 What would have happened if Click’s camera broke in the crash?
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. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a damned sweet picture of everything that was happening. 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. Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's skin. 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. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the nearest thing, and held on. "Is this what ?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled around—human dice in a croupier's cup. He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed from asteroid crackup. They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars. Upon the sharp meteoric rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply mashed and scattered. If it's proof you want, I've got it here, on film." "It's not proof we need now, Click. Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back to Earth. "Gravity should not act this way, Click." Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. Click's voice gasped it out, as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him. Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters!
 They would have continued to believe the monsters were real.
 Irish would have died on impact.  They would have returned immediately to Luna Base.  They would have caught Gunther faster.  They would have continued to believe the monsters were real.