How to Survive on Europa

Read/Watch 'em in Order #111

I made a mistake when I wrote about the first of A.E. Van Vogt's stories that were collected into the fix-up novel The War Against the Rull. Yes, I was wrong about something. It's hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

The stories all originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, with the tale we are discussing today getting published in the April 1940 issue. I knew of them but had never read any of them, stumbling across "Co-operate... or Else" at random and deciding that the stories would make good entries in my "Read/Watch 'em in Order" series. I decided I would review them as they appeared in the pulps and then made the unwarrented assumption that they were not significantly re-written before being included in Van Vogt's 1959 fix-up novel.

Well, I was wr......  wro....  I was... I was WRONG. There. I said it.

"Retribution" was published two years before "Co-operate... or Else," but was considered the second story chronologically when included in the novel. But I discovered when I read the pulp version that it was not originally a part of the War Against the Rull Universe.

The protagonist is a former explorer who is now a government official, visiting Jupiter's moon Europa. Named Thomas (we never learn his first name), he's there to tell the human settlers that Earth is turning the moon over to the Martian government.

Feeling betrayed, the settlers decide to fight rather than accept this. Their first act is to try to kill Thomas. This doesn't go as planned, though. As events play out, Thomas and his would-be assassin, Bartlett, are stuck together many days walk back to the nearest city, with no radio and wearing heated suits that don't stand a chance against the incredibly cold nights. They are also breathing filtered air that has a side effect of bringing on starvation very, very quickly.

Also, there's a nigh-indestructable predator called a Gryp, which loves to drink the blood of anything alive.

The two are forced to work together, though Bartlett is working on the assumption that they are doomed. But Thomas is a man of experience, modifying techniques used on other planets to kill a large, giraffe-like grass eater for food and then come up with a plan for taking out a Gryp. Deep caves provide them with a fighting chance against the cold during the nights.

But all this won't do Thomas any good at all if Barlett remains determined to eventually kill him.

The story is a solid and entertaining bit of Space Opera, which can be read online HERE.

As I've said, this is the first time I've read these stories, so I haven't yet read the version published in War Against the Rull 19 years later. I have found out that the protagonist was changed to Professor Jamieson, the hero from "Co-Operate... or Else," the location was shifted to a moon outside our solar system and the person forced to team up with Jamieson was gender-swapped. I presume the motivation for wanting to kill Jamieson was completely different, though I get the impression that the action-oriented events of the story remain the same. But I won't say that for sure. I don't want to be wrong again. The world could not survive that.

The next story is "The Second Solution," published in 1942. We'll look at that one soon.