The Second Solution

cover art by A. von Munchhausen

NOTE: SCHEDULING ERROR. This was supposed to post on Thursday, June 4, but was mistakenly posted a day early.

 Read/Watch 'em In Order #112

Okay, so I was definitely wrong. When I decided to review the six stories that make up A.E. Van Vogt's fix-up novel The War Against the Rull in their original pulp magazine form, I somehow got the impression that they were not re-written in any significant way when collected into one novel; that they were given an internal chronological order and linked together with a couple of new interstitial chapters.

But I found out I was wrong when I got to the second installment, which was not originally a part of the Rull Universe but was heavily re-written to make it fit. The main character, I learned, was also changed to Professor Jamieson, who would be the protagonist in all the stories when they were changed to fit into the novel.

Well, the third story is "The Second Solution," which appeared in the October 1942 issue of Astounding. It takes place at pretty much the same time as "Co-Operate... or Else," the first story in the Rull cycle. It seems that while Jamieson was stranded on an alien planet, trying to convince a male ezwal to cooperate with him, a pregnant female was being shipped back to Earth. Along the way, the female gave birth to a lion-sized baby.

In his adventure, Jamieson has discovered that the ezwal are intelligent and communicate via telepathy, but the rest of mankind doesn't know that yet. They see the ezwal as incredibly dangerous beasts who have killed many people on their indigeneous planet, which had been colonized by humans. Humanity, though, needed the planet as a base against the Rull, so could not simply give up and go home. The ezwal, in the meantime, are determined not to allow the humans to find out they are intelligent, as they (the ezwal) believe that this would bring on an even more determined effort to wipe them out.

When the ship bringing the ezwal to Earth is about to crash in a remote area, the female tells her son that, above all else, the humans must not learn they can think. She's soon dead, but the baby--who is already able to think and plan, manages to escape from the wreck of the ship.

art by William Kolliker

What makes the story fun is that, except for a few brief paragraphs at the beginning and end of the story, it's told entirely from the point-of-view of the young ezwal. Even though we realize the humans believe that he is just a mindless beast, we can see that he can think and feel. He's uncertain at time and downright frightened at other times, but still determined to carry out his mother's last wish. No one can be allowed to find out he's intelligent.

The title refers to an idea suggested by someone in the story that any important discovery will always be made. If Edison hadn't invented the light bulb or Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, then someone else would have.

In this story, we have someone on Earth who, like Professor Jamieson, has figured out the ezwal are intelligent and telepathic. This guy doesn't want to kill the young alien. Like Jamieson, he sees them as valuable allies against the Rull. But to convince the ezwal to trust him, when the poor "little" guy wants to follow Mom's last desperate wish, the human will have to pretty much make himself a target.

Remember that I haven't read the novel yet, but a summary I've found indicates that the book version of this story features Professor Jamieson as the protagonist. So, once again, some re-writing happened and the story would have been pushed a little further back in the Rull Universe timeline.

But the original version is another fine tale in its own right. You can read it online HERE.