The Death of Nirutam

Dead alien
by Robert Hack

When H. G. Wells needed to kill off his alien invaders in The War of The Worlds he made use of Earthly microbes. We have to ask: should we really expect microbes from Earth to cause problems for aliens from another planet? I doubt if Wells gave any thought to alien biochemistry.

Fifty years later, Isaac Asimov imagined another way to infect aliens. Asimov actually knew some biochemistry. In Asimov's story "Hostess", he described his aliens as being constructed from the same sorts of molecules as we humans, in particular, Asimov's aliens had proteins that were coded for by nucleic acid sequences. Asimov's method for killing aliens was a type of "chromosomal parasite" that in retrospect sounds a lot like a retrovirus.

Killing an alien.
"Hostess" interior art
by Edmund Emshwiller

Killing Nirutam
In the case of Nirutam, I imagine an alien that is quite similar to we humans, but with a few chemical differences. Due to a slightly different genetic code, Nirutam's cells are not able to become factories for producing Earthly viruses.

In the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Frank Freas.

Let's assume that Nirutam cannot be killed by Earthly microbes. Also, this works in reverse; any viruses carried by Nirutam cannot harm Earthly life forms.

However, by the time when the Editor discovers a good reason to kill Nirutam, his alien guest is already quite ill and the Editor has been trying for a few months to find a way to keep Nirutam alive. Suddenly, for reasons described in a previous blog post, the Editor decides to kill Nirutam.

Since Nirutam needs a few special molecules that cannot be supplied by Earthly food, she routinely takes chemical supplements. This might provide the Editor with an opportunity to poison Nirutam. All he needs to do is adulterate Nirutam's nutrient supplement with a poison. However, I'm not skilled at killing characters.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by
Harold McCauley and
John Howitt.

Jack Vance seemed to have little difficulty eliminating characters from his novels and on some occasions he used poison to eliminate a villain. Vance even imagined a world (the planet Sarkovy) where an entire culture has grown up around the manufacture of deadly poisons. Kirth Gersen kills one of his adversaries with Cluthe. Cluthe is a poison that causes a slow, agonizing death. When the Editor decides to Kill Nirutam, he wants death to be quick and painless.

2,4-DNP structure

I'm going to assume that Nirutam's metabolism makes use of proton gradients, as do our own mitochondria and therefor she can be killed by 2,4-dinitrophenol. Death by DNP poisoning with low doses sounds rather gruesome, so I'm going to pretend that Nirutam is given a large dose that quickly induces coma and death.

Related Reading: A Whiff of Death

Next: Star Trek: Picard

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