 What happened to the Whale?
Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. 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. Luck got me a place in the Whale . 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. 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 . Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds against finding Chang on a six-sun survey on the first star jump ever must be up in the googols. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. Look more like cats than people, but they're people all right.
 The Whale came out of its star-jump in the wrong position. It then crashed into the Pacific.
 Charlie sabotaged the deuterium fusion drive. The drive shut down, and the Whale crashed into the Pacific.  The ion rockets on the Whale exploded. It then crashed into the Pacific.  The Cazamian laser exploded, causing the Whale to crash down into the Pacific.  The Whale came out of its star-jump in the wrong position. It then crashed into the Pacific.