From the novel Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement, 1953

   [Mission of Gravity is a classic example of the 'genre' sci-fi novel. It's about as straightforward and straight ahead as a story about aliens on an alien world can be, and the emphasis is very much on the science -- lots of meteorology and mechanics in this case. Arthur C. Clark and Larry Niven must have admired this story, and many others like it.
   For all of its regularity and predictability, it held my attention throughout; interesting things keep happening, and Clement builds suspense by hinting toward a plot twist at the end. One of the real pleasures of Clement's style (here at least) is its very straightforwardness; there are none of the superfluous and distracting references to contemporary culture that mar and date much other pop literature (especially stories from the late '60s and early '70s). Arguably, this has a lot to do with the bland ordinariness of standard U.S. culture in the early 1950s. In any case, it is refreshing, and it makes it easier to experience the story itself, and to imagine that it's happening on another world.
   The story itself is a long adventure-packed odyssey to recover a broken spacecraft and its stores of priceless data about the huge, strangely-shaped planet Mesklin that it was sent from Earth to study. Since Mesklin's gravity varies from 3 times Earth's at its equator to 700 Gs at its poles, the expedition from earth enlists the help of the natives - trader and ship's captain Barlennan and his crew of doughty sailors.
   Barlennan and his mates resemble big hard-shelled caterpillars -- a modestly alien body-costume. Mentally and emotionally, they are men - nothing more or less, and nothing different. Clement does invest them, however, with a special set of idées fixe concerning gravity. See the selections below.   - WA, 4 Jan 98]

   Barlennan could see the windows and exhaust ports in the cylindrical hull. The storm wind had dropped almost completely, but now a warm breeze laden with a taint of melting ammonia began to blow from the point where the exhaust struck the ground. The drops of semiliquid spattered on Barlennan's eye shells, but he continued to stare at the slowly settling mass of metal. Every muscle in his long body was at maximum tension, his arms held close to his sides, pincers clamped tightly enough to have shorn through steel wire, the hearts in each of his body segments pumping furiously. He would have been holding his breath had he possessed breathing apparatus at all similar to that of a human being. Intellectually he knew that the thing would not fall -- he kept telling himself that it could not; but having grown to maturity in an environment where a fall of six inches was usually fatally destructive even to the incredibly tough Mesklinite organism, his emotions were not easy to control. Subconsciously, he kept expecting the metal shell to vanish from sight, to reappear on the ground below flattened out of recognizable shape. After all, it was still hundreds of feet up...


   [The Flyer (from Earth):] "Well' 'throw' is when you take some other object -- pick it up -- and then push it hard away from you so that it travels some distance before striking the ground!"
   [Barlennan:] "We don't do that up in reasonable countries. There are lots of things we can do here [at the equator where the Mesklinites weigh 2.25 lbs] which are either impossible or very dangerous there [at the habitable lands near the poles where the Mesklinites weigh 550 lbs]. If I were to 'throw' something at home, it might very well land on someone -- probably me."
   "Still, if you could find something small enough so that your muscles could throw it, why couldn't you catch it again, or at least resist its impact?"
   "I find the situation hard to picture, but I think I know the answer. There isn't time. If something is let go -- thrown or not -- it hits the ground before anything can be done about it."

   The individual... had rolled a bullet-sized pebble to the edge of the [300' high] cliff and given it a final shove. ...even to Mesklinite vision the pebble simply vanished. There was a short note like a breaking violin string as it clove the air, followed a split second later by a sharp report as it struck the ground below.
   Fortunately it landed on hard, slightly moist ground rather than on another stone; in the latter case, there would have been a distinct chance of someone's being killed by flying splinters. The impact, at a speed of approximately a mile a second, sent the ground splashing outward in a wave too fast for any eye to see while it was in motion, but which froze after a fraction of a second, leaving a rimmed crater surrounding the deeper hole the missile had drilled in the soil. Slowly the sailors gathered around, eying the gently steaming ground; then with one accord they moved a few yards away from the foot of the cliff. It took some time to shake off the mood that experiment engendered.

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