Left hand, right hand

In Short

Set on the arid, water-starved planet Cassa One, Left hand, right hand follows maintenance engineer Troy Gordon as he plots to escape a brutal subjugation by the "Hammerheads"—a aquatic alien species known as the Tareeg. Troy secretly restores a injured pilot, Jerry Newland, and builds an escape vessel. Meanwhile, Earth's senior scientists appear to be collaborating with their captors to terraform the planet with asteroid ice. However, a far darker strategy is unfolding behind the scenes, turning a story of captive survival into a cold-blooded extermination of an entire alien race.

The Story

The story begins in an underground base on the harsh desert world Cassa One. Troy Gordon, a maintenance engineer on the Cassa Expedition, visits a hidden room behind his quarters where he has been secretly tending to courier pilot Jerry Franklin Newland. Newland’s ship was shot down three years earlier when he attempted to escape and alert Earth to the arrival of the Tareeg—a species of amphibious, penguin-like aliens with shark-shaped heads. Troy rescued Newland from the wreckage and placed him in an emergency revival tank. As Newland slowly regains his memory and motor functions, Troy shares the grim reality of their situation: the expedition's leading scientists, Dr. Victor Clingman and Dr. Chris Dexter, appear to have turned traitor after witnessing the public, slow executions of their former commanders.

Troy reveals that Clingman and Dexter have been helping the Tareeg bring massive loads of ice from an asteroid belt to flood Cassa One, creating an ocean world that the aliens can inhabit as an expansion base toward Sol. Troy's secret plan is to use a concealed tunnel he dug into the alien hangar, assemble an interstellar drone ship, and flee to Earth with Newland to raise the alarm.

However, events move faster than expected. Clingman summons Troy under the guise of repairing a recording device and casually mentions that the new seas on Cassa One are finally rising. The Tareeg are gathering en masse at the shores for a mandatory religious ritual, filling sacred messenger drones with the newly formed sea water to send back to their twin homeworlds. Troy realizes his time is up. Fearing he has been discovered, he stages a distraction by setting his groundcar on an automated course into the desert, but he is ambushed in the corridors by human guards and knocked unconscious by stun-guns.

When Troy awakens days later, he finds himself aboard the expedition's massive starship, the Atlas, which is already in interstellar flight back toward Earth. Believing the mission has failed and that human traitors have turned him in, Troy breaks out of his medical room, disarms a guard, and tracks down Dr. Clingman. Confronting Clingman at gunpoint, Troy discovers a horrifying truth. Clingman and Dexter were never traitors; they were playing a long, ruthless game.

Using ancient biological research recovered from the shattered remnants of the Tareeg ancestral homeworld—found in the Cassa asteroid belt—the human scientists had synthesized an unstoppable, liquid-borne biological weapon. It was a self-destructing protein agent engineered specifically to destroy the Tareeg species within hours. The scientists deliberately delayed action for a year, enduring the torture and deaths of their crewmates, to ensure they mastered the precise Tareeg rituals required to send the contaminated water back via the messenger drones. With the drones dispatched, the agent is already spreading through the alien home oceans. Troy realizes with a shock that while he fought for a simple escape, the scientists executed the absolute genocide of an entire alien species.

How It Unfolds

The hidden pilot wakes Troy Gordon secretly visits a hidden room behind his maintenance quarters to check on Jerry Newland, a pilot he rescued from a crashed courier boat and kept alive in a medical tank for three years. Newland struggles with amnesia and cognitive lapses as Troy slowly updates him on their captivity under the Tareeg aliens.

A dangerous secret project Troy reveals to Newland that he has spent over two years secretly excavating a tunnel from his workshop to the alien hangar. He plans to finish building a functional interstellar drone so they can escape Cassa One and pilot their way back to Earth.

The fake repair call Late at night, Dr. Victor Clingman summons Troy to fix a recording mechanism in his office. While working, Troy learns that the Tareeg are preparing a planet-wide religious ceremony to celebrate the filling of Cassa One's dry sea basins with water brought in from ice asteroids.

The flight and ambush Believing he is about to be exposed, Troy sets an automated groundcar to ride off into the desert to misdirect the alien search parties. As he sneaks back into the station maintenance tunnels to launch his drone, he is ambushed by human guards wielding stun-guns and rendered unconscious.

Awareness on the starship Troy awakens inside the sick bay of the expedition carrier Atlas and discovers the ship is already traveling through interstellar space. Realizing he is mobile again, he overpowers his guard, puts on a corpsman's uniform, and sneaks out into the silent, nearly deserted corridors to find Clingman.

The horrifying revelation Troy corners Dr. Clingman in his suite at gunpoint, only to learn that the human "traitors" carried out a lethal double-cross. The scientists used the ice-hauling operations to introduce a engineered biological weapon into the messenger drones, effectively wiping out the Tareeg species on their homeworlds.

The People

• Troy Gordon: The practical, resourceful maintenance engineer of the Cassa Expedition. Driven by an intense desire to escape alien captivity and warn Earth, he spends years secretly digging tunnels and building a getaway ship. His moral clarity and straightforward determination contrast sharply with the cold, calculating nature of the leadership.
• Jerry Franklin Newland: A brave courier pilot who tried to break through the alien blockade alone three years prior. After surviving a crash that left him broken, he spends the story recovering inside an emergency tank, struggling with foggy amnesia while Troy relies on him as his sole trusted ally.
• Dr. Victor Clingman: A plump, pale, untidy senior scientist who appears to be a spineless collaborator serving the Tareeg. In reality, he possesses a terrifyingly detached intellect, enduring the brutal deaths of his colleagues while patiently engineering the complete biological extinction of the alien race.
• The Tareeg (Hammerheads): Aquatic alien conquerors with short legs, double sets of swimming flippers, and shark-like heads with crimson triangular mouths. Bound by rigid religious rituals and a zeal for water, their strictly enforced ceremonies ultimately become the vector for their own destruction.

In Its Own Voice

"He's been dead for the better part of three years and come awake again only the day before."

Troy Gordon watches Jerry Newland struggle with his shattered memories inside the hidden back room.

"They know everything about Earth that our top brass scientists of the Cassa Expedition were able to tell them."

Troy explains to Newland how the leadership appeared to betray human intelligence following public executions.

"It is a weapon. It kills and moves on. A biological weapon limited to attack one species: the enemy."

Dr. Clingman's recorded voice reveals the existence of the ancient, lethal protein agent.

What It's Really About

At its core, the story explores the disturbing line between self-preservation and cold-blooded annihilation. On the surface, it presents a traditional science-fiction escape narrative driven by individual bravery, resourceful engineering, and loyalty between comrades. Underneath, however, it contrasts Troy's humanistic, defensive struggle with the pragmatic savagery of high-level wartime science. Dr. Clingman and his fellow leaders do not merely fight back; they adopt an absolute, unsentimental commitment to total species-level warfare. The plot questions whether moral decency can survive in the face of total subjugation, demonstrating how easily human intelligence can pivot from helpless submission to total, unforgiving destruction.

Why Read It Today

Left hand, right hand is a tight, atmospheric science-fiction novella that delivers a sharp narrative twist. Readers who enjoy classic mid-century space opera with a grim, suspenseful edge will appreciate James H. Schmitz's focused pacing and vivid alien world-building. The depiction of the Tareeg—with their penguin-like bodies, hammerhead skulls, and obsessive water rituals—creates a uniquely eerie antagonist that feels genuinely non-human.

The story moves briskly from claustrophobic underground maintenance tunnels to the quiet, empty decks of a space carrier. What makes the piece stick with you is its moral sting: the shift in perspective from a desperate prisoner-of-war rescue to a chilling revelation of biological warfare. It is a quick, compelling read that leaves the reader pondering the quiet, ruthless choices made in the name of human survival.