



Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
   
  was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
   
  marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
   
  weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
 
  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
   
  Planet Stories Spring 1944.
   
  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
   
  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
 
  The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
 
  Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
 
  There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
 
  It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
 
  Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
 
  "Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
 
  "Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
 
  "Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
 
  Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
 
  They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
 
  The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
 
  Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
 
  He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
 
  A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
 
  "Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
 
  "From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
 
  Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
 
  "A million miles from nobody."
 
  They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
 
  "If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
 
  His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
 
  Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
 
  The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
 
  "Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
 
  Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
 
  Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
 
  Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
 
  Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
 
  Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
 
  Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
 
  They stopped, together.
 
  "Oops!" Click said.
 
  "Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
 
  Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
 
  They ran back. "Let's try it again."
 
  They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
 
  "Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
 
  Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
 
  Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
 
  "Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
 
  Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
 
  "Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
 
  "Use your gun."
 
  "They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
 
  "Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
 
  "I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
 
  "Let me think—"
 
  "Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
 
  "Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
 
  Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
 
  "Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
 
  That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
 
  Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
 
  Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
 
  "Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
 
  Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
 
  Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
 
  Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
 
  Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
 
  When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
 
  "Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
 
  Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
 
  "He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
 
  "I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
 
  Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
 
  Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
 
  "Huh?"
 
  "It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
 
  "What!"
 
  Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
 
  Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
 
  The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
 
  Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
 
  He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
 
  "Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
 
  "If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
 
  Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
 
  "Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
 
  "Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
 
  "Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
 
  Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
 
  "I can't let you do that, Irish."
 
  "Why not?"
 
  "You'd be going on my say-so."
 
  "Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
 
  "Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
 
  "If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
 
  "Irish, I—"
 
  "Shut up and load up."
 
  Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
 
  "Ready, Click?"
 
  "I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
 
  "Keep me in focus, lad."
 
  "All the way, Irish."
 
  "What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
 
  Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
 
  Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
 
  Only now it was only Marnagan.
 
  No more monsters.
 
  Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
 
  "Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
 
  "And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
 
  "Smile when you say that, Irish."
 
  "Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
 
  "Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
 
  "I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
 
  "Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
 
  "Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
 
  "Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
 
  The Irishman whistled.
 
  "But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
 
  "If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
 
  "Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
 
  Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
 
  "Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
 
  "Come back? How?"
 
  "They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
 
  Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
 
  Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
 
  "
Do
we, now?"
 
  "With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
 
  "All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
 
  Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
 
  Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
 
  Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
 
  Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
 
  The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
 
  "This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
 
  Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
 
  Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
 
  "Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
 
  "Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
 
  "Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
 
  Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
 
  Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
 
  Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
 
  The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
 
  "We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
 
  "I haven't got one."
 
  "We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
 
  And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
 
  His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
 
  Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
 
  Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
 
  "All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
 
  Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
 
  The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
 
  Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
 
  "I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
 
  The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
 
  A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
 
  Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
 
  "Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
 
  The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
 
  "Get his gun, Irish."
 
  Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
 
  Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
 
  "What!"
 
  "Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
 
  The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
 
  Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
 
  Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
 
  They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
 
  The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
 
  "So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
 
  "What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
 
  Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
 
  Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
 
  "There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
 
  "That's a silly question."
 
  "You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
 
  "Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
 
  An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
 
  Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
 
  He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
 
  He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
 
  Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
 
  "Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
 
  Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
 
  "Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
 
  "Impossible!"
 
  "I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
 
  A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
 
  The Patrol was coming!
 
  Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
 
  Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
 
  Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
 
  Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
 
  Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
 
  Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
 
  The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
One of the Patrolmen stopped firing, and ran toward Click and the
Building. He got inside. "Did you see them run, Click boy? What an
idea. How did we do?"
 
  "Fine, Irish. Fine!"
 
  "So here's Gunther, the spalpeen! Gunther, the little dried up pirate,
eh?" Marnagan whacked Hathaway on the back. "I'll have to hand it to
you, this is the best plan o' battle ever laid out. And proud I was to
fight with such splendid men as these—" He gestured toward the Plaza.
 
  Click laughed with him. "You should be proud. Five hundred Patrolmen
with hair like red banners flying, with thick Irish brogues and broad
shoulders and freckles and blue eyes and a body as tall as your
stories!"
 
  Marnagan roared. "I always said, I said—if ever there could be an
army of Marnagans, we could lick the whole damn uneeverse! Did you
photograph it, Click?"
 
  "I did." Hathaway tapped his camera happily.
 
  "Ah, then, won't that be a scoop for you, boy? Money from the Patrol so
they can use the film as instruction in Classes and money from Cosmic
Films for the news-reel headlines! And what a scene, and what acting!
Five hundred duplicates of Steve Marnagan, broadcast telepathically
into the minds of the pirates, walking across a Plaza, capturing the
whole she-bang! How did you like my death-scenes?"
 
  "You're a ham. And anyway—five hundred duplicates, nothing!" said
Click. He ripped the film-spool from the camera, spread it in the air
to develop, inserted it in the micro-viewer. "Have a look—"
 
  Marnagan looked. "Ah, now. Ah, now," he said over and over. "There's
the Plaza, and there's Gunther's men fighting and then they're turning
and running. And what are they running from? One man! Me. Irish
Marnagan! Walking all by myself across the lawn, paralyzing them. One
against a hundred, and the cowards running from me!
 
  "Sure, Click, this is better than I thought. I forgot that the film
wouldn't register telepathic emanations, them other Marnagans. It
makes it look like I'm a mighty brave man, does it not? It does. Ah,
look—look at me, Hathaway, I'm enjoying every minute of it, I am."
Hathaway swatted him on his back-side. "Look here, you egocentric son
of Erin, there's more work to be done. More pirates to be captured. The
Patrol is still marching around and someone might be suspicious if they
looked too close and saw all that red hair."
 
  "All right, Click, we'll clean up the rest of them now. We're a
combination, we two, we are. I take it all back about your pictures,
Click, if you hadn't thought of taking pictures of me and inserting
it into those telepath machines we'd be dead ducks now. Well—here I
go...."
 
  Hathaway stopped him. "Hold it. Until I load my camera again."
 
  Irish grinned. "Hurry it up. Here come three guards. They're unarmed.
I think I'll handle them with me fists for a change. The gentle art of
uppercuts. Are you ready, Hathaway?"
 
  "Ready."
 
  Marnagan lifted his big ham-fists.
 
  The camera whirred. Hathaway chuckled, to himself.
 
  What a sweet fade-out this was!

What is the plot of the story?
7
2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1
“Click” Hathaway, a photographer, is on a spaceship with “Irish” Marnagan, the ship’s pilot, as the ship is hit by a meteor and crashes

After the crash, Hathaway jokes about getting a shot of Marnagan emerging from the wreckage, which Marnagan takes offense to, pointing out he could have been dead; Hathaway says he took it for granted that Marnagan would survive.  Marnagan states that they could walk the entire diameter of the planet they are on in four hours, but Hathaway points out that he has only an hour of oxygen.  Hathaway states that he has photo evidence that the meteor that hit their ship was thrown at them, probably by Gunther, the person Marnagan is trying to capture, but Marnagan redirects their priorities to oxygen, food, and a way back to earth.

As they walk in search of help, they notice that there is human-made gravity on the planet.  Immediately after making that discovery, they encounter an enormous herd of dangerous beasts.  When Marnagan discovers his gun is ineffective as a weapon, they flee to a nearby cave for protection, as the cave is too small for the beasts to enter.

Marnagan asks Hathaway to take a picture of him with the beasts.  Hathaway snaps several pictures of Marnagan posing at a safe distance.  Hathaway then says that between the “natural” meteors, gravity, and beasts, their crash will look accidental rather than like murder.  He shows Marnagan the pictures he shot, intending to use the beasts as part of his argument, but Marnagan protests that his film is “lousy” as only Marnagan, appears in the shots and not the beasts.  When Hathaway confirms this is so, he is insistent that the film cannot lie.  If the beasts do not appear in the photos, they don’t exist.

When they emerge from the cave and the animals are gone, the men are at first elated.  Hathaway quickly realizes, though, that with their oxygen running low and limiting the time they have to find Gunther’s base and fresh oxygen, they must get the beasts to return so that they can follow the beasts to their source--Gunther’s base.

The men concentrate on the beasts and the beasts reappear; Hathaway and Marnagan locate a source point and head toward it.  Marnagan believes he is being attacked by a beast, but when Hathaway reminds him the monsters are fake, Marnagan is able to resist the telepathic message.  Marnagan enters the cave where it appears the animals are coming from and finds an air-lock door and a tunnel before he is captured by a guard.  He tells the guard his partner is dead.

Hathaway creeps in through the air-lock door to see Marnagan held at gunpoint.  Hathaway fools the guard into believing he is armed, takes his gun, and gets the guard to guide him and Marnagan to oxygen.  They then use photos of Marnagan, inserted in the telepath machines, to take over Gunther’s fortress and capture him.  The story ends with Hathaway taking a triumphant posed picture of Marnagan.
2
153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d
Click Hathaway and Irish Marnagan are on patrol, looking for the space pirate Gunther that no one has ever seen before. Marnagan is an Interplanetary Patrolman from Luna Base who hired Hathaway to travel with him and film the pirate's capture. He wants to use the film footage to teach Junior Patrolmen how to get out of difficult situations. While Hathaway is filming, a meteor strikes their spaceship, knocking it down to an asteroid. The ship splits open, so there is no way for them to leave the asteroid. They both have 60 minutes of oxygen remaining. At first, they think the meteor was an accident, but then Hathaway remembers that it was red-hot and glowing before it struck them, and he knows that meteors in space are never glowing hot. Hathaway is convinced that Gunther lobbed the meteor at them to make them crash. As they begin walking on the surface of the meteor, they notice a change in the gravity in one place and realize that they have stumbled upon Gunther’s hideout. Then a horde of monsters comes charging at them, making Hathaway and Marnagan run for their lives and hide in a small cave. Marnagan fires his gun at the beasts, but it does not affect them.

Marnagan has Hathaway film him facing the beasts. Hathaway has invented a film that develops itself when exposed to light. He pulls the film out of his camera for them to view, and both are surprised to find that the monsters are not on it. Hathaway thinks that the monsters are not real since they do not show up on the film. He believes they have just been tricked into thinking they are real. Marnagan agrees and decides to walk out among the monsters. When he does, the monsters disappear. Hathaway says that the monsters are still dangerous because as long as people think they are real, they might be frightened to death or commit suicide to avoid being caught by them. He also concludes that if they believe the monsters are real, they will return. 

Both men say they believe in the monsters to draw them out again so that they can see where they come from. They find the opening to the hideout, and Marnagan goes in first since he has a gun, but a guard catches him. Hathaway hears the guard over the audio system and sneaks up on the guard and threatens him to make him throw down his weapon. Marnagan and Hathaway find the telepathic station from which the images of the monsters are sent. Hathaway feeds his film into the telepathic station. When he confronts Gunther, the telepathic station shows an image of 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen marching toward them, but it’s really just Marnagan and 499 images of him. The guards run away as Hathaway films them. Since the film won’t record the telepathic images, it will look like Marnagan singlehandedly fought off all of Gunther’s guards.

9
3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d
Click Hathaway has been hired to document the journey that “Irish” Marnagan has embarked upon to kill Gunther, a space pirate. Their ship is struck by meteors and lands on an asteroid, where they begin to realize they are being manipulated by someone, most likely Gunther himself. They notice that someone has created a “super-gravity” setup that pulled their ship down, and after being chased into a cave by monstrous beasts they realize via Hathaway’s self-developing film that the creatures only exist in their minds. Once they figure this out they are able to follow the monsters to their source: Gunther’s fortress inside the asteroid. 

Marnagan enters first and is caught by a guard, and tells the guard that his partner is already dead while Hathaway sneaks in. They capture and truss up the guard and replace their oxygen tanks before heading into the fortress proper. They piece together how Gunther has been pulling in ships (including their own) to steal their cargo, and using the telepathic creatures to scare off tourists and inadvertent travelers. They find the machine used to create the creatures and concoct a plan. 

Hathaway walks toward what he presumes to be Gunther’s residence and allows himself to be captured. He is brought to Gunther, who calls his bluff when Hathaway tells him that patrols have arrived. They hear screams from the plaza and look out to see a line of five-hundred patrolmen. Gunther orders his troops to hold the patrolmen back and they stay to fight, but are vastly outnumbered and easily defeated by the patrolmen. During the battle, Gunther starts shooting a pistol wildly and Hathaway knocks him out with a paperweight before Marnagan enters the building. 

We learn that the line of patrolmen was made up of duplicates of Marnagan created by the telepathic sending station that created the monsters. As the story closes, Marnagan is tracking down the remaining pirates while Hathaway follows him to get some great footage. 

8
47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885
Interplanetary Patrolman Irish Marnagan and photographer Click Hathaway are on a mission to apprehend a space pirate named Gunther, when a meteor hits their ship, and they crash-land. Marnagan had hired Click to document his capture of Gunther as an educational video for Junior Patrolmen. Click realizes they have an hour left in their oxygen supplies, so they set about to find food, air, and a way to return to Earth. Click suspects the crash was engineered by Gunther himself. As they walk along the meteor, they begin to realize gravity behaves strangely there, and Click wonders if that, too, has been engineered by Gunther. Before he can think on this too deeply, they encounter a horde of monsters of all shapes and sizes coming for them over a hill. Marnagan shoots at them, but they are immune to his shots. Marnagan and Click hide in a nearby cave to hatch a plan. Marnagan poses for some pictures pretending to battle the monsters. Click posits a theory that the strange gravity and meteor attack they’d encountered earlier was Gunther’s way of crashing ships on his asteroid—an effective weapon in an age with primitive space-battle weaponry and a good way to gather supplies while being short on crew. The monsters had been sent to finish the job. When they sit down to examine Click’s footage, they see that there are no monsters in any of the shots. This leads Click to develop another theory—if the monsters weren’t really there, then neither were they! Marnagan tests his theory by walking out of the cave into the middle of the monsters. Because he believes they do not exist, they vanish completely, and the two men realize Gunther’s plan to scare to death anyone who might happen upon his asteroid. At the same time, they are running out of oxygen, and Click says they must bring the monsters back in order to follow them back to Gunther’s base. They bring them back by believing in them, but protect themselves by not being afraid of them. They fight their way through the fake monsters until Marnagan discovers a door leading to a tunnel, and he drops into it. A guard stops Marnagan, and Click uses his camera as a fake weapon to trick the guard into dropping his weapon. After procuring oxygen tanks, Click and Marnagan discover the telepathic sending station from which Gunther transmitted the monster images to ward off visitors. Click has the idea to use this technology to their advantage and trick Gunther and his men into believing the entire Patrol has come to the asteroid. Marnagan stays behind to imitate the 500-man Patrol, while Click goes to Gunther’s hideout to film the fake Patrol’s attack. Marnagan’s fake Patrol defeats Gunther’s men, Click disables Gunther, and Marnagan realizes that Click’s film portrays him as a hero (the film did not capture the telepathically-induced Patrol—only Marnagan storming their ranks). Marnagan gets his educational video, and Click gets his news headline.
What is the significance of Hathaway’s profession in the story?
7
2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1
Hathaway’s photography is the reason he is initially selected to go along on the mission to capture the outlaw Gunther.  Unlike the character Marnagan, who is repeatedly described as physically very large and strong, Hathaway is not on the mission for his physical prowess, but is there to document Marnagan’s capture of Gunther for training of Junior Patrolmen in the future  Hathaway has also invented self-developing film which seems like a cross between Polaroid pictures and a digital camera, as it has to be put into a micro-viewer at the camera’s base to be seen.  This film allows Hathaway and Marnagan, the active partner on the mission, to view Hathaway’s pictures immediately and notice the absence of beasts from Hathaway’s pictures.  This allows for the revelation that the beasts are telepathic projections into the men’s minds and sets up the final “battle” in the story, in which telepathic projections of Marnagan, created by the same projectors that created the beasts, along with photos from Hathaway’s film, defeat Gunther’s guards and enable Hathaway and Marnagan to capture Gunther.  While nothing could have been accomplished without Marnagan, Hathaway’s photography is essential to the successful completion of the mission.

2
153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d
Hathaway is a filmmaker and has been hired by Marnagan to accompany him on his trip to try to track down the pirate Gunther. Marnagan wants the encounter on film so that it can be used to train Junior Patrolmen. Throughout the story, Hathaway films several incidents that prove to be useful later. He is filming the meteor when it strikes their spaceship, and by reviewing the footage, he realizes that the meteor is glowing hot, which is never the case with meteors in space, and concludes that it must have been aimed at them. After he films the monsters and reviews his film, he realizes that the monsters are not real, which enables Marnagan and Hathaway to exit the cave where they are hiding. Later, when a guard has Marnagan, Hathaway holds his camera out like a weapon to make the guard drop his gun. Hathaway’s profession also helps him think of a way to use the telepathic station against Gunther’s guards when he films Marnagan in various movements and then feeds his film into the machine to become thought emanations. The images make the guards believe that 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen are on the asteroid and marching toward them. The guards panic and run because they think they are outnumbered.
9
3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d
Click Hathaway is a photographer, which is very significant to the story for several reasons. First, it is the reason he is on the voyage, having been hired by Marnagan to document his takedown of Gunther. Even more importantly, however, it is Hathaway’s constant photo taking combined with his use of the self-developing film he invented that reverses the fortunes of Click and Irish and allows them to succeed. After they try to distract themselves from their terror by taking a fun photo montage of Marnagan and the monsters hunting them, Hathaway realizes that the monsters don’t show up on the photos and surmises that they aren’t real, which allows them to enact their plan. After they trick Gunther and his forces, Hathaway continues to document Marnagan as he gleefully takes out the pirates. 

8
47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885
Click Hathaway is a photography and filmmaker with Cosmic Films, responsible for making news reels. He is commissioned by Marnagan to accompany him on his mission to apprehend the space pirate Gunther. Click takes a variety of shots of Marnagan at key points throughout their journey—from the time they are hit by Gunther’s rogue meteor to when they take refuge from the pursuant monsters in a cave and making their plan. Click’s purpose is to help Marnagan make an educational video he can use to train those in the Junior Patrol on how to handle difficult situations. For his own purposes, Click would like an exciting news reel to show Cosmic Films and hopefully boost his career. After Click deduces the monsters are a telepathic construction of some device of Gunther’s creation, he and Marnagan are able to use this knowledge to penetrate Gunther’s hideout and use the technology against his men by making them believe Marnagan is the 500-men Patrol coming to defeat them. Click uses this great battle to make an exciting news reel, which in turn gives Marnagan the footage he needs to make his educational video.
What is the relationship between Hathaway and Marnagan in the story?
7
2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1
Despite their clear differences, Hathaway and Marnagan are a solid team who work well together and depend on each other.  We first see this in the opening scene of the story where Hathaway is physically clinging to Marnagan in his distress during the crash sequence.  After the crash, Hathaway is more concerned with taking photos of Marnagan emerging from the crash than helping him emerge from the rubble, not because he doesn’t care about his companion, but because he sees his companion as so strong, it doesn’t occur to him to be concerned for his physical safety.  This points to one of their key differences--while Marnagan is immediately concerned for Hathaway’s safety and assumes Hathaway would reciprocate, Hathaway sees Marnagan as much stronger than himself, nearly invulnerable.

We see Hathaway and Marnagan’s collaborative relationship continue when they are faced with the beasts.  They are both afraid; Hathaway is the first to spot the secure hiding place of the cave and hails Marnagan to run there.  Marnagan then proposes that he pose “with” the beasts--standing at a safe distance with them in the background--and Hathaway agrees.  They continue to argue about what to do while Hathaway develops the film as part of his argument.  When Hathaway presents the developed film as evidence, Marnagan teases him about his invention being “lousy”, as only he (Marnagan) shows in the photos, but the monsters do not.  This joke sets up Hathaway’s realization that the beasts are telepathic projections rather than physical beings, leading the men to debate which of them will lead the hunt for oxygen.  While Hathaway knows his partner is physically stronger and he is already suffering from oxygen deprivation, he doesn’t want to risk Marnagan’s safety if his deduction proves wrong.  Marnagan, however, shows his trust in Hathaway by insisting that he (Marnagan) lead, confident that if Hathaway says the monsters aren’t there, they are indeed not.

When Marnagan briefly succumbs to the telepathic illusion of the beasts, Hathaway is able to talk him down.  Just by listening to Hathaway’s words, Marnagan is able to convince himself again that the beasts are not real.  Marnagan then convinces the guard he encounters that Hathaway died in the ship crash, allowing Hathaway to sneak in, capture the guard, and get both the men oxygen.  They use their teamwork in a last instance to defeat the principal antagonist of the story, Gunther.  Hathaway is captured by more of Gunther’s guards and taken to him, but is already prepared.  He shows Gunther that Gunther’s men are being overwhelmed and defeated by five hundred armed Patrol men, causing Gunther to pull out a weapon and fire wildly until Hathaway knocks him unconscious.  We then are told that the “five hundred Patrol men” are telepathic illusions of Marnagan projected by the same projectors that created the images of the beasts, supplied with photos of Marnagan shot by Hathaway.  Once again their teamwork proves crucial to the success of the mission.

2
153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d
Marnagan hired Hathaway to film his search for the elusive pirate Gunther. Marnagan plans to use the film to train Junior Patrolmen how to get out of a difficult situation. The two men are also friends who joke with each other. When Marnagan points out that he could have been killed in the crash, Hathaway frowns and turns pale. When Hathaway first speculates that Gunther caused the meteor to hit their spaceship, Marnagan isn’t convinced that is true, but as they begin making discoveries about the asteroid’s gravity and monsters, Marnagan trusts Hathaway’s theories enough to leave the cave and walk among the monsters. When Marnagan returns unscathed, Hathaway breaks down in tears of relief to see that he is safe. Later, when a guard is holding Marnagan at gunpoint, Hathaway risks his life to save Marnagan by using his camera as a pretend weapon to take the guard’s weapon. He then forces the guard to drag Marnagan, unconscious from lack of oxygen, to get a replacement oxygen tank. The two men also compliment each other when they defeat Gunther and his men.
9
3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d
At the beginning of the story, Hathaway and Marnagan are colleagues; Marnagan has hired Hathaway to document his mission to hunt down Gunther. As the story goes on, they become very dependent on one another in order to survive. They both try to put themselves in harm’s way in order to protect the other (Hathaway wanting to leave the cave first in case the monsters are real, Marnagan telling the guard that the monsters already killed his partner, etc.) multiple times and value the contributions the other makes to their plans. The events of the story bring them much closer, and they effectively save each other’s lives. 

8
47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885
Marnagan has contracted Click Hathaway’s talents as a photographer and filmmaker to help him produce a video he can use to train the Junior Patrolmen how to handle difficult situations they may face. Together, they seek out Gunther the space pirate and Click documents the journey. Their relationship is mutually beneficial—Marnagan is the brawn, and Click is the brain. They work together to escape the monsters, and, ultimately, to defeat Gunther and his men and procure the footage both of them want for their individual purposes. Throughout the story, both characters engage in witty retorts to one another, but they always show each other respect and a commitment to get through the trying ordeal to survive.
What is the significance of the crash of Hathaway and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene for the rest of the story?
7
2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1
The crash of Hathaway and Marnagan’s ship is the precipitating event for the events that follow, but it is also more than that.  Hathaway states shortly after the crash that the meteor that hit their ship was deliberately aimed at them with force, based on it being “hot and glowing” at the time of the collision.  Hathaway hypothesizes at that time that Gunther, the man Marnagan is trying to capture on their mission, had engineered the crash.  A short time later, when walking along the surface of the planet, Hathaway notices sudden weight loss.  After he and Marnagan test it and confirm that it really happened, they conclude that their ship was not only hit by a meteor, it was dragged down to the planet by an unnatural amount of gravity, more than the planet is generating.  They then meet horrifying, dangerous monsters, but these are revealed in short order to be telepathic projections.  They are able to dispel the images of the monsters by their own belief that the monsters are not really there, then summon them back by imagining that they are there, but that the monsters cannot harm them.  In this way, the monsters lead them to Gunther, who is captured when Marnagan and Hathaway use the telepathic projectors that generated the “monster” images to generate hundreds of images of Marnagan, making it appear that there is an army ready to take over Gunther’s base and capture or kill all his men.  All of this flows from the initial crash engineered by Gunther with the propelled meteor and the area of super-gravity that pulled the ship down to the planet.  Gunther hoped to make the ship disappear and Marnagan and Hathaway along with it.  Instead, they crashed on the single planet where they could find him and had to take on an immediate quest to search for him in order to survive, as they had limited oxygen and needed to find the only other humans on the planet in order to replenish their supply.
2
153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d
The crash in the opening scene sets up the conflict with Gunther in the climax of the story. Gunther is responsible for the meteor that strikes the spaceship and makes it crash on the asteroid. He is also responsible for the monsters that first terrify Hathaway and Marnagan and that later lead the men to his hideout inside the asteroid. Hathaway speculates that Gunther crashes or pulls ships onto his asteroid. Gunther is short on men, and space weapons are inaccurate, so he uses super-gravity to crash the ships. The people die from a lack of air or food or their injuries from the crash. Since there are no signs of weapons, if the Patrol ever shows up, it looks like the people died of accidental deaths rather than murder. The crash makes it possible for Marnagan to finally reach Gunter, a space pirate that no one has ever seen before.
9
3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d
The crash of Hathaway’s and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene of the story is significant both because it brings them to the asteroid where Gunther is hiding, and because it helps them figure out how Gunther is stealing cargo. Their ship is brought down at great speed by meteorites that Gunther and his troops launch at it, and then pulled in by a super-gravity situation they have set up. Hathaway and Marnagan realize the gravity is at play when they seem to lose weight as they get further from the ship. Their own ship wreck experience points them toward discovering how to get to Gunther. 

8
47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885
The crash at the beginning of the story is perpetuated by a meteor that Click later determines was sent as a projectile by Gunther himself. He presumes this was done in conjunction with the artificial gravity of the asteroid base in order to fell cargo ships to gather supplies for Gunther and his limited crew of fellow pirates. This crash sets in motion the action that forces Marnagan and Click to confront the monsters, whom Click soon realizes are telepathically imposed and not real at all. Because of this encounter with the monsters, Click discovers a way to defeat Gunther and his forces while dealing with limited resources and using his own technology against him. The crash also provides a dramatic moment in Click’s film.
What is the significance of the telepathic projectors in the story?
7
2395af6d550e4c6b9137b6d7a2e785d1
Telepathy plays an interesting role in this story.  Rather than telepathy being used by one character to discern the thoughts of another character, as is often the case, we instead have machines creating telepathic projections.  It is fitting, then, that since machines are creating the telepathic projections, a machine can also defeat them.  The camera does not "see" through interpreting images or trying to understand them.  It only records light and shadow.  For this reason, it remains unaffected by telepathy--it can only record what is there, not what is projected into the mind.

Hathaway and Marnagan become trapped in a small cave by what they believe are dangerous wild beasts.  Marnagan asks Hathaway to take his pictures as Marnagan poses against the backdrop of the beasts.  When Marnagan looks at the photos and complains that the beasts do not appear, Hathaway realizes that the beasts are not physically real, but only telepathic projections in the men's minds.  He and Marnagan are then able to dismiss the beasts and bring them back at will in order to let the projections lead them to their source.

Telepathy plays a significant role again when Hathaway and Marnagan formulate a plan to capture Gunther, the person Marnagan is on a mission to capture and the man that caused their crash.  While the two of them could easily overpower Gunther if he were alone, there are at least fifty guards with him at his base.  Hathaway realizes they can photograph Marnagan in poses as though he's taking over the base and use those images in the telepathic projector against the guards and Gunther.  The telepathic projector turns one Marnagan into five hundred, allowing the two men to easily capture the base and Gunther while the guards flee.  The guards are likely aware of the telepathic projectors, but do not suspect that Hathaway and Marnagan have managed to turn the projectors to their own ends.  By using the projectors, Hathaway and Marnagan are able to turn a very dangerous situation into an easy victory. 
2
153a03df0ed44556a2718fcde88a092d
The telepathic projectors create the illusion that the asteroid is populated with a horde of hideous monsters. This impression frightens people whose spaceships crash onto the asteroid so that they will be too afraid to search for the hideout of Gunther and his guards. Hathaway realizes that the monsters are simply images that disappear when people no longer believe they are real when he examines his film of Marnagan with the monsters in the background. When he reviews his film, only Marnagan is visible, so Hathaway realizes that the monsters are not real. Gunther’s telepathic projectors protect him and his men; he needs this added protection because he only has a few men, and Gunther himself is old and crippled, unable to defend himself or move on his own. Just as the telepathic projectors give him protection, they are also his undoing at the end of the story when Hathaway and Marnagan use the projectors against him. They feed in a film that makes it look like 500 Interplanetary Patrolmen are marching toward Gunter’s headquarters, but in reality, it’s only Marnagan with his image reproduced 499 times. Also, Hathaway and Marnagan are able to trick the projector into producing the monsters again to discover where they are coming from. This leads them to find Gunther’s lair where they defeat him.
9
3dfed7031f5b4c62959b5086d1ef742d
The crash of Hathaway’s and Marnagan’s ship in the opening scene of the story is significant both because it brings them to the asteroid where Gunther is hiding, and because it helps them figure out how Gunther is stealing cargo. Their ship is brought down at great speed by meteorites that Gunther and his troops launch at it, and then pulled in by a super-gravity situation they have set up. Hathaway and Marnagan realize the gravity is at play when they seem to lose weight as they get further from the ship. Their own ship wreck experience points them toward discovering how to get to Gunther. 

8
47412f6b40dd4c80b8cf86f81ecf6885
The telepathic projectors are Marnagan’s and Click’s most important discovery in the story. They are the source of the monsters that had previously pursued the two after crash-landing on the asteroid. After realizing the monsters are fake, Click proposes that they can push through their ranks by simply disbelieving in their ability to harm them. This turns out to be true, and they are able to make their way to Gunther’s hideaway, where they find oxygen tanks to support them in their next steps. By commandeering use of the projectors for their own purposes, Marnagan and Click are able to trick Gunther’s men into believing Marnagan is the 500-men Patrol come to capture Gunther and defeat his ranks. Marnagan does his best acting like the men, and their images are projected telepathically into the minds of Gunther’s men, who are subsequently defeated. In turn, this provides the footage that both Marnagan and Click desired when they initially began their quest.