mcculley%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (07/10/85)
From: mcculley%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Bruce McCulley) > Subject: UFO (or "The Personal Disasters of Cmdr. Straker") > From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse> > "...But there were still a lot of strange things: > why the women on moon base wore lavender hair (though they > looked normal enough on earth); ..." from looking around at some of today's fashions, lavender hair *DOES* look normal enough on earth (at least in some situations). > "The earth side of things was done moderately well. Low, sleek cars, > with gull-wing doors. The doors opened just quickly enough so that > you couldn't really say "nobody would ever use something like that"... why would you say such a thing? there are some classic gull-wing sports cars (I'd love to have a concours Mercedes 300SLR!) around, people who use them seem to think they make sense. > "...I recall one <...episode...> where Col. Foster crashed on the > moon, and was injured, with his spacesuit damaged. He was found by > an alien who, instead of killing him, assisted him back toward moon > base, several days' journey, with constant repairs needed to Foster's > suit, and the constant fear between the two temporary allies who > otherwise would have been deadly enemies. It was powerful. " this description reminds me of an extraordinarily powerful story I read (at a fairly young and impressionable age) about a strikingly similar plot. I can recall neither title nor author, although I have a faint recollection that it might have been by Damon Knight (or perhaps Harlan Ellison, it was a library book by a "name" author that was not one of my staples). To the best of my recollection, it was a juvenile story (although perhaps not, I was a juvenile when I read it) about a young teenage girl stranded in some situation alone on the moon, encountering an alien (first contact?) and a temporary alliance based on mutual need in the face of fear. The story line involved a struggle to get back to some sort of base camp, an attempt to strand the alien that had to be reversed for a subsequent need, and the protoganist finally lying stricken by a venomous bite listening to the alien key the code calling her family from orbit to help her. Can anybody identify this story from the information given? I'd like to see if my initial impression of the story's strength holds up on rereading it. thanks - Bruce McCulley "machines are my playthings..." DEC SW Development