Left Hand, Right Hand
Troy Gordon, a maintenance engineer aboard the interstellar carrier _Atlas_, has spent nearly three years as a prisoner of the Tareegs — amphibious, penguin-like aliens who ambushed Earth's Cassa Expedition on arrival and have since tortured and executed captives at intervals to enforce obedience. Two of the expedition's senior scientists, Dr. Victor Clingman and Dr. Chris Dexter, appear to have become collaborators, feeding the Tareegs a plan to haul billion-ton loads of asteroid ice down onto the desert world of Cassa One and transform it into a sea — ostensibly giving the Tareegs a forward base near their home system, and marking the human scientists as traitors in the eyes of their fellow prisoners. Secretly, Troy has been building his own escape: he found the wrecked courier ship of pilot Jerry Newland, shot down attempting to flee and warn Earth, its pilot barely alive in an emergency medical tank. Troy hid the tank in a room he carved out behind his own quarters and has spent over two years secretly converting one of the Tareeg's own interstellar attack drones — using salvaged parts from Newland's ship plus stolen and improvised components — into a vessel capable of carrying two men back to Earth. As the ice-seeding operation nears completion and clouds finally appear over the desert, Troy begins reviving Newland from his long coma, coaching him back toward coherence so he'll be fit to serve as pilot, while withholding the details of the plan until Newland is stable enough to be trusted with it. The tension escalates when Troy is summoned to Clingman's office on a pretext, growing convinced the summons is a stalling tactic while his quarters are searched. He discovers Newland and the emergency tank have vanished from the hidden room — apparently a Tareeg discovery. Believing capture imminent, Troy diverts pursuit by sending his driverless groundcar racing into the desert rigged to self-destruct, then heads for the tunnel leading to the Tareeg hangar to make his own solo escape attempt. There he is ambushed — not by Tareegs, but seemingly by a human collaborator — and shot down with a stun weapon after firing back in the dark. Troy wakes aboard the _Atlas_, now in interstellar flight, still fogged and partially paralyzed, believing the escape has failed and he is being carried back for interrogation. Nursing his hatred of the "traitor" scientists, he plans a final act of sabotage or violent last stand: overpowering his medical guard, arming himself, and moving toward the bridge to cripple the ship rather than let the Tareegs profit from its capture. Along the way he notices the ship seems strangely deserted of both Tareegs and fellow prisoners. Cornering Clingman in his cabin, gun in hand, Troy learns the truth: the "collaboration" was an elaborate long game. Clingman and Dexter had secretly reconstructed a Tareeg biological weapon — a species-specific killing agent, dormant for over a thousand years in the frozen fragments of the Tareegs' shattered ancestral world, which lies within the very asteroid swarm they proposed hauling to Cassa One as "ice." By steering the aliens into ritually immersing themselves in the new sea at a ceremonially significant moment, and into dispatching their sacred messenger drones loaded with sanctified water back toward the twin Tareeg home planets, the scientists ensured the weapon would be delivered directly into both enemy home oceans — wiping out the Tareeg species while sparing Earth a war it might not have won. Troy's independent escape attempt, and Newland's earlier revival, had been deliberately delayed and finally intercepted by allies (including Dr. Rojas) rather than enemies, precisely to keep the secret compartmented until the plan's success was assured. The story closes on the irony of Troy's misjudgment: the men he despised as weak turncoats were in fact the architects of humanity's salvation, playing a far colder and more calculated game than he ever suspected.
By James H. Schmitz · First published 1962 · Genre: Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Espionage Thriller · 13,857 words
First lines
_Men were tortured. men were killed. and the Earth Scientists chatted pleasantly with the Tareeg. Were they traitors or were they waiting for The Ice Men? _
Jerry Newland was sitting up on the side of his bunk, frowning at the floor, when Troy Gordon came quietly into the room and stopped at the entrance to watch him. Not too good, Troy thought after a moment, studying Newland's loose mouth, the slow blinking of the eyes and the slumped immobility of position. Not too bad either -- not for a man who, in most practical respects, had been dead for the better part of three years and come awake again only the day before.
What this Textopian page supports
Left Hand, Right Hand is listed on Textopian as a short story by James H. Schmitz, dated 1962 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: James H. Schmitz
- Date: 1962 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Espionage Thriller, Survival Fiction, Hard Science Fiction
- Length: 13,857 words
- Structure: 1 section, 194 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for Left Hand, Right Hand by James H. Schmitz
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Science Fiction — The story is fundamentally science fiction, featuring interstellar travel, alien species (the Tareegs), advanced space technology including the Atlas carrier and courier ships, and exploration of alien worlds in the Cassa system.
- Military Science Fiction — The narrative is driven by military conflict between Earth and an alien civilization, involving captured expeditions, warfare strategy, torture, interrogation methods, and tactical planning for survival and escape.
- Espionage Thriller — Troy's primary activities involve covert operations—hiding Newland, gathering intelligence about the Tareegs, conducting secret repairs in hidden tunnels, and engaging in spy-craft against his captors and collaborators.
- Survival Fiction — The core plot revolves around survival against overwhelming odds: Newland's recovery from near-death, Troy's hidden resistance, and the desperate attempt to escape and warn Earth of the Tareeg threat.
Tags
space-opera · science-fiction · alien-contact · captivity · survival · conspiracy · betrayal · military-science-fiction · planetary-exploration · spacecraft · psychological-thriller · moral-ambiguity