Tantalusian Toads

“Why did you stay here?” Moran demanded. “There must be some way out.”


“Hell, we’ve all tried that!” It was a scarred half-caste from one of Earth’s stray colonies. “There’s no way, only the way we came, and there you’ve got the toad to pass and the Stalkers if you make it. With her dead we’ll starve here. There was worse things than goin’ to her!”


Moran’s eyes narrowed. “Are you man enough to risk the Stalkers if I handle the toad?” They stared at him blankly. “They’re big but they’re stupid; some of us’ll get through. Do you have the guts to try?”


They shuffled forward, one by one, until they were crowding around him. “All right,” he told them, “you’ve got leather – make me two ropes, strong ones, and get together whatever you’ve got to fight with. Grandpa and me’ll do the rest.”

- from “Trouble on Tantalus” a short story by P. Schuler Miller, first published in 1941.


Neat little SF short stories from the golden age I read last night. This scene happens towards the end, and something in my mind just clicked. This would be something I would use, I thought, were I to teach a creative writing class.

I don’t know if it was all these references to the “toad,” or to “Grandpa” at the end that did it. But what wonderful possibilites, no? Moran, to me, is a musclehead, albeit a clever one, like Vin Diesel in his Riddick movies. Tantalus is Hell localized in the Sirian system. Stalkers … well, they could be just about anything, as long as that anything was vicious and very unpleasant.

So what I would do would be to hand out copies of this scene to the class. Then I would simply say, “Finish it.”

Hint: can you intuit what those leather ropes would be used for? Hmm? When fighting a toad-monster? It winds up being very clever and very satisfyingly written.

I wanna write like this when I grow up.