If you missed the last one….
Last time we looked at an unusual tale from Henry Kuttner who didn’t write many space operas. This time it is Edmond Hamilton, who did quite a bit more than Hank. Ed wrote Science Fiction for Weird Tales in the 1920s and early 30s. Much of it was Wellsian in nature. In the 1940s, Ed used WT for his more experimental tales, many of which are classics in Hamilton’s career like “He That Hath Wings”.
At the same time he produced plenty of Science Fiction for Better Publications: Thrilling Wonder and Startling Stories and in 1940 the Captain Future novels for that magazine. Hamilton was one of the authors who produced “novels” to lead the issues of their Pulps, especially Startling Stories, which promised a full novel each issue. Other writers who penned these longer tales include Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman, Oscar J. Friend, Noel Loomis and Malcolm Jameson. Many of these novels were used by Donald A. Wollheim for his ACE Doubles in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1938 Ed added Ray A. Palmer to his list of editors and created more action-oriented material for Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. One of these tales was “The World With a Thousand Moons” (Amazing Stories, December 1942), a space opera with all the best elements: mystery, danger, weird aliens and a touch of Horror. Only Hamilton’s wife, Leigh Brackett could match him for combining suspense and Science Fiction in a space tale.
The story begins with Lance Kenniston and the Jovian, Hulk Or, in Syrtis, the largest city on Mars. They need to buy a ship but no one is selling. Kenniston has to resort to deceit to interest a yacht full of spoiled rich kids in a non-existent treasure hunt on Vesta. He tells them that he knows where John Dark, the space pirate, has left his ship. The news services have been telling how the Patrol found Dark and shot his ship to pieces. They were unable to capture him since the ship floated into a dangerous asteroid field. Gloria Loring, the owner of the yacht, Sunsprite, agrees to Kennistson’s plan to go to Vesta.
The trip to the moon is long but largely uneventful. Kenniston has some trouble with the party-pooper of the group, Hugh Murdock. He is in love with Gloria and doesn’t like her attention for Kenniston. Murdock looks in the hold and finds the equipment there is not treasure hunting stuff but what you need to repair a ship. Kenniston and Hulk Or know that they are really taking repair materials to John Dark, who is not dead, only trapped on Vesta. The travelers see the thousands of asteroids clustered around Vesta, giving us the title of the story.
Before Lance can land the ship on Vesta, Murdock holds him up at gunpoint, declaring the two are pirates. He has used the telaudio to check up on the Jovian , who is a well-known pirate. He assumes Kenniston is one too, though he denies it. Lance and Hulk Or manage to break away from their captors and hold up on the bridge. Lance begins to land the ship but Murdock and Captain Walls break in, causing them to crash. Now the travelers are as stranded on Vesta just like the pirates.
It is now that Gloria learns that Kenniston is not a pirate but a prisoner of John Dark. The pirates have Lance’s brother, Ricky, and will kill him if Kenniston doesn’t get the repair equipment. This doesn’t matter to the others. They take the two prisoners out of the ship and encounter their first Vestan, despite Kenniston’s warnings. A strange jungle cat with a brain attached to its head appears. The pilot, Bray, shoots the cat but the brain detaches itself and crawls up his leg. The brain, the actual Vestan, shoves two antennae into Bray’s brain stem and hijacks the man’s body. (I was surprised by this creature, as I, like so many, thought Robert A. Heinlein came up with The Puppet Masters in 1951. Once again, Hamilton innovates and receives no credit.)
Kenniston and Hulk Or are locked up. They escape easily because Captain Walls has forgotten that Or is from Jupiter. On a low-gravity world like Vesta he is strong enough to crush the lock from the door. (Hulk smash!) They flee into the night but are attacked by a Vestan. This allows the Earthmen time to corner and recapture them. Walls decides they are too dangerous to keep and calls for a firing squad. The execution is stopped by John Dark and his pirates showing up.
The pirate captain is pleased to find the materials to repair The Falcon, his ship. Kennitson convinces him the Earth people are rich and worthy of holding for hostage. The prisoners are placed inside a hut while repairs begin on the ship. The pirate camp is protected by an electric fence. Vestans attack the parties going to and fro from the Sunsprite and then begin collecting around the fence. The captives have time to talk. The earth folk meet Ricky Kenniston, a medical doctor. John Dark has kept him alive to be the pirates’ medic. Lance reveals that he had to save Ricky not just because he was his brother. Ricky has found a cure to the dread gravitation-paralysis, a form of space sickness that afflicts many spacemen. Captain Walls’s own son has been stiff as a board for three years. Lance was willing to allow the Sunsprite travelers be hostaged if it meant Ricky got to Earth and gave his cure to the galaxy.
This changes when Hulk Or breaks into the back of the hut. He has been told by John Dark that all the passengers and crew are going to be killed and placed inside the yacht. When the Patrol finds them, they will not realize that John Dark and his men escaped death. Hulk Or is smart enough to know he will also be killed because of Murdock’s telaudio. Everyone is willing to die if Ricky and his cure can be saved. Lance has a plan that won’t come to that. He has Ricky inject all the captives and Hulk Or with his new serum. His cure for gravitation-paralysis works by coating the nerve endings. The shot should also make the humans immune to the Vestans.
Kennistson has Hulk Or turn off the power to the fence. The mass of Vestans charges into camp, claiming pirate victims. He watches John Dark become a zombie and walk off into the jungle. The Jovian kills the few pirates remaining in the ship. The captives escape Vesta and head for Mars. A really happy ending follows with the galaxy cured of an evil disease, Huk Or headed for a pardon and Lance and Gloria headed for the wedding chapel.
The best scene in this story, for me, is the climax when the Vestans charge the camp and claim all the pirates. Hamilton pulls out the stops and makes it gory enough (I suspect so he could sell it to Weird Tales, if Palmer said No.)
The crash of his atom-gun drowned his own shout. Other pirates were firing wildly at the hideous creatures assailing them. For the little gray Vestans had detached themselves from their animal victims and were swarming upon the pirates, clambering with blurring speed up their legs and backs, sinking into their necks the tiny antennae…Other Vestans were clambering up on them like ghastly gray spiders as they ran, but were powerless to overcome them. They tore away the creatures and plunged on.
Conclusion
Of the Big Four (Hamilton, Kuttner, Moore and Brackett), Ed was the oldest by seven years. C. L. Moore was the next, with Henry Kuttner four years younger than her, and Leigh Brackett the baby, eleven years younger than her husband, Hamilton. The two couples produced so many classics in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres during the Pulp era, it is often easy to forget Hamilton’s seniority. He was the first writer to try and make a living writing only SF (along with his pal, Jack Williamson). Both failed, but inspired so many who came after, including future friends and spouses.
“The World With a Thousand Moons” may not be the best Space Opera tale ever, though I quite like it. Hamilton always has an edge (tinged with Horror) in his best pieces like “The Horror on the Asteroid” that comes from his being a Weird Tales writer first. (Moore and Kuttner can also claim this.) The Pulp adventure story set on a moon or planet goes back to Stanley G. Weinbaum but I think Edmond Hamilton did it better more often.
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