Question: What is the plot of the story involving a quirky science fiction writer who uncovers a dangerous scheme while navigating a peculiar world filled with interplanetary intrigue and societal unrest?

Answer:
Grannie Annie,  a prolific science fiction novelist, goes to see Billy at a men’s club. The two sit down to have a drink in an empty portion of the club, but they only have a minute to chat before Grannie Annie remembers she has an appointment at the Satellite Theater. She insists that Billy come with her.

Grannie Annie forces Billy to take a seat in the audience, and she takes her place backstage. The show is called “Doctor Universe and His Nine Geniuses,” and it’s a type of gameshow. People and creatures on nine different planets tune into the program, and they ask the geniuses questions. If the show’s experts cannot answer the question, the listener gets a sum of money. Grannie Annie is there to serve as the guest star.

The show goes off without a hitch. The only remarkable thing that Billy notices is that the audience appears to be mesmerized by Dr. Universe.

Grannie Annie tells Billy that while she was writing a sequel to her latest novel, she met Ezra Karn, and he told her about the Green Flames. The Green Flame is a radioactive rock originally found on Mercury, and the rock’s Gamma Rays have the power to make people and creatures have a strong desire for a leader. Grannie Annie included these fantastical ideas in her recent novel, but her manuscript was stolen. Now, she’s concerned that the rocks and rays will be used by an authoritarian leader.

In the middle of their conversation, Grannie Annie and Billy are attacked by someone with a heat ray. The pair leaves Swamp City, followed by the enemy. They travel and find Ezra Karn in his home.

Karn takes his friends to the spaceship where the Green Flames are stored. The precious resource is behind impenetrable glass, and it’s clear that whoever controls it made sure it was safe.

Karn is an avid Doctor Universe fan, and he off-handedly tells Grannie Annie and Billy that they ought to make the man the king. Grannie Annie realizes that Doctor Universe is in fact the person hoarding the Green Flames, and he’s using his quiz show to control the minds of the masses so that he can take over as dictator.

Without warning, Billy and his friends feel an invisible force pushing them and holding down their bodies. They recognize force as the Varsoom, and the only way to stop it is to make them laugh. Grannie Annie builds a machine that allows the group to interrupt Doctor Universe’s broadcast.

When Doctor Universe comes on the radio again, Grannie Annie reads one of her science fiction books to the invisible creatures. The plan works, and the Varsoom laugh wildly, which ruins the Doctor’s plans to take over the universe. Grannie Annie says it won’t deter her from writing her novels, and she invites Billy to come along for the research portion of her next project.

Answer: The story starts in a club on Venus, in Swamp City. The narrator is surprised to hear from a member of the staff that there is a woman here to see him--his friend Grannie Annie, who is known by lovers of science fiction novels by her pen name, Annabella C. Flowers. As they catch up over drinks, she interrupts to lead them to a Doctor Universe quiz show at the Satellite Theater. In this game show, she acts as an expert in the history of the solar system alongside members of various interplanetary races. After the seemingly innocuous show, there is a racist attack on a Martian outside of the theater. Grannie Annie finds a location to fill Billy (the narrator) in on a theory. She tells him about Ezra Karn, a prospector she met while doing research for one of her books. He found a large supply of Green Flame, a radioactive Mercurian rock that has opiate-like effects on those who are exposed to it. It had been used under some dictatorships to control populations. Grannie Annie had written a novel about Green Flame, but she thought someone had stolen the manuscript and was going through with the plot, using the rocks to affect people’s mindsets. Billy suspects Doctor Universe is the one with the evil plan, but Grannie is less convinced. The two had to run after they were shot at and headed out to find Ezra and the Green Flame. Traveling on pack animals and then in canoes through the swampland with some Venetian guides, Billy was increasingly stressed by the state of the world. They found Ezra after being attacked by a hunter-bird that had been sent after them. His two-room hut was equipped with the latest visi set, allowing him to watch the Doctor Universe program. He agreed to take them to the ship where he had seen the Green Flame after the show. When they arrived, they found the ship outfitted with a self-operating broadcasting unit which was well-protected behind unbreakable glass. The group had already started to feel the effects of the radiation, feeling despondent, but they knew they had to do something. Grannie realizes that Billy was right, and Doctor Universe was the one with the evil plan. After the camp was attacked by the Varsoom, an energy being native to the area of Venus they were in, Grannie had an idea. The only way to escape the Varsoom attack was to make them laugh, so she rigged Ezra’s visi set to be able to insert the sound of them laughing into the broadcast of the game show. The group could not find a way to make them laugh, until Grannie read them her book. Their laughter made it into the broadcast, thwarting Doctor Universe’s plans for becoming dictator of the solar system. In the end, Grannie decides she wants to keep writing novels and invites Billy on a trip to Mars for background research for her next book.

Answer:
Billy is playing pool when his grandmother attempts to enter the male-only Spacemen’s Club in Venus. He runs out to meet her in the lobby then takes her up to the grille where she won’t be seen. They share a drink, while he asks her what she’s doing in town. Grannie Annie, better known as Annabella C. Flowers, is a popular science fiction writer. Before she can explain her arrival, she rushes to the Satellite Theater, taking Billy with her. She’s a participant in the Doctor Universe game show, and she wants Billy to watch.
After the show is over, a racist interaction takes place. The I.P. comes around to break it up, but not before one Kagor was seriously hurt.
Grannie Annie takes Billy into another restaurant and finally explains herself. She was writing a sequel for her last book and was doing research on Venus. There she met Ezra Karn, an older man with plenty of stories to tell. He told her of the Green Flames, an ore that released gamma rays stronger than any drug known to man. They made people receptive and easily manipulated.
She wrote a book about it and included many facts that Karn told her, including the location of the remaining Green Flames. The manuscript was stolen, and now she believes that this person is using the Geren Flame to control people.
Billy immediately thinks the suspect is Doctor Universe, but Grannie blows him off. She thinks that someone has figured out a way to broadcast the emissions. A heat ray blasts toward them, almost killing Grannie Annie. They rush to the hydrocar and get out of there.
Finally, they reach Level Five close to Vansoom territory, where Karn lives. The Vansooms are energy creatures, extremely dangerous, and volatile. They take a boat, where a trained hunter-bird attacks them. They survive thanks to Grannie’s shooting skills. They meet Karn at last and he agrees to show them to the shipwreck after they listen to the latest Doctor Universe gameshow.
They reach the ship and see that someone has added to it. A network of wires ran across the shipwreck, protected by impenetrable glass. As was the Green Flames. Since they weren’t able to destroy it, the team sets up camp and hatches a new plan.
After being attacked by the Vansooms, they realize that laughter is the only way to fend them off. Grannie Annie decides to broadcast the Vansooms’ laughter over the next Doctor Universe gameshow, where he is to announce his incoming dictatorship. They spend the next day attempting to make the Vansoom’s laugh but only succeed when Grannie Annie reads a chapter from her most popular novel. They broadcast their laughter over Doctor Universe and override his cry for power.
They make their way back home, a longer journey thanks to the Vansoom, and are greeted by the news that Doctor Universe failed. Grannie invites Billy to Mars where she will research her next novel.

Answer:
In a future where all planets of the solar system have been colonized, the narrative tells the story of an adventure with science fiction novelist Grannie Annie and her acquaintance Billy Boy.

Annie has begun to notice that populations in the solar system are displaying curious tendencies. Overall intellectual lethargy and a clear preference to be led by a despot or dictator. Theorizing that this behavior is the result of exposure to a unique radiation of the Green Flame rock, Annie and Billy investigate in the back country of Venus. As they hunt for an answer they are threatened by would-be assassins who are intent on stopping them.

Eventually they uncover that quiz show host, Doctor Universe, is amplifying radiation from a cache of Green Flame and broadcasting it throughout the solar system through his visi program. Annie foils his scheme by broadcasting the laughter of the Varsoom as Doctor Universe tries to announce himself as System Dictator. The story ends as Grannie Annie heads off to Mars with Billy Boy understanding that he was fated to join her in her next adventure.


Question: Describe the character of Grannie Annie, a science fiction writer who finds herself embroiled in a dangerous situation.

Answer:
Grannie Annie is a small elderly woman who wears a bonnet and dresses in black. She smokes tobacco and her choice of beverage is whiskey. She is a very well-known science fiction writer, and her work is highly sought after by publishers. Her pen name is Annabella C. Flowers. Her writing includes some repetition. Each novel includes a beautiful woman for the protagonist to fall in love with. Still, Grannie Annie always does her research. If she’s writing about a colony on Venus, she spends weeks there to truly get to know the place before she portrays the setting in her book.

Grannie Annie is bold and intelligent. Although she does not first suspect that Doctor Universe is the wannabe dictator, as soon as Karn mentions that he thinks the Doctor should be king, everything clicks, and Annie recognizes him as the villain. She is a quick thinker and a tinkerer as well. She is able to build a contraption that interrupts Doctor Universe’s broadcast in very little time.

When the Varsoom laugh at her novel, she gets angry. She clearly takes pride in her work and doesn’t like feeling like a laughingstock. Annie is not a quitter. When Billy asks her if she will continue writing, she already has the idea for her next piece ready to go.

Answer: Grannie Annie is a science fiction author who writes under the pen name Annabella C. Flowers. She is very prolific, and also quite well-known. She is dedicated to doing the right research to make her stories as accurately detailed as possible, and often travels to visit the locations she is writing about so that she has lived in those places before she tries to represent them. Because she is a popular figure, she also participates in other public-facing events, such as the Doctor Universe broadcast at the beginning of the story. She is fond of Billy, the narrator, and they clearly trust each other. Physically, she is very slight, but very expressive, and wears very distinctive clothing. Those who know her personally know she is a fireball in terms of her personality, and her readers are constantly hungry for her adventuresome writing. It’s possible that she has written the most science fiction of anyone in her day, and this left her quite well-off, financially. She is also a creative thinker outside of her writing and was the one to come up with the plan to disrupt the Doctor Universe broadcast near the end of the story. Not only did she set up the equipment to be able to include the laughing sounds from the Varsoom, but it was she that eventually got the Varsoom to laugh. Although at first she was insulted that they would laugh at her story, she quickly dusted herself off and knew she would continue writing, and exploring the world while she did it.

Answer:
Grannie Annie is not what she seems. Although her appearance reflects her age, at heart she is wild, adventurous, and a tad bit crazy.
Writing under the pseudonym Annabella C. Flowers, Grannie Annie became one of the most popular science fiction writers. But her books aren’t tomfoolery. She researches each setting before she writes it, traveling to far-off planets to ensure accuracy and attention to detail.
She leads Billy and their expeditious team on a great journey. She’s skilled with a gun, killing a highly-trained hunter-bird along the way, and she’s incredibly persistent. When the Vansooms’ laugh at her writing, she, at first, is angry and hurt. But as the story continues, she laughs at the situation, claiming that these creatures wouldn’t know good writing if it hit them in the face.
Her courage, wildness, and bravery make for a spectacular tale.

Answer:
Grannie Annie is a successful science fiction author who writes under the name Annabel C. Flowers. She ensures authenticity in her writing by visiting the various planets that are to be the settings of her novels. She is a clever, tough and streetwise individual.

When she uncovers a plot to set up quiz show host Doctor Universe as dictator of the solar system. She enlists the help of her companions to dismantle the plot using her ingenuity and her less than stellar written material.


Question: Describe the significance of the Green Flames in the context of a science fiction tale involving a determined writer, a mysterious quiz master, and a dangerous conspiracy.

Answer:
The Green Flames are highly important to the narrative because without them, Doctor Universe would not be able to try and take over the universe. The Green Flames originally come from planet Mercury. When earthlings or other creatures come in contract with the rock’s Gamma rays, their brains instantly desire control from leadership. The element’s power is immense but also subtle.

The Green Flames have already been used to institute a dictatorship, as with the cautionary tail of Vennox. Vennox forced each creature to keep two of the rocks in each house, and he used their powers to make them servile. When the government was overthrown, the Green Flames were destroyed.

Ezra Karn finds the Green Flames hidden away in a spaceship in the Varsoom district of Venus. Doctor Universe has secured the resource and its power when he broadcasts his weekly quiz show, “Doctor Universe and His Nine Geniuses.” The show is a hit on multiple planets, and the quiz master urges his followers to tune in to each broadcast. The Green Flames lead listeners to believe that he is a supreme being and deserves to be in a position of power.

Answer: Green Flame is not well understood by the scientific community in the story, but it plays an important role in the history of political power in the system, as well as the contemporary political situation that Grannie Annie is navigating. The rock was originally found on Mercury, and its composition is only partially understood, but it is clear that all types of life forms are affected by the drug-like effects of its radiation. Initially, it appears to just drain some energy, but with increased exposure, the beings search for more direction and guidance, a desire that can be fulfilled by political power of dictators. In fact, it had been used specifically for this purpose on Earth, Venus, and Mars by a dictator named Vennox I. He required that two pieces of Green Flame were in every household, which ensure that the people wanted to look to him for guidance. The stash of this rock that was found in an abandoned ship on the surface of Venus is the last remaining supply, as it was mostly destroyed after the dictatorship ended. When Grannie Annie found out about the supply, through a prospector named Ezra Karn, she decided to use it as part of the plot for her newest novel. However, Doctor Universe used the details of the story to devise his own plot to use the Green Flame to try to start his own dictatorship. He used broadcast technology to extend the effects of the radioactive rock, so that it affected anyone who watched his quiz show. In the end, the plan is not successful, because Billy and Grannie Annie and their team were able to thwart his efforts.

Answer:
The Green Flames are a radioactive ore that can and have been used to cause great harm. They emit gamma rays that are incredibly suggestive and powerful when consumed. Vennox I, a dictatorship that ruled over three planets in 2710, used the Green Flames to control their people.
By placing the ores in every house, they were able to manipulate and oppress their people. The Green Flames’ power can erase all freedom and individual liberty from a planet.
With this kind of power, it’s no wonder that they were all destroyed after Vennox I was overthrown. However, a ship containing a tank full of them crashed, leaving some untouched. Their discovery led to Doctor Universe’s attempt at dictatorship. Luckily, he was foiled along the way.

Answer:
Green Flame is a type of rock with a specific type of radiation. When a lifeform is exposed to this radiation, its brain begins to deteriorate and display an acute lack of energy that increases with exposure.

The rocks were outlawed as part of a push for democratized government and supposedly destroyed centuries ago but a large quantity of the rocks were discovered on Venus.

Now as populations are agitating for dictatorial government, it is suspected that it is due to the influence of Green Flame.

It was revealed that augmented Green Flame radiation was being broadcast through Doctor Universe's quiz show.


Question: Describe the relationship between Billy and Grannie Annie in the context of their adventurous encounter that intertwines with a mysterious plot and a science fiction backdrop.

Answer:
When Grannie Annie shows up at the men’s club to see Billy, the two friends have not seen each other in two years. It is immediately clear that Grannie Annie runs the show in their relationship, in part because Billy is willing to risk his reputation at the men’s club in order to make his elderly friends happy. Within minutes, Billy is whisked away to the theater to watch Annie guest star on Doctor Universe’s show, even though she does not explain the plan to him and he has little interest in being an audience member.

Although the rest of the world knows Grannie Annie as Annabella C. Flowers, the name she uses to publish her science fiction novels, Billy would never address her so formally. There is an obvious feeling of trust between the two characters. When Grannie Annie gets her novel stolen and worries that there’s a dictator about to take over the universe, she finds Billy to help her solve the case. Similarly, when Grannie Annie spills her guts about her far-fetched theory about her novel inspiring an evil villain to use the Green Flames to control millions of beings, Billy believes her right off the bat.

The pair get along very well, and it’s clear that’s the case when Grannie Annie asks Billy to accompany her on her next trip to research her upcoming novel. Billy simply can’t say no to his friend, whom he deeply admires.

Answer: At the time that the story takes place, Billy and Grannie Annie had not seen each other in two years. Even so, they trust one another confidently. At the beginning of the story, we see that Grannie Annie has approached Billy to talk about her concerns for the political climate based on the manuscript of one of her novels. Billy admits to the reader that her story of what was happening, told by anyone else, would be hard to believe, but from her he knows there has to be some truth to it. He also trusts her enough to go along on her expedition to find Ezra, the abandoned ship, and the Green Flame. They know each other well enough ability to know that Grannie’s usual drink is a whiskey sour. At the end of the story, although Billy says he does not want to join on a trip to Mars, he admits to the reader that he knows he will join on another adventure, following Grannie wherever she goes.

Answer:
Grannie Annie is Billy’s grandma and confidante. Billy is a little shyer than she is, however they play off of each other and he gains confidence on the journey. This is best shown at the end when she asks if he will come to Mars with her, and he initially says no. Then, he thinks to himself, Of course, I’ll go.
Grannie Annie shows up at the exclusive, men-only club Billy was playing at and knew he would come with her. Billy acts as her sidekick and trusted partner throughout the story. Despite their age gap, it’s fair to say that their friendship and camaraderie will last a long time.

Answer: Billy and Annie are old friends who have had multiple past adventures throughout the solar system. They relate to each other easily and have a sense of mutual respect. Grannie often travels throughout the solar system to gather material for her novels. Billy has often joined her as a partner in her adventures. Billy admires Annie's no-nonsense attitude and commitment to realism. He is brought into the plot to foil Doctor Universe's scheme and aids Annie in accomplishing her plan.


Question: What happens to Ezra Karn, an old prospector involved in a dangerous plot, throughout the story?

Answer:
Grannie Annie first meets Ezra Karn when she goes to Venus City to research the setting for her novel. Ezra Karn is a prospector who lives in a deep marsh in Varsoom country. Grannie Annie learns that the Green Flames were not all destroyed after the last dictatorship when he tells her that he stumbled upon the resource in an abandoned spaceship.

Grannie Annie and Billy find Karn at his hut in the marsh. They ask Karn to take them to the Green Flames, and after some hesitation, he agrees. He knows that the only way to defeat the Varsoom is to make them laugh, but he does not know what exactly they think is funny. He is a huge fan of Doctor Universe, and he never misses a show.

Ezra Karn successfully takes Grannie Annie and Billy to the spaceship he previously found. Within moments of laying eyes on it, Karl yells out in pain. He rolls around on the ground, trying to stand but failing. He informs his companions that the force he is dealing with is the Varsoom, and the only way to end the madness is to make them laugh.

When it’s time to interrupt Doctor Universe’s broadcast to stop him from taking over the universe, it is Karn’s idea to have Grannie Annie read her book to the Varsoom. He does not realize that they will find it funny, but he does think it’s a good way to get the invisible creatures’ attention. He essentially saves everyone, since Grannie Annie’s book makes the Varsoom laugh and laugh and make it impossible for Doctor Universe to control the minds of the masses.

Answer: Ezra is only present for a small part of the story, but he already knew Grannie Annie as they had met in Venus City. Ezra is a prospector, and he finds his home in the swamps where the Varsoom live. When Grannie Annie and Billy make it to the swamplands and marshes, they find Ezra, and Grannie Annie asks him to guide the group to the spaceship that held the Green Flames he had told her about. He agrees, though he warns the group about the Varsoom, an energy life form that could potentially be dangerous. He refuses to miss a showing of Doctor Universe’s quiz show, but guides the group after the show is over. Ezra was the first person to see the ship they were looking for, and asked about the broadcasting apparatus that was built on top of it. He circled the ship with Grannie as the group split up to survey the area, and once they entered the ship, Ezra tried using his pistol to break the glass that was protecting the equipment. Eventually, after camp was set up, he watched Doctor Universe again as he smoked his pipe. When Ezra suggests that Doctor Universe is a wonderful person to be made a leader, Grannie realizes that Billy was right about Doctor Universe wanting to take over. Ezra, along with the rest of the group, experienced extreme pain as the Varsoom showed up. Ezra reminded the group that they needed to make these beings laugh, and as he did a silly dance, he tripped and fell, which did the trick. Ezra and Billy watch Grannie set up the altered visi set to disrupt the broadcast following day. He set up a lamp for Grannie when she started to read her book to the Varsoom, and once they have the laughter they needed, he turned on the equipment so that the microphone could add the laughter of the Varsoom to the Doctor Universe broadcast.

Answer:
Ezra Karn is an elderly explorer, filled to the brim with stories and adventures galore. He first met Grannie Annie while she was researching the sequel to her latest novel. She visited Venus and Karn to fully immerse herself in the culture. His stories were so ludicrous and wonderful that she decided to turn them into her next novel. Once her manuscript was stolen and the secret stash of Golden Flame revealed, Ezra Karn was thrust into the adventure alongside Billy-Boy, her grandson.
Karn is a devoted fan of Doctor Universe’s gameshow and never missed a single broadcast. He leads their crew into the Vansoom territory, despite his anxiety. Only he and one other man had ever escaped their territory alive.
His guidance leaves them safe and sound, and, though he is attacked by the Vansoom, he’s able to stop them by making them laugh.
Without Karn, they would have never discovered how to draw the Vansooms’ attention and make them laugh. If they hadn’t known how to make them laugh, they wouldn’t have been able to defeat Doctor Universe and his evil plan.

Answer:
Ezra Karn is an old prospector who lives on Venus. In the past, he had come upon an old ship that was loaded with Green Flame ore--a rock that was outlawed ages ago for its unique radiative properties. Karn is a religious viewer of the Doctor Universe quiz program, and it's his reaction that hints at the influence of Green Flame on all of the program's viewers.

Karn is the one who leads Annie and Billy back to the ship in order to destroy the Green Flames. He informs the duo of the Varsoom who are beings of pure energy that can only be defeated if one can get them to laugh. During an attack of the Varsoom he stumbles into the campfire which triggers enormously laughter from the Varsoom.


Question: What is the plot of the story that involves a space journey, unexpected encounters, and the complexities of gender dynamics in a futuristic setting?

Answer: O’Rielly is an apprentice maintaining Burner Four during his first flight on a spaceship traveling between Venus and Earth. The story begins when his supervisor, Burner Chief Callahan, alerts O’Rielly that one of the controls on his burner has slipped, so he sets about resetting the controls to prevent the ship from crashing when it starts its descent toward Earth. He searches his watch room and around the burner looking for a mouse or anyone who might have moved the control. He thinks about Captain Millicent Hatwoody, the ship’s commander nicknamed “Old Woman”, and worries she will exile him to a distant moon if she discovers the issue. During his search, he discovers a stowaway Venusian woman named Trillium on his bunk bed, and she tells him she had moved the control in order to escape the burner room where she was hiding. O’Rielly is struck by her beauty and allows her to shower in his bathroom. While she is showering, Callahan to interrogate O’Rielly and instructs him to take a shower because Captain Hatwoody is bringing a guest to tour the facilities. He reminds O’Rielly of the history of the Earth women’s supremacy over men, which began as a response to the Earth men’s infatuation with Venusian women. When they established dominance, the Earth women returned the Venusian women to their planet. Consequently, the Venusian men warned of war if any Earth men attempted to contact Venusian women. For their part, Venusian women would be killed if they tried to leave. To soften the threat, Venus agreed to let Earth purchase products at a lower cost. O’Rielly reminds Callahan that no Earth man has seen a Venusian woman in 125 years, and Callahan tells the story—an Earth man disguised himself as a Venusian in order to visit his love, a Venusian woman named Berta. When Trillium returns, she reveals that she is Berta’s granddaughter. She hides again before Captain Hatwoody arrives. The captain and her guest, a Venusian ambassador named Dimdooly, investigate the burner, and their interactions reveal conflicting attitudes towards gender superiority on Earth versus Venus. As they leave, Trillium reveals herself, and Dimdooly recognizes her as the Venusian president’s granddaughter. Captain Hatwoody then calls the presidents of both planets, who begin to blame each other and threaten war. Trillium explains that it was Berta, the president’s wife, who taught her how to stowaway, as she had done so herself 125 years prior. She reveals her purpose for stowing away was to draw attention to her revolutionary vision—to convince Earth to stop purchasing products from Venus, thus stopping their cash flow to fund wars. She explains the wars distract Venusian men, and that is why the women are attracted to Earth men. While the president balks, his wife orders him to step aside as she has been elected new President of Venus, and the Venusian women are taking over. Trillium is rewarded with Dimdooly’s ambassadorship, and Callahan and O’Rielly are sent back to work.

Answer:
O’Rielly is an Apprentice Burnerman in charge of the burners of the craft. He is surprised when one of them has a fusion control two points low in flight since he thought he had set everything correctly prior to takeoff.

He discovers a female from Venus stowing away on the ship. O’Rielly does not view women of power with respect, but he treats this woman differently and is attracted to her. There is a gender-based arrangement where women from Venus are no longer allowed on Earth, so her presence is highly illegal.

Callahan (O’Rielly’s superior) comes into the room and discovers the woman from Venus, thinking she is named Berta. Berta was the grandmother of the stowaway, who is actually named Trillium. She hides under the bed in the room, just as the Captain and Ambassador step in to see what is the problem with the burner. They look at the burner personally, and then discover Trillium before leaving the room.

Captain calls an interplanetary emergency and both the President of Earth and of Venus are brought into conference call. Trillium is the granddaughter of the President of Venus. The President of Venus has been married to Trillium’s grandmother (Berta) for 124.5 years. The President of Venus tries to convince Trillium that people from Earth stole her away, but Trillium is clear that she learned from Berta (his wife) how to execute her plan. Trillium was raising awareness to Earth to stop trade with Venus to stop funding their wars.

The President of Earth cancels all trade with Venus. Berta becomes the new President of Venus through a unanimous vote. There are only females on the planet to vote, as all Venus men are at war for 10 months at a time with only 2 weeks home inbetween. Her husband is furious and does not believe women should hold power.

Ambassador Dimdooly proposes marriage to Trillium aboard the spaceship. The President of Earth welcomes the idea of a female ambassador travelling Earth to create a new trade treaty. Trillium is given the role of the new Personal Ambassador in Dimdooly’s place.

The Captain is tasked with giving O’Rielly and Callahan a suitable reward for “aiding in the revolution”. She chooses five minutes of leisure before they must return to their duties.

Answer:
The story takes place aboard a spaceship, at a distant point in the future when women rule Earth, men rule Venus, and the two planets have a tenuous relationship based on old economic treaties, restrictions, and fears they have about one another. Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly can’t figure out how one of the burners he was in charge of on a spaceship had a control slip, until he discovers that it was caused by a stowaway: a beautiful woman from Venus, who has a strange and powerful effect on O’Rielly.

He tries to keep her hidden but she is discovered by his superior, Callahan, who seems to know a lot about the last Earth man to stow away to Venus 125 years ago, and who mistakes the stowaway, Trillium, for her own grandmother, Berta. Trillium seems to want to be found, and is soon revealed to the ship’s Captain, Millicent Hatwoody, and an ambassador from Venus, Dimdooly. Hatwoody alerts the presidents of both Earth and Venus to the situation, and they disagree about what has happened and whose fault it is. The president of Earth thinks Trillium stowing away on an Earth vessel is tantamount to an act of war, while the president of Venus (Trillium’s grandfather) thinks she must have been kidnapped by the Earth men on the ship.

Trillium clarifies that she intentionally stowed away, with help from her grandmother, Berta, in order to ask the president of Earth to stop buying anything from Venus. The women of Venus want the men to stop leaving to fight in wars that the male-dominated government make up reasons to start just to keep the men occupied, and they want Earth to stop funding the wars. As her grandfather is telling Trillium that things are going to stay as they are, the Earth president says she has dissolved all trade with Venus, and Berta enters her husband’s office and announces that the women of Venus have unanimously voted for Berta to take over the presidency and women to unseat the men from power. She has her female enforcers remove her husband.

On the spaceship, Dimdooly tells Trillium that he loves her and proposes. She is then given his ambassadorship. O’Rielly and Callahan, heavily implied to be the man who stowed away to Venus 125 years ago and met Berta, are no longer under the Venus woman trance, and now the men of Venus are. As the presidents of Venus and Earth congratulate and thank each other, Berta asks that O’Rielly and Callahan be rewarded for accidentally helping with their plan. Captain Hatwoody awards them each five minutes of leisure time, and Callahan thinks they’re lucky to be alive.

As the story ends, O’Rielly gets Callahan to tell him why the women of Venus didn’t keep him there if they were lonely, and Callahan reveals that because he didn’t have the “earth beards” that men of Venus have to clutch and tickle the women’s ears, he wasn’t of much use to them.

Answer:
Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly discovers that one of the burners he is responsible for has been reset, but he can’t figure out how that happened since no one has passed through his room outside the burner room to get to it. When he returns to his watch room, a beautiful woman from Venus is on his bunk. She explains that she changed the setting because she was in the burner room and couldn’t open the door when it grew too warm for her.

O’Rielly’s superior, Chief Callahan, arrives to see what caused the problem. Callahan discovers the woman from Venus. He reminds O’Rielly that the first flight from Earth to Venus was made one thousand years ago, and the men from Earth immediately fell in love with the women from Venus and brought some of them back to Earth. Women on Earth were angered by the Earthmen’s behaviors and took over the control of Earth. They took the Venus women back to Venus and warned that there would be a war if any of them came back to Earth. The last time an Earthman was near a Venus woman was 125 years ago when he stuffed himself into a luggage bag and made himself a pair of fake ear beards with worms in them to make them move so he could pass himself off as a Venus man.

The girl from Venus steps out of the shower, and Callahan calls her “Berta,” but she says her name is “Trillium” and that her grandmother’s name is Berta. Trillium is said to look just as Berta did 125 years ago. O’Rielly hides Trillium under his cot just before Captain Hatwoody enters to check on the burner problem. She is also escorting the Dimdooly, the Personal Assistant of the President of Venus, on a ship tour. Just as the Ambassador and Hatwoody are leaving, Trillium makes a loud bump, and they discover her. The Ambassador is certain she has been kidnapped, but Trillium explains that she stowed away.

Hatwoody takes everyone to her office where she calls the presidents of both Earth and Venus. The president of Venus is Trillium’s grandfather. He says she couldn’t have stolen away on her own and demands the truth, so she explains that her grandmother, his wife, told her how to do it. Trillium explains she stowed away to bring the cause of the Venus women to Earth’s attention. She wants Earth to stop trading with Venus so that Venus won’t have the money to keep sending its men to wars for all but two weeks every year. The Venus president’s wife interrupts and declares she’s taking over the presidency; she orders her women to take her husband away and appoints Trillium her new ambassador. O’Rielly realizes Callahan was the last Earthman to meet a Venus woman in person and was the one who tried to stow away to Venus. He was caught because his fake ear beards didn’t grab hold of Berta’s ears like real ones do.


Question: Describe the setting of the story, which revolves around the challenges and dynamics faced by a young apprentice in a technologically advanced yet gender-imbalanced society.

Answer: The story takes place on a spaceship that shuttles between Earth and Venus. The ship is commanded by Captain Hatwoody, a stern woman who represents the matriarchy that has taken over Earth. The majority of the story’s narrative happens in Apprentice Burnerman O’Rielly’s watch room. This is a simple room equipped with a bunk bed and bathing facilities, which includes a shower. From this room, he is able to maintain careful stewardship of Burner Four, which helps power the ship. When Callahan notifies O’Rielly that one of his controls has slipped, O’Rielly investigates the burner to find the culprit of the situation. After he discovers Trillium, she uses his bathing facilities to wash herself of the stink from the burner room where she was stowing away. After Callahan enters the watch room and learns of Trillium’s presence, he encourages her to hide again because of Captain Hatwoody’s impending visit. She hides beneath O’Rielly’s bunk. After Captain Hatwoody and her guest, Ambassador Dimdooly, stumble upon Trillium, the captain demands that they all follow her to her office. In her office, she convenes a conference with the presidents of Earth and Venus. After Berta—Trillium’s grandmother, the wife of the current Venusian president, and Callahan’s former love interest—reveals herself as the new ruler of Venus, O’Rielly and Callahan are given a five-minute break and sent back to their former duties managing the burners below.

Answer: The story takes place on a spacecraft led by the female Captain Hatwoody. The main settings are in O’Rielly’s bunk room, shower, burner room four, and the command center of the craft. It is described as quite a large ship with many rooms and crew. The craft is on a mission to deliver the Personal Ambassador to the President of Venus to Earth from the planet of Venus. The spacecraft is in transit during the story, and there are no settings on either of the planets themselves, only the ship.

Answer: The setting of the story includes multiple areas of a spaceship, including one of its burner rooms, the watch room, bunk, locker, and shower of O’Rielly, and Captain Hatwoody’s office. The ship is in outer space, approaching but not yet within Earth’s orbit. Several other locations are described, either involving characters who are communicating remotely (the presidents of Earth and Venus talking to Captain Hatwoody from their offices on their respective planets via video panels), or describing past events (Callahan describing his adventures stowing away while on vacation and traveling to Venus). Several past events are also discussed that include Earth, Venus, and/or spacecrafts. The story is set over 1,000 years in the future.

Answer: The story is set on an Earth spaceship in the future one thousand years after Earth completed its first successful flight to Venus. It specifically starts in Burnerman O’Rielly’s watch room outside burner room number four for which he is responsible. The ship is returning to Earth, and burner number four has a fusion control reading that is two points low. This can cause the ship to crash on landing. The ship has futuristic features including an electronic shower that can cleanse a person and his clothes in a matter of minutes and video conference calls. On the initial flight from Earth to Venus, the Earthmen discovered the beauty of the Venus women and immediately fell in love with them. They took some Venus women back to Earth, and men there abandoned everything, even their wives and families, to try to be with the Venus women. Earth women were angry at how the men acted and took control of the planet; they also sent all the Venus women back to their home planet. Now Earth and Venus trade with each other, but Earthmen and Venus women are not allowed to be together because doing so can spark a war between the two planets. Earth has a female president, and women hold all the positions of authority over men. Venus has a male president who is very traditional and does not agree with the women of Venus that their men need to be home for more than two weeks every year and spend the rest of their time fighting in wars. Venus men look down on Earthmen for being subservient to women.


Question: What is the relationship between Callahan and Berta throughout the story that involves a complex interplay of power dynamics and unexpected encounters?

Answer: Callahan is Burner Chief on the ship and has been flying as a professional Burnerman for 125 years. Berta is the first lady of Venus, and the grandmother of Trillium. When O’Rielly is trying to hide Trillium in his shower, Callahan tells the story of when women first took control of Earth: They were not pleased that Earth men were so entranced by Venusian women, and so they took over leadership of the planet and sent all Venusian women back to their own planet. Likewise, Venusian men banned Earth men from interacting with Venusian women under threat of war. This led to an agreement where Earth and Venus could conduct trade together for cheaper prices. Callahan suggests that he was the last man to touch a Venusian woman, and he did so by hiding himself inside a large bag and sneaking through customs disguised as a Venusian man with a long, fake beard. The woman he was sneaking in to see turned out to be Berta, and Callahan says she ultimately rejected him because she could tell his beard was fake, and Venusian women loved to be tickled by real beards.

Answer:
Callahan is a Burner Chief mechanic on the spaceship and has been working in space for 125 years. Berta is the grandmother of Trillium, the female stowaway from Venus. Berta stowed away on a spaceship 125 years ago.

Callahan thinks that Trillium is Berta when he first catches her in O’Rielly’s bunk room. Callahan appears to have had a history with Berta 125 years ago when she stowed away aboard a spaceship.

Callahan and Berta do not interact often in the story, but Callahan is eager to be present when she is discovered by the Captain and to know how the situation will play out given that women from Venus are not allowed to travel to Earth.

Answer: Callahan is an older officer aboard the ship, and Berta is an older woman of Venus, married to its longtime ruler. As Callahan references the tale of the Earth man who stowed away to Venus 125 years ago, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is likely the man in question. When he first sees Trillium, he mistakes her for Berta, and she says that she is her granddaughter but looks like Berta did 125 years earlier. It later turns out that Berta coached Trillium to use Callahan’s stowaway method (hiding in a ditty bag) for their plan. Though Callahan was as taken with Berta as O’Rielly is with Trillium, at the conclusion of the story we learn that Callahan was sent away from Venus due to his lack of ear beards, and resultant inability to tickle women’s ears. However, he always remembers Berta and assists her granddaughter, and after Berta is elected president she asks that he be rewarded for this.

Answer: Callahan is the Earthman who is the last known man to interact with a Venus woman 125 years ago, and Berta is the Venus woman he fell for. He tells O’Rielly that the last Earth guy who tried to stay with a Venus woman hid in a large luggage bag to be shipped to Venus and attached to himself a pair of fake ear beards with Jupiter wiggle worms in them to make the beards move. At the time of the story, Callahan is O’Rielly’s commanding officer who catches O’Rielly with a Venus woman on the ship. When he sees the Venus woman, he calls her Berta, but Trillium explains that her grandmother is named Berta, and everyone says she looks just like her grandmother did 125 years ago. Callahan tries to prevent Captain Hatwoody from discovering Trillium is there; when she does make the discovery and contacts the presidents of Earth and Venus, the president of Venus confirms that Trillium is his granddaughter. Trillium reveals that her grandmother, Berta, explained to her how to stow away on the ship and that her grandmother was the Venus woman that the Earthman 125 years ago was trying to see. As the video conference continues, Berta enters the room where the president of Venus is and announces that she has been elected president of Venus by all the women on Venus and is replacing him. She also says that Callahan and O’Rielly are proof that Venus women are no longer a threat to Earth’s peace, and she asks the Earth president to reward them for their assistance in Venus’s revolution. Callahan reveals to O’Rielly that his disguise was discovered because his ear beards didn’t reach out and grab Berta around the ears when he kissed her.


Question: What was Trillium’s plan as a stowaway aboard a ship in a story involving interplanetary dynamics and personal relationships?

Answer: Trillium is the granddaughter of the President of Venus and his wife, Berta. One-hundred twenty-five years ago, Berta learned from Callahan’s example how to stowaway and break the rules devised between the two planets. She taught her granddaughter how to do the same, so Trillium took this knowledge to implement her own plan. Trillium represents the women of Venus, who are tired of the lack of attention they receive from Venusian men; the men are far more interested in war and harbor misogynistic attitudes towards women. Likewise, the women rulers of Earth treat men as their inferiors as a result of their lust for Venusian women. When Trillium is discovered, this triggers a meeting between the two presidents of Earth and Venus, and the president of Earth announces that her presence on the ship signifies a breach in their rules. Therefore, the special arrangement between the two planets is ended, and Earth no longer recognizes Dimdooly’s ambassadorship. As the Venusian president resists, he also learns that his wife Berta has been elected the new President of Venus, and that women will now take over just as they did on Earth. She orders her husband to be taken away. After Dimdooly loses his position, he announces his love for Trillium, which confirms her plan to regain the amorous attentions of Venusian men has worked. As a reward for her role in the revolution, Trillium receives Dimdooly’s ambassadorship.

Answer:
She wanted to bring attention to her cause as a revolutionary and explain that if Earth would stop buying things from Venus, then they would stop funding Venus’ wars like they have been for the past 10,000 years. Trillium explains that women of Venus would like the men of Venus to instead remain on the planet and do useful work.
However, it turns out that Trillium is part of a larger plan for her grandmother to overthrow her grandfather as President of Venus, which they succeed in doing.

Answer: Trillium’s plan, which she undertook at her grandmother’s behest and with her assistance, was to stow away on the Earth ship to draw the Earth president’s attention to her cause. Berta and Trillium want to beseech Earth’s government to stop supporting Venus’s economy and funding their constant warfare. The women of Venus want the men of Venus to spend time with them rather than constantly going into battle, and Berta and Trillium have devised a way to get Earth to cooperate in their efforts to switch control of Venus from men to women.

Answer: Trillium plans to follow her grandmother’s plan and stow away on the ship and travel to Earth. She stows away because that is the only way that the women of Venus can get the attention of Earth’s president. She wants Earth to agree to stop trade with Venus so that Venus will no longer have the money to keep its men in wars all the time. She claims that Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war that they don’t have time for the Venus women. It is the Venus women’s desire to be loved that makes them so irresistible to Earthmen. Although the Venus government allows its men two weeks at home from war each year, the Venus women want their men for longer than that so that the men can do useful work. As a result of the stowaway incident, the president of Earth cancels all trade agreements with Venus. Once Venus women have the Venus men under their power, they no longer have any interest in Earthmen. When Trillium’s grandmother becomes president of Venus, she makes Trillium the new Ambassador to Earth.


Question: What is the relationship between Captain Hatwoody and Ambassador Dimdooly as they navigate through a tumultuous interplanetary situation involving unexpected visitors and tensions between their worlds?

Answer: Captain Hatwoody is the commander of the ship that ferries between Earth and Venus. She is a stern, efficient Earth woman with a vocal disdain for men. Behind her back, the men of her crew refer to her as “the Old Woman.” Ambassador Dimdooly is a Venusian who works as the right-hand man of the President of Venus. Similar to Hatwoody’s disgust for men, Ambassador Dimdooly harbors a deep-seated misogyny. Both characters’ innate sexism is reflected in the social orders of their individual planets and are the result of over one-hundred years of conflict. Captain Hatwoody plays gracious host to Ambassador Dimdooly when he visits the ship, even referring to him as “Excellency.” However, their tensions are revealed when together they inspect Burner Four after visiting O’Rielly in his watch room. They each make snarky comments to each other about the inferiority of the others’ respective gender. Their attitudes are reflected later during the confrontational meeting between the presidents of Earth and Venus in Captain Hatwoody’s office. These two characters’ interactions are essential in highlighting the gender conflict that explodes at the story’s end when both Earth and Venusian women solidify their rule over their respective planets.

Answer:
The male staff on the ship call Captain Hatwoody “Old Woman” and she is described in language that suggests she is cold and unfeeling. This appears to be a product of their failing to recognize her power as a superior and their discomfort with having a woman in charge.
Ambassador Dimdooly is the Personal Ambassador to the President of Venus. He speaks down to the Captain as a “lesser gender”. After the discovery of Trillium he bades to handle it himself, because he knows that she is the granddaughter of the President and that her stowing away could be cause for war.
The Captain and the Ambassador have tense interactions. The Ambassador does not think the Captain should be in a position of power as a woman and looks down upon the male staff on the ship that stand at her command.

Answer: The relationship between Captain Hatwoody and Ambassador Dimdooly is a tense professional relationship between two high-ranking officials from societies with disparate cultural values and gender norms. Dimdooly is from Venus, where men are in control of the government and considered the dominant sex, and Hatwoody is from Earth, where the opposite is true. Dimdooly is an Ambassador being shown around the ship of which Hatwoody is the captain. Dimdooly appears to be disgusted at the male crew members taking orders from a woman, and he and the captain disagree about who should get “precedence” in terms of who will shower first and where based on which of them has the superior status. Their interactions are characterized by an icy civility throughout the story.

Answer: Captain Hatwoody is giving Ambassador Dimdooly a tour of Earth’s ship. When Hatwoody orders Callahan and O’Rielly to attention, Dimdooly sneers at the sight of the two men being subservient to a woman. He acts as if he would never allow a woman to tell him what to do. He also refers to Hatwoody as “the lesser gender,” which shows that he considers himself superior to women. When Trillium is discovered on board, and Hatwoody starts to handle the situation, he tells Hatwoody to “shut up” and states that he will take care of the matter since he is the “Personal Ambassador of the President of Venus” and that the incident can lead to war between the two planets. When Berta takes over the presidency for Venus, Trillium orders Dimdooly to stop beating around the bush with her and say what he means, so Dimdooly confesses he loves Trillium and asks her to marry him at her earliest convenience. Trillium then states that Earthmen have no power over Venus women when Venus women have control over their Venus men.


Question: What is the plot of the story that involves a character from another world who grapples with human emotions while on a mission that challenges his original purpose?

Answer:
Three aliens from the planet Ortha, Thig, Kam and their Commander, Torp, have landed on Long Island to see if Earth is viable for the Orthans to take over. Thig captures a passing man, an author named Lewis Terry, and brings him back to the spaceship, where Torp decides that Thig should impersonate Terry to learn more about Earth. Terry’s knowledge is transferred to Thig, a process that kills Terry and arms Thig with with all of his memories. He is given plastic surgery to look like Terry, and he goes to live with Terry’s family.

He is greeted by Terry’s three young children and his wife, Ellen; the children’s affection and Ellen’s kiss lead to sensations that confuse but excite Thig. The story then jumps ahead 12 weeks to when they return from their vacation, Thig having experienced many new emotions and sensations and having become very attached to Terry’s family. He knows that he must report to his Orthan colleagues, but has misgivings about doing so. Upon his arrival back to the ship, he tells Torp that Earth is ideal for their purposes, and Torp commends him and says he’ll recommend that Ortha take it over and eradicate the humans. Thig suggests that they instead disarm and exile the humans, and train them in the ways of Ortha. Torp responds angrily that they don’t need to waste their time with anyone outside the Orthan “Horde”. He asks Kam to check his blood for disease.

Thig realizes that he loves Ellen and wants to protect her and the earthlings and says as much to Kam, who attempts to subdue him. After a struggle over Kam’s blaster, Thig kills him. Torp sees what he has done and flies into the type of rage Orthans don’t ascribe to, bludgeoning Thig until he thinks he is dead. Thig takes a blaster from a case above him and kills Torp. He reads in the ship log that Torp has written that Earth is not viable, because it infected Thig with a disease that led to him killing Kam and made it necessary for Torp to kill him. Thig puts the ship on autopilot toward Ortha, takes one of the small auxiliary ships, and heads back to Earth.

He experiences many emotions, and regrets how callous he was when he first arrived on Earth and captured Lewis Terry. He vows to live as Terry in repayment to his family, and thinks knowing that Ellen doesn’t really love him, Thig, will be his punishment while he strives to make her happy. As he heads toward Long Island, the idea for a story develops in his mind. This one is about a cowboy that visits other worlds, worlds like the ones Thig has seen. He thinks maybe he could write this, and then reminds himself to remember that he is Lewis Terry now.

Answer: The story begins with the protagonist Thig, who is an alien from the planet Ortha, on a mission to investigate Earth’s suitability to be colonized by the conquering Horde he represents. Thig is a bit shorter than the average human with a thick, muscular body and reddish hair. His spaceship is hidden below the sand at a Long Island beach, and after he emerges, he hides behind the brush along a nearby road. He sees a human that looks remarkably like himself. This human turns out to be a Western writer named Lewis Terry, who lives nearby with his wife and children. Lew, as his wife calls him, had been out fishing as he tried to plot out new stories to fund his proposed trip out West, where he could gather research to make his writing more believable. Thig knocks him out and takes him back to his ship, where he and his fellow Orthans Kam and Torp begin the process of transferring Lew’s memories, thoughts, and emotions into Thig’s mind. This allows him to disguise himself as he researches Earth’s environment and the humans that populate it. After undergoing plastic surgery to better mimic Lew’s appearance, Thig returns to Lew’s home, guided by his memories of the past and human emotions. Thig meets Lew’s children and experiences emotions of love for the first time. These feelings are further complicated when he meets Ellen, Lew’s wife, who kisses him and floods Thig’s new Lew-mind with romantic emotions. Thig shows Ellen the treasures he has brought with him from Mars, and Ellen says they can now afford to pay for their trip out West. They spend the next three months exploring the West, during which time Thig plunges deeper into human emotion and is overwhelmed by the beauty of Earth. Upon his return to the ship, Thig attempts to convince Kam and Torp to change their plans about destroying humankind, and they think Thig has contracted some kind of disease. When Kam goes to test Thig, Thig kills him with a decomposition blaster; in turn, Torp beats Thig until he thinks he has killed him. Torp then returns to his desk and makes a note that Earth is probably not suitable for the Horde due to a mysterious disease that had overtaken Thig. Thig kills Torp and returns to Earth in an escape vessel, sending the ship back to Ortha with Torp’s message. Torp goes back to Ellen and the children, intending to spend the rest of his life living as Lewis Terry.

Answer:
Thig appears naked on Long Island and waits for an Earthman to come near. Lewis Terry, a writer of Westerns, walks by Thig. He went out on his boat to fish, and Thig jumps out at Terry and kills him.
Thig is excited to help his people, the Orthans, discover a new place to inhabit. On planet Ortha, everything is done to serve the Horde. The creatures have no families. They instead devote their lives to society.
On the spaceship, Thig takes over Terry’s body and gains all of his knowledge. He then undergoes surgery to correct the scars that Terry sustained during the attack. When he exits the spaceship, Thig is surprised to learn that he now holds all of Terry’s childhood memories and understandings about the world around him.

He approaches Terry’s home and is greeted by his children and his wife. Thig feels pleasure from this interaction, something he has never experienced before. When Ellen talks to Thig, he naturally responds like Terry would without even thinking about it. The family heads out on a vacation in the West.

After several weeks, Thig’s family arrives back at home. He loved building relationships with his wife and children, and soon he will need to talk to his fellow Orthans and let them know that Earth is a perfect place for them to take over. He worries about what will become of Terry’s family. Thig enjoys being an Earthman because he is allowed to feel and express emotions and experience the uncertainty of life that does not exist on Ortha.

When Thig leaves the house to go to the spaceship, his mind keeps coming up with ideas for new Western novels. He can’t help it since he still has many of Terry’s old thoughts. Torp decides it’s time to head back to Ortha. He will recommend killing all humans. Thig disagrees, and Torp becomes angry. He assumes that Thig has contracted a disease, and he tells Kam to test him. The ship blasts off, and in a fit of rage, Thig chokes Kam. They wrestle over Kam’s weapon, and Thig makes Kam shoot himself in the torso. Torp comes into the room and hits Thig over the head with a gun.

Torp leaves Thig bleeding and alone in the laboratory. When he wakes up, he is injured, but he manages to grab a weapon. When Torp comes back in the room, he begins shrieking. Thig shoots the commander.

Thig finds Torp’s note that says that Earth holds some disease that causes insanity, and therefore it is not appropriate for colonization. He sets the spaceship for Ortha and takes an auxiliary ship back to Earth. Happiness overtakes him as he heads back to his new home. He has zero regrets about leaving Ortha forever. Thig now believes in God, and realizes that his duty is to take care of Terry’s family for the rest of his life. He thinks up a Western plot about a cowboy who visits another planet.

Answer:
Thig and two other Orthans, Torp and Kam, are traveling the galaxy looking for another planet that the Orthans can populate. When they reach Earth, Thig goes out to look for a human specimen that he can capture and take back to the space cruiser to drain the person’s memory and knowledge to help them determine whether Earth will be a suitable planet for Orthan colonization. Thig captures Lewis Terry, a fiction writer with writer’s block and taking the day off to go fishing. Terry bears an uncanny likeness to Thig, and Torp decides to transfer Terry’s knowledge to Thig and have Thig explore Earth to determine whether it will be appropriate for the Orthans. They make the transfer, but Terry dies. They perform plastic surgery to make Thig look even more like Terry; then Thig returns to Terry’s home.

Terry’s children and wife greet him, and Thig realizes he has a warm response to them even though Orthans have no emotions or sentimentality. When Terry’s wife, Ellen, tells him he received a check for $50 for one of her stories, Thig immediately comments that the story was worth $100—and is stunned to realize he is thinking like Terry, not himself. He shows Ellen the stones he dug up from an old wooden box that he remembered learning about in Terry’s childhood, and she exclaims they are worth a fortune and will finance a travel trailer and their trip out West.

After returning from their western trip, Thig realizes he needs to report back to Torp about whether Earth is an appropriate planet for the Orthans. He knows it is perfect and that the Orthans will destroy every Earth person, and he begins to wonder why they would have to destroy them. As he makes his way to the space cruiser, he comes up with a new Western story to write.

When Thig makes his report to Torp, Torp agrees that Earth is perfect for the Orthans and grows angry when Thig asks if they couldn’t just disarm the Earth people rather than destroying all of them. Torp orders Kam to check Thig’s blood for disease. The space cruiser blasts off, and Thig thinks about Ellen and her children with Lewis Terry and realizes he loves them and must protect them. He tells Torp and Kam to turn back—that there is a woman who needs him and the Horde from Ortha doesn’t need Earth. Thig fights and kills Kam, but Torp realizes what is happening and catches Thig off-guard. Torp beats Thig almost to death, and when Thig regains consciousness, he kills Torp and returns to Earth via a lifeboat. Thig decides that he must be Lewis Terry, not Thig, from now on, and he begins to develop another story about the old West.


Question: Who is Thig, a character from a story involving interplanetary conflict and emotional discovery, and what happens to him throughout the narrative?

Answer: Thig is the protagonist of the story, a native of the planet Ortha. He is described as shorter than an average human man (though tall for an Orthan man), and thick-bodied with well-developed muscles, average-to-large facial features, and reddish brown eyes. At the beginning of the story, he and two other Orthans, Kam and Torp, are on a mission to find planets considered viable for the Orthans to take over. Thig kidnaps a human man, Lewis Terry, and the Orthans transfer his memories to Thig and surgically alter him to look like Terry. Thig assumes his identity and joins his family posing as Terry. He begins to feel new sensations and emotions around Terry’s wife, Ellen, and their kids, and travels with them on a three-month vacation during which he learns what it feels like to be human and to care for a family. When they return and he must make his report to the other Orthans, he truthfully reports that Earth would be ideal to take over but has second thoughts when Torp says he’ll recommend that they conquer Earth and decimate the population. When his pleas to consider just disarming and exiling the humans are met with scorn, Thig becomes angry and ultimately realizes that he loves Ellen and wants to go back to save Earth. He kills both of his Orthan colleagues and sends the ship back toward Ortha as he takes an auxiliary ship back to Long Island. Along the way, he experiences many emotions including regret for his former callousness and taking Lewis Terry away from his family. Instead of the robotic being who initially exhibited coldness and indifference at the beginning of the story, he now experiences remorse and selflessness as he decides to give Ellen and the kids the life they deserve even though he’ll always know who he is and what he has done.

Answer: Thig is an Orthan from the planet Ortha, who visits Earth on a research mission with fellow Horde members Kam and Torp. Thig looks very similar to his research victim, a Western fiction writer named Lewis Terry, except he is a bit shorter, has a thick, muscular body, and has unusual reddish-brown hair on his head that matches his eyebrow hair. He wears no clothes, except some straps and pockets used for carrying his weapons and food; he is disturbed by Lew’s human clothes, which he considers impractical. Thig captures Lew and Kam and Torp help him transfer his memories, thoughts, and human emotions to better disguise himself as he researches Earth’s suitability for Horde habitation. Throughout the story, Thig struggles with processing his newly-acquired human emotions as they conflict with the mind programming of the Horde, which tells him that all of life is to be lived exclusively for the benefit and maintenance of the Horde. Thig goes on a three-month excursion with Lew’s family, during which time he falls in love with Ellen and discovers the beauty of Earth. He tries to convince Kam and Torp to abandon their mission, and when they try to test Thig for disease, he kills them both and returns to Earth to spend his existence as Lewis Terry.

Answer:
Thig is an Orthan who has spent his entire life devoted to the Horde. He has no family or friends, and he has never experienced love or real emotions. He is essentially part of an ant colony, and he spends every day working for the good of society and neglecting his own individuality.

Thig is sent to Earth to investigate whether the planet will be a good place to relocate the Orthans. He must find a human and kill him in order to take over his mind and body . Thig quickly finds his victim in Lewis Terry, chokes him, takes him back to the ship, and gains all of his knowledge and his appearance.
Thig is originally on Earth strictly for the mission, but once he joins Terry’s family, he immediately begins to have feelings for Terry’s wife, Ellen, and his three children. As Terry, Thig is affectionate, he takes part in real conversations, and he thinks about plots for Western novels.

He truly discovers the joy of living on Earth on his three month vacation with Terry’s family. They take in the landscape and enjoy their time together.

When he returns, he knows he has to tell Torp and Kam, two other Orthans on the mission, that Earth is a paradise and the other Orthans would love it. However, he wants nothing to do with the mass killing of humans. Although he originally follows through with his plan and returns to the spaceship, he almost immediately regrets his decision. He does not want to see Earth taken over by the Orthans. He finds the strength to fight off Kam and Torp and heads back to Earth, his new home.
Thig realizes that his entire outlook on life has changed, and he can’t go back to being a cog in a machine. He feels real guilt for killing Terry, and he knows the only way to make it up to him is to take care of Ellen and the children for the rest of his life. He will leave the Orthans to colonize another planet, but he feels positive that they will stay away from Earth when the spaceship with two dead bodies returns to his home planet with a note that says that Earth carries a deadly disease.

Answer: Thig is a man from Ortha who travels around the galaxy with two other men, looking for another planet that the Orthans can occupy. He lands on Earth and captures a human, Lewis Terry, to take to the space cruiser. Thig looks so much like the human that the Orthans decide to transfer the human’s knowledge and memories to Thig and let him explore the planet in the guise of the man. When Thig encounters the human’s family, he begins to have warm feelings for them, although all feelings and emotions have been removed from the Orthans for hundreds of thousands of years. After the family spends three months on a trip out West, Thig has changed. Instead of thinking only of the good of the Horde of Orthans, he now questions that single-minded devotion and considers the Orthans mindless bees who don’t know the pleasure of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions as the Earthmen do. When the family returns home from the trip out West, he reports what he has learned to Torp, who declares that the planet is suitable and the humans must be destroyed. Thig asks if the Orthans couldn’t just disarm the humans and exile them to a less desirable continent, and Torp thinks he must be sick and orders Kam to check Thig’s blood for disease. As they launch into space, Thig is overwhelmed with the desire to protect Ellen; he realizes he loves her. After defeating Kam and Torp and heading back to Earth, he realizes that he thinks like Lewis Terry and must BE Lewis Terry. His Orthan values and identity no longer matter.


Question: Describe the setting of the story involving an alien explorer and a struggling writer whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.

Answer: The story is set in multiple locations, including Long Island, New York, an Orthan spaceship and smaller auxiliary ship, parts of the American West, and outer space. The ship from Ortha lands on Long Island in New York, and this is where Thig captures Lewis Terry and takes him to the Orthans’ spaceship, before settling in with his family, posing as Terry. This area of Long Island is near the beach and the sound, and is described as lush and green. The Terry family lives in a small grey house that is somewhat run down. While we don’t travel out west on the Terry family vacation, we do experience bits of it in Thig’s memory, including the Grand Canyon in Arizona and unspecified desert terrain. The story then takes us back to the ship, and a small laboratory aboard the ship, and then inside a smaller ship as it heads back to Long Island.

Answer: Lew’s family lives near a beach on Long Island. When the story begins, Thig emerges from his spaceship, which is buried below this beach. He sees dense, green brush beyond the beach running along a highway with little traffic. This is where he chooses to hide and waits to overtake Lew. Thig’s interactions with Kam and Torp take place on the spaceship below the beach surface; this is also where they kill Lew during the brain transfer with Thig. Thig reunites as Lew with Ellen and their children at their beach home and joins them on an epic, three-month journey out West where he sees the Grand Canyon and is overwhelmed by the beauty of the desert with its sagebrush and cacti and variety of colors. Later, Torp charts a path back to Ortha, where they will report their findings. Thig kills Torp and Kam aboard the spaceship, and then he commandeers an escape vessel to make his way back to Earth and back to Ellen and the children.

Answer:
Most of the story, The Quest of Thig, takes place on Long Island. When Thig first appears on Earth, he is standing in the seaweed and sand, looking out at the Long Island Sound. There are trees and lots of greenery along the shoreline. He notes that this planet appears to be perfect for the Orthans because it has sunlight, lots of water, and a dense atmosphere.

Terry’s little gray house has a dilapidated front porch and a screen door. There is an old swing that creaks when it’s used. The family owns a gray car and a trailer.  Ellen makes simple meals for her family in their kitchen.
During the family’s trip out West, they visit the Grand Canyon where they see red dunes in the desert and sagebrush and cacti.

The other setting in the story is the Orthans’ spaceship. When Thig takes Terry’s body back to his spaceship to take over his body and mind, there are two parallel metal tables in the operation room. Both Thig and Terry’s body wear helmets to transfer the information from one to the other. Later in the story, Thig is taken to the laboratory on the ship to get his blood checked for a disease. The lab is neatly set up with instruments hanging from the wall and weapons hanging from the ceiling. There is also a control room on board. The space ship also has six auxiliary miniature spaceships nested inside the larger vessel.

Answer:
There are three settings in the story, two of which are present in the story and the third is remembered. The first setting is the space cruiser that brings the Orthans to Earth. The space cruiser lands on a beach across the Sound from Connecticut. It is buried in the sand to prevent it from being seen by the Earthmen. It contains a laboratory with instruments and gauges that enable the Orthans to capture the memories and knowledge of another species. It is also outfitted with their decomposition blasters that reduce living organisms to flaky ashes. There is also a control room where Torp guides the space cruiser on its travels through the galaxy and keeps the ship’s log detailing its journeys and findings. Wastes are disposed of with a refuse lock. The ship carries auxiliary lifeboats, which are basically miniatures of the larger ship, for emergencies.

The setting on Earth is based in Connecticut where the space cruiser lands on a beach. There is sand at the beach, trees and shrubs, highways, and other manmade features. It also features Lewis Terry’s cottage where he lives with his family. It is a weathered small gray house with sagging boards, a front porch, and a porch swing. When the family visits the West, they stop at the Grand Canyon, and Thig is breathless when he sees its beauty. He also notes the sun-painted red peaks in the desert and beautiful starry nights.

Thig remembers Ortha as dull, gray, and black and associates it with a monotonous routine.


Question: How do the ways of Ortha differ from those that Thig discovers while navigating life on a seemingly idyllic Earth?

Answer: The society on Ortha has discarded what they consider to be primal or barbaric tendencies and customs. Their children are raised in laboratories never knowing their parents and are not shown love or affection. They are taught to value loyalty to the Orthan “Hordes” over everything, and to believe that they are entitled to anything in the universe that they desire, with no regard to those outside the Hordes. They don’t have mates or have sex, though they do walk around naked. Free thought and primal urges are discouraged, and Orthan society has attempted to filter out any behavior they consider to be barbaric in favor of a robotic, obedient populace. By contrast, Thig discovers that humans feel the full gamut of emotions, think for themselves, and feel empathy rather than the dispassionate callousness Ortha demands.

Answer: The Orthans are a race totally committed to the advancement of the Horde, which travels around the universe seeking to find new planets to overthrow and inhabit. Over the years, their minds have been programmed to think only of the good of the Horde, with no thought to sentimental emotions or feelings. When Thig receives Lewis Terry’s mind, he also receives his mentality, his thoughts, his memories, and his emotions. He experiences for the first time how humans feel. He describes the warmth of hugging Lew’s children, and the choking-warm sensation of kissing his wife, Ellen. He feels awe when standing before the Grand Canyon and learns to feel excitement about the unpredictability of human behavior and emotion. He feels love, hate, and sadness. All of these emotions stand in stark contrast to the Orthan way of life, which is carefully regimented and devoid of any of these kinds of feelings.

Answer:
On Ortha, the aliens are raised in the laboratories of their Horde. The Orthans function in a collective society. They do not believe in the individual. There are no families, no romantic relationships or sex, and no friends. Everything that is done must be done for the greater society, much like an ant farm. The Orthans are looking for a new planet to colonize, and they send out Torp, Kam, and Thig on the mission.

Orthans are incapable of feeling emotions and all of their primitive impulses have been done away with. The aliens are part of a strict caste system where they are only allowed to have certain thoughts according to their position in the Horde. They have acted this way for over one hundred thousand years.

Orthans believe they are superior to Earthmen, whom they see as feeble and weak. They believe they have the right to take whatever planet is best for them, and killing billions of Earthmen means nothing to them.

Answer:
On Ortha, men are loyal to the Horde, and that is all they care about. They are cultured and brought to life in laboratories, so there are no fathers or mothers and no affection and love. From childhood on, males and females in Ortha are taught that the only important thing is the growth and power of the Horde. Men and women have no feelings outside of their devotion to the Horde. Men have no mates and children, which prevents Thig from first understanding the warm feeling that sweeps over him when Lewis Terry’s children greet him and Ellen kisses him on the first night he goes to their home. On Ortha, men have no independent ideas or interests; everything they think and do is to maintain the Horde. For this reason, their civilization has remained static for a hundred thousand years.

On Earth, men and women love each other and marry and have children. Men are focused on the well-being of their families and their own lives rather than on the well-being of their population as a whole. Earthmen have independent thoughts and make their own decisions. People are unpredictable, and uncertainty adds interest to everyday life.


Question: Who is Ellen and how does she influence Thig and the decisions he makes throughout the story?

Answer: Ellen is the wife of Lewis Terry, and she is described as slender with red hair. When Thig assumes Terry’s identity, some of the first sensations he experiences result from Ellen kissing him. On their travels throughout the American West, Thig bonds with her and with her children. He learns to understand new experiences and emotions throughout his time with Ellen, and he observes that she seems to know how he’s feeling without him telling her. When Thig ultimately realizes that he wants to go back to Earth, it is because he loves Ellen and wants to save her and humanity. It is Ellen he thinks about as he returns to Earth and feels the sting of regret that he killed her husband, and decides to spend the rest of her life making it up to her.

Answer: Ellen is Lewis Terry’s wife, whom Thig meets after receiving Lew’s memories, thoughts, and emotions. From the moment he feels Ellen’s embrace and her kiss, he experiences emotions he has never felt before. He travels with her and the children out West, where she demonstrates the feeling of breathless wonder at the beauty of nature when they visit the Grand Canyon. He feels love for Ellen, and that feeling changes everything Thig thought he knew. When he returns to the ship after spending three months with Ellen, he feels the strong urge to return to her and spend the rest of his life with her. He abandons the call of the Horde and completely rejects his old way of living. He would rather spend his life feeling things that are new and with purpose as opposed to the pointless conquering of his old life.

Answer:
Ellen is Lewis Terry’s red-headed wife, and she has a major impact on Thig and his way of thinking. In the beginning, Thig is only interested in finding a new home for his people, the Orthans. However, from their first hug alone, Thig begins to have feelings for Ellen. He likes the way that she offers him food and coffee and knows when something is bothering him. He is pleased with her excitement when he shows her the treasure he found at the beach. Thig loves spending the three months with Ellen and her children in their trailer exploring the West. She appreciates the beautiful landscape of the Grand Canyon, but she also acknowledges that there isn’t anything more beautiful in the world than their little piece of land and sky at home.

Thig realizes he has to kill Kam and Torp, his fellow Orthans, when he can’t stand the thought of leaving Ellen behind for good. He has experienced love and fun and curiosity with her, and he can’t go back to his old life as a member of the Horde. He loves Ellen, and he is willing to risk it all to be with her and take care of her, especially because he is the reason she is alone without a partner to look out for her.

Answer: Ellen is Lewis Terry’s wife who unknowingly makes Thig fall in love. Ellen is a supportive wife who celebrates her husband’s accomplishments when he sells a story. She is excited when Thig shows her the gems they can use to finance their trip out West. Ellen thinks of her husband’s needs, and rather than fussing at him when he comes home late, she asks where he has been but immediately shifts to caring for his needs. Thig enjoys sharing the beautiful views of the West with Ellen, and he likes matching wits with her. From her, he learns what he and other Orthans are missing by not having meaningful relationships with members of the opposite sex. Thig is touched by her sensitivity to his moods and her understanding when something is troubling him. When Torp announces that Earth is a perfect planet for the Orthans to take over, Thig knows this means they will kill all the humans. He thinks of Ellen as helpless and alone and cannot bear to be separated from her; he wants to return to her and protect her. He realizes he loves her and that he will sacrifice his Orthan identity to be with her and support her dreams and happiness.


Question: What is the plot of the story involving two con-men navigating a tricky situation in a spaceport filled with peculiar characters and unexpected challenges?

Answer:
Joe and Harvey land on Planetoid 42 and enter a bar. They see Genius, an incredible looking creature with six limbs, and immediately become interested in him. They tell the bartender, Johnson, that they’re very thirsty, so he sells them each eight glasses of water, and they guzzle them down. Harvey and Joe are horrified to find out that the water is highly expensive. Johnson explains that the water must be purified. When the pair leaves, they find a pipe in a small pond and realize that Johnson has undoubtedly swindled them. The sweet water is readily available and it is transported directly to the saloon via this pipe.

Harvey and Joe head back to the bar. Joe comes down with a sudden illness, and it’s clear that this is a con the men use all the time. Johnson recognizes that Joe has asteroid fever and becomes frightened. Harvey explains that the only medication that will provide an instant cure is the one they happen to be selling: La-anago Yergis.

Joe is instantly cured once Harvey pours the special liquid into his mouth. Johnson is flabbergasted and wants to purchase an entire case. While in the privacy of their ship, Joe and Harvey discuss their joint desire to purchase Genius. They believe they could make a fortune off of him if they featured him in an exhibit.

Johnson accepts the fake solution and informs Harvey and Joe that his restaurant is open. After looking at the menu, the men are astounded at the low prices. However, they soon find out that they have been taken advantage of when they receive a bill for a very large sum of money. They learn that the fine print they missed on the menu explains the charge. When Joe tells Johnson they won’t pay the bill, Johnson reminds them that he is in fact the Sheriff as well as the saloon owner and the mayor.

Harvey requests to purchase Genius, and Johnson agrees. In a last ditch effort to recoup some more money, Harvey brings up an invention they have on their ship that Johnson must see. Joe brings back a radio that was supposedly created by a famous doctor. It is special because it broadcasts from the fourth dimension. They convince Johnson that he is the perfect person to make sense of the garbled transmissions. Johnson pays extra for the special batteries it takes.

Just as Harvey and Joe make it back to the ship with Genius, the creature informs them that he cannot leave the planet because another planet’s pressure would squish him to death. And yes, he admits, Johnson was fully aware of this fact when he sold him.

When Harvey does the math involved in the various exchanges of goods, he realizes that after all that time and the several cons they engaged in, he and Joe made a measly four cents. The men take off on their ship and head to Mars.

Answer: Harvey and Joe are interplanetary conmen. They sell fraudulent snake-oil to unsuspecting marks. They arrive on Planetoid 42, a nearly uninhabited asteroid, with a desperate need for water. They come upon the only habitation on the planet and receive water that they are grossly overcharged for. They deal with Johnson, the lone authority on the planet, who is a grifter himself. They duo and Johnson proceed to swindle each other out of money using various schemes and deceptions. As they leave the planet Harvey and Joe realize that they have broke completely even, losing as much money as they gained.

Answer:
Harvey Ellswroth and Joe Mallon land on this Planetoid 42 in search of water. These solar salesmen travel the galaxy selling their miraculous elixir, which isn’t so miraculous after all. They find water and are served by Johnson, the barmen, sheriff, and general chief of the land. After drinking eight glasses, their thirst is quenched and they’re ready to pay. At the sight of the large check, they are rightfully appalled, until Johnson explains the reason behind it. The water on this planet is so bitter that it must undergo a rigorous purification process to make it drinkable. Harvey and Joe believe him and pay their sum. They ask if they can fill up the water tank for their spaceship as well, and Johnson points them to the pond. The water there is bitter, but they haul it back and forth. Joe notices a reflection not too far from them and discovers another pond with sweet drinkable water. They realize that they’ve been conned by Johnson.
They rush back to the bar to confront him when they meet his son, Jed. Jed is huge, and Harvey and Joe abandon their plan. Quickly, Harvey changes course and asks Jed if he’s feeling ill. Jed feigns illness and collapses, while Johnson assumes it’s the notorious asteroid fever. Harvey rushes to the ship to grab their miraculous cure and forces Joe to drink it. He rises, convincing Johnson of its powers. Johnson quickly asks to buy cases of it, and Harvey agrees, supplying it at a great price. The men run back to the ship to prepare the vials. Harvey is supplementing them with the bitter water, so they save more snake oil.
Johnson invites them to eat at his restaurant when they return with the medicine. He cons them yet again here by including a hefty fee at the bottom of the paycheck for the entertainment that Genius provided.
Harvey and Joe still decide to barter further and arrange a monetary transaction in exchange for Genius. Johnson agrees though he admits he will miss him. At this, Harvey decides on one last con and sends Joe to pick up their most prized possession. A radio that can reach the fourth dimension. Johnson buys into it and sits down to attempt to translate garbled English. Harvey, Joe, and Genius leave quickly before Johnson realizes the radio is nothing more than tomfoolery.
However, the last con is played on Harvey and Joe, as Genius reveals he is unable to leave this planet due to atmospheric pressure differences. Harvey and Joe leave him behind.
They count their money and realize they haven’t made any real profit.

Answer: Harvey Ellsworth and Joe Mallon have landed on Planetoid 42, somewhere between Mars and Ganymede, out of water and in need of supplies. They find a saloon manned by a six-armed life-form and a bartender named Johnson. Harvey and Joe ask for water, which they get, but are charged forty buckos, presumably because there is a high price to get water filtered in this area. The men are astounded but Harvey tries to be understanding of the unusual situation, and pays Johnson the money he asks for. It turns out that Johnson is not just the bartender, but also the mayor, among other jobs. He works out a deal for the men to fill their tanks with purified water, claims to give them a bargain price, and sends his assistant out to the pumps to help the men. Although purified water is expensive, unpurified water used as battery fluid is free, and Johnson points the men to the body of water where they can find what they need. As Joe and Harvey are collecting battery water, they find pipes that carry purified water to the saloon from a clean pool—Johnson had lied about the purification system, and thus charged them way more than the water was worth (twice), so Harvey decides they need revenge. Joe pretends to get asteroid fever, which terrifies Johnson, and Harvey concocts a fake medicine using some of the bitter water to convince Johnson to buy a case from him. The back-and-forth of cons continues: Johnson lures them into a meal with inexpensive food but an expensive hidden surcharge for service and entertainment. Then, Harvey “convinces” Johnson to sell him Genius, his assistant, and Joe and Harvey convince Johnson to buy a radio that they inserted a scrambler into, claiming it had hidden knowledge from the fourth dimension. This whole time, Johnson acts as though he doesn’t have any interest in things he wants to buy, for as long as he can maintain that appearance. However, Joe and Harvey will often get him interested by the end, with Johnson becoming upset when he can’t have what he wants. In the end, it turns out Genius can’t actually leave Planetoid 42, because he would be crushed by a larger planet’s gravity, and Joe and Harvey leave somewhat dejected, hoping that they managed to make some amount of money from the whole ordeal. It turns out they broke exactly even, so they had a good laugh of frustration and went on to Mars to try another plan.


Question: Describe the relationship between Harvey and Joe in a story about two con-men navigating a tricky situation in a spaceport.

Answer:
Harvey and Joe are business partners and conmen. Although they are both important players in their various ruses, Harvey is definitely the brains behind the operation. Joe is willing to listen to Harvey’s instructions and play along in order to get money out of their victims. However, he is also a bit more hot-headed than his partner, and it’s up to Harvey to calm Joe down when he gets flustered because they are taken advantage of. When Joe finds out about the sweet water that Johnson lied about, he is instantly irate. Later, when Johnson tricks them into ordering loads of food at his restaurant, Joe is furious and threatens not to pay the bill. In both instances, Harvey recognizes that the pair was fooled fair and square and all they can do is accept the loss.

It is obvious that the two have been working together for a long time because they are able to communicate using very few words and gestures. They both know their playbook of tricks, and it is easy for each of the men to tip the other off to their thoughts. After meeting Genius, Harvey and Joe immediately agree that they should try and acquire the creature. Both men are money-minded and they see dollar signs when they lay their eyes on an alien as peculiar as him. When the duo wants to sell their medicine, Joe pretends to come down with symptoms of asteroid fever, and Harvey doesn’t miss a beat. Within moments he asks Joe if he’s feeling okay and goes to fetch the fake panacea that they peddle.

Answer: Harvey and Joe are conmen and partners. They work together to deceive and swindle people out of their money using various schemes. Harvey is a fast-talker and smooth operator. Joe is more emotionally charged and tends to complain to Harvey often about the state of affairs they find themselves in. Joe often questions Harvey's approach but falls in line in order to execute his plan.  Even though they work well together, they also fall prey to the deceptions that are set up by Johnson.

Answer:
Harvey and Joe are colleagues and friends. They work together as solar salesmen, who con people by selling them their fake cure for all ailments. Their experience together makes them very effective conmen.
	It’s clear through their rapport and previously devised tricks that they have been working together for a long time. When Joe feigned being sick to sell the medicine, Harvey guided Johnson along with them and convinced him entirely of the medicine’s success.

Answer: Harvey Ellsworth and Joe Mallon have very complementary personalities: when we meet them, they show us that Harvey is the levelheaded one who tries to see the best in people, but Joe is much more reactive and has less of a performative air to his demeanor. They know each other quite well, enough that they are able to communicate with each other discreetly to give each other direction while trying to run a con. Harvey is the one who holds on to hope in an interesting sense: he is able to take previous experiences to formulate plans for current predicaments, in a way that means he is not easily rattled. This presents itself in Harvey acting as sort of a leader of the duo, and Harvey comes up with plans and directs Joe as needed. Harvey steers a lot of the conversations they have with others, and when it’s just the two of them, Harry spends a lot of time scolding Joe for his attitude. Even though Harvey tries to see the best in Johnson at the beginning of the story, he eventually agrees with Joe’s anger once they realize that Johnson did not need to purify the water that he had sold them. However, whereas Joe was angry at the treatment they were receiving, Harvey more directly wanted revenge. In the end, when they leave Planetoid 42, we see them connect about their history again, excited to run another con together.