DIMENSION X - The Lost Race (Murray Leinster)

DIMENSION X
The Lost Race
May 20, 1950

William Fitzgerald Jenkins wrote engaging and topical science fiction under the pseudonym Murray Leinster. His short story The Lost was adapted and dramatized for radio by Ernest Kinoy, a script writer whose career in Hollywood spanned 50 years and multiple mediums: radio, television, film, stage. Murray Leinster's short story was renamed for radio and became The Lost Race for its Dimension X debut. This story brings us into a future world in which space exploration has uncovered evidence of a lost race who settled numerous planets across the galaxy before mysteriously disappearing.

HISTORICAL GLOSSARY

When the main tube burns out, Danton says he can't make repairs in flight. The Captain answers, "Get a jury-rig on her. We'll try to set her down." Jury-rig, not to be confused with Jerry-rig, means to make something quickly with materials on hand. (Jerry-rig means something made cheaply and of poor quality). Jury-rig is referring to the rigging of a ship, and the "jury" part is not from a court room, but rather from an Old French word meaning to assist or to aid. So, literally, to jury-rig is to fix something at sea to make the boat sail better, which will be fixed properly when the boat is back in the harbor. It actually means the same thing when the Captain says it in this radio play. He wants Danton to do whatever it takes for a temporary fix just to get the ship landed.

When the captain points out to Briggs the spot he has chosen to make their emergency landing, Briggs looks at the clearing and says it is too narrow. The Captain responds, "Two-to-one, for a dollar. All right, hang on." This is a reference to "laying odds" on a bet. He's saying the odds, or chances, of his success are twice as likely as failure. In a wager "even money" is when a straightforward wager is made and no player has an advantage. Whichever party loses pays the same amount. "Two-to-one" means that one player has an advantage so if the advantaged player loses, he pays twice what the disadvantaged player pays. Briggs and the Captain aren't actually placing a bet with each other, but rather, it is figurative language demonstrating the Captain's confidence.

Danton calls Williams a “lyin’ four-flusher!” A four-flusher is a person who is essentially a liar, but the sort of liar who uses trickery and half-truths in order to deceive. The reference comes from a bluffing strategy in poker. To hold a “flush” a player needs five cards of matching suit. Four cards of a matching suit are worthless. If a player pretends to have five (a flush), when he only has four, he is a four-flusher.

When Howell describes his family home in Detroit he mentions , “the antimacassars on the chairs”. An antimacassar is a doily or lace trimmed cloth that is placed on the arms or the headrests of chairs and sofas to be both decorative and to keep the upholstery clean. The antimacassars can be removed and washed as needed and the sofa's arms and headrest areas remain stain-free. Note that Howell’s father is very fussy, complaining of a crumpled newspaper. The use of antimacassars would indicate a fussy person who is OCD about getting any wear or stains on their furniture. It is a detail that helps develop a minor character in the story.

Danton says that “...with that bessendium fuel, it’ll be a milk run. I’ll reach the Space-Guard station ... in mid-space.” The idiom “milk run” refers to a simple easy task. If you were a milk truck driver in 1950 (not home delivery, but the hauler) you would pick up milk from producers and take it to a factory where it would be bottled. The milk would be pumped from a vat into your tanker. You wouldn’t have to load anything onto your truck, just sit there while a machine did the work. Your counterpart who was driving a cabbage truck had to load all those heavy cabbages onto his truck, and struggle to drive carefully over rutted roads so the produce didn’t bounce around getting bruised, meanwhile your milk was safely in a tank and you didn’t have to worry about it, nor did you have to worry about theft of your product if you stopped for lunch at a roadside diner. Doing a milk run was easy.