As proof of this story, Jarvis displays to his friends the cause of the fight with the barrel beasts. It is the wonderful fluorescent crystal—which the captain of the Ares expedition has just suggested “ ‘might be the cancer cure they’ve been hunting for a century and a half.’ ”
And this was another example of wish-fulfillment. Only eighteen months after the publication of “A Martian Odyssey,” Stanley Weinbaum would be dead from throat cancer.