne has learned from the creature that he is Hennessy, the missing captain of the buried ship. He reveals that the blobs, a peculiarity on the planet, can change the cells in living creatures to help them adapt to the planet, which has done to Captain Hennessy and his crew members. All the mysterious creatures surrounding the ship are either the original crew members or their descendants. They decided to bury the ship after noticing the changes. After he finished the story, Captain Hennessy went to gather with his people. And now, Captain Gwayne faces the same situation as Captain Hennessy did in the past: either die when they go back to the Earth or stay on the planet to become a different creature, which at least makes humankind survive differently. Captain Gwayne decides to stay, so he discharges all the fuel out to not let the ship live again. He then tells Jane Corey, the Lieutenant, the truth and his decision. They both know that they have to stay for the better strength of the species after generations because humankind needs to have at least one hope to spread their seeds, even in a different shape. They will obliterate all their traces so that the Earth will send no more humans to the planet.\n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "17362750e0094364a9365a4295b0e4f7", "response_text": "Captain Gwayne is a weary fourty-year old man who captains the starship Pandora, as one of the many colonies traveling around space to find a new planet that can sustain human life like Earth. Accompanied by Lieutenant Jane Corey, he is informed that two of the space cadets snuck outside the ship. Among the outside landscape includes blobs, who are described to be a peculiarity of this particular planet; seemingly harmless but are ugly in looks.\n\nGwayne wishes to study them more thoroughly, but is reminded of his mission in deviating to this planet to search for Captain Hennessey and his men, who had abandoned their ship. As the cadets are heading back to Gwayne’s ship, a herd of blobs disperses in excitement and instead they begin to hover over a singular spot. The cadets turn to find a horde of things heading towards them, described to be vaguely man-like with a distinct leader at eight feet tall, and all of them holding objects like spears or sticks. In a race to reach the cadets before the things did, Gwayne, Jane and other officers raced in Jeeps towards the boys. Noticing the incoming Jeeps, the creatures grabbed the boys and disappeared into the mists, with the officers following fast in pursuit. Plowing through them, Gwayne touches a blob whose shape passes around it. As they confront the eight foot leader, it suddenly drops the boys and Gwayne and Doc Barker knock it out of consciousness. \n\nWith the boys safe, they take the unconscious creature back to the ship to try and see if the creature had anything to do with Hennessey’s disappearance and buried ship. Any information revealed would be pivotal in determining this planet’s habitability, as it is revealed that Earth was threatened with the Sun going nova and hence the human race found themselves in a scramble to find a replacement home. Gwayne and Jane then visit Barker and the now-awake creature, who immediately greets Gwayne in some garbled English. They find out that the leader of the creature is actually Captain Hennessy who had grabbed the kids with the intention of talking to them. It turns out that Hennessey and his crew have physically changed due to the planet, turning them into man-like creatures with an adapted English language. \n\nMore so, it is revealed that blobs enjoy having the humans around, and are subtly changing and adapting the human cells. It is what happened to Hennessy and is already happening to Gwayne because he’s been touched. However, the rest of his crew could go back but are unable to because Gwayne has dumped the fuel. In the end, we find out that Gwayne and Jane consider the answer to finding a new planet to be void, as they only thing they could do is find a new spawning ground, which they would be able to achieve if both crews spawn a new race on this planet and eventually, explore the star lanes once again. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "2e7ac0d328af449aaf0169a3bb6ddd4e", "response_text": "The story is about a ship captain, Gwayne, and his team arriving on a new planet. It is revealed that they were on that planet because two different expeditions had gone there before and neither had returned, so Gwayne and his team were there to see what had happened. It is also revealed that Earth’s sun was going nova, which is why humans were exploring and looking to colonize other planets. The planet is inhabited by blobs, spirit-like alien creatures, who seem harmless. Gwayne sends 2 kids to check the planet, and when they return the ship and the crew are ambushed by a horde of alien-like creatures. When the leader captures the two cadets, Gwayne rushes out and, with the help of another crew member, rescues the kids and captures the leader. When the crew’s doctor checks the leader, they find out that the creature is actually the captain of the previous mission, and Gwayne’s friend. Gwayne realizes that this was the blobs’ doing, and that they can change and adapt the body of human beings. After this is revealed, the crew decides that they should all stay on the planet, and bury the ship. This would allow the humans to create a new colony there with the blobs, and allow them to help each other, as the blobs could in a far future help the changed humans adapt to different planets. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "f6fb6af1626843458f73bbe960102af8", "response_text": "The starship Pandora creaks and groans as she settles on an ugly world. The starship is two hundred light-years away from Earth. Captain Gwayne curses and reaches for his boots; he shuffles to the control room where Lieutenant Jane Corey is waiting. Jane reports that a dozen mysterious blobs held a convention north, but they had broken off about an hour ago. She also informs him that the two cadets have snuck out again, to which Gwayne swears because Kaufman and Pinelli have no sense of caution. The Sol-type Sun begins to rise, but there is so much fog everywhere that it is impossible to see. He observes three blobs but knows that there is no time because Earth sent him here to check for any signs of Hennessy’s ship. Suddenly, Jane calls him to say that the two cadets are back. Strange creatures appear, and Gwayne yells at Jane to get the jeeps out. Once they drive, the menacing horde notices the jeeps and begins to run away with the cadets faster. Although the creatures try to stop their pursuers, the jeep goes through and catches a glimpse. Once the creature with the two cadets is in front of him, Gwayne dives to get the cadets back. Doc Barker hits the creature seconds after, and this causes the creature to collapse. The men examine the cadets, while Doc and Gwayne wonder if the creature could be the key to the missing ship. They discuss how the native creatures could have gone undetected, while Gwayne explains that it is time for him to go and get the ship back to Earth. The report from the cadets is enough, but there are still a lot of questions regarding the creatures and the missing crew. However, there needs to be an answer fast because Earth is close to extinction from the Sun. Since nobody would be able to live in the Solar System when that happens, the explorers must go out and find another world. Everybody does their part because the Sun will explode in ten years, while some of the strange planets would give man the opportunity to repopulate. Gwayne receives a call from Doc Barker and goes to see the creature. The creature is Captain Hennessy, and he has forgotten how to speak English because they had to change the language to make the sounds fit. When Gwayne questions the creature, it answers correctly; they listen to Hennessy’s story. Gwayne leads former Hennessy out and goes back to the control room to discharge the ship’s fuel tanks. It is revealed that the blobs can adapt to cells and have no choice but to stay because they are already changed. Jane figures that they have really not been changed yet, but she concludes spawning ground. The fifty men and women can replenish the Earth here, and Gwayne knows that their children would one day find a way to the star lanes again to spread the children of men further. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Hennessy? What happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "433c25c82cc749389b26ea9f22686d22", "response_text": "Hennessy is the captain of the lost ship sent to inspect an exploring team fifteen years ago on a planet. He is also a friend of Captain Gwayne, who comes after him to check his loss. He becomes a mysterious creature adapted by the blobs, a peculiarity on the planet. Due to this change to him and his crew members, they decide to bury their ships carefully not to let other people find them.\n\nWhen the Starship Pandora lands on the planet and the two cadets from the ship approach to examine the buried ship, Hennessy kidnaps them with his members, leading Captain Gwayne to come to capture him. After becoming a captive in the ship, he reveals his identity to Captain Gwayne, and Gwayne confirms his identity with a series of questions that are only known to them. Finally, he tells all the story to Gwayne and leaves to gather with his people outside the ship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "17362750e0094364a9365a4295b0e4f7", "response_text": "Captain Hennessy is a fellow officer whose ship and its crew became the first colony to explore this peculiar planet. However, for some initial unknown reason, Hennessy and his men abandoned their ship and equipment and ultimately buried their ship; hence, leading Earth to send Captain Gwayne and his crew to search for signs of them. \n\nIt is revealed that Captain Hennessy and his crew are indeed the horde of creatures that initially take the two young cadets. The tall eight foot leader, who actually turned out to be Hennessy, was knocked out after a confrontation and in conversation with Gwayne, Jane and the Doc, reveals how he and his crew came to be the creatures. It turns out that the blobs had great curiosity and interest in the humans and desired to keep them around, and so through contact with the humans, eventually changed and adapted their cells to be able to live on this planet. The change resulted in going from humans to man-like creatures with more primitive instincts, an adapted English language with distorted yet strong physiques. \n\nAfter explaining this to the officers aboard Pandora, Hennessy is released off the ship and back onto the planet, where he is greeted by the blobs and the rest of his monstrous crew. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "2e7ac0d328af449aaf0169a3bb6ddd4e", "response_text": "Hennessy is a captain of one of the human’s colonizing ships. He is sent to a new planet in order to check up on a failed mission there. When he arrives, he and his crew get in contact with the blobs of the planet, which end up physically changing them into monster-like creatures. They decide to bury the ship and cut ties with the humans, in order to stop the same thing from happening to others. After a few years, a new ship arrives under the leadership of captain Gwayne. When two cadets of the ship are sent to explore the planet, Hennessy tries to talk to them, but this action is taken as a violent act by the ship, which ends up with the crew capturing him and taking him back to the ship. There the crew realizes that the creature is in fact Hennessy, and the crew realizes the position that they are in now. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "f6fb6af1626843458f73bbe960102af8", "response_text": "Hennessy is one of the captains of a ship that was sent to check on an exploration party that disappeared. His own ship disappears too, which is why Gwayne’s ship is sent to check up on the vile planet. Although Hennessy is initially thought to have disappeared, his ship is found in a deep gorge hidden by fog. Gwayne and his crew spend the majority of their time trying to find any traces of Hennessy or his crew. Later, it is revealed that Hennessy had actually adapted and become something akin to one of the creatures that they encounter. He has forgotten how to speak normal English as a result of having to change the language around to make the sounds fit. When Gwayne tests him, Hennessy knows that there are three barmaids at the Cheshire Cat; his oldest son’s dog has seven pups, and none of them are brown. Hennessy then tells his story, and Gwayne leads him out to where a crowd of monsters is waiting.  "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Jane Corey? What happens to her throughout the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "433c25c82cc749389b26ea9f22686d22", "response_text": "Jane Corey is the lieutenant on the Starship Pandora. She calls Captain Gwayne “Bob.” She informs Captain Gwayne about the sneaking out of two cadets and the situation when Captain Gwayne asks her. She also gets the jeeps out when Captain Gwayne tries to catch up with the mysterious creatures who captured the cadets. In addition, after Captain Gwayne learns the truth from Hennessy, the leader of the mysterious creature, and discharges the fuel from the ship, he tells Jane about his decision. Jane does not condemn him for deciding the future of other members alone because she realizes that they must stay on the planet to function as a spawning ground for the human species. She is a good partner for Captain Gwayne."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "17362750e0094364a9365a4295b0e4f7", "response_text": "Jane Corey is a Lieutenant aboard the ship, Pandora, and is Captain Gwayne’s right hand woman. She is described to be highly intelligent and organized, as she is the first to inform Gwayne of the young cadet’s escapades as well as the first to observe the blobs’ change in behavior, hence alerting them to the kids’ presence in danger. \n\nHer intelligence is further highlighted after she, Gwayne and the Doc speak with the changed Hennessy. When Gwayne gives the gist of the situation to Jane, she is able to see through his lie and come to the conclusion herself the dire reality of the situation: that she and the crew are to remain on this planet in spite of turning into the creatures. This is because the planet is to be their spawning ground, in which the future bloodlines need to be as rich and fruitful in order to give the new human race a chance - and in the future - once again explore and adapt to other worlds. After this realization, she smiles and understands this reality to be fruitful and eventually, spawn to replenish Earth. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "2e7ac0d328af449aaf0169a3bb6ddd4e", "response_text": "Jane Corey is a lieutenant in Captain Gwayne’s ship. She arrives on a new planet with her crew following up on the disappearance of two previous expeditions on that planet. After the crew finds Hennessy in his new form, Corey and Gwayne decide the best course of action for the ship, which is to settle in the planet and let the blobs adapt them to the planet, and adapt them to new planets in the future. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "f6fb6af1626843458f73bbe960102af8", "response_text": "Lieutenant Jane Corey is one of the crew members on the Pandora spaceship. She is noted to have blonde hair. When Gwayne sees her in the morning, she tells him that he needs a shave. Later, she is the one to tell him about the kids heading back to the ship. She is also a quick-thinker, instantly releasing the jeeps when Gwayne yells at her. Jane later holds a cup of murky coffee in her hand and tells Gwayne that he can see more primitive spears outside if he enjoys its design so much. She instantly catches on when he tells her about the blobs, concluding that they have to be the ones who set up a spawning ground. She knows Gwayne better than the other crew members, and she silently agrees to stay on the planet. However, she also knows that they have not really been changed yet. As Gwayne talks about how he needs her, she smiles and talks about being fruitful to spawn and replenish the earth. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of the blobs?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "433c25c82cc749389b26ea9f22686d22", "response_text": "The blobs are insect-like creatures with skeletons inside with four to twelve legs on their bodies. They are harmless. They are curious about any moving objects on the ground. They can change the cells in any living thing to adapt to the planet. They like humans, so they change their cells to let them stay on the planet.\n\nThe blobs are the main reason why Captain Hennessy and Gwayne decide to stay on the planet. They choose to stay because the blobs make them able to survive on the planet without having to change the whole planet to do so. Without the blobs, they may leave to search for other planets that can let humans survive. But with the blobs, someday in the future, humans may be able to seek out more possibilities in other worlds where the blobs will help them adapt to the new environments. In addition, the blobs also change their shape from only a twelve-leg body to having a four-leg form, which is also evidence of how they like human beings.\n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "17362750e0094364a9365a4295b0e4f7", "response_text": "The blobs are the native inhabitants of this peculiar planet that the characters are exploring in this story. Observed as seemingly harmless and curious, the blobs aren’t given too much caution in the beginning of the story. However, the behavior of the blobs seem to indicate the presence of humans or creatures and as the story continues, are revealed to play a role in the latter. \n\nIt turns out that the blobs have adaptive capabilities to them - and have already used these capabilities to change the cell structure of Hennessy and his crew - changing them from humans to man-like creatures. While they are no longer like Earth humans, these man-like creatures are able to survive on this planet. This is significant because this story details man’s mission in searching for a habitable planet and the survival of the human race  - and through the blob’s amusement of man and adaptive capabilities - have discovered this form of survival. Rather than humans colonizing the planet like we may assume, the blobs indicate the planet changing the humans and signify the new reality for Captain Gwayne and his crew. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "2e7ac0d328af449aaf0169a3bb6ddd4e", "response_text": "The blobs are the inhabitants of the new planet that are described as spirit-like. The crew believes that the blobs are harmless. After they find Hennessy, the crew realizes that the blobs can affect the humans, and adapt their bodies to different environments. Because of the impending explosion of the sun, humans are desperately looking for different planets where humans can live. Gwayne realizes that the blobs could be very important for the survival of the human species, because if the humans stay on the planet, the blobs could help the humans adapt to different planetary conditions in the future. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "f6fb6af1626843458f73bbe960102af8", "response_text": "The blobs are a peculiarity on the planet and look like overgrown fireballs. They are initially very curious about humans, but they are not harmless. These blobs, however, later prove to be significant because they are capable of changing human cells to better adapt to the alien environment. The blobs find people amusing and like having them around. Gwayne mentions that life before man came used to have twelve legs, but the blobs have changed that. Another reason why the blobs are significant is that they have adapted man to the alien world instead of the other way around. Since men usually have to adapt the planet to their needs, being touched by a blob does the opposite and brings a human further away from human society. "}]}, {"question_text": "What happens to the human race on the Earth?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "433c25c82cc749389b26ea9f22686d22", "response_text": "After the invention of atomic weapons, humans maintained peace for nearly two centuries. However, four decades ago, observation revealed that the sun would soon go nova, which would make the whole solar system uninhabitable for millennia. Since then, humans have been searching for habitable planets in other solar systems. They send many starships carrying deep-sleep stored people to different worlds, hoping they could be the colonies for the human race in the future, but none has promised to be safe for generations. So the exploring teams are sent continuously. Yet the situation is challenging. The training schools cannot export enough astronauts, so promising young candidates are trained as cadets on starships. Humans do not have enough time to find another Earth to live on for generations."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "17362750e0094364a9365a4295b0e4f7", "response_text": "On Earth, the human race is threatened by the Sun’s imminent reality of going nova. Despite surviving the discovery of atomic weapons and preventing an interplanetary war, the Sun going nova meant that humans had to find another world to inhabit and colonize in order to continue to survive, as even the Solar System would be uninhabitable for a while. \nAs such, explorers like Captain Gwayne and Hennessy were sent out to discover new worlds that may be habitable for humans with deep-sleeping colonizers while teams of terraformers did their best. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "2e7ac0d328af449aaf0169a3bb6ddd4e", "response_text": "The human race on Earth is facing probable extinction. This is because they found out that the sun is going nova, which means that the Sun is going to explode soon, leading to the extinction of the human race. This has caused the human race to search different planets where they could live and colonize. This whole process is what set up the arrival of Gwayne’s crew on the planet to search for Hennessy. Hennessy’s ship was sent to the planet to scout and see if humans could live there. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "f6fb6af1626843458f73bbe960102af8", "response_text": "The human race on Earth will be destroyed when the sun goes nova. Since this event will render the entire Solar System uninhabitable for millenia, people will have to colonize other planets. There is a team of explorers going out to find a world in desperation, terraforming teams, and big starships are also sent out with colonists in a deep sleep to conserve space. By the time they go to the new planet, the sun will explode in ten years and kill the entire human race on Earth. Even though humans enjoy their life on Earth, they know that they must find a new place to adapt to because the world will become destroyed. The human race might also go to these new planets to spawn and spread the same seeds that they did on Earth. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "24192", "uid": "2171c0c2b71446af804251f915ce97aa", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "THE FIRST ONE\n \n\n By HERBERT D. KASTLE\n \n\n Illustrated by von Dongen\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog July 1961.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright\n on this publication was renewed.]\n  The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be\n welcomed ... but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a\n hero...?\n \n \n There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual\n speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had\n once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had\n since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. But everything\n wasn't usual. The crowd was quiet, and the mayor didn't seem quite as\n at-ease as he'd been on his last big welcoming—for Corporal Berringer,\n one of the crew of the spaceship Washington , first to set Americans\n upon Mars. His Honor's handclasp was somewhat moist and cold. His\n Honor's eyes held a trace of remoteness.\n \n Still, he was the honored home-comer, the successful returnee, the\n hometown boy who had made good in a big way, and they took the triumphal\n tour up Main Street to the new square and the grandstand. There he sat\n between the mayor and a nervous young coed chosen as homecoming queen,\n and looked out at the police and fire department bands, the National\n Guard, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the Elks and Masons. Several of\n the churches in town had shown indecision as to how to instruct their\n parishioners to treat him. But they had all come around. The tremendous\n national interest, the fact that he was the First One, had made them\n come around. It was obvious by now that they would have to adjust as\n they'd adjusted to all the other firsts taking place in these—as the\n newspapers had dubbed the start of the Twenty-first Century—the\n Galloping Twenties.\n \n He was glad when the official greeting was over. He was a very tired man\n and he had come farther, traveled longer and over darker country, than\n any man who'd ever lived before. He wanted a meal at his own table, a\n kiss from his wife, a word from his son, and later to see some old\n friends and a relative or two. He didn't want to talk about the journey.\n He wanted to forget the immediacy, the urgency, the terror; then perhaps\n he would talk.\n \n Or would he? For he had very little to tell. He had traveled and he had\n returned and his voyage was very much like the voyages of the great\n mariners, from Columbus onward—long, dull periods of time passing,\n passing, and then the arrival.\n \n The house had changed. He saw that as soon as the official car let him\n off at 45 Roosevelt Street. The change was, he knew, for the better.\n They had put a porch in front. They had rehabilitated, spruced up,\n almost rebuilt the entire outside and grounds. But he was sorry. He had\n wanted it to be as before.\n \n The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had\n escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him.\n He was glad. He'd had enough of strangers. Not that he was through with\n strangers. There were dozens of them up and down the street, standing\n beside parked cars, looking at him. But when he looked back at them,\n their eyes dropped, they turned away, they began moving off. He was\n still too much the First One to have his gaze met.\n \n He walked up what had once been a concrete path and was now an ornate\n flagstone path. He climbed the new porch and raised the ornamental\n knocker on the new door and heard the soft music sound within. He was\n surprised that he'd had to do this. He'd thought Edith would be watching\n at a window.\n \n And perhaps she had been watching ... but she hadn't opened the door.\n \n The door opened; he looked at her. It hadn't been too long and she\n hadn't changed at all. She was still the small, slender girl he'd loved\n in high school, the small, slender woman he'd married twelve years ago.\n Ralphie was with her. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual\n support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. They\n looked at him, and then both moved forward, still together. He said,\n\"It's good to be home!\"\n \n Edith nodded and, still holding to Ralphie with one hand, put the other\n arm around him. He kissed her—her neck, her cheek—and all the old\n jokes came to mind, the jokes of travel-weary, battle-weary men, the\n and- then -I'll-put-my-pack-aside jokes that spoke of terrible hunger.\n She was trembling, and even as her lips came up to touch his he felt the\n difference, and because of this difference he turned with urgency to\n Ralphie and picked him up and hugged him and said, because he could\n think of nothing else to say, \"What a big fella, what a big fella.\"\n \n Ralphie stood in his arms as if his feet were still planted on the\n floor, and he didn't look at his father but somewhere beyond him. \"I\n didn't grow much while you were gone, Dad, Mom says I don't eat enough.\"\n \n So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that\n everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General\n Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left\n Washington.\n \n \"Give it some time,\" Carlisle had said. \"You need the time; they need\n the time. And for the love of heaven, don't be sensitive.\"\n \n \n \n Edith was leading him into the living room, her hand lying still in his,\n a cool, dead bird lying still in his. He sat down on the couch, she sat\n down beside him—but she had hesitated. He wasn't being sensitive; she\n had hesitated. His wife had hesitated before sitting down beside him.\n \n Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De\n Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more\n so. Carlisle had said lots of things, but even Carlisle who had worked\n with him all the way, who had engineered the entire fantastic\n journey—even Carlisle the Nobel prize winner, the multi-degreed genius\n in uniform, had not actually spoken to him as one man to another.\n  The eyes. It always showed in their eyes.\n \n \n He looked across the room at Ralphie, standing in the doorway, a boy\n already tall, already widening in the shoulders, already large of\n feature. It was like looking into the mirror and seeing himself\n twenty-five years ago. But Ralphie's face was drawn, was worried in a\n way that few ten-year-old faces are.\n \n \"How's it going in school?\" he asked.\n \n \"Gee, Dad, it's the second month of summer vacation.\"\n \n \"Well, then, before summer vacation?\"\n \n \"Pretty good.\"\n \n Edith said, \"He made top forum the six-month period before vacation, and\n he made top forum the six-month period you went away, Hank.\"\n \n He nodded, remembering that, remembering everything, remembering the\n warmth of her farewell, the warmth of Ralphie's farewell, their tears as\n he left for the experimental flight station in the Aleutians. They had\n feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in\n continent-to-continent experimental flight.\n \n They had been right to worry. He had suffered much after that blow-up.\n But now they should be rejoicing, because he had survived and made the\n long journey. Ralphie suddenly said, \"I got to go, Dad. I promised Walt\n and the others I'd pitch. It's Inter-Town Little League, you know. It's\n Harmon, you know. I got to keep my word.\" Without waiting for an answer,\n he waved his hand—it shook; a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and\n ran from the room and from the house.\n \n He and Edith sat beside each other, and he wanted badly to take her in\n his arms, and yet he didn't want to oppress her. He stood up. \"I'm very\n tired. I'd like to lie down a while.\" Which wasn't true, because he'd\n been lying down all the months of the way back.\n \n She said, \"Of course. How stupid of me, expecting you to sit around and\n make small talk and pick up just where you left off.\"\n \n He nodded. But that was exactly what he wanted to do—make small talk\n and pick up just where he'd left off. But they didn't expect it of him;\n they wouldn't let him; they felt he had changed too much.\n \n \n \n She led him upstairs and along the foyer past Ralphie's room and past\n the small guest room to their bedroom. This, too, had changed. It was\n newly painted and it had new furniture. He saw twin beds separated by an\n ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more\n ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire\n fence around the experimental station.\n \n \"Which one is mine,\" he asked, and tried to smile.\n \n She also tried to smile. \"The one near the window. You always liked the\n fresh air, the sunshine in the morning. You always said it helped you\n to get up on time when you were stationed at the base outside of town.\n You always said it reminded you—being able to see the sky—that you\n were going to go up in it, and that you were going to come down from it\n to this bed again.\"\n \n \"Not this bed,\" he murmured, and was a little sorry afterward.\n \n \"No, not this bed,\" she said quickly. \"Your lodge donated the bedroom\n set and I really didn't know—\" She waved her hand, her face white.\n \n He was sure then that she had known, and that the beds and the barrier\n between them were her own choice, if only an unconscious choice. He went\n to the bed near the window, stripped off his Air Force blue jacket,\n began to take off his shirt, but then remembered that some arm scars\n still showed. He waited for her to leave the room.\n \n She said, \"Well then, rest up, dear,\" and went out.\n \n He took off his shirt and saw himself in the mirror on the opposite\n wall; and then took off his under-shirt. The body scars were faint, the\n scars running in long lines, one dissecting his chest, the other slicing\n diagonally across his upper abdomen to disappear under his trousers.\n There were several more on his back, and one on his right thigh. They'd\n been treated properly and would soon disappear. But she had never seen\n them.\n \n Perhaps she never would. Perhaps pajamas and robes and dark rooms would\n keep them from her until they were gone.\n \n Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter\n Reed Hospital early this morning; which was something he found\n distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time,\n he began to understand that there would be many things, previously\n beneath them both, which would have to be considered. She had changed;\n Ralphie had changed; all the people he knew had probably\n changed—because they thought he had changed.\n \n He was tired of thinking. He lay down and closed his eyes. He let\n himself taste bitterness, unhappiness, a loneliness he had never known\n before.\n \n But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began\n filtering into his mind. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same\n man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and\n friends which was, if anything, stronger than before. Once he could\n communicate this, the strangeness would disappear and the First One\n would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for—a\n return to old values, old relationships, the normalcies of the backwash\n instead of the freneticisms of the lime-light. It would certainly be\n granted to him.\n \n He slept.\n \n \n \n Dinner was at seven\n p.m.\n His mother came; his Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille\n came. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate\n in the dining room at the big table.\n \n Before he'd become the First One, it would have been a noisy affair. His\n family had never been noted for a lack of ebullience, a lack of\n talkativeness, and Ralphie had always chosen mealtimes—especially with\n company present—to describe everything and anything that had happened\n to him during the day. And Edith herself had always chatted, especially\n with his mother, though they didn't agree about much. Still, it had been\n good-natured; the general tone of their lives had been good-natured.\n \n This wasn't good-natured. Exactly what it was he wasn't sure. \"Stiff\"\n was perhaps the word.\n \n They began with grapefruit, Edith and Mother serving quickly,\n efficiently from the kitchen, then sitting down at the table. He looked\n at Mother as he raised his first spoonful of chilled fruit, and said,\n\"Younger than ever.\" It was nothing new; he'd said it many many times\n before, but his mother had always reacted with a bright smile and a quip\n something like, \"Young for the Golden Age Center, you mean.\" This time\n she burst into tears. It shocked him. But what shocked him even more was\n the fact that no one looked up, commented, made any attempt to comfort\n her; no one indicated in any way that a woman was sobbing at the table.\n \n He was sitting directly across from Mother, and reached out and touched\n her left hand which lay limply beside the silverware. She didn't move\n it—she hadn't touched him once beyond that first, quick, strangely-cool\n embrace at the door—then a few seconds later she withdrew it and let it\n drop out of sight.\n \n So there he was, Henry Devers, at home with the family. So there he was,\n the hero returned, waiting to be treated as a human being.\n \n The grapefruit shells were cleaned away and the soup served. Uncle Joe\n began to talk. \"The greatest little development of circular uniform\n houses you ever did see,\" he boomed in his powerful salesman's voice.\n\"Still going like sixty. We'll sell out before—\" At that point he\n looked at Hank, and Hank nodded encouragement, desperately interested in\n this normalcy, and Joe's voice died away. He looked down at his plate,\n mumbled, \"Soup's getting cold,\" and began to eat. His hand shook a\n little; his ruddy face was not quite as ruddy as Hank remembered it.\n \n Aunt Lucille made a few quavering statements about the Ladies' Tuesday\n Garden Club, and Hank looked across the table to where she sat between\n Joe and Mother—his wife and son bracketed him, and yet he felt\n alone—and said, \"I've missed fooling around with the lawn and the rose\n bushes. Here it is August and I haven't had my hand to a mower or\n trowel.\"\n \n Aunt Lucille smiled, if you could call it that—a pitiful twitching of\n the lips—and nodded. She threw her eyes in his direction, and past him,\n and then down to her plate. Mother, who was still sniffling, said, \"I\n have a dismal headache. I'm going to lie down in the guest room a\n while.\" She touched his shoulder in passing—his affectionate, effusive\n mother who would kiss stray dogs and strange children, who had often\n irritated him with an excess of physical and verbal caresses—she barely\n touched his shoulder and fled.\n \n So now five of them sat at the table. The meat was served—thin, rare\n slices of beef, the pink blood-juice oozing warmly from the center. He\n cut into it and raised a forkful to his mouth, then glanced at Ralphie\n and said, \"Looks fresh enough to have been killed in the back yard.\"\n Ralphie said, \"Yeah, Dad.\" Aunt Lucille put down her knife and fork and\n murmured something to her husband. Joe cleared his throat and said\n Lucille was rapidly becoming a vegetarian and he guessed she was going\n into the living room for a while. \"She'll be back for dessert, of\n course,\" he said, his laugh sounding forced.\n \n Hank looked at Edith; Edith was busy with her plate. Hank looked at\n Ralphie; Ralphie was busy with his plate. Hank looked at Joe; Joe was\n chewing, gazing out over their heads to the kitchen. Hank looked at\n Lucille; she was disappearing into the living room.\n \n He brought his fist down on the table. The settings jumped; a glass\n overturned, spilling water. He brought it down again and again. They\n were all standing now. He sat there and pounded the table with his big\n right fist—Henry Devers, who would never have thought of making such a\n scene before, but who was now so sick and tired of being treated as the\n First One, of being stood back from, looked at in awe of, felt in fear\n of, that he could have smashed more than a table.\n \n Edith said, \"Hank!\"\n \n He said, voice hoarse, \"Shut up. Go away. Let me eat alone. I'm sick of\n the lot of you.\"\n \n \n \n Mother and Joe returned a few minutes later where he sat forcing food\n down his throat. Mother said, \"Henry dear—\" He didn't answer. She began\n to cry, and he was glad she left the house then. He had never said\n anything really bad to his mother. He was afraid this would have been\n the time. Joe merely cleared his throat and mumbled something about\n getting together again soon and \"drop out and see the new development\"\n and he, too, was gone. Lucille never did manage to speak to him.\n \n He finished his beef and waited. Soon Edith came in with the special\n dessert she'd been preparing half the day—a magnificent English trifle.\n She served him, and spooned out a portion for herself and Ralphie. She\n hesitated near his chair, and when he made no comment she called the\n boy. Then the three of them were sitting, facing the empty side of the\n table. They ate the trifle. Ralphie finished first and got up and said,\n\"Hey, I promised—\"\n \n \"You promised the boys you'd play baseball or football or handball or\n something; anything to get away from your father.\"\n \n Ralphie's head dropped and he muttered, \"Aw, no, Dad.\"\n \n Edith said, \"He'll stay home, Hank. We'll spend an evening\n together—talking, watching TV, playing Monopoly.\"\n \n Ralphie said, \"Gee, sure, Dad, if you want to.\"\n \n Hank stood up. \"The question is not whether I want to. You both know I\n want to. The question is whether you want to.\"\n \n They answered together that of course they wanted to. But their\n eyes—his wife's and son's eyes—could not meet his, and so he said he\n was going to his room because he was, after all, very tired and would in\n all probability continue to be very tired for a long, long time and that\n they shouldn't count on him for normal social life.\n \n He fell asleep quickly, lying there in his clothes.\n \n But he didn't sleep long. Edith shook him and he opened his eyes to a\n lighted room. \"Phil and Rhona are here.\" He blinked at her. She smiled,\n and it seemed her old smile. \"They're so anxious to see you, Hank. I\n could barely keep Phil from coming up and waking you himself. They want\n to go out and do the town. Please, Hank, say you will.\"\n \n He sat up. \"Phil,\" he muttered. \"Phil and Rhona.\" They'd had wonderful\n times together, from grammar school on. Phil and Rhona, their oldest and\n closest friends. Perhaps this would begin his real homecoming.\n \n Do the town? They'd paint it and then tear it down!\n \n \n \n It didn't turn out that way. He was disappointed; but then again, he'd\n also expected it. This entire first day at home had conditioned him to\n expect nothing good. They went to the bowling alleys, and Phil sounded\n very much the way he always had—soft spoken and full of laughter and\n full of jokes. He patted Edith on the head the way he always had, and\n clapped Hank on the shoulder (but not the way he always had—so much\n more gently, almost remotely), and insisted they all drink more than was\n good for them as he always had. And for once, Hank was ready to go along\n on the drinking. For once, he matched Phil shot for shot, beer for beer.\n \n They didn't bowl very long. At ten o'clock they crossed the road to\n Manfred's Tavern, where Phil and the girls ordered sandwiches and coffee\n and Hank went right on drinking. Edith said something to him, but he\n merely smiled and waved his hand and gulped another ounce of nirvana.\n \n There was dancing to a juke box in Manfred's Tavern. He'd been there\n many times before, and he was sure several of the couples recognized\n him. But except for a few abortive glances in his direction, it was as\n if he were a stranger in a city halfway around the world.\n \n At midnight, he was still drinking. The others wanted to leave, but he\n said, \"I haven't danced with my girl Rhona.\" His tongue was thick, his\n mind was blurred, and yet he could read the strange expression on her\n face—pretty Rhona, who'd always flirted with him, who'd made a ritual\n of flirting with him. Pretty Rhona, who now looked as if she were going\n to be sick.\n \n \"So let's rock,\" he said and stood up.\n \n They were on the dance floor. He held her close, and hummed and chatted.\n And through the alcoholic haze saw she was a stiff-smiled, stiff-bodied,\n mechanical dancing doll.\n \n The number finished; they walked back to the booth. Phil said,\n\"Beddy-bye time.\"\n \n Hank said, \"First one dance with my loving wife.\"\n \n He and Edith danced. He didn't hold her close as he had Rhona. He waited\n for her to come close on her own, and she did, and yet she didn't.\n Because while she put herself against him, there was something in her\n face—no, in her eyes; it always showed in the eyes—that made him know\n she was trying to be the old Edith and not succeeding. This time when\n the music ended, he was ready to go home.\n \n They rode back to town along Route Nine, he and Edith in the rear of\n Phil's car, Rhona driving because Phil had drunk just a little too much,\n Phil singing and telling an occasional bad joke, and somehow not his old\n self. No one was his old self. No one would ever be his old self with\n the First One.\n \n They turned left, to take the short cut along Hallowed Hill Road, and\n Phil finished a story about a Martian and a Hollywood sex queen and\n looked at his wife and then past her at the long, cast-iron fence\n paralleling the road. \"Hey,\" he said, pointing, \"do you know why that's\n the most popular place on earth?\"\n \n Rhona glanced to the left, and so did Hank and Edith. Rhona made a\n little sound, and Edith seemed to stop breathing, but Phil went on a\n while longer, not yet aware of his supposed faux pas .\n \n \"You know why?\" he repeated, turning to the back seat, the laughter\n rumbling up from his chest. \"You know why, folks?\"\n \n Rhona said, \"Did you notice Carl Braken and his wife at—\"\n \n Hank said, \"No, Phil, why is it the most popular place on earth?\"\n \n Phil said, \"Because people are—\" And then he caught himself and waved\n his hand and muttered, \"I forgot the punch line.\"\n \n \"Because people are dying to get in,\" Hank said, and looked through the\n window, past the iron fence, into the large cemetery at the fleeting\n tombstones.\n \n The car was filled with horrified silence when there should have been\n nothing but laughter, or irritation at a too-old joke. \"Maybe you should\n let me out right here,\" Hank said. \"I'm home—or that's what everyone\n seems to think. Maybe I should lie down in an open grave. Maybe that\n would satisfy people. Maybe that's the only way to act, like Dracula or\n another monster from the movies.\"\n \n Edith said, \"Oh, Hank, don't, don't!\"\n \n The car raced along the road, crossed a macadam highway, went four\n blocks and pulled to a stop. He didn't bother saying good night. He\n didn't wait for Edith. He just got out and walked up the flagstone path\n and entered the house.\n \n \n \n \"Hank,\" Edith whispered from the guest room doorway, \"I'm so sorry—\"\n \n \"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's just a matter of time. It'll\n all work out in time.\"\n \n \"Yes,\" she said quickly, \"that's it. I need a little time. We all need a\n little time. Because it's so strange, Hank. Because it's so frightening.\n I should have told you that the moment you walked in. I think I've hurt\n you terribly, we've all hurt you terribly, by trying to hide that we're\n frightened.\"\n \n \"I'm going to stay in the guest room,\" he said, \"for as long as\n necessary. For good if need be.\"\n \n \"How could it be for good? How, Hank?\"\n \n That question was perhaps the first firm basis for hope he'd had since\n returning. And there was something else; what Carlisle had told him,\n even as Carlisle himself had reacted as all men did.\n \n \"There are others coming, Edith. Eight that I know of in the tanks right\n now. My superior, Captain Davidson, who died at the same moment I\n did—seven months ago next Wednesday—he's going to be next. He was\n smashed up worse than I was, so it took a little longer, but he's almost\n ready. And there'll be many more, Edith. The government is going to save\n all they possibly can from now on. Every time a young and healthy man\n loses his life by accident, by violence, and his body can be recovered,\n he'll go into the tanks and they'll start the regenerative brain and\n organ process—the process that made it all possible. So people have to\n get used to us. And the old stories, the old terrors, the ugly old\n superstitions have to die, because in time each place will have some of\n us; because in time it'll be an ordinary thing.\"\n \n Edith said, \"Yes, and I'm so grateful that you're here, Hank. Please\n believe that. Please be patient with me and Ralphie and—\" She paused.\n\"There's one question.\"\n \n He knew what the question was. It had been the first asked him by\n everyone from the president of the United States on down.\n \n \"I saw nothing,\" he said. \"It was as if I slept those six and a half\n months—slept without dreaming.\"\n \n She came to him and touched his face with her lips, and he was\n satisfied.\n \n Later, half asleep, he heard a dog howling, and remembered stories of\n how they announced death and the presence of monsters. He shivered and\n pulled the covers closer to him and luxuriated in being safe in his own\n home.\n \n \n THE END", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "113", "uid": "450fa16d4c944058b51490bd17a280ba", "response_text": "The story is about a family man - Henry Devers - returning to his hometown after a unique adventure. He was participating in an experimental flight that ended in an explosion. But he managed to survive thanks to regenerative technologies that helped rebuild his body and make him breathe again. The story starts with a grandiose tour around his town where the mayor, the National Guard, the Fire Department bands, and many other people participate though they all seem a little distant and scared to Devers. The official car lets him off at his house that, as he notices, has changed a little. Edith, his wife, and Ralphie, his ten-year-old son, meet him at the door. Later, in the living room, they have an awkward conversation about Ralphie’s school grades, his son quickly leaves for a baseball game, and soon Devers goes to sleep in his separate twin bed that his wife bought while he was away. He looks at his scars before going to bed, thinking about how people’s behavior changed because they believe Henry has changed.  \nIn the evening, Henry’s mother, uncle Joe, and aunt Lucille come for dinner. Again everyone seems aloof: Henry’s overly affectionate mother now barely touches him and even cries for several minutes, his aunt and uncle cannot talk about casual things - no one looks him in the eyes. After all, Devers gets infuriated and screams at the guests, they leave, and his son once again tries to leave instead of spending time with the parents. Later in the evening, Edith wakes her husband because his good friends Phil and Rhona came - they all go to bowling alleys and then to a tavern. Even Devers’ close friends seem stiff and cautious while talking to him, dancing with him, being around him. On their way back, Phil tries to make a joke about a cemetery but stops himself from finishing it - this upsets Henry even more, completely ruining the evening. When they get home Edith tries to apologize to her husband and admits that she’s frightened. In reply, he says that soon such regenerative technologies and processes will be an ordinary thing, and his captain, for example, who died together with Devers, will soon leave the hospital, too. She asks him to be patient with everybody. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1d0f7465382746f29d2d4b05a9dc5f69", "response_text": "There is a welcoming crowd and politicians giving speeches. However, the mayor and crowd are much quieter than the last welcoming. His Honor’s handclasp is somewhat moist and cold, with eyes holding traces of remoteness. Henry Devers is still honored, and there is a tour up Main street to where the mayor waits alongside a young homecoming queen. Hank looks out to the crowd, and there is a lot of national interest because he is the First One. He is glad that the official greeting is over, and all he wants to do is see his family again. When Hank goes back to 45 Roosevelt Street, the house has changed for the better. He is glad not to have to deal with more strangers and is surprised by having to use the ornamental knocker on the new door. Edith opens the door with their son Ralphie in her arms, and the family shares a sweet moment. Edith hesitates to take a seat next to him. When Hank asks about Ralphie, the boy says that it is now summer vacation. However, Edith says that he has been doing excellent in school. He remembers back to their farewells at the experimental flight station in the Aleutians. Ralphie suddenly says he must go to pitch for the Inter-Town Little League; Hank tells Edith that he is tired. She leads him upstairs, where there are two twin beds in entirely new furniture. Hank assumes that Edith has created this barrier between them because he has changed too much. When she leaves, Hank goes to look at his scars. He hopes Edith does not have to see them, even though he did not consider the scars when he left the Walter Reed Hospital. As Hank dozes off, he thinks about wishing to regain his old relationships. His mother, Uncle Joe, and Aunt Lucille all come when dinner approaches. Hank tries to compliment his mother over grapefruit, and she bursts into tears. Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille make little to no attempts to talk either, making Hank angry because nobody treats him like a human being. Hank falls asleep, but Phil and Rhona come to take everyone to a bowling alley. Hank agrees to Phil’s request to drink and continues to do so in Manfred’s Tavern. He tries to dance with Rhona, who looks as if she will be sick, and even his wife is reluctant to dance with him. When the entire party drives back, Hank jokes about a cemetery and wonders if he should just lie in an open grave. Edith tries to apologize to him and says that they all need some time to get used to him being back when he should have died. Hank tells her that the government is doing everything they can and that he has not seen anything in the six and half months. However, when he lays in his bed, he thinks back to the monsters and is glad to be in his own house. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "8f26a064298c43a09443a91e51681def", "response_text": "Eleven months ago, Henry Devers, an Air Force soldier, left his family for an experimental flight station in the Aleutians. His family had seen him off with care and warmth by that time. Seven months ago, he died. And now, he comes back as the first to breathe again from death after receiving the new regenerative technology. He still gets a big welcome from the nation and his family, but it is not the same anymore. He feels the awkward silence in the ceremony and parade when it was once lively and welcoming. His family no longer touches him as they did before because they are now afraid of him. Things have changed after he left, and it is not the same anymore. He feels uneasy and angry. He wants the old normality and urges to be accepted by his family and close friends, but people are too scared to act normally to him. They treat him as some monster. Henry knows that it takes time for people to accept him, but it is also true that people like him will become normal in the future, and there must be a time when his family takes him as an ordinary person again. This story mainly describes the tension between Henry and his loved ones and how he wants to be treated normally after becoming the first one to gain a second life from new technology."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "c8f1cbeee97f4a649aea7d01a4d64649", "response_text": "The story is about a man, named Henry Devers, and his return to his hometown after being the “First One” to complete an important journey. He first is received by the mayor and a few people, but everyone seems cold around him, like they were afraid of him. When he arrived at his house, his cold reception continued, as his wife and his son also seemed nervous and weird around him. His mother even cried when she saw him, and couldn’t spend time with him. This trend continued throughout, as even his mother, aunt and uncle were sad when they saw him. Throughout the story, Henry only wanted everyone to treat him normally, like before he left. He then decides to go out with his wife and best friends. Even his best friend seemed to not act normally around him when they were bowling and drinking alcohol. When the two men got drunk, the 4 of them returned home. When they passed a graveyard, Henry’s best friend made a joke about them and the death of people. Here it is revealed that Henry had actually died, and that the “journey” that he had been on was a journey of reviving. He ends up explaining to his wife that even if he is the first one to return from the dead, more people will come soon, and that in time it will become normal. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who’s Henry Devers and what happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "113", "uid": "450fa16d4c944058b51490bd17a280ba", "response_text": "Henry Devers was participating in an experimental flight that ended in an explosion. After that, he became the first person ever saved by regenerative technologies that had helped rebuild his body and make him breathe again. At the beginning of the story, he leaves the hospital after months of medical sleep during which his body was healing. Devers is met by the mayor and curious yet quiet crowds, he goes on a triumphant tour around the town and finally comes home to his wife Edith and his ten-year-old son Ralphie. They also seem aloof and hesitant, having no idea what to say or do around him now. He realizes his wife bought a separate twin bed which looks like an additional barrier between them to him, and his son quickly leaves for a baseball game having no apparent desire to spend time with the father. In the evening, his mother, uncle Joe, and aunt Lucille come for dinner: his mother cries, his uncle and aunt are not talkative - everyone looks stiff and uncomfortable, they are avoiding Henry’s gaze. It infuriates him, and after his angry outburst, the guests soon leave. After another small awkward conversation with his family, he goes to bed only to be soon woken up by Edith who informs him about his friends’ arrival. Phil and Rhona seem happy to see their friend, but after going to bowling alleys and a tavern Devers realizes that they are apprehensive and scared, just like everyone else. After Phil’s unsuccessful joke about a cemetery, Devers understands that everyone treats him as The First One, they cannot act as they used to because they are afraid. Later at home, Edith admits that she’s frightened and they all need time to adapt. In reply, he tells her that soon such regenerative technologies and processes will be an ordinary thing, and his captain, for example, who died together with Henry, will soon leave the hospital, too. Devers won't be the only one. He goes to sleep in the guest room."}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1d0f7465382746f29d2d4b05a9dc5f69", "response_text": "Henry Devers, or Hank, is one of the men who go beyond the Great Frontier and is the first one to return. Before leaving, he had married his high-school love Edith and had a son with her. Hank also worked extensively with General Carlisle, a commanding officer who engineers the entire trip and goes on to win a Nobel Prize. His family sheds tears and embraces him when he leaves the experimental flight station in the Aleutians. There is an explosion, and everybody assumes that he has died. When he returns eleven months later, a homecoming party is held for him. However, no one in the crowd is overly enthusiastic to see him, and they are all nervous about his appearance as the First One. After the official ceremonies, he is excited to go home and see his family again after being away from home for eleven months. However, everyone has changed, and he can no longer fit in with them because they are not used to him being alive. Ralphie does everything he can to stay away from his father, and Edith has rearranged their bedroom so that the both of them sleep separately. When he dines with the rest of his family, Hank’s mother cries at the sight of him and does not take his compliment kindly. His other relatives, Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille, also try not to talk, even though his family is known for their love of talking. Hank is tired of everybody treating him as some alien and angrily sends everyone away. Even when Phil and Rhona visit, their interactions are not the same as before. Nobody wants to treat Hank usually, and they are all frightened that he is still alive when he is supposed to be dead. Hank hopes that everything will work out in time, and he tells Edith that there will be more men coming back. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "8f26a064298c43a09443a91e51681def", "response_text": "Henry Devers is an Air Force soldier who left for an experimental flight station in the Aleutians. He has a son and a wife. He died in an incident seven months ago but then retrieved his life by new regenerative technology. He has scars all over his body. He likes the sunshine and the fresh air in the morning. After he regained his life, he returned to his hometown as the first person to rebreathe from death. However, when he comes home, everyone treats him differently than he was before. He notices the differences, but he thinks they need time to adjust to the new changes. However, after being disappointed by several reunions with his family and close friends, he feels isolated and frustrated with the situation. He wants to be treated normally, but everyone surrounding him needs time for the new and terrifying change. When he decides to live in the guest room in his home, he talks to his wife, saying that people like him will become part of normality."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "c8f1cbeee97f4a649aea7d01a4d64649", "response_text": "Henry Devers is the main character of the story. At the beginning it is revealed that he is the “First One” to return from an important expedition. As he returns to his hometown, he is accompanied by some U.S. army members, and meets with the town’s mayor. This makes it seem as if he was an astronaut, military member, or something similar. He gets a very cold reception from everyone in the town, including his own wife and son. This seems to bother him as he hopes everything will be back to normal. It is also revealed that he was in an accident that left his body scarred during his journey. As Henry reconnects with his mother, she also has a very bad reaction to seeing him, as she starts crying and can't seem to be close to him. All of these reactions make Henry very angry. When he gets the chance to go out with his childhood friends, he is very excited as he believes that they will treat him normally. This isn’t the case and after going with them and passing through a graveyard, we realize that what had happened to Henry is that he had died. After he died, Henry was put through a regenerative procedure to revive him, which is where his scars come from, and why everyone was so weird around him. He ends up fighting with his wife, but he realizes that time is needed for everyone to go back to normal and accept this new technology. "}]}, {"question_text": "What’s the significance of the regenerative technology in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "113", "uid": "450fa16d4c944058b51490bd17a280ba", "response_text": "The main character - Henry Devers - is the first man to have been saved by regenerative technologies. After leaving the hospital, he goes on a grandiose tour around the town, but he can see that the crowds are quiet. At home, his wife Edith seems overly hesitant and restrained, his son Ralphie quickly leaves them. Later in the evening, during dinner, his mother, aunt, and uncle also seem stiff and anxious, infuriating him. After that, he meets with his close friends hoping for them to treat him as before, but all their actions show that they are not comfortable with Devers either. He realizes that everyone he knows doesn't know how to behave around him, they cannot look him in the eyes and are scared. The First One status makes everyone terrified of him, which his wife later admits. But Devers assures her that soon this kind of technology will be ubiquitous, and the old superstitions will die, people like him will be ordinary citizens. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1d0f7465382746f29d2d4b05a9dc5f69", "response_text": "The regenerative technology allows the men who have gone beyond the Great Frontier to return home safely. Without this technology, Hank would not have been able to return to his family. When Hank speaks to Edith, he tells her that he knows of eight men in the regenerative tanks right now. Even the people who died, such as Captain Davidson, will return home as a result of the technology. The regenerative technology can regenerate a brain and organ for any of the young men who lose their lives by accident. This technology is also very significant because it can bring people back to life from the dead. Even though reviving someone from death should be impossible, regenerative technology has made it possible."}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "8f26a064298c43a09443a91e51681def", "response_text": "Regenerative technology is a new technology that can bring the dead to life. It uses a tank to regenerate brains and organs for anyone who dies from violence, accident, and who can recover, to save the life of the dead ones. It is a technology that the government plans to use in the future to save as many lives as they can. This technology also brings Henry Devers alive again, which is the one that makes Henry Devers become the First One to regain life from death. However, as Henry returns to his hometown from his death, he is treated by people fearfully because he is reborn. Therefore, as the cause for Henry Devers being treated abnormally by everyone, regenerative technology is the leading cause for the whole story to proceed."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "c8f1cbeee97f4a649aea7d01a4d64649", "response_text": "The regenerative technology is one of the most important aspects of the story because it leads to the main plot. At the beginning of the story, it is revealed that Henry was “The First One” to go through a journey, but his journey is never elaborated further until the end. At the end we realize that Henry and his team had died, but the regenerative technology allowed them to continue living, which is why everyone was acting weirdly around him. Henry says that the procedure took 6 months, which is why he was away for so long. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "113", "uid": "450fa16d4c944058b51490bd17a280ba", "response_text": "At the beginning of the story, Henry Devers - the first man to have been saved by regenerative technologies - goes on a town tour up to Main Street to the new square and the grandstand. He gets off at 45 Roosevelt street - his home. Here he has an awkward interaction with his wife Edith and his son Ralphie who soon leaves for a baseball game. In the evening, Henry, his wife, son, mother, uncle, and aunt eat in the dining room - the guests seem to be stiff and nervous, it infuriates Devers. After an outburst of anger, he goes to his room. After his friends, Rhona and Phil, come to see him, they all go to bowling alleys and then to Manfred’s Tavern where they dance, though his friends seem relatively uncomfortable and scared. On their way back, they drive past a cemetery when Phil makes an inappropriate joke which leads to a moment of dead silence. Later, when they come home, Devers and Edith have a sincere conversation - she admits that everyone, including her, is terrified. After reassuring his wife, Henry goes to sleep in the guest room."}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1d0f7465382746f29d2d4b05a9dc5f69", "response_text": "The story is set in the world of the Great Frontier in the growing city of Croton. The airport used to be twenty miles outside of the city, but it has developed so fast that it has now engulfed the airport within its boundaries. There is also a Main Street and a new town square with a grandstand. The Walter Reed Hospital is also in this city. The experimental flight station is in the Aleutians; a twelve-foot concrete and barbed-wire fence surround the station. Instead of the old concrete path, there is now an ornate flagstone path leading up to Hank’s house. The house also has a new porch and ornamental knocker on a new door that plays soft music. The house also has a window to look through from the inside to the outside. Inside of the house, there is a living room with a couch and a doorway. Upstairs, there is a foyer with an entrance to Ralphie’s room, a small guest room, and the couples’ bedroom. The couples’ bedroom is newly painted and has new furniture. An ornate little table now separates two twin beds with an ornate little lamp. In the dining room, there is a big table and a kitchen. The story later transitions out of the house to a bowling alley and Manfred’s Tavern. The tavern has a dance floor and a jukebox to dance to. Later, they pass a cemetery and race along a macadam highway as they drive back."}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "8f26a064298c43a09443a91e51681def", "response_text": "The story happens in the twenty-first century of America. Humans have already set their foot on the planets outside of the Earth. It is called the Galloping Twenties because of new generative technology that can bring people from death to life. However, the technology is so new that only one person, namely Henry Devers, succeeds at the moment. People are frightened of his existence because he returns from an uncharted territory where humans have never been able to step in - death. Nonetheless, the government plans to bring life to more dead people through regenerative technology, guaranteeing that the once-dead people will return and live as ordinary in the future."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "c8f1cbeee97f4a649aea7d01a4d64649", "response_text": "The story is set in a traditional American rural town. It looks to be very quaint, small and quiet. Our character traverses through the airport and reaches his very normal home, with a porch and front yard. The house of Henry seemed like a very normal American home, with two bedrooms and a guest bedroom. Something different was that the master bedroom had two twin beds, instead of a queen or king bed. The story also moves to a bowling alley, where Henry gets to see his best friends. The last important location of the story is a graveyard, because of which we learn that Henry’s journey was actually coming back from the dead. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who’s Edith and what happens to her throughout the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "113", "uid": "450fa16d4c944058b51490bd17a280ba", "response_text": "Edith is the wife of Henry Devers - the first man to have been saved by regenerative technologies. While he was healing, she managed to renovate their house and buy a new bed for her husband. Together with their son Ralphie Edith meets Henry at the porch after he leaves the hospital and goes on a tour around their town. She seems nervous and scared around her husband while trying to talk to him about their son’s academic achievements at school. Later she dines with Devers and his relatives, still feeling very hesitant and unsure about how she has to interact with him. Edith tries to placate her husband after he angrily screams at the guests because of how scared they are and the fact that they avoided his gaze during the entire evening. Soon, she goes to wake him up after his close friends come to see him. Four of them go to bowling alleys and then to Manfred’s Tavern, but his friends - Phil and Rhona - behave as strangely as everybody else. Phil makes awkward remarks, Rhona looks sick. After an inappropriate joke made by one of the friends, Edith has to calm her husband again. She finally talks to him when they get back, admitting that everyone, including her, is terrified and they need more time to adapt. After reassuring her, her husband goes to sleep in the guest room. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1d0f7465382746f29d2d4b05a9dc5f69", "response_text": "Edith is Hank’s wife and the mother of Ralphie. She is initially very frightened to see her husband after assuming he has died. She and Ralphie hold on to each other tightly when Hank first comes back, and she is very hesitant to respond to his affections. Even when they go to the living room to sit down, she hesitates to sit next to him. Later, when she brings him upstairs, she explains to him that the lodge donated the twin bedroom set when she purposely arranged it to create a barrier between them. During dinner with his relatives, she focuses on serving the food and does not try to make any form of conversation. Both her and Ralphie do not want to spend any time with Hank despite him returning alive. She gives him one of her old smiles when his friends come, but she cannot return to being the old Edith when they dance on the dance floor in Manfred’s Tavern. Only later, when Hank says that he should lay in an open grave, does Edith feel terrible about her behavior. Edith promises that everything will return in time, and she gives him a kiss when he explains to her the situation of the men coming back. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "8f26a064298c43a09443a91e51681def", "response_text": "Edith is Henry Devers’ wife, the wife of the person who was reborn from death through regenerative technology. She married Henry twelve years ago. She is a thirty-three-year-old. She calls Henry “Hank.” She used to sleep in the same bed with Henry, but she sleeps in different beds with him when Henry returns. She also used to touch Henry lovingly, but she interacted with him carefully after his return. When Henry feels angry during the dinner because other people around the table cannot treat him normally, Edith calls his name with fear, trying to calm him down. She also brings an English trifle to Henry when he is upset about the unnormal treatment during the dinner, and she calls their son to come and eat with them. When their son, Ralphie, tries to escape away again from his dad, she stops him and tells Henry that they will spend the time together, playing games and watching TV. However, Henry refuses her proposal because he can see their fear in their eyes. When Edith and Henry go out for town with their old friends, they dance, but it is so stiff that Henry can feel Edith’s failure to try to be the old her. When they come back home, and Henry states that he will live in the guest room for the moment, she apologizes for the treatment she and the other people give Henry. She asks him whether he feels anything during the death, and he responds that it was just like sleeping with no dreams.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "c8f1cbeee97f4a649aea7d01a4d64649", "response_text": "Edith is Henry’s husband. We learn that for the past year she has been raising their son alone. When her husband returns home, she tries to do her best to treat him normally, but it is hard for her to see him. Throughout the story she tries to help her husband cope with being back home, but her restraint towards him is clear. At the end she has a fight with Henry, and lets Henry know that it is going to take some time for everything to go back to normal. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "63304", "uid": "c88a2a397faf4e9a9f1b8bf6aef542db", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "DOUBLECROSS\n \n\n by JAMES Mac CREIGH\n \n \n Revolt was brewing on Venus, led by the descendant of the first Earthmen to land. Svan was the leader making the final plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n The Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock. There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He turned.\n \n \"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n \n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n\"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n \n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \" If they come back.\"\n \n \"Is there any question?\"\n \n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n \n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings, just like us—\"\n \n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"\n \n \"Acclimation,\" Lowry said scientifically. \"They had to acclimate themselves to Venus's climate. They're friendly enough.\"\n \n The Exec shrugged again. He stared at the wooden shacks that were the outskirts of the native city, dimly visible through the ever-present Venusian mist. The native guard of honor, posted a hundred yards from the Earth-ship, stood stolidly at attention with their old-fashioned proton-rifles slung over their backs. A few natives were gazing wonderingly at the great ship, but made no move to pass the line of guards.\n \n \"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives. They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will. After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n \n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"\n \n Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n\"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n \n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n \n \n\n \n \"You see?\"\n \n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"\n \n The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n \n Svan laughed harshly. \" They don't think so. You heard them. We are not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n \n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n \n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still object?\"\n \n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly convinced by Svan.\n \n \"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n \n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n \n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of assent.\n \n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not return.\"\n \n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n \n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to Earth.\"\n \n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council authorized—murder?\"\n \n Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you object?\"\n \n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n \n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"\n \n He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty, irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a mark on one of them, held it up.\n \n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n \n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that bowl.\"\n \n Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n \n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their slips.\n \n Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n\"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation. The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough, after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"\n \n There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n \n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled. Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over, striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n \n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance. Almost he was disappointed.\n \n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n \n Then gray understanding came to him. A traitor! his subconscious whispered. A coward! He stared at them in a new light, saw their indecision magnified, became opposition.\n \n Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision. Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n \n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\n \n \n\n \n The six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.\n \n \"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We have ample time.\"\n \n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered. Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n \n The right answer leaped up at him. They all are , he thought. Not one of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\n \n \n He clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"\n \n She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them, illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n \n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n \n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.\n \n \"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n \n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is that not permitted?\"\n \n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n \n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"\n \n Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n\"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\" He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining. He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had ruthlessly pounded it against the road.\n \n \n Svan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally.\n \n\n \n Svan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously, then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be no trace.\n \n Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep a watch for other guards.\"\n \n \n\n \n Venus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer. Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n \n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n \n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n \n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose something happens to the delegation?\"\n \n \"Then we're in the soup,\" the Exec said philosophically. \"I told you the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the last three hundred years.\"\n \n \"It isn't all the natives,\" Lowry said. \"Look how they've doubled the guard around us. The administration is co-operating every way they know how. You heard the delegation's report on the intercom. It's this secret group they call the Council.\"\n \n \"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be coming from the town, anyhow....\"\n \n \n\n \n Svan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed. Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been two bombs in the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n \n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"\n \n Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n \n Svan, listening, thought: It's not much of a plan. The guards would not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a purpose.\n \n \n Aloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember, you are in no danger from the guards.\"\n  From the guards , his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a ground-shaking crash.\n \n Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n \n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n \n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around, sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n \n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean? Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?\n \n There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n \n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own. They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the side of the ship.\n \n Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance. He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\n \n \n\n \n He became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n \n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan, with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came for you. We must flee!\"\n \n He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly. Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb in the car—\n \n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n \n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though. What've you got there?\"\n \n Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type, delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car, and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n \n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing now.\"\n \n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered. The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n \n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it. They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said.\n \n \"What's that?\" Lowry craned his neck. \"A piece of paper with a cross on it? What about it?\"\n \n The surgeon shrugged. \"He had it clenched in his hand,\" he said. \"Had the devil of a time getting it loose from him.\" He turned it over slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be doing carrying a scrap of paper with a cross marked on both sides?\"", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "57f8b65bd11d491dbf6c73685c2779d6", "response_text": "Svan, a leader of members in the Council on Venus, plots to revolt against the Earthman delegations who are going to bring back the news of the habitability of Venus. Initially, he eavesdrops on the conversation between the Office of the Deck and the Executive Officer, which is about the untrustworthiness of Venusians, the descendants of the first generation of Earthman who migrated to Venus. Svan then initiates a revolting plan against the Earthman.\n\nBy showing this conversation to the group, Svan convinces the members to conduct his plan of not letting the Earthman ship go back to the Earth. In his plan, they will drive near the ship, five people will cause some chaos to attract the guards, and one person will put the delayed-action atomite bomb on the ship. They draw lots to determine when they decide who will put the bomb. However, Svan finds that no one admits to being the one, so he draws a cross on his slip, pretending to be the one who has terrible luck. \n\nAfter assigning the tasks to each person, Svan and his members drive to cross the border, where Svan brings down a native guard. When they separate to let one group cause the commotion and let Svan put the bomb, Svan takes out one bomb and leaves another one in the car. He knows that the bomb on the car will explode and attract the Earthman guards, which is unknown by the other members. He sees the car leave and turns to wait for the explosion. But the car comes back because the native guards found the rifle left by the murdered guard. The members in the car try to pick up Svan to flee from the search of the Earthman when Svan tries his best to run away. The explosion happens. Svan is on the verge of death when the Office of the Deck and the Executive Officer come to see him. They find a slip with a cross drawn on both sides in his hand.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "06c25c80707044b3852749e8ad4ada4f", "response_text": "The story follows two different groups of people. One of these is a crew of humans from earth that arrived on venus with the purpose of scouting and of negotiating with the venus natives to prepare for the arrival of more humans. These natives were in fact the descendants of the first group of humans that arrived on venus. Even though they are humans, their physical appearance has adapted to the venusian atmosphere. When the humans arrive, a group of natives called “The Council” decided to bomb the ship of the humans. To decide the person who would sneak on the ship to plant the bomb, the natives marked a slip with an X and randomly picked slips. When no one came forward, the leader of the natives, Svan, decided to do it himself. Because the person with the X didn’t come forward, Svan didn’t trust his group anymore. Therefore, after the group sneaked past a guard, Svan decided to blow up both the car with his team and the ship. Svan and his team split up, and just as the car’s bomb was going to explode, they returned to Svan because they were caught. This led to all of them getting blown up. When the crew of the human ship found the bodies, they saw that Svan had in fact a slip with X’s on both sides. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a03db93d0a2546a9a773f625aadf7cb8", "response_text": "Approximately 4-5 generations ago the first expedition landed on Venus, the descendants of these explorers are called the native Venusians. A delegation from Earth just arrived on Venus, and everyone wonders what is going to happen next now that people know Venus is habitable. \n\nThe Executive Officer - the Exec - and the Officer of the Deck - Lowry -  talk in the Earth-ship’s open lock. The Exec doubts the natives’ friendliness and does not consider them human anymore. Lowry tries to explain that their appearance doesn't affect their amiability. He also tells the Exec that some natives are afraid of the possible wave of immigration from Earth because it can ruin their regular way of life, and some underground group is spreading the word that the consequences will be even worse. Lowry adds that it’s possible but is interrupted by a loud voice notifying them about a spy ray focused on their lock. The Exec alerts their guards and the delegation. \n\nThe ray was used by Svan and five other representatives of the Council - an underground organization fighting against any partnerships with humans. They hear Lowry’s words, and Svan becomes infuriated. He persuades everyone, including Ingra who initially hesitates, that they can’t let the delegation come back to Earth. Svan plans to plant a bomb in the ship, it will detonate on the delegation’s way back, killing everyone. Others are uncertain, so Svan decides to randomly pick the one who will plant the bomb. When he sees that his slip is blank, he thinks that someone is afraid to admit that they had the slip with the cross. So Svan quickly marks his slip and pretends to be the one who was initially chosen. He explains the specifics of their plan: while he will be near the ship, the others will fake a car accident to draw some guards which will allow Svan to get in. Their car is stopped by the State Guard who realizes that Svan is the reason the state of danger was declared. Svan kills the guard and hides the body. He takes one bomb and leaves another one in the car, hoping that the explosion will draw enough attention and punish the five people he now considers fearful traitors. Before the car takes off, Ingra kisses Svan. He waits near the ship fumbling with his slip and wondering who the coward was. Suddenly, he hears the car is driving back. Ingra screams that they were chased, but got away and came back for Svan. He starts running from the car, realizing the bomb inside it is supposed to detonate. The explosion wave knocks him out. Later, he wakes up near a surgeon, who calmly declares that Svan will soon die from the wounds, and shocked Lowry. The surgeon is confused by a paper slip with a cross marked on both sides he found clenched in Svan’s hand. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "bf27bc895713472bb5f13a662fb64b0c", "response_text": "In James Mac Creigh's short story Doublecross, the actions revolve around two opposing sides of the storyline of the planet Venus. The Officer of the Deck on the Earth spaceship reports to The Executive Officer about a pathetic underground group of dissidents who spread the rumor that immigrants will kill the indigenous Venusians, descendants of the first expedition. During their arrogant conversation, the ship receives news of an attempted attack.\n\tAn underground organization controlled by an indigenous Venusian, Svan, overhears the ship's delegation's conversation about their contemptuous attitude towards the natives. Svan is determined not to let the Earth colonizers leave Venus and destroy the ship before its departure. The council informs the Venusians that only they had the right to decide the course of action. The underground organization agrees that if the Earth ship returned, it would mean disaster for Venus. Therefore, it should not return. Svan plans to sneak aboard at night and attach the Atomit magnetic time bomb to the ship. However, the commander faces the problem of betrayal, indecision, and cowardice among his renegade team. Svan suggests that the operation draws lots to decide who will be honored to perform the most critical part of the plan - the attachment of the bomb. He draws a small cross on one of the random papers in the bowl for the draw. After distributing the pieces of paper, Svan realizes that none of the team members agrees to reveal the brave one, fulfilling his duty to the people of Venus. The current political situation scares the six conspirators to attempt their expedition. After a fight with the guard, Svan and his team successfully make their way to the ship, but a second bomb turns out to be in Svan's possession and put into the car of his subordinates. Not only does Svan plan to explode the colonizers' ship, but also to take out revenge on his crew. As soon as he thinks of killing two birds with one stone: the Earth colonizers and five traitors, one of the team members Ingra, kisses Svan before going on board and wishes him good luck. Svan is thrown into a shudder, realizing that he is making a fatal mistake. As a result of his confusion, both bombs explode: in his pocket and the car of his accomplices. \nDying on the table of an Earth surgeon on the ship he was trying to destroy, Svan overhears a conversation between the Watch assistant Lowry and the doctor. While examining his clothes, he finds a piece of paper with two marked crosses as a symbol that Svan framed himself because of his fiery and distrustful temper."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Ingra? What happens to her throughout the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "57f8b65bd11d491dbf6c73685c2779d6", "response_text": "Ingra is one of the members in the room where Svan plans his revolt against the Earthman. She initially objects to Svan’s plan, a plan to destroy the Earthman ship with an atomite bomb, but when she sees other people agree with Svan, who is the leader of the revolting group, she takes back her objection. She hands the bowl to Svan, letting him put six slips inside to determine their futures, which is that one of them will put the bomb on the ship. She is also the first one to pick a slip. \n\nWhen the conspirators conduct their plans, she is the one who drives the car. She listens to Svan whenever he orders her to do something, and she kisses him when they separate to conduct different missions. After leaving Svan alone, she drives the car in the opposite direction to Svan, trying to cause a commotion. However, the Earthman guards are searching for them due to the discovery of the left rifle from the murdered Venusian, the native guard Svan killed. With no weapons to fight against the guards, Ingra drives the car back to pick up Svan, wanting to flee with him, but dies in the explosion of the vehicle.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "06c25c80707044b3852749e8ad4ada4f", "response_text": "Ingra is one of the venusian natives that decides to bomb the human ship. At the beginning, she was apprehensive of the plan, but after they spy on the ship and hear what they are saying about them, she and the team decide to go through with the plan. After choosing that Svan would go onto the ship, they leave in a car towards the ship. Before separating from Svan, she decides to kiss him. This made Svan doubt his plan of killing her and the team, but he decides to go through with it. Ingra was supposed to drop the car in a lake, but she decides to go back for Svan after they were noticed by the guards. When she goes to pick up Svan, the bomb in the car goes off and they all die. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a03db93d0a2546a9a773f625aadf7cb8", "response_text": "Ingra is one of the members of the underground group curated by the Council. They plan on planting a bomb in the Earth-ship and killing the delegation. She initially hesitates, hoping that the colonists might be friendly, but eventually agrees with the plan. She is driving the car. They get stopped by the State Guard, who says that there is no access to the ship because of some danger. Svan tries to talk to him but soon kills the Venusian in front of the car. When he finally gets out of the car with the bomb, leaving the other one in the seat's compartment, Ingra kisses him and wishes him luck. Shortly after they drive off, the guards start chasing the car. Ingra manages to get away and drive back to Svan, screaming that they all must flee. Svan runs from Ingra, telling her to go away. Seconds later, the car with her and four other members explodes, and they die. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "bf27bc895713472bb5f13a662fb64b0c", "response_text": "The girl Ingra is one of the members of Svan's underground team, participating in the mission of destroying the Earth ship for the benefit of the Venusians. Being one of the natives whose ancestors came to Venus generations ago, she sympathizes with Svan’s ideas of freedom. However, Ingra is disturbed by Svan’s escalated self-confidence. During the operation, she performs as the car driver. Before Svan is sent to his immediate death, Ingra sends him a good luck kiss, which puzzles Svan at the most inconvenient moment. Due to Ingra’s bold act, Svan is perplexed and acts in nonconformity with his plan. Svan, confident in the betrayal of his subordinates, leaves them to certain death by planting a bomb in the car. However, if not for Ingra’s kiss, he would never have guessed about the miscommunication and the mistake he made on his own."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Lowry? What happens to him throughout the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "57f8b65bd11d491dbf6c73685c2779d6", "response_text": "Lowry is the Officer of the Deck on the Earthman ship. He has a conversation with the Executive Officer on the main lock, which is eavesdropped on by Svan, the leader of a revolting group. Lowry believes that the Venusians are trustworthy since they are humans with different appearances. Still, he also believes that there may be some fights between Earthmen and Venusians when Earthmen land more colonists on Venus.\n\nWhen Svan, the leader of a rebellious group, and his members drive the car coming towards the ship to plant the bomb, Lowry sees the car light. He is talking to the Executive Officer by then about this secret group called the Council against the Earthman colonies. Even though the Executive Officer highly doubts the loyalty of the Venusians, Lowry still believes that Venusians can be trusted.\n\nAfter Svan is blown away by the explosion of the car, Lowry and a surgeon come to inspect his body. They find the pieces of the bomb. They also find a piece of paper with both sides marked with a cross in his hand. Lowery is confused about the paper's purpose, but he is sure that Svan intended to explode the Earthman ship.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "06c25c80707044b3852749e8ad4ada4f", "response_text": "Lowry is the Officer of the Deck in the ship that has arrived on Venus in order to create relations with the natives and prepare for the arrival of more humans from earth. Lowry believes that the natives are friendly and that there is no need to be worried about them. He then is told that the natives are spying on him and the ship, which makes him rethink the ways of the natives, and that maybe they aren’t as friendly as they seem. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a03db93d0a2546a9a773f625aadf7cb8", "response_text": "Lowry is the Officer of the Deck. At the beginning, he talks to the Executive Officer and tries to convince him that the natives are friendly. Lowry also mentions that they are afraid of a possible wave of immigration from Earth which can disrupt their life processes or significantly worsen their quality of life, as some underground group says. He admits that this outcome is possible but gets interrupted by a signal stating that a spy ray is focused on the ship’s main lock - someone heard their conversation. Lowry alerts the delegations and the guards. Later, he sees some lights in the darkness but quickly forgets them. He tells the Exec about the secret group called the Council that must be behind the spy rays. After the car with Ingra and four other members of the Council’s group die in an explosion and Svan is taken in, Lowry confiscates a bomb from him. He breaks the inner wire connection, determines the bomb type, and realizes that it was supposed to detonate on their way back. He stands near the surgeon and Svan, shocked. The surgeon assures him that it was a very positive outcome for them and shows him a slip with a cross marked on both sides, which he finds confusing. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "bf27bc895713472bb5f13a662fb64b0c", "response_text": "The Officer of the Deck Lowry is the right-hand man of The Executive Officer on the Earth spacecraft that arrived to colonize Venus. He keeps records of the delegation, cargo, ship staff, and their most valuable target - the natives from Venus, Venusians. Lowry obeys all the orders of his commander but is skeptical of The Exec’s point of view about the Venusians. The Executive articulates with intensity that Venusians are less of people than humans due to their transformation following Venus climate over the past generations. He believes that the natives have lost their right to being considered equal to humans after their ancestors’ acclimatization to their new planet. Lowry emphasizes that the natives are not so naive, having a potential fear of colonizers from Earth. Immediately after his remark, an alarm lights up on the ship that the Earthlings are under the scope of a spy ray, proving Lowry’s point about the natives’ naivete. At the end of the story, Lowry bears the burden of shame that all the efforts of the natives are in vain, considering Svan's half-dead body. However, the surgeon assures him that it is better to witness someone else’s death than their own. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the setting of the story?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "57f8b65bd11d491dbf6c73685c2779d6", "response_text": "The story happens on Venus. Venus is a habitable planet with a thick layer of clouds. There are two species on Venus, one is Venusians, who are the descendants of the first generation Earthmen coming to Venus, and the other is Earthmen, who come later as a delegation to collaborate with Venusians for the future colonies. \n\nThe story happens in the background of the disharmony between Earthmen and part of the Venusians. There is a secret Venusian group called the Council, where the members fear that the future Earthmen colonies will harm them and deprive them of their living spaces. Therefore, to not let the Earthmen ship bring back the news of the habitability of Venus, the Council orders Svan as a leader to conduct some rebellious plan, which starts the story.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "06c25c80707044b3852749e8ad4ada4f", "response_text": "The story is located on the planet venus.The planet has been colonized by a group of humans that have settled and adapted to the environment of the planet. The planet seems to be very arid, and is covered by a mist that makes it very hard to see. The planet also has a swamp, which is where the natives were supposed to drop their car after dropping off Svan. The planet doesn’t have a moon, which allows for perfect darkness for the natives to attack the ship. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a03db93d0a2546a9a773f625aadf7cb8", "response_text": "The story is set in the future. All characters are on Venus, where a delegation from Earth recently landed. At the beginning, two officers talk in the ship’s lock. The Exec claims that the Venusians - the descendants of the first expedition that came here approximately a century ago - are not particularly friendly or fully human. Lowry - the Officer of the Deck - explains that many of them are scared of what immigrants from Earth can do with them, admitting that a negative outcome is possible. His speech is interrupted by a voice that tells them a spy ray is focused on the main lock. They are being listened to by six members of an underground group called the Council, who decide to plant a bomb in the ship to kill the delegation on its way back. They drive along the main street of the native town and eventually get stopped by a State Guard. Svan kills him, and they continue driving. At the same time, the two officers are at the bow of the ship, discussing the situation. Soon, when Ingra and the others drive off and then quickly come back for Svan, the car explodes. Its five passengers die, and Svan loses consciousness. The story ends with the surgeon examining Svan’s wounds that turn out to be lethal. He also shows Lowry, who just deactivated the second bomb he had taken from Svan, a slip with two crosses, which he finds puzzling.  "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "bf27bc895713472bb5f13a662fb64b0c", "response_text": "The story unfolds on Venus after humans settled on the planet many generations ago. As a result, these humans have transformed to fit Venus' volatile climate, changing their appearance. The setting opens on the Earthling colonizer spaceship. One may recognize the wooden shacks on the town's outskirts visible from the deck. While dusk was gathering and the underground organization was preparing for an attack, fog covered the swampy area of Venus. Rows of guards lined up around the Earth ship. They were keeping the machine safe from a hundred-yard distance away from it, scaring local onlookers with old-fashioned rifles, who came to be surprised by the ship. As soon as dusk deepened and a misty haze fell on the planet, six oppositionists moved towards the anticipated battle. They were illuminating the narrow and pale road with the yellowish headlights of the trailer. They noticed the twisted vegetation of the surrounding jungle. As they moved, the rain intensified, but the downpour was supposed to subside before midnight. The rain was still drizzling over the marshy area, but this did not prevent Svan from putting his plan into action despite Ingra's persuasions to drown the car in the swamp and create a commotion. As Svan headed toward the midnight road, the ground rose, and the jungle thinned. Looking into the distance, the bright lights of an Earth ship flickered in the rainclouds, landing in the center of a clearing created by its ferocious rockets. Seeing the whirling figures of the sentries, Svan realized they were the ship's guards. Despite their thin-shaft blasters, they wouldn't be as easy to defeat as the natives. He could only board by deception."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the importance of the slip with a cross?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "112", "uid": "57f8b65bd11d491dbf6c73685c2779d6", "response_text": "The slip with a cross is used to determine who will be the one to plant the bomb on the ship when Svan, the leader of a rebellious group, assign tasks to each person. However, during the process of drawing lots, when the person who gets the slip with a cross on it should reveal oneself to accept the task, no one admits because Svan, who receives the slip, didn’t see the cross on the other side of the paper. As a result, he mistakenly thinks that the person who received the slip is a coward that does not want to do the task, so he secretly marks another cross on his paper and accepts the mission.\n\nThis misunderstanding of no one accepting the task drives Svan to suspect all the other members as disloyal and cowardly, leading him to decide to put one bomb on the car. He is so furious that he wants them to die for their disloyalty and cowardice while serving as an attraction to the guards. However, when the plan does not go well, and the members come back to seek him, he unavoidably suffers from his deed. The paper is later found to have a cross on both sides, which forms an irony of Svan's behaviors. Ironically, Svan’s suspicion of other people causes their death when he is the real traitor."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "06c25c80707044b3852749e8ad4ada4f", "response_text": "The slip with the cross is very important for the development of the story. When the natives decide to attack the ship, they need one person to get inside and plant the bomb. To choose, they write an X on one of the slips and take turns choosing slips, and the person with the X slip would go. When no one goes forward, Svan volunteers by writing an X on his blank paper, but realizes that there is a coward in the team. This leads to Svan plotting to doublecross his team, and when his plan backfires they all end up dying. When the humans discover the bodies, it is revealed that Svan had a paper with an X on both sides, showing that he was in fact double crossing his team for no reason. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "a03db93d0a2546a9a773f625aadf7cb8", "response_text": "Svan decides to choose who will plant a bomb in the Earth-ship by taking out paper slips, one of them marked with a cross. When no one admits that their slip is not blank and Svan doesn’t see a cross on his piece of paper, he becomes angry. He thinks that there might be a coward on the team, and eventually, he decides that everyone on the team is fearful and useless. He decides to kill them and later leaves another bomb in a seat compartment of the car when they drive off. When he waits for the car to explode and distract the ship’s guards, he tries to understand who could lie about the slip. When Ingra and others drive back to get Svan and flee, the car explodes, killing the passengers and wounding him. He wakes up near one of the ship’s officers - Lowry - who just deactivated the second bomb and a surgeon who wonders why Svan would be holding a slip with a cross on both sides. Nobody from the team lied to him, and his suspicion ruined the operation. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "bf27bc895713472bb5f13a662fb64b0c", "response_text": "he slip with the cross represents Svan's anticipation and feelings about his team and the cause they are fighting for together. His trust and strength stem from teamwork. Developing a plan, he hopes for cooperation and courage from each participant. Being the leader, he allows fate to make a choice rather than himself. He puts himself on the same level as his teammates, thus not shifting the responsibility and burden onto someone specific. Not finding a small cross, he is convinced of the idea of being surrounded by traitors and cowards who cannot complete his cunning operation. Enraged, he sees no better solution than revenge. He feels resentment and betrayal, yet his feelings are crossed out with a kiss for good luck from Ingra. After discovering the lost cross, he tries to correct his quick judgment, but it turns out that it's too late. The lost slip symbolizes all the wrong acts of misjudgments in human nature that lead to an insolvable disaster. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51597", "uid": "a7e03664d3b4432691eacc1a196616cd", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "GOURMET\n \n \n By ALLEN KIM LANG\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine April 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n This was the endless problem of all spaceship cooks: He had to feed the men tomorrow on what they had eaten today!\n \n\n \n Unable to get out to the ballgame and a long way off from the girls,\n men on ships think about, talk about, bitch about their food. It's\n true that Woman remains a topic of thoughtful study, but discussion\n can never replace practice in an art. Food, on the other hand, is a\n challenge shipmen face three times a day, so central to their thoughts\n that a history of sea-faring can be read from a commissary list.\n \n In the days when salt-sea sailors were charting islands and spearing\n seals, for example, the fo'c's'le hands called themselves Lobscousers,\n celebrating the liquid hash then prominent in the marine menu. The\n Limey sailor got the name of the anti-scorbutic citrus squeezed into\n his diet, a fruit known to us mariners of a more sophisticated age\n only as garnish for our groundside gin-and-tonic. And today we Marsmen\n are called Slimeheads, honoring in our title the Chlorella and Scenedesmus algae that, by filling up the spaces within, open the\n road to the larger Space without.\n \n Should any groundsman dispute the importance of belly-furniture in\n history—whether it be exterminating whales, or introducing syphilis\n to the Fiji Islanders, or settling the Australian littoral with\n cross-coves from Middlesex and Hampshire—he is referred to the\n hundred-and-first chapter of Moby Dick , a book spooled in the\n amusement tanks of all but the smallest spacers. I trust, however, that\n no Marsman will undertake to review this inventory of refreshment more\n than a week from groundfall. A catalogue of sides of beef and heads of\n Leyden cheese and ankers of good Geneva would prove heavy reading for a\n man condemned to snack on the Chlorella-spawn of cis-Martian space.\n \n The Pequod's crew ate wormy biscuit and salt beef. Nimitz's men won\n their war on canned pork and beans. The Triton made her underwater\n periplus of Earth with a galley stocked with frozen pizza and\n concentrated apple-juice. But then, when sailors left the seas for the\n skies, a decline set in.\n \n The first amenity of groundside existence to be abandoned was decent\n food. The earliest men into the vacuum swallowed protein squeezings\n from aluminum tubes, and were glad enough to drop back to the\n groundsman's diet of steak and fried potatoes.\n \n \n\n \n Long before I was a boy in Med School, itching to look at black sky\n through a view-port, galley science had fulfilled the disgusting\n exordium of Isaiah 36:12, to feed the Slimeheads for breakfast today\n what was day-before-yesterday's table-scraps and jakes-water.\n \n The Ship's Cook, the man who accomplishes the daily miracle of turning\n offal into eatables, is in many ways the most vital man aboard a\n spacer. He can make morale or foment a mutiny. His power is paramount.\n Slimeheads remember the H. M. S. Ajax fiasco, for example, in which a\n galleyman leveled his Chlorella tanks with heavy water from the ship's\n shielding. Four officers and twenty-one Other Ranks were rescued from\n the Ajax in deep space, half dead from deuterium poisoning. We think\n of the Benjo Maru incident, too, caused by a Ship's Cook who allowed\n his algaeal staff-of-life to become contaminated with a fast-growing Saccharomycodes yeast. The Japanese vessel staggered to her pad at\n Piano West after a twenty-week drunk: the alien yeast had got into\n the stomach of every man aboard, where it fermented each subsequent\n bite he ate to a superior grade of sake . And for a third footnote to\n the ancient observation, \"God sends food, and the Devil sends cooks,\"\n Marsmen will recall what happened aboard my ship the Charles Partlow\n Sale .\n \n The Sale blasted off from Brady Station in the middle of August, due\n in at Piano West in early May. In no special hurry, we were taking\n the low-energy route to Mars, a pathway about as long in time as the\n human period of gestation. Our cargo consisted mostly of Tien-Shen fir\n seedlings and some tons of an arctic grass-seed—these to be planted\n in the maria to squeeze out the native blue bugberry vines. We had\n aboard the Registry minimum of six men and three officers. Ship's\n Surgeon was myself, Paul Vilanova. Our Captain was Willy Winkelmann,\n the hardest man in space and very likely the fattest. Ship's Cook was\n Robert Bailey.\n \n Cooking aboard a spacer is a job combining the more frustrating\n tensions of biochemistry, applied mycology, high-speed farming,\n dietetics and sewage engineering. It's the Cook's responsibility to\n see that each man aboard gets each day no less than five pounds of\n water, two pounds of oxygen, and one-and-a-half pounds of dry food.\n This isn't just a paragraph from the Spacer Union Contract. It's a\n statement of the least fuel a man can run on.\n \n Twelve tons of water, oxygen, and food would have filled the cargo\n compartments to bursting, and left a small ship like the C. P. Sale no reason to reach for Mars. By allowing a colony of Chlorella algae to\n work over our used air, water and other effluvia, though, three tons\n of metabolites would see us through from Brady Station to Piano West\n and back. Recycling was the answer. The molecule of carbohydrate, fat,\n protein or mineral that didn't feed the crew fed the algae. And the\n algae fed us.\n \n All waste was used to fertilize our liquid fields. Even the stubble\n from our 2,680 shaves and the clippings from our 666 haircuts en route\n and back would be fed into the Chlorella tanks. Human hair is rich in\n essential amino acids.\n \n The algae—dried by the Cook, bleached with methyl alcohol to kill the\n smell and make the residue more digestible, disguised and seasoned in a\n hundred ways—served as a sort of meat-and-potatoes that never quite\n wore out. Our air and water were equally immortal. Each molecule of\n oxygen would be conversant with the alveoli of every man aboard by the\n end of our trip. Every drop of water would have been intimate with the\n glomeruli of each kidney on the ship before we grounded in. Groundling\n politicians are right enough when they say that we spacers are a\n breed apart. We're the one race of men who can't afford the luxury of\n squeamishness.\n \n \n\n \n Though I'm signed aboard as Ship's Surgeon, I seldom lift a knife\n in space. My employment is more in the nature of TS-card-puncher\n extraordinary. My duties are to serve as wailing-wall, morale officer,\n guardian of the medicinal whiskey and frustrator of mutual murder.\n Generally the man aboard who'd serve as the most popular murder-victim\n is the Cook. This trip, the-man-you-love-to-hate was our Captain.\n \n If the Cook hadn't problems enough with the chemical and psychic duties\n of his office, Winkelmann supplied the want. Captain Willy Winkelmann\n was the sort of man who, if he had to go into space at all, had best do\n so alone. If the Prussians had a Marine Corps, Winkelmann would have\n done splendidly as Drill Instructor for their boot camp. His heart\n was a chip of helium ice, his voice dripped sarcastic acid. The planet\n Earth was hardly large enough to accommodate a wart as annoying as\n Willy Winkelmann. Cheek-by-jowl every day in a nacelle the size of a\n Pullman car, our Captain quickly established himself as a major social\n hemorrhoid.\n \n The Captain's particular patsy was, of course, young Bailey the Cook.\n It was Winkelmann who saw humorous possibilities in the entry, \"Bailey,\n Robert,\" on Ship's Articles. He at once renamed our unfortunate\n shipmate \"Belly-Robber.\" It was Winkelmann who discussed haut\n cuisine and the properties of the nobler wines while we munched our\n algaeburgers and sipped coffee that tasted of utility water. And it was\n Captain Willy Winkelmann who never referred to the ship's head by any\n other name than The Kitchen Cabinet.\n \n Bailey tried to feed us by groundside standards. He hid the taste\n of synthetic methionine—an essential amino acid not synthesized by\n Chlorella—by seasoning our algaeal repasts with pinches of oregano\n and thyme. He tinted the pale-green dollops of pressed Chlorella pink,\n textured the mass to the consistency of hamburger and toasted the\n slabs to a delicate brown in a forlorn attempt to make mock-meat.\n For dessert, he served a fudge compounded from the dextrose-paste of\n the carbohydrate recycler. The crew thanked him. The Captain did not.\n\"Belly-Robber,\" he said, his tone icy as winter wind off the North Sea,\n\"you had best cycle this mess through the tanks again. There is a pun\n in my home country: Mensch ist was er isst. It means, you are what\n you eat. I think you are impertinent to suggest I should become this Schweinerei you are feeding me.\" Captain Winkelmann blotted his chin\n with his napkin, heaved his bulk up from the table, and climbed up the\n ladder from the dining-cubby.\n \n \n\n \n \"Doc, do you like Winkelmann?\" the Cook asked me.\n \n \"Not much,\" I said. \"I suspect that the finest gift our Captain can\n give his mother is to be absent from her on Mother's Day. But we've got\n to live with him. He's a good man at driving a ship.\"\n \n \"I wish he'd leave off driving this Cook,\" Bailey said. \"The fat swine!\"\n \n \"His plumpness is an unwitting tribute to your cooking, Bailey,\" I\n said. \"He eats well. We all do. I've dined aboard a lot of spacers in\n my time, and I'll testify that you set a table second to none.\"\n \n Bailey took a handful of dried Chlorella from a bin and fingered it. It\n was green, smelled of swamp, and looked appetizing as a bedsore. \"This\n is what I have to work with,\" he said. He tossed the stuff back into\n its bin. \"In Ohio, which is my home country, in the presence of ladies,\n we'd call such garbage Horse-Leavings.\"\n \n \"You'll never make Winkelmann happy,\" I said. \"Even the simultaneous\n death of all other human beings could hardly make him smile. Keep up\n the good work, though, and you'll keep our Captain fat.\"\n \n Bailey nodded from his one-man cloud of gloom. I got a bottle of rye\n from Medical Stores and offered him a therapeutic draught. The Cook\n waved my gift aside. \"Not now, Doc,\" he said. \"I'm thinking about\n tomorrow's menu.\"\n \n The product of Bailey's cerebrations was on the mess table at noon the\n next day. We were each served an individual head of lettuce, dressed\n with something very like vinegar and oil, spiced with tiny leaves of\n burnet. How Bailey had constructed those synthetic lettuces I can only\n guess: the hours spent preparing a green Chlorella paste, rolling and\n drying and shaping each artificial leaf, the fitting together of nine\n heads like crisp, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. The pièce de\n résistance was again a \"hamburger steak;\" but this time the algaeal\n mass that made it up was buried in a rich, meaty gravy that was only\n faintly green. The essence-of-steak used in these Chlorella cutlets had\n been sprinkled with a lavish hand. Garlic was richly in evidence. \"It's\n so tender,\" the radioman joked, \"that I can hardly believe it's really\n steak.\"\n \n Bailey stared across the dining-cubby toward Winkelmann, silently\n imploring the Captain's ratification of his masterpiece. The big\n man's pink cheeks bulged and jumped with his chewing. He swallowed.\n\"Belly-Robber,\" Winkelmann said, \"I had almost rather you served me\n this pond-scum raw than have it all mucked-up with synthetic onions and\n cycler-salt.\"\n \n \n\n \n \"You seem able enough to choke down Bailey's chow, Captain,\" I said. I\n gazed at Winkelmann's form, bulbous from a lifetime of surfeit feeding.\n \n \"Yes, I eat it,\" the Captain said, taking and talking through another\n bite. \"But I eat only as a man in the desert will eat worms and\n grasshoppers, to stay alive.\"\n \n \"Sir, what in heaven's name do you expect from me?\" Bailey pleaded.\n \n \"Only good food,\" Winkelmann mumbled through his mouthful of disguised\n algae. He tapped his head with a finger. \"This—the brain that guides\n the ship—cannot be coaxed to work on hog-slop. You understand me,\n Belly-Robber?\"\n \n Bailey, his hands fisted at his sides, nodded. \"Yes, sir. But I really\n don't know what I can do to please you.\"\n \n \"You are a spacer and a Ship's Cook, not a suburban Hausfrau with the\n vapors,\" Winkelmann said. \"I do not expect from you hysterics, tantrums\n or weeping. Only—can you understand this, so simple?—food that will\n keep my belly content and my brain alive.\"\n \n \"Yes, sir,\" Bailey said, his face a picture of that offense the British\n term Dumb Insolence.\n \n Winkelmann got up and climbed the ladder to the pilot-cubicle. I\n followed him. \"Captain,\" I said, \"you're driving Bailey too hard.\n You're asking him to make bricks without straw.\"\n \n Winkelmann regarded me with his pale-blue stare. \"You think, Doctor,\n that my cruelty to the Belly-Robber is the biliousness of a middle-aged\n man?\"\n \n \"Frankly, I can't understand your attitude at all,\" I said.\n \n \"You accuse me of driving a man to make bricks without straw,\"\n Winkelmann said. \"Very well, Doctor. It is my belief that if the\n Pharaoh's taskmaster had had my firmness of purpose, the Children of\n Israel would have made bricks with stubble. Necessity, Doctor, is the\n mother of invention. I am Bailey's necessity. My unkindnesses make him\n uncomfortable, I doubt that not. But I am forcing him to experiment,\n to improvise, to widen the horizons of his ingenuity. He will learn\n somehow to bring good food from Chlorella tanks.\"\n \n \"You're driving him too hard, Sir,\" I said. \"He'll crack.\"\n \n \"Bailey will have some fifty thousand dollars' salary waiting when we\n ground at Brady Station,\" Captain Winkelmann said. \"So much money buys\n many discomforts. That will be all, Doctor Vilanova.\"\n \n \"Crew morale on the ship....\" I began.\n \n \"That will be all, Doctor Vilanova,\" Captain Winkelmann repeated.\n \n \n\n \n Bailey grew more silent as we threaded our way along the elliptical\n path to Mars. Each meal he prepared was a fresh attempt to propitiate\n the appetite of our splenetic Captain. Each such offering was condemned\n by that heartless man. Bailey began to try avoiding the Captain at\n mealtimes, but was frustrated by Winkelmann's orders. \"Convey my\n compliments to the Chef, please,\" the Captain would instruct one of\n the crew, \"and ask him to step down here a moment.\" And the Cook would\n cheerlessly appear in the dining-cubby, to have his culinary genius\n acidly called in question again.\n \n I myself do not doubt that Bailey was the finest Cook ever to go\n into Hohmann orbit. His every meal established a higher benchmark in\n brilliant galleymanship. We were served, for instance, an ersatz hot\n turkey supreme. The cheese-sauce was almost believable, the Chlorella\n turkey-flesh was white and tender. Bailey served with this delicacy\n a grainy and delicious \"cornbread,\" and had extracted from his algae\n a lipid butter-substitute that soaked into the hot \"bread\" with a\n genuinely dairy smell. \"Splendid, Bailey,\" I said.\n \n \"We are not amused,\" said Captain Winkelmann, accepting a second\n helping of the pseudo-turkey. \"You are improving, Belly-Robber, but\n only arithmetically. Your first efforts were so hideous as to require\n a geometric progression of improving excellence to raise them to mere\n edibility. By the time we are halfway 'round the Sun, I trust you will\n have learned to cook with the competence of a freshman Home Economics\n student. That will be all, Bailey.\"\n \n The crew and my fellow-officers were amused by Winkelmann's riding of\n Bailey; they were in addition gratified that the battle between their\n Captain and their Cook served to feed them so well. Most spacers embark\n on an outward voyage somewhat plump, having eaten enough on their last\n few days aground to smuggle several hundred calories of fat and many\n memories of good food aboard with them. This trip, none of the men had\n lost weight during the first four months in space. Winkelmann, indeed,\n seemed to have gained. His uniform was taut over his plump backside,\n and he puffed a bit up the ladders. I was considering suggesting to our\n Captain that he curtail his diet for reasons of health, a bit of advice\n that would have stood unique in the annals of space medicine, when\n Winkelmann produced his supreme insult to our Cook.\n \n \n\n \n Each man aboard a spacer is allowed ten kilograms of personal effects\n besides his uniforms, these being considered Ship's Furnishing. As\n his rank and responsibility merit, the Captain is allowed double this\n ration. He may thus bring aboard with him some forty-five pounds of\n books, playing-cards, knitting-wool, whiskey or what have you to help\n him while away the hours between the planets. Bailey, I knew for a\n fact, had used up his weight-allowance in bringing aboard a case of\n spices: marjoram and mint, costmary, file powder, basil and allspice,\n and a dozen others.\n \n Captain Winkelmann was not a reader, and had brought no books. Cards\n interested him not at all, as card-playing implies a sociability alien\n to his nature. He never drank aboard ship. I had supposed that he'd\n exercised his option of returning his personal-effects weight allowance\n to the owners for the consideration of one hundred dollars a kilogram.\n To collect the maximum allowance, spacers have been known to come\n aboard their ship mother-naked.\n \n But this was not the case with Winkelmann. His personal-effects\n baggage, an unlabeled cardboard box, appeared under the table at noon\n mess some hundred days out from Piano West. Winkelmann rested his feet\n on the mysterious box as he sat to eat.\n \n \"What disgusting form does the ship's garbage appear in today,\n Belly-Robber?\" he asked the Cook.\n \n Bailey frowned, but kept his temper, an asceticism in which by now he'd\n had much practice. \"I've been working on the problem of steak, Sir,\"\n he said. \"I think I've whipped the taste; what was left was to get the\n texture steak-like. Do you understand, Sir?\"\n \n \"I understand,\" Winkelmann growled. \"You intend that your latest mess\n should feel like steak to the mouth, and not like baby-food. Right?\"\n \n \"Yes, Sir,\" Bailey said. \"Well, I squeezed the\n steak-substrate—Chlorella, of course, with all sorts of special\n seasonings—through a sieve, and blanched the strands in hot algaeal\n oil. Then I chopped those strands to bits and rolled them out. Voila! I had something very close in texture to the muscle-fibers of genuine\n meat.\"\n \n \"Remarkable, Bailey,\" I said.\n \n \"It rather throws me off my appetite to hear how you muddle about with\n our food,\" the Captain said, his jowls settling into an expression of\n distaste. \"It's quite all right to eat lobster, for example, but I\n never cared to see the ugly beast boiled before my eyes. Detail spoils\n the meal.\"\n \n Bailey lifted the cover off the electric warming-pan at the center of\n the table and tenderly lifted a small \"steak\" onto each of our plates.\n\"Try it,\" he urged the Captain.\n \n \n\n \n Captain Winkelmann sliced off a corner of his algaeal steak. The\n color was an excellent medium-rare, the odor was the rich smell\n of fresh-broiled beef. Winkelmann bit down, chewed, swallowed. \"Not\n too bad, Belly-Robber,\" he said, nodding. Bailey grinned and bobbed\n his head, his hands folded before him in an ecstasy of pleasure. A\n kind word from the Captain bettered the ruffles-and-flourishes of a\n more reasonable man. \"But it still needs something ... something,\"\n Winkelmann went on, slicing off another portion of the tasty Chlorella.\n\"Aha! I have it!\"\n \n \"Yes, Sir?\" Bailey asked.\n \n \"This, Belly-Robber!\" Winkelmann reached beneath the mess-table and\n ripped open his cardboard carton. He brought out a bottle and unscrewed\n the cap. \"Ketchup,\" he said, splattering the red juice over Bailey's\n masterpiece. \"The scarlet burial-shroud for the failures of Cooks.\"\n Lifting a hunk of the \"steak,\" streaming ketchup, to his mouth,\n Winkelmann chewed. \"Just the thing,\" he smiled.\n \n \"Damn you!\" Bailey shouted.\n \n Winkelmann's smile flicked off, and his blue eyes pierced the Cook.\n \n \"... Sir,\" Bailey added.\n \n \"That's better,\" Winkelmann said, and took another bite. He said\n meditatively, \"Used with caution, and only by myself, I believe I have\n sufficient ketchup here to see me through to Mars. Please keep a\n bottle on the table for all my future meals, Belly-Robber.\"\n \n \"But, Sir....\" Bailey began.\n \n \"You must realize, Belly-Robber, that a dyspeptic Captain is a threat\n to the welfare of his ship. Were I to continue eating your surrealistic\n slops for another hundred days, without the small consolation of\n this sauce I had the foresight to bring with me, I'd likely be in\n no condition to jet us safely down to the Piano West pad. Do you\n understand, Belly-Robber?\" he demanded.\n \n \"I understand that you're an ungrateful, impossible, square-headed,\n slave-driving....\"\n \n \"Watch your noun,\" Winkelmann cautioned the Cook. \"Your adjectives are\n insubordinate; your noun might prove mutinous.\"\n \n \"Captain, you've gone too far,\" I said. Bailey, his fists knotted, was\n scarlet, his chest heaving with emotion.\n \n \"Doctor, I must point out to you that it ill behooves the Ship's\n Surgeon to side with the Cook against the Captain,\" Winkelmann said.\n \n \"Sir, Bailey has tried hard to please you,\" I said. \"The other officers\n and the men have been more than satisfied with his work.\"\n \n \"That only suggests atrophy of their taste buds,\" Winkelmann said.\n\"Doctor, you are excused. As are you, Belly-Robber,\" he added.\n \n \n\n \n Bailey and I climbed from the mess compartment together. I steered him\n to my quarters, where the medical supplies were stored. He sat on my\n bunk and exploded into weeping, banging his fists against the metal\n bulkhead. \"You'll have that drink now,\" I said.\n \n \"No, dammit!\" he shouted.\n \n \"Orders,\" I said. I poured us each some fifty cc's of rye. \"This is\n therapy, Bailey,\" I told him. He poured the fiery stuff down his throat\n like water and silently held out his glass for a second. I provided it.\n \n After a few minutes Bailey's sobbing ceased. \"Sorry, Doc,\" he said.\n \n \"You've taken more pressure than most men would,\" I said. \"Nothing to\n be ashamed of.\"\n \n \"He's crazy. What sane man would expect me to dip Wiener schnitzel\n and sauerkraut and Backhahndl nach suddeutscher Art out of an algae\n tank? I've got nothing but microscopic weeds to cook for him! Worn-out\n molecules reclaimed from the head; packaged amino acid additives. And\n he expects meals that would take the blue ribbon at the annual banquet\n of the Friends of Escoffier!\"\n \n \"Yours is an ancient plaint, Bailey,\" I said. \"You've worked your\n fingers to the bone, slaving over a hot stove, and you're not\n appreciated. But you're not married to Winkelmann, remember. A year\n from now you'll be home in Ohio, fifty grand richer, set to start that\n restaurant of yours and forget about our fat Flying Dutchman.\"\n \n \"I hate him,\" Bailey said with the simplicity of true emotion. He\n reached for the bottle. I let him have it. Sometimes alcohol can be\n an apt confederate of vis medicatrix naturae , the healing power of\n nature. Half an hour later I strapped Bailey into his bunk to sleep it\n off. That therapeutic drunk seemed to be just what he'd needed.\n \n For morning mess the next day we had a broth remarkable in\n horribleness, a pottage or boiled Chlorella vulgaris that looked\n and tasted like the vomit of some bottom-feeding sea-beast. Bailey,\n red-eyed and a-tremble, made no apology, and stared at Winkelmann as\n though daring him to comment. The Captain lifted a spoonful of the\n disgusting stuff to his lips, smacked and said, \"Belly-Robber, you're\n improving a little at last.\"\n \n Bailey nodded and smiled. \"Thank you, Sir,\" he said.\n \n I smiled, too. Bailey had conquered himself. His psychic defenses were\n now strong enough to withstand the Captain's fiercest assaults of\n irony. Our food would likely be bad the rest of this trip, but that was\n a price I was willing to pay for seeing destroyed the Willy Winkelmann\n theory of forcing a Cook to make bricks without straw. The Captain\n had pushed too hard. He'd need that ketchup for the meals to come, I\n thought.\n \n Noon mess was nearly as awful as breakfast had been. The coffee tasted\n of salt, and went largely undrunk. The men in the mess compartment were\n vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for\n the decline in culinary standards. Bailey seemed not to care. He served\n the algaeburgers with half a mind, and hurried back into his galley\n oblivious of the taunts of his crewmates.\n \n \n\n \n There being only three seats in the Sale's mess compartment, we ate\n our meals in three shifts. That evening, going down the ladder to\n supper, my nose was met with a spine-tingling barbecue tang, a smell\n to make a man think of gray charcoal glowing in a picnic brazier,\n of cicadas chirping and green grass underfoot, of the pop and hiss\n of canned beer being church-keyed. \"He's done it, Doc!\" one of the\n first-shift diners said. \"It actually tastes of food!\"\n \n \"Then he's beat the Captain at his game,\" I said.\n \n \"The Dutchman won't want to mess ketchup on these steaks,\" the crewman\n said.\n \n I sat, unfolded my napkin, and looked with hope to the electric\n warming-pan at the center of the table. Bailey served the three of\n us with the small \"steaks.\" Each contained about a pound of dried\n Chlorella, I judged, teasing mine with my fork. But they were drenched\n in a gravy rich as the stuff grandma used to make in her black iron\n skillet, peppery and seasoned with courageous bits of garlic. I cut\n a bit from my steak and chewed it. Too tender, of course; there are\n limits to art. But the pond-scum taste was gone. Bailey appeared in the\n galley door. I gestured for him to join me. \"You've done it, Bailey,\"\n I said. \"Every Slimehead in orbit will thank you for this. This is\n actually good .\"\n \n \"Thanks, Doc,\" Bailey said.\n \n I smiled and took another bite. \"You may not realize it, Bailey; but\n this is a victory for the Captain, too. He drove you to this triumph;\n you couldn't have done it without him.\"\n \n \"You mean he was just whipping me on, trying to make me do better?\"\n Bailey asked.\n \n \"He was driving you to do the impossible,\" I said; \"and you did it. Our\n Captain may be a hard man, Bailey; but he did know how to coax maximum\n performance out of his Ship's Cook.\"\n \n Bailey stood up. \"Do you like Captain Winkelmann, Doctor?\" he asked.\n \n I thought about his question a moment. Winkelmann was good at his job.\n He persuaded his men by foul means, true; but it was all for the good\n of the ship and his crew. \"Do I like Captain Winkelmann?\" I asked,\n spearing another piece of my artificial steak. \"Bailey, I'm afraid I'll\n have to admit that I do.\"\n \n Bailey smiled and lifted a second steak from the warming-pan onto my\n plate. \"Then have another piece,\" he said.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "6e0e3a9e14fa4a978efb59fd8789cef4", "response_text": "The story first begins discussing how food is a central topic for men on ships. The Marsmen are called Slimeheads, honoring in their title the Chlorella and Scenedesmus algae that open the road to the wider space without by filling the spaces within. The Ship’s Cook is described to be the most vital man on a spacer because he is the one who turns offal into eatables. There are also instances described where the cooks have messed up and created disasters for fellow crew members, such as poisoning them. Paul Vilanova, the narrator, goes on to tell what happened on the Charles Partlow Sale. The ship is to take a low-energy route and carries various seeds of plantlife. There are the Registry minimum of six men and three officers aboard, including Paul the surgeon, Willy Winkelmann the captain, and Robert Bailey the cook. The cook is responsible for the livelihood of all the men on the ship, and the algae also helped feed the men in a way where they cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness. Although Paul is the surgeon, he rarely lifts a knife in space because his duties are more in line with serving as a morale officer and wailing-wall. Captain Winkelman is described to have a heart of helium ice and is extremely unpopular. Bailey is often his target, but he tries his best as the Ship Cook to feed everybody in a way that makes the algae somewhat appetizing. Paul admits that he does not like the Captain much, but he tells Bailey that his cooking is what keeps the captain retaining his plump figure. Bailey cooks them a luxurious meal the next day, but the captain only criticizes him. Bailey tries to ask what Captain Winkelman wants from him, and even Paul says that he is going to crack from being driven so hard. The Captain tells him that he is simply trying to widen Bailey’s horizons in terms of cooking. Bailey tries to avoid the Captain during meal time after, and Paul believes that he is the finest cook to go into the Hohmann orbit. Even though everybody is impressed by his dishes, Winkelmann still refuses to compliment him despite gaining weight from eating. When Bailey tries to convince the Captain of his food again, Winkelmann takes out a bottle of ketchup to eat with his meal. Bailey is furious, while Paul tries to cheer him up over some fifty cc’s of rye. After the therapeutic drinking, Bailey begins to cook awful looking and tasting dishes. Winkelman, ironically, tells Bailey that he is improving even though the other crew members complain. When Paul goes to visit Bailey again later, one of the crew members exclaims that the cook has managed to make the algae taste similar to real food. Paul tells him that this is the result of the Captain’s continuous pushing; he answers that he does like the Captain when Bailey asks him again. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "12ea0bf7bdef416b8f67ae6026e2db56", "response_text": "This story follows several men aboard the Ship, specifically focused on the Ship’s Cook Bailey, the Captain Willy Winkelmann and the narrator of the story, the Ship’s Surgeon Paul Vilanova. The story chronicles the importance of food in space, in particular, the trials of the Ship’s Cook in making delectable food out of ship-offal, which all food is made out of. \n\nThe Ship’s Cook, Bailey, is introduced to us as someone who feeds his shipmates by groundside standards. He hides the synthetic and off-putting tastes of the algal repasts with spices like oregano and thyme, and uses his culinary techniques to shape and reuse the offals into mock-meats and other familiar meals. His fellow ship mates are satisfied with the tastes and creativeness of the meals - with none of them losing the typical weight aboard a ship and their Captain Winkelmann, actually, gaining more weight instead. Despite this, the Captain verbalizes his dissatisfaction and criticizes each meal. Every time Bailey ups the ante in the tastes or creativeness of a meal prepared, the Captain’s critique only increases further. The story’s narrator aids the Cook's support and reassures him of the delicious quality of the food he prepares, second to none of the narrator’s past ship experiences. As part of his role in crew morale, the narrator tries to reason with the Captain in driving Bailey too hard, but to no avail. \n\nAt his breaking point, Bailey prepares the ship and the Captain an exquisite steak meal, mimicking its real texture, only to be insulted by the Captain bringing out ketchup and declaring it palpable only with the condiment. Respectfully telling off the Captain, the narrator brings Bailey back to his bunkers and reaches for alcohol as a healing power of nature, again reassuring him and commending him for taking the pressure. The next morning, the crew is served a disgusting pottage of the algae and finally, Bailey receives the Captain’s approval. The narrator is proud, willing to take the bad meals for the rest of the trip in exchange for Bailey overcoming the Captain and gaining his psychic defenses. After a day, the crew mates are rewarded by Bailey’s newest concoction: a barbecued steak that is complimented to actually taste of food and be delicious. The narrator reveals that the Captain’s relentless critique was actually to improve Bailey’s culinary skills and for the good of the ship, and is rewarded with another piece of the artificial steak. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9e84f433edf649bb8f47f4603a2523ab", "response_text": "The story is about the crew of a spaceship that is making their way to Mars. At the beginning, the main character, Paul Vilanova, relates the importance of food in these trips. He says that the cook in a ship has the power to either make a trip or break a trip. On this particular trip, the cook is Robert Bailey. He is very talented, but the captain of the trip believes that he isn't. Throughout the story, the Captain continuously berates Bailey for the lack of quality in his cooking, even though Paul and the rest of the ship are really impressed with the food. Bailey is forced to cook with algae, as it allows for long trips and gives men all the necessary nutrients that they need. When the Captain begins to put ketchup on Bailey’s delicacies, he takes this as the last straw and begins to lower the quality of the cooking severely. Lastly, Bailey gives a steak that seemed to be perfect, perfectly cooked and a perfect replica of a real steak. It is hinted that this steak is actually human meat, and that Bailey killed the Captain. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "da5a1e0da9b54f88aa10a0be0b49e115", "response_text": "The story talks about the future in which people are traveling between different planets. The ones that do that are called the spacers. They spend a lot of time in space, and, thus, need to eat a lot. The solution of this future is algae that feed the men and help keep the ship a sustainable system. The narrator of the story is Paul Vilanova, a spacer. Sometime in the past, he traveled to Mars on a ship called The Sale. He was the board surgeon, the captain was Willy Winkelmann - a very unapproachable man. Their cook - the most important person on the ship because he had to apply biochemistry and dietetics to cook nourishing food from Chlorella algae - was called Robert Bailey, he was originally from Ohio. Vilanova describes a very tense relationship between the cook and the captain: Willy Winkelmann, an unpleasant person he was, was always mispronouncing the cook's name and criticizing his dishes. \n\nHe served a three-course dinner and the crew thanked him, but the captain found his food disgusting and left the dinner with a small scandal. Later, Bailey talked to the surgeon about the captain and complained about his insulting remarks. Paul assured him that no one could make Winkelmann happy and that the food was way above average. The next day the captain made an offensive comment about Bailey's cooking abilities again. Paul tried to talk to Winkelmann about his harsh attitude towards Bailey, and the captain said that he believed this attitude would make the cook improvise and experiment more. Paul disagreed but was soon told to leave. Bailey started avoiding the captain but was still called from the kitchen almost every time. The other crew members enjoyed this conflict since it made Bailey cook in a more creative way. One day Paul even learned that instead of taking anything meaningful on the board Winkelmann had just brought a box of ketchup to help him eat the spacers’ food and humiliate Bailey even more. After another offensive monologue from the captain, the cook became angry and started talking back, but Winkelmann quickly excused him and Paul, who had tried to defend Bailey. Later Paul gave the cook some rye and listened to him cursing and insulting the captain. The next morning Bailey cooked something unusually disgusting, and the captain realized he had lost and decided to give the cook a word of praise. Sometime later, Bailey managed to make the best dish he had made so far - the steaks tasted like real food, not the algae. After a small chat, Paul and Bailey both agreed that Winkelmann had significantly contributed to Bailey's success by criticizing his food and driving the cook more eager to prove himself. "}]}, {"question_text": "What are some of the dishes that Bailey cooks for the crew?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "6e0e3a9e14fa4a978efb59fd8789cef4", "response_text": "One of the first-mentioned dishes that Bailey cooks is hamburger. He tries to create this out of the algae, seasoning the food to hide the flavors. He also serves a fudge for dessert that is compounded from the dextrose-paste of the carbohydrate recycler. After speaking with Paul initially, Bailey serves a dish of hamburger steak again. There is an individual head of lettuce served, along with a steak drenched in gravy. Later, he serves them a hot turkey supreme. The cheese-sauce is very believable, whereas the turkey is white and tender even though it is made from Chlorella. When Captain Winkelmann pushes Bailey too far, he begins to create disgusting foods. One of the first dishes he serves is boiled Chlorella vulgaris that resembles vomit. The coffee at noon also tastes of salt. However, at the very end of the story, Bailey succeeds in making his Chlorella steak actually taste like food."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "12ea0bf7bdef416b8f67ae6026e2db56", "response_text": "The dishes Bailey cooks for the crew varies greatly, ranging from artificial vegetables to mock-meats. One dish that he makes is a mock-meat hamburger, with the pressed Chlorella tinted pink and seasoned by oregano and thyme. The dish is accompanied by dessert - a fudge made from dextrose-paste. More mock-meat dishes include a hamburger steak covered in a rich, meaty gravy lavishly seasoned with garlic. \n\nAnother dish includes a mock individual head of lettuce dressed with vinegar and oil. The lettuce was made by Bailey constructing each synthetic lettuce leaf, with the narrator guessing the process to be out of pressing, rolling and shaping a green Chlorella paste. \n\nIn contrast to some of the delicious dishes that Bailey makes, the Cook also delivers some less tasty meals in response to the Captain’s critiques. These included boiled Chlorella vulgaris in some soup and subpar algaeburgers. \n\nBailey’s final dish in the story - and the best one yet - is an artificial steak that greets the crew with a barbecue smell. It is drenched with gravy and seasoned with a peppery and garlicy taste, and as the crew eats it, they find that the usually pond-scum taste that accompanies each repurposed chlorella meal is gone and instead, the taste and texture reflects actual steak. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9e84f433edf649bb8f47f4603a2523ab", "response_text": "Throughout their trip, Bailey does the best he can in order to replicate traditional food using the Algae. To impress the Captain, Bailey cooks a wide variety of foods including algae burgers, fudge, Steak with gravy and a head of lettuce, Hot turkey with cornbread and butter sauce, and medium rare steak. None of these foods impressed the Captain, so Bailey went back to cooking unappealing food such as a porridge-like broth and bad coffee. At the end, Bailey serves a new type of steak, which is hinted to be human steak from the Captain."}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "da5a1e0da9b54f88aa10a0be0b49e115", "response_text": "Bailey made a lot of different dishes while working on the Sale ship. He cooked a hamburger and a fudge. He made a steak with rich meat gravy and lettuce, vinegar, and oil. An ersatz hot turkey supreme with a cheese sauce, cornbread, and a pottage was also served at some point. All of these were criticized by Captain Winkelmann. Mostly Bailey was working on the taste of steak, which at the end of the story, he managed to perfect to a certain extent, partly thanks to the captain’s constant remarks. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Robert Bailey, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "6e0e3a9e14fa4a978efb59fd8789cef4", "response_text": "Robert Bailey is the cook of the ship; he is considered to have one of the most important roles on the ship because he is the one who must feed all of the crew members. Bailey works very hard to try and please Captain Winkelmann, even though the captain constantly berates him on his efforts. He takes pride in his cooking, which is why he constantly tries to improve in order to gain the Captain’s approval. Paul considers him to be the best cook in the entire orbit, especially when he is shown to be capable of creating algae food that tastes realistic at the end of the story. Apart from the Captain, Bailey is very respectful towards his fellow crew members, especially Paul. Bailey dedicates himself to his food entirely, trying to cook up the best meal he can out of the Chlorella algae. He also plans to open a restaurant once he returns to Ohio. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "12ea0bf7bdef416b8f67ae6026e2db56", "response_text": "Robert Bailey is the ship’s Cook, who is earnest and passionate about delivering tasty meals to the rest of his crew mates to the best of his ability. He is described as being quite successful in his pursuit as complimented by the crew and the narrator in having some of the best dishes compared to their past experiences on other ships. He is creative and experimental, choosing to use the necessary chlorella algae off-cuts and recycled pastes of the ship in inventive ways to come up with mock-meats, vegetables, and even desserts. He is dedicated to the cause, even so far as using space in his own personal affects to bring spices, whereas other crewmates may have brought books or the like. \n\nHe is also described as tenacious and hardworking - especially when being constantly ridiculed by the Captain - he consistently works hard everyday to better his dishes and eventually, is able to come up on the other side with a stronger psychic defense against the Captain and the best tasting meal he’s served all journey. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9e84f433edf649bb8f47f4603a2523ab", "response_text": "Robert Bailey is the cook of the crew. He is very talented in his profession, providing his crew with delicious and nutritious meals derived from algae. Unfortunately, the Captain doesn’t like him or the food. Bailey is very sensitive to these reactions, and frequently breaks down in front of Paul. Bailey shows a lot of determination, as even though the captain frequently berates him in front of the crew, he continues trying to impress the captain. Bailey also seems to be very humble, as he wishes to take his salary and move back to his hometown in Ohio and open a restaurant there. Lastly, Bailey shows a violent side, with it being hinted that he murdered and cooked the captain for the crew. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "da5a1e0da9b54f88aa10a0be0b49e115", "response_text": "Robert Bailey was the cook of the Sale ship that was flying to Mars. He had many altercations with Winkelmann, the captain of the Sale ship, because of the way the latter criticized Bailey’s food made from the Chlorella algae. Robert was a talented cook who tried to be as meticulous as possible. He was fond of his passion but was also sensitive. Bailey managed to handle the harsh attitude of the captain for some time, but then his anger overwhelmed him. Still, he was a confident and determined professional, and, in the end, it helped him create the best version of steak and satisfy Winkelmann. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "6e0e3a9e14fa4a978efb59fd8789cef4", "response_text": "The story is set on the Charles Partlow Sale in outer space. The ship left in the middle of August, and it is due at Piano West in early May. The path to Mars is considered to be as long in time as the human period of gestation. This is because the ship is taking a low-energy route. There are Chlorella tanks on the ship to grow the algae in. There is also a dining compartment with a mess table for the crew members to eat food on. The ship also has a cargo compartment, filled with the seeds of Tien-Shen fir and some tons of arctic grass. However, the ship itself is described to be quite small and cannot carry huge amounts of cargo. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "12ea0bf7bdef416b8f67ae6026e2db56", "response_text": "This story takes place aboard a ship called the Charles Partlow Sale, which took off from the Brady Station on a low-energy route to Mars, taking about a journey’s time of about 9 months before arrival.\n\nThe setting mainly occurs in the mess hall as the backdrop to the crew’s meal times as they dig into the prepared dishes by the Cook. It is also here where the interactions between the Cook and the Captain take place, often with the Captain ridiculing the Cook’s culinary prowess. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9e84f433edf649bb8f47f4603a2523ab", "response_text": "The story is set in a spaceship, but the spaceship seems to have very traditional attributes of a sea ship. It has different levels of decks, as well as different rooms that allow for different day to day activities. Most of the story is recounted on the dining table, where Bailey serves the food that he cooks in order for the crew to enjoy. This is also where the Captain berates Bailey constantly for his lack of cooking skill, and where Bailey sits there taking the criticism. The story also takes place in the medbay, where Bailey and Doc share their dislike of the captain. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "da5a1e0da9b54f88aa10a0be0b49e115", "response_text": "The story is set in the future where interplanetary trips are normal and regular, specifically, the narrator tells about what was happening on the spaceship called the Sale that had left the Brady Station and was on its way to Mars. Most of the conversations and events of the story happened in the mess, the dining area of the ship. Captain Winkelmann criticized Bailey’s food many times while eating there. Paul, the narrator and the ship’s doctor, and Bailey also went to the medical quarters after they both had a conflict with the captain after he had called the meal a failure. Here they had an emotional talk about the captain, and the next day Bailey cooked a disgusting pottage that proved that Bailey had overcome the captain’s criticism. Sometime later, Paul and Bailey met at the dining area again after the cook had made the best version of steak with a real taste of meat. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the importance of the Chlorella algae?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "6e0e3a9e14fa4a978efb59fd8789cef4", "response_text": "The Chlorella algae is what keeps all of the crew members alive for the duration of the journey. Since twelve tons of water, oxygen, and food would have filled the compartment to bursting, Chlorella algae is the solution to this. It can work over used food, air, and effluvia, three tons of metabolites that would see them through the entire round trip. Everything the crew recycles is fed to the algae, which feeds the crew members in return. The waste is used to fertilize the liquid fields. Even their stubble from 2,600 shaves and clipping from 666 haircuts is used to feed the algae because human hair is rich in essential amino acids. The algae is their food, as well as the water and air that keeps the crew members going. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "12ea0bf7bdef416b8f67ae6026e2db56", "response_text": "The chlorella algae is integral to the story as well as the shipmen. On each ship, a colony of chlorella algae is introduced in order to recycle through the used air, water and other effluvia that the crewmates both used and wasted. Everything that couldn’t feed the crew like molecules of fat, minerals, carbohydrates etc were used to feed the algae, and in return, the Cook would use the algae offcuts and pastes to feed the crew. It served its purpose both as the key sustenance for the crewmates as well as an important part of the recycling process aboard the ship. \n\nThroughout the story, it also serves as an important piece of the Cook overcoming the challenge of working with algae. In every dish, despite his creativity and seasonings, the taste and look of algae - tasting like pond-scum and green - will be present in some way. By the end of the story, however, the Cook has been able to tenderize and shape the algae’s texture in such a way that it mimics real meat. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9e84f433edf649bb8f47f4603a2523ab", "response_text": "The Chlorella algae is what the cook uses to make his food. The algae works over the air that the crew doesn’t use, and is also fed with waste from the ship, including hair and human waste as fertilizer. The algae was then cooked by the chef to feed the crew and create a cycle that allows the ship to do long voyages. The algae tastes very bad, and requires a lot of cooking effort to make it somewhat edible, which is what Bailey did. Bailey managed to replicate traditional dishes very well using the algae, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy the Captain. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "da5a1e0da9b54f88aa10a0be0b49e115", "response_text": "Chlorella algae were important because they allowed the spaceship and its crew members to get to their destination without bringing tons of food and gear with them. It worked over the used air, the crew’s water, other effluvia, and types of waste; and extracted different proteins, minerals, and fat from it, feeding itself. And the algae, on the other hand, served as the main food ingredient for the spacers that spent months on a spaceship. The algae - served in different ways and with various dressings - were practically the main dish every day. Water and oxygen were recycled, too.\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "23942", "uid": "044d3625f2244d8b92848b8bda47ddde", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "UNBORN TOMORROW\n \n\n BY MACK REYNOLDS\n \n Unfortunately\n , there was only\n one thing he could bring back\n from the wonderful future ...\n and though he didn't want to\n... nevertheless he did....\n \n Illustrated by Freas\n \n Betty\n looked up from\n her magazine. She said\n mildly, \"You're late.\"\n \n \"Don't yell at me, I\n feel awful,\" Simon told\n her. He sat down at his desk, passed\n his tongue over his teeth in distaste,\n groaned, fumbled in a drawer for the\n aspirin bottle.\n \n He looked over at Betty and said,\n almost as though reciting, \"What I\n need is a vacation.\"\n \n \"What,\" Betty said, \"are you going\n to use for money?\"\n \n \"Providence,\" Simon told her\n whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle,\n\"will provide.\"\n \n \"Hm-m-m. But before providing\n vacations it'd be nice if Providence\n turned up a missing jewel deal, say.\n Something where you could deduce\n that actually the ruby ring had gone\n down the drain and was caught in the\n elbow. Something that would net\n about fifty dollars.\"\n \n Simon said, mournful of tone,\n\"Fifty dollars? Why not make it five\n hundred?\"\n \n \"I'm not selfish,\" Betty said. \"All\n I want is enough to pay me this\n week's salary.\"\n \n \"Money,\" Simon said. \"When you\n took this job you said it was the romance\n that appealed to you.\"\n \n \"Hm-m-m. I didn't know most\n sleuthing amounted to snooping\n around department stores to check on\n the clerks knocking down.\"\n \n Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now\n it comes.\"\n \n \n \n There was a knock.\n \n Betty bounced up with Olympic\n agility and had the door swinging\n wide before the knocking was quite\n completed.\n \n He was old, little and had bug\n eyes behind pince-nez glasses. His\n suit was cut in the style of yesteryear\n but when a suit costs two or\n three hundred dollars you still retain\n caste whatever the styling.\n \n Simon said unenthusiastically,\n\"Good morning, Mr. Oyster.\" He indicated\n the client's chair. \"Sit down,\n sir.\"\n \n The client fussed himself with\n Betty's assistance into the seat, bug-eyed\n Simon, said finally, \"You know\n my name, that's pretty good. Never\n saw you before in my life. Stop fussing\n with me, young lady. Your ad\n in the phone book says you'll investigate\n anything.\"\n \n \"Anything,\" Simon said. \"Only\n one exception.\"\n \n \"Excellent. Do you believe in time\n travel?\"\n \n Simon said nothing. Across the\n room, where she had resumed her\n seat, Betty cleared her throat. When\n Simon continued to say nothing she\n ventured, \"Time travel is impossible.\"\n \n \"Why?\"\n \n \"Why?\"\n \n \"Yes, why?\"\n \n Betty looked to her boss for assistance.\n None was forthcoming. There\n ought to be some very quick, positive,\n definite answer. She said, \"Well,\n for one thing, paradox. Suppose you\n had a time machine and traveled back\n a hundred years or so and killed your\n own great-grandfather. Then how\n could you ever be born?\"\n \n \"Confound it if I know,\" the little\n fellow growled. \"How?\"\n \n Simon said, \"Let's get to the point,\n what you wanted to see me about.\"\n \n \"I want to hire you to hunt me up\n some time travelers,\" the old boy\n said.\n \n Betty was too far in now to maintain\n her proper role of silent secretary.\n\"Time travelers,\" she said, not\n very intelligently.\n \n The potential client sat more erect,\n obviously with intent to hold the\n floor for a time. He removed the\n pince-nez glasses and pointed them\n at Betty. He said, \"Have you read\n much science fiction, Miss?\"\n \n \"Some,\" Betty admitted.\n \n \"Then you'll realize that there are\n a dozen explanations of the paradoxes\n of time travel. Every writer in\n the field worth his salt has explained\n them away. But to get on. It's my\n contention that within a century or\n so man will have solved the problems\n of immortality and eternal youth, and\n it's also my suspicion that he will\n eventually be able to travel in time.\n So convinced am I of these possibilities\n that I am willing to gamble a\n portion of my fortune to investigate\n the presence in our era of such time\n travelers.\"\n \n Simon seemed incapable of carrying\n the ball this morning, so Betty\n said, \"But ... Mr. Oyster, if the\n future has developed time travel why\n don't we ever meet such travelers?\"\n \n Simon put in a word. \"The usual\n explanation, Betty, is that they can't\n afford to allow the space-time continuum\n track to be altered. If, say, a\n time traveler returned to a period of\n twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler,\n then all subsequent history would be\n changed. In that case, the time traveler\n himself might never be born. They\n have to tread mighty carefully.\"\n \n Mr. Oyster was pleased. \"I didn't\n expect you to be so well informed\n on the subject, young man.\"\n \n Simon shrugged and fumbled\n again with the aspirin bottle.\n \n \n \n Mr. Oyster went on. \"I've been\n considering the matter for some time\n and—\"\n \n Simon held up a hand. \"There's\n no use prolonging this. As I understand\n it, you're an elderly gentleman\n with a considerable fortune and you\n realize that thus far nobody has succeeded\n in taking it with him.\"\n \n Mr. Oyster returned his glasses to\n their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then\n nodded.\n \n Simon said, \"You want to hire me\n to find a time traveler and in some\n manner or other—any manner will\n do—exhort from him the secret of\n eternal life and youth, which you figure\n the future will have discovered.\n You're willing to pony up a part of\n this fortune of yours, if I can deliver\n a bona fide time traveler.\"\n \n \"Right!\"\n \n Betty had been looking from one\n to the other. Now she said, plaintively,\n\"But where are you going to find\n one of these characters—especially if\n they're interested in keeping hid?\"\n \n The old boy was the center again.\n\"I told you I'd been considering it\n for some time. The Oktoberfest ,\n that's where they'd be!\" He seemed\n elated.\n \n Betty and Simon waited.\n \n \"The Oktoberfest ,\" he repeated.\n\"The greatest festival the world has\n ever seen, the carnival, feria , fiesta to beat them all. Every year it's held\n in Munich. Makes the New Orleans\n Mardi gras look like a quilting\n party.\" He began to swing into the\n spirit of his description. \"It originally\n started in celebration of the wedding\n of some local prince a century\n and a half ago and the Bavarians had\n such a bang-up time they've been\n holding it every year since. The\n Munich breweries do up a special\n beer, Marzenbräu they call it, and\n each brewery opens a tremendous tent\n on the fair grounds which will hold\n five thousand customers apiece. Millions\n of liters of beer are put away,\n hundreds of thousands of barbecued\n chickens, a small herd of oxen are\n roasted whole over spits, millions of\n pair of weisswurst , a very special\n sausage, millions upon millions of\n pretzels—\"\n \n \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept\n it. The Oktoberfest is one whale\n of a wingding.\"\n \n \n \n \"Well,\" the old boy pursued, into\n his subject now, \"that's where they'd\n be, places like the Oktoberfest . For\n one thing, a time traveler wouldn't\n be conspicuous. At a festival like this\n somebody with a strange accent, or\n who didn't know exactly how to wear\n his clothes correctly, or was off the\n ordinary in any of a dozen other\n ways, wouldn't be noticed. You could\n be a four-armed space traveler from\n Mars, and you still wouldn't be conspicuous\n at the Oktoberfest . People\n would figure they had D.T.'s.\"\n \n \"But why would a time traveler\n want to go to a—\" Betty began.\n \n \"Why not! What better opportunity\n to study a people than when they\n are in their cups? If you could go\n back a few thousand years, the things\n you would wish to see would be a\n Roman Triumph, perhaps the Rites\n of Dionysus, or one of Alexander's\n orgies. You wouldn't want to wander\n up and down the streets of, say,\n Athens while nothing was going on,\n particularly when you might be revealed\n as a suspicious character not\n being able to speak the language, not\n knowing how to wear the clothes and\n not familiar with the city's layout.\"\n He took a deep breath. \"No ma'am,\n you'd have to stick to some great\n event, both for the sake of actual\n interest and for protection against being\n unmasked.\"\n \n The old boy wound it up. \"Well,\n that's the story. What are your rates?\n The Oktoberfest starts on Friday and\n continues for sixteen days. You can\n take the plane to Munich, spend a\n week there and—\"\n \n Simon was shaking his head. \"Not\n interested.\"\n \n As soon as Betty had got her jaw\n back into place, she glared unbelievingly\n at him.\n \n Mr. Oyster was taken aback himself.\n\"See here, young man, I realize\n this isn't an ordinary assignment,\n however, as I said, I am willing to\n risk a considerable portion of my\n fortune—\"\n \n \"Sorry,\" Simon said. \"Can't be\n done.\"\n \n \"A hundred dollars a day plus expenses,\"\n Mr. Oyster said quietly. \"I\n like the fact that you already seem\n to have some interest and knowledge\n of the matter. I liked the way you\n knew my name when I walked in the\n door; my picture doesn't appear often\n in the papers.\"\n \n \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality\n in his voice.\n \n \"A fifty thousand dollar bonus if\n you bring me a time traveler.\"\n \n \"Out of the question,\" Simon\n said.\n \n \"But why ?\" Betty wailed.\n \n \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the\n two of them sourly, \"suppose I tell\n you a funny story. It goes like\n this:\"\n \n \n \n I got a thousand dollars from Mr.\n Oyster (Simon began) in the way\n of an advance, and leaving him with\n Betty who was making out a receipt,\n I hustled back to the apartment and\n packed a bag. Hell, I'd wanted a vacation\n anyway, this was a natural. On\n the way to Idlewild I stopped off at\n the Germany Information Offices for\n some tourist literature.\n \n It takes roughly three and a half\n hours to get to Gander from Idlewild.\n I spent the time planning the\n fun I was going to have.\n \n It takes roughly seven and a half\n hours from Gander to Shannon and\n I spent that time dreaming up material\n I could put into my reports to\n Mr. Oyster. I was going to have to\n give him some kind of report for his\n money. Time travel yet! What a\n laugh!\n \n Between Shannon and Munich a\n faint suspicion began to simmer in\n my mind. These statistics I read on\n the Oktoberfest in the Munich tourist\n pamphlets. Five million people\n attended annually.\n \n Where did five million people\n come from to attend an overgrown\n festival in comparatively remote\n Southern Germany? The tourist season\n is over before September 21st,\n first day of the gigantic beer bust.\n Nor could the Germans account for\n any such number. Munich itself has\n a population of less than a million,\n counting children.\n \n And those millions of gallons of\n beer, the hundreds of thousands of\n chickens, the herds of oxen. Who\n ponied up all the money for such expenditures?\n How could the average\n German, with his twenty-five dollars\n a week salary?\n \n In Munich there was no hotel\n space available. I went to the Bahnhof\n where they have a hotel service\n and applied. They put my name\n down, pocketed the husky bribe,\n showed me where I could check my\n bag, told me they'd do what they\n could, and to report back in a few\n hours.\n \n I had another suspicious twinge.\n If five million people attended this\n beer bout, how were they accommodated?\n \n The Theresienwiese , the fair\n ground, was only a few blocks\n away. I was stiff from the plane ride\n so I walked.\n \n \n \n There are seven major brewers in\n the Munich area, each of them represented\n by one of the circuslike tents\n that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent\n contained benches and tables for\n about five thousand persons and from\n six to ten thousands pack themselves\n in, competing for room. In the center\n is a tremendous bandstand, the\n musicians all lederhosen clad, the\n music as Bavarian as any to be found\n in a Bavarian beer hall. Hundreds of\n peasant garbed fräuleins darted about\n the tables with quart sized earthenware\n mugs, platters of chicken, sausage,\n kraut and pretzels.\n \n I found a place finally at a table\n which had space for twenty-odd beer\n bibbers. Odd is right. As weird an\n assortment of Germans and foreign\n tourists as could have been dreamed\n up, ranging from a seventy- or\n eighty-year-old couple in Bavarian\n costume, to the bald-headed drunk\n across the table from me.\n \n A desperate waitress bearing six\n mugs of beer in each hand scurried\n past. They call them masses , by the\n way, not mugs. The bald-headed\n character and I both held up a finger\n and she slid two of the masses over\n to us and then hustled on.\n \n \"Down the hatch,\" the other said,\n holding up his mass in toast.\n \n \"To the ladies,\" I told him. Before\n sipping, I said, \"You know, the\n tourist pamphlets say this stuff is\n eighteen per cent. That's nonsense.\n No beer is that strong.\" I took a long\n pull.\n \n He looked at me, waiting.\n \n I came up. \"Mistaken,\" I admitted.\n \n A mass or two apiece later he looked\n carefully at the name engraved on\n his earthenware mug. \"Löwenbräu,\"\n he said. He took a small notebook\n from his pocket and a pencil, noted\n down the word and returned the\n things.\n \n \"That's a queer looking pencil you\n have there,\" I told him. \"German?\"\n \n \"Venusian,\" he said. \"Oops, sorry.\n Shouldn't have said that.\"\n \n I had never heard of the brand so\n I skipped it.\n \n \"Next is the Hofbräu,\" he said.\n \n \"Next what?\" Baldy's conversation\n didn't seem to hang together very\n well.\n \n \"My pilgrimage,\" he told me. \"All\n my life I've been wanting to go back\n to an Oktoberfest and sample every\n one of the seven brands of the best\n beer the world has ever known. I'm\n only as far as Löwenbräu. I'm afraid\n I'll never make it.\"\n \n I finished my mass . \"I'll help\n you,\" I told him. \"Very noble endeavor.\n Name is Simon.\"\n \n \"Arth,\" he said. \"How could you\n help?\"\n \n \"I'm still fresh—comparatively.\n I'll navigate you around. There are\n seven beer tents. How many have you\n got through, so far?\"\n \n \"Two, counting this one,\" Arth\n said.\n \n I looked at him. \"It's going to be\n a chore,\" I said. \"You've already got\n a nice edge on.\"\n \n Outside, as we made our way to\n the next tent, the fair looked like\n every big State-Fair ever seen, except\n it was bigger. Games, souvenir\n stands, sausage stands, rides, side\n shows, and people, people, people.\n \n The Hofbräu tent was as overflowing\n as the last but we managed to\n find two seats.\n \n The band was blaring, and five\n thousand half-swacked voices were\n roaring accompaniment.\n \n \n In Muenchen steht ein Hofbräuhaus!\n \n\n Eins, Zwei, G'sufa!\n \n \n \n At the G'sufa everybody upped\n with the mugs and drank each other's\n health.\n \n \"This is what I call a real beer\n bust,\" I said approvingly.\n \n Arth was waving to a waitress. As\n in the Löwenbräu tent, a full quart\n was the smallest amount obtainable.\n \n A beer later I said, \"I don't know\n if you'll make it or not, Arth.\"\n \n \"Make what?\"\n \n \"All seven tents.\"\n \n \"Oh.\"\n \n A waitress was on her way by,\n mugs foaming over their rims. I gestured\n to her for refills.\n \n \"Where are you from, Arth?\" I\n asked him, in the way of making\n conversation.\n \n \"2183.\"\n \n \"2183 where?\"\n \n He looked at me, closing one eye\n to focus better. \"Oh,\" he said. \"Well,\n2183 South Street, ah, New Albuquerque.\"\n \n \"New Albuquerque? Where's\n that?\"\n \n Arth thought about it. Took another\n long pull at the beer. \"Right\n across the way from old Albuquerque,\"\n he said finally. \"Maybe we\n ought to be getting on to the\n Pschorrbräu tent.\"\n \n \"Maybe we ought to eat something\n first,\" I said. \"I'm beginning to feel\n this. We could get some of that barbecued\n ox.\"\n \n Arth closed his eyes in pain.\n\"Vegetarian,\" he said. \"Couldn't possibly\n eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.\"\n \n \"Well, we need some nourishment,\"\n I said.\n \n \"There's supposed to be considerable\n nourishment in beer.\"\n \n That made sense. I yelled, \" Fräulein!\n Zwei neu bier! \"\n \n \n \n Somewhere along in here the fog\n rolled in. When it rolled out again,\n I found myself closing one eye the\n better to read the lettering on my\n earthenware mug. It read Augustinerbräu.\n Somehow we'd evidently\n navigated from one tent to another.\n \n Arth was saying, \"Where's your\n hotel?\"\n \n That seemed like a good question.\n I thought about it for a while. Finally\n I said, \"Haven't got one. Town's\n jam packed. Left my bag at the Bahnhof.\n I don't think we'll ever make\n it, Arth. How many we got to\n go?\"\n \n \"Lost track,\" Arth said. \"You can\n come home with me.\"\n \n We drank to that and the fog rolled\n in again.\n \n When the fog rolled out, it was\n daylight. Bright, glaring, awful daylight.\n I was sprawled, complete with\n clothes, on one of twin beds. On the\n other bed, also completely clothed,\n was Arth.\n \n That sun was too much. I stumbled\n up from the bed, staggered to\n the window and fumbled around for\n a blind or curtain. There was none.\n \n Behind me a voice said in horror,\n\"Who ... how ... oh, Wodo ,\n where'd you come from?\"\n \n I got a quick impression, looking\n out the window, that the Germans\n were certainly the most modern, futuristic\n people in the world. But I\n couldn't stand the light. \"Where's\n the shade,\" I moaned.\n \n Arth did something and the window\n went opaque.\n \n \"That's quite a gadget,\" I groaned.\n\"If I didn't feel so lousy, I'd\n appreciate it.\"\n \n Arth was sitting on the edge of\n the bed holding his bald head in his\n hands. \"I remember now,\" he sorrowed.\n\"You didn't have a hotel.\n What a stupidity. I'll be phased.\n Phased all the way down.\"\n \n \"You haven't got a handful of\n aspirin, have you?\" I asked him.\n \n \"Just a minute,\" Arth said, staggering\n erect and heading for what\n undoubtedly was a bathroom. \"Stay\n where you are. Don't move. Don't\n touch anything.\"\n \n \"All right,\" I told him plaintively.\n\"I'm clean. I won't mess up the\n place. All I've got is a hangover, not\n lice.\"\n \n Arth was gone. He came back in\n two or three minutes, box of pills in\n hand. \"Here, take one of these.\"\n \n I took the pill, followed it with a\n glass of water.\n \n \n \n And went out like a light.\n \n Arth was shaking my arm. \"Want\n another mass ?\"\n \n The band was blaring, and five\n thousand half-swacked voices were\n roaring accompaniment.\n \n \n In Muenchen steht ein Hofbräuhaus!\n \n\n Eins, Zwei, G'sufa!\n \n \n \n At the G'sufa everybody upped\n with their king-size mugs and drank\n each other's health.\n \n My head was killing me. \"This is\n where I came in, or something,\" I\n groaned.\n \n Arth said, \"That was last night.\"\n He looked at me over the rim of his\n beer mug.\n \n Something, somewhere, was\n wrong. But I didn't care. I finished\n my mass and then remembered. \"I've\n got to get my bag. Oh, my head.\n Where did we spend last night?\"\n \n Arth said, and his voice sounded\n cautious, \"At my hotel, don't you remember?\"\n \n \"Not very well,\" I admitted. \"I\n feel lousy. I must have dimmed out.\n I've got to go to the Bahnhof and\n get my luggage.\"\n \n Arth didn't put up an argument\n on that. We said good-by and I could\n feel him watching after me as I pushed\n through the tables on the way\n out.\n \n At the Bahnhof they could do me\n no good. There were no hotel rooms\n available in Munich. The head was\n getting worse by the minute. The\n fact that they'd somehow managed\n to lose my bag didn't help. I worked\n on that project for at least a couple\n of hours. Not only wasn't the bag\n at the luggage checking station, but\n the attendant there evidently couldn't\n make heads nor tails of the check\n receipt. He didn't speak English and\n my high school German was inadequate,\n especially accompanied by a\n blockbusting hangover.\n \n I didn't get anywhere tearing my\n hair and complaining from one end\n of the Bahnhof to the other. I drew\n a blank on the bag.\n \n And the head was getting worse\n by the minute. I was bleeding to\n death through the eyes and instead\n of butterflies I had bats in my stomach.\n Believe me, nobody should drink\n a gallon or more of Marzenbräu.\n \n \n \n I decided the hell with it. I took\n a cab to the airport, presented my return\n ticket, told them I wanted to\n leave on the first obtainable plane to\n New York. I'd spent two days at the Oktoberfest , and I'd had it.\n \n I got more guff there. Something\n was wrong with the ticket, wrong\n date or some such. But they fixed\n that up. I never was clear on what\n was fouled up, some clerk's error,\n evidently.\n \n The trip back was as uninteresting\n as the one over. As the hangover began\n to wear off—a little—I was almost\n sorry I hadn't been able to stay.\n If I'd only been able to get a room I would have stayed, I told myself.\n \n From Idlewild, I came directly to\n the office rather than going to my\n apartment. I figured I might as well\n check in with Betty.\n \n I opened the door and there I\n found Mr. Oyster sitting in the chair\n he had been occupying four—or was\n it five—days before when I'd left.\n I'd lost track of the time.\n \n I said to him, \"Glad you're here,\n sir. I can report. Ah, what was it\n you came for? Impatient to hear if\n I'd had any results?\" My mind was\n spinning like a whirling dervish in\n a revolving door. I'd spent a wad of\n his money and had nothing I could\n think of to show for it; nothing but\n the last stages of a grand-daddy\n hangover.\n \n \"Came for?\" Mr. Oyster snorted.\n\"I'm merely waiting for your girl to\n make out my receipt. I thought you\n had already left.\"\n \n \"You'll miss your plane,\" Betty\n said.\n \n There was suddenly a double dip\n of ice cream in my stomach. I walked\n over to my desk and looked down at\n the calendar.\n \n Mr. Oyster was saying something\n to the effect that if I didn't leave today,\n it would have to be tomorrow,\n that he hadn't ponied up that thousand\n dollars advance for anything\n less than immediate service. Stuffing\n his receipt in his wallet, he fussed\n his way out the door.\n \n I said to Betty hopefully, \"I suppose\n you haven't changed this calendar\n since I left.\"\n \n Betty said, \"What's the matter\n with you? You look funny. How did\n your clothes get so mussed? You tore\n the top sheet off that calendar yourself,\n not half an hour ago, just before\n this marble-missing client came\n in.\" She added, irrelevantly, \"Time\n travelers yet.\"\n \n I tried just once more. \"Uh, when\n did you first see this Mr. Oyster?\"\n \n \"Never saw him before in my\n life,\" she said. \"Not until he came\n in this morning.\"\n \n \"This morning,\" I said weakly.\n \n While Betty stared at me as though\n it was me that needed candling by a\n head shrinker preparatory to being\n sent off to a pressure cooker, I fished\n in my pocket for my wallet, counted\n the contents and winced at the\n pathetic remains of the thousand.\n I said pleadingly, \"Betty, listen,\n how long ago did I go out that door—on\n the way to the airport?\"\n \n \"You've been acting sick all morning.\n You went out that door about\n ten minutes ago, were gone about\n three minutes, and then came back.\"\n \n \n \n \"See here,\" Mr. Oyster said (interrupting\n Simon's story), \"did you\n say this was supposed to be amusing,\n young man? I don't find it so. In\n fact, I believe I am being ridiculed.\"\n \n Simon shrugged, put one hand to\n his forehead and said, \"That's only\n the first chapter. There are two\n more.\"\n \n \"I'm not interested in more,\" Mr.\n Oyster said. \"I suppose your point\n was to show me how ridiculous the\n whole idea actually is. Very well,\n you've done it. Confound it. However,\n I suppose your time, even when\n spent in this manner, has some value.\n Here is fifty dollars. And good day,\n sir!\"\n \n He slammed the door after him\n as he left.\n \n Simon winced at the noise, took\n the aspirin bottle from its drawer,\n took two, washed them down with\n water from the desk carafe.\n \n Betty looked at him admiringly.\n Came to her feet, crossed over and\n took up the fifty dollars. \"Week's\n wages,\" she said. \"I suppose that's\n one way of taking care of a crackpot.\n But I'm surprised you didn't\n take his money and enjoy that vacation\n you've been yearning about.\"\n \n \"I did,\" Simon groaned. \"Three\n times.\"\n \n Betty stared at him. \"You mean—\"\n \n Simon nodded, miserably.\n \n She said, \"But Simon . Fifty thousand\n dollars bonus. If that story was\n true, you should have gone back\n again to Munich. If there was one\n time traveler, there might have\n been—\"\n \n \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said\n bitterly, \"I went back there three\n times. There were hundreds of them.\n Probably thousands.\" He took a deep\n breath. \"Listen, we're just going to\n have to forget about it. They're not\n going to stand for the space-time\n continuum track being altered. If\n something comes up that looks like\n it might result in the track being\n changed, they set you right back at\n the beginning and let things start—for\n you—all over again. They just\n can't allow anything to come back\n from the future and change the\n past.\"\n \n \"You mean,\" Betty was suddenly\n furious at him, \"you've given up!\n Why this is the biggest thing— Why\n the fifty thousand dollars is nothing.\n The future! Just think!\"\n \n Simon said wearily, \"There's just\n one thing you can bring back with\n you from the future, a hangover compounded\n of a gallon or so of Marzenbräu.\n What's more you can pile\n one on top of the other, and another\n on top of that!\"\n \n He shuddered. \"If you think I'm\n going to take another crack at this\n merry-go-round and pile a fourth\n hangover on the three I'm already\n nursing, all at once, you can think\n again.\"\n \n \n THE END", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "8e681a5a47cd4fbbaca3dde623a264ed", "response_text": "Simon goes to his desk as Betty remarks that he is late. He tells her that he needs a vacation, but she asks him where the funds will come from and her weekly salary. Suddenly, the door knocks, and a man named Mr. Oyster comes in. Despite having never met before, he is impressed that Simon knows him and asks the other man if he believes in time travel. Betty says it is impossible, and Mr. Oyster questions her about why. Simon then asks why he came, to which the potential client responds that he wants them to hunt up some time travelers. He asks Betty some more about science fiction and explains that he is willing to gamble his fortune to investigate the presence of time travelers in the current era. Mr. Oyster further says that these time travelers will be at the Oktoberfest in Munich, which is considered the greatest festival globally. Simon says that he is not interested in taking up the case. Betty is surprised, and Mr. Oyster tries to offer him a substantial amount of money. Simon then tells them a story where he accepts Mr. Oyster’s offer. Simon thinks about how much fun he will have and a fake report to generate for Mr. Oyster. He then goes on to be suspicious about how five million people can appear to attend a festival in a remote part of southern Germany, especially considering the population of Munich is less than one million. There is no hotel space in Munch, so Simon must go to Bahnhof to apply for hotel service. It is suspicious how the five million attendees are accommodated for this festival. The circus-like tents represent the seven major brewers of the Munich area, and many people are going around. Simon finds a space at one of the tables; he notes that the crowd is made up of both tourists and Germans. A bald-headed person and he both drink beer. The bald man accidentally reveals that his pencil is Venusian and tells Simon that his dream is to sample each of the seven best beer brands. The man then introduces himself as Arth and tells Simon that he is from a strange location. Arth offers to take him to his hotel later, and Simon goes with him. Arth gives him a box of pills for his hangover, and the scene cuts to them drinking at the festival again. Simon feels that something is off and decides to go back to New York. He returns to the office, where Mr. Oyster tells him that Betty has just finished the receipt. They are both confused and say that he has only been gone for about three minutes. Mr. Oyster is furious and leaves, while Betty asks why he didn’t just take the money. Simon tells her that he experienced the trip three times and says that he will not be dealing with a fourth hangover on top of the three already-present ones. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "035a50c74e50481ab86e9de5614e38cb", "response_text": "One day, Mr. Oyster comes to Simon’s office and tries to assign a mission of finding a time traveler in a huge festival, Oktoberfest, in Munich and bring back the secret of eternal youth. However, Simon refuses his request. While Mr. Oyster is confused about why Simon rejects such a large amount of money and a chance to go on a vacation, Simon tells him a story.\n\nIn the story, Simon accepts Mr. Oyster’s request and goes to Oktoberfest. When he gets to Munich, he cannot find a hotel to stay in since there are too many people to be accommodated. While drinking in the big tent held by the local brewery, Simon meets a guy who wants to try all the beer. He then accompanies him to drink. When they get drunk, Simon tells the guy that he doesn’t have anywhere to stay, and the guy invites him to his place. While they talk in the guy’s place, the guy carelessly leaks information about where he comes from, which seems like a time traveler. On the following day, when the time traveler realizes what he did last night, he tells Simon not to move and goes into the bathroom. After he comes out, he gives Simon a pill and lets him go. When Simon takes the flight back to his office, the time seems to be reset to when he just left the office to catch the flight to Munich.\n\nMr. Oyster thinks that Simon tries to ridicule him through his story, so he angrily leaves. Betty, Simon’s clerk, asks Simon why he didn’t want to accept the request, and Simon tells her that the story is what truly happened. Moreover, it has already happened three times, but they never believe him as they cannot sense the time reset. In the end, Betty cannot understand what Simon is trying to say, and Simon is also too tired to explain it. The only thing sure is that he will not make the whole trip again.\n"}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "4bd0270d36ef41b08ec17a2b032b42e4", "response_text": "This story follows Simon and Betty, his assistant, who are two investigators. As Simon nurses a headache and Betty laments over making enough for a week’s salary, a new client enters, an old man wearing an expensive suit. Identifying the old man by name - Mr. Oyster - he details his desire to investigate time travel. Insisting that time travel is possible and real, with all the paradoxes explained away, Mr. Oyster passionately hypothesizes that time travelers often congregate at events like Oktoberfest and propose for Simon and Betty to attend the festival and nab a time traveler. Simon expands on the latter’s desire as to him wanting the investigators to exhort from the time traveler some secret of eternal youth, and hence be willing to pay a premium rate of upwards of fifty thousand dollars. Despite this generous amount, Simon declines, and instead tells the pair a story. \n\nThe story goes: he took a thousand dollars from Mr. Oyster as an advance and departed on the first flight out to Germany. When he arrived at the festival, Simon found an available space in a brewers tent. He sat down across a bald-headed man who appeared to be noting down the various beers being tried. Introducing himself as Arth, Simon and Arth end up traversing the rest of the festival’s breweries together, getting more and more inebriated with each one. After a while, both of them head back to Arth’s hotel and pass out. The next morning, Arth is surprised to find Simon and gives him a pill to help with Simon’s hangover. In the next scene, Simon finds them the next day back at the festival, nursing another mug of beer. With a terrible hangover and not remembering the details of the previous night, Simon says his goodbyes and heads to pick up his luggage, only to find it lost. He decided to head to the airport and fly out without it, found himself with a momentary bump with a ticketing error, and went directly to his office after landing. At the office, Simon is surprised to find Mr. Oyster there, surmising that he is eager to get the report. However, as Betty expresses that she just met Mr. Oyster that morning, he soon realizes that he somehow indeed time traveled. \n\nWhen Simon finished telling his story, Mr. Oyster is in disbelief and believes that he is being ridiculed and storms out of the office, leaving behind fifty dollars for the investigator's time. Betty comments that he is surprised he didn’t take the offer. Simon reveals that he did, actually, three times. It turns out that Mr. Oyster’s hypothesis on time travelers’ existence and their congregation at Oktoberfest was correct. However, these time travelers - like Arth - will immediately reset the track if the space-time continuum was threatened - like they did to Simon. Nursing several hangovers, Simon implores Betty to let it go.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "854a8a7afac244c19e839bdfd0001b97", "response_text": "This story centers around two private investigators, Betty and Simon. Betty seems to be working under Simon, and asks Simon for her payment. They have a little disagreement, but it ends when a new client arrives. The client is Mr. Oyster, an old and rich man who is looking to find time travelers and is willing to pay handsomely. After the 3 of them go back and forth debating about the existence of time travel, Simon starts to tell a story about him going to Oktoberfest, and how an entanglement with a time traveler could go. The story starts with Simon arriving at the festival, and immediately becomes friends with a time traveler, Arth. After drinking together, they end up going to Arth’s hotel. When Simon wakes up, he is in a very futuristic room. When Arth notices him, he gives him a pill and then Simon wakes up in the Oktoberfest again. Arth tells him it is the day after, but Simon ends up going back to New York. When he gets there, he arrives not 10 minutes later after he left. After the story ends, he rejects Mr. Oyster’s proposal and it is revealed the story was real, and that Simon had in fact gone to the future with Arth, and had found time travelers. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe Oktoberfest in the story.", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "8e681a5a47cd4fbbaca3dde623a264ed", "response_text": "Oktoberfest, as described by Mr. Oyster, is held in Munich. It is the greatest festival the world has ever seen; each brewery opens a tremendous tent on the fairgrounds, holding five thousand customers apiece. There are millions of liters of beer, hundreds of thousands of barbecued chickens, oxen roasted over spits, millions of pairs of weisswurst sausage, and millions of pretzels. Since there are many people at Oktoberfest, it is perfect for strange people to blend in since nobody will notice. Oktoberfest is also mentioned to start on a Friday and continues for sixteen days. In Simon’s story, the seven major brewers of the Munich area are all represented by circus-like tents. Each tent contains benches and tables that can seat up to five thousand people. There is a tremendous bandstand in the tent's center, where the musicians are lederhosen-clad. The music is described to be Bavarian as well. It is described that there are many desperate waitresses as well, scrambling around and handing people masses of beer. In terms of people, it is extremely loud and crowded; tourists and German natives are all present and try to squeeze into the tents. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "035a50c74e50481ab86e9de5614e38cb", "response_text": "Oktoberfest is an annual festival held in Munich, the biggest one that has ever been seen. Five million people attend annually. It originates from celebrating a wedding of some local princes about a century and a half ago. Since then, Bavarians have maintained such a tradition. The Munich breweries will have a special beer called Marzenbräu. Each brewery will set up a circus-like tent that allows five thousand customers to stay. Each tent contains benches and tables, and there will be a music band in each tent. A tremendous amount of beer, barbecued chicken, and pretzels will be provided. Foods like weisswurst, a special sausage, and roasted oxen will also be in plenty. The whole event usually lasts for sixteen days. People will drink beers and enjoy the food from one tent to another."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "4bd0270d36ef41b08ec17a2b032b42e4", "response_text": "Oktoberfest is a famed beer festival that takes place in Southern Germany, beginning on September 21st and running for sixteen consecutive days. As described by Mr. Oyster, its historical origins began as a celebration of the wedding of a local prince centuries ago, and have since continued as a great time. Each year, many Munich breweries will brew a special batch - Marzenbrau beer - and will erect tents that can hold up to five thousand people. \n\nIn Simon’s own experience, Oktoberfest just like Mr. Oyster described. Simon marvels - and questions - at the fact that five million people come to attend Oktoberfest, when the population of Munich itself does not go over a million. Because of the large number of event attendees, Simon is unable to find hotel space in Munich and has to go to Bahnhof and be put on the waitlist for a room. He finds seven major brewers in the Munich area, arranged in circus-like tents as described, with Bavarian musicians playing. Alongside the mugs of beer, fellow festival go-ers are also enjoying platters of chicken, sausage, kraut and pretzels. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "854a8a7afac244c19e839bdfd0001b97", "response_text": "Oktoberfest is described as the greatest festival in the world. It is said that over 5 million people attend the festival in southern Germany yearly, which Simon considers to be weird, as he wonders where those many people come from. The festival has different tents and is full of food and loud music where people get drunk and have a good time. The festival is also described as super packed, as Simon and Arth had a lot of trouble finding chairs in the tents. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Arth, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "8e681a5a47cd4fbbaca3dde623a264ed", "response_text": "Arth is a bald man at Oktoberfest. He is first introduced as a bald-headed drunk who sits across from Simon. They share a beer together and toast. After, Arth makes a note to write down the name engraved on his mug in a small notebook with a pencil. When Simon asks if he is German, Arth accidentally responds that his pencil is Venusian. Arth is very determined to fulfill his pilgrimage of trying every single beer at Oktoberfest, but he is disappointed that he will never make it. Simon asks him where he is from when they go to another tent, and Arth responds that he is from 2183 South St in New Albuquerque; it is situated right across Old Albuquerque. Arth also has a kind side to him, as he offers to take Simon to his hotel to rest for the night. He even offers Simon a box of pills to help with his hangover. When they go back to drinking again, he looks at Simon cautiously when the latter does not remember where he spent the night. Arth looks at Simon strangely as he goes back, even though he is initially portrayed as a friendly and kind bald man. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "035a50c74e50481ab86e9de5614e38cb", "response_text": "According to Simon's story, Arth is a time traveler that Simon meets in Oktoberfest. He is bald. He has a small notebook and a Venusian pencil in his pocket. He is from 2183 South Street, New Albuquerque. He is a vegetarian. He meets Simon, a detective who comes to Oktoberfest to search for time travelers, in a tent in Oktoberfest. He invites Simon to go to his place when he knows that Simon has no place to stay. He resets the time when he wakes up the following morning and realizes that he may leak information about his identity to Simon. He gives Simon a pill and sends him out after resetting the time."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "4bd0270d36ef41b08ec17a2b032b42e4", "response_text": "Arth is a fellow Oktoberfest go-er that Simon meets at one the brewery tents, who is on a pilgrimage to try every beer from the seven best brands, but has only made it so far as the Lowenbrau beer. He and Simon set off together as a pair to try the rest of the beers. In making conversation, we find out that Arth often slips in what he says. For example, when writing down the beers he is trying, Simon inquires about the odd type of pencil he is using and assumes it is German, but Arth corrects him and says that it is Venusian. As an afterthought, Arth says that he should not have said that. Similarly, when Simon asks where Arth is from, Arth simply says ‘2183’ before correcting it to a supposed street address in New Albuquerque. \n\nAfter a couple more beers, Arth brings Simon back to his hotel room as Simon has yet to find one himself. The next morning, Arth expresses regret and stupidity towards himself for bringing Simon back and hands him a pill - supposedly aspirin - for Simon’s hangover. The next day, as Simon continues nursing his hangover, Arth details the memories of last night cautiously to Simon and they end up saying their goodbyes. Overall, Arth appears to marvel at Oktoberfest in an odd way. He also seems to be cautious - oftentimes slipping up with revealing too much or a certain information and regrettably having to correct it. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "854a8a7afac244c19e839bdfd0001b97", "response_text": "Arth is described as a bald man, who seems to be very drunk when Simon befriends him at the festival. Throughout the story, it becomes clearer and clearer that Arth is a time traveler. He said he is from 2183, probably referring to his year, as well as referring to his pen as being “venusian”. Arth is on a pilgrimage to complete the 7 tents within the festival, as he wanted to experience the greatest festival ever. He ends up taking Simon to the future with him, but when he realizes his mistake sends Simon back to the present using a pill. "}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Simon, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "8e681a5a47cd4fbbaca3dde623a264ed", "response_text": "Simon works with Betty investigating many cases at their office in New York. He initially has a terrible headache and has to take aspirin for his hangover. He is perceptive as well, knowing who Mr. Oyster is without having seen him before and informative about time travel. However, he does show a stubborn side when he refuses Mr. Oyster’s offer no matter how much money the other man offers him. Even though he could just create a false report for Mr. Oyster, he refuses to take the job. Simon later reveals to Betty that he has already experienced going to Oktoberfest three times and has brought nothing but multiple hangovers back. In the story he tells, Simon is very friendly towards Arth and tries to help him on his pilgrimage. He ends up getting extremely hungover and goes back to New York, which then resets the entire cycle of events again. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "035a50c74e50481ab86e9de5614e38cb", "response_text": "Simon is a detective who constantly searches for his aspirin bottle. He is weary and tired when Mr. Oyster comes to give a request on hunting a time traveler. He needs a vacation. In his story, he does not find a place to stay, so he leaves his bag in one of the hotels. After he goes into a tent to have some beers, he meets a time traveler in Oktoberfest without knowing the identity of the time traveler. He is invited to the time traveler’s home, and the next day, he is sent out after taking a pill. After leaving the time traveler’s house, he cannot find his bag in the hotel since there is no check receipt to show that his bag has been stored there. His flight ticket also has a weird, wrong date. When he gets back to the office, he realizes that he goes back to when he had just left to catch the flight. He tries to tell other people that he has the same experience as the story, but no one believes him."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "4bd0270d36ef41b08ec17a2b032b42e4", "response_text": "Simon, the protagonist, is an investigator alongside his assistant, Betty. He is recruited by Mr. Oyster to further investigate and locate a time traveler in Oktoberfest, and exhort a time traveler’s secrets to eternal life in return for a generous sum. Initially described as someone looking to make money, it is surprising that he turns down the opportunity. \n\nHowever, it is revealed through the story that he did initially take the offer. Simon’s disbelief at Mr. Oyster’s insistence of time travelers is attributed as whilst on the plane, Simon plans to embellish and dream up the material in Mr. Oyster’s report. However, he soon begins to have suspicions about the feasibility of such time travelers, as facts like the vast number of people attending Oktoberfest and cost of expenditure in contrast to the location and timing of the festival do not appear to make sense to Simon. \n\nSimon is also described as friendly and open, as he instantly makes conversation with Arth and makes casual conversation with him about his time at Oktoberfest, where he’s from, etc. The two of them fall into an easy companionship and set off to try the rest of the beers together. He is also smart and pragmatic, choosing to cut his losses at Oktoberfest and head back home early. Whilst at the office in discovering that it was the same day as he had supposedly left for Oktoberfest, he demonstrates his intelligence in being able to suss out what had happened to him.  \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "854a8a7afac244c19e839bdfd0001b97", "response_text": "Simon is a private investigator. He seems to be a very pragmatic person, as he knew exactly what he needed to do in order to get his client happy and comfortable. He also knew how to manage Betty’s expectations, as she wanted him to pay him but he knew what to say in order to make her happy. He also learns from his mistakes, as he already tried to find a time traveler, but he refuses to try again because of the situation that he suffered the first time. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "How does the story Simon tells relate back to Mr. Oyster’s initial request to find time travelers?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "8e681a5a47cd4fbbaca3dde623a264ed", "response_text": "The story that Simon tells relates back to Mr. Oyster’s initial request about time travelers because he is the one who time traveled. Although he calls it a funny story, the sequence of events he describes is all actual events he experiences. The entire purpose of Mr. Oyster’s request and his desire to spend a portion of his fortune is to find a time traveler and come to a conclusion that they exist. However, he fails to realize that the very person he is asking has time traveled. Since the events were repeated three times, Simon’s refusal now changes the flow of events in the near future to avoid a fourth hangover. Even though Mr. Oyster leaves angrily, Simon’s story serves as a true report of time traveling and fulfills Mr. Oyster’s request. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "035a50c74e50481ab86e9de5614e38cb", "response_text": "Mr. Oyster’s initial request is to find the time traveler in the Oktoberfest in Munich and bring back the secret of eternal youth from them. On the other hand, Simon tells the story about what will happen after accepting the requests and going to Oktoberfest. Simon will not be able to find his accommodation in Munich as there will be too many people to be accommodated. Simon will meet a time traveler and have fun with him. Since they are both drunk, the time traveler will take Simon back to his place and leak some information about the future. On the following day, once the time traveler realizes what he did last night, he will reset the time to where Simon starts and send Simon back. When Simon is back, it will only be him remembering the whole thing. And if Simon tries to tell Mr. Oyster and his clerk about what happened, they will only consider him as ridiculing them since they do not believe the time has been reset. Therefore, the story Simon tells reveals that even if Simon accepts Mr. Oyster’s request and meets a time traveler, he will not be able to bring back the secret of eternal youth but only a severe hangover because the space-time continuum track is not allowed to be changed."}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "4bd0270d36ef41b08ec17a2b032b42e4", "response_text": "Simon’s story relates back to Mr. Oyster’s initial request to find time travelers because it confirms Mr. Oyster’s theory: that time travelers exist and they do attend Oktoberfest. To us as readers, the meeting between Mr. Oyster and Simon and Betty in the beginning of the story marks the first time all three of them meet. However, Simon’s story tells us the opposite, that it is actually the second or third time Simon has met Mr. Oyster and completed his request, each time nursing a hangover. \n\nWe find out through Simon that while Mr. Oyster was correct in his insistence at the existence of time travelers, he was wrong in thinking that time travelers would give up the secrets of eternal life and threaten the space-time continuum. In fact, we can see from the interactions between Simon and Arth that time travelers will do whatever it takes to reset the timeline and prevent the space-time continuum from being threatened. It is clear through Simon’s repeat experiences with the same meeting, same day, and same hangover that Simon had investigated a little too closely to the time travelers, and as a consequence, returned back to his office on a reset day, with only his hangover and change from the initial thousand dollars as the only witness to the alternate reality. \n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "854a8a7afac244c19e839bdfd0001b97", "response_text": "Simon’s story begins simply as a story of a trip to Germany to the Oktoberfest. Simon recounts his story of how he met a friend, Arth. In the end, we realize that in fact Arth was a time traveler, and that when Simon went to Arth’s hotel it was in fact the future. We learn that at the time of recounting the story to Mr. Oyster, Simon had already gone to the future with Arth. "}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51609", "uid": "0b57d70b507c4a158b1bdffea0bedc18", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "A FALL OF GLASS\n \n \n By STANLEY R. LEE\n \n Illustrated by DILLON\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n The weatherman was always right: Temperature, 59; humidity, 47%; occasional light showers—but of what?\n \n\n \n The pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously.\n \n It was a splendid day. The temperature was a crisp 59 degrees, the humidity a mildly dessicated 47%. The sun was a flaming orange ball in a cloudless blue sky.\n \n His pockets were picked eleven times.\n \n It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses, one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions. But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the confusion of spilled letters and apologies from both sides, the postman rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets.\n \n \n\n \n He was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl happened along with something in her eye. They collided. She got his right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence. The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time. He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the handkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he was playing.\n \n There was an occasional tinkle of falling glass.\n \n It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist, hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of a celesta. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing.\n \n Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and handedness behind.\n \n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an orange patrol car parked down the street.\n \n \n\n \n Lanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.\n \n Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n \n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it, Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own small efforts, rarer.\n \n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable. Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.\n \n \"Sometimes his house shakes ,\" Lanfierre said.\n \n \"House shakes,\" Lieutenant MacBride wrote in his notebook. Then he stopped and frowned. He reread what he'd just written.\n \n \"You heard right. The house shakes ,\" Lanfierre said, savoring it.\n \n MacBride looked at the Fownes house through the magnifying glass of the windshield. \"Like from ... side to side ?\" he asked in a somewhat patronizing tone of voice.\n \n \"And up and down.\"\n \n MacBride returned the notebook to the breast pocket of his orange uniform. \"Go on,\" he said, amused. \"It sounds interesting.\" He tossed the dossier carelessly on the back seat.\n \n Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably trite.\n \n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a vacation.\n \n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.\n \n \"It's like this, MacBride. Do you know what a wind is? A breeze? A zephyr?\"\n \n \"I've heard some.\"\n \n \"They say there are mountain-tops where winds blow all the time. Strong winds, MacBride. Winds like you and I can't imagine. And if there was a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds did blow, it would shake exactly the way that one does. Sometimes I get the feeling the whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down the avenue.\"\n \n \n\n \n Lieutenant MacBride pursed his lips.\n \n \"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The windows all close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if they all had something important to say but had to close the windows first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city? And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n \n MacBride whistled.\n \n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n \n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.\n \n \"No, you don't need a rest,\" MacBride said. \"You're starting to see flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—\"\n \n At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed shut.\n \n The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound. MacBride and Lanfierre both leaned forward, as if waiting for the ghostly babble of voices to commence.\n \n The house began to shake.\n \n It rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the....\n \n MacBride looked at Lanfierre and Lanfierre looked at MacBride and then they both looked back at the dancing house.\n \n \"And the water ,\" Lanfierre said. \"The water he uses! He could be the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole family of thirsty and clean kids, and he still wouldn't need all that water.\"\n \n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n \n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n \n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n \n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There was something implacable about his sighs.\n \n \"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n \n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n \n Lanfierre nodded.\n \n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n \n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured, watching the house with a consuming interest.\n \n They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes widened as the house danced a new step.\n \n \n\n \n Fownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch from outside.\n \n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a draw-pull.\n \n Every window slammed shut.\n \n \"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that right? No, snug as a hug in a rug . He went on, thinking: The old devils.\n \n \n The downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n \n Outside, the domed city vanished.\n \n It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. Looking through the window he saw only a garden.\n \n Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a huge area of sky, and it sang. The sun and moon both looked down upon a garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.\n \n Moonlight, he thought, and roses. Satisfactory. And cocktails for two. Blast, he'd never be able to figure that one out! He watched as the moon played, Oh, You Beautiful Doll and the neon roses flashed slowly from red to violet, then went back to the closet and turned on the scent. The house began to smell like an immensely concentrated rose as the moon shifted to People Will Say We're In Love .\n \n \n\n \n He rubbed his chin critically. It seemed all right. A dreamy sunset, an enchanted moon, flowers, scent.\n \n They were all purely speculative of course. He had no idea how a rose really smelled—or looked for that matter. Not to mention a moon. But then, neither did the widow. He'd have to be confident, assertive. Insist on it. I tell you, my dear, this is a genuine realistic romantic moon. Now, does it do anything to your pulse? Do you feel icy fingers marching up and down your spine?\n \n His own spine didn't seem to be affected. But then he hadn't read that book on ancient mores and courtship customs.\n \n How really odd the ancients were. Seduction seemed to be an incredibly long and drawn-out process, accompanied by a considerable amount of falsification. Communication seemed virtually impossible. \"No\" meant any number of things, depending on the tone of voice and the circumstances. It could mean yes, it could mean ask me again later on this evening.\n \n He went up the stairs to the bedroom closet and tried the rain-maker, thinking roguishly: Thou shalt not inundate. The risks he was taking! A shower fell gently on the garden and a male chorus began to chant Singing in the Rain . Undiminished, the yellow moon and the red sun continued to be brilliant, although the sun occasionally arced over and demolished several of the neon roses.\n \n The last wheel in the bedroom closet was a rather elegant steering wheel from an old 1995 Studebaker. This was on the bootleg pipe; he gingerly turned it.\n \n Far below in the cellar there was a rumble and then the soft whistle of winds came to him.\n \n He went downstairs to watch out the living room window. This was important; the window had a really fixed attitude about air currents. The neon roses bent and tinkled against each other as the wind rose and the moon shook a trifle as it whispered Cuddle Up a Little Closer .\n \n He watched with folded arms, considering how he would start. My dear Mrs. Deshazaway. Too formal. They'd be looking out at the romantic garden; time to be a bit forward. My very dear Mrs. Deshazaway. No. Contrived. How about a simple, Dear Mrs. Deshazaway . That might be it. I was wondering, seeing as how it's so late, if you wouldn't rather stay over instead of going home....\n \n \n Preoccupied, he hadn't noticed the winds building up, didn't hear the shaking and rattling of the pipes. There were attic pipes connected to wall pipes and wall pipes connected to cellar pipes, and they made one gigantic skeleton that began to rattle its bones and dance as high-pressure air from the dome blower rushed in, slowly opening the Studebaker valve wider and wider....\n \n The neon roses thrashed about, extinguishing each other. The red sun shot off a mass of sparks and then quickly sank out of sight. The moon fell on the garden and rolled ponderously along, crooning When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day .\n \n The shaking house finally woke him up. He scrambled upstairs to the Studebaker wheel and shut it off.\n \n At the window again, he sighed. Repairs were in order. And it wasn't the first time the winds got out of line.\n \n Why didn't she marry him and save all this bother? He shut it all down and went out the front door, wondering about the rhyme of the months, about stately August and eccentric February and romantic April. April. Its days were thirty and it followed September. And all the rest have thirty-one. What a strange people, the ancients!\n \n He still didn't see the orange car parked down the street.\n \n \n\n \n \"Men are too perishable,\" Mrs. Deshazaway said over dinner. \"For all practical purposes I'm never going to marry again. All my husbands die.\"\n \n \"Would you pass the beets, please?\" Humphrey Fownes said.\n \n She handed him a platter of steaming red beets. \"And don't look at me that way,\" she said. \"I'm not going to marry you and if you want reasons I'll give you four of them. Andrew. Curt. Norman. And Alphonse.\"\n \n The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\" she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n \n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be talk.\"\n \n \"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale, I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily worse for him.\"\n \n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n \n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try some of the asparagus. Five. That's what they'd say. That woman did it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n \n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"\n \n He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his shoulders. \"And what about those very elaborate plans you've been making to seduce me?\"\n \n Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork.\n \n \"Don't you think they'll find out? I found out and you can bet they will. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't always tell the truth. To be completely honest with you, Mr. Fownes, it wasn't the old customs at all standing between us, it was air. I can't have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\"\n \n \n\n \n Fownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say.\n \n \"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes, you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask me a few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n \n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n \n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n \n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n \n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're lost, you and I.\"\n \n \"Not if we could leave the dome,\" Fownes said quietly.\n \n \"That's impossible! How?\"\n \n In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes leaned across the table and whispered: \"Fresh air, Mrs. Deshazaway? Space? Miles and miles of space where the real-estate monopoly has no control whatever? Where the wind blows across prairies ; or is it the other way around? No matter. How would you like that , Mrs. Deshazaway?\"\n \n Breathing somewhat faster than usual, the widow rested her chin on her two hands. \"Pray continue,\" she said.\n \n \"Endless vistas of moonlight and roses? April showers, Mrs. Deshazaway. And June, which as you may know follows directly upon April and is supposed to be the month of brides, of marrying. June also lies beyond the dome.\"\n \n \"I see.\"\n \n \" And ,\" Mr. Fownes added, his voice a honeyed whisper, \"they say that somewhere out in the space and the roses and the moonlight, the sleeping equinox yawns and rises because on a certain day it's vernal and that's when it roams the Open Country where geigers no longer scintillate.\"\n \n \" My. \" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays warm long enough for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ... you may call me Agnes.\"\n \n \n\n \n When Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It would be such a deliciously insane experience. (\"April has thirty days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor with it are primes .\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier. Lanfierre sighed.)\n \n Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over to government publications and censored old books with holes in them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near unintelligibility.\n \n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \" Gulliver's Travels. Loaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for five days. What do you make of it?\"\n \n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.\n \n \"A twister,\" she replied quickly. \"Now listen to this . Seven years later on March 21, 1986, Ella Marshall Davidson took out the same book. What do you make of that ?\"\n \n \"I'd say,\" Humphrey Fownes said, \"that he ... that he recommended it to her, that one day they met in the street and he told her about this book and then they ... they went to the library together and she borrowed it and eventually, why eventually they got married.\"\n \n \"Hah! They were brother and sister!\" the librarian shouted in her parched voice, her old buckram eyes laughing with cunning.\n \n Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\n \n \n\n \n The Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.\n \n \"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing that the great technological societies before ours could not invent, notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\"\n \n Fownes was the kind of man who never answered a rhetorical question. He waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled with this problem in revolutionary dialectics.\n \n \" A sound foreign policy ,\" the leader said, aware that no one else had obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the movement into domes began— by common consent of the governments . This is known as self-containment.\"\n \n Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be arranged for him to get out.\n \n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n \n \"Outside the dome.\"\n \n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and leave.\"\n \n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future wife and I have to leave now .\"\n \n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country. You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And dialectically very poor.\"\n \n \"Then you have discussed preparations, the practical necessities of life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else? Have I left anything out?\"\n \n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything out,\" he said to the group.\n \n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n \n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n \n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \" A sound foreign policy ,\" they all said, it being almost too obvious for words.\n \n \n\n \n On his way out the librarian shouted at him: \" A Tale of a Tub , thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed the door.\n \n Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one block away from his house. It was then that he realized something unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.\n \n His house was dancing.\n \n It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense curiosity.\n \n The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch.\n \n From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as his favorite easy chair sailed out of the living room on a blast of cold air and went pinwheeling down the avenue in the bright sunshine. A wild wind and a thick fog poured out of the house. It brought chairs, suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room.\n \n He stood up; a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his cheeks. He got hit by a shoe.\n \n As he forced his way back to the doorway needles of rain played over his face and he heard a voice cry out from somewhere in the living room.\n \n \"Help!\" Lieutenant MacBride called.\n \n Standing in the doorway with his wet hair plastered down on his dripping scalp, the wind roaring about him, the piano rumbling in the distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly.\n \n \" Winds ,\" he said in a whisper.\n \n \"What's happening?\" MacBride yelled, crouching behind the sofa.\n \n \" March winds,\" he said.\n \n \"What?!\"\n \n \"April showers!\"\n \n The winds roared for a moment and then MacBride's lost voice emerged from the blackness of the living room. \"These are not Optimum Dome Conditions!\" the voice wailed. \"The temperature is not 59 degrees. The humidity is not 47%!\"\n \n \n\n \n Fownes held his face up to let the rain fall on it. \"Moonlight!\" he shouted. \"Roses! My soul for a cocktail for two!\" He grasped the doorway to keep from being blown out of the house.\n \n \"Are you going to make it stop or aren't you!\" MacBride yelled.\n \n \"You'll have to tell me what you did first!\"\n \n \"I told him not to touch that wheel! Lanfierre. He's in the upstairs bedroom!\"\n \n When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a wheel in his hand.\n \n \n\n \n \"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n \n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n \n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n \n The wind screamed.\n \n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n \n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n \n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.\n \n Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n \n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n \n \"I never figured on this ,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n \n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house. They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a wild, elated jig.\n \n \"What kind of a place is this?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed it away.\n \n \"Sure, he was different ,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"\n \n When the roof blew off they weren't really surprised. With a certain amount of equanimity they watched it lift off almost gracefully, standing on end for a moment before toppling to the ground. It was strangely slow motion, as was the black twirling cloud that now rose out of the master bedroom, spewing shorts and socks and cases every which way.\n \n \" Now what?\" MacBride said, thoroughly exasperated, as this strange black cloud began to accelerate, whirling about like some malevolent top....\n \n \n\n \n Humphrey Fownes took out the dust jacket he'd found in the library. He held it up and carefully compared the spinning cloud in his bedroom with the illustration. The cloud rose and spun, assuming the identical shape of the illustration.\n \n \"It's a twister,\" he said softly. \"A Kansas twister!\"\n \n \"What,\" MacBride asked, his bravado slipping away again, \"what ... is a twister?\"\n \n The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land beyond the confines of everyday living .\"\n \n MacBride's eyes and mouth were great zeros.\n \n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n \n Huge chunks of glass began to fall around them.\n \n \"Fownes!\" MacBride shouted. \"This is a direct order! Make it go back!\"\n \n But Fownes had already begun to run on toward the next house, dodging mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted.\n\"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\"\n \n The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then, emptied of molten glass, rushed to the Trough which they quickly emptied and then rushed about empty-handed. \"Yoo-hoo!\" he yelled, running. The artificial sun vanished behind the mushrooming twister. Optimum temperature collapsed. \"Mrs. Deshazaway! Agnes , will you marry me? Yoo-hoo!\"\n \n Lanfierre and Lieutenant MacBride leaned against their car and waited, dazed.\n \n There was quite a large fall of glass.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af2277cc377c4fe0a323b1470d434367", "response_text": "Mr. Humphrey Fownes has been pickpocketed eleven times despite the weather being good. This is because he is an uncommonly preoccupied individual and has constantly been thinking about the weather for the entire day. The first person who pickpockets him is a bogus postman who jostles him while pretending to read a postal card. The next person who pickpockets him is a pretty girl who collides with him. The next people are two men who pretend to be in a heated argument. Humphrey continuously thinks about the weather outside; this allows the police to maintain tight surveillance of him. Lanfierre is one of the people in the orange car and thinks about Humphrey Fownes being unique. He tells Lieutenant MacBride that Fownes’ house sometimes shakes, which makes the other man frown. Lanfierre considers MacBride to be a barbarian because he is cynical and cannot appreciate the peculiar nature of Fownes. He goes on to tell him that the windows all close at the same time in the house. MacBride refuses to believe him and tells him to take a rest, but all of the windows close, and the house suddenly begins to shake. They continue to observe the man; Fownes goes into his house and begins to think about his dinner with Mrs. Deshazaway. The house begins to shake more, and he decides that repairs are a must. During his dinner, Mrs. Deshazaway explains how she will never marry again. The widow is a passionate woman, and she passionately tells him he forgot salt on his potatoes during the explanation of why they cannot marry because of the air. When she continues to refuse him, Fownes brings up the idea of leaving the dome city for freedom. She tells him that if they can leave, then she will let him call her by her first name. After the date, he goes to the library, where the old librarian tries to test him with old library cards. The story then cuts to a movement meeting, where the members discuss how the old society failed and the lack of a sound foreign policy. Fownes impatiently explains that he and his future wife must leave now, to which the leader explains that it is impossible because there is no sound foreign policy. When Fownes returns to the house, he finds MacBride in the doorway with dripping hair. MacBride yells that these are not optimum dome conditions, explaining that Lanfierre is in the upstairs bedroom. The entire dome air supply is going through his bedroom, and a strange black cloud appears. Fownes recognizes this as a Kansas twister and runs towards the next house for Mrs. Deshazaway. The dome glass has begun to fall, destroying the artificial sun and optimum temperature. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "58a9b41ec2f6485cb991b213fe2e5bc8", "response_text": "The story is set in a nameless domed city in the future: it has perfect temperature conditions, its citizens never leave the city's borders and must be conformists, i.e lack any signs of aberration. Mr. Humphrey Fownes is a rather eccentric citizen that caught the attention of the police lieutenants whose job is to maintain normality within the dome’s society. Lanfierre, Dome’s police lieutenant, has been following Fownes for months and is truly impressed by his queerness and eccentricity. \nAt the beginning, together with lieutenant MacBride he collects personal information about Fownes, his parameters, the content of his pockets, etc. While sitting in a car parked near Fownes’ house, Lanfierre tells MacBride about the other strange things that he has witnessed while studying Fownes’ life, for example, that his house is shaking occasionally or that his windows always close at the same moment. MacBride is skeptical but unexpectedly all the windows actually slam shut in one second and the walls start wobbling. At the same time, Fownes is inside the house: after closing the windows he goes down to his closet mechanism that creates an illusion of a sunset with flowers, then adding the rain and wind - the things he believed ancients had. Using that mechanism, he wants to seduce Mrs. Deshazaway, a widow whose four ex-husbands died. During their supper, she states that she won’t marry Mr.Fownes but hints at changing her mind if he gets them both outside the dome. Later, he goes to a library meeting of people that criticize the existence of the dome but they cannot provide Fownes with any useful information regarding leaving the city and going outside. \n\nWhile Fownes is away, the police lieutenants decide to enter his house, and  Lanfierre out of curiosity turns the wheel that switches the closet mechanism and opens the valve of the bootleg pipe connected to the dome air system. Walking back, Fownes sees his house shaking. Desperate, MacBride and Lanfierre ask him if they can stop the wind but Humphrey realizes that there is nothing they can do to stop the entire dome air supply from coming through his room. The wind blows off the roof and creates a twister. MacBride orders Humphrey to stop everything immediately, but Fownes leaves the shocked police and runs happily to Mrs. Deshazaway, screaming and asking for her hand, hoping the twister will get them to the outside world, just like it did in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9a6f730f11514f06936266ea3bbf91d1", "response_text": "The story follows an eccentric man named Humphrey Fownes that lives inside of a domed city. As Fownes is walking around the neighborhood, it is revealed that he is being tracked by the police for his eccentric nature. The police sent undercover people to pickpocket him and steal anything they could find in his pockets. After this walk and while the police wait outside his car, it is revealed that Fownes built a machine that creates different environments inside his house. Fownes then meets with his neighbor and it is said that he is in love with her, and the environments created in his house are meant to replicate romantic scenarios and get her to marry him. After she says that she will only marry Fownes if they leave the dome together, he goes to the library to find ways to escape the dome. There, he meets with members of the Movement, a group of people that got together in order to protest the reality in which they lived. Here he finds an old book jacket of The Wizard of Oz, which had a twister on the front. After going home, he finds that his house is shaking and his machine is creating a storm of water and wind. He realizes that in his absence the police had entered and broken his machines. After rescuing the two policemen, the storm gets worse and worse and eventually turns into a twister. Fownes realizes that the twister is destroying the dome and eagerly calls to his neighbor to join him in following the twister outside the dome. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e908ea1084bf4892a5bddc53a5455f4b", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes has been pick-pocketed by the police disguised as the ordinary. He does not notice all the intended bumping because he is weirdly preoccupied with the question of the always optimum weather in the dome. The police target him because his house often shakes heavily, and he is considered a weird person. \n\nHis house shakes because he connects pipes between the dome blower system and his cellar, letting the winds build up in his house, which causes the dancing of the house. He never notices the phenomenon of his home because it always happens when he is in the place and preoccupied with his plan of getting Mrs. Deshazaway, a widow, to marry him. He builds all this mechanism to create an illusion of imaginary ancient romance, hoping to get a slight chance to let Mrs. Deshazaway nod her head. But he constantly fails because she is so scared that the fifth man will die in the marriage with her. Nonetheless, when Humphrey tells her his plan of leaving the dome, she promises him that she will marry him if they can go and live somewhere else with fresher air.\n\nHumphrey goes to the Movement, an organization that wants to protest the lack of a sound foreign policy in the dome. This organization informs members of the goodness of living in the Open Country. Humphrey tries to know how to leave the dome through the Movement, but the leader disappoints him. When he returns home, he sees his house shaking. The two officials are in his place, and one of them turns on the wheel in the bedroom, which leads to the constant winds blowing from the blower system. The winds build up to a certain point that it becomes a twister, which eventually breaks the dome apart. Humphrey’s dream has come true. He runs away to find Mrs. Deshazaway because he can finally marry her.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Mrs. Deshazaway, and what are her characteristics?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af2277cc377c4fe0a323b1470d434367", "response_text": "Mrs. Agnes Deshazaway is a widow who had previously married four men. All of her four husbands died; she claims that she will never marry again. However, she is also considered to be a passionate woman who does everything passionately. Whether it be talking, cooking, dressing, everything about her is passionate. She also has uncontrollable dynamism, and Fownes remarks that he has never known anyone like her. Despite her passion, she is also self-conscious of what other people think of her, telling Fownes that there is a rumor that she is a cannibal. She blames her husbands’ deaths on the air and gets angry when Fownes says that he does not mind. Despite how reluctant she is to marry Fownes, Mrs. Deshazaway also has a hopeful side to her. She is quite attentive when Fownes tells her the possibility of leaving the dome, telling him that she will allow him to marry her if the both of them can leave. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "58a9b41ec2f6485cb991b213fe2e5bc8", "response_text": "Mrs. Deshazaway is a citizen of the domed city and a widow whose four ex-husbands died while being married to her. She’s the love interest of Mr. Humphrey Fownes - he tries to seduce her by making a mechanism that recreates the outside world and later by promising her to get them both outside the dome. She’s a passionate woman who doesn’t like when people gossip about her, fearing that if Humphrey marries her and dies the neighbors will resent her even more. She’s dreaming of going to the open world and breathing fresh air that will allow her new husband to live long"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9a6f730f11514f06936266ea3bbf91d1", "response_text": "Mrs. Deshazaway is Fownes' neighbor and love interest. They have supper every night together at her house. She is a widow of 4 husbands, who she believes all died due to the bad quality of air inside the dome. Because of this, she rejects Fownes’ various proposals, and ultimately says that they will only get married if Fownes finds a way to get them out of the dome. She is described as a very passionate and practical woman. She is a very smart woman and she knows of the love that Fownes has for her. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e908ea1084bf4892a5bddc53a5455f4b", "response_text": "Mrs. Deshazaway is a widow who lost her four husbands: Andrew, Curt, Norman, and Alphonse. She is a passionate woman who talks, cooks, and does everything passionately. She is always energetic. She keeps refusing Humphrey Fownes's proposal, a man who falls in love with her ardently. All of her husbands died, and their deaths are blamed on her by the rumors. She believes the cause of their deaths is the bad air in the dome. But she told Humphrey that she refused him because of the ancient custom, which is a lie. The reason is the rumor, not the ancient traditions. She finds out about Humphrey's secret closet of the Master Mechanism, and she is afraid that the official will come to inspect her because of it. When Humphrey told her his plan of leaving the dome with her, she promised him that if he could make it comes true, she would marry him and let him call her \"Agnes.\""}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af2277cc377c4fe0a323b1470d434367", "response_text": "The story is set inside a dome city with an artificial sun and optimal weather conditions. Fownes first strolls down a quiet residential avenue lined with private houses. Although the weather is generally cloudless, there are light showers that make small geysers of shiny mist. His house is also noted to be located right next to Mrs. Deshazaway’s house. Inside of an orange car, Lanfierre and MacBride watch him. Fownes’ house has a porch and a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system. His downstairs closet contains the Master Mechanism. The illusion he sees is of a red sun setting brightly, marred by an occasional arcover that leaves the scent of ozone. There is a garden outside as well, and a gigantic moon hidden in a large area of the sky. Neon large roses are found in the garden, and their colors change from red to violet. Inside of his bedroom closet upstairs, there is a rainmaker. The outside world that Fownes describes to Mrs. Deshazaway, outside of the dome, is one with miles and miles of space. The real-estate monopoly has no control, and the windows blow across prairies. When Fownes goes to the library, the place is described as a shattered and depressing place. It is used very infrequently, filled with given over government publications and censored old books with holes in them. The librarian's desk has ancient library cards that are almost impossible to read. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "58a9b41ec2f6485cb991b213fe2e5bc8", "response_text": "The story takes place in the future where people live in a domed city. It has perfect climate conditions and its citizens are required to have regulated, non-aberrative lives - this order is maintained by the police. The story starts from a short walk that Mr. Humphrey, an eccentric citizen, takes while coming back to his house. There he again looks at his mechanism, parts of which are connected to the water and air systems of the dome, that creates an illusion of a sunset, strong wind, or rain. He leaves for dinner with Mrs. Deshazaway, a widow with a bad reputation - Humphrey created the mechanism to seduce and marry her. Later, he goes to a meeting of some nonconformists in a library where they talk about the prehistory of the domed society. Walking back, he notices that his building is shaking and soon learns that while he was away the police decided to search his house and one of them switched on the mechanism letting all the dome air supply go through his bedroom. Realizing that nothing can be done and seeing his roof fly off, Humphrey runs to Mrs. Deshazaway, hoping that the appearing twister will take them outside the dome, to some unique new world, like it did in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9a6f730f11514f06936266ea3bbf91d1", "response_text": "The story is set in a dystopian city, where everything seems to be controlled perfectly, including the weather. The city is also inside of a large, glass dome that has robots that constantly fix it as pieces of class constantly fall onto the city below. Fownes’ home is located on a very quiet and residential street, but his house was everything but that. His home is described as an old and large house, with a machine that can change the environment of the house and constantly makes it shake. Part of the story also takes place in a library, which is old and unkempt. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e908ea1084bf4892a5bddc53a5455f4b", "response_text": "People live in the dome where the weather is always optimum, with 59 degrees and 47% humidity. Everyone who lives in the dome must be normal and not act weird. Otherwise, the officials will inspect the queerness and conduct some necessary actions to protect the normality in the dome. A sound foreign policy cannot be formed before, resulting in a confined dome society with no foreign policy. The dome citizens cannot go outside of the dome due to the lack of a sound foreign policy."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Humphrey Fownes, and what are his characteristics?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af2277cc377c4fe0a323b1470d434367", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes is an interesting man who always seems to be preoccupied with the weather. Despite it being optimal conditions, he does not seem to notice anything around him even when he is being pickpocketed. He owns an assortment of machinery, capable of creating his ideal illusions and even affecting the weather outside. It is revealed that most of this is part of his plan to leave the dome. Fownes is a very persistent person as well, trying his very hardest to convince Mrs. Deshazaway to marry him even after she rejects his offer. He is stubborn, too, especially when the leader of The Movement explains that they cannot just leave the dome without a sound foreign policy. No matter what, he is determined to leave the dome and marry the widow. However, his plans seem to finally come together when MacBride and Lanfierre mess with the wheel in his house. When the dome begins to break, Fownes sees this as an opportunity and becomes excited at the thought of finally leaving this dome and living in the outside world with his future wife. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "58a9b41ec2f6485cb991b213fe2e5bc8", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes is an eccentric citizen of a domed city. He’s in love with a widow, Mrs. Deshazaway, who has a peculiar reputation, and builds a complex mechanism, which can recreate wind, rain, and smells, in his closet to impress and seduce her. Police lieutenants are watching him because his queer, nonconforming behavior goes against the rules of the dome. He is happy to see a twister that is appearing near his house after the wind and rain mechanisms in his closet go out of control, not realizing its danger and meaning. Humphrey is silly, gullible, passionate, he is a dreamer who wants to get outside the dome and marry Mrs. Deshazaway.\n"}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9a6f730f11514f06936266ea3bbf91d1", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes is the main character of the story. He is described as being very eccentric and preoccupied. He is always in his thoughts, but he is very smart as he was able to make a machine that harnesses water and wind from the city inside his home. He is motivated by his love for his neighbor, and is looking to find ways to get her to marry him. He seems very different from the other people of the city, which is why the police are investigating him. He also is a very determined individual, as even though he has been rejected many times by his neighbor, he continues pursuing her. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e908ea1084bf4892a5bddc53a5455f4b", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes is a weird man targeted by the officials in the dome. He never sees the weather that is different from the dome’s optimum one, but he admires it. He never perceives the roses and twisters, but he wants to see them in real life. He is weirdly attracted to April in ancient customs because it has thirty days. He wants to marry Mrs. Deshazaway, a widow refusing his proposal because of her four dead husbands. Humphrey is so uncommonly preoccupied that he cannot notice the change and nonnormality of his surroundings even when he has been pick-pocketed many times on the street. He is so weirdly passionate about ancient life that he often goes to the library to study them. He thinks the ancient people are strange as he digs into their lives and customs. Humphrey fiercely falls in love with Mrs. Deshazaway. He creates all the possible romantic settings he can imagine from the ancient documents to marry her. He is also a member of Movement, an organization that gathers people who want to leave the dome."}]}, {"question_text": "What are the features and significance of the Master Mechanism in the downstairs closet that Fownes owns?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "af2277cc377c4fe0a323b1470d434367", "response_text": "The Master Mechanism in the downstairs closet is similar to a watch being inside of a great watch case. There is a profusion of wheels surrounding it, and the Mechanism itself is a miniature see-saw that goes back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels are salvaged from grandfather’s clocks and music boxes, going around in graceful circles at a rate of 30 to 31 times an hour. However, there is one eccentric cam that goes between 28 and 29. Fownes also sets the time to seven o’clock on April 7th of any year. This Master Mechanism is significant because it is capable of showing the ideal illusion to Fownes. He uses this Mechanism to envision his ideal life outside of the dome, and it gives him the home that he hopes to see instead of the one that he is currently living inside of the dome. These illusions also motivate him to try and find a way to leave the dome with the widow. The Master Mechanism serves as a motivator for Fownes, and it allows him to envision his dreams into a form of reality. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "58a9b41ec2f6485cb991b213fe2e5bc8", "response_text": "Humphrey Fownes has a complex Master Mechanism in his downstairs closet. It consists of various wheels surrounding a miniature see-saw and allows him to choose a date and a time of the day and experience the weather conditions at this very moment. Together with the bedroom wheels, he can create an illusion of a rainy, windy April evening, he can smell roses and listen to a romantic song about love. He wants to use this mechanism to make Mrs. Deshazaway, a passionate widow living next door, fall in love with him and get married. At the end of the story, when the police officer unknowingly switches the mechanism, making the wind and water work in the full-power mode, which soon makes the wind currents uncontrollable, this mechanism destroys Fownes’ roof and creates a twister that jeopardizes the infrastructure of the entire city and the dome’s integrity. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "9a6f730f11514f06936266ea3bbf91d1", "response_text": "The Master Mechanism is a machine inside of Fownes’ house. The machine was made by Fownes himself, and is made from wheels, gears and tubes. The machines allow Fownes to harness the water and wind from the city and create different environments inside of the house. Fownes made this machine in order to create romantic scenarios and get Mrs. Deshazaway to marry him. At the end, the two policemen destroy the machine and it ends up destroying Fownes’ home by creating a twister. This twister also ends up destroying the dome and allows Fownes and Mrs. Deshazaway a way out. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e908ea1084bf4892a5bddc53a5455f4b", "response_text": "The closet is like a big watch case. Many wheels inside surround a miniature see-saw that goes back and forth 365-4/1 times an hour, the Master Mechanism. The wheels are old, coming from old grandfather’s clocks or music boxes and moving gracefully at the same speed, except for one that moves eccentrically slower than the others. This machine enables Fownes to create an illusion that depicts his imaginary ancient nature. In addition, this closet connects to a pipe in the bedroom, equipped with a wheel that adjusts the flow of winds from the dome blower system. So whenever he turns on the wheel in the bedroom upstairs, the winds will blow through the pipes towards the downstairs closet, building up the air pressure in the room. This connection between the wheel mechanism and the dome blower system is the cause of the house shaking, which eventually creates an artificial twister that breaks the dome, enabling Fownes to go outside of the dome, which has been his wish from the beginning of the story."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "24966", "uid": "583e33e2ee5f434db3ded7478ff0b029", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "SURVIVAL TACTICS\n \n\n By AL SEVCIK\n \n \n ILLUSTRATOR NOVICK\n  The robots were built to serve\n Man; to do his work, see to his\n comforts, make smooth his way.\n Then the robots figured out an\n additional service—putting Man\n out of his misery.\n \n\n\n There\n was a sudden crash\n that hung sharply in the air,\n as if a tree had been hit by\n lightning some distance away.\n Then another. Alan stopped,\n puzzled. Two more blasts, quickly\n together, and the sound of a\n scream faintly.\n \n Frowning, worrying about the\n sounds, Alan momentarily forgot\n to watch his step until his foot\n suddenly plunged into an ant\n hill, throwing him to the jungle\n floor. \"Damn!\" He cursed again,\n for the tenth time, and stood\n uncertainly in the dimness.\n From tall, moss-shrouded trees,\n wrist-thick vines hung quietly,\n scraping the spongy ground like\n the tentacles of some monstrous\n tree-bound octopus. Fitful little\n plants grew straggly in the\n shadows of the mossy trunks,\n forming a dense underbrush that\n made walking difficult. At midday\n some few of the blue sun's\n rays filtered through to the\n jungle floor, but now, late afternoon\n on the planet, the shadows\n were long and gloomy.\n \n Alan peered around him at the\n vine-draped shadows, listening\n to the soft rustlings and faint\n twig-snappings of life in the\n jungle. Two short, popping\n sounds echoed across the stillness,\n drowned out almost immediately\n and silenced by an\n explosive crash. Alan started,\n\"Blaster fighting! But it can't\n be!\"\n \n Suddenly anxious, he slashed\n a hurried X in one of the trees\n to mark his position then turned\n to follow a line of similar marks\n back through the jungle. He\n tried to run, but vines blocked\n his way and woody shrubs\n caught at his legs, tripping him\n and holding him back. Then,\n through the trees he saw the\n clearing of the camp site, the\n temporary home for the scout\n ship and the eleven men who,\n with Alan, were the only humans\n on the jungle planet, Waiamea.\n \n \n \n Stepping through the low\n shrubbery at the edge of the\n site, he looked across the open\n area to the two temporary structures,\n the camp headquarters\n where the power supplies and\n the computer were; and the\n sleeping quarters. Beyond, nose\n high, stood the silver scout ship\n that had brought the advance\n exploratory party of scientists\n and technicians to Waiamea\n three days before. Except for a\n few of the killer robots rolling\n slowly around the camp site on\n their quiet treads, there was no\n one about.\n \n \"So, they've finally got those\n things working.\" Alan smiled\n slightly. \"Guess that means I\n owe Pete a bourbon-and-soda\n for sure. Anybody who can\n build a robot that hunts by homing\n in on animals' mind impulses ...\"\n He stepped forward\n just as a roar of blue flame dissolved\n the branches of a tree,\n barely above his head.\n \n Without pausing to think,\n Alan leaped back, and fell\n sprawling over a bush just as\n one of the robots rolled silently\n up from the right, lowering its\n blaster barrel to aim directly at\n his head. Alan froze. \"My God,\n Pete built those things wrong!\"\n \n Suddenly a screeching whirlwind\n of claws and teeth hurled\n itself from the smoldering\n branches and crashed against the\n robot, clawing insanely at the\n antenna and blaster barrel.\n With an awkward jerk the robot\n swung around and fired its blaster,\n completely dissolving the\n lower half of the cat creature\n which had clung across the barrel.\n But the back pressure of the\n cat's body overloaded the discharge\n circuits. The robot started\n to shake, then clicked sharply\n as an overload relay snapped\n and shorted the blaster cells.\n The killer turned and rolled back\n towards the camp, leaving Alan\n alone.\n \n Shakily, Alan crawled a few\n feet back into the undergrowth\n where he could lie and watch the\n camp, but not himself be seen.\n Though visibility didn't make\n any difference to the robots, he\n felt safer, somehow, hidden. He\n knew now what the shooting\n sounds had been and why there\n hadn't been anyone around the\n camp site. A charred blob lying\n in the grass of the clearing confirmed\n his hypothesis. His stomach\n felt sick.\n \n \"I suppose,\" he muttered to\n himself, \"that Pete assembled\n these robots in a batch and then\n activated them all at once, probably\n never living to realize that\n they're tuned to pick up human\n brain waves, too. Damn!\n Damn!\" His eyes blurred and\n he slammed his fist into the soft\n earth.\n \n When he raised his eyes again\n the jungle was perceptibly darker.\n Stealthy rustlings in the\n shadows grew louder with the\n setting sun. Branches snapped\n unaccountably in the trees overhead\n and every now and then\n leaves or a twig fell softly to the\n ground, close to where he lay.\n Reaching into his jacket, Alan\n fingered his pocket blaster. He\n pulled it out and held it in his\n right hand. \"This pop gun\n wouldn't even singe a robot, but\n it just might stop one of those\n pumas.\"\n \n \n They said the blast with your name on it would find\n you anywhere. This looked like Alan's blast.\n \n \n Slowly Alan looked around,\n sizing up his situation. Behind\n him the dark jungle rustled forbiddingly.\n He shuddered. \"Not a\n very healthy spot to spend the\n night. On the other hand, I certainly\n can't get to the camp with\n a pack of mind-activated mechanical\n killers running around.\n If I can just hold out until morning,\n when the big ship arrives ...\n The big ship! Good\n Lord, Peggy!\" He turned white;\n oily sweat punctuated his forehead.\n Peggy, arriving tomorrow\n with the other colonists, the\n wives and kids! The metal killers,\n tuned to blast any living\n flesh, would murder them the\n instant they stepped from the\n ship!\n \n \n \n A pretty girl, Peggy, the girl\n he'd married just three weeks\n ago. He still couldn't believe it.\n It was crazy, he supposed, to\n marry a girl and then take off\n for an unknown planet, with her\n to follow, to try to create a home\n in a jungle clearing. Crazy maybe,\n but Peggy and her green eyes\n that changed color with the\n light, with her soft brown hair,\n and her happy smile, had ended\n thirty years of loneliness and\n had, at last, given him a reason\n for living. \"Not to be killed!\"\n Alan unclenched his fists and\n wiped his palms, bloody where\n his fingernails had dug into the\n flesh.\n \n There was a slight creak above\n him like the protesting of a\n branch too heavily laden. Blaster\n ready, Alan rolled over onto his\n back. In the movement, his elbow\n struck the top of a small\n earthy mound and he was instantly\n engulfed in a swarm of\n locust-like insects that beat disgustingly\n against his eyes and\n mouth. \"Fagh!\" Waving his\n arms before his face he jumped\n up and backwards, away from\n the bugs. As he did so, a dark\n shapeless thing plopped from\n the trees onto the spot where he\n had been lying stretched out.\n Then, like an ambient fungus,\n it slithered off into the jungle\n undergrowth.\n \n For a split second the jungle\n stood frozen in a brilliant blue\n flash, followed by the sharp report\n of a blaster. Then another.\n Alan whirled, startled. The\n planet's double moon had risen\n and he could see a robot rolling\n slowly across the clearing in his\n general direction, blasting indiscriminately\n at whatever mind\n impulses came within its pickup\n range, birds, insects, anything.\n Six or seven others also left the\n camp headquarters area and\n headed for the jungle, each to a\n slightly different spot.\n \n Apparently the robot hadn't\n sensed him yet, but Alan didn't\n know what the effective range\n of its pickup devices was. He\n began to slide back into the\n jungle. Minutes later, looking\n back he saw that the machine,\n though several hundred yards\n away, had altered its course and\n was now headed directly for\n him.\n \n His stomach tightened. Panic.\n The dank, musty smell of the\n jungle seemed for an instant to\n thicken and choke in his throat.\n Then he thought of the big ship\n landing in the morning, settling\n down slowly after a lonely two-week\n voyage. He thought of a\n brown-haired girl crowding with\n the others to the gangway, eager\n to embrace the new planet, and\n the next instant a charred nothing,\n unrecognizable, the victim\n of a design error or a misplaced\n wire in a machine. \"I have to\n try,\" he said aloud. \"I have to\n try.\" He moved into the blackness.\n \n Powerful as a small tank, the\n killer robot was equipped to\n crush, slash, and burn its way\n through undergrowth. Nevertheless,\n it was slowed by the\n larger trees and the thick, clinging\n vines, and Alan found that\n he could manage to keep ahead\n of it, barely out of blaster range.\n Only, the robot didn't get tired.\n Alan did.\n \n The twin moons cast pale, deceptive\n shadows that wavered\n and danced across the jungle\n floor, hiding debris that tripped\n him and often sent him sprawling\n into the dark. Sharp-edged\n growths tore at his face and\n clothes, and insects attracted by\n the blood matted against his\n pants and shirt. Behind, the robot\n crashed imperturbably after\n him, lighting the night with fitful\n blaster flashes as some\n winged or legged life came within\n its range.\n \n There was movement also, in\n the darkness beside him, scrapings\n and rustlings and an occasional\n low, throaty sound like an\n angry cat. Alan's fingers tensed\n on his pocket blaster. Swift\n shadowy forms moved quickly in\n the shrubs and the growling became\n suddenly louder. He fired\n twice, blindly, into the undergrowth.\n Sharp screams punctuated\n the electric blue discharge as\n a pack of small feline creatures\n leaped snarling and clawing\n back into the night.\n \n \n \n Mentally, Alan tried to figure\n the charge remaining in his blaster.\n There wouldn't be much.\n\"Enough for a few more shots,\n maybe. Why the devil didn't I\n load in fresh cells this morning!\"\n \n The robot crashed on, louder\n now, gaining on the tired human.\n Legs aching and bruised,\n stinging from insect bites, Alan\n tried to force himself to run\n holding his hands in front of\n him like a child in the dark. His\n foot tripped on a barely visible\n insect hill and a winged swarm\n exploded around him. Startled,\n Alan jerked sideways, crashing\n his head against a tree. He\n clutched at the bark for a second,\n dazed, then his knees\n buckled. His blaster fell into the\n shadows.\n \n The robot crashed loudly behind\n him now. Without stopping\n to think, Alan fumbled along the\n ground after his gun, straining\n his eyes in the darkness. He\n found it just a couple of feet to\n one side, against the base of a\n small bush. Just as his fingers\n closed upon the barrel his other\n hand slipped into something\n sticky that splashed over his\n forearm. He screamed in pain\n and leaped back, trying frantically\n to wipe the clinging,\n burning blackness off his arm.\n Patches of black scraped off onto\n branches and vines, but the rest\n spread slowly over his arm as\n agonizing as hot acid, or as flesh\n being ripped away layer by\n layer.\n \n Almost blinded by pain, whimpering,\n Alan stumbled forward.\n Sharp muscle spasms shot from\n his shoulder across his back and\n chest. Tears streamed across his\n cheeks.\n \n A blue arc slashed at the trees\n a mere hundred yards behind.\n He screamed at the blast. \"Damn\n you, Pete! Damn your robots!\n Damn, damn ... Oh, Peggy!\"\n He stepped into emptiness.\n \n Coolness. Wet. Slowly, washed\n by the water, the pain began to\n fall away. He wanted to lie there\n forever in the dark, cool, wetness.\n For ever, and ever, and ...\n The air thundered.\n \n In the dim light he could see\n the banks of the stream, higher\n than a man, muddy and loose.\n Growing right to the edge of the\n banks, the jungle reached out\n with hairy, disjointed arms as\n if to snag even the dirty little\n stream that passed so timidly\n through its domain.\n \n Alan, lying in the mud of the\n stream bed, felt the earth shake\n as the heavy little robot rolled\n slowly and inexorably towards\n him. \"The Lord High Executioner,\"\n he thought, \"in battle\n dress.\" He tried to stand but his\n legs were almost too weak and\n his arm felt numb. \"I'll drown\n him,\" he said aloud. \"I'll drown\n the Lord High Executioner.\" He\n laughed. Then his mind cleared.\n He remembered where he was.\n \n \n \n Alan trembled. For the first\n time in his life he understood\n what it was to live, because for\n the first time he realized that he\n would sometime die. In other\n times and circumstances he\n might put it off for a while, for\n months or years, but eventually,\n as now, he would have to watch,\n still and helpless, while death\n came creeping. Then, at thirty,\n Alan became a man.\n \n \"Dammit, no law says I have\n to flame-out now !\" He forced\n himself to rise, forced his legs\n to stand, struggling painfully in\n the shin-deep ooze. He worked\n his way to the bank and began to\n dig frenziedly, chest high, about\n two feet below the edge.\n \n His arm where the black thing\n had been was swollen and tender,\n but he forced his hands to dig,\n dig, dig, cursing and crying to\n hide the pain, and biting his\n lips, ignoring the salty taste of\n blood. The soft earth crumbled\n under his hands until he had a\n small cave about three feet deep\n in the bank. Beyond that the\n soil was held too tightly by the\n roots from above and he had to\n stop.\n \n \n \n The air crackled blue and a\n tree crashed heavily past Alan\n into the stream. Above him on\n the bank, silhouetting against\n the moons, the killer robot stopped\n and its blaster swivelled\n slowly down. Frantically, Alan\n hugged the bank as a shaft of\n pure electricity arced over him,\n sliced into the water, and exploded\n in a cloud of steam. The\n robot shook for a second, its\n blaster muzzle lifted erratically\n and for an instant it seemed almost\n out of control, then it\n quieted and the muzzle again\n pointed down.\n \n Pressing with all his might,\n Alan slid slowly along the bank\n inches at a time, away from the\n machine above. Its muzzle turned\n to follow him but the edge of\n the bank blocked its aim. Grinding\n forward a couple of feet,\n slightly overhanging the bank,\n the robot fired again. For a split\n second Alan seemed engulfed in\n flame; the heat of hell singed his\n head and back, and mud boiled\n in the bank by his arm.\n \n Again the robot trembled. It\n jerked forward a foot and its\n blaster swung slightly away. But\n only for a moment. Then the gun\n swung back again.\n \n Suddenly, as if sensing something\n wrong, its tracks slammed\n into reverse. It stood poised for\n a second, its treads spinning\n crazily as the earth collapsed underneath\n it, where Alan had\n dug, then it fell with a heavy\n splash into the mud, ten feet\n from where Alan stood.\n \n Without hesitation Alan\n threw himself across the blaster\n housing, frantically locking his\n arms around the barrel as the\n robot's treads churned furiously\n in the sticky mud, causing it to\n buck and plunge like a Brahma\n bull. The treads stopped and the\n blaster jerked upwards wrenching\n Alan's arms, then slammed\n down. Then the whole housing\n whirled around and around, tilting\n alternately up and down like\n a steel-skinned water monster\n trying to dislodge a tenacious\n crab, while Alan, arms and legs\n wrapped tightly around the blaster\n barrel and housing, pressed\n fiercely against the robot's metal\n skin.\n \n Slowly, trying to anticipate\n and shift his weight with the\n spinning plunges, Alan worked\n his hand down to his right hip.\n He fumbled for the sheath clipped\n to his belt, found it, and extracted\n a stubby hunting knife.\n Sweat and blood in his eyes,\n hardly able to move on the wildly\n swinging turret, he felt down\n the sides to the thin crack between\n the revolving housing and\n the stationary portion of the robot.\n With a quick prayer he\n jammed in the knife blade—and\n was whipped headlong into the\n mud as the turret literally snapped\n to a stop.\n \n The earth, jungle and moons\n spun in a pinwheeled blur,\n slowed, and settled to their proper\n places. Standing in the sticky,\n sweet-smelling ooze, Alan eyed\n the robot apprehensively. Half\n buried in mud, it stood quiet in\n the shadowy light except for an\n occasional, almost spasmodic\n jerk of its blaster barrel. For\n the first time that night Alan\n allowed himself a slight smile.\n\"A blade in the old gear box,\n eh? How does that feel, boy?\"\n \n He turned. \"Well, I'd better\n get out of here before the knife\n slips or the monster cooks up\n some more tricks with whatever\n it's got for a brain.\" Digging\n little footholds in the soft bank,\n he climbed up and stood once\n again in the rustling jungle\n darkness.\n \n \"I wonder,\" he thought, \"how\n Pete could cram enough brain\n into one of those things to make\n it hunt and track so perfectly.\"\n He tried to visualize the computing\n circuits needed for the\n operation of its tracking mechanism\n alone. \"There just isn't\n room for the electronics. You'd\n need a computer as big as the\n one at camp headquarters.\"\n \n \n \n In the distance the sky blazed\n as a blaster roared in the jungle.\n Then Alan heard the approaching\n robot, crunching and snapping\n its way through the undergrowth\n like an onrushing forest\n fire. He froze. \"Good Lord!\n They communicate with each\n other! The one I jammed must\n be calling others to help.\"\n \n He began to move along the\n bank, away from the crashing\n sounds. Suddenly he stopped, his\n eyes widened. \"Of course! Radio!\n I'll bet anything they're\n automatically controlled by the\n camp computer. That's where\n their brain is!\" He paused.\n\"Then, if that were put out of\n commission ...\" He jerked away\n from the bank and half ran, half\n pulled himself through the undergrowth\n towards the camp.\n \n Trees exploded to his left as\n another robot fired in his direction,\n too far away to be effective\n but churning towards him\n through the blackness.\n \n Alan changed direction slightly\n to follow a line between the\n two robots coming up from\n either side, behind him. His eyes\n were well accustomed to the dark\n now, and he managed to dodge\n most of the shadowy vines and\n branches before they could snag\n or trip him. Even so, he stumbled\n in the wiry underbrush and\n his legs were a mass of stinging\n slashes from ankle to thigh.\n \n The crashing rumble of the\n killer robots shook the night behind\n him, nearer sometimes,\n then falling slightly back, but\n following constantly, more\n unshakable than bloodhounds\n because a man can sometimes cover\n a scent, but no man can stop his\n thoughts. Intermittently, like\n photographers' strobes, blue\n flashes would light the jungle\n about him. Then, for seconds\n afterwards his eyes would see\n dancing streaks of yellow and\n sharp multi-colored pinwheels\n that alternately shrunk and expanded\n as if in a surrealist's\n nightmare. Alan would have to\n pause and squeeze his eyelids\n tight shut before he could see\n again, and the robots would\n move a little closer.\n \n To his right the trees silhouetted\n briefly against brilliance as\n a third robot slowly moved up\n in the distance. Without thinking,\n Alan turned slightly to the\n left, then froze in momentary\n panic. \"I should be at the camp\n now. Damn, what direction am\n I going?\" He tried to think\n back, to visualize the twists and\n turns he'd taken in the jungle.\n\"All I need is to get lost.\"\n \n He pictured the camp computer\n with no one to stop it, automatically\n sending its robots in\n wider and wider forays, slowly\n wiping every trace of life from\n the planet. Technologically advanced\n machines doing the job\n for which they were built, completely,\n thoroughly, without feeling,\n and without human masters\n to separate sense from futility.\n Finally parts would wear out,\n circuits would short, and one by\n one the killers would crunch to\n a halt. A few birds would still\n fly then, but a unique animal\n life, rare in the universe, would\n exist no more. And the bones of\n children, eager girls, and their\n men would also lie, beside a\n rusty hulk, beneath the alien\n sun.\n \n \"Peggy!\"\n \n As if in answer, a tree beside\n him breathed fire, then exploded.\n In the brief flash of the\n blaster shot, Alan saw the steel\n glint of a robot only a hundred\n yards away, much nearer than\n he had thought. \"Thank heaven\n for trees!\" He stepped back, felt\n his foot catch in something,\n clutched futilely at some leaves\n and fell heavily.\n \n Pain danced up his leg as he\n grabbed his ankle. Quickly he\n felt the throbbing flesh. \"Damn\n the rotten luck, anyway!\" He\n blinked the pain tears from his\n eyes and looked up—into a robot's\n blaster, jutting out of the\n foliage, thirty yards away.\n \n \n \n Instinctively, in one motion\n Alan grabbed his pocket blaster\n and fired. To his amazement the\n robot jerked back, its gun wobbled\n and started to tilt away.\n Then, getting itself under control,\n it swung back again to face\n Alan. He fired again, and again\n the robot reacted. It seemed familiar\n somehow. Then he remembered\n the robot on the river\n bank, jiggling and swaying for\n seconds after each shot. \"Of\n course!\" He cursed himself for\n missing the obvious. \"The blaster\n static blanks out radio\n transmission from the computer\n for a few seconds. They even do\n it to themselves!\"\n \n Firing intermittently, he\n pulled himself upright and hobbled\n ahead through the bush.\n The robot shook spasmodically\n with each shot, its gun tilted upward\n at an awkward angle.\n \n Then, unexpectedly, Alan saw\n stars, real stars brilliant in the\n night sky, and half dragging his\n swelling leg he stumbled out of\n the jungle into the camp clearing.\n Ahead, across fifty yards of\n grass stood the headquarters\n building, housing the robot-controlling\n computer. Still firing at\n short intervals he started across\n the clearing, gritting his teeth\n at every step.\n \n Straining every muscle in\n spite of the agonizing pain, Alan\n forced himself to a limping run\n across the uneven ground, carefully\n avoiding the insect hills\n that jutted up through the grass.\n From the corner of his eye he\n saw another of the robots standing\n shakily in the dark edge of\n the jungle waiting, it seemed,\n for his small blaster to run dry.\n \n \"Be damned! You can't win\n now!\" Alan yelled between blaster\n shots, almost irrational from\n the pain that ripped jaggedly\n through his leg. Then it happened.\n A few feet from the\n building's door his blaster quit.\n A click. A faint hiss when he\n frantically jerked the trigger\n again and again, and the spent\n cells released themselves from\n the device, falling in the grass\n at his feet. He dropped the useless\n gun.\n \n \"No!\" He threw himself on\n the ground as a new robot suddenly\n appeared around the edge\n of the building a few feet away,\n aimed, and fired. Air burned\n over Alan's back and ozone tingled\n in his nostrils.\n \n Blinding itself for a few seconds\n with its own blaster static,\n the robot paused momentarily,\n jiggling in place. In this\n instant, Alan jammed his hands\n into an insect hill and hurled the\n pile of dirt and insects directly\n at the robot's antenna. In a flash,\n hundreds of the winged things\n erupted angrily from the hole in\n a swarming cloud, each part of\n which was a speck of life\n transmitting mental energy to the\n robot's pickup devices.\n \n Confused by the sudden dispersion\n of mind impulses, the\n robot fired erratically as Alan\n crouched and raced painfully for\n the door. It fired again, closer,\n as he fumbled with the lock\n release. Jagged bits of plastic and\n stone ripped past him, torn loose\n by the blast.\n \n Frantically, Alan slammed\n open the door as the robot, sensing\n him strongly now, aimed\n point blank. He saw nothing, his\n mind thought of nothing but the\n red-clad safety switch mounted\n beside the computer. Time stopped.\n There was nothing else in\n the world. He half-jumped, half-fell\n towards it, slowly, in tenths\n of seconds that seemed measured\n out in years.\n \n The universe went black.\n \n Later. Brilliance pressed upon\n his eyes. Then pain returned, a\n multi-hurting thing that crawled\n through his body and dragged\n ragged tentacles across his\n brain. He moaned.\n \n A voice spoke hollowly in the\n distance. \"He's waking. Call his\n wife.\"\n \n Alan opened his eyes in a\n white room; a white light hung\n over his head. Beside him, looking\n down with a rueful smile,\n stood a young man wearing\n space medical insignia. \"Yes,\"\n he acknowledged the question in\n Alan's eyes, \"you hit the switch.\n That was three days ago. When\n you're up again we'd all like to\n thank you.\"\n \n Suddenly a sobbing-laughing\n green-eyed girl was pressed\n tightly against him. Neither of\n them spoke. They couldn't. There\n was too much to say.\n \n \n THE END", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "cb523904420e45249e25c9ec38ad7ea3", "response_text": "Alan is walking when he hears a sudden crash that hangs sharply in the air. He loses his footing and trips, realizing that there is a possibility of blaster fighting. He hurries to mark an X on a tree for his position and heads back to the clearing of the temporary camp site. This place is home to the only eleven humans, with Alan, on the planet of Waiamea. Once Alan returns to the site, he observes the killer robots and praises Pete for getting them to work. However, when the robots turn on him, he realizes that the robots must have been programmed to pick up human brain waves. He thinks back to Penny, a girl he married three weeks ago who will be arriving with the rest of the colonists tomorrow. This becomes his reason to live against the killer robots, and he observes the killer robots. He fires into the undergrowth and berates himself for not loading fresh cells in the morning as the robot gets louder. He is injured by one and cries out as he feels himself dying. As the robot comes towards him again, he understands what it means to live and forces himself to keep walking. Alan then hugs the bank as pure electricity arches over him, sliding slowly and away from the machine above. The robot trembles and suddenly falls; this gives Alan an opportunity to tackle it. The two struggle, but Alan takes a hunting knife out and jams it into the robot. He wonders how Pete managed to create these robots so perfectly. Suddenly, he hears an approaching robot and realizes that they communicate with each other even if one of them is jammed. Alan decides to run towards the camp because he realizes that’s where the brain of the robots is located. Shortly after running, he finds himself lost because the camp has not appeared in sight yet. He tries to think back to where the camp could be and narrowly misses getting blasted by one of the killer robots. When he fires the pocket blaster, it cancels out the radio transmission from the computer to the robot; Alan sees this as an opportunity to go towards the headquarters building. His blaster suddenly quits, but he manages to hurl a pile of dirt and insects at the robots. He goes into the room quickly as the robot continues to blast. The robot aims point blank at him as he hurls himself towards the red-clad safety switch. Everything then fades to black. When Alan wakes up again, there is a young man wearing a medical insignia telling him that he had hit the switch three days ago. Suddenly, his wife appears, and they hold each other tight. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "27216cdf4b2d4b269a12ae1f49d0d62f", "response_text": "The main character of the short story Survival Tactics Alan conducts a solo reconnaissance clearance mission on a new jungle planet of Waiamea for the life of colonizers. Upon landing, Alan and his eleven crew members set up a headquarters from which they monitor the technological equipment. The jungle does not allow Alan to relax, making his way through thick bushes of lianas, came under attack by a puma, but is rescued by a killer robot of dangerous living creatures built by scientist Pete. However, Alan soon realizes that predators and deadly insects are not the most challenging obstacle he will have to overcome. Killer robots hunt, guided by the mind impulses, posing a threat to all living beings, including humans. Suddenly, the robots start chasing after Alan, surrounded by the dark unknowns of the jungle. He flees, thinking about how in two days, a ship with refugees and his beautiful green-eyed wife Peggy will arrive on Waiamea. Alan understands that human lives are in great danger because of insensitively programmed robots that kill indiscriminately. The explorer manages to drown one of the robots in the mud and turn off its power system by climbing on it with a pocket knife. However, before he understands the tactics of subsequent actions, the robots in the area receive a notification of the loss of one of their brethren and attack the lost Alan. He successfully reaches the headquarters in the clearing and turns off the robots' power, but the electric volley manages to hit him. When Alan wakes up after a three-day coma, his colleagues and wife stand over his bed. They all thank him for his bravery and wit."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "467c84b9caa54fd38f05ea35481ebcd6", "response_text": "The story starts off with the main character Alan, exploring a jungle on an alien planet. After hearing blaster shots, he returns to his ship camp only to find that it has been captured by killer robots, and all of his friends have been killed by them. The robots were created by one of his crewmates, and they were made to help the humans hunt and fight against the alien animal species on the planet, but they went rogue and started killing humans. Alan tries to find ways to beat them, because a new ship of settlers is coming in a few days, including his wife. Alan gets in a fight with one of the robots, and manages to drown it in some mud. This fight hurt him very badly, but he realizes that he needs to reach his ship and shut off the robots from the main computer. He then tries to evade the robots in order to get into the ship, but he continues getting very badly hurt. Finally, he manages to shut them off, but as he does he passes out from all his wounds. When he wakes, the new settlers have arrived, and he gets to reconnect with his wife. "}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "9e3e58aece6d4b59b27ff39457db38a3", "response_text": "A small group of colonists landed on the planet Waiamea to explore the area and prepare the jungle for the arrival of other people, including women and children. While being on a walk in the jungle, Alan, one of the colonists that just landed, hears strange noises. After walking back, he realizes that the killer robots, that his friend was building and whose main goal was to pick up animals’ and dangerous predators’ brain activity and kill them, have been programmed in a wrong way, and now they are aiming at every living creature, including humans. He sees that the other colonists in the camp were already killed, and Alan himself is accidentally saved by a predator who attacks the robot aiming at him. The metal killers are now moving around the territory, guarding it, and trying to pick up somebody’s brain waves. Remembering his wife Peggy and everyone else who was going to land on the next day, Alan decides to at least try to fight the robots and prevent them from killing everybody on this approaching ship. He runs through the jungle, bruising his arms and legs, getting bitten by insects, and manages to temporarily disable the robot by half-drowning him in the river and stabbing his metal corpus with a knife. When he hears the other robots approaching the river he realizes that they must be connected by radio and, thus, are controlled by the main computer in the camp’s headquarters. He runs back to the camp, firing with his blaster which slows down the robots a little bit. Thinking about the importance of the human species and overcoming excruciating throbbing pain in his limbs, Alan gets to the camp. He runs out of blaster cells but makes his way to the computer room. With a robot aiming right at him Alan jumps towards the safety switch and instantly loses consciousness. Three days later Alan finally wakes up with agonizing pain. A medical worker happily informs him that the switch indeed was hit. Alan embraces his sobbing-laughing wife Peggy."}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Alan, and what are his traits?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "cb523904420e45249e25c9ec38ad7ea3", "response_text": "Alan is one of the men who have arrived on Waiamea. He ventures around the jungle planet but goes on the run after a programming error with Pete’s robots. Alan is thirty years old, and he married a woman named Peggy three weeks earlier. Initially, he is very afraid of death and tries to protect himself from the robots. However, he does realize his love for Peggy and sees it as a motivation to continue living. He understands what it means to live for the first time in his life, and he becomes a lot more courageous. Instead of giving up, Alan chooses to find a way to defeat the robots. He also shows himself to be intelligent, figuring out that the robots are being controlled by radio transmissions via a computer in the headquarters building. Furthermore, he is capable of using his pocket blaster and knife to defeat one of the robots, even though it could instantly kill him with a single blast. Alan is very resilient as well; he is injured and continues to run around and fight against the robots. Even when the odds are against him, his desire to be with his wife gives him the strength to continue heading towards the headquarters building and flip off the switch. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "27216cdf4b2d4b269a12ae1f49d0d62f", "response_text": "Alan is a thirty-year-old scientist and technician, who arrives on Waimea on a scout-ship with eleven colleagues. During his solo exploration, the reader learns about Alan's behavior, ingenuity, and will for survival. Although he faces numerous challenges, including attacks from carnivores, dangers of the jungle and its poisonous insects, as well as human-built robot exterminators, he perseveres. Alan's mission is to rid Waiamea of potential threats in the face of predators and other creatures to provide the planet with the safety of the life of the arriving colonizers. Throughout the story, the reader learns about the young and beautiful Peggy, Alan's wife, who should soon arrive on Waiamea. Alan, unconsciously in love with his wife, is motivated to stop the attack of robots at any cost, ensuring the safety of incoming people. His unwavering thirst for survival and endurance help the reader to recognize the weight of responsibility lying on Alan’s shoulders and empathize with the main character throughout his tedious and dangerous journey."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "467c84b9caa54fd38f05ea35481ebcd6", "response_text": "Alan is the main character of the story, and is part of a scouting mission sent to a new planet to test if humans could live there. When the robots that were made to help them kill his crew, he has to find a way to shut them off while fighting them. Throughout the story Alan shows a lot of resilience and pain-tolerance. Even though he is very badly hurt by the robots, he continues fighting in order to save the incoming settlers and see his wife again. He is also very intelligent, using his knowledge to defeat a robot in a mud trap."}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "9e3e58aece6d4b59b27ff39457db38a3", "response_text": "Alan is one of the first 11 colonists that came to the jungle planet Waiamea to explore it and get prepared for the arrival of all the other people. When the killer robots murder his colleagues and become a real danger to every human who is going to step out in the jungle on the next day, he has to think and act quickly. Being fairly intelligent, Alan realizes all the risks, understands the basic working mechanisms of the robots, and even manages to destroy one of them by ensnaring the robot in a trap on a bank and disabling him with a knife. He also understands that the only solution to the problem is switching off the main camp computer that controls all the robots. He is very devoted, brave, and rational, too. Both his love for his wife and realization of his responsibility for the future of humanity push him forward and enable him to overcome pain and save everyone from being killed by robots. "}]}, {"question_text": "What are the features of the killer robots?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "cb523904420e45249e25c9ec38ad7ea3", "response_text": "The killer robots work by homing in on the mind of animals’ impulses. However, due to mass production, robots are also capable of picking up human brain waves. The robots are also capable of firing beams from its blaster, as one had dissolved a cat creature’s entire lower half when it clung onto the robot. The blaster aim is almost always perfect unless the robot’s radio wave or discharge circuit is interrupted. One of its features is also a pickup device. The robots can move around quietly, too, as their original purpose was to guard the campsite. When Alan continues to escape from them, it is revealed that the robots can communicate with each other and the camp computer. The communication works by using radio waves, but it is possible to interrupt these waves using a pocket blaster. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "27216cdf4b2d4b269a12ae1f49d0d62f", "response_text": "Killer robots are the invention of one of the scientists from Alan's team. Their fundamental feature is the elimination of the particularly dangerous living creatures to ensure the safe residence of people on an unknown planet. They respond to brain impulses and shoot towards a live target. Although the scientists believed that robots were programmed to kill only animals, birds, and insects that lived in the jungle and carried an immediate danger to humans, Alan understands from his own experience that robots are defective. Armed with electric blasters, small exterminators move on quiet tracks for better contact with the ground, the killer robots immediately becoming the main danger for people living there. When one of their fighters falls, they can communicate via radio transmitters. Wirelessly, the robots summon new robots to the battlefield for assistance. However, during the fight, Alan deduces that the robots need a few seconds to reset the sight and debug the direction of the shot. Moreover, Alan throws a handful of dirt with swarming insects at the robot, which confuses the robot's settings, making it adjust its aim in the direction of its primary target, winning Alan a few seconds to retreat and save the planet. "}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "467c84b9caa54fd38f05ea35481ebcd6", "response_text": "The killer robots are robots that were made by the exploration crew in order to have them hunt and kill the native animals of the planet. These robots don’t rely on a camera for vision, instead they sense live creatures using their heartbeats and other types of characteristics. They can also communicate with each other, which is how Alan was found by the other robots after defeating the first one. They hold large blasters and are controlled by the ship’s main computer. Alan was able to defeat them by shutting down the computer of the ship. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "9e3e58aece6d4b59b27ff39457db38a3", "response_text": "Alan’s colleague, Pete,  has been assembling killer robots that would hunt animals by picking up their brain waves and quickly locating the animal. Apparently, he hasn’t excluded humans’ brain activity from the robots’ targets. Now, these metal killers are taught to kill all living flesh, including people. They have blaster barrels, move around on quiet treads, can communicate via radio, and are automatically controlled by the main camp computer. The radio transmission is disrupted by blaster static blanks which disables the robots for a few seconds. The only way to turn them off is to disconnect them from the computer or switch off the computer itself. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the setting of the story.", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "cb523904420e45249e25c9ec38ad7ea3", "response_text": "The story is set on the jungle planet of Waiamea. There are tall moss-shrouded trees and wrist-thick vines that hang similar to a monstrous tree-bound octopus. Fitful little plants grow straggly in the shadows of the mossy trunks, and the sun is blue. The campsite that Alan goes to houses power supplies, one central computer, and sleeping quarters. There are also a variety of animals that live on the planet. Some of these animals include feline creatures and insects attracted by the scent of blood. The planet also has a double moon when it becomes night time. When Alan escapes from the robot, he ends up in a stream of water and mud. As he runs towards the headquarters building, there is a small insect pile that he takes advantage of against the robot. Inside of the headquarters building, there is a red-clad safety switch mounted beside the computer. During Alan’s recovery, he is in a white room with a white light hanging over him. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "27216cdf4b2d4b269a12ae1f49d0d62f", "response_text": "The action of the story takes place on the jungle planet Waimea. Upon the arrival of the research ship, scientist Alan finds himself in the depths of the dark vines. Alan looks around at the shadows entwined with vines, listening to the quiet rustle and faint crackling of the branches of life in the jungle. As he made his way into the tropical forest at noon, the sun filtered through the branches. As the planet approached evening, the shadows were long and gloomy. As the planet's double moon is visible, Alan sees how the jungle flashed bright blue and then hazes in the blink of an eye. The twin moons cast pale shadows, faintly conveying what was under Alan's feet. He stumbled over hidden debris, and sharp-edged growths tore at his face and clothes while insects attracted by blood clung to his pants and shirt. His arm slipped into something sticky that spread over his forearm, causing him to scream in agony. Black spots scraped off the branches and vines, but the rest slowly spread over his arm, painfully, like hot burning acid. Retreating, Alan stumbled upon the bank of a stream in the dim light of the moons. The banks were loose and muddy. The jungle growing along the edges of the water seemed to be one shaggy whole, complementing the picture with the unknown. As Alan flees from the attacking robots, he notices stars in the distance as a sign that a campsite is nearby. After about fifty yards of grass, there was the headquarters building. Alan wakes up in a bright white room, surrounded by familiar faces."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "467c84b9caa54fd38f05ea35481ebcd6", "response_text": "The story is located on a planet that humans want to settle on. The planet has a very large jungle, filled with very tall trees and insects. The planet is full of these insects, with Alan using them to his advantage and distracting a Robot. The jungle has a large clearing, which is where the exploration party landed their ship, and where the robots seem to be clustered. The jungle also has a lot of bushes and ferns that have sharp edges, and hurt Alan."}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "9e3e58aece6d4b59b27ff39457db38a3", "response_text": "The story is set in the future where people are moving to another planet called Waiamea. It’s covered in jungle forest and that’s where Alan - one of the first 11 colonists that already landed -  is when he hears some strange blaster noise. After noticing the killing robots at the camp and realizing what situation he is in, Alan runs through the jungle while being chased by a robot and ends up on a stream bank where he manages to disable the metal killer. Then he tries to get back to the camp where he can turn off the main computer controlling these robots. He overcomes different jungle obstacles and fires at robots while trying to get to the computer room. Finally, he jumps towards the switch right before losing consciousness. At the end, three days later, Alan wakes up in a hospital-like white room where he finally hugs his crying wife Peggy after learning from the doctor that he did hit the switch and, thus, the robots are not a danger anymore. \n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of Alan’s realization that he must continue to live?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "107", "uid": "cb523904420e45249e25c9ec38ad7ea3", "response_text": "Alan’s realization that he must continue to live makes him become a man at thirty. Not only does it fill him with determination, but it is also what fuels him to stop the robots and end up saving everybody. He declares that no law says he has to flame-out at this age, so he continues to work his way through the jungle and against the robots. Without this realization, he would not have been motivated to use his pocket blaster against the robots and knife. Alan would also not have lived long enough to figure out the control of the robots as the computer in the headquarters building. This, itself, also lets him actually choose to go back to the area at the risk of death to find the safety button. Finally, his will to live lets him put aside his fear and goes to push the button, which ends up saving everybody. "}, {"worker_id": "110", "uid": "27216cdf4b2d4b269a12ae1f49d0d62f", "response_text": "For Alan, nothing is more important than to continue his struggle throughout the work. The researcher faces insurmountable obstacles such as fights with a puma, a sticky unknown that burns through his skin, escape from killer robots, and the difficulty of making his way through the thick jungle. Although the reader points out that it takes traits like perseverance, bravery, strength, and endurance to survive in the relentless tropical forest, Alan’s character is not the only condition keeping him motivated. The main character realizes that the overwhelming responsibility lies on his shoulders, realizing that the lives of children and women depend on his actions and tactics. Furthermore, Alan obtains a second wind when reminiscing about his loving wife Peggy; he shares that Peggy has brought light into his dark world, giving him the willpower to push through and fight for a better future. Even at the end, when his strength leaves his body, he decides to fight through the pain and stop the inevitable nightmare, clearing the jungle out of killer robots."}, {"worker_id": "111", "uid": "467c84b9caa54fd38f05ea35481ebcd6", "response_text": "Before reaching the ship, Alan fought that he was going to die, and that he wasn’t going to be able to shut off the killer robots. He accepts this death, but just as the robot was going to kill him he thinks about his wife. He realizes that if he dies, the robots would kill the settlers when they arrive. This pushes him to continue fighting, and when he does the defeats the robots and saves the settlers."}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "9e3e58aece6d4b59b27ff39457db38a3", "response_text": "As one of the first colonists of the planet, Alan realizes that he must continue to live to save his beloved wife and all the other people traveling with her on the ship right now because they are the only humans left in this world. When pain clouds his rational judgment, and he cannot walk anymore, the feelings of love and responsibility enable him to move further. He disables one robot and, after all, switches off the computer that controls all the other ones. Even though his body is in agonizing pain, his realization makes him move forward and practically save everyone who is to land on the planet on the next day, save humanity in a sense.\n\n"}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "60747", "uid": "afc7d0b8ab9b44e499bf68cf3c9465e0", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "Nuts to wild talents! Mine was no satisfaction, never earned me a penny—and now it had me fighting for my life in ...\n \n \n THE LITTLE RED BAG\n \n\n By JERRY SOHL\n \n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n \n About an hour out of San Francisco on the flight to Los Angeles, I made\n the discovery. I had finished reading the Chronicle , folded and put\n it beside me, turned and looked out the window, expecting to see the\n San Joaquin Valley but finding only a sea of clouds instead. So I\n returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed\n gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats\n before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde.\n \n I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n \n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n \n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n \n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained.\n \n It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore\n the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers\n and—well, human beings. But human beings aren't worth the trouble.\n It's like swimming through spaghetti. And I've got to stay away from\n electric wires. They hurt. Now don't ask me how they hurt.\n \n Maybe you think it's fun. For the most part, it really isn't. I always\n knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and\n therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can't feel\n the color of anything, just its consistency. An apple senses about the\n same as a potato, except for the core and the stem. I can't even tell\n if there's writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn't much. Just\n the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to\n become pretty good at guessing.\n \n Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object\n in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it—a lipstick. A round, hard\n object with dust inside—a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small\n book, probably an address book, money in a change purse—a few bills\n and coins. Not much else.\n \n I was a little disappointed. I've run across a gun or two in my time.\n But I never say anything.\n \n \n\n \n I learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when\n Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat\n my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some\n of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction.\n Lunchtime was nearly over and we'd both finished eating; she said she'd\n be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during\n her absence, which I dutifully did.\n \n Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for\n her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and\n looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while\n she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which\n she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.\n \n \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out.\n \n I was sent home with a stinging note.\n \n Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able\n to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other\n people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine.\n \n I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but\n how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the\n things I sense in probing really are.\n \n But I've learned to move things. Ever so little. A piece of paper. A\n feather. Once I stopped one of those little glass-enclosed light or\n heat-powered devices with vanes you see now and then in a jeweler's\n window. And I can stop clocks.\n \n Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty\n because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco\n International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it\n seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement\n and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last\n time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the\n pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its\n delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. I hung onto the wheel, exerting\n influence to decrease the restoring torque.\n \n The wheel slowed down until there was no more ticking. It took quite\n a bit of effort, as it always does, but I did it, as I usually do. I\n can't stand the alarm.\n \n When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went\n to Las Vegas to try my hand, so to speak, with the ratchets and pawls\n and cams and springs on the slot machines. But there's nothing delicate\n about a slot machine, and the spring tensions are too strong. I dropped\n quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up.\n \n So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that\n it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane.\n \n The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n \n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.\n \n I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\n \n \n\n \n The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n \n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.\n \n It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n \n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n \n But of course that had been the plan!\n \n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.\n \n \"Sir.\" My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle,\n smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small\n paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped\n doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a\n napkin.\n \n I goggled at her, managed to croak, \"No, thanks.\" She gave me an odd\n look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at\n the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her.\n \n I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n \n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n \n \"Anything the matter?\"\n \n My eyelids flew open and I looked into the eyes of the woman next to\n me. There was sugar from the doughnut around her mouth and she was\n still chewing.\n \n \"No,\" I said, letting out my breath. \"I'm all right.\"\n \n \"You were moaning, it sounded like. And you kept moving your head back\n and forth.\"\n \n \"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\n \n \n\n \n All right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.\n \n Mountain crags jutted through the clouds. We were in the range north of\n the city. Here and there were clear spots and I could see roads below,\n but there were also clouds far above us. It was very beautiful, but it\n was also very bumpy, and we started to slip and slide.\n \n To my horror I found that the balance wheel was rocking again. Closing\n my eyes and gritting my teeth, I forced my senses to the wheel, tugging\n and pulling and shoving and pushing until it finally stopped.\n \n A jab in the shoulder. I jumped, startled.\n \n \"Your cup,\" my seat partner said, pointing.\n \n I looked down at the coffee cup I had crushed in my hands. Then I\n looked up into the eyes of the stewardess. I handed it to her. She took\n it without a word and went away.\n \n \"Were you really asleep that time?\"\n \n \"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n \n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n \n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.\n \n It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n \n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.\n \n I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n \n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\n \n \n\n \n The baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n \n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"\n \n \"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n \n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n \n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n \n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n \n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n \n \"Cab?\"\n \n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n \n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n \n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.\n \n I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n \n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n \n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.\n \n But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n\"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n \n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.\n \n I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n \n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n \n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n \n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n \n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n \n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.\n \n The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n \n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\n \n \n\n \n At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n \n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n \n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n \n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n\"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.\n \n She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n \n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n \n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n \n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n \n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"\n \n She gave me a speculative look.\n \n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n \n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n \n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n \n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n \n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n \n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.\n \n Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n \n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n \n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n \n \"Who is Joe?\"\n \n \"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n \n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n \n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n \n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n \n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"\n \n I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n \n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\n \n \n\n \n I finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.\n \n \"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n \n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n \n The two bags weren't there.\n \n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n \n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n \n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"\n \n The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n \n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n \n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n \n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n \n \"That he did,\" I said.\n \n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"\n \n The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n \n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n \n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n \n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n \n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n \n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n \n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"\n \n \"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n \n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n \n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't make you report it.\"\n \n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n \n \"Sure,\" I said.\n \n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "d951e09dfc734bc08b8758b2dfbe6dd2", "response_text": "On a seemingly normal flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles sits our protagonist, on his way to complete a printing order. In his initial musings, we find out that his curiosity and intuition about his fellow passengers come out of his extrasensory ability to see inside objects and human beings. The protagonist is also revealed to be able to manipulate time by stopping clocks, which he uses to his benefit with early wake-up calls. Despite his unique abilities, he laments that it renders largely useless and mundane as it often ruins surprises like Christmas gifts, requires a bit of guessing, and fails to work as gimmicks in manipulating games like Vegas slot machines. \n\nAnd so with his seemingly useless but curious gaze, the protagonist ponders about his seat-mate’s purse, Amos Magaffey the purchasing agent, and rifling through luggages and identifying his own. All of sudden, his musings are halted by the discovery of a bomb in one of the luggages, with a countdown timer ticking with 10 minutes or less. The flight is still 40 minutes away from its destination and so with great effort and increasing suspicion from his seat-mate, the protagonist uses his ability to stop the ticking bomb. The flight lands safely with the bomb remaining inactivated, but the protgaonist now worries between alerting authorities - which may cast suspicion upon himself - or follow the luggage and identify who picks it up. With no one initially picking up the luggage with the bomb - the little red bag - it is delivered by the flight attendant to the rear room. Soon, a young lady arrives to pick it up. It is then that the protagonist hurries over to her in hopes of warning her of the ticking time bomb. It turns out that the likely culprit of planting the bomb is the young lady’s - Julia Claremont - husband, whose motives are unknown but nevertheless unhinged. Armed with this information and a false story about the bag’s suspicion, the pair decides to approach an airport policeman and inform them of the bomb. However, as they return to where they left their bags, they find that both his and Julia’s luggages have been stolen by a strange man entering his grey vehicle. Turning to the airport policeman in reporting this stolen luggage, they are interrupted by an explosion in a grey vehicle. Shocked and somber, Julia and the protagonist inform the policeman that they no longer wish to report the stolen luggage, and the two begin to walk away from the airport. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "0a53b3c2f9524b75926a004ea5aba4dd", "response_text": "The protagonist and narrator of the story is a man who long ago discovered that he had an extraordinary ability: sensing the contents of different objects, like boxes and bags, and moving light things, like feathers or a watch balance wheel, without touching them. He got in trouble for naively using his gift in the fourth grade and has kept quiet about it ever since. At the beginning of the story, he is on a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a business meeting with an amusement chain owner. After studying the passengers around him, checking the window view, and mentally looking through the purse of a woman next to him, he decides to find his suitcase in the luggage compartment of the plane. The narrator is going through the content of other people’s suitcases when he feels something resembling a bomb. It seems to be inside a small woman’s bag and is about to go off in ten minutes, but the plane is supposed to land only in forty. Anxious and hectic, he refuses the cup of coffee from a stewardess and decides that he has to stop the clock mechanism, at least for the duration of the flight. He does it every morning with his alarm, so it doesn’t seem impossible. After temporarily stopping it, his thoughts race ahead to the landing, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to control the mechanism forever or tell the truth to the police. But his thinking process is disturbed by turbulence - he realizes that the balance wheel is moving again. After some tugging, pulling, and shoving, it finally becomes immovable. When the plane lands, the protagonist goes to the baggage claim and tries to find the owner of the bag. After picking up his suitcase and watching how the claim employees take the bag with the bomb to the storage room, he finally sees a blond woman called Julia Claremont - he saw her on the flight - approaching the counter. He convinces her to put the bag down and pretends that he is speaking to someone in a telephone booth while deactivating the mechanism once again. When she asks for an explanation, he invites her to an airport coffee shop and tells her everything. At the end of his monologue, she starts crying and says that her husband Joe probably put it in her bag after she had finished packing the day before. That trip was Joe’s idea, but she doesn’t know why her husband would do something like that. They go back to the gate to realize that the bags they had left there are gone. The protagonist sees the thief throw their bags into his car’s rear seat and rapidly drive off. When they are ready to go to the police office to file a report, a loud explosion occurs somewhere near the airport. Julia and the narrator don’t report luggage theft and walk away. \n\n\n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "82d4aff5b2c4454ab8640054a18ca313", "response_text": "The protagonist finishes reading the Chronicle an hour into his flight when he sees a sea of clouds where the San Joaquin Valley should be. He observes a few passengers and sees a familiar blonde from the gate. He thinks about the printing order in Los Angeles and begins exploring the old lady’s purse next to them. The protagonist's powers allow him to explore the inside of anything, but he remarks that it is not any fun because all he does is feel the shapes and guess. He goes through the lady’s belongings and becomes disappointed when nothing is of interest. The scene cuts to the fourth-grade protagonist eating lunch with Miss Winters for a minor infraction. Miss Winters leaves for a moment and tells the protagonist to erase the blackboard. She cannot find her favorite mechanical pencil when she comes back, and the protagonist probes her purse to find it. He generally keeps quiet about their special gift but can move certain objects. The old lady wakes up again, and the protagonist begins to think about securing a printing deal with Amos Magaffey. He probes through belongings and finds a bomb in a woman’s bag. He begins to panic and thinks about what to do when a stewardess offers him a tray full of food; the protagonist cannot bring himself to accept it. The lady next to him is concerned, but he insists that he is okay and asks for a cup of coffee. The protagonist has temporarily stopped the timer, and he thinks about what will happen once the luggage begins to move because the timer will start again. As he concentrates, the old woman notices again and asks if he is sleeping. Once the plane stops, the protagonist leaves and observes the baggage being transported from the plane to find the bag with the bomb. Once the protagonist claims his baggage, he waits to see who will claim the bag with the bomb. Although he should be meeting with Amos Magaffey, he knows that he will be unable to live with himself if he lets the bomb explode. The blonde from earlier appears to claim her bag, and the protagonist stops her by saying that he has something important to tell her. He manages to stop the bomb timer again by pretending to dial a number in the telephone booth. He and the woman then go grab a coffee, where he explains the situation; she is horrified to realize that her husband Joe is the one who put the bomb in. She introduces herself as Julia Claremont, and the both of them pay the tab to leave. They realize that their bags are stolen by the dumpy man from earlier in the lobby. The redcap tells them to tell the policeman, while a loud explosion suddenly happens. The two of them decide to forego their luggage because of the bomb and walk down the street arm in arm. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e2b12bad8974425591557512915a9ebb", "response_text": "A man with extrasensory ability finds a bomb on the plane. He doesn’t want to tell the stewardess that there is a bomb because he cannot explain how he knows it without exposing his ability. His unwillingness to reveal his ability also originates from his childhood memory that his teacher doubts him as a thief when he tells her where her pencil is. During the whole flight, he uses his ability to move the wheel in the bomb not to let it count down to explosion. \n\nAfter the plane lands, he goes to pick up his baggage. When he grabs his bag, he also sees the one with a bomb in the baggage claim area in the airport. He waits and hesitates to tell the truth to the airport officer. When he sees the baggage claim attendant trying to move the bag with the bomb to the rear room in the airport, he almost tells the truth, but he sees a woman come and try to find her bag. After the woman takes the bag, he approaches the woman, tells her to put the bag away, and goes to grab a coffee with her. He explains everything to her, including his extrasensory ability. The woman is startled. When they decide to tell the police to deactivate the bomb and walk out of the coffee shop, they see a thief grab both of their baggage and drive away. The police come and try to help them, but they all hear a massive explosion sound. They tell the police not to report the property stolen, and they leave.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "Who is Julia Claremont and what happens to her in the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "d951e09dfc734bc08b8758b2dfbe6dd2", "response_text": "Julia Claremont is a young blonde in the plane that initially peaks the protagonist's interest with her attractive profile, who later is identified as the owner of the little red bag that houses the ticking bomb. Flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles to visit her sister on her husband’s suggestion, she is the first person that the protagonist reveals his extrasensory abilities to. Despite the extraordinary tale, Claremont believes him and reveals herself that the likely culprit of the bomb to be her husband. Under the guise of putting in books for her sister to read, she surmises that her husband likely used that opportunity to plant the bomb. However, she is unable to identify the motives of her husband or more likely, she would rather not to. \n\nDespite this shock, Claremont and the protagonist devise a somewhat likely story to alert the airport policeman of her suspicious of a bomb in her luggage in order to quickly deactivate it as well as divert attention from how the protgaonist was able to sense it. On their way over to where they left their bags, they noticed them to be stolen and identified a dumpy man as the thief, heading over to his grey vehicle to take off with them. As they approach an airport policeman to report this theft instead, they are interrupted by an explosion - the bomb having gone off. Seemingly on the same page, Claremont turns to the policeman as she retracts her desire to report the theft - with the protagonist doing the same - and turns to walk away, leaving the mayhem of the explosion at the airport behind them. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "0a53b3c2f9524b75926a004ea5aba4dd", "response_text": "The narrator feels that there is a bomb in the luggage compartment of the plane he is on, and Julia Claremont is one of the passengers of this flight. She is visiting her sister after her husband Joe suggested it some time ago. After leaving the plane, she tries to call her sister, and it takes a while before she can go to the baggage claim. After picking up her bag, the narrator convinces her to put it down and, after some time, invites Julia to a cafe. He tells her about his gift and that there is a bomb in her bag. She cries and realizes that after she had finished packing, her husband said he would put some books in her bag as a gift to the sister. She understands that he must’ve put the bomb in her luggage, but she doesn’t know why. They walk back to the airport lobby and see that their suitcases got stolen. The protagonist chases the thief, but the man throws the bags into his car and quickly leaves. When they approach a police officer ready to file a report, a loud explosion somewhere near the airport shatters the air, apparently killing the thief and wrecking his car. They quickly lose the desire to report the theft and walk away from the airport. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "82d4aff5b2c4454ab8640054a18ca313", "response_text": "Julia Claremont is one of the people the protagonist first sees at the gate. The original purpose of her trip is to visit her sister. Before leaving, her husband Joe packs some books that they have finished reading for her sister. However, he also manages to sneak a bomb inside of her bag for unknown reasons. The protagonist describes her as blonde and shapely, giving a privileged view of a trim ankle and calf. She is also described to stare moodily across the aisle and out the window. Later, when Julia comes to claim her bag, the protagonist hurriedly follows her. She is initially annoyed and then confused, continuously asking “Why?” in response to what he says. He also notices that her eyes are blue and brown-flecked. Later, she is horrified to discover what happened and begins to bawl. She has no idea why her husband would do this, and the two of them come up with a plan to tell the police why there is a bomb in her bag. Julia also explains that she arrived at the baggage claim late because of a call from her sister. Once the bag is stolen, she sees this as an opportunity to leave with the protagonist before the blame can be pinned on them. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e2b12bad8974425591557512915a9ebb", "response_text": "Julia Claremont owns the red bag that contains a bomb inside. When she picks up her baggage, the protagonist comes to tell her to put away her bag. When she learns the truth from the protagonist in the coffee shop, she is startled and troubled. She realizes that her husband put the bomb in her baggage. She tries to call her sister when she arrives at the airport because her sister is supposed to pick her up, so she picks her luggage up later than other people. When she and the protagonist decide to tell the police about the bomb, they find a man who steals the pieces of baggage. They cannot catch up with the thief. When the police come to help them, they refuse to report the case because they hear the explosion. She leaves with the protagonist."}]}, {"question_text": "Q3. Why is the protagonist reluctant to reveal his extraordinary ability?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "d951e09dfc734bc08b8758b2dfbe6dd2", "response_text": "The protagonist finds out about his extraordinary ability at an early age and quickly finds out that it is better to keep this information to himself. One incident that drove this message home occured in the fourth grade with his teacher, Miss Winters. At the time, the protagonist was sentenced to eat lunch with her as a minor punishment. After the lunch period was over, Miss Winters found herself looking for her favorite mechanical pencil, asking the class if anyone had seen it while casting a suspicious eye at the protagonist. Aiming to maintain his innocence and help out his teacher, the protagonist used his ability to find the pencil - in Miss Winters’ purse all along - and let her know. Instead, he was rewarded with a note sent home. \n\nEver since then, he found it to be safer to keep his ability a secret. Despite his curiosities about other potential extraordinary individuals, he recognizes that revealing any information gained from his ability would only cast suspicion upon himself from the authorities. For example, had the protagonist immediately alerted a flight attendant or the authorities about a bomb in one of the luggages the moment he discovered it on the plane, intrusive questions about how he knew or suspicions about him being the one to plant it were highly likely to arise. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "0a53b3c2f9524b75926a004ea5aba4dd", "response_text": "After using his gift in primary school and getting a stinging note for that, the protagonist decides to keep quiet about his ability. Even when he has to deal with a bomb he is still reluctant to share his secret because he thinks that his life would change forever and people would never trust him again since he would be considered a prying man. He doesn’t believe that his gift can be used for anything meaningful, and ruining his life by revealing his ability definitely doesn’t seem sensible to him. \n\n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "82d4aff5b2c4454ab8640054a18ca313", "response_text": "The protagonist is reluctant to reveal his extraordinary ability because it will make him look suspicious. He has learned to keep quiet about it in the past because it will only cast disbelief on him. The incident with his fourth-grade teacher’s mechanical pencil only made it seem like he had purposely hidden it in her purse. He has also thought about making money with the ability before, but it is not very useful because he can only feel around objects and guess what they are. Even though the protagonist feels panicked about the bomb, he knows that he cannot outright report it because nobody is aware of his ability. If he does, they will only cast suspicion on him for being the one who initially put it in there. Even when he thinks about calling ahead and convincing the authorities that he can stop the clock, there is no use. The protagonist knows that everybody will see him as a man who cannot be trusted once the secret is out and has prying eyes. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e2b12bad8974425591557512915a9ebb", "response_text": "The protagonist is reluctant to reveal his extrasensory ability because of his childhood experience. He learns the wisdom of not disclosing his power in the fourth grade when his teacher suspects him as a thief after he tells her where her pencil is. He used to believe that many other people have supernatural abilities like him, but the truth remains questionable. He does not want to reveal his ability because he believes that people will not believe him. Even if people believe him, his life will change, and he will become suspected of a prying person who always peeks at others’ privacy."}]}, {"question_text": "Q4. Describe the setting(s) of the story. Why is it important?", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "d951e09dfc734bc08b8758b2dfbe6dd2", "response_text": "This story has two settings: first, on an airplane from San Francisco to Los Angeles and second, at the Los Angeles airport in the baggage claim and arrivals terminal. The first setting - on the airplane mid flight - is highly important to the story because it is here that the protagonist discovered the bomb in the luggage. Not only that, he discovers that bomb is on a countdown with 10 minutes remaining before detonation while the flight still has 40 minutes before arrival. It is due to this fact that the protagonist utilizes his time manipulation ability to stop the clock successfully. \n\nIn the second setting, the tensions in this story continue to rise. Despite the protagonist successfully stopping the clock in the air, it appears to continue on the ground. With both the anticipation of watching to see who picks up the little red bag and dodging suspicions from the airport policeman and workers, we can imagine the hectic and panicked energy that sometimes appears in baggage claims. Additionally, an airport is filled with many people arriving and departing, which adds to the pressure the protagonist is facing in dealing with deactivating the bomb before anyone gets hurt. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "0a53b3c2f9524b75926a004ea5aba4dd", "response_text": "The first part of the story is happening on a plane that is flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles. When the protagonist finds the bomb in one of the bags in the luggage compartment, the plane is somewhere above the mountain range north of Los Angeles - even in theory, it is impossible to land because there are no airports around this area. He stops the clock mechanism, using his extraordinary ability. After the landing, the story continues in the building of the airport, where the protagonist finds the owner of the bag with the bomb - Julia Claremont. He tells her about the bomb and how he sensed it during the flight. She cries and tells him that her husband put it in her bag after she had finished packing. They go back to the lobby and see that their suitcases got stolen. The protagonist tries to chase the thief, but the man quickly drives off with the bags. When they decide to file a report, something explodes loudly near the airport, and Julia, together with the protagonist, walks away, refusing to report the theft. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "82d4aff5b2c4454ab8640054a18ca313", "response_text": "The story first begins on a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The protagonist first expects to see San Joaquin Valley, but he is greeted by a sea of clouds instead. He sits next to an old woman on the plane. A little north of Bakersfield, he finds that one of the bags on the plane contains a bomb. It is forty minutes from Burbank to Lockheed Air Terminal, and there would be no place to land the plane any time soon. Once the protagonist gets off the plane, he heads to the baggage claim at the airport for his bag. When Julia gets her bag, he leads her to a telephone booth to make the fake call. Then, they leave their bags in the lobby and go to a coffee shop. The airport policeman is across the street from the parking lot. The setting of the plane is important because it is where the protagonist first discovers the bomb. Without his extraordinary ability to feel around any enclosed object, he would not be able to detect and temporarily stop the bomb’s timer before it was too late. This is also significant because the plane would have exploded had he not found it. The airport is important too because that is where he meets Julia. He would not have figured out who the bag belonged to and the entire story without waiting at the airport. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e2b12bad8974425591557512915a9ebb", "response_text": "The story's setting is in an ordinary world where no extrasensory ability is found or known. This setting is essential because the protagonist has the extrasensory ability, which allows him to see the insides of things and move some very light objects with his mind. However, since the world does not know the existence of the ability, he cannot tell anyone about it because if he tells people the truth, people either do not believe him or see him as a freak. Furthermore, since he cannot tell anyone his ability, neither can he tell people about what he finds in any bags, like a bomb, because he cannot explain how he knows what is inside of things that do not belong to him. Therefore, this inability to reveal his extrasensory ability drives the story to progress."}]}, {"question_text": "What is the relationship between the protagonist and authority figures like the airport policeman?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "109", "uid": "d951e09dfc734bc08b8758b2dfbe6dd2", "response_text": "The protagonist’s relationship with authority figures - like the airport policeman in this story - is a double edged sword. On one hand, it is figures like the policeman who are the right figure to report his suspicions towards. They are the ones equipped with the knowledge and resources on how to deal with the bomb in the little red bag. More importantly, informing them is the right thing to do and would save the lives of everyone else at the airport. On the other hand, however, we can see that the protagonist has revealed that authority figures in the past often choose to cast suspicion upon him rather than appreciate the usefulness of the knowledge that comes about his ability. If the protagonist were to approach the policeman in a suspicious manner or reveal too much information about his know-how of the bomb, it is likely that they will suspect him to be the culprit and probe him on something he is unable to explain, and hence arrest him. The protagonist has to carefully consider the implications of either decision and try to optimize both the safety of others around him and his own. \n\nThe protagonist chooses to inform the policeman of a suspicious baggage situation through the luggage’s owner, Julia Clarmeont, which would deflect any suspicion on himself. However, the bomb detonates before they are able to follow through with it. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "0a53b3c2f9524b75926a004ea5aba4dd", "response_text": "Throughout the entire story, the protagonist tries to avoid any interaction with the police because he is afraid that they will either consider him the bomber or force him to reveal his ability, thus, changing his life for the worse. Even when Julia and the protagonist were ready to file a theft report, he quickly left after hearing the explosion. Possibly, he thought that he would be under suspicion and wasn’t sure that the police would believe the real story even after he revealed his secret. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "82d4aff5b2c4454ab8640054a18ca313", "response_text": "The protagonist and the authority figures share a fairly neutral relationship. On the plane, he first speaks to the stewardess by rejecting her food offer. The stewardess also later brings him a cup of coffee and takes the crushed cup away. At the baggage claim, the attendant continues to stare at the protagonist as he stares back. He is bored of his job and confused why the protagonist would ask about bags that are not claimed. He wants to tell the airport policeman that there is a bomb in one of the luggage, but he does not because he sees the clerk begin to move the unclaimed piece of luggage inside. The policeman remains unaware of the bomb. Later, when he and Julia speak to the policeman about a stolen bag, the policeman is sympathetic. As the bomb goes off, the policeman tells them that he cannot make them report the stolen bags after the two of them do not want their pieces of luggage anymore. "}, {"worker_id": "112", "uid": "e2b12bad8974425591557512915a9ebb", "response_text": "The protagonist holds the worry about the explosion of the bomb, but he cannot tell the airport authority about it because he cannot explain how he knows it. Meanwhile, the airport authority works as they usually do without knowing the bomb's existence. They can see the protagonist constantly hovering around the place and looking worrisome and anxious. Still, the only thought they have is probably to regard the protagonist as a strange person that needs help. When the protagonist’s baggage is stolen, the policeman comes and asks if he needs help. After hearing the explosive sound, the protagonist tells the policeman he does not want to report the case. The policeman allows him to do so."}]}]}
+{"metadata": {"passage_id": "51296", "uid": "4caa0cdf23444c0c864a679fa01c1ec6", "license": "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license."}, "document": "The Sense of Wonder\n \n \n By MILTON LESSER\n \n Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM\n \n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n \n \n\n When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's going, how can they tell when it has arrived?\n \n \n \n Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone, from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had grown.\n \n If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside him.\n \n Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart by itself in the middle of the viewport.\n \n If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what was it?\n \n Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and greeted gray-haired old Chuls.\n \n \"In five more years,\" the older man chided, \"you'll be ready to sire children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars.\"\n \n Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it; he just didn't, without comprehending.\n \n Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a headache?\n \n Chuls said, \"It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here and knew it was your time, too....\"\n \n His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.\n \n \"I'll go with you,\" Rikud told him.\n \n \n\n \n A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a metallic voice said. \"Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please.\"\n \n Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when he wanted to do it? There was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and unsatisfactory answers.\n \n He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen. But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being again, something which was as impalpable as air.\n \n Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only listened to the buzzer.\n \n And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said. There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the people against the elders, and it said the people had won.\n \n Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future, not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only a decade to go.\n \n Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True, this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw Crifer limp.\n \n But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.\n \n \n\n \n Now Crifer said, \"I've been reading again, Rikud.\"\n \n \"Yes?\" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.\n \n But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it was always the same.\n \n \"Yes,\" said Crifer. \"I found a book about the stars. They're also called astronomy, I think.\"\n \n This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one elbow. \"What did you find out?\"\n \n \"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think.\"\n \n \"Well, where's the book?\" Rikud would read it tomorrow.\n \n \"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under\n'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous terms.\"\n \n \"You know,\" Rikud said, sitting up now, \"the stars in the viewport are changing.\"\n \n \"Changing?\" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he questioned what it might mean in this particular case.\n \n \"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the others.\"\n \n \"Astronomy says some stars are variable,\" Crifer offered, but Rikud knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he did.\n \n Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. \"Variability,\" he told them, \"is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be.\"\n \n \"I'm only saying what I read in the book,\" Crifer protested mildly.\n \n \"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without meaning.\"\n \n \"People grow old,\" Rikud suggested.\n \n A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and Chuls said, \"It's almost time for me to eat.\"\n \n Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago, but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.\n \n His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman. He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed; this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.\n \n He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the stars again.\n \n \n\n \n The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his eyes to look.\n \n Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age? Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.\n \n Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer, and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them. But the new view persisted.\n \n Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone, too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud had no name.\n \n A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green, and on the other, blue.\n \n Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular intervals by a sharp booming.\n \n Change—\n \n \"Won't you eat, Rikud?\" Chuls called from somewhere down below.\n \n \"Damn the man,\" Rikud thought. Then aloud: \"Yes, I'll eat. Later.\"\n \n \"It's time....\" Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.\n \n But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him, and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did not exist in the viewport.\n \n Maybe it existed through the viewport.\n \n That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more confusing than ever.\n \n \"Chuls,\" he called, remembering, \"come here.\"\n \n \"I am here,\" said a voice at his elbow.\n \n Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of vapor. \"What do you see?\"\n \n Chuls looked. \"The viewport, of course.\"\n \n \"What else?\"\n \n \"Else? Nothing.\"\n \n Anger welled up inside Rikud. \"All right,\" he said, \"listen. What do you hear?\"\n \n \"Broom, brroom, brrroom!\" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of the engines. \"I'm hungry, Rikud.\"\n \n The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.\n \n \n\n \n Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world. But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover, did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.\n \n Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.\n \n The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.\n \n \n\n \n For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless, it was a garden.\n \n He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, \"It is the viewport.\"\n \n Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. \"It looks like the garden,\" he admitted to Rikud. \"But why should the garden be in the viewport?\"\n \n Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere was the garden and the world had arrived.\n \n \"It is an old picture of the garden,\" Chuls suggested, \"and the plants are different.\"\n \n \"Then they've changed?\"\n \n \"No, merely different.\"\n \n \"Well, what about the viewport? It changed. Where are the stars? Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?\"\n \n \"The stars come out at night.\"\n \n \"So there is a change from day to night!\"\n \n \"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?\"\n \n \"Once they shone all the time.\"\n \n \"Naturally,\" said Crifer, becoming interested. \"They are variable.\"\n \n \n\n \n Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, \"Well, variable or not, our whole perspective has changed.\"\n \n And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another, it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could they find the nature of that purpose?\n \n \"I will eat,\" Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.\n \n Damn the man, all he did was eat!\n \n Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because he was hungry.\n \n And Rikud, too, was hungry.\n \n Differently.\n \n \n\n \n He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the door.\n \n \"What's in here?\" he demanded.\n \n \"It's a door, I think,\" said Crifer.\n \n \"I know, but what's beyond it?\"\n \n \"Beyond it? Oh, you mean through the door.\"\n \n \"Yes.\"\n \n \"Well,\" Crifer scratched his head, \"I don't think anyone ever opened it. It's only a door.\"\n \n \"I will,\" said Rikud.\n \n \"You will what?\"\n \n \"Open it. Open the door and look inside.\"\n \n A long pause. Then, \"Can you do it?\"\n \n \"I think so.\"\n \n \"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before? There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud.\"\n \n \"No—\" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently, and Crifer said, \"Doors are variable, too, I think.\"\n \n Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across, Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.\n \n He missed the beginning, but then:\n  —therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be permitted through this door—\n \n \n Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.\n \n When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle humming, punctuated by a throb-throb-throb which sounded not unlike the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.\n \n \"Odd,\" Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, \"Now there's a good word, but no one quite seems to know its meaning.\"\n \n Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.\n \n Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and, although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way off in the distance.\n \n And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new viewport. He began to turn the handle.\n \n Then he trembled.\n \n What would he do out in the garden?\n \n He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.\n \n Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.\n \n By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could walk and then might find himself in the garden.\n \n It was so big.\n \n \n\n \n Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that book on astronomy.\n \n Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. \"There are not that many doors in the world,\" he said. \"The library has a door and there is a door to the women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through that. But there are no others.\"\n \n Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. \"Now, by the world, there are two other doors!\"\n \n Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.\n \n \"What are you doing that for?\" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than Crifer, but had no lame foot.\n \n \"Doing what?\"\n \n \"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble hearing you.\"\n \n \"Maybe yelling will make him understand.\"\n \n Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.\n\"Why don't we go see?\" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.\n \n \"Well, I won't go,\" Chuls replied. \"There's no reason to go. If Rikud has been imagining things, why should I?\"\n \n \"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—\"\n \n \"You'll show me nothing because I won't go.\"\n \n Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at the blouse.\n \n \"Stop that,\" said the older man, mildly.\n \n \n\n \n Crifer hopped up and down. \"Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse.\"\n \n \"Stop that,\" repeated Chuls, his face reddening.\n \n \"Only if you'll go with me.\" Rikud was panting.\n \n Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud holding Chuls' blouse.\n \n \"I think I can do that,\" declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's shirt.\n \n Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.\n \n A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.\n \n Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, \"Time to retire.\"\n \n In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.\n \n What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?\n \n This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it, though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.\n \n \n\n \n Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears, would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he was clearly an \"unauthorized person.\" He had heard the voice again upon entering the room.\n \n He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding, crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.\n \n \n\n \n Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud smashed everything in sight.\n \n When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first, but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.\n \n He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.\n \n Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once, when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.\n \n Whimpering, he fled.\n \n \n\n \n All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.\n \n Chuls said, over and over, \"I'm hungry.\"\n \n \"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us,\" Wilm replied confidently.\n \n \"It won't any more,\" Rikud said.\n \n \"What won't?\"\n \n \"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it.\"\n \n Crifer growled. \"I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad thing you did, Rikud.\"\n \n \"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there beyond the viewport.\"\n \n \"That's ridiculous,\" Chuls said.\n \n Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. \"He broke the buzzer and no one can eat. I hate Rikud, I think.\"\n \n There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, \"I hate Rikud.\" Then everyone was saying it.\n \n Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's quarters. Did women eat?\n \n Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the plants in the viewport would even be better.\n \n \"We will not be hungry if we go outside,\" he said. \"We can eat there.\"\n \n \"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken,\" Chuls said dully.\n \n Crifer shrilled, \"Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again.\"\n \n \"No,\" Rikud assured him. \"It won't.\"\n \n \"Then you broke it and I hate you,\" said Crifer. \"We should break you, too, to show you how it is to be broken.\"\n \n \"We must go outside—through the viewport.\" Rikud listened to the odd gurgling sound his stomach made.\n \n A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard Crifer's voice. \"I have Rikud's head.\" The voice was nasty, hostile.\n \n Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.\n \n The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.\n\"I hit him! I hit him!\"\n \n Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, \"Let us do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery.\" Rikud ran. In the darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.\n \n It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely and positively.\n \n He became sickly giddy thinking about it.\n \n But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.\n \n He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library, through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.\n \n Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.\n \n He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness, it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to break him.\n \n Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life. The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could people. Rikud and his people should . This was why the world had moved across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more. But he was afraid.\n \n He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head. Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:\n\"There is Rikud on the floor!\"\n \n Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright. Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous red eyes.\n \n Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal which he could see in the dim light through the open door.\n \n \"Where's the buzzer?\" he sobbed. \"I must find the buzzer.\"\n \n Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, \"You broke it. You broke it. And now we will break you—\"\n \n Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway. Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.\n \n His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness, then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....\n \n So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of his neck.\n \n He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row of mounds.\n \n \n\n \n Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the weight of his body with all his strength against the door.\n \n It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.\n \n The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the horizon. It was all very beautiful.\n \n Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the water to drink.\n \n \n\n \n Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was good.\n \n Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. \"Even feelings are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud.\"\n \n Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. \"People are variable, too, Crifer. That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people.\"\n \n \"They're women,\" said Crifer.\n \n They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness. With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.\n \n It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer, frightening doors and women by appointment only.\n \n Rikud felt at home.", "questions": [{"question_text": "What is the plot of the story?", "question_number": 1, "responses": [{"worker_id": "111", "uid": "f79f2525868d40058315766e1347c0da", "response_text": "The story starts off with the main character, Rikud, watching space from a viewport that is located on what seems to be a spaceship. Rikud is part of a group of men that live on the spaceship under a strict set of unspoken rules. Rikud then connects with other characters named Chuls and Crifer while getting a bath of health-rays, an example of the high technology in the ship. After the stars in the viewport start changing, Rikud doubts the way of living that the men have taken. He starts to doubt the fact that they have a set span of years, and that they have to live separately from the women (even though he doesn't know what women are). When the view of the viewport changes to “gardens”, Rikud begins to question more and more, and ends up finding the machine room for the ship, as well as a control center that has another viewport. Unsuccessfully convincing the others to go outside with him, Rikud becomes enraged and breaks the machine room of the ship. After realizing that Rikud has messed up the buzzers that control the actions of the people, they begin to hurt Rikud and chase him through the ship. Rikud ends up opening the door that leads outside from the control room, and they discover a new world where they can live freely with the women. \n"}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1a3867c95d414d3db23ee190dc35f2bc", "response_text": "Rikud has come to watch the great changeless sweep of space for a week. The steady whining of the world that he has heard for all twenty-five years of his life have grown. Space looks different to him today because the stars are not as bright, and there is more darkness except for one very bright star that has set itself apart. Old Chuls approaches him and chides him for staring at stars when he is almost ready to foster children in five years. Rikud is nervous because no other man has these thoughts about who the Calculator will select as their mate. Chuls says that it is time for his bath in the health-rays, and Rikud goes with him. When they get to the health-ray area, Rikud feels the urge to see the stars again. The machine tells him fifteen minutes under the tub. Crifer, who is in the tube on his left, brings satisfaction to Rikud through his lame foot because it is proof that the world is not perfect. Crifer tells Rikud that he has been reading about astronomy lately in the library and stars. When Rikud tells him that the stars are changing, Crifer offers that variability may contribute. He later goes to see the stars again, observing how they make his eyes hurt and are paler than before. Rikud then sees a new shape appear in the form of a big sphere. He tries to get Chuls to see it too when the old man tells him it is time to eat, but Chuls sees and hears nothing. After a while, Rikud becomes fascinated with the gardens in the viewport. The view does not change for an entire week, and Crifer also agrees that the view looks like a garden. When he brings the conversation back to the stars appearing and disappearing, Crifer once again brings up variable. Rikud believes he has a bigger purpose in life; he decides to investigate the door at the back of the library while Crifer reads another book on astronomy. He sees another door that explains how this ship is a self-sustaining world, but Rikud cannot understand the words. He then has a traumatizing experience about going out to the garden because it is completely foreign to him. Three or four days later, Rikud feels comfortable enough to tell Crifer about what happened. He tries to convince Chuls too and grabs his blouse. Others in the crowd copy Rikud grabbing Chul’s blouse, but a buzzer goes off and it is time for them to retire. Rikud then decides to break the buzzer, and everybody hates him. Nobody wants to go out with him, and they all decide to begin attacking him for breaking the buzzer. He tries to escape them, and all of them end up going into the garden. The story cuts to them realizing how beautiful it is outside, and the women begin to appear from the ship as well. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3dcac22cb29343ca9815678547bef0dc", "response_text": "This story follows Rikud who lives aboard a ship that is self-sustaining and separated by men and women. He first encounters a unique feeling when he looks through the viewport and notices that the space around him has changed. The stars in particular, previously speckled and scattered, have now been replaced by a singular bright star. \n\nWhile undergoing his bath in the health rays, Rikud laments his life on the ship. Noting the lack of authority - the closest being the automated buzzer - he ponders the perfectness of life around him and realizes he is assured by Crifer’s limp because it demonstrated that not everything was perfect. When talking to him, Crifer reveals that he has begun reading again in lieu of the normal evening activity of chatting to other ship passengers. In return, Rikud reveals that the stars in the viewport are changing and Crifer suggests that it may be due to variability - a concept newly introduced in his book on astronomy. While Rikud and Crifer contemplate the meaning of variability and the connection between the concepts, Chuls interrupts by denouncing variability as a contradictory term. Once the buzzer sounds again, they all continue with their daily routine. \n\nAs Rikud looks again at the star, he finds that the landscape has changed to reveal a sphere with brown and green, just like the garden aboard the ship. Despite the hesitant acknowledgment and adamant denial from Crifer and Chuls respectively, they are unable to explain why the garden is in the viewpoint. Continuing with his exploration, Rikud enters through a set of doors no man has gone through. As he enters through each door, he receives warnings from the buzzer and encounters stranger noises. By the time he attempts to reach the third, Rikud is overwhelmed with a sense of fear and runs back. In explaining his discovery, Rikud begins to hold Chul’s blouse and sets off a chain of reactions with the other men as they begin to mimic his unfamiliar but exciting activity. However, once the buzzer sounds again, the men forget their behavior. Frustrated with the buzzing, Rikud finds a metal rod and smashes all the machinery on board - destroying the buzzer and the machines that provided the ship with light, food, and water. Disrupted by their routine and lifeline to the buzzer, Crifer and the other men begin to riot against Rikud, chasing and beating him. In running away from them, Rikud finds himself at the third door and while uncertain about the potential of life beyond the door, he chooses to open it to reveal the garden and the blue-white globe. \n\nThrough the door reveals fresh air, plants, and running water. Rikud and the others step out and bask in this strange but comforting new landscape, and as the women on the ship stepped off as well, Rikud noted a sense of contentedness in a world away from the buzzer and the machines.\n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "cea70479b2c3463b90fdc5b5c98c4c16", "response_text": "The story talks about a distant future where people left Earth long ago and now are living on a spaceship that is traveling through space. The ship is divided into two parts: male and female. People of two different sexes meet when they turn 30 after the so-called calculator defines their future partner.  Everyone on the ship lives by the buzzer - a sound that signifies the beginning or the end of any daily activity. They do not understand the concepts of change, world, space, authority, just living with the same schedule. They do not understand sickness since now they can take a bath in the health rays that provide them with immunity. \n\nRikud is a 25-year-old inhabitant who enjoys looking at the viewport that shows the changing stars. Sometimes he chats with Chuls, a 90-year-old fellow inhabitant of the ship, who doesn't show any traits of nonconformity and is satisfied with his regulated schedule. We meet him at the very beginning when he joins Rikud who stands near the viewport gazing at the stars. Together they go to the health rays’ room. While waiting for the procedure to be over, Rikud thinks about different arbitrary notions, like authority, history, human will. In the same room lies Crifer, another inhabitant of the ship. He’s short and has a lame foot which reminds Rikud of the world’s imperfection. Crifer says that he found an interesting book about astronomy during his visit to the reading room. Rikud says that stars may be changing and Crifer claims that the book mentioned their variability, Chuls protests but their conversation ends quickly. Later, Rikud, during his visits to the viewport,  witnesses a rapid change in the stars, their form, location, and even experiences a novel feeling of pain while looking at one of them without breaks. Amazed, Rikud stands there and asks Chuls about the differences in the viewport and in the sound of the engines, which, as Rikud noticed, had become quieter, but the old man gives an unsatisfying answer. Later, apparently after landing, Rikud sees a huge garden in the viewport and this image doesn’t change for a whole week. \n\nWhile visiting the reading room with Crifer, Rikud decides to open the door that he finds there. It leads to a room where he hears a voice saying something about unauthorized visitors. The next room is full of wires, gears, and cogs. The third one has a small viewport showing the same garden from a different side. When no one believes him later, infuriated, Rikud comes back and destroys the wired room, which he suspects to be the buzzer. Now it doesn’t go off and the food mechanism is not working, leaving the ship's inhabitants confused and hungry. They become angry and try to chase Rikud. The sense of danger forces Rikud to open the little viewport from the third room and finally leave the ship. Everybody goes out into the world and finally sees the garden.\n"}]}, {"question_text": "What is the setting of the story?", "question_number": 2, "responses": [{"worker_id": "111", "uid": "f79f2525868d40058315766e1347c0da", "response_text": "The story is located in space, inside of a large spaceship. The ship has a viewport that looks outside of the ship, and is where Rikad spends most of his time. The ship also seems to have high tech, showcased in the med room. Here is where the men go to stay healthy by being showered under health rays. The ship also has a library, which is where Crifer and Rikud read about astronomy and stars, and where Rikud started to doubt more and more about their lifestyle. The ship then arrives at a planet, full of lush greenery, making Rikud more and more suspicious of the changing view. After exploring the back of the room Rikud finds a series of rooms. These rooms include both a machinery room that is full of gears and tubes as well as a control room that has a smaller viewport. The story ends in the new planet, after Rikud opened the door that led outside, knowing that they would be able to survive after he compared the new planet to the gardens that the ship had. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1a3867c95d414d3db23ee190dc35f2bc", "response_text": "The story is set on a self-sustaining ship. Rikud starts off observing the space sky from the viewport. Inside of the ship, there is a health-ray bath area; people lie naked under the ray tubes. It is also impossible for people to injure themselves; for example, Rikud was cushioned by something soft when he hurled himself at the wall. There is a library too, but nobody reads anymore so it is covered in dust. There is also a dusty table and a door at the back. Outside of the viewport, a garden soon appears. It is larger than the entire world, with plants that Rikud has never seen before. Later, Rikud confronts Chuls in a room where other people gather as well. There is also a sleeping area for them to rest when the buzzer goes off. The buzzer dictates their entire life. Rikud later goes to a room full of machinery, with cogs and gears that constantly spin. There is also a bright metal rod that he tugs free from the wires that hold it in place. The women’s quarters are located on the ship too, but they are separated from the men. Once they go outside, the air is more fresh than any air Rikud has breathed before. There is also a blue-white globe on the horizon. The water does not flow from machines either, and there are plants everywhere. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3dcac22cb29343ca9815678547bef0dc", "response_text": "This story takes place on the inside of a ship that is described to be self-sustaining, with food, water, healthy heat lamps and social interaction all provided and guided by a buzzer. On this ship, the characters are led by a routine in which the buzzer will sound a buzz and the next step in the daily routine will commence. The daily routine occurs in a set number of rooms whereby the ship inhabitants eat, sleep, lay amongst the healthy lamp rays, chat amongst each other after dinner, etc. The only doors on this ship are between the men and women, and for rooms like the library or sleeping quarters - besides the ones that Rikud discovers that leads to the machinery room and the outside world. However, the ship itself is a perfect world, where inhabitants are protected from injury. The ship continues its journey and maintains its automation until the supposed journey ends a thousand years from the occurrence of the story - or until its inhabitants find something better. \n\nThe ship floats amongst space and houses a viewport in which characters like Rikud are able to look outside the ship and into the vastness of space and its stars. By the end of the story, the setting transitions to the outside of the ship with the lush greenery, fresh air and water. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "cea70479b2c3463b90fdc5b5c98c4c16", "response_text": "The story is set in the distant future where people live on a big spaceship cruising through space. The ship is divided into two parts: the male and female sections, the readers follow the life of the male character, Rikud, a twenty-five-year-old man who enjoys thinking about life and looking at the viewport where we find him at the beginning of the story. Then together with the other ship inhabitant Chuls, an old man who doesn’t like thought-provoking ideas, Rikud goes to the health rays room where they get the required scheduled dose of immunity, and we also meet another character - Crifer, a short limping man who occasionally likes reading in the reading room. Rikud gets back to the viewport a few times, noticing how the stars change their form and then surprisingly disappear just to be replaced by an image of a garden - this puzzles him. Later, in the reading room with Crifer, Rikud opens a mysterious doof, leading to a room with a voice that prohibits his unauthorized presence. The next room turns out to be full of wires, cogs, and gears - apparently, it’s the buzzer - the sound system that controls the ship’s inhabitants’ daily life. The last room was a tunnel with a small viewport at the end. When no one believes Rikud, he comes back, upset and angry, and breaks the mechanism in the second room, turning off the buzzer and the food system. Hungry and violent, people chase Rikud who runs back to the small viewport door he found and opens it, leaving the craft. Now everybody was in a large garden, apparently, on some new planet their craft landed on. "}]}, {"question_text": "What is the significance of \"variability\" in the story?", "question_number": 3, "responses": [{"worker_id": "111", "uid": "f79f2525868d40058315766e1347c0da", "response_text": "Variability is a big part of the story. The inhabitants of the ship have always lived the same routine, the same life, and when things start to change they don’t know how to react. First, when the view of the ship starts to change, Rikud doesn’t understand what it means, and begins to think about the meaning of change. These thoughts are enhanced when Crifer told him that he had been reading Astronomy, and that stars are variable. When the ship lands on the new planet, and Rikud begins to explore, he starts to think about the variability of doors, and the meaning of going through doors and how it relates to the viewport. In the end, the change from having the buzzers to not knowing how to act is what sparks the violence of the men towards Rikud. This is due to the fact that he changed their routine, and having never experienced it, they don’t know how to react to change. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1a3867c95d414d3db23ee190dc35f2bc", "response_text": "Variability signifies the change to the lifestyle on the self-sustaining ship. When Crifer brings up the variability of the stars, Chuls is quick to refute the idea and says that nothing is variable. In the story, variability exists when Rikuld begins to notice the sweep of space and the stars. While the others are perfectly content with their lives and believe that they will not leave the ship, Rikuld differentiates from the rest. He wants to explore the greater world and does not believe that their only function is to live on the ship, conceive children, and eventually grow to die. The variability that is he believes he has a greater purpose, and this differentiates him from the rest. It also motivates him to see the world that the ship has landed in once the landscape does not change for a week. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3dcac22cb29343ca9815678547bef0dc", "response_text": "The concept of variability is significant because it exists in contrast to the world that is presented in the story. The ship, the routine, and the characters that follow the routine are not variable. Everything is premeditated and controlled, with no room for change. However, the changing landscape outside the viewport and Crifer’s base understanding of the astronomy book introduces this idea of variability, which Rikud in particular latches onto as the potential answer for the dissonance he is experiencing. The stars, the sphere, and the garden that they see - could it be due to variability? \n\nAs the story progresses, Rikud begins to better understand the meaning of variability and finds that many concepts around him are in fact variable, like Crifer’s feelings towards him. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "cea70479b2c3463b90fdc5b5c98c4c16", "response_text": "The story describes the life of people of the future: they live on a big spaceship with a regulated daily schedule consisting of health ray procedures, eating, and limited free time. No one questions the limits of their world, so no one understands the phenomenon of change as it has never occurred in their lives on the craft. Rikud, a young inhabitant of the ship, analyzes the changing views of the stars and tries to explain them. His friend, Crifer, tells him about the stars’ feature called variability that he read about in an old astronomy book. They both do not really understand this concept, neither don’t they understand change, but Rikud needs to rationalize why stars become brighter and change form. His attempts are also hindered by Chuls, an old man who actively claims that both change and variability are useless terms with no real meaning. When the views change again, and the image of a garden replaces the stars, Rikud is even more puzzled. Crifer mentions the variability of stars again, explaining their disappearance, and Rikud starts thinking about the concept of change. He uses the word variable to label everything that is not functioning normally or is unknown to him, including doors, the rooms he finds near the reading room, and people. The term both serves as a stepping stone to an understanding of changes and as an independent notion that explains the differences in behavior, environment, etc. After all, seeking the explanation of change and variability, Rikud opens the viewport-door and enables the others to step outside and see the garden that their craft landed in. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the relationship between Rikud and Chuls", "question_number": 4, "responses": [{"worker_id": "111", "uid": "f79f2525868d40058315766e1347c0da", "response_text": "At the beginning of the story, the relationship between Rikud and Chuls seemed like a mentor-mentee or like a father-son relationship. Rikud was a young forward-thinker, and Chuls was an older man who had already lived a lot and tried to guide Rikud on how he should live. As the story progresses more, Rikud seems to stray from Chuls’ guidance and tries to figure out what to think on his own. When Rikud tries to explain his reasoning, Chuls doesn’t understand because he has lived so much time inside of the ship and its routine that he can’t seem to doubt it. This led to Rikud getting mildly violent at Chuls because he couldn’t understand why Chuls didn’t believe him. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1a3867c95d414d3db23ee190dc35f2bc", "response_text": "Initially, Chuls is very dismissive of Rikud’s ideas. He does not listen to Rikud much, instead telling him to take a health-ray bath and eat. Chuls is content with how he lives, but he does care for Rikud when he tells him to eat. Rikud, on the other hand, does not like that Chuls is content with how he lives his life. He is angry that Chuls is so dismissive of his ideas and thinks that all the other man cares about is eating. When Rikud asks Chuls to come to see the garden, he refuses and thinks about eating again. Rikud is furious and grabs him by the shirt; everybody else copies this action. Although Chuls is not as angry as Crifer when Rikud breaks the machine, he is sad because he does not have a purpose of living by the buzzer’s announcement. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3dcac22cb29343ca9815678547bef0dc", "response_text": "The relationship between Rikud and Chuls is antagonistic. Rikud is presented as the wild card who sees the changing star, who begins to question the routine aboard the ship and who ultimately incites new and unfamiliar behaviors and feelings amongst the other men on the ship. On the other hand, Chuls is an old man who follows the rule without question and content with the life he lives. \n\nFor example, when Rikud and Crifer begin to discuss the word “variability” and the potential of the changing stars being variable, Chuls quickly shuts down this idea by adamantly declaring that the word itself is a contradiction - and that they should go eat. When looking at the changed landscape of the star through the viewport, Rikud and Crifer begin to question why the garden is in the viewport, but Chuls simply says that it is the viewport. Therein lies the tension between these two characters, with Rikud constantly questioning and probing and Chuls remaining steadfast in his routine and knowledge of the world. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "cea70479b2c3463b90fdc5b5c98c4c16", "response_text": "Rikud and Chuls are two inhabitants of the same spaceship where people now live while traveling to their new home. Rikud is a young curious man, he thinks about the future and the past and sometimes thinks outside the box. Chuls, on the other hand, is an old man who got used to the same regular daily schedule that everybody lives by. He is not seeking answers and has no urge to understand the world or see anything beyond the walls of the spaceship. When Rikud notices the changes in the viewport he tries to find an explanation and define the term ‘change’. Bur Chuls is consciously ignoring anything that reminds him of change, he can see the same view, though the stars changed their size and location, hear the same engine sound, though in reality, it became quieter. Rikud even becomes angry for the first time, grabbing Chuls’ blouse when the man doesn’t believe that Rikud found some new rooms with another viewport. Admitting this would mean admitting the reality of change and Chuls can’t do that.  When Rikud breaks the buzzer, the sound mechanism that controls the ship’s inhabitants’ daily life, Chuls cannot realize that eating is possible without it, again showing how dependent he is on the ship’s regulated way of life. "}]}, {"question_text": "Describe the significance of the viewport in the story?", "question_number": 5, "responses": [{"worker_id": "111", "uid": "f79f2525868d40058315766e1347c0da", "response_text": "The viewport is one of the most important parts of the story. Rikud goes to the viewport in order to get a break from his routine life inside the ship. The changing stars that he could see through the viewport is what inspired Rikud to think more about the changes going on around him and to explore hhhhhh\bhe ship. Ultimately it is the viewport that showed him the possibility of a new life on the planet. The viewport essentially lead Rikud to breaking the engine room and to opening the door of the ship. "}, {"worker_id": "107", "uid": "1a3867c95d414d3db23ee190dc35f2bc", "response_text": "The viewport that Rikud looks through initially shows a great changeless sweep of space. He believes that there is a greater purpose for him in the world, even if he has spent his entire life on the ship. There is a bright star that Rikuld sees through it, and it bothers him nonstop. When he looks through the viewport again, he sees that the bright central star has become a blue-tinged globe of light. This is extremely significant because what Rikud is observing is actually the ship’s landing on a new planet. This motivates him to investigate further, and he finds that the scenery has not changed for a week after a garden begins to enter the viewport’s field of vision. The viewport also serves as a reason for Rikud to break the ship’s buzzer announcement system; this stops everybody from living their pre-programmed way of life and to leave the ship for the more mysterious world outside. Without the viewport, Rikud would have never noticed the changes in space and as they eventually land on the planet. "}, {"worker_id": "109", "uid": "3dcac22cb29343ca9815678547bef0dc", "response_text": "The viewport in this story is the only portal in which characters in this story are able to look beyond their perfect, constructed world aboard the ship. It is the only window into what exists outside of the ship, and throughout the story, we can see that it is where change and a variability in landscape is seen. \n\nIt is significant because what Rikud sees through the viewport is what begins to create dissonance in his relationship with the world around him. It is only when he begins to notice the change in the stars, the appearance of a sphere with blue and green, and a bright light that he further questions why the men live on the ship and not outside. Additionally, it is significant because the viewport is one-dimensional in that all information is one-way. Whatever Rikud and the other men see through the viewport can only be explained by them, and so they have no way of knowing if it is true or not. As seen in the story, many times the other men are reluctant to even wonder what it is or simply shrug and move on. \n"}, {"worker_id": "113", "uid": "cea70479b2c3463b90fdc5b5c98c4c16", "response_text": "The story talks about our distant future. Humans left Earth long ago and now live on a spaceship that has been traveling through space for centuries. Everyone on the ship lives by the buzzer - a sound that signifies the beginning or the end of any daily activity: eating, sleeping, free time. They do not understand the concepts of change, space, because their life is limited to the rooms of the ship. The main character, Rikud, is a young man who enjoys looking at the viewport - it allows him to see the stars surrounding the ship and the cosmic blackness. He spends some time every day contemplating the view and notices when the stars change in size and location, disappearing from the view. This observation makes him think about variability and change, what these terms mean. When sometime later Rikud sees an unchanging image of a garden instead of cosmos in the viewport, he starts questioning the space he’s so long lived in. His attempt to rationalize this makes him more curious, and soon he finds another viewport that also looks like a door to the outer world. A different angle of view surprises him since he has always thought that there’s only one possible viewpoint on this ship. After days of chaotic thoughts and revelations, after breaking the buzzer and causing the inhabitants’ anger, Rikud finally opens the small viewport and sets foot in the garden, allowing everyone else to leave the ship, too. "}]}]}