"You Believe in Ghosts—Space Ghosts? Maybe Not—but Don’t Be Too Sure!"

THE other day we posted about several out-and-out fantasy stories 

involving spooky stuff. Let's get a little more scientific as we pay 

a visit to . . .

"Asteroid 745: Mauritia."

By Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wollheim; 1914-90; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDB HERE; the SFE HERE; and the IMDB HERE, 5 credits).

First appearance: Orbit Science Fiction, September 1953.

Illustration by Dick Sheldon.

Reprints page (ISFDB HERE).

Short short short story (~ 4 pages as a PDF).

Artwork by David A. Hardy

Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE).

   "I do know one incident which I consider a true ghost story of space. I can’t account for it any other way. The whole thing fits the ghost pattern, though of course we didn’t realize it at the time."

IS guilt transferable from, let's say, one generation to the next? Nowadays people tend either to buy into that notion or completely reject it as being unjust to the innocent, who, they insist, shouldn't be held responsible for what their ancestors did. In today's story, that dilemma arises on a chunk of rock hundreds of millions of miles from Earth . . .

Main characters:

~ Chief Braun, three asteroid prospectors, Leopold Mauritz, and the unnamed narrator.

References:

- Asteroid 745: Mauritia is real. See the Space Reference Database (HERE) and Wikipedia (HERE) for all of the details.

  "Mauritia is a large asteroid that orbits between Mars and Jupiter in the outer reaches of the main asteroid belt. NASA JPL has not classified Mauritia as potentially hazardous because its orbit does not bring it close to Earth.

  "Mauritia orbits the sun every 2,150 days (5.89 years), coming as close as 3.12 AU and reaching as far as 3.40 AU from the sun. Mauritia is about 24.7 kilometers [15.3 miles] in diameter, making it larger than 99% of asteroids, comparable in size to the city of Indianapolis.

  "The rotation of Mauritia has been observed. It completes a rotation on its axis every 9.95 hours.

"Mauritia's orbit is 2.14 AU from Earth's orbit at its closest point. This means that there is an extremely wide berth between this asteroid and Earth at all times."

- "poking around the asteroids" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "base on Juno" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "our Geigers" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "A character named Hitler" (HERE and HERE; Wikipedia).

- "read us the riot act" (HERE, verb definition; Wiktionary).

- "the Syndicate" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "I found that this planetoid, number seven-four-five, was first discovered about 1928 by an amateur astronomer named Leopold Mauritz. He named it after himself, Mauritia." The Wikipedia article about Asteroid 745: Mauritia (see above) tells a different story.

Resources:

- "Asteroid 745: Mauritia" seems to be one of many stories carrying Donald Wollheim's alternate byline of "Martin Pearson." Did Wollheim write "Spelled Guilty" (HERE) under another name? We're still not sure.

- One of what have been called "flying mountains" is the scene of the crime in Sam Moskowitz's "Death of an Asteroid" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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