The Beast People were human enough. The Monkey Man bored me, however. He was forever jabbering at me; jabbering utter nonsense. One thing about him entertained me a little: he had a fanciful trick of coining new words. He had an idea, I believe, that to babble about names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it "big thinks", to distinguish it from "little thinks" -- the sane everyday interests of life. If ever I made a remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to say it again and again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word wrong here and there, to all the milder of the Beast People. He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very curious "big thinks" for his especial use. I think now that he was silliest creature I ever met.
A very nice
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The least
expensive paperback in print of The Island of Dr. Moreau
A nicer paperback
edition of The Island of Dr. Moreau
"Cadet Pirx!"
Bullpen's voice snapped him out of his daydreaming. He had just had visions of a two-crown piece lying tucked away in the fob pocket of his old civvies, the ones stashed at the bottom of his locker. A jingling, shiny silver coin -- all but forgotten. A while ago he could have sworn nothing was there, an old mailing stub at best, but the more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed that one might be there, so that by the time Bullpen called out his name, he was absolutely sure of it. The coin was now sufficiently real that he could feel it bulging in his pocket, so round and sleek to the touch. There was his ticket to the movies, he thought, with half a crown to spare. And if he settled for some newsreel shorts, that would leave a crown and a half, of which he'd squirrel away a crown and the the rest blow on the slot machines. Oh, what if the machine suddenly went haywire and coughed up so many coins into his waiting hands that he couldn't stuff his pockets fast enough . . . ? Well, why not -- it happened to Smiga, didn't it? He was already reeling under the burden of his unexpected windfall when Bullpen roused him with a bang.
Folding his hands behind his back and shifting his weight to his good leg, his instructor asked:
"Cadet Pirx, what would you do if you were on patrol and encountered a ship from an alien planet?"
Pirx opened his mouth wide, as if the answer were there and all he had to do was to force it out. He looked like the last person on Earth who knew what to do when meeting up with a vessel from an alien planet.
"I would maneuver closer," he answered, his voice muted and strangely hoarse.
The class froze in welcome anticipation of some comic relief.
"Very good," Bullpen said in a fatherly sort of way. "Then what would you do?"
"I would stop," Pirx blurted out, sensing that he was drifting off into realms that lay vastly beyond his competence. Furiously he racked his empty brains in search of the appropriate paragraphs from his Space Manual, but it was as if he had never laid eyes on it. Sheepishly he lowered his gaze, and as he did so, he noticed that Smiga was trying to prompt him -- with his lips only. One by one he deciphered Smiga's words and repeated them out loud, before he had a chance to fully digest them.
"I'd introduce myself."
A howl went up from the class.
The only
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A sequel: More
Tales of Pirx the Pilot
My favorite collection of humorous short science fiction stories by Stanislaw Lem:
The Star Diaries
(More to come........)
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