The Cold Equations

“He was not alone. There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him.”

The first sentence of the story introduces the simple fact that things in the EDS are not as the pilot initially thought. It is science, represented by the white hand of the tiny gauge, which alerts him to this inconvenient fact. The hand of science, which is a simplified cipher of the more complex human hand that invented it, is also the hand that unequivocally dooms the stowaway.

“He would, of course, do it. It was the law, stated very bluntly and definitely in grim Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations: Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery. It was the law, and there could be no appeal.” 

Godwin shows how the men on the space frontier are at the mercy of the objective but ruthless laws which control their behavior. Still, the third-person limited perspective which takes the pilot’s view applies the adjective “grim” to describe the instructional paragraph. It alerts the reader that the pilot still possesses human feelings that conflict with the requirements of his work.

“Ship and pilot and stowaway would merge together upon impact as a wreckage of metal and plastic, flesh and blood, driven deep into the soil. The stowaway had signed his own death warrant when he concealed himself on the ship; he could not be permitted to take seven others with him.” 

The pilot contemplates the disaster that will ensue if the stowaway is permitted to stay on board. The three self-contained bodies of the ship, pilot, and stowaway will merge into a chaotic mixture that will lead to the destruction of all. He then explains the harsh justice that the stowaway will have to face for his transgression: he must unwittingly sign his own death warrant in order to benefit the majority.