For every blissfully short and stupid chapter of Mission Earth, there's an irritatingly long and stupid chapter to make up for it. This chapter is one of the latter.
Gris and Heller arrive in Spiteos' medical suites, a complex of operating theaters and biological storage famed for the stench of purtrifying cultures and rotting organic waste. Normally such a festering pit of disease, combined with the Apparatus' appalling hygiene, would be a hotbed of plagues that would regularly sweep through Spiteos' population, potentially wiping out the Apparatus altogether. Since this is a Hubbard story, however, the miasma and grossness only serves to underline the Apparatus' moral decay without inhibiting their function in any way.
Did I mention that Spiteos has no air circulation system? Despite being in a desert, and having a complex of tunnels extending deep underground? Obviously the stone walls are exuding breathe-gas to prevent suffocation.
Dr. Crobe's putting the finishing touches on "the one and only specimen of life from the unconquered Planet of Matacherferstoltzian," some poor schmuck who's had his arms and legs replaced with tentacles and gotten an extra-long insectoid tongue sure to delight the freakshows. Gris considers it fortunate that the insane victim will probably die soon, and shows the doctor his next patient. And then a funny thing happens - Gris feels a bit nauseous.
The mad doctor Crobe goes on with giving Heller a physical, giving the nurses a show by ordering Heller to strip and flex for measurements, and letting Gris admire his nemesis' physique before mentally slapping himself and assuring us that he's no "man-lover." The doctor determines that Heller is a native of Planet Manco (the same world the Countess is from, incidentally), and starts listing the ways he'll have to compensate to life on Earth - there's 1/6th less gravity so he'll have to practice moving about, the atmosphere is thinner so he'll oxygenate daily, that sort of thing. Amusingly, the good doctor proscribes hamburgers as a balanced, healthy ration, ideally washed down with beer.
No mention of immunization against a planet's worth of diseases and viruses that Heller's systems have no way of fighting against.
Heller's barely playing attention anyway. He's distracted by pictures displaying Earth's various races and asks for, of all things, a compilation of Voltarian mythology. After an infatuated nurse brings him an abridged copy of In the Mists of Time, Legends of the Original Planets of the Voltarian Confederacy, Heller looks up a particular story he remembers from his childhood on Manco.
Once upon a time, the story goes, during the Great Rebellion, Prince Caucalsia (oh God) fled Manco with his followers to Planet Blito-P3, where they founded the colony of Atalanta (oh come on!). The rest of the Confederacy only learned of this nine years later when two freighters returned to Manco proposing peace and trade, only to be betrayed by a woman named Nepogat (I have a bad feeling about this) and executed. Fortunately for the colonists, the internal struggles wracking the Confederacy kept them from further reprisal, and afterward everyone apparently lost interest, leaving no records to verify the truth of the legend.
In other words, looks like we're in for some "Atlantis was aliens" bullcrap. Not gonna lie, it's a pet peeve of mine, the insinuation that humanity's progress is due to some extraterrestrial influence, as if we couldn't figure out stuff like soap or air circulation systems without alien help. It's particularly jarring coming from Hubbard, really, considering his last work had a bunch of cavemen mastering alien technology, surpassing everyone's expectations to essentially become multiple universes' benevolent overlords. Isn't this guy supposed to be an old-school sci-fi author, full of optimism and the promise of the human mind?
I should really track down some of Hubbard's early works. I think they'd answer some questions.
Anyway, Dr. Crobe gets frothing mad at the story, exclaiming that "Humanoid forms are the commonest sentient life forms in the universe! They comprise 93.7 percent of all populations discovered to date. The humanoid form is inevitable from the basic survival demands of any reasonable carbon-oxygen planet: if sentient life is to appear and succeed, the adeptness of hands, the articulation of feet, the symmetrical right-left body construction and flexible skin are needed."
Which is an utter load of garbage. It's absolutely mind-boggling to suggest that our bodies are the only way for sentient life to succeed, that it's some sort of universal constant so that similar shapes will arise on alien worlds. One natural disaster in Earth's prehistory, one shower of random interstellar radiation, and humanity could have been wiped out before it ever got around to banging rocks together, leaving Earth to be inherited by sentient squid, or elephants, or dinosaurs. Just because we're currently dominant by no means proves the superiority of the human form, and it is utterly laughable to suggest that if evolution started all over again it would turn out the same way.
On the other hand, here's a convenient excuse for designing alien races that are indistinguishable from humans. Nice combination of bad science and laziness, Hubbard.
Crobe doesn't buy Heller's suggestion of similarities between Manco and Earth races' facial structure, and summons a blood sample to prove there's no connection. Or rather he brings in a severed human hand from the freezer to take his sample - the Apparatus is responsible for a few alien abductions, it would seem. When the comparisons are up on screen, Heller insists that they still look similar, and though Crobe can't make a good rebuttal he refuses to believe Heller's theory.
Instead the good doctor rants about how Heller's incapable of blending in with humans - he's 28, just past his growth period, but he can expect to live to be almost two hundred, and will probably gain some inches in the coming years. So Heller will be trying to act innocuous while looking like a 6'5'' eighteen-year-old. The solution, the doctor goes on, is to surgically shorten Heller by removing sections of bone from his limbs and shrinking his skull. And this is where Gris throws up.
The special agent falls to the ground in utter agony, doubling up and adding a new lair of yuck to the area as he empties his stomach, while Heller has some guards get a stretcher. I find it somehow appropriate that copious vomiting marked the end of this chapter.
Back to Chapter Two
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