Proxy Planeteers

"Proxy Planeteers" by Edmond Hamilton is a science fiction short story published in the mid-20th century. The tale unfolds in a futuristic setting involving the mining of uranium on Mercury using unmanned machines called Proxies, operated remotely from Earth. The protagonist, Doug Norris, confronts the mysterious failures of these Proxies and speculates on the presence of an unknown radioactive lifeform that may be sabotaging their operations. The plot centers on Doug Norris and Martin Kincaid, who are tasked with the Proxy Project on Mercury, crucial for providing uranium to Earth’s power supply. As several Proxies mysteriously fail, Norris theorizes that living gaseous entities, referred to as Raddies, are attacking them. After a series of misadventures, which include a drunken decision to attempt to revolutionize atomic energy by using bismuth instead of uranium, they realize that the Raddies possess a form of intelligence. It is ultimately revealed that these beings have imparted knowledge to the humans through a psychic link while operating their machines, leading to a profound revelation about the interconnectedness of intelligence across different life forms. The story combines thrilling adventure with thought-provoking ideas about consciousness and the boundaries of science. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Edmond Moore Hamilton was an American writer of science fiction during the mid-twentieth century. He is known for writing most of the Captain Future stories.