# Svan — Short Fiction character guide

> Svan in Short Fiction by Frederik Pohl.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0000-asteroid-of-the-damned

## Snapshot

Svan is the conspirator who marks his own slip in secret and volunteers to plant the bomb, gambling everything on a bluff that fails.

## Who they are

Svan moves among six wavering conspirators in a ground car, reading their fear and deciding, in fractions of a second, that unmasking the coward would only fracture them further. He takes the fatal task himself, then tries to talk his way past a Venusian guard with a coded gesture and a bared-teeth smile. His gamble collapses into brute force, and his gross white bulk hurled at the guard is the moment the quiet conspiracy turns openly violent.

## In the story

### [Double-Cross](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/chapters/double-cross)

Leader of the Venusian conspirators; secretly marks his own slip to plant the bomb, kills a guard, and distrusts his own group.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/svan
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters