Giant Snakes

Nathaniel and his crew stop for supplies on a Hammer-Face space station. The Hammer-Faces there have a favor-money system, meaning that all naturally indivisible tasks and objects are considered to be of the same value. Nathaniel does a favor for the Hammer-Faces by telling them a story, and they return the favor by giving him a bowl of food.

Nathaniel eats his bowl of candy sprinkles with a spoon and tells them another story. “So how did you get away from the Barts?” the tall one asks.

“We still had the numb-ray with us,” Nathaniel answers.

Eventually, the Hammer-Faces invite Nathaniel to visit nearby planet Hek with them. Frankfurt, the tall one, tells him, “It’s good that you never surrender. Good guys always fight bad guys. We know a place where you can be a hero anytime you want.”

“That sounds like fun!” Nathaniel agrees.

The three Hammer-Faces and their three Stuffians fly low over the jungles of planet Hek and land on top of a small hill. Nathaniel follows in his ship, landing nearby. They all meet outdoors for lunch. “Now we wait.”

Several minutes later, a small spacecraft passes over the nearby mountain range, loses altitude, and crashes into the jungle. “What happened?”

“Those mountains are magnetic. Strong enough magnetic fields interfere with low-velocity antigravity fields and cause them to collapse. Any ship running on antigravity that goes over those mountains crashes,” Frankfurt explains.

“Oh,” Nathaniel says.

“Now we can rescue them from the snakes,” Frankfurt says.

“Snakes?” Nathaniel queries.

“Yes. There are giant snakes here that eat anything they can catch and squeeze to death. Here are your weapons,” Frankfurt says. The explorers are handed swords will small switches on the handles. Nathaniel turns his on. The blade vibrates into a blur and the edges gradually become white-hot. Nathaniel’s eyes go wide.

Planet Hek is a place of vast, steamy jungles with large, droopy leaves. There are as many boulders as trees. Boulders and trees alike are largely black with pastel stripes. It is also a planet of snakes. Snakes of all kinds crawl along the ground, under the ground, and hang from the branches above. Some of these snakes can be quite large. To blend in, most snakes are also black with pastel stripes. Some even have leaf-like appendages. The jungle is thick and full of insects. A mosquito flies into Nathaniel’s mouth when he asks a question and he accidentally eats it. Everything is wet and slimy. The leaves drip and the rocks are slippery.

They walk for almost an hour. The snakes are everywhere. Nathaniel constantly looks above him while Doctor Bill looks behind him and Fred looks side to side. Haticat takes the front. Haticat swings his sword at everything in his way. Finally, they reach the crash site. Two of the inhabitants have already been eaten. The third stands by the stuck open door with a broken pipe. “Come with us!” Frankfurt yells.

Due to the high concentration of snakes attracted to the crash site, they have to slice a path to the survivor. On the way back out, Doctor Bill is taken by surprise when a snake drops from above in a coil around him and rapidly contracts, knocking his sword from his hand and silencing his scream. The others do not realize his situation for five seconds. Turning around, Nathaniel sees Doctor Bill being raised up into the trees. He slices off the snake’s head and its body relaxes enough for Doctor Bill to push his way out. Dozens more snakes approach the two of them from all sides. The ground seemingly comes alive. Nathaniel and Doctor Bill climb up onto a striped boulder. Fred and Haticat now come to their rescue, chopping snakes into bits and picking up Doctor Bill’s sword. Eventually, the four of them rejoin the Hammer-Faces and walk back to their ship.

“That was great! Let’s do it again!” Nathaniel shouts.

“We will. Every day, somebody goes over those mountains and crashes,” Frankfurt says.

“Great!” Haticat yells.

Nathaniel remains in the jungle for several days, helping to rescue fourteen more people from four more wrecks. Then he gets an idea. He and Haticat prepare a warning beacon and climb to the top of the nearest mountain to set it up. He is quite proud of himself, but when the Hammer-Faces find out about it they are mad. “Now we can’t play hero anymore! I thought you wanted to be a good guy!” Hammer-Faces.

“I do. Good guys warn people of danger,” Nathaniel responds.

“No! If no one ever gets into danger then there are no more opportunities to be a good guy. You have to create the danger,” Frankfurt explains.

“Won’t that make us bad guys?” Nathaniel asks.

“There are no good guys without bad guys,” Frankfurt says.

Nathaniel stops to consider this. He realizes he will be very bored without a challenge. He almost died of boredom once. He has no desire to repeat the experience. “I guess you’re right.”

The beacon is destroyed and the boys go back to their watch. After a while, Nathaniel starts to feel uncomfortable. He talks privately to his crew about it. “We’re not saving everybody; some people are always eaten before we can rescue them. I don’t think we’re being good enough to be real good guys.”

“I agree. The math shows we are doing more bad than good,” Doctor Bill says.

“Yes, it’s not as much fun as it was at first,” Haticat adds.

“Should we put back the warning beacon?” Fred asks.

“I don’t know. We need fun to live or else we can’t be good or bad,” Nathaniel says.

“We should think about it and talk again tomorrow,” Doctor Bill suggests.

That afternoon, their minds are made up for them. One small ship rounds the top of the mountain, loses control for a moment, and then enters a stable glide just above the treetops. “Oh no, they reestablished their antigravity field,” Frankfurt says.

“I’ll fix it,” the short Hammer-Face, Horace, says. He steps over to the weapons station and fires a laser bolt, hitting the small ship and causing it to drop into the jungle.

“Hey!” Nathaniel yells.

“That was mean,” Haticat says.

“You’re a bad guy,” Fred says, pulling out his laser pistol and pointing it at Horace’s face.

Instantly, everyone has their guns out and pointed at each other. Frankfurt says, “I told you before: it takes a bad guy to make a good guy. That’s why we bought the magnet.”

Nathaniel could not believe what he was hearing. The magnetism wasn’t even natural! “You also told me that good guys always fight bad guys,” Nathaniel says. He then shoots up the steering console so they cannot fly the ship, releasing a big rush of smoke that disorients the Hammer-Faces and their Stuffians so that Nathaniel and his crew can escape. “Never surrender!”

After rescuing the crew of the small ship from the snakes and destroying the magnet on the mountain, the boys land in a different part of the jungle. “I’m bored. What do we do now?” Fred asks.

“What if we put ourselves in danger and then rescued ourselves?” Haticat suggests.

“Yeah, we could do that!” Nathaniel agrees.

The boys trek out into the jungle again, but soon realize the trouble with their plan. “We’re too well armed. There’s no challenge. There’s no danger,” Nathaniel points out.

“Fred, drop your sword and go run into that pile of snakes,” Haticat says.

“Why don’t you do it?” Fred says.

They finally decide that Nathaniel should do it. He drops his sword, his knife, his gun, and runs into the writhing mass – and then runs right out again. “Hey, you didn’t let us rescue you,” Haticat complains.

“I rescued myself,” Nathaniel declares.

It takes a long time to get the right balance between danger and safety for a real adventure. Nathaniel is captured by a snake. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are right behind him, but then the snake starts to lift him into the trees where they cannot reach. The grip gets tighter and Nathaniel can’t breathe. Oh no! They had miscalculated. He was going to die. He’d never be a hero again! As he starves for oxygen, he no longer produces enough fun to animate his Stuffians and they collapse. Snakes quickly wrap themselves around the Stuffians as well. Who would rescue them now?

Nathaniel frantically scratches the snake’s skin, but the scales are too tough. He bites as hard as he can, but not much happens. Twisting his body for leverage, his teeth finally draw blood and make the snake flinch, losing its grip for a brief moment. This gives him just enough time to push his way out and drop to the ground. Another snake speeds towards him, but he throws a rock at its head. Grabbing Doctor Bill’s sword, he fights the snakes off and rescues his Stuffians as they start to wake up again.

Once back on their ship, Nathaniel nurses his bruises. “let’s not do that again.”

“What are we going to do? I’m bored again,” Fred complains.

“Me too,” Haticat says.

“We can’t put others in danger. That’s being a bad guy,” Nathaniel says.

“Right,” Haticat agrees.

“We can’t put ourselves in danger. That’s being a bad guy to ourselves,” Nathaniel says.

“I guess so,” Haticat says.

“We have to search for bad guys to fight,” Nathaniel declares.

“Where?” Fred asks.

“The universe is full of bad guys – and fires, and hurricanes, and meteors. We only have to look where people are hurting,” Doctor Bill says.

“That’s right, Y made a bad universe,” Haticat says.

“Does that mean that Y is bad?” Fred asks.

“Hmm. That’s a hard question. Y made everything – good and bad,” Doctor Bill says.

“Y made bad guys, but also made good guys to fight them,” Haticat says.

“And without bad guys, there’s no one to fight, so it’s good that Y is bad,” Nathaniel says.

“Does that make Y good?” Fred asks.

“Um…I guess so. My brain hurts,” Nathaniel says.

“Mine too,” Fred says.

“Never mind. Let’s go find something bad!” Nathaniel starts the launch sequence and several minutes later, they have left the planet.

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