Short Fiction · Chapter
III: The Mirage Pup explained
Jim recounts his harrowing experience on the hull of the spaceship, where he encounters a terrifying electrolube and a woman he cannot save.
What happens
Jim recounts his harrowing experience on the hull of the spaceship, where he encounters a terrifying electrolube and a woman he cannot save. After returning inside, Pete explains that the woman was a mirage projected by a mirage pup—a small, furry creature from Pluto that can make thoughts appear three-dimensional. Jim is left grappling with despair and a sense of loss for a woman a century dead.
Themes in this chapter
Madness and Psychological Trauma
Jim's intense grief and despair over a mirage woman, his struggle with reality, and the psychological impact of the encounter.
Alien Encounters and Otherness
The mirage pup, an alien creature from Pluto, and the electrolube, a devouring entity of the void, represent otherworldly beings.
Characters to notice
- Lucky Jim Sanders
Narrator of the chapter; experiences a traumatic encounter on the hull and struggles with grief over a mirage of a woman.
- Pete
Jim's companion; explains the mirage pup's abilities and tries to console Jim as they prepare to land.
Key passages
“I crawled out into the void on my hands and knees, clinging to the rough hull, digging with my magnetic irons into the thick coating of meteoric dust and grit and rubble the ship had picked up in deep space.”
Jim exits the ship onto the hull, using magnetic tools to navigate the debris-covered surface.
Describes Jim's dangerous spacewalk.
“It may have been imagination. But for the barest instant as I stared at the incredible shape of radiance a face seemed to look out at me. A fat face, bloated, toadlike, supported by a shadowy neck that swelled out beneath it like the hood of a rearing cobra!”
Jim sees a terrifying, toad-like face in the radiant energy form, which he identifies as an electrolube.
Jim's encounter with the electrolube.
“She didn’t wait for the horror to slice down. She jerked her knees, tore her wrists free and shut her eyes. Then she was gone.”
The woman Jim tried to save lets go and falls into space, choosing death over the electrolube.
The woman's suicide to avoid the electrolube.
“It’s all my fault! Pete groaned. Me and my rantings! Jeebies my foot! Soon as you went out I got to thinkin’. There’s a beastie could do it, a little black, furry beastie called a mirage pup!”
Pete realizes that the woman Jim saw was a projection from a mirage pup, a creature that can make thoughts appear real.
Pete explains the mirage pup's illusion.