Martian noir

[randy_byers]

There had been a brawl at Madam Kan's, on the Jekkara Low-Canal. Some little Martian glory-holer had got too high on thil, and pretty soon the spiked knuckle-dusters they use around there began to flash, and the little Martian had pulled his last feed-valve.

They threw what was left of him out onto the stones of the embankment almost at my feet. I suppose that was why I stopped -- because I had to or trip over him. And then I stared.

The thin red sunlight came down out of a clear green sky. Red sand whispered in the desert beyond the city walls, and red-brown water ran slow and sullen in the canal. The Martian lay twisted over on his back, with his torn throat spilling the reddest red of all across the dirty stones.

He was dead. He had green eyes, wide open, and he was dead.

-- Leigh Brackett, "The Veil of Astellar", Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spring 1944

I think we can safely assume that Brackett didn't mean glory-hole in its modern slang sense, but I'm not sure whether it's a neologism or whether it had a different meaning in the '40s. Feed-valve I take for a stefnal neologism, although she doesn't define it within the story.

These are the very first words of the story. A completely familiar Mars -- thin sun, red sand, canals -- but she's giving it the stripped down, hard-boiled edge of the day. Thin sun, red sand, canals -- and death. Pure pulp poetry. You know there's only one thing that can follow this, and it's telepathic vampires.

Comments

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

A glory hole was was a simple shaft mine, dug straight down to the ore.
Like at the beginning of _There Will Be Blood_, I think.
I presume it meant a miner/prospector who was working alone, in the story.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'd never heard of this meaning before, but it makes total sense in the context. Makes the story a distant relative of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, perhaps.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

I just ran across a reference to "glory hole" when looking up Hangtown Fry".
"Legend has it that a 49'er hit a glory hole, an incredibly rich pocket of gold nuggets."

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ah, so in that usage it has more the implication of a motherlode, it sounds like.