Long Answer Questions — 5 Marks Each

Answer: The narrator wakes with a headache and disturbed sleep, feels sluggish, notices an unusually quiet breakfast and sees Claribel unconscious. Claribel revives immediately in oxygen but collapses again when returned to station air. This pattern reminds him of miners using canaries as warnings of bad air. He therefore infers that the station atmosphere is unsafe before the engineering system confirms it.

Answer: The station uses costly chemical and electronic engineering and is supposed to have duplicate alarm circuits. Yet the backup is not connected, the single alarm fails and the purifier freezes during an eclipse. Claribel’s biological sensitivity notices the danger first. The story does not reject technology; it argues for verification, redundancy and independent warning methods.

Answer: The narrator is practical, observant and humorous. He initially treats Claribel as an amusing surprise, but when unusual symptoms appear he notices evidence rather than accepting the silent alarms. His memory of canaries in mines allows him to make the key inference. His dry humour also shapes the story’s tone.