Skip to main content

Short story about aliens trading for hydroponics


I am looking for information on a short story that was written probably in the late 60's early 70's. This was part of a short story collection; I can't be certain but it was possibly edited by Groff Conklin.


The story is told from the point of view of the aliens who meet human explorers on a planet they have both landed on. We can tell because of the description that the narrators provide of the humans. I remember specifically they thought the humans skin was ugly - too thin, they could see parts of the circulatory system through the skin.


The aliens are entranced with the human's hydroponic system, have never seen anything like it. The don't explicitly use the term 'hydroponics' since they've never see one before, but evidently food is in short supply and they really need something like this. The aliens, though, have this really cool pop-up survival tent that incorporates life support, power, etc. The humans and aliens swap hydroponics for the tent. Each think they've taken advantage of the other.


At the end, both high-tail it off the planet fearing the others will realize they've been ripped off and change their minds. The final line, said by the alien, is something like "The way they're behaving would make you believe that they - not we - have committed the perfect crime."



Answer



In Value Deceived by H. B. Fyfe (1950)


Story appeared in collection Possible Worlds of Science Fiction edited by Groff Conklin.


The alien home world had all its food crops destroyed by a blight. They are surviving on terrible tasting synthetic food which is in short supply. Alien explorers are frantically trying to find an alternate source of food.


They encounter a human starship. When they are invited inside, the aliens are stunned to see a hydroponic garden. This technology is the key to stopping the famine on their homeworld.



But the aliens play coy, pretending not to be terribly interested. Eventually they manage to get the humans to give them a spare hydroponic set up as an amusing trifle.


They give the humans one of their heating units, which the humans had been pretending to be uninterested in. It gives off heat, but also produces ashes. Things like diamonds, gold nuggest, and chunks of uranium. An amusing trifle.


As they depart, the aliens floor the ship's accelerator to run away, before the humans regret their bargain. To their surprise, the aliens see that the humans are frantically running away as well.


The alien captain thinks



“Anyone would suspect that they—not we—had practically committed theft!”



enter image description here


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more