Mindless creatures mewled and grovelled in
the streets of Ohio ... and men found themselves
suddenly in the swampy, alien hell of Venus,
fighting a weird battle for existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The experiment flopped, or perhaps, more accurately speaking, itsucceeded only too well.
The theory had been that of plucking the ego from one human domicileand transplanting it, temporarily of course, into the brain of anotherman—or animal. The machine had been built for the same purpose.
Circuits shorted and the resultant blast of power killed Doctor Brixsonand his elderly assistant, Elmer Morgus. And outward the circle ofunleashed power extended for a mile from Crayton College.
The egos, wrenched from their rightful places, went hurtling outwardinto space on the light-speeding wave of the blast and contacted thatof life on our sister planet, Venus. And mindless things grovelled andmewled in the streets of Crayton, Ohio....
Only since the Malcolm's successful voyage to Venus, recently, hasthe full story of that catastrophe been known. From the lips of therubbery hided, hideous Venusians who came to Earth aboard the spacer welearned the truth.
This, then is the story of those Earthlings flung into that swampyalien hell of a world by the freakish blast of an experimentalpatchwork of wires, tubes, and odd scraps of quartz. It is the tale oftheir battle for survival in a sodden unfriendly environment:
Glade Masson, timid, myopic history professor at Crayton College,jerked his head from the dank grayish ooze of the hollow where he lay.His eyes snapped wide as he examined the foggy outlines of bushes andtwisting vines surrounding him. Further than the length of two bodieshe could not see.
"'Lo," a croaking voice mumbled from close by.
Masson looked up into the blinking round dark eyes of the aliencreature. He examined the naked human-shaped animal curiously as hecame to his feet.
That the strange being was intelligent he realized at once; the sharpdagger of splintered bone depending from a cross band of mildewed hidetold him that. But the noseless, broad-joweled face; the hairless slickgrayness of the froglike body, shading to a dark purple around the twoeyes and the generous slit of a mouth; the webbed hands and feet, andthe drooping pointed ears were anything but human.
"A frog!" he gasped, amazed, "an intelligent batrachian!" He rubbed hishand across his eyes, and arrested the motion.
His hand was webbed and gray! He had six fingers instead of five!And his sleek body was naked save for the crossed belts of ridged hidesupporting his own two daggers.
Masson belched. This strange new body of his had dined on fish hediscovered, and probably very overripe fish at that. He flexed histhick gray arms, admiring the ripple of sleek hard muscle. Blood waspumping and throbbing through his body with the excitement of themoment. For almost the first time in his forty years of myopic boyhoodand timid manhood Glade Masson felt alive.
Luxuriantly the man from Earth stretched. He saw an expression that hetook to be amazement cross the strange being's features. The purpledeepened around the other male's sunken nostrils.
"I," the frog man said, "am Doctor John Lawler!"
Masson's mouth dropped open. What must have happened back there inCrayton? His last memory was of a horrible wrenching at his delicatestomach, and then an abrupt blacking out of the auditorium. Apparentlyhis ego, and that of Doctor Lawler as