Det finns en novell som jag läste om ett rymdskepp av mänskligt analogt besättning som blev fast i tyngdkraften och kraschade djupt på en supermassiv planet. Invånarna på denna planet var naturligtvis fysiskt anpassade till den höga tyngdkraften, och när de hittade hantverket, var det för dem överraskande tunna skrovade och de var nyfiken på de rosa pulpy blobs som de hittade inom. Ljudkänt?
"Heavy Planet" av Milton A. Rothman , ursprungligen publicerad under pseudonymen" Lee Gregor "i augusti 1939-utgåvan av Förvånande Science-fiction , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv . (Jag hittade denna recension på webben.) The berättelsen berättas från utlänningens synvinkel, som fann det avbrutna rymdskeppet:
Ennis turned the prow of his boat to meet the path of the falling vessel. Curious, he thought, where were its wings? Were they retracted, or broken off? It ballooned closer, and it wasn't a glider. Far larger than any glider ever made, it was of a ridiculous shape that would not stand up for an instant. And with the sharp splash the body made as it struck the water—a splash that fell in almost the same instant it rose—a thought seemed to leap up in his mind. A thought that was more important than anything else on that planet; or was to him, at least. For if it was what he thought it was—and it had to be that—it was what Shadden had been desperately seeking for many years. What a stroke of inconceivable luck, falling from the sky before his very eyes!
The silvery shape rode the ragged waters lightly. Ennis' craft came up with a rush; he skilfully checked its speed and the two came together with a slight jar. The metal of the strange vessel dented as if it were made of rubber. Ennis stared. He put out an arm and felt the curved surface of the strange ship. His finger prodded right through the metal. What manner of people were they who made vessels of such weak materials?
He moored his little boat to the side of the larger one and climbed to an opening. The wall sagged under him. He knew he must be careful; it was frightfully weak. It would not hold together very long; he must work fast if it were to be saved. The atmospheric pressure would have flattened it out long ago, had it not been for the jagged rent above which had allowed the pressure to be equalized.
He reached the opening and lowered himself carefully into the interior of the vessel. The rent was too small; he enlarged it by taking the two edges in his hands and pulling them apart. As he went down he looked askance at the insignificant plates and beams that were like tissue paper on his world. Inside was wreckage. Nothing was left in its original shape. Crushed, mutilated machinery, shattered vacuum tubes, sagging members, all ruined by the gravity and the pressure.
There was a pulpy mess on the floor that he did not examine closely. It was like red jelly, thin and stalky, pulped under a gravity a hundred times stronger and an atmosphere ten thousand times heavier than that it had been made for.
He was in a room with many knobs and dials on the walls, apparently a control room. A table in the center with a chart on it, the chart of a solar system. It had nine planets; his had but five.
Then he knew he was right. If they came from another system, what he wanted must be there. It could be nothing else.
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