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"Tidal Moon" is a
Ben Amherst is a cree collector on Ganymede in the year 2083. Although he normally operates alone, he finds himself accompanied on one of his rounds by a tourist from Earth named Kirt Scaler. Scaler plans to travel with Amherst to the village of Aquia, then remain there for two months while Amherst continues on his rounds. Amherst finds Scaler strangely knowledgeable about conditions on Ganymede for someone who claims never to have left Earth before.
Reaching Aquia, Amherst and Scaler find that its chief trader, Carl Kent, has gone missing; his teenaged daughter Carol is carrying on in his place. Kent's disappearance is ominous since he has only recently worked out a process for distilling crephine from red moss. While Aquia is drowned in the flood, Scaler spends most of his time with Carol Kent.
A day and a half before the tide is due to ebb away from Aquia, Carol Kent discovers that her father's notes on his red moss distillation process are missing. Amherst remembers a rumour he heard that red moss has been discovered on Io; Scaler, he realizes, must be working for Ionian Products, a company seeking to break Cree, Inc.'s crephine monopoly. If they succeed, it will mean hard times for everyone on Ganymede. Aquia is searched for Scaler, to no avail. Suddenly one of the valves leading to the surface opens; Scaler is using it to escape Aquia with Carl Kent's notes. Amherst sends Kent to get him a vacuum suit; when she returns with it, she is wearing one herself. He tells her to remain in the settlement, but she ignores his order and follows him up the aqueduct.
On the still-half-flooded surface of Ganymede, there is no sign of Scaler, but Amherst and Kent see a rocket ship in the sky, coloured Ionian red. As the rocket nears the muddy ground, it lowers a ladder, then disappears behind a hill. When it reappears, a man is clinging to the ladder. It is Scaler, and Carl Kent's process is on its way to Io.
As they return to Aquia, Carol Kent tells Amherst about her father's process, which involves exposing red moss to ammonia and treating it with an extract from the eggs of Ganymedian gall-ants. Amherst is overjoyed: Ionian Products might have the process, but they don't have the gall-ants, and gall-ants can only breed on Ganymede. Carl Kent's notes will be worthless to the Ionians.
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum and Helen Weinbaum that first appeared in the December 1938 issue of ''Thrilling Wonder Stories
''Wonder Stories'' was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stor ...
'' and was reprinted in the collection ''Interplanetary Odysseys'' (2006). Sam Moskowitz
Sam Moskowitz (June 30, 1920 – April 15, 1997) was an American writer, critic, and historian of science fiction.
Biography
As a child, Moskowitz greatly enjoyed reading science fiction pulp magazines. As a teenager, he organized a branch of ...
stated that Stanley G. Weinbaum completed only a page and a half of the story before his death and that his sister Helen Weinbaum completed the story on her own.In the introduction to ''A Martian Odyssey and Other Science Fiction Tales'', introduction by Sam Moskowitz, Hyperion, 1974, . "Tidal Moon" is the only story by Weinbaum to take place on Ganymede.
Plot summary
Ben Amherst is a cree collector on Ganymede in the year 2083. Although he normally operates alone, he finds himself accompanied on one of his rounds by a tourist from Earth named Kirt Scaler. Scaler plans to travel with Amherst to the village of Aquia, then remain there for two months while Amherst continues on his rounds. Amherst finds Scaler strangely knowledgeable about conditions on Ganymede for someone who claims never to have left Earth before.
Reaching Aquia, Amherst and Scaler find that its chief trader, Carl Kent, has gone missing; his teenaged daughter Carol is carrying on in his place. Kent's disappearance is ominous since he has only recently worked out a process for distilling crephine from red moss. While Aquia is drowned in the flood, Scaler spends most of his time with Carol Kent.
A day and a half before the tide is due to ebb away from Aquia, Carol Kent discovers that her father's notes on his red moss distillation process are missing. Amherst remembers a rumour he heard that red moss has been discovered on Io; Scaler, he realizes, must be working for Ionian Products, a company seeking to break Cree, Inc.'s crephine monopoly. If they succeed, it will mean hard times for everyone on Ganymede. Aquia is searched for Scaler, to no avail. Suddenly one of the valves leading to the surface opens; Scaler is using it to escape Aquia with Carl Kent's notes. Amherst sends Kent to get him a vacuum suit; when she returns with it, she is wearing one herself. He tells her to remain in the settlement, but she ignores his order and follows him up the aqueduct.
On the still-half-flooded surface of Ganymede, there is no sign of Scaler, but Amherst and Kent see a rocket ship in the sky, coloured Ionian red. As the rocket nears the muddy ground, it lowers a ladder, then disappears behind a hill. When it reappears, a man is clinging to the ladder. It is Scaler, and Carl Kent's process is on its way to Io.
As they return to Aquia, Carol Kent tells Amherst about her father's process, which involves exposing red moss to ammonia and treating it with an extract from the eggs of Ganymedian gall-ants. Amherst is overjoyed: Ionian Products might have the process, but they don't have the gall-ants, and gall-ants can only breed on Ganymede. Carl Kent's notes will be worthless to the Ionians.
Weinbaum's Ganymede
In Weinbaum'sSolar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...
, Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
radiates enough heat to create Earthlike environments on the Galilean moons
The Galilean moons (), or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They were first seen by Galileo Galilei in December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized by him as satellites of Jupiter ...
. Ganymede, the third Galilean satellite, has a subarctic climate, large bodies of water, and a six-month rotation period. Due to Jupiter's tidal pull, every spot on Ganymede's surface is inundated with water every three months except a small area of the south pole where the human settlement of Hydropole is located. The Ganymedian natives, the Nympus, grow a mosslike plant called cree which is ordinarily red, but which turns blue when exposed to the ammonia in Ganymede's atmosphere. The blue moss is collected by human traders in the employ of Cree, Inc. who travel among the native villages on an aquatic riding animal called a hipp (short for ''Hippocampus catamiti''); it is then shipped to Earth to produce crephine, a combined anaesthetic and medicine. Other Ganymedian life-forms include the whale-like Gamma Rorqual, the tentacled land leet, and the four-winged Blanket Bat.
Footnotes