what to see on
deimos

from the Captain Future saga

clever arachnida of deimos

Bruce was more or less familiar with the scanty vegetation and animal life among the rocks nearby. Years before, he had piloted an exploration party from Earth, consisting of four eminent men of science, which had spent some time in studying this tiny moon.

After several busy hours, Bruce stole a few minutes to search the pitted face of the cliff near which he was working. There was nothing to fear from these aboriginal dwellers of Deimos, as he was well aware, for he remembered them as inoffensive, sessile-eyed, snail-footed Arachnida, only a few inches tall. But he was wondering if this strange, unknown thing which Horker had hatched from his pebbles had affected them in any visible manner.

Although small, sluggish creatures, these Arachnida, he remembered, possessed an intelligence considerably higher than that of any animal of Earth – a quaint, semi-human intelligence, which enabled them to use certain primitive tools.

And now, here in the shallow niches of the cliff, he found their tiny, conical, adobe huts. His eyes traced the small terraces lying before the huts, filled with dark loam which the industrious Arachnida had carefully collected from the scanty supply available.

But these small gardens were neglected, the tiny huts abandoned…

D L James, Crystals of Madness (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1936)

>> Guess The World - Third Series

pouring beer on deimos

    “I’m fed up with squirting my beer out of a bulb,” he explained. “I want to pour it properly into a glass now we’ve got the chance again. Let’s see how long it takes.”
    “It’ll be flat before it gets there,” warned Mackay. “Let’s see – g’s about half a centimetre a second squared, you’re pouring from a height of…” He retired into a brown study.
    But the experiment was already in progress. Scott was holding the punctured beer-tin about a foot above his glass – and, for the first time in three months, the word “above” had some meaning, even if very little. For, with incredible slowness, the amber liquid oozed out of the tin – so slowly that one might have taken it for syrup. A thin column extended downwards, moving almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly accelerating. It seemed an age before the glass was reached: then a great cheer went up as contact was made and the level of the liquid began to creep upwards…

Arthur C Clarke, The Sands of Mars (1951)

>> Guess The World - Sixth Series

marginally habitable deimos

...All this while the ship and ourselves had been drifting towards Deimos. The little world was as prominent as Mars in the sky now. The ship was clearly still making for Deimos.
"Ancient Martian history tells of colonies on Deimos, of cities, air-plants and supplies left intact when the place was evacuated," Usulor told us. "Many thousands of years ago, of course. But most of it is probably still usable."
"Why was the world evacuated?" I asked.
"Because of radiations, the old books say. That might mean cosmic rays, or ultra-violet or radium emanations. It might mean almost anything."
(...)
AS WE got nearer to Deimos we saw that what looked like disks of pale green glass were dotted about the surface of the tiny world, some of them miles in diameter.
"Air and temperature traps," Usulor explained. "Former Martian colonies. Radiant heat goes in through the glassite readily but seeps out only very slowly."
I could easily understand that. I have grown tomatoes in a hothouse or greenhouse. On Deimos men had tried to live in giant greenhouses. Without much success, it appeared.
(…)
After a long, long journey we reached Deimos. A desert, uninviting world, apart from the hothouse colonies. Jagged mountains, thin air, polar ice-caps, no extensive seas, some stunted vegetation in the valleys. No place for a honeymoon...

Festus Pragnell, Devil Birds of Deimos (Amazing Stories, April 1942)

>> Guess The World - Seventh Series

Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
This is the fifth story from Festus Pragnell's Martian series about the adventures of Don Hargreaves - not too bad a one, although without many details. (This series starts with a rather serious story entitled Ghost on Mars, where is introduced the idea of Martians living in great underground caverns inside the planet after the atmosphere has dissipated ages ago, which setting seems almost realistic, but then in the sequels, already written in first person, the plot gradually deteriorates into a silly parody of the planetary romance genre. The author even seems to forget or simply not to care, that the events he describes were originally supposed to be in the future, and treats them as if they happen in real time). The notable thing here is that in this excerpt Deimos is represented as a world in itself, even though a miniature one: it is said that it has polar ice-caps (the author obviously imagines it as spherical), vegetation and “no extensive seas” (does this mean that there still are some kind of seas?). No more details are given in the story itself, which happens mostly inside an artificial dome of an ancient Martian colony, but we still receive the impression of a little planet and not just a big rock orbiting around Mars.

Comment from Zendexor:
For me it's the "stunted vegetation" which, in this excerpt, causes the scene to make the grade as a world. And with regard to the idea of ancient Martian colonies: this reminds me, there's a comparative lack of tales that feature other-world colonists, as opposed to colonies sent out by Earth, except of course for various invasions of Earth itself and the alien attempts to settle there. So, "alien neighbouring worlds planting colonies on each other" is something to add to the accumulating list of tales unwritten.