"He Didn't Intend To Be Taken"

    "His arms dangled limply. His lips behind the helmet were tight with terror."

"Moon of Memory."

By Bryce Walton (1918-88; Wikipedia HERE; ISFDb HERE; SFE HERE; IMDb HERE).

Illustration by Luros (1911-99; ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: Future Science Fiction, November 1950.

Reprinted in Black Cat Weekly #85 (2023).

Short short story (6 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE) and Project Gutenberg (HERE).

(Parental caution: Graphic violence.)

   "Barstac found it hard to believe that this girl had helped him escape—until he learned her reason."

A desperate character, this Barstac. On the run for his life, he's more than willing to take any port in a storm. The "port" in this instance, as he discovers to his amazement, is a beautiful blonde. What he doesn't know, though, is that while she might be beautiful as well as a blonde, she has plans for him that definitely don't include a rose-covered cottage in a shady grove somewhere . . .

Principal characters:

~ Karl Barstac ("thanks for the ride"), "a tourist in a dude suit" ("it took off the man's head and helmet in a burst of flame"), Marian Sayers ("I can find life with you, Karl"), and the voice ("This is not a place for the old emotions").

Typos: "Once ['there' is omitted], a man could escape"; "berylium".

References and resources:

- "get to Deimos":

  Little Deimos shows up in S. M. Tenneshaw's "Let Space Be Your Coffin" (HERE; first story). Also see Wikipedia (HERE) and (HERE).

- "Phobos shine":

  Don't expect to get a suntan, though. Phobos reflects only about 7 percent of the light that strikes it (its albedo):

  "Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo of 0.071. Surface temperatures range from about −4 °C (25 °F) on the sunlit side to −112 °C (−170 °F) on the shadowed side." (Wikipedia HERE.)

  Phobos made guest appearances in Poul Anderson's "The Martian Crown Jewels" (HERE; 2nd story), Richard Wilson's "Inside Story" (HERE), Robert Silverberg's "Twelve Hours to Blow!" (HERE), and S. M. Tenneshaw's "Let Space Be Your Coffin" (HERE; 1st story).

- "in Martian atmosphere that meant unconsciousness in a few seconds":

  Or maybe sooner. See Wikipedia, especially under "Atmosphere":

  "Compared to Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is quite rarefied. Atmospheric pressure on the surface today ranges from a low of 30 Pa (0.0044 psi) on Olympus Mons to over 1,155 Pa (0.1675 psi) in Hellas Planitia, with a mean pressure at the surface level of 600 Pa (0.087 psi). The highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to that found 35 kilometres (22 mi) above Earth's surface. The resulting mean surface pressure is only 0.6% of Earth's 101.3 kPa (14.69 psi). The scale height of the atmosphere is about 10.8 kilometres (6.7 mi), which is higher than Earth's 6 kilometres (3.7 mi), because the surface gravity of Mars is only about 38% of Earth's." (Wikipedia HERE).

(Click on image to enlarge.)

- "on its grav-plates":

  If humans want to spend a lot of time in outer space, they're going to need some kind of reliable anti-grav system:

  "Anti-gravity (also known as non-gravitational field) is a hypothetical phenomenon of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to either the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to balancing the force of gravity with some other force, such as electromagnetism and aerodynamic lift. Anti-gravity is a recurring concept in science fiction. Examples are the gravity blocking substance 'Cavorite' in H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon and the Spindizzy machines in James Blish's Cities in Flight. 'Anti-gravity' is often used to refer to devices that look as if they reverse gravity even though they operate through other means, such as lifters, which fly in the air by moving air with electromagnetic fields." (Wikipedia HERE.) 

Concept by Mike Winkelmann.

- "In this light gravity":

  Walton gets this one right:

  "The gravity of Mars is a natural phenomenon, due to the law of gravity, or gravitation, by which all things with mass around the planet Mars are brought towards it. It is weaker than Earth's gravity due to the planet's smaller mass. The average gravitational acceleration on Mars is 3.72076 m/s2 (about 38% of the gravity of Earth) and it varies." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "like turning on a cyclotron":

  With the development of atomic weapons and the Cold War on everybody's mind, quite a few laymen knew what it was: 

  "A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. A cyclotron accelerates charged particles outwards from the center of a flat cylindrical vacuum chamber along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying electric field. Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- A movie with a similar character dynamic (but a very different outcome) to "Moon of Memory" is Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944; WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE).

Walter and Phyllis, together to the end of the line.

- "mining heavy berylium [sic]":

  When combined with aluminum, beryllium could be quite useful in space:

  "Beryllium-aluminum alloy an alloy that consists of 62% beryllium and 38% aluminum, by weight, corresponding approximately to an empirical formula of Al2Be. It was first developed in the 1960s by the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, who called it Lockalloy, and used as a structural metal in the aerospace industry because of its high specific strength and stiffness. The material was used in the Lockheed YF-12 and LGM-30 Minuteman missile systems." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "The Martian's thoughts were so calm and gentle, so old and wise":

  With this story it looks as if Walton might be cashing in on Ray Bradbury's version of Mars, very popular at the time (WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE).

- The Project Gutenberg Bryce Walton collection is (HERE) and (HERE), and The Pulp Magazine Archive collection is (HERE).

Bryce Walton (left) with Ross Rocklynne.

The bottom lines:

  Marian: "I'll stay with you, Karl, right to the end."

  Phyllis: "And nobody's pulling out. We went in this together and we're coming out at the end together. It's straight down the line for both of us. Remember?"

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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