 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. 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. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. 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. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. 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. 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. 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. If you doubt it, chew these facts over. "One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. "Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . "Three, they've a great sense of humor. Can't say I care for that hot-foot and belly-laugh stuff myself, but tastes differ. "Four, the ten-man language team also learned chess and table tennis. People who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like tigers in trousers.
 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