Final Exam — George W. Harper

In the late 1960's or early 1970's I led a group of teenagers in recording meteor radiants for the NASA lunar project. This was the same era when UFO's were all the rage and the gurus of the movement organized UFO get-togethers in a valley abutting Mt. Rainier. The goal was to unite their mental brain waves to tell the aliens there were friends awaiting them in the expectation of passing some sort of a test to see if they could be admitted as probationary members of the great galactic federation. So I asked myself what would happen if a battered, abused actual spaceship and an exhausted crew chanced to land in the midst of such a conclave? The locals would be utterly convinced this was a crucial element of the admission exam and no matter how hard the crewmen tried to explain that they were only here to get some fresh air, replace the contaminated water supply and acquire a few algae strains which could be converted into synthesized food, the locals would persist on the final exam scenario. There is material for a grand circus of misunderstanding and frustration on all sides. But first it is necessary to paint a convincing picture of the desperate condition of QUIZZER's crew, so the first part of the book establishes this while the last section contains a surprise of its own, among them one of asking how an already depleted crew would handle a member who has gone off the deep end?