Question: What is the significance of Genius in a story about two con-men who encounter a peculiar creature while trying to survive in a harsh environment?

Answer:
Genius is an important character because he is used to illustrate just how brilliant Johnson is. The man is clearly intelligent because he has positioned himself as the sheriff, the barman, and the mayor of Planetoid 42. He also makes money by fooling gullible outsiders into paying high prices for water and food. However, his idea to sell Genius over and over again is perhaps the most shrewd. His asking price for the remarkable creature is in the 600s, much more than he’s able to charge for water or dishes at his restaurant. Johnson pretends that he’s attached to Genius and would hate to see him go, yet he cannot turn down the incredible sum of money.

Each time Genius is sold to naive buyers, he ends up making his way right back to Johnson’s bar, and Johnson profits all of the money. Genius cannot leave the planet because the pressure in other habitats is too much for his unique body to handle. If one of the buyers insisted on bringing him aboard their ship, he would turn up dead and useless to them anyway. Therefore, they always send the poor creature back to Johnson and lose out on their plans to make loads of money off of him.

Answer: Genius is an alien being with 6 arms. He serves Johnson on Planetoid 42 as an all-around servant. He is coveted by and eventually purchased by Harvey and Joe to be exploited for profit off world. Unfortunately for the pair, after his purchase Genius explains that he cannot leave the planet because the higher atmospheric pressure of an off world environment would kill him. Johnson continually "sells" genius to unsuspecting visitors to the planet as a source of income only to have him return.

Answer:
Genius is the many-armed native that works for Johnson and his son. His 30 fingers and dexterous abilities make him a hot commodity to Harvey and Joe. After they watch him bartend, using some hands to pour glasses, other to sweep the floor, and even more to complete other duties, they start brainstorming all the ways he could be helpful onboard their ship. Or, on the other hand, how much they could get for him once he’s sold.
Eventually, Harvey and Joe decide to make an offer on Genius. Johnson sells his worker for a little over half a thousand buckos. Despite selling him to Harvey and Joe, Johnson forgot to include one minute detail. Genius is unable to leave their small planet, due to the gravity he grew up on. Any bigger atmospheric pressure would crush him.
Genius is yet another example of the many cons Johnson pulled on Harvey and Joe.

Answer: The character of Genius acts as a symbol of the things that visitors do not understand about Planetoid 42, and how Johnson uses this to his advantage when he tries to make money off of visitors. When humans first encounter him, Genius seems like an incredible and one-of-a-kind creature who fascinates the visitors, sometimes prompting them to want to take him to zoo. Johnson uses this to his advantage to set a trap, and allows visitors to buy Genius off of him before they realize that Genius can’t actually leave the planetoid. Not only does he look interesting, but he is also very talented and uses his six hands to accomplish many tasks at once. He is able to carry boxes while cleaning, and makes for an incredible waiter as he is able to play instruments while serving food. Johnson has to rely on the idea that the visitors will not think about Genius’ inability to adapt to other planets’ environments, and focus only on his uniqueness. Genius also represents how Johnson leaves out small pieces of information in strategic places. For instance, there is no reason to assume that Genius is able to speak based on the majority of the story, but once he arrived at Joe and Harvey’s ship he explains to them that he cannot go with them. It seems he is a piece of Johnson’s plot, as his assistant, as opposed to being more of an independent character who makes his own decisions, but there is not enough information to say for sure.


Question: How does Johnson demonstrate that he's a formidable opponent to the slick con-men, Joe and Harvey, in their dealings on a distant planetoid?

Answer:
Joe and Harvey are professional conmen, so they are quite good at swindling innocent victims. They make their money by peddling a fake panacea called La-anago Yergis. The men regularly partake in an act where Joe falls ill and Harvey has to come to his rescue with the extract. Although Johnson falls for this trick and purchases an entire case of the medicine, he also does a great job of getting Harvey and Joe back. At the end of the story, the opposing sides come out basically even in terms of financial gains.

Johnson first demonstrates that he can take advantage of Harvey and Joe when he gives them each eight glasses of water before letting them know that he charges a lot for each glass. The men say they’re thirsty, so he is happy to give them as much as they’d like to drink. Although Johnson says that the water costs so much because it must be specially purified, the truth is that he has access to an entire body of water and there really isn’t any reason to charge so much.

Later, Johnson convinces Harvey and Joe that they’re hungry enough to sit down at his restaurant even though neither one had even mentioned food. He allows them to order their food and believe that they’re getting an incredible deal until he tells them about the fine print on the menu. Harvey and Joe are forced to fork over hundreds of dollars for their meal, and when they threaten to walk out, Johnson reminds them that he is the sheriff on Planetoid 42, and he has the power to arrest them.

Answer: Johnson has a number of schemes that he uses to swindle Harvey and Joe. He initially charges them for water that he claims is expensively purified when in fact it is naturally drinkable. He overcharges them for a meal using a menu with ludicrously fine print. Finally he sells them Genius even though they can't take him off world. In the end Johnson proves that he is just a good a grifter as Harvey and Joe because he manages to extract exactly as much money out of the pair as they do out of him.

Answer:
Joe and Harvey arrive on this planet in need of water for their ship and in the hopes that they will be able to make a profit off of it. From the get-go, we know that these men are scheming cons, but Johnson is the first to make a move. He cons them into paying more for the water than was necessary and from there the battle only grows.
With every con Joe and Harvey pull, Johnson is right back with them. Although they may stump him in the end with the ingenious radio that picks up the fourth dimension, he got the last laugh what with Genius being unable to leave.
As well, when Joe and Harvey count their money in the end, they realize they’re leaving with the same amount they arrived with. Johnson was not only a formidable foe but possibly their equal in terms of scheming qualities.

Answer: Throughout the story, the two groups of people (Joe and Harvey, the travelers, and Johnson and Genius, the locals) are constantly trying to trick one another in ways that the others do not see coming. Joe and Harvey think that they are excellent conmen; they say they are salesman who are traveling, but show throughout the story that they are the type to find the best deal for themselves in any way possible. Johnson, the man who runs the bar and the legal system on Planetoid 42, is ready to rise to the occasion. In fact, at the end of the story, they break even and neither side has actually gained any money. Whenever Joe and Harvey are trying to pull one of their scams, Johnson maintains an uninterested air and tries to not give away any interest in anything the visitors may have to sell him. He always acts as if he needs to be convinced by something, and does not let on what he is trying to pull something over on Joe and Harvey. He also finds very sneaky ways of getting money from them, playing on the visitors’ limited knowledge of the planetoid and its environment. This is how he originally sells them on the idea that he has to charge for water, but it is not his only tactic. He presents them with a menu that has very inexpensive prices for food, but does not mention the extremely small print on the bottom of the menu that shows an exorbitant service charge for the entertainment. These types of ploys have something in common: he tries to set up a situation to make it look very normal for his environment on the planetoid, but hides the information necessary for visitors to make an informed decision. This includes selling Genius near the end of the story, which is a con he has apparently run many times. Because he expects visitors to not think about the biology of the creatures who live on the planetoid, he is able to sell the flashy exterior, in this case his assistant’s capabilities, while there is always a hidden piece of information underneath.


Question: Describe the setting of the story, which involves two con-men navigating a peculiar spaceport and encountering unexpected challenges in their quest for resources.

Answer:
Planetoid 42 is a place without much to offer besides a port. It is heavily polluted, covered in plants that are similar to vines, and boasts only one saloon. It is home to only two humans, Johnson and his son Jeb, and Genius, a fantastic creature with six limbs that is unlike anything Joe and Harvey have ever seen before. The planet has gravity, which made it possible for Jed to grow to eight feet tall. Genius is also able to thrive on Planetoid 42 while he would perish on other planets with more gravity.

Although Johnson says that the water must be purified so it doesn’t taste bitter, the truth is that there’s a large pool with sweet water on the planet. Johnson insists that he has to charge a lot of money for water in part because he has very few customers. The planet is mostly deserted and people only show up to his bar if they’re in trouble.Johnson makes the rules because he is in charge of everything. He is the sheriff, fire chief, mayor, justice of the peace, and restaurateur.

Answer:
The story is set on Planetoid 42. It is a small and extremely sparsely populated asteroid. It has nearly no infrastructure. Most of the narrative takes place in the spaceport/saloon/restaurant operated by Johnson. The world is technologically simple and has very few resources.

The story takes place in an unspecified future where space travel is commonplace and alien races have been discovered. Joe and Harvey remark that they have traveled from planet to planet and seen numerous strange life forms.

Answer:
Grifter’s Asteroid by H.L. Gold takes place on a small planetoid somewhere in the universe. Because of its small size, there are only two Earthmen on it, Johnson and his large son. There are the Native peoples as well, one of which is Genius, Johnson’s employee.
This small planet does not have many resources to its name. Due to its small size and remote location, there are no radios or satellites that Johnson can use to catch up on political battles or other earthly drama.
There are two water sources, one which is bitter and must be purified to drink, and the other which is sweet and fresh.
There’s no mechanic or any other repairman on this planet. Even the spaceport is nothing more than a small stretch of land. This planet has a similar feel to that of a Midwestern rural town.

Answer: The story takes place on Planetoid 42, a small and mostly deserted location that lies somewhere between Mars and Ganymede. Because it is small, the gravitational pull is much lower than the larger planets that humans are used to. It is not very well developed in the sense of infrastructure, and there are not many buildings—in fact, only two humans live there, Johnson and his son, although Genius grew up on the planetoid. The saloon is where we encounter our protagonists for the first time, and it is located on a poorly kept stretch of land covered in trash. Outside of the saloon are the water tanks where Johnson keeps his filtered water to sell the people passing through. There are at least two bodies of water outside, one with bitter water that is used for battery fluid, and one that has clean water that Johnson keeps a secret. These locations are connected through sets of pipes that allow Johnson to keep his freshwater tanks full. Most of the story takes place inside the saloon itself. It is at the bar where Joe and Harvey found water to drink at the beginning of the story, this is the bar that Joe lies on when he pretends to have asteroid fever, and this was the area that served as the restaurant where they ate. A few scenes take place inside of Joe and Harvey’s ship, as they eventually leave Planetoid 42, but also when Harvey pulled the medicine con.


Question: What is the plot of the story that involves a crew's exploration of a unique world with curious inhabitants and their philosophical encounters?

Answer:
The story describes the crew of a probe spaceship as it investigates an extraterrestrial world. The crew is made up of Stark, Gilbert, Steiner, Langweilig, Craig, and Briton—the captain, executive officer, crewmember, engineer, part-owner of the probe, and a Catholic priest respectively.
From orbit, the crew scans the moon using various technological instruments. They discover abundant highly developed life forms including a small location of sentient life, possibly of extraordinary magnitude.

They descend to the moon’s surface near the location of the sentient life. They discover a multitude of plants and animals that are found on Earth, also finding two individuals that appear to be human, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah.

Their investigation of the surroundings bears a startling resemblance to the biblical story of Genesis. The crew is bewildered to consider that this may indeed be a new Garden of Eden which never fell into sin and was preserved as a perfect paradise.

After remaining for a few days, the crew returns to their probe. They remark how immoral it would be to meddle such an unspoiled paradise, but nevertheless begin the process of advertising the world to potential colonizers who would indeed exploit the moon for profit.

Surprisingly, it is revealed that back on the planet that the individuals that were merely posing as Ha-Adamah and Hawwah working with their boss, Snake-oil Sam, to deceive potential colonists, ambushing them upon arrival and confiscating their valuable supplies and equipment.

Back on the probe Father Briton chides the rest of the crew that they had been taken in by an obvious ruse and to inform any potential colonists to prepare for armed resistance. The incredulous crew demands to know the reasoning behind his conclusion.  He casually says that besides what he contended were glaring inaccuracies, the fact that Ha-Adamah refused to play him in checkers despite claiming to have a preternaturally perfect intellect was all the proof he needed.

Answer:
Steiner uses several tools to determine if there is any life on a little moon that his craft hovers over. After getting some positive feedback, Steiner agrees to scan the rest of the world while his colleagues get some rest. The findings are good, so the crew decides to land.

A man introduces himself as Ha-Adamah (Adam) and his female partner is named Hawwah (Eve). The man explains that he is able to speak whatever language his listener needs to hear in order to understand, and this includes animals like eagles and squirrels.

Stark then asks the mostly naked man if there are other humans on the moon. Adam says there cannot be more than one of anything. He then names each member of the crew something different and explains that they cannot be people because the man and woman themselves are people.

The crew members consume fruit from the garden and are incredibly surprised at their quality. The produce tastes better than anything they have ever eaten on earth. They begin to make the connections between this place and the Garden of Eden, and they wonder if they are dreaming. The man tells Langweilig he is not allowed to eat from the pomegranate tree, and the priest explains that in other languages, it is not the apple that is forbidden in the Garden of Eden, but the pomegranate.

The crew members continue to silently make comparisons to the Biblical story. Adam tells the men that he has heard about another world in which the people have fallen. He also explains that he has a preternatural intellect. In order to check his claims, the priest asks Adam to play checkers, but he refuses.

The crew members learn about the large serpent that lives in a nearby cave. Adam claims that if evil is to come to him, it will happen via the serpent.

After leaving on their ship, all of the crew members are convinced that they have found an actual paradise, a place that has yet to be touched and has not yet fallen. They are eager to take advantage of the land’s resources and exploit the perfect conditions by selling off the land to settlers.

The only person who disagrees that this Garden of Eden is real is the priest. He points out several inconsistencies and argues that Adam refused to play checkers because in reality he could not win. His skepticism convinces his colleagues that their shared experience was in fact fake.

Meanwhile, Adam and Eve take off their costumes and the paint on their bodies that causes them to glow. Snake-Oil Sam comes out of his cave and the trio begins to prepare for the return of the settlers. They have done this many times before, and each time they fool a group of people, those settlers come back and Snake-Oil Sam takes everything they have and stockpiles it for himself. His motivation is to gain enough equipment and goods to start his own civilization there.

Answer: A crew of humans in a spaceship encounter a small moon that has a promising amount of life that they wish to investigate. The crew of the Little Probe is made up of a typical captain, engineer, and executive officer, but also includes a tycoon and a priest, among others. Stark, the captain, orders his man Steiner to continue running scans overnight so that the crew can land on the moon the next day. When they approach the surface, they recognize various animals that look familiar from life on Earth, including sheep and lions, but there is a bright light they don’t understand the source of. Briton, the priest, is also a linguist so he approaches the two people that they find, and is surprised when he is easily understood. The man, Ha Adamah, speaks English perfectly, and says it is due to a special character of his own language that anyone can understand him. The woman on the surface, Hawwah, does not speak while the crew is there. These two are the only humanoids that the crew notices, and they find that the bright light seems to be coming from the people themselves. The main features on the surface are a large garden and a fountain, and the crew is struck by the resemblance to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. They test the boundaries of the similarities by asking to eat apples, which they are told is fine, but then find that pomegranates are not allowed to be consumed. This does not discount the similarity, as some versions of the story say that pomegranates were the forbidden fruit, and the crew is even more baffled when they hear that there is a serpent there that is the source of evil: they do not meet him, as he is in a cave. After three days on the surface, with Father Briton asking questions all the while, the crew goes back to the Little Prob where they discuss what they had witnessed. Stark was astounded at the purity of the world, and thought it needed to be protected, as did Steiner. Craig, the tycoon who owns 51% of the probe, admitted it was beautiful and would be terrible to ruin, but immediately works on dictating a message to Gilbert, the executive officer, advertising the moon to those who might want to buy or lease land there. On the surface, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah are meeting with the Old Serpent—it turns out that the entire situation was a ploy to draw the humans in, and they regularly kill incoming settlers to take their supplies. Father Briton is the only one who is suspicious, and convinces the rest of the crew that they have to doubt what they had just experienced—besides flaws in logic, he was surprised that his offer of a checkers game had been denied, as it would have been a chance for Ha-Adamah to show off.

Answer:
	A crew of six find themselves in outer space, searching for their next mission. Steiner, one man on board, uses a machine to read the planet below, searching for life. The reader comes back positive, so they move on to the next test. The eppel reports an orange light, meaning the possibility of something extraordinary, but perhaps not.The eppel (the Extraordinary Perception Locator) was created with the intention to find the most extraordinary people, brains, or trains of thought.
	Stark, the captain, takes charge and demands they scan the rest of the planet for traces of infrastructure. He sends the rest of the crew to bed, and when they wake up the next morning, the report is back. Negative. They target the possibility of something extraordinary, as reported by the eppel, and make their way to the surface.
	As they land, they take note of their surroundings. No shelters, buildings, or lean-tos. Just land with a lion and a lamb. They spot two people, neither naked nor clothed but bathed in light, and ask Father Briton, the Jesuit priest and resident linguist, to communicate with them.
	He approaches them, talking in English, and the man, Ha-Adamah, replies. He introduces himself and the woman, named Hawwah. Father Briton asks him a few questions about their surroundings and names, and the Man responds with convoluted answers. He points the crew towards the fountain, so they may quench their thirst. Although hesitant at first, the men soon realize this water is the best they’ve ever had: the freshest, bubbliest, and clearest. Their suspicions about this place and the Man and Woman only grow.
	The Captain attempts to question Ha-Adamah, and his answers confirm their suspicions. This place might be Paradise or Eden, the place where humanity was born and disgraced. Ha-Adamah welcomes them and offers the fruit on the trees to eat, except for the pomegranates. Ha-Adamah reveals that he is happy here, but that he has been warned that he may lose this happiness and lead the rest of his life desperately trying to find it again. The Man also shies away from the cave where he says the great and evil serpent lives. The crew, now convinced, leave this land and call it in. Selling it as paradise perfect for ranching, farming, camping, or other industrial uses, they plot their return with settlers to take over the land. Only Father Briton believes paradise is not paradise at all, simply a trick.
	The story flashes back to the surface, where Hawwah and Ha-Adamah are huddling with the Serpent, Snake-Oil Sam. It is revealed that they pretend to be Adam and Eve to draw in settlers, only to steal their equipment and kill them. The Serpent congratulates them on their work, but reminds them that more is to be done in order to farm this new world and get all the equipment they need.
	On the spaceship, Father Briton asks for an armed escort to accompany them. The others laugh him off.


Question: Describe the characters in this tale of exploration and their interactions as they encounter a unique and isolated world.

Answer:
There are two main groups of characters: the crew of the Little Probe and the inhabitants of the “Garden” world.

The crew of the Little Probe consist of Stark, the captain; Gilbert, the executive officer; Steiner, a generall crewmember “flunky”; Langweilig, the engineer; Craig, a businessman and part-owner of the ship; and Fr. Briton, priest, linguist, and checkers afficionado. Stark is the leader of the group, commanding the others to their various tasks. Craig is shown to be a shrewd entrepreneur who is most intent on reaping potential profit from the situation they find themselves in.

On the moon lives Ha-Adamah and Hawwah who present themselves as archetypes of the biblical Adam and Eve. In reality, they are settlers, attempting to gather supplies to farm this world by stealing supplies from other settlers that they entice to world and then ambush. They are commanded by Snake-Oil Sam, a cynical, former showbusiness professional who runs the con.

The two groups interact when the crew descends to the surface of the moon. Ha-Adamah describes his environment in casual but bewildering terms to his visitors. Briton, as a Catholic priest, is designated by the crew to be Ha-Adamah’s main interlocutor. Hawwah, notedly does not speak at all—a flourish to attempt to further depict the attractiveness of the world to their all-male visitors. The crew beside Briton are enamored by the environment of the moon and are totally taken in by the performance of their hosts. The story concludes with Briton chiding his crewmates for their gullibility. Although Briton perhaps had the most reason to believe the moon was divinely ordained, he saw through the charade without much difficulty.

Answer:
There are two different groups of characters at play in the story. The crew members who land on the new world represent one group, and Adam, Eve, and Snake-Oil Sam represent the other. The second group is nearly able to convince the first group that the moon is an untouched world, almost identical to the Garden of Eden. The crew members spend several days with Adam and Eve, and their elaborate ruse convinces them that Adam and Eve know nothing of death or suffering or ageing. It is only the priest that recognizes that the entire interaction was a con.

As soon as the crew members leave, Snake-Oil Sam comes out of his cave to give Adam and Eve more directions. He is in charge of the entire sham, and he gives out orders. Sam recognizes that people simply can’t resist ruining something that appears to be perfect. He has played this game before, and he knows that the crew members will be back with others to try and take over what they see as a paradise. Instead, he will murder them and take their goods to use for his own advantage.

Answer: The story’s characters fall into two groups: the crew of the Little Probe, and those who live on the surface of the small moon that the Little Probe goes to investigate. The crew consists of six Americans: Stark is the ship’s captain, so he calls all of shots onboard and asks a lot of questions on the surface. Steiner is his right-hand man, who tends to follow what Stark says and runs a lot of scans. Gilbert is the executive officer, who points out that they have to eat an apple to truly test if this reality is indeed the biblical paradise it appears to be, and Langweilig is the ship’s engineer. Craig is the tycoon who owns most of the ship, and wants to rent out land on the moon, and Briton is the priest and linguist who initiates contact on the surface and remains a skeptic throughout the story, eventually convincing the rest of the crew that the whole thing is a trap. On the surface, there are three characters of interest: the Old Serpent, who the reader finds out at the end of the story is in charge of the deception, and the two people known as Ha-Adamah and Hawwah. Ha-Adamah, or Adam, is the one who interacts with the ship’s crew when they visit the surface, and Hawwah, or Eve, does not talk to them while they are there—she does talk, though, and works on the plan with the serpent at the end. It is the serpent who creates the paint that makes Adam and Eve glow as if they are sources of light themselves, and writes the script for the deception.

Answer:
	The crew of the spaceship visiting “Paradise” is made up of six men: Captain Stark, Steiner, Father Briton, Casper Craig, Wolfgang Langweilig, and Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer. Each man serves his own purpose on board their ship. Based on their friendliness and camaraderie, these men have worked together before. Finding paradise was not their first mission. Although Stark is the captain, he often asks favors from Father Briton, the advanced linguist. In commanding him and letting him work, Stark is showing his complete trust in his crew.
	However, the group of creatures on Paradise interact a little differently. As Father Briton mentions later in the story, it’s clear that there was a powerful Thought (mind or being) on the planet, it just didn’t reveal itself to them. The Serpent, or Snake-Oil Sam, hides out in a cave with the equipment, money, ships, and bone meal that they have stolen from previous settlers. He is the true brains behind the operation. He has Ha-Adamah and Hawwah under his command, and, though they complain about the itchy costume, they are on board with his plan. He is clearly in charge and more manipulative than Captain Stark.
	As the Serpent and his crew act out paradise, Captain Stark and his crew fall for it. All except for Father Briton. But the others don’t listen to him. They only laugh off his ideas and request for an armed escort.


Question: Describe the setting of the story, which revolves around a seemingly idyllic world inhabited by two unusual beings and explores themes of perception and reality.

Answer: The story takes place on an unnamed extraterrestrial moon and a small probe that is visiting the moon to investigate its suitability for development. The moon is an earthlike environment that appears to be a perfect paradise in every respect. The land is fertile, the wild animals are domesticated, and there is an abundance of fruit to eat and minerals to potentially harvest. The description of the world that the crew receives depicts it as a true Eden—a perfect paradise. Also on the moon is a massive cave, from where the inhabitants of the moon store their stolen goods and prepare to ambush unsuspecting potential settlers.

Answer:
The crew members come across a new moon they have never visited before. Once they land, they find a mostly naked man and woman who are glowing in light. There are no cities or buildings, no civilization at all. Instead, they discover a lamb that lays with a lion and bears that do not fight the other animals. The magnificent water and fruit that the land bears, along with many other clues, convince them that they have stumbled upon the Garden of Eden.

When the visitors learn about the nearby serpent who lives in a cave and has the power to bring about evil to the land, they are downright convinced that this place is just like Earth, except it is still pure.

After staying several days, the men take off in their spaceship and Adam and Eve are revealed to be con artists. Snake-Oil Sam, their boss, is hiding in a cave, and he has stockpiled dozens of spaceships, piles of bonemeal, and lots of equipment to use to create his own civilization. Sam knows that the land is perfect for farming and it is beautiful and untouched. He wants to destroy it in his own way, by creating his own society.

Answer: The majority of this story takes place on the surface of a small moon, in an area with a gorgeous garden and large variety of flora and fauna that are familiar from Earth. The crew of the Little Probe visits for three days, looking to investigate the signs of life and intelligence that their scans had reported. There are two people covered in very bright light, and meadows, forests, and a fountain, but no buildings. The water in the fountain is cool and clean, and the trees have any number of fresh fruits to pick from. The animals there, including lions, sheep, and monkeys, seem to enjoy the soft grass. The one area the crew of the Little Probe did not visit was a large cave that they were told was the home of the great serpent. When Ha-Adamah goes to talk to the serpent we see that this cave is filled with various types of supplies, military and practical, including power equipment, food, and dozens of space ships.

Answer:
	In the Garden by R.A. Lafferty takes place on a planet somewhere in the universe. The three inhabitants (animals not included) have kept it isolated and deserted. There aren’t any structures, buildings, or infrastructure that would be recognizable from space. Even on land, you can’t tell this planet has been touched by human hands. Trees grow abundantly with the most delicious fruits, a fountain spouts water that is clear and clean, and lush green grass rests on the ground. Gold speckles shine on the rocks, a promise of greater treasures to be found underground.
	The only real mystery is the cave, which the crew of the visiting spaceship are not allowed to see. Within is the evidence of humanity: spaceships, farming equipment, and tools. However, with all this tucked away, this land can truly pass off as Paradise: untouched, unblemished, and unseen by humans.


Question: How do religion and religious faith contribute to the themes presented in the story of a crew's encounter with extraordinary beings in a seemingly perfect world?

Answer:
Christianity is a central component of the story. The heart of the narrative revolves around the description of the world as a replica of the biblical Garden of Eden. The author goes into extensive detail regarding the aspects of the garden and its inhabitants and how they conform to aspects of the Genesis narrative and how it was understood by religious analysis. It is heavily suggested that here, the Serpent did not succeed in convincing man to sin and fall from grace as was the case in the biblical narrative. As a result, Ha-Adamah and Hawwah (the Hebrew names for Adam and Eve) remain clothed in light and still enjoy the preternatural gifts of creation including a highly advanced intellect, immortality and even an illuminated appearance.

It is revealed that this depiction is a deception on the part of the moon’s inhabitants. Interestingly, the 4 non-believers on the crew are the most ready to believe that the state of affairs on the planet is indeed supernatural. It is only the clever priest who possesses faith, but employs the skepticism necessary to see through the fraud.

Answer:
Snake-Oil Sam, the mastermind behind the ruse, realizes that the visitors who come to the new world will immediately make connections to the Garden of Eden if there are enough clues to point them in that direction. In that way, the story demonstrates that people are susceptible to believing in an already established story or trope, regardless of how impossible it seems. Since the settlers are familiar with the Bible and the famous story of Adam and Eve, they are preconditioned to believe that another Adam and Eve may exist in a separate world, a world that has yet to be tainted with sin.

The priest is the only character that sees through Adam and Eve’s show. Although it’s strange that the religious man in the group would be the most skeptical, it’s clear that he has a keen eye for details. He purposefully asks Adam to play checkers with him to test his supernatural intellect, and when Adam refuses, he realizes that he cannot be who he says he is. Perhaps the priest has the most to lose in believing in this illusion, so his refusal to take the con artists at their word shows his true dedication to Christianity.

Answer: The people on the surface of the moon that the crew of the Little Probe is investigating are part of a very detailed ploy to replicate the biblical story of Adam and Eve. This religious story served as a recognizable type of paradise, which the serpent used to his advantage, knowing that humans would be drawn to something that they thought was perfect. All of the details of the facade were carefully designed around an attempt to make an authentic, tempting environment. This included changing some details from the English-translated version of the biblical story, including giving the people their Hebrew names of Ha Adamah and Hawwah. The other major point of religion in the story is the Jesuit priest who is onboard the Little Probe. It is Father Briton who is the skeptic, asking questions during his stay on the surface to try to uncover the truth of the situation. The rest of the crew are surprised that it is the religious man who is skeptical of the reality of the moon, but he convinces them that he is right, having thought carefully about every detail of every interaction they had on the surface.

Answer:
	The story of Adam and Eve (or Genesis) is one of the most widely known myths. The idea that we, as humans, once inhabited Paradise, but lost it due to our greed and stolen innocence is intoxicating. It explains why life isn’t perfect, why things don’t always go our way, and why people die.
	In In the Garden, this story is explored in a different manner. The Christian origin story acts as a backdrop for this uninhabited planet that a crew visits. After exploring, they are quick to believe that they have discovered another universe’s Eden. And, therefore, quick to destroy it.
	Their religious faith and belief in the story of Adam and Eve adds to the gravity of the situation. If this weren’t a well-known story, then the crew would have been less amazed by the space before them. The perfection of the place, and the potential of Paradise, was what truly brought them in and, eventually, destroyed them.


Question: How is human fallenness explored as a theme in a story about a crew's encounter with seemingly perfect beings in a mysterious garden?

Answer:
Human sinfulness and its collective fall from grace are referenced in several ways in the story. Ha-Adamah contrasts his world’s perfection with the fallenness that is apparent in the visitors. He claims to be free from the stain of original sin. He presents himself as perfectly happy and not subject to corruption, aging, or death. This is contrasted with Earth's humanity which was fated to “lose that happiness, and then to seek it vainly through all the ages.”

The entire crew of the Little Probe agree on the unacceptability of spoiling a pristine world. Even so, they irresistibly and almost gleefully prepare to exploit the world’s riches.

Snake-Oil Sam expounds upon this inclination. He claims that on top of the very real greed of the visitors they’ve deceived over the years, they are capitalizing on the human desire to despoil the unspoiled. This is a clear summation of concupiscence—the inclination for fallen humanity to tend toward sin. It is clear that Sam and his associates are just as fallen as the other individuals in the story, preying on others to further their own goals.

Answer:
Although the visiting crew members are impressed and in awe of the Garden of Eden, they have every intention of pillaging the place. They love the clean and delicious water it offers and the tasty fruit that is better than anything they’ve had before. Yet, they cannot resist their urge to take over the land and commercialize it. They do not care that their actions will ruin the purity of the land and its two occupants. They are greedy and only want what will benefit them in the end.

Likewise, Snake-Oil Sam recognizes the immense beauty of the untouched world, and instead of trying to preserve it, he entices groups of people to come and try to take it over so that he can murder them and take their goods and equipment. Snake-Oil Sam is cunning because he innately knows that if he can convince settlers that this world is pure and special, they will immediately desire to destroy it. According to Sam, people can’t resist ruining something that appears to be unique and unadulterated. He uses human nature and the desire to control to his own advantage. By convincing strangers that Adam and Eve are simple and kind and unaware of ageing or suffering, he knows that those strangers will return to the land to make sure that Adam and Eve learn all about those topics. They can’t help themselves precisely because humans have already fallen and are predisposed to sinning.

Answer: Human fallenness can be interpreted as the degraded state of mankind, or as inauthenticity in human interaction. These are both important themes to this story. In terms of inauthenticity, this is the root of the interactions on the surface of the moon. As the crew of the Little Probe is exploring the area where the two humanoids are living, everything they encounter is a carefully staged ploy. The two people on the surface do not let on any of the truth of their situation to the crew, and deliberately lie to them in order to entice them to come back to settle on the moon. This is ironic, as the serpent’s plan for this ruse is heavily based on others’ desires for authenticity in the story they are presented, thus the small changes in various iterations of this illusion of the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In terms of degradation, another central idea is that this moon is a pure and untouched place. However, the serpent knows that this will entice humans to investigate and try to settle there, because of an innate draw to spoil things that are in perfect condition. The crew of the Little Probe recognize this idea in a different way, in that they see this moon as what humankind could have been before it fell, when Adam and Eve fell to temptation. They see this as innocence that would be a crime to ruin, and know that humans of their own world would be inclined to disrupt what was there.

Answer:
	The story of Adam and Eve ends with human failure. Eve, or Hawwah, eats the apple/pomegranate that God told them not to eat. And so she is cursed with painful birth, toiling the land, and eventual return to dust, or death. Both she and Adam are expelled from Eden and their expulsion leads to the creation of other humans. There is no longer one Man or Woman.
	However in this story, the destruction of paradise is brought about by two separate groups. The Serpent’s crew of actors and props creates a false paradise to lure people in and pillage them. This in itself is an example of human fallenness, failure, or expulsion from Eden. By extorting the idea of paradise and using it to harm others, the Serpent and his crew are fallen humans.
	And so are the crew of the visiting spaceship. After discovering so-called paradise, their first thought is to destroy it. Their tools are farming, building, and burning, but not preserving. Human greed is what led to the falling, and is also what led to the falling of these two crews.


Question: What is the plot of the story involving a group of explorers attempting a perilous journey in a harsh, unforgiving environment?

Answer:
James Baron is planning a trek to Brightside Crossing on Mercury, a feat so far unaccomplished. Few had tried, and those that did died. All except for one. He is asked to wait at the Red Baron as someone wanted to see him at 8. He waits patiently and is rewarded with the company of Peter Claney, the man who made it back home. Claney instantly tells him to give up on the journey and stay on Earth. Baron asks for details about their trek and what went wrong, but Claney refuses to give him the details. Claney is an older man now with an epithelioma on his face. Although he came to warn him, he quickly learns that Baron may only listen if he hears the truth. So Claney recounts the story.
Major Tom Mikuta recruited Claney, Jack Stone, and Ted McIvers to join him. They were to adventure to the Brightside Crossing at perihelion, a more dangerous journey. Temperatures reached up to 770 degrees Fahrenheit at perihelion, but Mikuta was an all-or-nothing man. Stone arrived on Mercury first, soon followed by Mikuta and Claney. McIvers was the last to arrive and they left soon after with three Bugs and one tractor dragging the sledges. Stone was briefed by Sanderson, the head of the observatory, before they left, and the men pored over all images and maps of the Crossing before beginning.
Despite their high-tech spacesuits and general gadgets, the giant sun still got to them. They were constantly thirsty and hot, and their skin itched and burned. They drove for eight hours, then slept for five. They needed to travel 70 miles a day. It would take 30 days to reach the Center, and then another 30 to reach the pick-up spot. The journey quickly took a toll on Stone, who was the most apprehensive of the bunch. He retreats into himself, while McIvers chatters nonstop to fill the silence. Tension grew among the crew, especially as McIvers put himself at risk by adventuring away from them.
Claney lead the gang in his Bug, while McIvers and Mikuta flanked him. Stone was in the very back. If Claney saw something suspicious or unsafe, they would investigate on foot before continuing in their equipment.
As they travel, they got closer to the Sun, which appeared to be twice as big as it did on Earth. Several drives into their journey, McIvers discovered something truly terrible on one of his forrays. He screamed into the intercom, alerting the others who quickly rushed after him. He stood there, pointing below. There lay a broken, older Bug and two corpses. Wyatt and Carpenter, the original discoverers.
They continued on with disheartened spirits until Claney reached a cleft. There was no way to cross it, except for a very small and dangerous ledge. The cleft slowly began to crumble under their Bugs and they’re left in a very precarious position.

Answer:
The story is about a man, Baron, who is planning to cross the bright side of the planet Mercury. Right before the trip is about to depart he runs into one of the famous adventurers that attempted it before him, Peter Claney, at a bar called the Red Lion. Peter goes into a long recollection of his experience to Baron, which is interspersed with them snapping back to reality at the bar.

Peter’s attempted Brightside crossing involved a party of four: the Major (a trusted team captain of sorts), himself (who would be in the lead Bug of the expedition), McIver (who would flank one side of Peter along with the Major), and Stone (who would drag the sledges). They began the expedition at a place called the Twilight lab, an observatory for studying the sun run by a person called Sanders located in a 5 mile wide transition between the bright and dark sides of Mercury which had hospitable temperatures for humans to survive.

Over the course of their journey, tensions between them grew tense. McIver started to drive on little side trips during their daily driving in the Bug vehicles. On one of his side trips he discovered the skeletons of the last known explorers that came before them - Wyatt and Carpenter. Peter does not finish recounting his tale before the story closes, but the reader knows he never did successfully make the crossing, although he did survive (because he is presently sitting in the bar with Baron and recalling this tale from the past).

It is revealed that Peter’s expedition party went beyond the farthest known point explored by humans (due to finding the bodies), and that he thinks a couple of mistakes were made in equipment choices and in not having a person driving several miles ahead to scout the terrain before the entire convoy had to drive through it.

Answer:
An explorer named James Baron waits irritatedly for a stranger in the Red Lion, a bar in New York. The stranger turns out to be another explorer, Peter Claney, whom Baron has been attempting to contact to get the details of Claney’s previous mission to Mercury’s Brightside, as he is the only man on Earth to have survived and attempt to cross the Brightside, and Baron plans to attempt it soon himself. Claney says it can’t be done, and that he’ll tell Baron his story to prove it to him. The rest of the passage takes place within Claney’s story.

Claney tells of his desire since childhood to attempt the journey, and how he met Major Mikuta, who wants to attempt it. Claney joins Mikuta, along with a young acolyte of the Major’s, Jack Stone, and an impetuous, thrill-seeking climber named Ted McIvers. The addition of McIvers to the team is an unwelcome surprise to Claney, and he proves to be headstrong and restless.

The team plans and strategizes at Twilight Lab at Mercury’s north pole. They set out on their journey with Claney out front and in charge of finding safe passage routes, Mikuta and McIvers flanking him on either side, and Stone pulling the sledges in the rear. They were state-of-the-art protective equipment and travel in “bug” vehicles, but the terrain and atmosphere are treacherous. They grow more anxious as they go, with McIvers driving the rest of the crew nuts with his constant talking and wandering, and Stone growing more quiet and reserved. Their nerves are further troubled by the discovery of two previous explorers’ corpses (the two explorers Claney had mentioned looking up to as a kid).

As the passage ends, Claney is in a precarious position at the edge of a chasm with only a thin, ramp-like surface that is already shifting as he watches and ponders how they’ll cross.

Answer:
Peter Claney shows up at the Red Lion to convince James Baron not to go on his trip to the Brightside Crossing. Baron has been trying to find Claney for months to learn about his attempt at crossing the Brightside. Claney is the only person on earth who has attempted the ordeal and made it out alive, but Claney says that it simply cannot be done. It’s impossible.

Claney explains that a major named Tom Mikuta recruited him to go on the trip. Major wanted to cross the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion, except he wanted to cross the entire surface of the planet. Claney admits he was afraid because he knew the story of the last two explorers who never returned from their trip. He is also fully aware that the only place hotter than the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion is the actual surface of the sun. Claney believes that it can be done, and he agrees to join Major’s team of men.

Major and Claney meet up at The Twilight Lab, which is near the north pole of Mercury. Jack Stone, another member of the team, arrives with supplies and equipment. Claney is upset to learn that McIvers will also be joining the team. He thinks he is too much of a risk-taker. The men discuss Mercury’s atmosphere, and Claney realizes that there’s no way to prepare for a voyage this mysterious. There will be active volcanoes, but they have no idea where they will find them. McIvers finally shows up, and although he’s late, Major doesn’t make an issue of it.

The team leaves the lab with a plan to reach the Center of Brightside in 30 days. They need to travel 70 miles per day. McIvers wants to know who will be out four or five miles ahead of the pack to evaluate the surface. Major sternly tells him that isn’t part of the plan - all team members will stay in sight of one another.

Back at Red Lion, Claney tells Baron that the heat was unbearable, even when their suits kept them cool at 70 degrees. The sight of the sun tricked their minds into believing they were melting. The team drives for eight hours and then stops and sleeps for five. Most of the time, the men are unable to get any rest. The only thing that propels them forward is the fact that no one had ever succeeded before.
Claney crosses Mercury’s difficult terrain, which includes mounds of dust and impassable cracks. At one point, McIvers drives down a long canyon. Claney sees that McIvers is waving to get his attention, so he follows his lead. McIvers finds wrecked vehicles; this is the spot where the two explorers died. Claney begins to experience difficulties with his Bug. He comes to a six foot drop that his vehicle cannot pass over. He sees a narrow ledge that resembles a ramp.


Question: Who is McIvers, and what occurs with him during the course of the narrative involving a perilous journey across a treacherous landscape?

Answer:
From the get-go, Claney is clear in his obvious mistrust of McIvers and his preceding reputation. Late to Mercury, he arrives ready to explore. With long, gray hair and paradoxically drowsy yet alert eyes, McIvers’ constant movement and chatter get on his colleague’s nerves. McIvers is a famous climber known for pushing the boundaries and being a daredevil.
After his arrival on Mercury, he and the crew soon set out for their treacherous journey to the Brightside Crossing. He switches spots with Stone, so he would have control of a Bug. He also asks to explore four or five miles ahead of the rest of the crew to see if it’s dangerous footing ahead. Mikuta quickly shuts him down. McIvers talks nonstop through the intercoms or when they’re supposed to be resting. As well, he disobeys Mikuta’s orders and occasionally drifts off from the rest of the group, discovering things as he goes. He never drifts far enough to receive any real punishment, though he does get farther away every time.
During one of his side-explorations, he discovers a wrecked Bug and two corpses belonging to Wyatt and Carpenter, the previous explorers of the Brightside Crossing. With this shocking find, he returns to the crew in silence.

Answer:
McIvers had a reputation in the climbing world for being both skilled and lucky, and the Major sought him out for the Brightside Crossing he was leading because he thought his skills would be useful. They had never met prior to this trip together, though they had spoken about the intent of the trip and that there would be no fooling around. The Major lets it slide that McIver shows up late, however, he does not approve of McIver’s plan to go ahead of the rest of the party to scout the terrain. This turns out to potentially be one of the big mistakes that foils their attempted crossing.

During their crossing, tensions between the crew and McIver become frazzled because they are tired of McIver’s talking and bad jokes. McIver irritates the crew by taking little side trips away from the rest of them as they try to make forward progress through the Brightside. During one of those trips, McIver makes a significant discovery of two skeletons of the last known explorers. It is not known whether he lives or dies at the close of the crossing attempt that Peter is recollecting.

Answer: McIvers is a climbing enthusiast who is known as something of a daredevil, and is described by Mikuta as possessing skill and luck. Claney describes him as tall, with long, wavy, prematurely graying hair and “climber’s” eyes that can look drowsy or suddenly very alert. He never stands still and is always speaking, moving, or doing something. He has been invited on the Brightside Crossing mission, unbeknownst to Peter Claney, by Major Mikuta. He casually shows up three days late, having missed the ship that Claney and Mikuta took and conned his way into a different route via Venus. On the eve of the mission, as plans are being doled out, he asserts that he thinks he and Jack Stone should switch roles and he should be given more leeway for movement. He asks if he can go several miles ahead of the rest to scout out the terrain, but Mikuta insists that they will all stay together. McIvers shows his hot temper during this exchange but ultimately agrees. He grows restless during the journey and annoys everyone with his constant talking and wandering. Because of his meandering, he is the first to encounter a chilling sight: the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, the first two explorers to attempt the Brightside Crossing.

Answer:
McIvers is an excellent climber with long gray hair and sleepy eyes. He is fidgety and difficult to take seriously.

Major Tom Mikuta invites Ted McIvers to join the team on their mission to cross the Brightside of Mercury, and Peter Claney is immediately disappointed. McIvers has a reputation for being a daredevil, and Claney worries that he’s incapable of taking the danger of the mission seriously. Major argues that McIvers is both lucky and skillful, and the team will need plenty of luck and skill on this difficult trip. He also explains that McIvers knows that fooling around is unacceptable. When Claney tells James Baron the story of his trip, Baron agrees that taking McIvers was a huge mistake. Claney tells him that actually, the equipment and the route were more worrisome than McIvers.

McIvers arrives late to The Twilight Lab, but Major doesn’t chide him. He actually shows up on a freight rocket from Venus because he missed his original chance to get on the ship that Major and Claney took. Major, the leader of the pack, tells McIvers that he will be dragging the sledges, but McIvers tells his boss that he and Jack Stone have already decided to switch roles. He clearly has no issue with challenging authority, and he gets his way. However, McIvers also wants to know who will be miles ahead of the group scouting the terrain, and Major tells him that no one will take that role. Everyone is to remain in sight of one another. Later, Claney reveals that McIvers was right about this suggestion. It would have been incredibly helpful to have a scout out ahead so the team wasn’t driving blind.

McIvers’ constant talking really annoys Claney and perhaps the other team members as well. He tells the same stupid jokes over and over and repeatedly wishes he had a cold beer. He also begins to go further and further away from the rest of the group members. On one of these tangents, McIvers spots the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, two explorers who failed at their mission to cross The Brightside.


Question: Describe the setting of the story, which revolves around a dangerous expedition to conquer a treacherous and extreme environment.

Answer:
Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse mostly takes place on the surface of Mercury.  The main characters begin in an observatory equipped to support human life as well as do research on the planet itself. However, they quickly move on in their journey to cross the Brightside at perihelion. Full of craters, gorges, and cracked land, the planet’s surface is incredibly dangerous to travel on. Sulfurous, hot winds blow across the planet. Beyond the towering, rocky spears and jagged gorges lay yellow valleys and flatlands. The gas beneath the surface of the planet can cause volcanic-like eruptions. This gas can also imply rise up from the core and poison the atmosphere around it. Gray dust caused by years of erosion rested atop every surface.
Mercury is an incredibly hot planet, being the nearest to the sun, and the surface reflects that.

Answer:
The only ‘real’ setting is a bar called Red Lion where Baron and Peter are sitting together. All other settings are imagined through Peter’s recalling of past events.

Peter’s story includes settings from the Twilight Lab (an observatory on Mercury in the twilight zone between the bright and dark sides of the planet), in vehicles called Bugs on the surface of Mercury as his expedition party tries to cross the Brightside, and in various inhospitable locations on the surface of the bright side of the planet, including molten lead lakes and volcanoes.

The surface of the planet Mercury that faces the sun is referred to as the Brightside. Crossing it is extremely difficult due to the environmental conditions. It is described that the bright side of mercury is always facing towards the light as it rotates around the sun, never having darkness over it. It is an extremely hot place (770F), known to have active volcanoes, and an atmosphere that is mostly CO2, nitrogen and heavier gases. Humans must wear specialized suits to keep their body temperature at 75F while on the Brightside. A journey from the twilight zone (the transition between the bright and dark sides of the planet) to the Center of the Brightside would take about 30 days.

Answer: The initial setting is on Earth, in New York, outside of and then inside of a bar called the Red Lion. It is a quiet and sparsely populated lounge where some other adventurers (Andean climbers, the person who had mapped a previous voyage for Baron) are in attendance. Peter Claney’s story touches briefly on settings during his childhood (presumably somewhere on Earth), Mikuta’s time on Mars, his time with Mikuta on Venus, and New York again, but the primary setting is Mercury. The first area of Mercury they encounter is the Twilight Lab, located near Mercury’s north pole. This is the jumping off point for the mission, and includes a rocket landing, labs and quarters located deep in Mercury’s crust, and a tower with a solar scope. Mercury’s temperature is around -410 degrees F on the darkside and can reach 770 degrees on the brightside. The lab is located in a twilight zone between the two, which is about five miles wide at the pole and allows the area to be habitable. The brightside has ranges of craters, peaks, and faults; some ranges are inactive while others have volcanic activity and shifting below surface level. The atmosphere is as treacherous as the terrain, with Co2, nitrogen, traces of heavier gases, sulfur vapor, carbon disulfide, and sulfur dioxide flowing in constant atmospheric tides from the brightside to the darkside. The first thirty miles of the trek take them through fluffy volcanic ash and into virgin territory full of desolate gorges and intense heat. They see tall, jagged rocks, as well as the yellow, smoky plains below them. They venture closer and closer to the sun, and have to be increasingly cautious of the tenuous surface of Mercury. Based on Claney saying he was ten in 2082, the events Claney describes as well as his meeting with Baron likely occur in the 2100s (or later).

Answer:
The story begins at Red Lion, a place with few patrons. A doorman is in charge of the comings and goings. Several climbers are conversing, including Andean climbers and the first man to cross the Vulcan Crater on Venus.
Claney then dives into his story about his trip to cross the Brightside of Mercury. The men meet up for their trip at the Twilight Lab near the north pole of the planet. The lab has a rocket landing and a lab, and much of it is deep in the crust of the planet where it is cooler. There is also a tower that houses the Solar ‘scope. Sanderson, the lab’s manager, is a sun researcher, so his lab is located at the closest reasonable spot to the sun. Its position between the Brightside and the Darkside means that the temperatures only fluctuate about 50-60 degrees.
Mercury is situated on an axis, and the part that turns in faces the sun. This area, the perihelion, is the hottest place in the solar system besides the actual surface of the sun. Here, the temperatures soar to 770 degrees fahrenheit. The surface of Mercury is particularly treacherous. There are many active volcanoes, and the ground shifts frequently, creating cracks and craters that are difficult to see and impossible to cross. The gases present are also dangerous, including CO 2, nitrogen, sulfur vapor, and sulfur dioxide. There is liquid lead and boiling pools of sulfur.
On Mercury, the sun appears to be twice as big as it does on Earth. The planet only has 30% of the gravity that Earth does, and it is blanketed with gray ash. Huge cracks in the surface appear out of nowhere, and cliffs rise out of the land, and rocks and rubble and molten lead make driving treacherous. Everything is difficult to see because of the sulfur mist and the volcanic ash. Without filters and screens, humans would be instantly blinded by the light from the sun.
There is a deep gorge where the bodies of Wyatt and Carpenter, two famous explorers who attempted to cross The Brightside, lie. Their outdated Bugs crashed there, presumably because they misjudged the surface and did not see the crack in the lan


Question: What is the significance of the Brightside Crossing in the context of an arduous journey filled with challenges and the pursuit of knowledge?

Answer:
The Brightside Crossing is an undiscovered portion of Mercury. It is the closest planet to the sun, and the Brightside is the surface that is face-to-face with the surface of the sun most of the time, thanks to Mercury’s quick orbit. It is an incredibly dangerous area of Mercury, with temperatures reaching up to 770 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly more. Because of the difficult atmosphere, the presence of dangerous gases, treacherous landscape, and the heat, the Brightside Crossing remained undiscovered and uninhabitable for hundreds of years.
Major Tom Mikuta decided to follow in the footsteps of Wyatt and Carpenter and take on the challenge. The promise of power and discovery draws the main characters forward, as well as the idea of being the first. Mikuta claims that if he were to make the crossing, Mercury would be his. The challenge of the Brightside Crossing is the origin of their desire.

Answer: It is significant to the explorers because it has never been done before, so being the first would presumably make them very famous. On a greater scale, a successful crossing means conquering Mercury for humanity to the Major. He thinks that if he can successfully cross the bright side of Mercury at perihelion (when the planet is closest to the sun) then man has “got Mercury”. As in, if they have the technologies, knowledge, and skills to make the crossing at the hottest possible time there is nothing that isn’t possible for humans to do on the planet.

Answer: The Brightside Crossing is significant because no one has done it successfully, though it has been attempted before. It is also significant because the entire story is about the Brightside Crossing. Baron’s well-publicized upcoming mission to cross it is what brings Claney to speak with him (and try to talk him out of it), and the story Claney tells is about his own experience attempting to cross, as he is the only man on Earth to have survived an attempt (though he did sustain some physical damage). The Brightside gets its name from one of the most dangerous things about it: its proximity to the sun.

Answer:
Many climbers and explorers wish to take on the Brightside Crossing, but it seems as though the trip is nearly impossible. Wyatt and Carpenter, two famous explorers, attempted to make the trip across the hottest planetary surface in the solar system in 2082, and they never returned from the trip.

Peter Claney is the only living man who has attempted the trip and made it back alive. He was not successful in his mission to cross the perihelion, so it can be assumed that he turned back towards The Twilight Lab after his teammates perished.

Maps of the terrain are shoddy at best since, and the surface is ever changing. Volcanoes erupt, cracks appear, cliffs crumble, and photography and technology is not yet good enough to create detailed pictures of the surface that would allow explorers to create a definitive and safe route. Since the men must travel at least 70 miles a day, there can be zero detours. It’s a constant game of scanning the terrain and making last minute decisions about which way is safest.

Peter Claney and his teammates are motivated almost entirely by their desire to be the first people to conquer The Brightside Crossing. They believe that The Brightside would get them or they would get The Brightside. There is no other way, and their fame and success makes the dangerous trip worth a try.


Question: Who is Jack Stone in the context of a perilous expedition involving a treacherous crossing, and what happens to him throughout the story?

Answer:
Jack Stone arrives on the surface of Mercury around a week ahead of his partners. It’s revealed rather early on that Stone is not much of an explorer himself. His wits and genius make him an invaluable resource, but his heart wasn’t necessarily in the right place. Claney claims that Stone only came to follow Major Mikuta around, a man he deeply respected and admired.
At barely 25 years old, Stone was the youngest member of the team. His experience with Mikuta at the Vulcan qualified him for the trek, or so he thought, and so he tagged along.
His apprehension and anxiety about the trip are evident from the beginning. After Sanderson, the leader of an observatory on Mercury, explained how treacherous their journey was going to be, Stone almost cried.
Once they begin their trek, Stone retreats further into himself. Jack’s job was to drag the sledges behind the rest of the crew. Possibly fed up by McIvers’ constant joking or tortured by the fear that he would be lost on this planet forever, Stone became a shell of himself.
In the end, after McIvers discovered the corpses of the two discoverers that came before them, Wyatt and Carpenter, we can only assume that Stone’s fear and reservedness increased tremendously.

Answer:
Jack Stone is one of the explorers the Major recruits for his expedition. He is hardly twenty-five years old and crewed on the Major’s vulcan explorations. Peter’s assessment of Stone is that he follows the Major around like a puppy and begged to come on the Brightside Crossing.

Stone has the important role of bringing the supplies and equipment for their crossing. He receives some information about the inhospitable conditions of the Brightside from Sanders (owner of the Twilight Lab) that dejects him and makes him nervous about their trip. Stone has the important role of dragging the sleds of supplies during their crossing. He does not irritate the rest of the team, but instead grows more quiet and apprehensive with each day.

The reader doesn’t know whether he survived the attempted crossing or what he did afterwards.

Answer: Jack Stone is a young man of about twenty-five who is part of the Brightside Crossing team. He had worked with Major Makuta at Vulcan and pleaded with him to be part of the Brightside mission. Claney theorizes that he doesn’t care as much about exploring as he does Mikuta, who he sees as a kind of god and follows around. He arrives to Twilight Lab a few days before Claney and Mikuta to be briefed by Sanderson, and brings the supplies and equipment for the mission with him. By the time the other two arrive, Jack seems somewhat despondent based on what Sanderson has told him about the difficulties and improbability of the mission. Jack is assigned to flank Peter on the mission, along with Mikuta, but agrees to switch positions with McIvers and pull the sledges instead. This seems like something McIvers had pushed for in a previous conversation, but Jack says he doesn’t mind and Mikuta agrees to the switch. As the mission goes on, Claney notices that, unlike McIvers, Jack gets quieter and more reserved as he grows more apprehensive.

Answer:
Jack Stone is the youngest member of The Brightside Crossing team. He is about 25 years old, and he looks to Major Tom Mikuta as a mentor. They worked together on Venus, and that’s where he discovered that Major would be making the trip across The Brightside. Stone begged Major to let him go along, even though it appears that he’s very nervous about the trip. When Sanderson, The Twilight Lab manager, tells Stone about what The Brightside is really like, Stone nearly cries from fear. He gets the equipment all ready and helps to prepare the team for the treacherous trip.
Stone has never met McIvers before, but the two become fast friends. McIvers is able to easily manipulate Stone into switching roles with him. He wants to be more mobile, so he tells Stone that he should drag the sledges instead. Stone acquiesces without a fight.
Throughout the trip, Stone becomes quiet and stoic. He is a young guy and isn’t prepared to die on this trip. He responds to the difficult terrain and uncertainties with silence.


Question: What is the plot of the story involving a peculiar science fiction writer and her companions as they navigate a mysterious and dangerous landscape filled with strange phenomena?

Answer:
The mining for a precious ore called Acoustix has spurred colonization of Jupiter’s eighth moon by two mining companies called Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. There is a barren desert landscape between the mining areas of the two companies that is called the Baldric. The only plant appears to be trees that have melon-shaped tops, and the only animal is a silver parrot-like bird that is capable of imitating human speech, and also of imitating human forms in a holographic-like manner.

Grannie Annie (AKA Annabella C. Flowers) is a famous science fiction writer, who is travelling to the Baldric with her martian employee, Xartal, who takes detailed drawings that are the background research for her next novel. She is travelling in a party of four: herself, Xartal, Ezra Karn (old prospector), and the narrator (called Billy-boy by Grannie).

Strange happenings are known to occur in the Baldric. They encounter a silver bird that repeats English words and creates what seems like a mirage of themselves projected in the distance which disappears as it comes closer. They do not know at the time, but the parrot has created this mirage based on viewing one of the lifelike drawings that Xartal is making of the group.

They happen to run into Jimmy Baker, the manager of the Larynx Incorporated mining company, who is interested in Grannie’s help sorting out the root cause of his workers coming down with “red spot fever” which causes them to leave their work and walk into the Baldric, never to return. They travel to Larynx Incorporated’s offices with Jimmy, where he learns all of the workers from Shaft Four have left their posts due to the fever. Coincidentally, that is also their most productive ore location. Jimmy, Grannie, and Xartal take off to Shaft Four via the Baldric to investigate what is going on. During their travel, they break for camp near a flock of the birds and discover their ability to imitate human forms.

Antlers Karn, the manager of Interstellar Voice, turns out to be a bad guy who ambushes Grannie’s camp. He is trying to sabotage Jimmy’s company by causing the red spot fever to stop them from capitalizing on a huge deposit of Acoustix they discovered in Shaft Four. He steals Jimmy’s car and kidnaps a mirage-version of Grannie. Billy and Ezra chase them down and discover Antlers has stranded their friends in a valley thirty miles away.

Grannie has independently solved the mystery of the Red Spot Fever and sending her mirage with Antlers was part of her master plan. When Billy and Ezra return to her, Jimmy is projecting ultra-violet light onto a large group of the Shaft Four workers in a deep valley gorge. This counteracts the infra-red radiation that put them into a trance-like state that caused them to wander into the desert.

Grannie, Jimmy, Xartal, Billy, and Ezra are triumphantly returning the workers to Shaft Four at the close of the story.

Answer: The story starts three days into an expedition on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, led by Annabella C. Flowers, a science fiction author, known by her friends as Grannie Annie. Also in the group were some of her friends: the narrator Billy, the prospector Ezra Karn, and the Martian illustrator named Xartal. The moon was known for Acoustix, an ore that allows aging Martians to improve their supersonic telecommunication abilities. They traveled through the desert to an area called the Baldric, which was filled with cat-tail-like trees and silver cockatoo-like creatures. Antlers Park, the manager of Interstellar Voice (an Acoustix mining company) had told them about the area. As they continued on, the group had a shock: they saw duplicates of themselves traveling toward them. It was not a simple mirage, as they could hear the others talking. Once they got close, however, the doubles disappeared. Shaking off the odd situation, the group continued, and eventually ran into Jimmy Baker, the manager of Larynx Incorporated, the competitors of Interstellar Voice. It seemed Jimmy needed Grannie's help: his workers at the mine had been falling sick with Red Spot Fever, which made them wander into the Baldric. The group headed to the Larynx Incorporated offices, where Jimmy admitted that calling off the mining expedition would mean the end of Jimmy's company, so he needed to combat the Fever. Grannie grabbed supplies from Jimmy's laboratory and they headed to the desert with Xartal. Ezra and Billy stayed to look around the offices, and briefly talked to Antlers Park on the visiphone. He had less issue with the Fever, but had an antitoxin that he was willing to share with Jimmy. Through a camera on Jimmy's car, Billy was able to watch the group in the desert as another set of mirages appeared. Grannie excitedly realized that the cockatoos on the moon were copying Xartal's drawings, mimicking the mental images and causing these "mirages". Ezra and Billy headed to Jimmy's office to investigate reports, realizing that everyone fell sick in the barracks, not while mining. They found a lens in the barracks that was pushing concentrated rays towards the workers, so they ran to the visiscreen room to find out where Grannie was. They were surprised to see Antlers Park was the only person in the car with Grannie, Jimmy and Xartal nowhere to be seen. Ezra and Billy drove out to meet them, where Billy realized this was a cockatoo and not the actual Grannie. Antlers Park eventually gave up the information about where he had left Grannie and the others, and when Billy and Ezra found them, Grannie showed them the blue ultraviolet light that had been set up to counteract the red rays that cause the fever. It seemed that the lens amplifying the rays to cause the fever was placed in Jimmy's company's barracks by Antlers' company, and the Red Spot Fever was a plan to keep Jimmy's company from becoming more successful than Antlers'.

Answer: Annabella C. Flowers, known as Grannie Annie, is a famed science fiction writer who summons the story's narrator, Billy, to join her on a mission to the 8th moon of Jupiter, where she ostensibly plans to observe the setting for her next novel. She also invites her constant companion, a prospector name Ezra Karn, and her illustrator, a Martian named Xartal. On the moon, the team unites at the offices of Interstellar Voice, a company managed by Antlers Park. Upon Billy's arrival, Antlers updates him on the history of the company; Interstellar Voice and their rival company Larynx Incorporated mine the moon for its resource of an ore called Acoustix, which is popular amongst Martians because of its ability to revitalize their supersonic vocalizations that dwindle around middle age. Between the properties of these two companies stretches a vast desert known as the Baldric, which is home to a bird-like species resembling cockatoos as well as flagpole trees. Grannie Annie plans to cross in order to further observe the moon's environment and make way to Larynx Incorporated. Antlers Park warns them vaguely of danger in the Baldric, but the team leaves anyway. During the course of their journey, they observe the cockatoos and discover their ability to mimic human voices. In addition, they discover an alarming visage--from their perch atop a high cliff, they see four travelers, seemingly themselves in exact 3D duplicate, walking along the same path they'd just traversed. After this odd discovery, they meet Jimmy Baker, who arrives in his car guided through the air attached to a kite, and Grannie Annie reveals the true purpose of their trip is to help Jimmy resolve the labor issues at his company, Larynx Incorporated. His workers have been stricken with Red-Spot Fever, which causes them to abandon their job and walk into the desert; Jimmy worries this will destroy his business. After Grannie Annie, Xartal, and Jimmy Baker leave to tour his company's laboratory and Shaft Four, Billy and Ezra stay behind and tour the offices of Larynx Incorporated. An employee shows them an updated visiphone from which they can view Grannie Annie's journey, and they witness them stopping by a cockatoo nest, where a cockatoo observes Xartal's drawings and uses its ability to mentally mimic images to recreate his drawings of the team in 3D just as they saw previously in the desert. When Billy and Ezra discover a device in the workers' bunker that has been used to spread Red-Spot Fever and see Grannie Annie is returning with Antlers Park, they rush to meet them. Billy realizes this isn’t the real Grannie Annie, but rather her 3D image, and they hurry to stop Antlers Park. After a chase, Antlers admits he set up the Red-Spot device in order to sabotage his business rival. When they reunite with Annie, she and Jimmy and Xartal are using ultra-violet rays to combat the infra-red rays that ignited the Red-Spot Fever in order to draw them back to Larynx Incorporated.

Answer:
Grannie Annie, Ezra Karn, and Billy-Boy are on Jupiter’s Eighth Moon. Xartal, a Martian, is also there to draw illustrations for Grannie Annie’s book. The group meets with Antlers Park, the manager of Interstellar Voice, and he tells them about the Baldric, a stretch of land that connects his company, Interstellar Voice, with Larynx Incorporated. The two companies are competing to harvest Acoustix. Acoustix is an ore that amplifies Martians’ thoughts so that they can continue to speak to Earthmen even in their old age when their ability to produce vibrations diminishes. Park warns that the Baldric is dangerous, but Annie is undeterred.

Annie, Ezra, Billy, and Xartal arrive at the Baldric and spot a cockatoo. Xartal draws the creature and the group members in his notebook. Moments later, Annie spots four figures that look just like herself and her crew members walking on the other side of the hill. The apparent mirage disappears quickly.

Billy sees a kite car, and minutes later Jimmy Baker, the manager of Larynx Incorporated, approaches the group. His company is in trouble because a lot of its workers have come down with Red Spot Fever. The workers become talkative and then they walk out into the Baldric. Annie, Jimmy, and Xartal head out to investigate. Billy and Ezra stay behind, and they check out an invention of Jimmy’s - a three-dimensional screen that makes them feel like they’re right there with their group members. They speak to Park on the contraption, and he says that he will give Jimmy the antidote to Red Spot Fever. Billy spots his own likeness on the screen, and he’s shocked. Annie tells the others that the cockatoos are looking at Xartal’s drawings and projecting their mental images of his pictures.

Billy realizes that all of the workers become sick when they’re in their barracks, not when they’re in the mines. At the barracks, Ezra finds a piece of metal with a lens on the wall. The infra-red rays from Jupiter are causing the plague; the lens was put there to amplify those rays, and they sicken the sleeping workers.

Billy and Ezra return to the screen and see Park driving a kite car with Annie by his side.  While the men follow Park’s car, he tries to shoot at them. He fails, and Ezra uses a tool to grab Park by the throat. Billy and Ezra find Annie and hundreds of Jimmy’s workers. The group has set up a large ultraviolet light that works to fight the infra-red rays that cause the fever. It was Park all along who was forcing the men to become sick because he did not want Jimmy’s company to be competitive. Park had tried to get Grannie Annie sick as well, but he ended up taking her duplicate image in the kite car instead of the real one.


Question: What settings does the story take place in, which involves a science fiction writer and her companions navigating a mysterious and hazardous environment?

Answer:
In the buildings of Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated, two Acoustix ore mining companies on Jupiter’s eighth moon.

The Baldric - the largely deserted space between the mining grounds of Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. It is a desert-like place with trees that are trunks with melon-shaped tops, and silver birds that can repeat English phrases as well as mimic human forms that appear like mirages. There is also a deep valley gorge within the desert and many eyries which seem similar to oases.

There are several scenes aboard kite-propelled cars in the Baldric, as well as visiphone-like video feed of Jimmy’s car that is viewed from the offices of Larynx Incorporated.

Shaft Four is one of the locations that Larynx Incorporated mines in on the border of the Baldric, which is talked about often, but is never actually visited by the main characters during the story.

Answer: The surface of Jupiter's Eighth Moon is covered in desert with huge trees that look like giant cat-tails, long thin poles with a melon-shaped part on top. It is very windy, which pushes all of the desert sand around a lot. The "flagpole trees" mark the edge of the Baldric, an area defined by the trees and a cockatoo-like creature. When Antlers Park said that the area would be trouble, Grannie knew she had to investigate. The Baldric itself acts as a line between the areas controlled by the two mining companies, and the mines themselves are where the work happens. Most of the surface, then, is covered either in sand or rock. The other major location in the story is the headquarters of Larynx Incorporated, which is also on Jupiter's Eighth Moon. In the headquarters, there are barracks for the miners, which have huge windows made of denvo-quartz. There is a commissary where people can eat, and a number of administrative areas such as Jimmy's office, and a large visiscreen room where the characters at the headquarters are able to track the movements of the part of the group that left to investigate Red Spot Fever.

Answer: The primary action of the story takes place on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, where Grannie Annie assembles a team to help Jimmy Baker resolve the labor issues at his company, Larynx Incorporated. Although the team assembles at the headquarters of Jimmy's rival company, Interstellar Voice, they never go inside, and immediately make their way across a vast, desert-like area known as the Baldric. The manager of Interstellar Voice, Antlers Park, warns them of threats in the Baldric, but they never run into any such danger. Instead, they observe two of the Baldric's most unique characteristics: The flagpole trees that look like vertical cat tails topped with a melon-like protuberance and the bird-like creatures resembling cockatoos that build large, transparent, web-like nests between them. The cockatoos are silver and look like parrots with a crest and have the unique ability to mimic not only the sounds of a person's voice but also the 3D image of their visage in exact duplicate. As the team makes their way across the desert, they are pelted by wind and powdery sand and climb a high ridge from which they are picked up by Jimmy Baker flying his kite-guided car. These vehicles appear to be the main mode of transportation for representatives of both companies on the moon. The final unique setting of the story is Larynx Incorporated, which is comprised of offices and crew bunkers in a large central building, several mining shafts spread throughout the Baldric, a laboratory, a commissary, and an experimental shop. From one of the many offices in the building, an operator shows Billy and Ezra an update to the visiphone that allows viewers to witness 3D events remotely. Later, Billy and Ezra examine the barracks, housed in a low, rectangular building with a dome roof.

Answer:
“Double Trouble” takes place on the Eighth Moon of Jupiter. Two companies, Interstellar Voice, and Larynx Incorporated are at war with each other to harvest the most Acoustix ore. The companies are located about 10 miles away from each other, and in between them is a space called the Baldric. The Baldric is covered with Flagpole trees. They stand straight up and have a bulbous fruit or vegetable that grows out of the very top. The entire surface is covered in sand, and wind is an ever-present feature of the atmosphere. There are also hundreds of birds that look a lot like cockatoos. The birds look at Xartal’s drawings and then project those images out of their minds. This makes it appear like there are two Grannie Annies or two Billys, when there is really just one. The cockatoos’ ability to project images is similar to their ability to repeat words and phrases that humans say.

The characters also venture inside of Larynx Incorporated, the company owned by Jimmy Baker. There are offices, glass doors, counting machines, and report tapes there. The offices are where they package the Acoustix ore to ship it to their customers. The most interesting part of Larynx Incorporated is Jimmy’s invention, an improvement on the visiphone called a visiscreen. Viewers can be taken to a location and the three D image that’s created makes it feel like they are there, experiencing everything along with the group.


Question: What was the relationship like between Jimmy and Grannie, two characters involved in a bizarre adventure on a distant moon filled with strange phenomena and challenges?

Answer:
Jimmy Baker is the manager of the Acoustix ore mining company called Larynx Incorporated on Jupiter’s eighth moon. Grannie Annie (AKA Annabella C. Flowers) is a famous science fiction writer, well known for her authentic background research for her novels. She is exploring the eighth moon of Jupiter for her newest novel.

Jimmy has knowledge of Grannie’s work and is hoping she can help him solve the mystery of the Red Spot Fever with her excellent problem solving skills. Grannie does not appear to know Jimmy before their meeting in the Baldric. They have a cordial and collaborative relationship through the story that results in solving the mystery.

Answer: Jimmy Baker is the director of Larynx Incorporated, one of the companies on Jupiter's Eighth Moon that aims to collect Acoustix ore. Visiting Jimmy was Grannie's primary reason for traveling to the Baldric, and Jimmy seems to need her help. In fact, he thinks she is the only one who might be able to solve his problem. Grannie is excited to help, and is intrigued by the puzzle he has for her. The two of them seem to work well together; Jimmy trusts Grannie to go with him to investigate the issues, and Grannie has some good ideas for him. In the end, they are able to uncover the issue and find a way to help Jimmy's workers.

Answer: Jimmy Baker is the congenial manager of Larynx Incorporated, and Billy immediately likes him. When Jimmy picks up Grannie Annie and her team in the Baldric, he mentions how relieved he feels to have her there to help him with his labor problems. Jimmy is a realist, and Grannie Annie is a science fiction writer, so his pragmatic thinking and her creativity work well together to put a stop to Antlers Park's plot to sabotage Jimmy's business. Because of her stubborn insistence of carefully observing each setting for her potential novels, Grannie Annie has developed a quick and keen understanding of unusual phenomena she discovers in her travels. This helps her determine the cause of the 3D duplicates of themselves the cockatoos create and also helps her to quickly deduce Antlers' scheme. When Antlers attempts to force the Red-Spot Fever upon Annie, Jimmy, and Xartal, Annie's creativity leads her to pretend to contract the plague, so that Antlers will leave them to enact the rest of his plot. With Antlers gone, Jimmy and Annie work together to develop the plan to remove the windscreen from his kite car and replace it with an ultra-violet radiator that could be used to guide his lost workers back to Larynx Incorporated.

Answer:
Jimmy is thankful that Grannie Annie and her friends have come to help him solve the mystery of the Red Spot Fever. His business, Larynx Incorporated, will no longer exist if they can’t find the route cause of the illness. Jimmy needs his workers to stay on task and mine the ore, Acoustix, so that he can sell his product. Without the miners, Interstellar Voice will undoubtedly win the race and Larynx Incorporated will become obsolete. Jimmy explains that he pays his workers well and sends them on a nice vacation every year, so he can’t figure out why they are all walking off the job.

Although Antlers Park tries to scare Grannie Annie away from going to the Baldric to help her friend, Grannie Annie isn’t buying what he’s selling. She’s there to research her new novel and help out Jimmy, and nothing is going to stop her from completing her task. It is Grannie Annie’s idea to set up the ultraviolet screen that will counteract the infrared-rays that cause Red Spot Fever, and she does it all to get Jimmy’s workers back to the mines.


Question: What is the importance of Acoustix in the story involving a quirky science fiction writer, her peculiar adventures on a distant moon, and the mysterious events that unfold in a strange desert landscape?

Answer:
It is a precious, lightweight ore found on at least one of Jupiter’s moons (eighth moon) that is highly valuable on Mars, but of no value on Earth. Martians are able to speak out loud as Earthlings do by supersonically amplifying their thoughts. As Martians grow beyond middle age, they are no longer able to do this amplification without the assistance of the Acoustix ore. Thus, it is highly valuable to them.

The ore is the only reason for colonization of Jupiter’s moons, and there are two main companies that mine it - Interstellar Voice, Larynx Incorporated. It becomes a source of greed, which causes the manager of Interstellar Voice (Antlers Karn) to attempt sabotage against the other company, serving as the main climax of the story.

Answer: Acoustix is an ore found on Jupiter's eighth moon that helps older martians continue to amplify their thoughts with their supersonic communication methods that usually deteriorate once the Martian hits middle age. Although there is no use for it on Earth, it is the entire reason there is colonial presence on the moon, and the reason for the presence of the companies Interstellar Voice and Larynx Incorporated. The ore is therefore the primary point of competition between the two companies, and when Larynx Incorporated finds a new, rich source of the ore, Antlers Park decides he has to take action to keep Jimmy Baker's company from getting ahead. This is why Antlers made a small device to make the rays more concentrated, to shine them on the workers in the barracks, to give them Red Spot Fever. This would allow him to take over the area that is rich in ore.

Answer: Acoustix is an ore unique to Jupiter's Eighth Moon and is the reason for the presence of the mining operations of Intersteller Voice and Larynx Incorporated. As Antlers Park informs Billy, although the ore is useless to Earthmen, the Martians highly value it. Because Martians speak using a supersonic method, they are able to amplify their thoughts via high-frequency wavelengths. As they get older, this ability decreases, and the Acoustix has the ability to restore that ability to its previous strength. Jimmy Baker's company, Larynx Incorporated, has discovered a massive reserve of Acoustix that would essentially put them far ahead of their competition, and therefore Antlers Park works to sabotage them by spreading Red-Spot fever amongst his workers, knowing their discovery would hurt his own business, Interstellar Voice. Jimmy worries that the labor shortage will impair his company's ability to mine Shaft Four, which produces their largest share of Acoustix, and will lead to the termination of his charter through Spacolonial.

Answer:
Acoustix is the ore that Larynx Incorporated and Interstellar Voice are both harvesting and selling. As far as anyone knows, Acoustix can only be found on this moon of Jupiter's. The ore is useless on Earth, but Martians use it to continue to communicate with Earthmen after they have reached old age. Martians create wave lengths with their thoughts using vibrations. After they become older, they are unable to create the same frequency of vibrations, and therefore lose the ability to speak with others. The Acoustix ore revitalizes the organ they use to create the vibrations, and it gives them the gift of communication once more.

Antlers Park does not want Jimmy Baker and his company to outdo his business, Interstellar Voice. The men share access to the Baldric, which is where the miners are harvesting Acoustix. If Park can get Baker out of the way, he will have the whole stretch of land to harvest for himself, and he will be the sole person profiting off of the moon. He hatches a plan to make Baker's employees sick with Red Spot Fever so that they walk off the job and leave the Acoustix to his miners to gather and sell.