"Trap Line" by Timothy Zahn

Published by ‎ Amazon Original Stories on March 25, 2025

“Trap Line” is a short science fiction story. Nearly every sf story of any merit is eventually anthologized, so readers might soon find it in a larger volume if they decide not to invest their money in a relatively short story.

Toby Collier is an engineer. He is employed to send his consciousness (or “astral”) from his body to a clone (or “replicate”) of his body. His current mission is to send his astral to a replicate on a ship that is many light years from Earth. The ship’s transmitter isn’t working. Toby’s job is to fix it, using the replicate’s body, before sending his astral home.

Toby’s astral is captured on his way to the ship. He joins captives belonging to an alien race who call themselves Hyfisk. Despite being nothing more than a disembodied consciousness, Toby can see the alien astrals if he squints just right. They communicate in a common language, or perhaps Toby somehow translates their thoughts into English. Timothy Zahn offers no real explanations for these convenient facts but at least makes clear that they puzzle Toby. In any event, there would be no story if Toby couldn’t chat with the Hyfisk.

Toby learns that members of a third alien species — a family that includes a young daughter — work for the Overmasters. They set trap lines to capture astrals. Their best pay comes from catching Hyfisk. Why the Overmasters want to capture astrals is far from clear (they’ve already learned all they want to know about the Hyfisk), but the family is worried that their standard of living is in decline because they are capturing fewer astrals. The family also worries that a human astral might not be worth much of anything to anyone. Toby sympathizes with his captors, perhaps because worrying about money and trying to shield children from that concern is a very human trait — at least for humans who aren’t born into wealth.

In the grand tradition of science fiction, humans (especially human engineers) are smarter than aliens, so when Toby sets out to escape, the reader knows he has a pretty good chance of success. He does so in a reasonably entertaining way that involves an alien version of a cat. He even takes into account his desire to keep his captors from filing bankruptcy (or whatever aliens do when they go broke).

The story sets up a moral dilemma when Toby has to decide whether to free the Hyfisk. He sets up a test to decide whether they are morally worthy of being rescued. I didn’t buy the test. Neither did I buy Toby’s sympathy for a family that, like human slave traders, think it is okay to earn an income by capturing and imprisoning astrals, but perhaps I am less forgiving than Toby.

The story earns points for its originality. It moves quickly but raises more questions than it answers. Still, it does just enough to provide a measure of entertainment.

RECOMMENDED