 What is the role of humor in the story?
The most dangerous of weapons is the one you don't know is loaded. Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow. The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and ridges and bridges of ice. It lit the snow slope to a frozen glare, penciled black shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow's end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness. Nothing grew, nothing flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. "I've tried my hands and arms and they seem to work," it began. "I've wiggled my toes with entire success. It's well on the cards that I'm all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don't see how it could happen. This suit's got a built-in recorder, I might as well use it. You probably know we're back and wonder what went wrong. Sure I'm a good astronomer but so are lots of other guys. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. "You'll want to know if the ship worked. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you'll remember, and James pushed the button marked 'Jump'. Two months later your time, one second later by us. We covered our whole survey assignment like that, smooth as a pint of old and mild which right now I could certainly use. Better yet would be a pint of hot black coffee with sugar in. There was never anything wrong with the Whale till right at the end and even then I doubt if it was the ship itself that fouled things up. Matt Hennessy, from Farside Observatory, back of the Moon, just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale . Whoever you are who finds this tape, you're made. You'll find you can name your price and don't take any wooden nickels.
 It showed that things amusing to some can be dangerous for others
 Dark humor was a favorite of Matt's and defined his storytelling  It showed that things amusing to some can be dangerous for others  It was a set-up to a complicated joke  Jokes are the only thing that kept the crew life