 Why didn’t the proton gun hurt the monsters?
The Monster Maker By RAY BRADBURY "Get Gunther," the official orders read. For Click and Irish were marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console, wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this meteor coming like blazing fury. It made a spiked fist and knocked the rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round. Hathaway only knew he was picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't long in following, swearing loud words. A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of metal death. "Is this what ?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet. They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones. Bouncing, it struck again. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst, air and energy flung out. The best scenes in life never reach film, or an audience. Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it. Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked to his mid-belt. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed from asteroid crackup.
 The monsters had thick, resistant skin.
 The monsters ran too fast.  The proton gun was damaged in the crash.  The monsters had thick, resistant skin.  Irish wanted to negotiate a peace.