Laboratory — Themes and Context

Invisible Experiments and Visible Chaos

The story's humor derives from the gap between the Vegans' immense power and their inability to control their own creations. Pud has been shaping a 'thig-field' for three weeks, only to squelch it when the humans arrive. A 'yim-field' that took 'laborious psycho-induction' is dismissed with a thought. These invisible experiments are not just background—they drive the plot. When the humans land, the fields interact unpredictably: a force-field bounces into another, converting water to alcohol and instantly intoxicating the astronauts. The Vegans' technology is so advanced that even their mistakes produce spectacular effects, yet they are reduced to frantically deactivating experiments and herding beasts through an intraspatial doorway.

Multiple Heads, Multiple Problems

Pud and Gop are not single-minded beings. Pud has 'more than a hundred eyes' set in 'various-sized heads', and Gop's 'seventh head' is mentioned as something that can be shown or hidden. This physical multiplicity mirrors their mental conflicts: Pud is a 'totalitantrum' waiting to happen, while Gop is a 'Transverse Colon Revivalist' offended by Pud's swearing. Their dialogue is peppered with exclamations like 'Chew!' and 'dripping mouthfuls', suggesting a culture with its own idioms. The story uses their multiple perspectives to create comedy—Pud's eyes glower upward while others scour the planet—and to emphasize the difficulty of coordinating a hidden laboratory when even one's own body parts can betray the secret.

The Unseen Menace: Beasts and Doorways

The climax involves a menagerie of alien beasts that escape through a reversed intraspatial doorway. These creatures are described in vivid, absurd terms: a 'ten-ton gopher', a beast 'resembling a steam-shovel on spider's legs'. They are invisible until they stumble into view, and their behavior is chaotic—they chase, fight, and trample through the laboratory. The Vegans' attempts to control them are slapstick: Gop hardens his tentacles to 'pig iron' and hurls a beast through the doorway 'like a projectile'. The doorway itself is a one-way portal that can be reversed, a simple but effective device that creates a cascade of trouble. The humans, Johnny and Helen Gorman, are passive observers, drunk and bewildered, while the Vegans struggle to restore order.

Readers should pay attention to the way Bixby uses sensory details—the 'whine-and-crackle' of fields, the 'gargantuan roar' of an invisible Pud—to make the invisible visible. The story rewards attention to the Vegans' internal conflicts, which are as important as the external chaos. The incomplete excerpts leave open questions about the fate of the humans and the laboratory, but the pattern of escalating mishaps suggests that the Vegans' attempt to avoid Contact will fail spectacularly.

I’ve always found a quiet kinship between Bixby’s scientists and the lone Martian observer—both bound by solitude, one comic, one aching, yet both quietly desperate to be understood by those who cannot see their world. The Last Martian — A Closer Reading feels like a whispered answer to that frantic, invisible chaos. Funny how we shelve them together.