Feathered Friend

Clarke, Arthur C. "Feathered Friend." Collected The Other Side of the Sky." NYC: Harcourt, Brace &Company, 1958.[1]

Listed in Benford and Zebrowski's Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science.

Notes4free website summarizes, a "short story about a small canary and how her existence on the space station helped save lives."[2] Corresponding to Terran canaries' passing out (or dropping dead?) and thereby warning of carbon monoxide and/or methane in coal mines, the canary passes out because "the single, 500 thousand dollar alarm 'failed to go off,'" making the bird a cheap and very effective backup.

(Consider as something of a comic contrast [i.e., with a happy ending] to "John Henry," a "steel-driving man" who both wins and loses competing with a fancy new machine.[3][4] Note the motif of such competition developed at length in Kurt Vonnegut's satiric first novel, Player Piano.)

RDE, finishing, 13/14Jun22