<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Engineer and the Executioner is a 5000-word short story by Brian M. Stableford, about a biological research station with some specimens that must be destroyed. It was first published in the May, 1975 issue of Amazing Stories.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

On the asteroid Lamarck, an engineer has built a closed environmental system, teeming with artificial life forms, all of which evolve on Lamarckian principals. But officials on Earth are worried about it, thinking that if something escaped, such as Arrhenius spores, they might migrate to Earth, and spread an infection for which there is no antidote. Earth has sent an executioner, a robot, to Lamarck to oversee the destruction of the asteroid, by sending it hurtling into the sun. The engineer argues with the executioner, saying you don’t really understand life; that the men on Earth who gave this order are fools and must have ulterior motives; and that even if Arrhenius spores escaped, the solar winds would take them out of the solar system, and not in. The executioner robot is unmoved by these arguments, so the engineer shoots and kills him. Then the engineer breaks into the habitat, where he soon dies of a genetically engineered virus. A new lifeform grows out of his body, a winged creature. Other life forms evolve to explore the labs on the asteroid, as it hurtles in toward the sun. Other life forms evolve quickly to melt the outer doors of the station. Then the winged creature that evolved out of the remnants of the engineer ejects from its body Arrhenius spores, and since by then the asteroid is inside the orbit of Venus, the solar winds push the spores out, away from the sun, and toward the planet Earth.

Reprints

This story has been reprinted in Donald A. Wollheim's The 1976 Annual World’s Best SF.

Additional Notes

Lamarck was a French biologist who proposed an early (circa 1800) version of evolution, involving the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

External Links

• The Engineer and the Executioner at ISFDB.org

To see specific information, such as anthologies including thie story, please click the The Engineer and the Executioner category link at the bottom of this article. To see other articles that reference The Engineer and the Executioner, please click the What Links Here tool in the toolbox at the bottom of this page.