Feathered Friend

1. Who can a ‘feathered’ friend be?
A ‘feathered’ friend is a bird, like a parrot, a pigeon, a sparrow or a canary.

2. Which ‘feathered’ friend do you like? Why?
I like the parrot. It is colourful and can copy our words.

4. Do you think a ‘feathered’ or a ‘furry’ friend can accompany astronauts to space?
Yes, small animals have gone to space for experiments. But it is difficult, as they need special care, food and air in space.

1. Why did the narrator think Sven had sneaked a bird aboard? What was Sven’s scientific reason?
Sven wanted a pet, and a canary weighed almost nothing and needed very little food. He claimed that he brought her partly out of scientific curiosity. He wanted to see how a bird would fly when it had no weight but could still use its wings.

2. How did Claribel adjust to the new surroundings?
Claribel quickly learnt to move without gravity. She could hang motionless in the air with her wings folded. She even did backward loops. She thrived and grew fat.

3. What made the narrator mistake the musical whistle for a sound from the intercom?
Nobody expected a bird in a space station. So, when he heard a whistle beside his ear, he thought it came over the station intercom before an announcement.

4. Do you think the presence of the canary would lead the spacers into trouble?
It might. Claribel got noisy when she was upset. If the VIPs from Earth had found her, the crew could have been in trouble.

(i) What can be inferred about Sven’s abilities from his job description?
B. He possesses a strong understanding of working in space.

(ii) How can we conclude that Sven was working in zero gravity?
The girders ‘floated around in free fall’. They had to be moved in a slow-motion, three-dimensional ballet. This happens only in zero gravity.

(iii) Select the option that is correct for both Assertion (A) and Reason (R).
A. Both (A) and (R) are true, and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

(iv) Replace ‘outfits’ with a word similar in meaning from the extract.
garbs

(i) The narrator references canaries and miners in order to ______.
explain the reason that caused Claribel to faint suddenly

(ii) Jim initially dismisses the warning about the air because ______.
he believed that the duplicate alarm circuits would have gone off if anything was wrong.

(iii) What does the phrase ‘shook Jim’ mean?
B. startled by unexpected information

(iv) What does passing the oxygen bottle around ‘like a pipe of peace’ suggest?
It suggests that the crew shared the oxygen calmly and in turns, like friends. They did not panic, even though the situation was serious. It also adds humour.

1. What was the purpose of the alarm? What had caused its failure?
The alarm was meant to warn the crew if something went wrong with the air. During a rare eclipse by Earth’s shadow, part of the air purifier froze. The single alarm in the circuit failed to go off, and the second circuit was not yet connected.

2. How does the crew’s reaction to Claribel change over the course of the story?
At first, Claribel was Sven’s secret. Soon she became everyone’s pet, and the crew hid her from VIPs. When she fainted, they were all distressed. In the end, they saw her as their saviour.

3. What does the last part of the story tell us about unusual ways of problem solving?
Expensive machines failed, but a tiny bird warned the crew of danger. Sometimes simple and natural methods work when advanced technology fails.

4. Justify the appropriateness of the title of the story.
The story is about Claribel, a canary who becomes the crew’s friend. She also saves their lives by warning them about the bad air. So, ‘Feathered Friend’ is a suitable title.

5. ‘Without Claribel, we should soon have been slightly dead.’ What does this line suggest about uncertainty of life in space?
Life in space depends completely on machines. Even a small failure can be deadly, and the danger may not be noticed. Life there is always uncertain.

6. Explain how the writer has presented science fiction with a touch of humour.
The writer uses funny lines like the office ‘laughingly called’ an office and ‘the stars had ceased to explode before my eyes’. He says they would have been ‘slightly dead’ and passed oxygen ‘like a pipe of peace’. He ends by saying a canary gives double safety ‘at practically no extra expense’.

7. How would Sven reflect on his experience of almost losing Claribel and saving the crew?