 What is the Minnow?
Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. 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. 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. 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. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. Look more like cats than people, but they're people all right. "One, they learned our language in four weeks. "Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . 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. Of course it's a screwy situation, playing chess with something that grows its own fur coat, has yellow eyes an inch and a half long and long white whiskers.
 The Minnow is a shuttlecraft.
 The Minnow is Charlie's spaceship.  The Minnow is the most powerful ship ever built.  The Minnow is a shuttlecraft.  The Minnow is an escape pod.