"Somebody Didn't Mind Murdering in Order to Survive, Who?"

"Nonentity."

By E. C. Tubb (1919-2010; Wikipedia HERE; SFE HERE; ISFDb HERE; IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, February 1955.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Novelette (19 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 87).

(Parental note: Violence, adult situations and language.)

   "Someone in here is a murderer, and the only thing I'm certain about is that it isn't me."

Terrorists come in all shapes, sexes, and sizes, something to remember when you're a castaway in space: "Death rode the hands of the chronometer—and they all knew it. And knowing it, reacted each in their own fashion."

Principal characters:

~ "The officer" ("Would any of you be a doctor?"); Henley ("Now we'll see who survives"); 

Lorna ("You think I want to keep company with a corpse!"); Jeff ("When the chips are down only the strong can survive"); Prentice ("He was old and he was almost dead with fear"); Mrs. Caulder ("I'm not every clever at that sort of thing"); and Tommy ("Some poor devil separated from his people in the rush").

Comment: Grim, grimmer, grimmest. (You've been warned.)

References and resources:

- "he spilled the pile then smashed the rod-controls":

  It's obvious they were aboard an atomic rocket, which many in the fifties thought would be the only way to really get around in the Final Frontier. (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "the hostile satellites of Jupiter":

  As space probes have told us in the past half-century, they can be very hostile indeed:

  "Jupiter is expected to have about 100 irregular moons larger than 1 km (0.6 mi) in diameter, plus around 500 more smaller retrograde moons down to diameters of 0.8 km (0.5 mi)." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "Free fall":

  "In classical mechanics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on it. An object in the technical sense of the term 'free fall' may not necessarily be falling down in the usual sense of the term. An object moving upwards might not normally be considered to be falling, but if it is subject to only the force of gravity, it is said to be in free fall." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "before we left for the asteroids":

  "Of the roughly one million known asteroids, the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 A.U. from the Sun, in a region known as the main asteroid belt." (Wikipedia HERE; also see HERE.)

- "His blood would drift in tiny globules":

  Sounds a lot like a certain sci-film from thirty-six years later: "The blood that spurts out of the Klingon's wounds was created using computer generated imagery; the animators had to make sure that the blood floated in a convincing manner while still looking interesting and not too gory." (WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE; see under "Effects.")

- "if we're talking of survival":

  What can go wrong with people in outer space? Plenty:

  "The effects of spaceflight on the human body are complex and largely harmful over both short and long term. Significant adverse effects of long-term weightlessness include muscle atrophy and deterioration of the skeleton (spaceflight osteopenia). Other significant effects include a slowing of cardiovascular system functions, decreased production of red blood cells (space anemia), balance disorders, eyesight disorders and changes in the immune system. Additional symptoms include fluid redistribution (causing the 'moon-face' appearance typical in pictures of astronauts experiencing weightlessness), loss of body mass, nasal congestion, sleep disturbance, and excess flatulence. Overall, NASA refers to the various deleterious effects of spaceflight on the human body by the acronym RIDGE (i.e., 'space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, gravity fields, and hostile and closed environments')." (Wikipedia HERE; also see HERE.)

- Reading "Nonentity" reminds us strongly of an atypical and greatly underrated movie by Alfred Hitchcock (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE). We also know of a telefilm that was a conscious SFFnal reworking of Hitchcock's movie (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE), thereby taking it closer to being an inadvertent adaptation of today's story. Finally, we have to wonder if this film (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE) was a failed attempt to "adapt" (i.e., rip off and avoid royalties) "Nonentity"?

- If you didn't get a bad case of claustrophobia from today's story, then you might want to consult "101 Movies Based in One Room" (IMDb HERE); in TV productions the situation in our story would constitute a "bottle show" (Wikipedia HERE).

- To give you an inkling of how prolific a writer E(dwin) C(harles) Tubb was, consider this FictionMags list of his noms de plume:

  Stuart Allen, Antony Armstrong, Ted Bain, Alice Beecham, Anthony Blake, L. T. Bronson, Raymond L. Burton, Julian Carey, Morley Carpenter, Julian Cary, Norman Dale, Robert D. Ennis, James Evans, James R. Fenner, R. H. Godfrey, Charles Gray, Charles Grey, Volsted Gridban, Alan Guthrie, D. W. R. Hill, George Holt, Alan Innes, Gordon Kent, Nigel Lloyd, Robert Lloyd, Frank T. Lomas, Ron Lowam, Phillip Martyn, John Mason, Colin May, Carl Moulton, L. C. Powers, Edward Richards, John Seabright, Roy Sheldon, Eric Storm, Andrew Sutton, Ken Wainwright, Frank Weight, Douglas West, Eric Wilding & Frank Winnard.

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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