And the Gods Laughed

And the Gods Laughed by Fredric Brown

On an asteroid mining tug, five crewmen — Hank, Charlie Dean, Blake Powers, Zeb Werrah, and Ray — pass idle hours between work shifts trading tall tales. After Charlie spins a yarn about Martian bolies and earrings, Zeb and Ray suit up for their shift, and Hank offers to tell what really happened on his earlier trip to Ganymede, insisting that "earrings wore them," not the reverse. Hank recounts the voyage of the ship M-94, crewed by himself, Art Willis, and skipper Dick Carney, along with three specialists: linguist-biologist Lecky, geologist Haynes, and botanist Hilda Race. Landing on Ganymede, they find a humanoid native tribe, each member wearing a single large gold earring, except for one native who spears at Hank and Art before fleeing. The Ganymedeans prove friendly, primitive in their material culture yet startlingly advanced in mathematics; Lecky quickly picks up their language and is given an earring as a gift, trading his slide rule in return. Over successive visits, Hilda and then Haynes also receive earrings. Hank notices Haynes returning from the village with what looks like a bloodstain and a spear-hole through his coat, though he claims it was spilled wine and shrugs off questions. Hiding near the village, Hank witnesses a native's legs bitten off by something in a stream; instead of panic, the maimed native calmly hands his earring to a companion and drops dead the instant it leaves his hand. Growing suspicious, Hank notices the crew behaving oddly — pausing as if communicating without words. He corners Dick Carney, who reveals a ring worn hidden as a bracelet and admits the truth: the earrings are dormant, disembodied telepathic entities the Ganymedeans call "earring gods," incapable of independent thought or movement until worn. Once attached, they animate and dominate the body's mind, whether the original owner is alive or dead, and their kind has been trapped on Ganymede for eons, unable to develop space travel through native minds alone. Having taken over Lecky, Haynes, Hilda, and Dick, they intend to steer M-94 back to Earth and quietly seize human hosts there, disguising themselves as inconspicuous bracelets or bands. They admit Hank was kept as an unaltered control, to gauge how convincingly they imitated human behavior. Lecky, now possessed, offers Hank a ring at gunpoint; Hank knocks the pistol away, fires several shots that have no effect on the possessed bodies, and flees into the freezing Ganymede night without proper protection. Finding no escape and no plan, he sits on a rock as his air runs out, and loses consciousness in the dark — waking, he says, back aboard ship. Back in the tug's present, Charlie and Blake first laugh off the story as an elaborate lie, but Charlie, unsettled, snatches the tug's old projectile pistol and demands Hank prove he wears no ring. Hank complies, stripping down and showering in front of them to show his arms, ankles, and body are bare, and the two crewmen relax, joking that this trip has turned into one where men tell the truth for a change. Charlie warns Hank not to let Zeb and Ray know they were fooled, and answers a knock at the airlock as the two returning crewmen come back inside. The story closes with a telepathic message sent from an entity designated No. 67843, stationed on the asteroid, to another entity, No. 5463, on Terra. It reports that telling the "true" story of Ganymede to the terrestrial crew was a deliberate test of human credulity, and that the test succeeded: the men believed and dismissed it as fiction. This confirms that entities can be embedded directly within human flesh rather than worn as visible rings, avoiding suspicion, though the process requires performing the same "operation" on each person taken over individually. The message states there is no need to linger on the asteroid; command of the ship will now be taken, a false report of no ore will be filed, and the four aboard who now house the entities will report back upon reaching Terra.

By Fredric Brown · First published 1948 · Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Adventure · 7,272 words

First lines

Hank was spinning quite a space lie -- something about earrings wearing their owners. The crew got a boot out of the yarn -- until they got to thinking.

You know how it is when you're with a work crew on one of the asteroids. You're there, stuck for the month you signed up for, with four other guys and nothing to do but talk. Space on the little tugs that you go in and return in, and live in while you're there, is at such a premium that there isn't room for a book or a magazine nor equipment for games. And you're out of radio range except for the usual once-a-terrestrial-day, system-wide newscasts.

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And the Gods Laughed is listed on Textopian as a novel by Fredric Brown, dated 1948 CE.

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science fiction · humor · satire · philosophy · human nature · irony · short stories · absurdism · cosmic horror · existentialism · social commentary · parody

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