what to see on
eros

For a scenic browse, and an answer-page for Guess The World...

mini-elephants on eros

"I was stooping down to pick a branch of a tree to bring back, when I suddenly saw them in the dawn.  They stampeded and I caught one, a magnificent tusker, and none of them bigger than mice.  This I knew must be absolute proof...  I put the elephant into that match-box and put an elastic band round it to keep it shut...

"Well, I might have collected more things; but, as I said, I had absolute proof, and I had hanging over me all the while, and oppressing me with its weight, that feeling that I was on the wrong planet.  It is a feeling that no one who experiences it can shake off for a single moment...  It is no mere homesickness, it is an always-present overwhelming knowledge that you are in the wrong place, so strong that it amounts to a menacing warning that your very spirit repeats to you with every beat of the pulse.  It is a thing I cannot explain to anyone who has not been lost outside Earth..."

Lord Dunsany, Our Distant Cousins (Saturday Evening Post, 23 November 1929)

>>  Guess The World - Open

fungus forest on eros

Small as it was, Eros had a tiny satellite. It was a silvery object that circled (the asteroid) in a regular orbit. Curt only glanced at the object, which was now on the opposite site. Eros grew into a large, yellowish bulk as the Comet dropped in toward it. Thin air whistled outside, for one of the marvels of this tiny world was the fact that it was able to hold an atmosphere.

Curt flew above the sunlit side of the oblong asteroid, keeping well away from the black hills at its western end. He knew from his previous visit that so-called Magnet Mountains could tear every atom out of a ship that approached too closely.

They flew over a rolling plain covered with tawny grass, crossed above a river that flowed in a deep canyon around the asteroid, and then found themselves above a great forest of giant growths that looked for all the world like exaggerated mushrooms.

“That's the eastern Fungus Forest”, noted the Brain, his lenslike eyes peering closely. “The biggest Erosian town is just north of it”.

Curt nodded.

“I remember. We'd better land by the town and we'd better do it before that queer gravitation field starts affecting us.”

He sent the Comet scudding down on throttled rockets over the crowded yellow fungi of the weird forest. At its northern edge lay a small town of pale stone structures, curiously minareted edifices in which dwelt the human Erosians native to this little world. Captain Future landed the ship in the concealment of the towering fungi nearest this town...

Edmond Hamilton, Outlaws of the Moon (Captain Future, Spring 1942; paperback 1969)

>>  Guess The World - Third Series

a lush landscape on eros

They packed their meager belongings while Dick finished his meal; the sun was high when they left the beach. They followed the shore line southward, the ground rising steadily before them. And before evening, they came to a rolling vale through which a sparkling river meandered lazily to the sea.

Small wonders unfolded before their eyes. Marching along, they had discovered that there was game on Eros. Not quite Earthly, of course—but that was not to be expected. There was one small, furry beast about the size of a rabbit, only its color was vivid leaf-green. Once, as they passed a wooded glen, a pale, fawnlike creature stole from the glade, watched them with soft, curious eyes. Another time they all started violently as the familiar siren of a Patrol monitor screamed raucously from above them; they looked up to see an irate, orange and jade-green bird glaring down at them.

And of course there were insects—

"There would have to be insects," Pop said. "There could be no fruitful vegetable life without insects. Plants need bees and crawling ants—or their equivalent—to carry the pollen from one flower to another."

They chose a site on the riverside, a half mile or so from, above, and overlooking the sea. They selected it because a spring of pure, bubbling water was nearby, because the woodlands dwindled away into lush fields.

Nelson S Bond, Castaways of Eros (Planet Stories, Winter 1943)

>>  Guess The World - Third Series

Comment from Lone Wolf:

This fragment is probably the most detailed description of the life on the asteroid in the story, but the author concentrates mostly on the plot and doesn't return to it again. It is mentioned though that Eros has neutronium core to explain its Earth-like gravity, that permits existence of atmosphere and life.

[See the discussion arising from this, in The minimum nod of respect for Science.]

the magnet mts and the reversing river on eros

…The Magnet Mountains…  are hilly outcrops of pure iron which, in the strong magnetic field, exert an unbelievable pull upon any ferrous metal that comes near them.  The Erosians, indeed, are able to walk up perpendicular cliffs of these mountains like so many houseflies, by wearing sandals with thin soles of iron.

The small body of water called Lake Orr by the Erosians has a peculiar feature.  It contains both the source and the mouth of the same river – the stream known as the Reversing River.  This is due to the fact that the motion of Eros on its own axes as it glides through space is extremely irregular.  It has no regular period of rotation, due to its unspherical shape.  It turns over and over, much like a flying brick.

This fact makes its periods of day and night extremely irregular.  And also this causes such sudden variations in direction of the solar tidal pull on the lake, that its waters now flow in one direction in the river-bed around the worldlet, and now in another…

Article in Captain Future, Spring 1942

>>  Guess The World - Fourth Series

settlers just arrived on eros

The stars winked at him, the soft waves explored his face-plate with curious, white fingers of spray. Pretty soon there was sand scraping his boots . . . a long, smooth beach with rolling hills beyond.

…In the sudden scarlet of dawn, it was impossible to believe the night had even been frightening. Throughout the night, the Moseley clan huddled together there on the beach, waiting, silent, wondering. But when the sun burst over the horizon like a clamoring, brazen gong, they looked upon this land which was their new home — and found it good.

The night did not last long. But Pop had told them it would not.

“Eros rotates on its axis,” he explained, “in about ten hours, forty minutes. Earth time measurement. Therefore we shall have ‘days’ and ‘nights’ of five hours; short dawns or twilights. This will vary somewhat, you understand, with the change of seasons.”

Dick asked, “Isn’t that a remarkably slow rotation ? For such a tiny planet, I mean ? After all, Eros is only one hundred and eighty odd miles in circumference — "

“Eros has many peculiarities...”

Nelson S Bond, Castaways of Eros (Planet Stories, Winter 1943)

>>  Guess The World - Fifth Series

tentacular metal men of eros

Crash! There was a vivid flash! Our ship lurched, rushed mightily through space; entered a mad falling arc of acceleration! I was dazed; for a moment I could not believe my senses. We had survived!    
    “Saved!” ejaculated Professor D Four-Ten delightedly. “Saved! The charge of electricity neutralized by jumping across in a spark! Don’t you see, the rarefied air of this little planet enabled the surplus electrons of the electric charge to jump through space! Saved!”   
    “I’m not so sure of that, Professor,” I put in, noticing something below the ship. He followed my pointing finger. From the rocky surface of the planet below the weird metallic inhabitants of Eros were floating upward — creatures with a tiny ring of eyes about the upper portion of the cylindrical body. A vast squadron of the creatures were materializing from a series of what looked like ant mounds, and they maneuvered swiftly upward.   
    “I can’t understand!” murmured Professor D Four-Ten in perplexity. “The metal people of Eros have always been so peaceful!”   
    For almost half a century the Earth-Mars Space Line had maintained a refuelling station on Eros, unhindered by the peaceable metal men, who went their own way quietly. Now, however, they looked decidedly vicious and the little eyes in the strange shapes changed to angry colors like semaphores. Never before had they been known to offer battle!   
    (…)   
    As the long flight of metal figures approached from below, the tentacles from their middles unwrapped and stretched forward in anticipation!   
    (…)   
    The bodies of dully scintillant metal approached swiftly and their tentacles wrapped about our sphere. The malevolent eyes glared in at us. Soon the twining metal-sheathed tentacles were wound about the ship as more and more of the creatures added their weight to our vessel. Through the spaceports their thickly twining tentacles were visible, shutting so much light out that we were in partial shadow. Then our sphere began once more to sink.   
    We were being dragged down to Eros, by a cloud of passing meteorites...

J Harvey Haggard, An Adventure on Eros (Wonder Stories, September 1931)

>>  Guess The World - Seventh Series

Note from contributor Lone Wolf:
A very short story, which actually happens in a dream. It is not an ordinary dream though, but a hypnotically induced one for the purpose of training space pilots during sleep – this is in fact the main theme of the story, which is about the use of hypnopaedia in a not very far future (which is in fact already past for us, since the story is said to be happening in December 2012!), but we can assume that in such case the experiences of the protagonist should reflect the actual reality of his time, such as it is imagined by the author (with space travels, inhabited asteroid Eros, etc.).