ENGLISH 9A FICTION MODULE
You will be reading short stories for this module. Some of the short stories will be included with this module and some
of them will be in the green Prentice Hall Literature – Gold Level textbook.
The Cask of Amontillado” –Pages 4-12 – 8 vocabulary words
The Most Dangerous Game – Pages 18 – 36 – 8 vocabulary words
The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant – included in the module – 10 vocabulary words
Trap of Gold – included in the module – 10 vocabulary words
The Bet – included in the module – 10 vocabulary words
The Cold Equations – included in the module – 10 vocabulary words
1. You will need to use Reading Strategies (included in this module) for all of the short stories. Make sure you use all of
the Reading Strategies at least once, after that you can choose the reading strategy that works best for you.
2. You will need to do vocabulary for each short story. The vocabulary in the short stories will be underlined. You will
create a poster using all of the vocabulary words from each of the six stories above. On the poster you will need to write
the word, definition (from the context of the story) and create an image that depicts the word. Rubric is included in the
module.
3. You will need to do literary terms for each of the short stories. You will choose 24 DIFFERENT literary terms from the
list that is included in the module. You will use 4 DIFFERENT literary terms for each story. You will create a power point
for each of the literary terms. The power point will have the literary term, definition, an example from the actual text of
the story (indicating which story it is from) and you will have an image that depicts each example that you use from the
story. Rubric is included in the module.
4. You will need to do an activity for each of the short stories – the activity instructions will be before EACH of the short
stories.
5. You will do Grammar for 5 of the stories. If you get stuck you can refer to the green book titled – Writing and
Grammar Communication in Action – gold level.
A READING STRATEGY
3...2...1.....
**Divide your short story up because you will do AT LEAST four of these for the short story.
THREE things I learned:
TWO questions I still have:
ONE thing I’d like to know more about:
Reciprocal Learning Reading Strategy Note Sheet
Set-up your paper (s) as follows:
As you read, you jot down notes on each role below. Please make sure you divide the short story into AT
LEAST four sections and do one set of roles for each divided section.
Section 1: Beginning - ____________________________________________________
Summarizer: What is the selection about - relay the most important information?
Questioner: Reinforces the summary – gain more comprehension – ask in-depth questions (self-test) and make
sure they can be answered by the information you have just read.
Clarifier: Make sense of things that are not understood – reread if you are not sure – pay attention to
vocabulary.
Predictor: Hypothesize – what will the author discuss next. (You can use background information you already
have; also use headings, sub-headings, questions in the text – as a means of anticipating what comes next) This
is also an opportunity to link new knowledge with old knowledge and to determine the purpose to continue to
read. As you continue to read you will confirm or disprove the hypothesis.
Section 2: read to - ______________________________________________________
Summarizer:
Questioner:
Clarifier:
Predictor:
Section 3: read to - ______________________________________________________
Summarizer:
Questioner:
Clarifier:
Predictor:
Section 4: read to - ______________________________________________________
Summarizer:
Questioner:
Clarifier:
Predictor:
Section 5: read to - ______________________________________________________
Summarizer:
Questioner:
Clarifier:
Predictor:
ETC.
Combination Note-Taking – Reading Strategy
Source: Classroom Instruction That Works by Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock
**Divide your short story up because you will do AT LEAST four of these for the short story.
Title/Sub-Heading/Caption
Notes –Main/Big Ideas
Visual/Picture/Image etc. – for each note
Summary
Vocabulary Poster Rubric
1. The student has neatly and creatively placed ALL of the vocabulary words (56)
from the above listed six stories on the poster.
(56 points)
______
(56 points)
______
(56 points)
______
(10 points)
______
2. The student has neatly and creatively placed ALL of the definitions of
ALL of the vocabulary Words (56) from the above listed six short stories
on the poster.
3. The student has neatly and creatively drawn an image to depict EACH of the
vocabulary words (56) from the above listed six short stories on the
poster.
4. The poster demonstrates the student’s knowledge, imagination and
creativity.
TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS 168
______
Literary Terms
1. Allusion - a reference to a well-known person, place, or event, literary work or work of art. Example: an author may
allude to a Civil War battle, the Constitution, or a book like the Bible.
2. Foreshadowing – giving hints or clues of what is to come later in a story.
3. Metaphor – a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. Example: “love is
madness.”
4. Simile – a figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two subjects, using either like or as. Examples:
Her smile was like a sunbeam. She is a sweet as sugar.
5. Personification – a figure of speech in which nonhuman subjects are given human characteristics. Examples: The
creek ran down the hill. The leaves fought with one another in the wind. It is a smiling moon. Justice is blind.
6. Flashback – a section of a literary work that interrupts the chronological presentation of events to relate an event
from an earlier time. Characters will often “flashback” to an event of importance to the work.
7. Symbol – a concrete object used to represent an idea. Hourglass = time passing OR dove = peace
8. Idiom – a phrase or expression with a meaning different from the meanings of the individual words. A traditional
way of saying something – often an idiom, such as “under the weather,” does not seem to make sense if taken literally.
Someone unfamiliar with English idioms would probably not understand that to be “under the weather” is to be sick.
9. Hyperbole – an over exaggeration. Examples: “I am so hungry I could eat a horse.” OR “The man is as strong as an
ox.”
10. Understatement – to express something too weakly; restrained. A form of irony in which something is intentionally
represented as less that it is: “Hank Aaron was a pretty good ball player.”
11. Oxymoron – connecting two words with opposite meanings. Jumbo shrimp, pretty ugly, controlled chaos
12. Paradox – a true statement, which contradicts itself. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be
true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking. OR Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.
Types of Irony:
13. Dramatic Irony – is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
14. Situational Irony – is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual result.
15. Verbal Irony – is when an author says one thing and means something else.
Types of Conflicts – struggle between two opposing forces, or beliefs which form the basis of the plot – selection may
have all or some.
16. Internal Conflict – Person vs. Self
17. External Conflict – Person vs. Person
18. External Conflict – Person vs. Nature
19. External Conflict – Person vs. Society
20. External Conflict – Person vs. Fate/God
Types of characterizations: selection should always have these
21. Direct Characterization – author directly states a character’s traits
22. Indirect Characterization – author (shows) tells what a character looks like, does, and says, as well as how other
characters react to him or her.
23. Dynamic Character – a literary or dramatic character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in
personality or attitude.
24. Round Character – a character in fiction whose personality, background, motives, and other features are fully
described or outlined by the author.
25. Static Character – a literary or dramatic character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not
grow or develop.
26. Flat Character – an easily recognized character type in fiction who may not be fully described or outlined but is
useful in carrying out some narrative purpose of the author.
27. Types of Point of View – choose only one for your selection:
First Person – story is told by one of the characters
Limited Third Person – allows the narrator to share the thoughts and feelings of ONE central character
Omniscient Third Person – allows the narrator to share the thoughts and feelings of ALL characters.
28. Protagonist – is the main character or hero in the story.
29. Antagonist – is the person or force working against the protagonist, or hero, of the work.
30. Imagery – a word or groups of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste,
touch, hearing, and smell.
31. Setting – is the time and place in which the action of a literary work occurs.
32. Style – is how the author uses words, phrases, and sentences to form his or her ideas. Style is also thought of as the
qualities and characteristics that distinguish one writer’s work from the work of others.
33. Tone – is the overall feeling, or effect, created by a writer’s use of words. This feeling may be serious, humorous, or
satiric, etc.
34. Mood – is the feeling a text arouses in the reader: happiness, peacefulness, sadness, etc.
35. Theme – is the statement about life that a writer is trying to get across in a piece of writing. In most cases, the
theme will be implied rather than directly spelled out.
36. Author Purpose – Why did the author write the story? Entertain, present universal truth, inform, educate, social
comment, etc.
37. Cause and Effect – when something happens it results in another thing.
Plot Line:
38. Exposition – in a play, novel, short story, it would be the portion that gives the background or situation surrounding
the story.
39. Rising Action – is the series of struggles/events that builds a story or play toward a climax.
40. Climax – a series of struggles or conflict (most intense point).
41. Falling Action – is the part of a play or story that leads from the climax or turning point to the resolution.
42. Resolution/Denouement – is the portion of the play or story in which the problem/conflict is solved. It comes after
the climax and falling action and is intended to bring the story to a satisfactory end.
Literary Terms – Power Point Rubric
Total of 24 different literary terms, therefore, 24 literary term slides:
1. Student has 24 DIFFERENT literary terms on individual slides.
24 Points
______
2. Student has put the definition for the 24 literary terms on the slide.
24 Points
______
3. Student has indicated the short story that each actual text example has
been taken from and has included the text example from the short
story on the slide. Each story will use ONLY 4 literary terms.
48 Points
______
4. Student has an image, picture, etc. to depict EACH example that
was used from the short stories.
24 Points
______
5. Student has 1 introductory slide (your name)
2 Points
______
6. Student has at least 1 Bibliography slide (paste the web addresses on
the slide for information and images/pictures you used)
8 Points
______
7. Student has given a presentation of their Power Point
10 Points
______
Possible Points 116
______
The Cask of Amontillado - activity
When Fortunato refers to Montresor’s arms, he is referring to the Montresor family coat of arms. A coat of
arms is a shield or drawing of a shield whose design represents a family history. Coat of arms were originally
worn on armor to proclaim a knight’s allegiance, but were later adopted by noble families throughout Europe.
The origins, history, and rules governing coats of arms come under the study of heraldry, which dates from the
twelfth century. Heraldry is a complex system that has many rules and a specialized vocabulary. Montresor’s
arms include a “food d’or,” or golden foot, in a “field azure,” which means on a sky-blue background. The
“serpent rampant” is a serpent standing up, as if on hind legs.
A. Directions: answer the following questions on the lines provided.
What does Montresor’s coat of arms suggest about him?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
B. Design your Personal Coat of Arms.
A coat of arms is a shield or emblem depicting a family’s or an individual’s history and distinguishing characteristics. Use
the shield above, design your own personal coat of arms. You may use words, pictures, or symbols to suggest the
characteristics or important events in your life. Make sure you use all six spaces – make them colorful and neat.
1. Write your personal motto on the ribbon beneath the shield.
2. On the lines below explain the meanings of the words, pictures or symbols you used in each of the six spaces on your
coat of arms.
Responses for your Coat of Arms:
1.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
2.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
3.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
4.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
5.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
6.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
The Most Dangerous Game – activity
Map of Ship-Trap Island Instruction
Directions: In order to review the events and setting of “The Most Dangerous Game,” use the information that the
author, Richard Connell, gives you and your own creativity to create a map of the island according to the events and
locations in the story.
a. The map will be done on copy paper.
b. It will be colorful, creative, and neat.
c. Make sure you draw images/pictures and NEATLY label the places.
d. Include a key that clearly identifies any symbols, colors, and shapes used on your map.
e. Include a compass indicating north, south, east and west.
Required Places:
1. Rainsford’s landing point on Ship-Trap Island
2. Zaroff’s chateau
3. Zaroff’s dog pit
4. Fox trail from the house
5. First tree when Rainsford hides and sleeps
6. The Malay man-catcher
7. The fallen log he hid behind
8. Death Swamp (quicksand)
9. The Burmese Tiger Pit
10. The stump of a lightning-charred tree
11. Climbs a tree on a ridge
12. The springing tree trap
13. Climbed another tree
14. Rainsford’s jump into the sea
15. Cove between cliff and house
Rubric
Details: each one is worth 2 points
1. Rainsford’s landing point on Ship-Trap Island
2. Zaroff’s chateau
3. Zaroff’s dog pit
4. Fox trail from the house
5. First tree when Rainsford hides and sleeps
6. The Malay man-catcher
7. The fallen log he hid behind
8. Death Swamp (quicksand)
9. The Burmese Tiger Pit
10. The stump of a lightning-charred tree
11. Climbs a tree on a ridge
12. The springing tree trap
13. Climbed another tree
14. Rainsford’s jump into the sea
15. Cove between cliff and house
Total Accuracy Score (from above)
Label Score
Key Score
Compass Score
Creativity Score
Neatness/Colorful – Appearance Score
TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS ((70)
(30)
(5)
(10)
(5)
(10)
(10)
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
______
The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant – activity
The fourteen year-old narrator of “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” feels passionately about two things: the
largest, strongest largemouth bass he has every caught, and a girl he has admired all summer. Forced to choose
between them, he weighs his options while Sheila talks and the fish pulls the canoe backward. Write down in the left
side of the canoe the reasons you think the narrator should reel in the fish. In the right side of the canoe, write down
the reasons you think he should cut the line.
Quick Write: Write a ½ page reflection about: Think back to some time when you had to give up one thing for
something else. Write down what happened. Did you make the right choice? Do you have some regrets?
“The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant”
By W. D. Wetherell
There was a summer in my life when the only creature that seemed lovelier to me than a largemouth bass was
Sheila Mant. I was fourteen. The Mants had rented the cottage next to ours on the river; with their parties, their frantic
games of softball, their constant comings and goings, they appeared to me denizens of a brilliant existence. “Too noisy
by half,” my mother quickly decided, but I would have given anything to be invited to one of their parties, and when my
parents went to bed I would sneak through the woods to their hedge and stare enchanted at the candlelit swirl of white
dresses and bright, paisley skirts.
Sheila was the middle daughter—at seventeen, all but out of reach. She would spend her days sunbathing on a
float my Uncle Sierbert had moored in their cove, and before July was over I had learned all her moods. If she lay flat on
the diving board with her hand trailing idly in the water, she was pensive, not to be disturbed. On her side, her head
propped up by her arm, she was observant, considering those around her with a look that seemed queenly and severe.
Sitting up, arms tucked around her long, suntanned legs, she was approachable, but barely, and it was only in those
glorious moments when she stretched herself prior to entering the water that her various suitors found the courage to
come near.
These were many. The Dartmouth heavyweight crew would scull by her house on their way upriver, and I think
all eight of them must have been in love with her at various times during the summer; the coxswain would curse them
through his megaphone, but without effect—there was always a pause in their pace when they passed Sheila’s float. I
suppose to these jaded twenty-year-olds she seemed the incarnation of innocence and youth, while to me she appeared
unutterably suave, the epitome of sophistication. I was on the swim team at school, and to win her attention would do
endless laps between my house and the Vermont shore, hoping she would notice the beauty of my flutter kick, the
power of my crawl. Finishing, I would boost myself up onto our dock and glance casually over toward her, but she was
never watching, and the miraculous day she was, I immediately climbed the diving board and did my best tuck and a half
for her and continued diving until she had left and the sun went down and my longing was like a madness and I couldn’t
stop.
It was late August by the time I got up the nerve to ask her out. The tortured will-I’s, won’t-I’s, the agonized
indecision over what to say, the false starts toward her house and embarrassed retreats—the details of these have been
seared from my memory, and the only part I remember clearly is emerging from the woods toward dusk while they were
playing softball on their lawn, as bashful and frightened as a unicorn.
Sheila was stationed halfway between first and second, well outside the infield. She didn’t seem surprised to see
me—as a matter of fact, she didn’t seem to see me at all.
“If you’re playing second base, you should move closer,” I said.
She turned—I took the full brunt of her long red hair and well-spaced freckles.
“I’m playing outfield,” she said, “I don’t like the responsibility of having a base.”
“Yeah, I can understand that,” I said, though I couldn’t. “There’s a band in Dixford tomorrow night at nine. Want
to go?”
One of her brothers sent the ball sailing over the left-fielder’s head; she stood and watched it disappear toward
the river.
“You have a car?” she said, without looking up.
 Scull – row, as in a rowboat.
 Coxswain – person steering a racing shell and calling out the rhythm of the strokes for the crew.

Epitome – embodiment; one that is representative of a type or class.
I played my master stroke. “We’ll go by canoe.”
I spent all of the following day polishing it. I turned it upside down on our lawn and rubbed every inch with
Brillo, hosing off the dirt, wiping it with chamois until it gleamed as bright as aluminum ever gleamed. About five, I slid it
into the water, arranging cushions near the bow so Sheila could lean on them if she was in one of her pensive moods,
propping up my father’s transistor radio by the middle thwart so we could have music when we came back.
Automatically, without thinking about it, I mounted my Mitchell reel on my Pfleuger spinning rod and stuck it in the
stern.
I say automatically, because I never went anywhere that summer without a fishing rod. When I wasn’t swimming
laps to impress Sheila, I was back in our driveway practicing casts, and when I wasn’t practicing casts, I was tying the line
to Tosca, our springer spaniel, to test the reel’s drag, and when I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was fishing the river
for bass.
Too nervous to sit at home, I got in the canoe early and started paddling in a huge circle that would get me to
Sheila’s dock around eight. As automatically as I brought along my rod, I tied on a big Rapala plug, let it down into the
water, let out some line, and immediately forgot all about it.
It was already dark by the time I glided up to the Mants’ dock. Even by day the river was quiet, most of the
summer people preferring Sunapee or one of the other nearby lakes, and at night it was a solitude difficult to believe, a
corridor of hidden life that ran between banks like a tunnel. Even the stars were part of it. They weren’t as sharp
anywhere else; they seemed to have chosen the river as a guide on their slow wheel toward morning, and in the course
of the summer’s fishing, I had learned all their names.
I was there ten minutes before Sheila appeared. I heard the slam of their screen door first, then saw her in the
spotlight as she came slowly down the path. As beautiful as she was on the float, she was even lovelier now—her white
dress went perfectly with her hair, and complimented her figure even more than her swimsuit.
It was her face that bothered me. It had on its delightful fullness a very dubious expression.
“Look,” she said. “I can get Dad’s car.”
“It’s faster this way,” I lied. “Parking’s tense up there. Hey, it’s safe. I won’t tip it or anything.”
She let herself down reluctantly into the bow. I was glad she wasn’t facing me. When her eyes were on me, I felt
like diving in the river again from agony and joy.
I pried the canoe away from the dock and started paddling upstream. There was an extra paddle in the bow, but
Sheila made no move to pick it up. She took her shoes off and dangled her feet over the side.
Ten minutes went by.
“What kind of band?” she said.
“It’s sort of like folk music. You’ll like it.”
“Eric Caswell’s going to be there. He strokes number four.”
“No kidding?” I said. I had no idea whom she meant.
“What’s that sound?” she said, pointing toward shore.
“Bass. That splashing sound?”
“Over there.”
“Yeah, bass. They come into the shallows at night to chase frogs and moths and things. Big largemouths.
Micropterus salmoides,” I added, showing off.
 Chamois – soft leather used for polishing.
 Middle thwart – brace across the middle of a canoe.
 Micropterus salmoides – the scientific name for a largemouth bass.
“I think fishing’s dumb,” she said, making a face. “I mean, it’s boring and all. Definitely dumb.”
Now I have spent a great deal of time in the years since wondering why Sheila Mant should come down so hard on
fishing. Was her father a fisherman? Her antipathy toward fishing nothing more than normal filial rebellion? Had she
tried it once? A messy encounter with worms? It doesn’t matter. What does is that at that fragile moment in time I
would have given anything not to appear dumb in Sheila’s severe and unforgiving eyes.
She hadn’t seen my equipment yet. What I should have done, of course, was push the canoe in closer to shore
and carefully slide the rod into some branches where I could pick it up again in the morning. Failing that, I could have
surreptitiously dumped the whole outfit overboard, written off the forty or so dollars as love’s tribute. What I actually
did do was gently lean forward, and slowly, ever so slowly, push the rod back through my legs toward the stern where it
would be less conspicuous.
It must have been just exactly what the bass was waiting for. Fish will trail a lure sometimes, trying to make up
their mind whether or not to attack, and the slight pause in the plug’s speed caused by my adjustment was tantalizing
enough to overcome the bass’s inhibitions. My rod, safely out of sight at last, bent double. The line, tightly coiled, peeled
off the spool with the shrill, tearing zip of a high-speed drill.
Four things occurred to me at once. One, that it was a bass. Two, that it was a big bass. Three, that it was the
biggest bass I had ever hooked. Four, that Sheila Mant must not know. “What was that?” she said, turning half around.
“Uh, what was what?”
“That buzzing noise.”
“Bats.”
She shuddered, quickly drew her feet back into the canoe. Every instinct I had told me to pick up the rod and
strike back at the bass, but there was no need to—it was already solidly hooked. Downstream, an awesome distance
downstream, it jumped clear of the water, landing with a concussion heavy enough to ripple the entire river. For a
moment, I thought it was gone, but then the rod was bending again, the tip dancing into the water. Slowly, not making
any motion that might alert Sheila, I reached down to tighten the drag.
While all this was going on, Sheila had begun talking, and it was a few minutes before I was able to catch up with
her train of thought.
“I went to a party there. These fraternity men. Katherine says I could get in there if I wanted. I’m thinking more
of UVM or Bennington. Somewhere I can ski.”
The bass was slanting toward the rocks on the New Hampshire side by the ruins of Donaldson’s boathouse. It
had to be an old bass—a young one probably wouldn’t have known the rocks were there. I brought the canoe back into
the middle of the river, hoping to head it off.
“That’s neat,” I mumbled. “Skiing. Yeah, I can see that.”
“Eric said I have the figure to model, but I thought I should get an education first. I mean, it might be a while
before I get started and all. I was thinking of getting my hair styled, more swept back? I mean, Ann-Margret? Like hers,
only shorter.”
She hesitated. “Are we going backward?”
We were. I had managed to keep the bass in the middle of the river away from the rocks, but it had plenty of
room there, and for the first time a chance to exert its full strength. I quickly computed the weight necessary to draw a
fully loaded canoe backward—the thought of it made me feel faint.
“It’s just the current,” I said hoarsely. “No sweat or anything.”
 UVM or Bennington – University of Vermont or Bennington College, Bennington Vermont.

Ann-Margret – (1941- ) Movie star, very popular at the time of this story.
I dug in deeper with my paddle. Reassured, Sheila began talking about something else, but all my attention was
taken up now with the fish. I could feel its desperation as the water grew shallower. I could sense the extra strain on the
line, the frantic way it cut back and forth in the water. I could visualize what it looked like—the gape of its mouth, the
flared gills and thick, vertical tail. The bass couldn’t have encountered many forces in its long life that it wasn’t capable
of handling, and the unrelenting tug at its mouth must have been a source of great puzzlement and mounting panic.
Me, I had problems of my own. To get to Dixford, I had to paddle up a sluggish stream that came into the river
beneath a covered bridge. There was a shallow sandbar at the mouth of this stream—weeds on one side, rocks on the
other. Without doubt, this is where I would lose the fish.
“I have to be careful with my complexion. I tan, but in segments. I can’t figure out if it’s even worth it. I wouldn’t
even do it probably. I saw Jackie Kennedy in Boston, and she wasn’t tan at all.”
Taking a deep breath, I paddled as hard as I could for the middle, deepest part of the bar. I could have threaded
the eye of a needle with the canoe, but the pull on the stern threw me off, and I overcompensated—the canoe veered
left and scraped bottom. I pushed the paddle down and shoved. A moment of hesitation . . . a moment more. . . . The
canoe shot clear into the deeper water of the stream. I immediately looked down at the rod. It was bent in the same
tight arc—miraculously, the bass was still on.
The moon was out now. It was low and full enough that its beam shone directly on Sheila there ahead of me in
the canoe, washing her in a creamy, luminous glow. I could see the lithe, easy shape of her figure. I could see the way
her hair curled down off her shoulders, the proud, alert tilt of her head, and all these things were as a tug on my heart.
Not just Sheila, but the aura she carried about her of parties and casual touchings and grace. Behind me, I could feel the
strain of the bass, steadier now, growing weaker, and this was another tug on my heart, not just the bass but the beat of
the river and the slant of the stars and the smell of the night, until finally it seemed I would be torn apart between
longings, split in half. Twenty yards ahead of us was the road, and once I pulled the canoe up on shore, the bass would
be gone, irretrievably gone. If instead I stood up, grabbed the rod, and started pumping, I would have it—as tired as the
bass was, there was no chance it could get away. I reached down for the rod, hesitated, looked up to where Sheila was
stretching herself lazily toward the sky, her small breasts rising beneath the soft fabric of her dress, and the tug was too
much for me, and quicker than it takes to write down, I pulled a penknife from my pocket and cut the line in half.
With a sick, nauseous feeling in my stomach, I saw the rod unbend.
“My legs are sore,” Sheila whined. “Are we there yet?”
Through a superhuman effort of self-control, I was able to beach the canoe and help Sheila off. The rest of the
night is much foggier. We walked to the fair—there was the smell of popcorn, the sound of guitars. I may have danced
once or twice with her, but all I really remember is her coming over to me once the music was done to explain that she
would be going home in Eric Caswell’s Corvette.
“Okay,” I mumbled.
For the first time that night she looked at me, really looked at me.
“You’re a funny kid, you know that?”
Funny. Different. Dreamy. Odd. How many times was I to hear that in the years to come, all spoken with the
same quizzical, half-accusatory tone Sheila used then. Poor Sheila! Before the month was over, the spell she cast over
me was gone, but the memory of that lost bass haunted me all summer and haunts me still. There would be other Sheila
Mants in my life, other fish, and though I came close once or twice, it was these secret, hidden tuggings in the night that
claimed me, and I never made the same mistake again.

style.
Jackie Kennedy (1929-1994)First Lady during the administration of President John F. Kennedy; greatly admired by the public for her dignity and sense of
W.D. Wetherell
(1948– )
W.D. Wetherell was born in a small town in New York.Wetherell was shy as a child. At the age of ten or eleven, he
became interested in becoming a writer. First he wrote verse, but then switched to fiction which he called the
"hardest kind of writing." W.D. Wetherell wrote his first short story at the age of nineteen. Wetherell was rejected for
eight long years. Wetherell has said his work is "a testament of faith in the power of art in general and in the
importance of fiction in particular." Wetherell lives in western New Hampshire with his wife and two kids. He calls
himself "a walker in the sedentary age, a lover of quiet in a century that has the volume turned-up full blast; a reader
in a visual age; a writer in one that is increasingly alternate."
W. D. Wetherell was raised in Garden City, New Jersey, but has made his home for a number of years in Lyme Center,
New Hampshire, not far from Hanover and Dartmouth College. Wetherell is the author of eight books. These include
the novels Souvenirs (1981), Chekhov's Sister (1990), and The Wisest Man in America (1995), and two short stories
collections. The Man who loved Levitown (1985), which won The Drue Heinz Literature Prize the year of its
publication, and Hyannis Boat and Other Stories (1989). His short stories have appeared in such magazines as Kenyon
Review, Tr-Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, and Breadloaf Quarterly, Atlantic, Southern
Review, Colorado Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Graffiti. Several have been selected for inclusion in the
annual O. Henry Awards volume of Prize Stories and have won the P.E.N. Syndicated Fiction Prize. Wetherell is also
the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship.
Wetherell's lifelong avocation is fly-fishing, and he has three volumes on the subject: Upland Stream (1991), Vermont
River (1993), and One More River (1998). His most recent book is a celebration of mountainous western New
Hampshire, North of Now (1998). As for his story, " Wherever That Great Heart May Be," W.D. Wetherell has written
the current editor as follows: "The title comes from what I think is the most beautiful novel dedication ever, that of
Melville to Jack Chase, his former shipmate, in Billy Budd (Melville's last novel, published posthumously in 1924). I
have an extravagant belief in stories, in big stories, most of all, and I think this is an example of the tradition out of
which I'm writing; the last line, simple as it is, is the nearest thing to a credo I have."
The Trap of Gold – activity
Risky Business: Wetherton has experience in the desert, and he prides himself on his caution. These factors
give him a certain amount of control over his fate by reducing the risk involved in extracting the gold. With
each day inside the trap of gold, uncertainty increases the risk. He cannot control the unforeseen forces inside
the mountain, but can he control his greed? Use the scales below to conduct a risk-benefit analysis. On each
set of lines provided, choose and briefly describe a plot development in the story. Use the scales to assign
your personal ratings – put the numbers right below the scales - 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest)—to the risk and the
benefit involved at each point. For example, when Wetherton enters the desert, the risk might only be 1
because he is experiences and careful. The benefit may be high when he enters the desert because he has the
opportunity to find gold and his family needs the money.
Risk
Benefit
Risk
Benefit
Risk
Benefit
_______________________
_______________________
_______________________
_______________________
________________________
________________________
Risk
Risk
Benefit
Benefit
______________________
_______________________
______________________
_______________________
1. Did the initial rating you assigned to the benefit change as the story progressed? Why or why not?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Did the risk factor surpass the benefit factor at some point on your scales? If so, when and why? If not,
why not?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Quick Write: Write a ½ page reflection about: There’s an old saying: Money makes the world go round. Is it
true? Does money drive your actions? Does money drive your actions? How much would you risk for a hundred
dollars? A million? How much would tempt you to risk your life? Freewrite about power of money and the risks
people take to get it.
“Trap of Gold” by Louis L’Amour
Wetherton had been three months out of Horsehead before he found his first color. At first it was a few
scattered grains taken from the base of an alluvial fan where millions of tons of sand and silt had washed
down from a chain of rugged peaks; yet the gold was ragged under the magnifying glass.
Color =here, trace of gold
Alluvial fan = fan-shaped deposit of soil or sand
Gold that has carried any distance becomes worn and polished by the abrasive action of the
accompanying rocks and sand, so this could not have been carried far. With caution born of harsh
experience, he seated himself and lighted his pipe, yet excitement was strong within him.
A contemplative man by nature, experience had taught him how a man may be deluded by hope, yet all
his instincts told him the source of the gold was somewhere on the mountain above. It could have come
down the wash that skirted the base of the mountain, but the ragged condition of the gold made that
impossible.
The base of the fan was a half-mile across and hundreds of feet thick, built of silt and sand washed down
by centuries of erosion among the higher peaks. The point of the wide V of the fan lay between two
towering upthrusts of granite, but from where Wetherton sat he could see that the actual source of the
fan lay much higher.
Wetherton made camp near a tiny spring west of the fan, then picketed his burros and began his climb.
When he was well over two thousand feet higher, he stopped, resting again, and while resting he drypanned some of the silt. Surprisingly, there were more than a few grains of gold even in that first pan, so
he continued his climb and passed at last between the towering portals of the granite columns.
Above this natural gate were three smaller alluvial fans that joined at the gate to pour into the greater fan
below. Dry-panning two of these brought no results, but the third, even by the relatively poor method of
dry-panning, showed a dozen colors, all of good size.
The head of this fan lay in a gigantic crack in a granitic upthrust that resembled a fantastic ruin. Pausing
to catch his breath, his gaze wandered along the base of this upthrust, and right before him the
crumbling granite was slashed with a vein of quartz that was literally laced with gold!
Granitic = made of granite, a very hard rock
Struggling nearer through the loose sand, his heart pounding more from excitement than from altitude
and exertion, he came to an abrupt stop. The band of quartz was six feet wide, and that six feet was
cobwebbed with gold.
It was unbelievable, but here it was.
Yet even in this moment of success, something about the beetling cliff stopped him from going forward.
His innate caution took hold, and he drew back to examine it at greater length. Wary of what he saw, he
circled the batholith and then climbed to the ridge behind it, from which he could look down upon the
roof. What he saw from there left him dry-mouthed and jittery.
Bettling = projecting; jutting out
Batholith = large, deeply embedded mass of rock
The granitic upthrust was obviously a part of a much older range, one that had weathered and worn,
suffered from shock and twisting until finally this tower of granite had been violently upthrust, leaving it
standing, a shaky ruin among younger and sturdier peaks. In the process the rock had been shattered and
riven by mighty forces until it had become a miner’s horror. Wetherton stared, fascinated by the
prospect. With enormous wealth here for the taking, every ounce must be taken at the risk of life.
One stick of powder might bring the whole crumbling mass down in a heap, and it loomed all of three
hundred feet above its base in the fan. The roof of the batholith was riven with gigantic cracks, literally
seamed with breaks, like the wall of an ancient building that has remained standing after heavy
bombing. Walking back to the base of the tower, Wetherton found he could actually break loose chunks
of the quartz with his fingers.
The vein itself lay on the downhill side and at the very base. The outer wall of the upthrust was sharply
tilted, so that a man working at the vein would be cutting his way into the very foundations of the tower,
and any single blow of the pick might bring the whole mass down upon him. Furthermore, if the rock
did fall, the vein would be hopelessly buried under thousands of tons of rock and lost without the
expenditure of much more capital than he could command. And at this moment Wetherton’s total of
money in hand amounted to slightly less than forty dollars.
Thirty yards from the face he seated himself upon the sand and filled his pipe once more. A man might
take tons out of there without trouble, and yet it might collapse at the first blow. Yet he knew he had no
choice. He needed money, and it lay here before him. Even if he were at first successful, there were two
things he must avoid. The first was tolerance of danger that might bring carelessness; the second, that
urge to go back for that “little bit more” that could kill him.
It was well into the afternoon and he had not eaten, yet he was not hungry. He circled the batholith,
studying it from every angle, only to reach the conclusion that his first estimate had been correct. The
only way to get at the gold was to go into the very shadow of the leaning wall and attack it at its base,
digging it out by main strength. From where he stood, it seemed ridiculous that a mere man with a pick
could topple that mass of rock, yet he knew how delicate such a balance could be.
The tower was situated on what might be described as the military crest of the ridge, and the alluvial fan
sloped steeply away from its lower side, steeper than a steep stairway. The top of the leaning wall
overshadowed the top of the fan, and if it started to crumble and a man had warning, he might run to the
north with a bare chance of escape. The soft sand in which he must run would be an impediment, but
that could be alleviated by making a walk from flat rocks sunken into the sand.
It was dusk when he returned to his camp. Deliberately, he had not permitted himself to begin work, not
by so much as a sample. He must be deliberate in all his actions, and never for a second should he forget
the mass that towered above him. A split second of hesitation when the crash came—and he accepted it
as inevitable—would mean burial under tons of crumbled rock.
The following morning he picketed his burros on a small meadow near the spring, cleaned the spring
itself, and prepared a lunch. Then he removed his shirt, drew on a pair of gloves, and walked to the face
of the cliff. Yet even then he did not begin, knowing that upon this habit of care and deliberation might
depend not only his success in the venture, but life itself. He gathered flat stones and began building his
walk. “When you start moving,” he told himself, “you’ll have to be fast.”
Finally, and with infinite care, he began tapping at the quartz, enlarging cracks with the pick, removing
fragments, then prying loose whole chunks. He did not swing the pick, but used it as a lever. The quartz
was rotten, and a man might obtain a considerable amount by this method of picking or even pulling
with the hands. When he had a sack filled with the richest quartz, he carried it over his path to a safe
place beyond the shadow of the tower. Returning, he tamped a few more flat rocks into his path and
began on the second sack. He worked with greater care than was, perhaps, essential. He was not and had
never been a gambling man.
Tamped = packed down
In the present operation he was taking a careful calculated risk in which every eventuality had been
weighed and judged. He needed the money and he intended to have it; he had a good idea of his chances
of success, but he knew that his gravest danger was to become too greedy, too much engrossed in his
task.
Dragging the two sacks down the hill, he found a flat block of stone and with a single jack proceeded to
break up the quartz. It was a slow and a hard job, but he had no better means of extracting the gold.
After breaking or crushing the quartz, much of the gold could be separated by a knife blade, for it was
amazingly concentrated. With water from the spring, Wetherton panned the remainder until it was too
dark to see.
Out of his blankets by daybreak, he ate breakfast and completed the extraction of the gold. At a rough
estimate, his first day’s work would run to four hundred dollars. He made a cache for the gold sack and
took the now empty ore sacks and climbed back to the tower.
The air was clear and fresh, the sun warm after the chill of night, and he liked the feel of the pick in his
hands.
Laura and Tommy awaited him back in Horsehead, and if he was killed here, there was small chance
they would ever know what had become of him. But he did not intend to be killed. The gold he was
extracting from this rock was for them, and not for himself.
It would mean an easier life in a larger town, a home of their own and the things to make the home a
woman desires, and it meant an education for Tommy. For himself, all he needed was the thought of that
home to return to, his wife and son—and the desert itself. And one was as necessary to him as the other.
The desert would be the death of him. He had been told that many times and did not need to be told, for
few men knew the desert as he did. The desert was to him what an orchestra is to a fine conductor, what
the human body is to a surgeon. It was his work, his life, and the thing he knew best. He always smiled
when he looked first into the desert as he started a new trip. Would this be it?
The morning drew on, and he continued to work with an even-paced swing of the pick, a careful filling
of the sack. The gold showed bright and beautiful in the crystalline quartz, which was so much more
beautiful than the gold itself. From time to time as the morning drew on, he paused to rest and to breathe
deeply of the fresh, clear air. Deliberately, he refused to hurry.
For nineteen days he worked tirelessly, eight hours a day at first, then lessening his hours to seven, and
then to six. Wetherton did not explain to himself why he did this, but he realized it was becoming
increasingly difficult to stay on the job. Again and again he would walk away from the rock face on one
excuse or another, and each time he would begin to feel his scalp prickle, his steps grow quicker, and
each time he returned more reluctantly.
Three times, beginning on the thirteenth, again on the seventeenth, and finally on the nineteenth day, he
heard movement within the tower. Whether that whispering in the rock was normal he did not know.
Such a natural movement might have been going on for centuries. He only knew that it happened now,
and each time it happened, a cold chill went along his spine.
His work had cut a deep notch at the base of the tower, such a notch as a man might make in felling a
tree, but wider and deeper. The sacks of gold, too, were increasing. They now numbered seven, and their
total would, he believed, amount to more than five thousand dollars—probably nearer to six thousand.
As he cut deeper into the rock, the vein was growing richer.
He worked on his knees now. The vein had slanted downward as he cut into the base of the tower and he
was all of nine feet into the rock with the great mass of it above him. If that rock gave way while he was
working, he would be crushed in an instant with no chance of escape. Nevertheless, he continued.
The change in the rock tower was not the only change, for he had lost weight and he no longer slept
well. On the night of the twentieth day he decided he had six thousand dollars and his goal would be ten
thousand. And the following day the rock was the richest ever! As if to tantalize him into working on
and on, the deeper he cut, the richer the ore became. By nightfall of that day he had taken out more than
a thousand dollars.
Now the lust of the gold was getting into him, taking him by the throat. He was fascinated by the danger
of the tower as well as the desire for the gold. Three more days to go—could he leave it then? He looked
again at the tower and felt a peculiar sense of foreboding, a feeling that here he was to die, that he would
never escape. Was it his imagination, or had the outer wall leaned a little more?
On the morning of the twenty-second day he climbed the fan over a path that use had built into a series
of continuous steps. He had never counted those steps, but there must have been over a thousand of
them. Dropping his canteen into a shaded hollow and pick in hand, he started for the tower.
The forward tilt did seem somewhat more than before. Or was it the light? The crack that ran behind the
outer wall seemed to have widened, and when he examined it more closely, he found a small pile of
freshly run silt near the bottom of the crack. So it had moved!
Wetherton hesitated, staring at the rock with wary attention. He was a fool to go back in there again.
Seven thousand dollars was more than he had ever had in his life before, yet in the next few hours he
could take out at least a thousand dollars more, and in the next three days he could easily have the ten
thousand he had set for his goal.
He walked to the opening, dropped to his knees, and crawled into the narrowing, flat-roofed hole. No
sooner was he inside than fear climbed up into his throat. He felt trapped, stifled, but he fought down the
mounting panic and began to work. His first blows were so frightened and feeble that nothing came
loose. Yet when he did get started, he began to work with a feverish intensity that was wholly unlike
him.
When he slowed and then stopped to fill his sack, he was gasping for breath, but despite his hurry the
sack was not quite full. Reluctantly, he lifted his pick again, but before he could strike a blow, the
gigantic mass above him seemed to creak like something tired and old. A deep shudder went through the
colossal pile and then a deep grinding that turned him sick with horror. All his plans for instant flight
were frozen, and it was not until the groaning ceased that he realized he was lying on his back,
breathless with fear and expectancy. Slowly, he edged his way into the air and walked, fighting the
desire to run, away from the rock.
When he stopped near his canteen, he was wringing with cold sweat and trembling in every muscle. He
sat down on the rock and fought for control. It was not until some twenty minutes had passed that he
could trust himself to get to his feet.
Despite his experience, he knew that if he did not go back now, he would never go. He had out but one
sack for the day and wanted another. Circling the batholith, he examined the widening crack,
endeavoring again, for the third time, to find another means of access to the vein.
The tilt of the outer wall was obvious, and it could stand no more without toppling. It was possible that
by cutting into the wall of the column and striking down, he might tap the vein at a safer point. Yet this
added blow at the foundation would bring the tower nearer to collapse and render his other hole
untenable. Even this new attempt would not be safe, although immeasurably more secure than the hole
he had left. Hesitating, he looked back at the hole.
Once more? The ore was now fabulously rich, and the few pounds he needed to complete the sack he
could get in just a little while. He stared at the black and undoubtedly narrower hole, then looked up at
the leaning wall. He picked up his pick and, his mouth dry, started back, drawn by a fascination that was
beyond all reason.
His heart pounding, he dropped to his knees at the tunnel face. The air seemed stifling and he could feel
his scalp tingling, but once he started to crawl, it was better. The face where he now worked was at least
sixteen feet from the tunnel mouth. Pick in hand, he began to wedge chunks from their seat. The going
seemed harder now, and the chunks did not come loose so easily. Above him the tower made no sound.
The crushing weight was now something tangible. He could almost feel it growing, increasing with
every move of his. The mountain seemed resting on his shoulder, crushing the air from his lungs.
Suddenly he stopped. His sack almost full, he stopped and lay very still, staring up at the bulk of the
rock above him.
No.
He would go no further. Now he would quit. Not another sackful. Not another pound. He would go out
now. He would go down the mountain without a backward look, and he would keep going. His wife
waiting at home, little Tommy, who would run gladly to meet him—these were too much to gamble.
With the decision came peace, came certainty. He sighed deeply, and relaxed, and then it seemed to him
that every muscle in his body had been knotted with strain. He turned on his side and with great
deliberation gathered his lantern, his sack, his hand-pick.
He had won. He had defeated the crumbling tower; he had defeated his own greed. He backed easily,
without the caution that had marked his earlier movements in the cave. His blind, trusting foot found the
projecting rock, a piece of quartz that stuck out from the rough-hewn wall.
The blow was too weak, too feeble to have brought forth the reaction that followed. The rock seemed to
quiver like the flesh of a beast when stabbed; a queer vibration went through that ancient rock, then a
deep, gasping sigh.
He had waited too long!
Fear came swiftly in upon him, crowding him, while his body twisted, contracting into the smallest
possible space. He tried to will his muscles to move beneath the growing sounds that vibrated through
the passage. The whispers of the rock grew into a terrible groan, and there was a rattle of pebbles. Then
silence.
The silence was more horrifying than the sound. Somehow he was crawling, even as he expected the
avalanche of gold to bury him. Abruptly, his feet were in the open. He was out.
He ran without stopping, but behind him he heard a growing roar that he couldn’t outrace. When he
knew from the slope of the land that he must be safe from falling rock, he fell to his knees. He turned
and looked back. The muted, roaring sound, like thunder beyond mountains, continued, but there was no
visible change in the tower. Suddenly, as he watched, the whole rock formation seemed to shift and tip.
The movement lasted only seconds, but before the tons of rock had found their new equilibrium, his
tunnel and the area around it had utterly vanished from sight.
When he could finally stand, Wetherton gathered up his sack of ore and his canteen. The wind was cool
upon his face as he walked away; and he did not look back again.
Louis L’Amour
DOB : March 22, 1908
Birth Place : Jamestown, North Dakota
Birth Name : Louis Dearborn LaMoore
Parents : Louis Charles, Emily (Dearborn) LaMoore
Marriage : Katherine Elizabeth Adams, February 19, 1956
Death : June 10, 1988
On March 22, 1908, Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh and youngest child in
the family. His parents were Louis Charles and Emily Dearborn LaMoore, both of whom schooled L'Amour in family and
western lore, unknowingly laying the foundation for his literary career. Louis Charles LaMoore held various types of jobs,
including police chief, veterinarian, political leader and Sunday school teacher. Mrs. LaMoore, herself a skilled storyteller,
was trained as a teacher before her marriage, and so the environment was a great one for the children to learn and grow
in intellectually.
In 1923, when L'Amour was fifteen, his parents moved to Oklahoma. It was then that L'Amour decided to end his formal
education to pursue self-education by way of work and travel. He would hold a wide variety of jobs from this point, much
of it hard, physical labor. He worked as a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, miner, and cattle
skinner, all richly adding to his knowledge and well of experience which he would draw from later in his writing career. He
also boxed professionally in preliminary events, his father having taught him the sport.
His love of traveling took him up and down the west coast, and soon he embarked on a sailing trip to the Orient. One well
circulated story claims that he used the proceeds from a sunken treasure he discovered in Macao to pay his way to Paris
and other European cities. L'Amour's writing was greatly influenced by these early years of freedom and wandering. He of
course gained great knowledge as a result, but as well, his male hero's would often have conflicting feelings towards
settling down.
In the late 1930's L'Amour returned to Oklahoma to pursue the writing career which he had always intended to do. He
published a book of poetry in 1939, but then his career was interrupted by World War II. In 1942 he entered the army,
serving as an officer in tank destroying and transportation units in France and Germany. Upon the end
of the war he resumed his writing pursuits, and published stories in pulp magazines of all types, from
detective and adventure magazines to sports. Initially he did not plan to focus on westerns, but he
began to write mainly in that genre as he sold more work to Western magazines than the others. In
1953 he published his first novel, Hondo, and thereafter L'Amour consistently produced three novels a
year until his death in 1988. He gained steady popularity throughout his career, to the point where
hundreds of millions of copies of his books were sold.
Although L'Amour is best know for his westerns, he did step out of that field occasionally, writing books
such as 'The Walking Drum', (1984) which is set in medieval Europe, and 'The Haunted Mesa'. Never
did he lose his passion for travel and researching his books firsthand. He would search out people who
knew the area he was interested in the best, and delve into their knowledge of it.
L'Amour was the only novelist in America to accord the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, both of which were awarded to him by President Ronald Regan.
L'Amour (a non-smoker) died in Los Angeles, California, on June 10, 1988 of lung cancer.
The Bet – activity
Describe how the characters changed in the story.
The Lawyer
Beginning of “The
Bet”
Middle of “The Bet”
End of “The Bet”
The Banker
Quick Write: Write a ½ page reflection about: Think about a time when you chose to be alone for a while.
Maybe you needed to study to pass a test, or you may have wanted to be alone to think about an important
decision. Jot down the details of your experience. What did you learn from your solitude?
The Lawyer
The Banker
“The Bet” - By Anton Chekhov
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how,
fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there
had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of
the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They
considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of
some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.
"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or
imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than
imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly.
Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in
the course of many years?"
*Christian states: countries in which Christianity is the main religion.
*A priori: here, on the basis of theory rather than experience
"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the same object - to take away
life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."
Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he
said:
"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death
penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."
A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly
carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:
"It's not true! I'll bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."
"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen
years."
"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two million!"
"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man.
<2>
And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his
reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said:
"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two million is a trifle, but you are losing three
or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you
unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you
have the right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison. I am sorry for
you."
And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked himself: "What was the object of
that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two million? Can
it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and
meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money ..."
Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the young man should spend the years
of his captivity under the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed that for
fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human
voice, or to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was
allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could
have with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He might have anything he
wanted - books, music, wine, and so on - in any quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive
them through the window. The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his
imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there exactly fifteen years, beginning from
twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest
attempt on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the
obligation to pay him the two million.
<3>
For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered
severely from loneliness and depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and night from
his lodge. He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites the desires, and desires are the worst foes of
the prisoner; and besides, nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one. And
tobacco spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the books he sent for were principally of a light character;
novels with a complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.
In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner asked only for the classics. In the fifth
year music was audible again, and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the window
said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning
and angrily talking to himself. He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he would
spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had written. More than once he could be heard
crying.
In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously studying languages, philosophy, and history.
He threw himself eagerly into these studies - so much so that the banker had enough to do to get him the books
he ordered. In the course of four years some six hundred volumes were procured at his request. It was during
this period that the banker received the following letter from his prisoner:
"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show them to people who know the languages. Let
them read them. If they find not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That shot will show me
that my efforts have not been thrown away. The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages,
but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from
being able to understand them!" The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in
the garden.
<4>
Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed
strange to the banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste
nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and histories of religion followed the
Gospels.
*theology: the study of religious teachings concerning God and God’s
In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an immense quantity of books quite
indiscriminately. At one time he was busy with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or
Shakespeare. There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a manual of
medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in
the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and
then at another.
*Byron: George Gordon Bryon (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, English Romantic poet.
*spar: pole that supports or extends a ship’s sail
The old banker remembered all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he will regain his freedom. By our agreement I ought to pay him two million.
If I do pay him, it is all over with me: I shall be utterly ruined."
Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reckoning; now he was afraid to ask himself which
were greater, his debts or his assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the
excitability whic h he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his
fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at
every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why
didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life,
will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day
the same sentence: 'I am indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!' No, it is too much! The
one means of being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the death of that man!"
It struck three o'clock, the banker listened; everyone was asleep in the house and nothing could be heard
outside but the rustling of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he took from a fireproof safe the key of the
door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.
<5>
It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp cutting wind was racing about the garden,
howling and giving the trees no rest. The banker strained his eyes, but could see neither the earth nor the white
statues, nor the lodge, nor the trees. Going to the spot where the lodge stood, he twice called the watchman. No
answer followed. Evidently the watchman had sought shelter from the weather, and was now asleep somewhere
either in the kitchen or in the greenhouse.
"If I had the pluck to carry out my intention," thought the old man, "Suspicion would fall first upon the
watchman."
He felt in the darkness for the steps and the door, and went into the entry of the lodge. Then he groped his
way into a little passage and lighted a match. There was not a soul there. There was a bedstead with no bedding
on it, and in the corner there was a dark cast-iron stove. The seals on the door leading to the prisoner's rooms
were intact.
When the match went out the old man, trembling with emotion, peeped through the little window. A candle
was burning dimly in the prisoner's room. He was sitting at the table. Nothing could be seen but his back, the
hair on his head, and his hands. Open books were lying on the table, on the two easy-chairs, and on the carpet
near the table.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fifteen years' imprisonment had taught him to sit still.
The banker tapped at the window with his finger, and the prisoner made no movement whatever in response.
Then the banker cautiously broke the seals off the door and put the key in the keyhole. The rusty lock gave a
grating sound and the door creaked. The banker expected to hear at once footsteps and a cry of astonishment,
but three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the room. He made up his mind to go in.
At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn
tight over his bones, with long curls like a woman's and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow with an earthy tint
in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his shaggy head was propped
was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it. His hair was already streaked with silver, and seeing
his emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only forty. He was asleep ... In front
of his bowed head there lay on the table a sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine
handwriting.
<6>
"Poor creature!" thought the banker, "he is asleep and most likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only
to take this half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most conscientious
expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here ... "
The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I
leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience I
tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is
called the good things of the world.
"For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in
your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests,
have loved women ... Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have
visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your
books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have
watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched
from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields,
rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have
touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God ... In your books I have flung
myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered
whole kingdoms ...
"Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is
compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.
<7>
"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting,
illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of
the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history,
your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.
"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for
beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple
and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who
exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.
"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once
dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out
from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ..."
When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, and went
out of the lodge, weeping. At no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the Stock Exchange, had he felt
so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for
hours from sleeping.
Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him they had seen the man who lived in the
lodge climb out of the window into the garden, go to the gate, and disappear. The banker went at once with the
servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his prisoner. To avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took
from the table the writing in which the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in the
fireproof safe.
THE END
Anton (Pavlovich) Chekhov - b. Jan. 17, 1860 (Jan. 29, New Style); d. July 1/2, 1904 (July 14/15, New Style)
Russian playwright and one of the great masters of modern short story. In his work Chekhov combined the
dispassionate attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity and psychological understanding of an artist.
Chekhov portrayed often life in the Russian small towns, where tragic events occur in a minor key, as a part of
everyday texture of life. His characters are passive by-standers in regard to their lives, filled with the feeling of
hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts. "What difference does it make?" says Chebutykin in Three Sisters.
"There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentleman or university man who does not boast of his past.
The present is always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific characteristic: it
is quickly followed by exhaustion" (from Letters on the Short Story, the Drama and other Literary Topics, 1924)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the small seaport of Taganrog, southern Russia, the son of a grocer. Chekhov's
grandfather was a serf, who had bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught himself to
read and write.Yevgenia Morozov, Chekhov's mother, was the daughter of a cloth merchant.
"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." His early years were
shadowed by his father's tyranny, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, which was open from five in the
morning till midnight. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog (1867-68) and Taganrog grammar school
(1868-79). The family was forced to move to Moskow following his father's bankruptcy. At the age of 16, Chekhov
became independent and remained for some time alone in his native town, supporting himself through private
tutoring.
In 1879 Chekhov entered the Moskow University Medical School. While in the school, he began to publish hundreds
of comic short stories to support himself and his mother, sisters and brothers. His publisher at this period was
Nicholas Leikin, owner of the St. Petersburg journal Oskolki (splinters). His subjects were silly social situations,
marital problems, farcical encounters between husbands, wives, mistresses, and lovers, whims of young women, of
whom Chekhov had not much knowledge – the author was was shy with women even after his marriage. His works
appeared in St. Petersburg daily papers, Peterburskaia gazeta from 1885, and Novoe vremia from 1886.
Chekhov's first novel, Nenunzhaya pobeda (1882), set in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Hungarian
writer Mór Jókai. As a politician Jókai was also mocked for his ideological optimism. By 1886 Chekhov had gained a
wide fame as a writer. His second full-length novel, The Shooting Party, was translated into English in 1926. Agatha
Christie used its characters and atmosphere in her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).
Chekhov graduated in 1884, and practiced medicine until 1892. In 1886 Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him
to become a regular contributor for the St. Petersburg daily Novoe vremya. His friendship with Suvorin ended in 1898
because of his objections to the anti-Dreyfus campaingn conducted by paper. But during these years Chechov
developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgemental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother
Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful
descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6.
compassion."
Chekhov's fist book of stories (1886) was a success, and gradually he became a full-time writer. The author's refusal
to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intellitentsia and he was criticized for dealing
with serious social and moral questions, but avoiding giving answers. However, he was defended by such leading
writers as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an
indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of his play The Wood Demon (1889) and problems with his novel made Chekhov to withdraw from
literature for a period. In 1890 he travelled across Siberia to remote prison island, Sakhalin. There he conducted a
detailed census of some 10,000 convicts and settlers condemned to live their lives on that harsh island. Chekhov
hoped to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. It is probable that hard conditions on the island
also worsened his own physical condition. From this journey was born his famous travel book The Island: A Journey
to Sakhalin (1893-94). Chekhov returned to Russia via Singapore, India, Ceylon, and the Suez Canal. From 1892 to
1899 Chekhov worked in Melikhovo, and in Yalta from 1899.
"My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life
with envy, discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal
man, a landowner, a gentleman - why do you live so tamely and take so little from life?" (from The House with
the Mezzanine, 1986)
Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. Next year he was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of
Russian Literature. In 1900 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but resigned his post
two years later as a protest against the cancellation by the authorities of Gorky's election to the Academy. Later, in
1900, Gorky wrote to him: "After any of your stories, however insignificant, everything appears crude, as if written
not by a pen, but by a cudgel."
As a short story writer Chekhov was phenomenally fast – he could compose a little sketch or a joke while just visiting
at a newspaper office. During his career he produced several hundred tales. 'Palata No. 6' (1892, Ward Number Six) is
Chekhov's classical tale of the abuse of psychiatry. Gromov is convinced that anyone can be imprisoned. He develops
a persecution mania and is incarcerated in a horrific asylum, where he meets Doctor Ragin. Their relationship attracts
attention and the doctor is tricked into becoming a patient in his own ward. He dies after being beaten by a charge
hand. - The symmetrical story has much similarities with such works as Samuel Fuller's film The Shock Corridor
(1963), and Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over Cockoo's Nest (1975).
Today Chekhov's fame today rests primarily on his plays. He used ordinary conversations, pauses,
noncommunication, nonhappening, incomplete thoughts, to reveal the truth behind trivial words and daily life. There
is always a division between the outer appearance and the inner currents of thoughts and emotions. His characters
belong often to the provincial middle class, petty aristocracy, or landowners of prerevolutionary Russia. They
contemplate their unsatisfactory lives, immersed in nostalgia, unable to make decisions and help themselves when a
crisis breaks out.
Chekhov's first full-length plays were failures. When Chaika (The Seagull), written in Melikhovo, was revised in
1898 by Stanislavsky at the Moskow Art Theatre, he gained also fame as a playwright. Chekhov described The
Seagull as a comedy, but it ends with the suicide of a young poet. The idea for the play partly emerged from a day's
hunting trip Chekhov had made with his friend Isaac Levitan, who shot at a woodcock, which did not die. Disgusted,
Chekhov smashed the bird's head in with his rifle butt.
Another masterpieces from this period is Dyadya Vanya (1900, Uncle Vanya), a melancholic story of Sonia and his
brother-in-law Ivan (Uncle Vanya), who see their dreams and hopes passing in drudgery for others. Tri sestry (1901,
The Three Sisters) was set in a provincial garrison town. The talented Prozorov sisters, whose hopes have much in
common with the Brontë sisters, recognize the uselessness of their lives and cling to one another for consolation. "If
only we knew! If only we knew!" cries Olga at the end of the play.
Vishnyovy sad (1904, The Cherry Orchaid) reflected the larger developments in the Russian society. Mme
Ranevskaias returns to her estate and finds out that the family house, together with the adjoining orchard, is to be
auctioned. Her brother Gaev is too impractical to help in the crisis. The businessman Lopakhin purchases the estate
and the orchard is demolished. "Everything on earth must come to an end..."
In these three famous plays Chekhov blended humor and tragedy. He left much room for imagination - his plays as
well as his stories are in opposition to the concept of an artist as a mouthpiece of political change or social message.
However, in his late years Chekhov supported morally the young experimental director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who
hoped to establish a revolutionary theater. Usually in Chekhov's dramas surprise and tension are not key elements, the
dramatic movement is subdued, his characters do not fight, they endure their fate with patience. But in the process
they perhaps discover something about themselves and their monotonous life.
"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But
up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's
become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day." (from Uncle Vanya,
1897) - "When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair'." (from
Uncle Vanya)
Chekhov bought in 1892 a country estate in the village of Melikhove, where his best stories were written, including
'Neighbours' (1892), 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk' (1894), 'The Murder' (1895), and 'Ariadne' (1895). He
also served as a volunteer census taker, participated in famine relief, and worked as a medical inspector during
cholore epidemics. In 1897 he fell ill with tuberculosis and lived since either abroad or in the Crimea.
Chekhov married in 1901 the Moscow Art Theater actress Olga Knipper (1870-1959), who had several years central
roles in his plays on stage. In Yalta Chekhov wrote his famous stories 'The Man in a Shell,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About
Love,' 'Lady with the Dog,' and 'In the Ravine.' His last great story, 'The Betrothed,' was an optimistic tale of a young
woman who escapes from provincial dullness into personal freedom. Tolstoy, who admired Chekhov's fiction, did not
think much of his dramatic skills. When he met Chekhov in Yalta, he said: "Don't write any more plays, old thing."
Chekhov himself thought that Tolstoy was already a very sick man at that time, but he lived longer than Chekhov.
Chekhov died on July 14/15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. He was buried in the cemetery of the Novodeviche
Monastery in Moscow. Though a celebrated figure by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov
remained rather unknown internationally until the years after World War I, when his works were translated into
English.
Chekhov's brother Aleksandr, who married the author's mistress Natalia Golden, had problems with alcohol. His son
Mihail moved in the 1920s first to Germany and then in the United States, where he worked as a teacher of acting and
acted among others in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). It has been said that during WW II the German army
saved Chekhov's house in Yalta because Mihail's wife Olga, whose aunt was married to Chekhov, had been
photographed with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring. She also was a Soviet agent and knew Stalin.
The Cold Equations – activity
Mind Map
A Mind Map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a
central key idea/topic. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study,
organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.
Instructions for creating a Mind Map: Use a piece(s) of copy paper for this activity.
1. You will create a mind map over The Cold Equation.
2. Mind maps use visuals/pictures, colors, graphics, and very few words and stick people to display ideas.
3. Mind maps use color-coded arrows and links to show how ideas are related.
4. You will need to begin with a center – Topic/Subject.
5. From the center, draw BIG branches/Main Idea (s) that link to the topic about the scene. You will have to decide
what these Main Idea (s)/Big branches are.
6. From the BIG branches – draw smaller branches/supporting idea (s) that reach out from the Main Idea/Big Branches.
These smaller branches add supporting idea (s) to the Main Idea (s)/Big branches.
7. If there are links between Main Idea (s), draw arrows or linking lines between them.
8. Remember Key Words are printed.
Mind Map Rubric
1. The mind map depicts The Cold Equation and the information/concepts are
easy to understand.
(10 points)
______
2. Most of the ideas from the short story are enhanced with symbols, pictures, or
diagrams (VERY FEW WORDS AND STICK PEOPLE).
(20 points)
______
(10 points)
______
(20 points)
______
3. All symbols, pictures or diagrams have been neatly drawn and colored, AND color
-coding has been included to show all the connections and/or to categorize
ideas.
4. The mind map demonstrates a thorough understanding of the SHORT STORY’S
center = topic/subject; main ideas = big branches, and
supporting ideas = smaller branches.
TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS (60)
______
Quick Write: Write a ½ page reflection about: What kinds of choices might we have to make in life that
would have difficult consequences—not matter what we decide to do? Freewrite about such a choice. How
would you make a decision when faced with such a hard choice?
“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin
He was not alone.
There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him. The
control room was empty but for himself; there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives—but the white
hand had moved. It had been on zero when the little ship was launched from the Stardust; now, an hour later, it
had crept up. There was something in the supplies closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body
that radiated heat.
It could be but one kind of a body—a living, human body.
He leaned back in the pilot's chair and drew a deep, slow breath, considering what he would have to do. He
was an EDS pilot, inured to the sight of death, long since accustomed to it and to viewing the dying of another
man with an objective lack of emotion, and he had no choice in what he must do. There could be no
alternative—but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk
across the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to meet.
He would, of course, do it. It was the law, stated very bluntly and definitely in grim Paragraph L, Section
8, of Interstellar Regulations: Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following
discovery.
It was the law, and there could be no appeal.
***
It was a law not of men's choosing but made imperative by the circumstances of the space frontier.
Galactic expansion had followed the development of the hyperspace drive and as men scattered wide across the
frontier there had come the problem of contact with the isolated first-colonies and exploration parties. The huge
hyperspace cruisers were the product of the combined genius and effort of Earth and were long and expensive in
the building. They were not available in such numbers that small colonies could possess them. The cruisers
carried the colonists to their new worlds and made periodic visits, running on tight schedules, but they could not
stop and turn aside to visit colonies scheduled to be visited at another time; such a delay would destroy their
schedule and produce a confusion and uncertainty that would wreck the complex interdependence between old
Earth and the new worlds of the frontier.
Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency occurred on a world not scheduled
for a visit had been needed and the Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible, they
occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light metal and plastics, they were driven by a small
rocket drive that consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDS's and when a call for aid was
received the nearest cruiser would drop into normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed
supplies or personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course.
The cruisers, powered by nuclear converters, did not use the liquid rocket fuel but nuclear converters were
far too large and complex to permit their installation in the EDS. The cruisers were forced by necessity to carry
a limited amount of the bulky rocket fuel and the fuel was rationed with care; the cruiser's computers
determining the exact amount of fuel each EDS would require for its mission. The computers considered the
course coordinates, the mass of the EDS, the mass of pilot and cargo; they were very precise and accurate and
omitted nothing from their calculations. They could not, however, foresee, and allow for, the added mass of a
stowaway.
***
The Stardust had received the request from one of the exploration parties stationed on Woden; the six men
of the party already being stricken with the fever carried by the green kala midges and their own supply of
serum destroyed by the tornado that had torn through their camp. The Stardust had gone through the usual
procedure; dropping into normal space to launch the EDS with the fever serum, then vanishing again in
hyperspace. Now, an hour later, the gauge was saying there was something more than the small carton of serum
in the supplies closet.
He let his eyes rest on the narrow white door of the closet. There, just inside, another man lived and
breathed and was beginning to feel assured that discovery of his presence would now be too late for the pilot to
alter the situation. It was too late—for the man behind the door it was far later than he thought and in a way he
would find terrible to believe.
There could be no alternative. Additional fuel would be used during the hours of deceleration to
compensate for the added mass of the stowaway; infinitesimal increments of fuel that would not be missed until
the ship had almost reached its destination. Then, at some distance above the ground that might be as near as a
thousand feet or as far as tens of thousands of feet, depending upon the mass of ship and cargo and the
preceding period of deceleration, the unmissed increments of fuel would make their absence known; the EDS
would expend its last drops of fuel with a sputter and go into whistling free fall. Ship and pilot and stowaway
would merge together upon impact as a wreckage of metal and plastic, flesh and blood, driven deep into the
soil. The stowaway had signed his own death warrant when he concealed himself on the ship; he could not be
permitted to take seven others with him.
He looked again at the telltale white hand, then rose to his feet. What he must do would be unpleasant for
both of them; the sooner it was over, the better. He stepped across the control room, to stand by the white door.
"Come out!" His command was harsh and abrupt above the murmur of the drive.
It seemed he could hear the whisper of a furtive movement inside the closet, then nothing. He visualized
the stowaway cowering closer into one corner, suddenly worried by the possible consequences of his act and his
self-assurance evaporating.
"I said out!"
He heard the stowaway move to obey and he waited with his eyes alert on the door and his hand near the
blaster at his side.
The door opened and the stowaway stepped through it, smiling. "All right—I give up. Now what?"
It was a girl.
He stared without speaking, his hand dropping away from the blaster and acceptance of what he saw
coming like a heavy and unexpected physical blow. The stowaway was not a man—she was a girl in her teens,
standing before him in little white gypsy sandals with the top of her brown, curly head hardly higher than his
shoulder, with a faint, sweet scent of perfume coming from her and her smiling face tilted up so her eyes could
look unknowing and unafraid into his as she waited for his answer.
Now what? Had it been asked in the deep, defiant voice of a man he would have answered it with action,
quick and efficient. He would have taken the stowaway's identification disk and ordered him into the air lock.
Had the stowaway refused to obey, he would have used the blaster. It would not have taken long; within a
minute the body would have been ejected into space—had the stowaway been a man.
He returned to the pilot's chair and motioned her to seat herself on the boxlike bulk of the drive-control
units that set against the wall beside him. She obeyed, his silence making the smile fade into the meek and
guilty expression of a pup that has been caught in mischief and knows it must be punished.
"You still haven't told me," she said. "I'm guilty, so what happens to me now? Do I pay a fine, or what?"
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Why did you stow away on this EDS?"
"I wanted to see my brother. He's with the government survey crew on Woden and I haven't seen him for
ten years, not since he left Earth to go into government survey work."
"What was your destination on the Stardust?"
"Mimir. I have a position waiting for me there. My brother has been sending money home all the time to
us—my father and mother and I—and he paid for a special course in linguistics I was taking. I graduated sooner
than expected and I was offered this job on Mimir. I knew it would be almost a year before Gerry's job was
done on Woden so he could come on to Mimir and that's why I hid in the closet, there. There was plenty of
room for me and I was willing to pay the fine. There were only the two of us kids—Gerry and I—and I haven't
seen him for so long, and I didn't want to wait another year when I could see him now, even though I knew I
would be breaking some kind of a regulation when I did it."
I knew I would be breaking some kind of a regulation— In a way, she could not be blamed for her
ignorance of the law; she was of Earth and had not realized that the laws of the space frontier must, of necessity,
be as hard and relentless as the environment that gave them birth. Yet, to protect such as her from the results of
their own ignorance of the frontier, there had been a sign over the door that led to the section of the Stardust
that housed the EDS; a sign that was plain for all to see and heed:
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
KEEP OUT!
"Does your brother know that you took passage on the Stardust for Mimir?"
"Oh, yes. I sent him a spacegram telling him about my graduation and about going to Mimir on the
Stardust a month before I left Earth. I already knew Mimir was where he would be stationed in a little over a
year. He gets a promotion then, and he'll be based on Mimir and not have to stay out a year at a time on field
trips, like he does now."
There were two different survey groups on Woden, and he asked, "What is his name?"
"Cross—Gerry Cross. He's in Group Two—that was the way his address read. Do you know him?"
Group One had requested the serum; Group Two was eight thousand miles away, across the Western Sea.
"No, I've never met him," he said, then turned to the control board and cut the deceleration to a fraction of
a gravity; knowing as he did so that it could not avert the ultimate end, yet doing the only thing he could do to
prolong that ultimate end. The sensation was like that of the ship suddenly dropping and the girl's involuntary
movement of surprise half lifted her from the seat.
"We're going faster now, aren't we?" she asked. "Why are we doing that?"
He told her the truth. "To save fuel for a little while."
"You mean, we don't have very much?"
He delayed the answer he must give her so soon to ask: "How did you manage to stow away?"
"I just sort of walked in when no one was looking my way," she said. "I was practicing my Gelanese on the
native girl who does the cleaning in the Ship's Supply office when someone came in with an order for supplies
for the survey crew on Woden. I slipped into the closet there after the ship was ready to go and just before you
came in. It was an impulse of the moment to stow away, so I could get to see Gerry—and from the way you
keep looking at me so grim, I'm not sure it was a very wise impulse.
"But I'll be a model criminal—or do I mean prisoner?" She smiled at him again. "I intended to pay for my
keep on top of paying the fine. I can cook and I can patch clothes for everyone and I know how to do all kinds
of useful things, even a little bit about nursing."
There was one more question to ask:
"Did you know what the supplies were that the survey crew ordered?"
"Why, no. Equipment they needed in their work, I supposed."
Why couldn't she have been a man with some ulterior motive? A fugitive from justice, hoping to lose
himself on a raw new world; an opportunist, seeking transportation to the new colonies where he might find
golden fleece for the taking; a crackpot, with a mission—
Perhaps once in his lifetime an EDS pilot would find such a stowaway on his ship; warped men, mean and
selfish men, brutal and dangerous men—but never, before, a smiling, blue-eyed girl who was willing to pay her
fine and work for her keep that she might see her brother.
***
He turned to the board and turned the switch that would signal the Stardust. The call would be futile but he
could not, until he had exhausted that one vain hope, seize her and thrust her into the air lock as he would an
animal—or a man. The delay, in the meantime, would not be dangerous with the EDS decelerating at fractional
gravity.
A voice spoke from the communicator. "Stardust. Identify yourself and proceed."
"Barton, EDS 34G11. Emergency. Give me Commander Delhart."
There was a faint confusion of noises as the request went through the proper channels. The girl was
watching him, no longer smiling.
"Are you going to order them to come back after me?" she asked.
The communicator clicked and there was the sound of a distant voice saying, "Commander, the EDS
requests—"
"Are they coming back after me?" she asked again. "Won't I get to see my brother, after all?"
"Barton?" The blunt, gruff voice of Commander Delhart came from the communicator. "What's this about
an emergency?"
"A stowaway," he answered.
"A stowaway?" There was a slight surprise to the question. "That's rather unusual—but why the
'emergency' call? You discovered him in time so there should be no appreciable danger and I presume you've
informed Ship's Records so his nearest relatives can be notified."
"That's why I had to call you, first. The stowaway is still aboard and the circumstances are so different—"
"Different?" the commander interrupted, impatience in his voice. "How can they be different? You know
you have a limited supply of fuel; you also know the law, as well as I do: 'Any stowaway discovered in an EDS
shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.'"
There was the sound of a sharply indrawn breath from the girl. "What does he mean?"
"The stowaway is a girl."
"What?"
"She wanted to see her brother. She's only a kid and she didn't know what she was really doing."
"I see." All the curtness was gone from the commander's voice. "So you called me in the hope I could do
something?" Without waiting for an answer he went on. "I'm sorry—I can do nothing. This cruiser must
maintain its schedule; the life of not one person but the lives of many depend on it. I know how you feel but I'm
powerless to help you. I'll have you connected with Ship's Records."
***
The communicator faded to a faint rustle of sound and he turned back to the girl. She was leaning forward
on the bench, almost rigid, her eyes fixed wide and frightened.
"What did he mean, to go through with it? To jettison me. . . . to go through with it—what did he mean?
Not the way it sounded. . . . he couldn't have. What did he mean. . . . what did he really mean?"
Her time was too short for the comfort of a lie to be more than a cruelly fleeting delusion.
"He meant it the way it sounded."
"No!" She recoiled from him as though he had struck her, one hand half upraised as though to fend him off
and stark unwillingness to believe in her eyes.
"It will have to be."
"No! You're joking—you're insane! You can't mean it!"
"I'm sorry." He spoke slowly to her, gently. "I should have told you before—I should have, but I had to do
what I could first; I had to call the Stardust. You heard what the commander said."
"But you can't—if you make me leave the ship, I'll die."
"I know."
She searched his face and the unwillingness to believe left her eyes, giving way slowly to a look of dazed
terror.
"You—know?" She spoke the words far apart, numb and wonderingly.
"I know. It has to be like that."
"You mean it—you really mean it." She sagged back against the wall, small and limp like a little rag doll
and all the protesting and disbelief gone. "You're going to do it—you're going to make me die?"
"I'm sorry," he said again. "You'll never know how sorry I am. It has to be that way and no human in the
universe can change it."
"You're going to make me die and I didn't do anything to die for—I didn't do anything—"
He sighed, deep and weary. "I know you didn't, child. I know you didn't—"
"EDS." The communicator rapped brisk and metallic. "This is Ship's Records. Give us all information on
subject's identification disk."
He got out of his chair to stand over her. She clutched the edge of the seat, her upturned face white under
the brown hair and the lipstick standing out like a blood-red cupid's bow.
"Now?"
"I want your identification disk," he said.
She released the edge of the seat and fumbled at the chain that suspended the plastic disk from her neck
with fingers that were trembling and awkward. He reached down and unfastened the clasp for her, then returned
with the disk to his chair.
"Here's your data, Records: Identification Number T837—"
"One moment," Records interrupted. "This is to be filed on the gray card, of course?"
"Yes."
"And the time of the execution?"
"I'll tell you later."
"Later? This is highly irregular; the time of the subject's death is required before—"
He kept the thickness out of his voice with an effort. "Then we'll do it in a highly irregular manner—you'll
hear the disk read, first. The subject is a girl and she's listening to everything that's said. Are you capable of
understanding that?"
There was a brief, almost shocked, silence, then Records said meekly: "Sorry. Go ahead."
He began to read the disk, reading it slowly to delay the inevitable for as long as possible, trying to help
her by giving her what little time he could to recover from her first terror and let it resolve into the calm of
acceptance and resignation.
"Number T8374 dash Y54. Name: Marilyn Lee Cross. Sex: Female. Born: July 7, 2160. She was only
eighteen. Height: 5-3. Weight: 110. Such a slight weight, yet enough to add fatally to the mass of the shell-thin
bubble that was an EDS. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Complexion: Light. Blood Type: O. Irrelevant data.
Destination: Port City, Mimir. Invalid data—"
He finished and said, "I'll call you later," then turned once again to the girl. She was huddled back against
the wall, watching him with a look of numb and wondering fascination.
***
"They're waiting for you to kill me, aren't they? They want me dead, don't they? You and everybody on the
cruiser wants me dead, don't you?" Then the numbness broke and her voice was that of a frightened and
bewildered child. "Everybody wants me dead and I didn't do anything. I didn't hurt anyone—I only wanted to
see my brother."
"It's not the way you think—it isn't that way, at all," he said. "Nobody wants it this way; nobody would
ever let it be this way if it was humanly possible to change it."
"Then why is it! I don't understand. Why is it?"
"This ship is carrying kala fever serum to Group One on Woden. Their own supply was destroyed by a
tornado. Group Two—the crew your brother is in—is eight thousand miles away across the Western Sea and
their helicopters can't cross it to help Group One. The fever is invariably fatal unless the serum can be had in
time, and the six men in Group One will die unless this ship reaches them on schedule. These little ships are
always given barely enough fuel to reach their destination and if you stay aboard your added weight will cause
it to use up all its fuel before it reaches the ground. It will crash, then, and you and I will die and so will the six
men waiting for the fever serum."
It was a full minute before she spoke, and as she considered his words the expression of numbness left her
eyes.
"Is that it?" she asked at last. "Just that the ship doesn't have enough fuel?"
"Yes."
"I can go alone or I can take seven others with me—is that the way it is?"
"That's the way it is."
"And nobody wants me to have to die?"
"Nobody."
"Then maybe—Are you sure nothing can be done about it? Wouldn't people help me if they could?"
"Everyone would like to help you but there is nothing anyone can do. I did the only thing I could do when I
called the Stardust."
"And it won't come back—but there might be other cruisers, mightn't there? Isn't there any hope at all that
there might be someone, somewhere, who could do something to help me?"
She was leaning forward a little in her eagerness as she waited for his answer.
"No."
The word was like the drop of a cold stone and she again leaned back against the wall, the hope and
eagerness leaving her face. "You're sure—you know you're sure?"
"I'm sure. There are no other cruisers within forty light-years; there is nothing and no one to change
things."
She dropped her gaze to her lap and began twisting a pleat of her skirt between her fingers, saying no more
as her mind began to adapt itself to the grim knowledge.
***
It was better so; with the going of all hope would go the fear; with the going of all hope would come
resignation. She needed time and she could have so little of it. How much?
The EDS's were not equipped with hull-cooling units; their speed had to be reduced to a moderate level
before entering the atmosphere. They were decelerating at .10 gravity; approaching their destination at a far
higher speed than the computers had calculated on. The Stardust had been quite near Woden when she launched
the EDS; their present velocity was putting them nearer by the second. There would be a critical point, soon to
be reached, when he would have to resume deceleration. When he did so the girl's weight would be multiplied
by the gravities of deceleration, would become, suddenly, a factor of paramount importance; the factor the
computers had been ignorant of when they determined the amount of fuel the EDS should have. She would have
to go when deceleration began; it could be no other way. When would that be—how long could he let her stay?
"How long can I stay?"
He winced involuntarily from the words that were so like an echo of his own thoughts. How long? He
didn't know; he would have to ask the ship's computers. Each EDS was given a meager surplus of fuel to
compensate for unfavorable conditions within the atmosphere and relatively little fuel was being consumed for
the time being. The memory banks of the computers would still contain all data pertaining to the course set for
the EDS; such data would not be erased until the EDS reached its destination. He had only to give the
computers the new data; the girl's weight and the exact time at which he had reduced the deceleration to .10.
"Barton." Commander Delhart's voice came abruptly from the communicator, as he opened his mouth to
call the Stardust. "A check with Records shows me you haven't completed your report. Did you reduce the
deceleration?"
So the commander knew what he was trying to do.
"I'm decelerating at point ten," he answered. "I cut the deceleration at seventeen fifty and the weight is a
hundred and ten. I would like to stay at point ten as long as the computers say I can. Will you give them the
question?"
It was contrary to regulations for an EDS pilot to make any changes in the course or degree of deceleration
the computers had set for him but the commander made no mention of the violation, neither did he ask the
reason for it. It was not necessary for him to ask; he had not become commander of an interstellar cruiser
without both intelligence and an understanding of human nature. He said only: "I'll have that given the
computers."
The communicator fell silent and he and the girl waited, neither of them speaking. They would not have to
wait long; the computers would give the answer within moments of the asking. The new factors would be fed
into the steel maw of the first bank and the electrical impulses would go through the complex circuits. Here and
there a relay might click, a tiny cog turn over, but it would be essentially the electrical impulses that found the
answer; formless, mindless, invisible, determining with utter precision how long the pale girl beside him might
live. Then a second steel maw would spit out the answer.
The chronometer on the instrument board read 18:10 when the commander spoke again.
"You will resume deceleration at nineteen ten."
She looked toward the chronometer, then quickly away from it. "Is that when. . . . when I go?" she asked.
He nodded and she dropped her eyes to her lap again.
"I'll have the course corrections given you," the commander said. "Ordinarily I would never permit
anything like this but I understand your position. There is nothing I can do, other than what I've just done, and
you will not deviate from these new instructions. You will complete your report at nineteen ten. Now—here are
the course corrections."
The voice of some unknown technician read them to him and he wrote them down on the pad clipped to
the edge of the control board. There would, he saw, be periods of deceleration when he neared the atmosphere
when the deceleration would be five gravities—and at five gravities, one hundred and ten pounds would
become five hundred fifty pounds.
The technician finished and he terminated the contact with a brief acknowledgement. Then, hesitating a
moment, he reached out and shut off the communicator. It was 18:13 and he would have nothing to report until
19:10. In the meantime, it somehow seemed indecent to permit others to hear what she might say in her last
hour.
***
He began to check the instrument readings, going over them with unnecessary slowness. She would have
to accept the circumstances and there was nothing he could do to help her into acceptance; words of sympathy
would only delay it.
It was 18:20 when she stirred from her motionlessness and spoke.
"So that's the way it has to be with me?"
He swung around to face her. "You understand now, don't you? No one would ever let it be like this if it
could be changed."
"I understand," she said. Some of the color had returned to her face and the lipstick no longer stood out so
vividly red. "There isn't enough fuel for me to stay; when I hid on this ship I got into something I didn't know
anything about and now I have to pay for it."
She had violated a man-made law that said KEEP OUT but the penalty was not of men's making or desire
and it was a penalty men could not revoke. A physical law had decreed: h amount of fuel will power an EDS
with a mass of m safely to its destination; and a second physical law had decreed: h amount of fuel will not
power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination.
EDS's obeyed only physical laws and no amount of human sympathy for her could alter the second law.
"But I'm afraid. I don't want to die—not now. I want to live and nobody is doing anything to help me;
everybody is letting me go ahead and acting just like nothing was going to happen to me. I'm going to die and
nobody cares."
"We all do," he said. "I do and the commander does and the clerk in Ship's Records; we all care and each
of us did what little he could to help you. It wasn't enough—it was almost nothing—but it was all we could do."
"Not enough fuel—I can understand that," she said, as though she had not heard his own words. "But to
have to die for it. Me, alone—"
How hard it must be for her to accept the fact. She had never known danger of death; had never known the
environments where the lives of men could be as fragile and fleeting as sea foam tossed against a rocky shore.
She belonged on gentle Earth, in that secure and peaceful society where she could be young and gay and
laughing with the others of her kind; where life was precious and well-guarded and there was always the
assurance that tomorrow would come. She belonged in that world of soft winds and warm suns, music and
moonlight and gracious manners and not on the hard, bleak frontier.
"How did it happen to me, so terribly quickly? An hour ago I was on the Stardust, going to Mimir. Now
the Stardust is going on without me and I'm going to die and I'll never see Gerry and Mama and Daddy again—
I'll never see anything again."
He hesitated, wondering how he could explain it to her so she would really understand and not feel she
had, somehow, been the victim of a reasonlessly cruel injustice. She did not know what the frontier was like;
she thought in terms of safe-and-secure Earth. Pretty girls were not jettisoned on Earth; there was a law against
it. On Earth her plight would have filled the newscasts and a fast black Patrol ship would have been racing to
her rescue. Everyone, everywhere, would have known of Marilyn Lee Cross and no effort would have been
spared to save her life. But this was not Earth and there were no Patrol ships; only the Stardust, leaving them
behind at many times the speed of light. There was no one to help her, there would be no Marilyn Lee Cross
smiling from the newscasts tomorrow. Marilyn Lee Cross would be but a poignant memory for an EDS pilot
and a name on a gray card in Ship's Records.
"It's different here; it's not like back on Earth," he said. "It isn't that no one cares; it's that no one can do
anything to help. The frontier is big and here along its rim the colonies and exploration parties are scattered so
thin and far between. On Woden, for example, there are only sixteen men—sixteen men on an entire world. The
exploration parties, the survey crews, the little first-colonies—they're all fighting alien environments, trying to
make a way for those who will follow after. The environments fight back and those who go first usually make
mistakes only once. There is no margin of safety along the rim of the frontier; there can't be until the way is
made for the others who will come later, until the new worlds are tamed and settled. Until then men will have to
pay the penalty for making mistakes with no one to help them because there is no one to help them."
"I was going to Mimir," she said. "I didn't know about the frontier; I was only going to Mimir and it's
safe."
"Mimir is safe but you left the cruiser that was taking you there."
She was silent for a little while. "It was all so wonderful at first; there was plenty of room for me on this
ship and I would be seeing Gerry so soon. . . . I didn't know about the fuel, didn't know what would happen to
me—"
Her words trailed away and he turned his attention to the viewscreen, not wanting to stare at her as she
fought her way through the black horror of fear toward the calm gray of acceptance.
***
Woden was a ball, enshrouded in the blue haze of its atmosphere, swimming in space against the
background of star-sprinkled dead blackness. The great mass of Manning's Continent sprawled like a gigantic
hourglass in the Eastern Sea with the western half of the Eastern Continent still visible. There was a thin line of
shadow along the right-hand edge of the globe and the Eastern Continent was disappearing into it as the planet
turned on its axis. An hour before the entire continent had been in view, now a thousand miles of it had gone
into the thin edge of shadow and around to the night that lay on the other side of the world. The dark blue spot
that was Lotus Lake was approaching the shadow. It was somewhere near the southern edge of the lake that
Group Two had their camp. It would be night there, soon, and quick behind the coming of night the rotation of
Woden on its axis would put Group Two beyond the reach of the ship's radio.
He would have to tell her before it was too late for her to talk to her brother. In a way, it would be better
for both of them should they not do so but it was not for him to decide. To each of them the last words would be
something to hold and cherish, something that would cut like the blade of a knife yet would be infinitely
precious to remember, she for her own brief moments to live and he for the rest of his life.
He held down the button that would flash the grid lines on the viewscreen and used the known diameter of
the planet to estimate the distance the southern tip of Lotus Lake had yet to go until it passed beyond radio
range. It was approximately five hundred miles. Five hundred miles; thirty minutes—and the chronometer read
18:30. Allowing for error in estimating, it could not be later than 19:05 that the turning of Woden would cut off
her brother's voice.
The first border of the Western Continent was already in sight along the left side of the world. Four
thousand miles across it lay the shore of the Western Sea and the Camp of Group One. It had been in the
Western Sea that the tornado had originated, to strike with such fury at the camp and destroy half their
prefabricated buildings, including the one that housed the medical supplies. Two days before the tornado had
not existed; it had been no more than great gentle masses of air out over the calm Western Sea. Group One had
gone about their routine survey work, unaware of the meeting of the air masses out at sea, unaware of the force
the union was spawning. It had struck their camp without warning; a thundering, roaring destruction that sought
to annihilate all that lay before it. It had passed on, leaving the wreckage in its wake. It had destroyed the labor
of months and had doomed six men to die and then, as though its task was accomplished, it once more began to
resolve into gentle masses of air. But for all its deadliness, it had destroyed with neither malice nor intent. It had
been a blind and mindless force, obeying the laws of nature, and it would have followed the same course with
the same fury had men never existed.
Existence required Order and there was order; the laws of nature, irrevocable and immutable. Men could
learn to use them but men could not change them. The circumference of a circle was always pi times the
diameter and no science of Man would ever make it otherwise. The combination of chemical A with chemical B
under condition C invariably produced reaction D. The law of gravitation was a rigid equation and it made no
distinction between the fall of a leaf and the ponderous circling of a binary star system. The nuclear conversion
process powered the cruisers that carried men to the stars; the same process in the form of a nova would destroy
a world with equal efficiency. The laws were, and the universe moved in obedience to them. Along the frontier
were arrayed all the forces of nature and sometimes they destroyed those who were fighting their way outward
from Earth. The men of the frontier had long ago learned the bitter futility of cursing the forces that would
destroy them for the forces were blind and deaf; the futility of looking to the heavens for mercy, for the stars of
the galaxy swung in their long, long sweep of two hundred million years, as inexorably controlled as they by the
laws that knew neither hatred nor compassion.
The men of the frontier knew—but how was a girl from Earth to fully understand? H amount of fuel will
not power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination. To himself and her brother and parents she
was a sweet-faced girl in her teens; to the laws of nature she was x, the unwanted factor in a cold equation.
***
She stirred again on the seat. "Could I write a letter? I want to write to Mama and Daddy and I'd like to talk
to Gerry. Could you let me talk to him over your radio there?"
"I'll try to get him," he said.
He switched on the normal-space transmitter and pressed the signal button. Someone answered the buzzer
almost immediately.
"Hello. How's it going with you fellows now—is the EDS on its way?"
"This isn't Group One; this is the EDS," he said. "Is Gerry Cross there?"
"Gerry? He and two others went out in the helicopter this morning and aren't back yet. It's almost sundown,
though, and he ought to be back right away—in less than an hour at the most."
"Can you connect me through to the radio in his 'copter?"
"Huh-uh. It's been out of commission for two months—some printed circuits went haywire and we can't
get any more until the next cruiser stops by. Is it something important—bad news for him, or something?"
"Yes—it's very important. When he comes in get him to the transmitter as soon as you possibly can."
"I'll do that; I'll have one of the boys waiting at the field with a truck. Is there anything else I can do?"
"No, I guess that's all. Get him there as soon as you can and signal me."
He turned the volume to an inaudible minimum, an act that would not affect the functioning of the signal
buzzer, and unclipped the pad of paper from the control board. He tore off the sheet containing his flight
instructions and handed the pad to her, together with pencil.
"I'd better write to Gerry, too," she said as she took them. "He might not get back to camp in time."
She began to write, her fingers still clumsy and uncertain in the way they handled the pencil and the top of
it trembling a little as she poised it between words. He turned back to the viewscreen, to stare at it without
seeing it.
She was a lonely little child, trying to say her last good-by, and she would lay out her heart to them. She
would tell them how much she loved them and she would tell them to not feel badly about it, that it was only
something that must happen eventually to everyone and she was not afraid. The last would be a lie and it would
be there to read between the sprawling, uneven lines; a valiant little lie that would make the hurt all the greater
for them.
Her brother was of the frontier and he would understand. He would not hate the EDS pilot for doing
nothing to prevent her going; he would know there had been nothing the pilot could do. He would understand,
though the understanding would not soften the shock and pain when he learned his sister was gone. But the
others, her father and mother—they would not understand. They were of Earth and they would think in the
manner of those who had never lived where the safety margin of life was a thin, thin line—and sometimes not at
all. What would they think of the faceless, unknown pilot who had sent her to her death?
They would hate him with cold and terrible intensity but it really didn't matter. He would never see them,
never know them. He would have only the memories to remind him; only the nights to fear, when a blue-eyed
girl in gypsy sandals would come in his dreams to die again—
***
He scowled at the viewscreen and tried to force his thoughts into less emotional channels. There was
nothing he could do to help her. She had unknowingly subjected herself to the penalty of a law that recognized
neither innocence nor youth nor beauty, that was incapable of sympathy or leniency. Regret was illogical—and
yet, could knowing it to be illogical ever keep it away?
She stopped occasionally, as though trying to find the right words to tell them what she wanted them to
know, then the pencil would resume its whispering to the paper. It was 18:37 when she folded the letter in a
square and wrote a name on it. She began writing another, twice looking up at the chronometer as though she
feared the black hand might reach its rendezvous before she had finished. It was 18:45 when she folded it as she
had done the first letter and wrote a name and address on it.
She held the letters out to him. "Will you take care of these and see that they're enveloped and mailed?"
"Of course." He took them from her hand and placed them in a pocket of his gray uniform shirt.
"These can't be sent off until the next cruiser stops by and the Stardust will have long since told them about
me, won't it?" she asked. He nodded and she went on, "That makes the letters not important in one way but in
another way they're very important—to me, and to them."
"I know. I understand, and I'll take care of them."
She glanced at the chronometer, then back at him. "It seems to move faster all the time, doesn't it?"
He said nothing, unable to think of anything to say, and she asked, "Do you think Gerry will come back to
camp in time?"
"I think so. They said he should be in right away."
She began to roll the pencil back and forth between her palms. "I hope he does. I feel sick and scared and I
want to hear his voice again and maybe I won't feel so alone. I'm a coward and I can't help it."
"No," he said, "you're not a coward. You're afraid, but you're not a coward."
"Is there a difference?"
He nodded. "A lot of difference."
"I feel so alone. I never did feel like this before; like I was all by myself and there was nobody to care what
happened to me. Always, before, there was Mama and Daddy there and my friends around me. I had lots of
friends, and they had a going-away party for me the night before I left."
Friends and music and laughter for her to remember—and on the viewscreen Lotus Lake was going into
the shadow.
"Is it the same with Gerry?" she asked. "I mean, if he should make a mistake, would he have to die for it,
all alone and with no one to help him?"
"It's the same with all along the frontier; it will always be like that so long as there is a frontier."
"Gerry didn't tell us. He said the pay was good and he sent money home all the time because Daddy's little
shop just brought in a bare living but he didn't tell us it was like this."
"He didn't tell you his work was dangerous?"
"Well—yes. He mentioned that, but we didn't understand. I always thought danger along the frontier was
something that was a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows." A wan smile touched her face
for a moment. "Only it's not, is it? It's not the same at all, because when it's real you can't go home after the
show is over."
"No," he said. "No, you can't."
Her glance flicked from the chronometer to the door of the air lock then down to the pad and pencil she
still held. She shifted her position slightly to lay them on the bench beside her, moving one foot out a little. For
the first time he saw that she was not wearing Vegan gypsy sandals but only cheap imitations; the expensive
Vegan leather was some kind of grained plastic, the silver buckle was gilded iron, the jewels were colored glass.
Daddy's little shop just brought in a bare living— She must have left college in her second year, to take the
course in linguistics that would enable her to make her own way and help her brother provide for her parents,
earning what she could by part-time work after classes were over. Her personal possessions on the Stardust
would be taken back to her parents—they would neither be of much value nor occupy much storage space on
the return voyage.
***
"Isn't it—" She stopped, and he looked at her questioningly. "Isn't it cold in here?" she asked, almost
apologetically. "Doesn't it seem cold to you?"
"Why, yes," he said. He saw by the main temperature gauge that the room was at precisely normal
temperature. "Yes, it's colder than it should be."
"I wish Gerry would get back before it's too late. Do you really think he will, and you didn't just say so to
make me feel better?"
"I think he will—they said he would be in pretty soon." On the viewscreen Lotus Lake had gone into the
shadow but for the thin blue line of its western edge and it was apparent he had overestimated the time she
would have in which to talk to her brother. Reluctantly, he said to her, "His camp will be out of radio range in a
few minutes; he's on that part of Woden that's in the shadow"—he indicated the viewscreen—"and the turning
of Woden will put him beyond contact. There may not be much time left when he comes in—not much time to
talk to him before he fades out. I wish I could do something about it—I would call him right now if I could."
"Not even as much time as I will have to stay?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Then—" She straightened and looked toward the air lock with pale resolution. "Then I'll go when Gerry
passes beyond range. I won't wait any longer after that—I won't have anything to wait for."
Again there was nothing he could say.
"Maybe I shouldn't wait at all. Maybe I'm selfish—maybe it would be better for Gerry if you just told him
about it afterward."
There was an unconscious pleading for denial in the way she spoke and he said, "He wouldn't want you to
do that, to not wait for him."
"It's already coming dark where he is, isn't it? There will be all the long night before him, and Mama and
Daddy don't know yet that I won't ever be coming back like I promised them I would. I've caused everyone I
love to be hurt, haven't I? I didn't want to—I didn't intend to."
"It wasn't your fault," he said. "It wasn't your fault. They'll know that. They'll understand."
"At first I was so afraid to die that I was a coward and thought only of myself. Now, I see how selfish I
was. The terrible thing about dying like this is not that I'll be gone but that I'll never see them again; never be
able to tell them that I didn't take them for granted; never be able to tell them I knew of the sacrifices they made
to make my life happier, and I knew all the things they did for me and that I loved them so much more than I
ever told them. I've never told them any of those things. You don't tell them such things when you're young and
your life is all before you—you're afraid of sounding sentimental and silly.
"But it's so different when you have to die—you wish you had told them while you could and you wish
you could tell them you're sorry for all the little mean things you ever did or said to them. You wish you could
tell them that you didn't really mean to ever hurt their feelings and for them to only remember that you always
loved them far more than you ever let them know."
"You don't have to tell them that," he said. "They will know—they've always known it."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "How can you be sure? My people are strangers to you."
"Wherever you go, human nature and human hearts are the same."
"And they will know what I want them to know—that I love them?"
"They've always known it, in a way far better than you could ever put in words for them."
"I keep remembering the things they did for me, and it's the little things they did that seem to be the most
important to me, now. Like Gerry—he sent me a bracelet of fire-rubies on my sixteenth birthday. It was
beautiful—it must have cost him a month's pay. Yet, I remember him more for what he did the night my kitten
got run over in the street. I was only six years old and he held me in his arms and wiped away my tears and told
me not to cry, that Flossy was gone for just a little while, for just long enough to get herself a new fur coat and
she would be on the foot of my bed the very next morning. I believed him and quit crying and went to sleep
dreaming about my kitten coming back. When I woke up the next morning, there was Flossy on the foot of my
bed in a brand-new white fur coat, just like he had said she would be.
"It wasn't until a long time later that Mama told me Gerry had got the pet-shop owner out of bed at four in
the morning and, when the man got mad about it, Gerry told him he was either going to go down and sell him
the white kitten right then or he'd break his neck."
"It's always the little things you remember people by; all the little things they did because they wanted to
do them for you. You've done the same for Gerry and your father and mother; all kinds of things that you've
forgotten about but that they will never forget."
"I hope I have. I would like for them to remember me like that."
"They will."
"I wish—" She swallowed. "The way I'll die—I wish they wouldn't ever think of that. I've read how people
look who die in space—their insides all ruptured and exploded and their lungs out between their teeth and then,
a few seconds later, they're all dry and shapeless and horribly ugly. I don't want them to ever think of me as
something dead and horrible, like that."
"You're their own, their child and their sister. They could never think of you other than the way you would
want them to; the way you looked the last time they saw you."
"I'm still afraid," she said. "I can't help it, but I don't want Gerry to know it. If he gets back in time, I'm
going to act like I'm not afraid at all and—"
The signal buzzer interrupted her, quick and imperative.
"Gerry!" She came to her feet. "It's Gerry, now!"
***
He spun the volume control knob and asked: "Gerry Cross?"
"Yes," her brother answered, an undertone of tenseness to his reply. "The bad news—what is it?"
She answered for him, standing close behind him and leaning down a little toward the communicator, her
hand resting small and cold on his shoulder.
"Hello, Gerry." There was only a faint quaver to betray the careful casualness of her voice. "I wanted to see
you—"
"Marilyn!" There was sudden and terrible apprehension in the way he spoke her name. "What are you
doing on that EDS?"
"I wanted to see you," she said again. "I wanted to see you, so I hid on this ship—"
"You hid on it?"
"I'm a stowaway. . . . I didn't know what it would mean—"
"Marilyn!" It was the cry of a man who calls hopeless and desperate to someone already and forever gone
from him. "What have you done?"
"I. . . . it's not—" Then her own composure broke and the cold little hand gripped his shoulder
convulsively. "Don't, Gerry—I only wanted to see you; I didn't intend to hurt you. Please, Gerry, don't feel like
that—"
Something warm and wet splashed on his wrist and he slid out of the chair, to help her into it and swing the
microphone down to her own level.
"Don't feel like that—Don't let me go knowing you feel like that—"
The sob she had tried to hold back choked in her throat and her brother spoke to her. "Don't cry, Marilyn."
His voice was suddenly deep and infinitely gentle, with all the pain held out of it. "Don't cry, sis—you mustn't
do that. It's all right, honey—everything is all right."
"I—" Her lower lip quivered and she bit into it. "I didn't want you to feel that way—I just wanted us to say
good-by because I have to go in a minute."
"Sure—sure. That's the way it will be, sis. I didn't mean to sound the way I did." Then his voice changed to
a tone of quick and urgent demand. "EDS—have you called the Stardust? Did you check with the computers?"
"I called the Stardust almost an hour ago. It can't turn back, there are no other cruisers within forty lightyears, and there isn't enough fuel."
"Are you sure that the computers had the correct data—sure of everything?"
"Yes—do you think I could ever let it happen if I wasn't sure? I did everything I could do. If there was
anything at all I could do now, I would do it."
"He tried to help me, Gerry." Her lower lip was no longer trembling and the short sleeves of her blouse
were wet where she had dried her tears. "No one can help me and I'm not going to cry any more and everything
will be all right with you and Daddy and Mama, won't it?"
"Sure—sure it will. We'll make out fine."
Her brother's words were beginning to come in more faintly and he turned the volume control to
maximum. "He's going out of range," he said to her. "He'll be gone within another minute."
"You're fading out, Gerry," she said. "You're going out of range. I wanted to tell you—but I can't, now. We
must say good-by so soon—but maybe I'll see you again. Maybe I'll come to you in your dreams with my hair
in braids and crying because the kitten in my arms is dead; maybe I'll be the touch of a breeze that whispers to
you as it goes by; maybe I'll be one of those gold-winged larks you told me about, singing my silly head off to
you; maybe, at times, I'll be nothing you can see but you will know I'm there beside you. Think of me like that,
Gerry; always like that and not—the other way."
Dimmed to a whisper by the turning of Woden, the answer came back:
"Always like that, Marilyn—always like that and never any other way."
"Our time is up, Gerry—I have to go, now. Good—" Her voice broke in mid-word and her mouth tried to
twist into crying. She pressed her hand hard against it and when she spoke again the words came clear and true:
"Good-by, Gerry."
Faint and ineffably poignant and tender, the last words came from the cold metal of the communicator:
"Good-by, little sister—"
***
She sat motionless in the hush that followed, as though listening to the shadow-echoes of the words as they
died away, then she turned away from the communicator, toward the air lock, and he pulled down the black
lever beside him. The inner door of the air lock slid swiftly open, to reveal the bare little cell that was waiting
for her, and she walked to it.
She walked with her head up and the brown curls brushing her shoulders, with the white sandals stepping
as sure and steady as the fractional gravity would permit and the gilded buckles twinkling with little lights of
blue and red and crystal. He let her walk alone and made no move to help her, knowing she would not want it
that way. She stepped into the air lock and turned to face him, only the pulse in her throat to betray the wild
beating of her heart.
"I'm ready," she said.
He pushed the lever up and the door slid its quick barrier between them, enclosing her in black and utter
darkness for her last moments of life. It clicked as it locked in place and he jerked down the red lever. There
was a slight waver to the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had
bumped the outer door in passing, then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again. He
shoved the red lever back to close the door on the empty air lock and turned away, to walk to the pilot's chair
with the slow steps of a man old and weary.
Back in the pilot's chair he pressed the signal button of the normal-space transmitter. There was no
response; he had expected none. Her brother would have to wait through the night until the turning of Woden
permitted contact through Group One.
It was not yet time to resume deceleration and he waited while the ship dropped endlessly downward with
him and the drives purred softly. He saw that the white hand of the supplies closet temperature gauge was on
zero. A cold equation had been balanced and he was alone on the ship. Something shapeless and ugly was
hurrying ahead of him, going to Woden where its brother was waiting through the night, but the empty ship still
lived for a little while with the presence of the girl who had not known about the forces that killed with neither
hatred nor malice. It seemed, almost, that she still sat small and bewildered and frightened on the metal box
beside him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void she had left behind her:
I didn't do anything to die for—I didn't do anything—
THE END
Tom Godwin (1915–1980) was a science fiction author. Godwin published three novels and thirty short
stories. His controversial hard SF short story " The Cold Equations" is a notable in the mid-1950s science
fiction genre. He also had three novels published, but these stayed more firmly in John W. Campbell's preferred
styles and are less notable. Graduated from Bay Village High School in Bay Village, Ohio and was a fan of
squirrels.
Novels
Ragnarok series:

The Survivors ( Gnome Press, 1958) a.k.a. Space Prison ( Pyramid Books, 1960)
 The Space Barbarians ( Pyramid Books, 1964)
Others:

Beyond Another Sun (Curtis, 1971)
External links

Works by Tom Godwin at Project Gutenberg
Published short stories by Tom Godwin:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
The Gulf Between - in 'Astounding' for October 1953
Mother of Invention - in 'Astounding' for December 1953
The Greater Thing - in 'Astounding' for February 1954
The Cold Equations - in Astounding' for August 1954
No Species Alone - in 'Universe' for November 1954
You Created Us - in 'Fantastic Universe' for October 1955
The Barbarians - in 'If' for December 1955
Operation Opera - in 'Fantasy and Science Fiction' for April 1956
Brain Teaser - in 'If' for October 1956
10. Too Soon to Die (basis for his novel 'The Survivors') - in 'Venture' for July 1957
11. The Harvest - in 'Venture' for July 1957
12. The Last Victory - in 'If' for August 1957
13. The Nothing Equation - in 'Amazing' for December 1957
14. The Wild Ones - in 'Science Fiction Stories' for January 1958
15. My Brother - The Ape - in 'Amazing' for January 1958
16. Cry From a Far Planet - in 'Amazing' for September 1958
17. A Place Beyond the Stars - in 'Super Science Fiction' for February 1959
18. Empathy - in 'Fantastic' for October 1959
19. The Helpful Hand of God - in 'Analog' for December 1961
20. ...and Devious the Line of Duty - in 'Analog' for December 1962
21. Desert Execution - in 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine' for July 1967
22. The Gentle Captive - in the original story anthology 'Signs and Wonders' (1972)
23. We'll Walk Again the Moonlight - in the anthology 'Crisis' (1974)
24. Backfire - in 'Ed McBaines 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine' for April 1975
25. The Steel Guardian - in 'Antaeus' for Spring/Summer 1977
26. Social Blunder - in 'Amazing' for July 1977
27. Before Willows Ever Walked - in 'Fantasy and Science Fiction' for March 1980
Grammar activities for all short stories
The Cask of Amontillado - Build Grammar Skills: Common and Proper Nouns
Nouns can be divided into two groups: common nouns and proper nouns. A common noun names any one of a
class of people, places, or things. A proper noun names a particular person, place, or thing, and it always begins with a
capital letter. In proper nouns of more than one word, the first word, the last word, and all other important words are
capitalized.
The following sentence from “The Cask of Amontillado” contains both common and proper nouns. Notice that
sherry, a common noun, names a class of wine: Amontillado, a proper noun, names a particular wine.
“And as for Luchesi, he can’t distinguish sherry from Amontillado.
Practice: Correct the capitalization errors in the following sentences.
1. In the Short Story “The cask of amontillado,” Fortunato is eager to accompany montresor into the wine vaults.
2. As they descend into the Catacombs, Montresor pretends to be concerned about fortunato’s health.
3. When fortunato hears Montresor’s Family Motto, he seems unaware of the irony in the latin words.
4. In this story, Montresor and Fortunato are the Main Characters, and Montresor is the Narrator.
5. Edgar allan poe, whose parents were both Actors, was a Poet and a Critic as well as a short-story writer.
The Most Dangerous Game – Build Grammar Skills: Pronouns and Antecedents
Pronouns take the place of nouns. The noun to which a pronoun refers is called its antecedent. A pronoun may
appear before its antecedent, after it, or even in another sentence. Some common pronouns are I, you, he, she, it we,
they, his, and hers. Pronouns should agree in number and gender with their antecedents. In the following examples, the
pronouns are underlined, and the antecedents are in bold.
Examples: Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. Rainsford
remembered the shots. They had come from the right.
The pronoun his refers to its singular antecedent, Rainsford. The pronoun They refers to its plural antecedent, shots.
Practice: On the line below each sentence from The Most Dangerous Game, write the antecedent of the underlined
pronouns.
1. “Don’t talk rot, Whitney,” said Rainsford. “You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
2. “Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
3. Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an
extremity of anguish and terror.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
4. The man’s only answer was to raise with his thumb the hammer of his revolver.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
5. “Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow,” remarked the general, “but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
6. The general laughed with entire good nature. He regarded Rainford quizzically.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
7. “If my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins the game. If I find him” – the general smiled – “he loses.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The Trap of Gold - Language Link: Using Comparisons to Clarify
Lauren: L’Amour really makes the mountain come alive. I can almost see it.
Vernon: Yes, the mountain seems like an evil wizard casting a spell over Wetherton.
Lauren: When he is inside the hold, it is as if a mad giant were sitting on him crushing out his life.
Figurative language uses imaginative comparisons called figures of speech. Good writers instinctively use these
imaginative comparisons to help the reader visualize what they are describing. In the conversation above, Vernon and
Lauren use similes to describe their impressions of the mountain. A simile is a comparison between two essentially
unlike entities based on a shared quality. Vernon says the mountain is “like an evil wizard.” Lauren notes that it is “as if
a mad giant” were sitting on Wetherton.
Below are some rules and suggestions to keep in mind when using similes.
Similes are introduced by the terms like, as, or as if.
Example: The alluvial deposit containing the gold is like a fan. [Readers may never have seen an alluvial deposit, but
almost certainly they have seen a fan. The simile helps them visualize the deposit by comparing its shape to a familiar
object.]
Example: It looks as if a spider had spun a golden web through the quartz. [The simile helps the reader visualize what a
gold deposit looks like. Its appearance is compared to the delicate network a spider weaves when building a web.]
Similes must compare two dissimilar things.
Example: The granite tower was cracked like the walls of a bombed-out building. [This is a simile. The tower is a natural
structure, whereas people construct buildings. The two are essentially dissimilar things, but they share a qualityappearance.]
Example: Wetherton behave like a man driven by lust for gold. [This is not a simile. It does not compare dissimilar
things, because Wetherton is a man.]
Practice A: Recognizing Similes
Each of the sentences in the following activity contains a simile. Circle the introductory term in the simile. Underline
the figurative comparison that follows the introductory term. The sentences are based on events in “Trap of Gold.”
Example: The giant mass of rock creaked like the bones of an old man.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
He walked smiling into the desert as if he were a fly walking willingly into a spider’s web.
Like the nagging ache of a bad tooth, the fear came and went.
The mountain rumbled with a roar as if it were a mortally wounded mammoth crashing to the earth.
The peach he felt after making his decision was like the calm after a violent storm.
As he scrambled toward the cave’s mouth, each second was like an eternity.
Practice B: Distinguishing Similes
A simile must compare two dissimilar things. On the line provided before each of the following sentences, write an S if
the comparison is a simile. Write an N if the two things being compared in the sentence are not dissimilar and do not
produce a simile. All sentences are based on events in “Trap of Gold.”
_____1. The granite tower was like a ruined city that beckoned him to become one of its ghosts.
_____ 2. The tower leaned out as if the ridge of an older mountain chain had been thrust up by younger
peaks.
_____3. Newly deposited silt lay about like soil that had trickled out during a spasm that shook the interior of
the ancient tower.
_____4. The tower shook as if it were an old house with a cracked foundation.
_____5. Nervous sweat beaded Wetherton’s forehead, cold as the blast from an Arctic wind.
The Bet – Grammar Link
Active or Passive? Pick the Right Voice
Kim: The letter has been taken from the table.
Jose: Who took it?
Kim: The banker.
Jose: Well, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?
Jose has a good point. Kim first speaks using the passive voice. Something has been done to the letter, but she does not
name the doer. By using the passive voice, she has left out an important piece of information. Using the active voice,
Kim might have said, “The banker took the letter from the table.”
Writers who use the passive voice may have a good reason for doing so. Scientists use the passive voice in order
to emphasize the science itself rather than the scientist.
Passive: A cure for cancer was recently discovered. [In this sentence, the cure for cancer is
emphasized.]
Active: A team of eighty scientists recently discovered a cure for cancer. [In this sentence, the doers,
the team of eighty scientists, receive emphasis.]
Journalists use the passive voice when they do not know who did what they are describing or if they have some
reason for not naming the doer.
Passive: Thousands of pounds of garbage were left behind after the parade. [There are too many
people to name as the doers.]
Passive: The president was described as having known about the break-in. [The doer or doers are
known but kept secret.]
Passive: A man was seen escaping through an open window. [The doer is known but not named.]
Skilled writers like Chekhov might choose to use the passive voice to depict the subject as a victim, or as
someone out of control. The passive voice can also be used as a way of varying sentence structure.
Passive: The bowl was broken. [The responsibility of the doer is avoided.]
Active: Johnny broke the bowl. [The doer is named.]
The passive voice is not as direct and forceful as the active voice, and it usually makes a written passage less
interesting and less lively. The active voice is usually more forceful and interesting. Generally speaking, use active voice
when you can and passive voice only rarely.
Passive: The vacation at the beach was enjoyed by everyone. [The vacation sounds boring.]
Active: We had a blast at the beach! [This sentence makes the vacation sound fun.]
Practice: Distinguishing Active and Passive Voices:
____________
____________
____________
____________
____________
____________
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The banker bet two million that the lawyer couldn’t stay in solitary confinement.
The lawyer was given a piano and books on various subjects.
At first the lawyer did not want wine or cigars.
The lawyer read hundreds of books.
The banker was asked to bring books on many subjects.
Chekhov is known for writing plays.
The Cold Equation- Grammar Link:
They Always Agree – Subject and Verb
Have you ever tried catching a football with a softball glove? Sure, you can do it, but it doesn’t feel
right, does it? You could say that the football and the softball glove don’t agree. They are meant for different
sports.
Think of a subject and a verb as being like a ball and glove. Putting a plural subject with a singular verb
is like catching a football with a softball glove. For example, “Marilyn and Gerry has been separated for a long
time” is awkward because it combines a plural subject (Marilyn and Gerry) with a singular verb (has).
However, the sentence “Marilyn and Gerry have been separated for a long time” is like a softball glove
catching a softball. The plural subject (Marilyn an Gerry) agrees with the plural verb (have). This example
illustrates the following grammatical rule: Singular subjects take singular verbs; plural subjects take plural
verbs.
In certain cases, however, the following this simple rule may take a bit of thought. Here are some
considerations to keep in mind when you write.
Guideline
Example
1. The number of the subject is not changed by a
The main characters in the story are recognizably
phrase following the subject.
human. [The plural verb are agrees with the plural
subject characters, not with story, the object of
preposition.]
2. Subject joined by and usually take a plural verb.
Marilyn and Gerry have been separated for a long
EXCEPTION:
time.
A subject joined by and occasionally names one thing. Cutting and running is not one of Marilyn’s options.
For example, rock-and-roll names one kind of music.
3. Singular subjects joined by or or nor take a singular Either the ship or the stowaway is sacrificed.
verb.
4. When a singular subject and a plural subject are
Neither her brother nor her parents know where
joined by or or nor, the verb agrees with the subject
Marilyn is.
nearer the verb.
5. The following indefinite pronouns are singular:
No one likes the ending.
each, either, neither, one, everyone, everybody, no
Everybody roots for Marilyn.
one, nobody, anyone, anybody, someone, somebody.
6. The following indefinite pronouns are plural:
A few in the class are writing a new ending.
several, few, both, many.
7. When the subject follows the verb, make sure the
Here is the unchangeable rule.
verb agrees with it.
What are the consequences?
Practice: Identifying Agreement Between Subject and Verb
For each of the following sentences, which are based on details in “The Cold Equations,” write a S and the
subject or subjects. Then, write a V and the word that is in the parentheses that agrees with the subject.
Example: The S rules aboard an EDS (is, are)V are) strictly enforced.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The EDS pilot and the cruiser (maintains, maintain) constant contact.
Stowaways aboard any EDS (meets, meet) immediate death.
Neither Barton’s training nor his values (prepares, prepare) him for this challenge.
No one (disputes, dispute) that the rules are necessary.
(Isn’t, Aren’t) there any exceptions at all?
Marilyn and Gerry (come, comes) from Earth, where rules are gentler.
Either the stowaway’s questions or her youth (influence, influences) Barton.
How (is, are) Marilyn’s parents affected by the girl’s grave error?