by Jerry
The figure of Ted Penton smoked suddenly, and a hole the size of a golf ball drove abruptly through the center of the head, to the accompaniment of a harsh whine of steam and spurts of oily smoke. The figure did not fall. It slumped. It melted rapidly, like a snow-man in a furnace, the fingers ran together, the remainder of the face dropped, contracted, and became horrible. It was suddenly the face of a man whose pouched and dulled eyes had witnessed and enjoyed every evil the worlds knew, weirdly glowing eyes that danced and flamed for a moment in screaming fury of deadly hate—and dissolved with the last dissolution of the writhing face.
And the arms grew long, very long and much wider. Rod stood frozen while the very wide and rapidly widening arms beat up and down. The thing took off and flapped awkwardly away, and for an instant the last trace of the hate-filled eyes glittered again in the sun.
Rod Blake sat down and laughed. He laughed, and laughed again at the very funny sight of the melting face on the bat-bodied thing that had flown away with a charred hole in the middle of its grape-fruit-sized head. He laughed even louder when another Ted-Penton-thing came around the corner of the vegetable clump, on the run. He aimed at the center of its head. “Fly away!” he yelled as he pressed the little button down.
This one was cleverer. It ducked. “Rod—for the love of—Rod, shut up,” it spoke.
Rod stopped, and considered slowly. This one talked with Ted Penton’s voice. As it got up again he aimed more carefully and flashed again. He wanted it to fly away too. It ducked again, in another direction this time, and ran in rapidly. Rod got up hastily and ran. He fell suddenly as some fibrous thing lashed out from behind and wrapped itself unbreakably about his arms and body, binding him helplessly.
Penton looked down at him, panting heavily.
“What’s the trouble, Rod; and why in blazes were you shooting your gun at me?”
Rod heard himself laugh again, uncontrollably. The sight of Ted’s worried face reminded him of the flying thing, with the melted face. Like an overheated wax figure. Penton reached out a deliberate hand and cracked him over the face, hard. In a moment Rod steadied, and Penton removed the noose from his arms and body. Blake sighed with relief.
“THANK God, it’s you, Ted,” he said. “Listen, I saw you—you—not thirty seconds ago. You stood over there, and I spoke to you. You answered in my voice. I started off, and your feet came up out of the ground with roots on them, like a plant’s. I shot you through the forehead, and you melted down like a wax doll to a bat-thing that sprouted wings and flew away.”
“Uhh—” said Penton soothingly. “Funny, at that. Why were you looking for me?”
“Because there’s a Japanese maple where I was that grew while my back was turned, and changed its leaves while I looked at it.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Penton unhappily, looking at Rod. Then more soothingly, “I think we’d better look at it.”
Rod led the way back on his tracks. When the maple should have been in sight, it wasn’t at all. When they reached the spot where Rod’s tracks showed it should have been, it wasn’t there. There was only a somewhat wilted sword-bush. Rod stared blankly at it, then he went over and felt it cautiously. It remained placidly squatted, a slightly bedraggled lump of vegetation.
“That’s where it was,” said Blake dully. “But it isn’t there any more. I know it was there.”
“It must have been an—er—mirage,” decided Penton. “Let’s get back to the ship. We’ve had enough walking practice.”
Rod followed him, wonderingly shaking his head. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, that he nearly fell over Penton, when Ted stopped with a soft, unhappy, gurgling noise. Ted turned around and looked at Rod carefully. Then he looked ahead again.
“Which,” he asked at length, “is you?”
Rod looked ahead of Penton, over his shoulder. Another Rod was also standing in front of Penton. “My God,” said Rod, “it’s me this time!”
“I am, of course,” said the one in front. It said it in Rod Blake’s voice.
Ted looked at it, and finally shut his eyes.
“I don’t believe it. Not at all. Wo bist du gewesen, mein Freund?”
“Was sagst du?” said the one in front. “But why the Deutsch?”
Ted Penton sat down slowly and thoughtfully. Rod Blake stared at Rod Blake blankly, slightly indignant.
“Let me think,” said Penton unhappily. “There must be some way to tell. Rod went away from me, and then I come around the corner and find him laughing insanely. He takes a shot at me. But it looks, and talks like Rod. But he says crazy things. Then I go for a walk with him—or it—and meet another one that at least seems less insane than the first one. Well, well. I know German of course, and so does Rod. Evidently this thing can read minds. Must be like a chameleon, only more so.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rod Blake. It doesn’t particularly matter which one.
“A chameleon can assume any color it wants to at will. Lots of animals have learned to imitate other animals for safety, but it takes them generations to do it. This thing, apparently, can assume any shape or color at will. A minute ago it decided the best form for the locality was a swordbush. Some of these things must be real plants then. Rod thought of a maple tree, thought of the advantages of a maple tree, so it decided to try that, having read his mind. That was why it was wilted-looking; this isn’t the right kind of country for maple trees. It lost water too fast. So it went back to the sword-bush.
“Now this one has decided to try being Rod Blake, clothes and all. But I haven’t the foggiest notion which one is Rod Blake. It won’t do a bit of good to try him on languages we know, because he can read our minds I know there must be some way. There must—there must—Oh yes. It’s simple. Rod, just burn me a hole in that thing with your violet-gun.”
Rod reached for his gun at once with a sigh of relief and triggered quickly. The phoney Rod melted hastily. About half of it got down into the boiling mud before Rod incinerated the rest with the intense ultraviolet flare of the pistol. Rod sighed. “Thank the Lord it was me. I wasn’t sure for a while, myself.”
Ted shook himself, put his head in his hands, and rocked slowly. “By the Nine Gods of the Nine Planets, what a world! Rod, for the love of heaven, stay with me hereafter. Permanently. And whatever you do, don’t lose that pistol. They can’t grow a real violet-gun, but if they pick one up, may God help us. Let’s get back to the ship, and away from this damned place. I thought you were mad. My error. It’s just the whole bloody planet that’s mad.”
“I was—for a while. Let’s move.”
They moved. They moved hastily back across the sand dunes to the ship.
CHAPTER II
The Secret of the thushol
“THEY’RE centaurs,” gasped Blake. “Will you look at that one over there—a nice little calico. There’s a beautiful little strawberry roan. What people! Wonder why the city is so dilapidated, if the people are still here in some numbers. Set ‘er down, will you, Ted. They haven’t anything dangerous, or they’d have a better city.”
“Uhmmm—I suppose that’s right. But I’d hate to have one of those fellows nudge me. They must weigh something noticeable, even here—about twelve hundred pounds back on Earth. I’m setting down in that square. You keep your hand on that ten-inch ion-gun while I step out.”
The ship settled with a soft thumpf in the deep sandy dust of the ruined city square. Half a hundred of the centaurs were trotting leisurely up, with a grizzled old Martian in the lead, his mane sparse and coarse. Ted Penton stepped out of the lock.
“Pholshth,” the Martian said after a moment’s inspection. He extended his hands out horizontally from his shoulders, palms upward and empty.
“Friends,” said Ted, extending his arms in a similar gesture, “I am Penton.”
“Fasthun Loshthu,” explained the centaur, indicating himself. “Penshun.”
“He sounds like an ex-soldier,” came Blake’s voice softly. “Pension. Is he O.K.
?”
“I think so. You can leave that post anyway, and shut off the main atomics, start auxiliary B, and close the rooms. Lock the controls with the combination and come on out. Bring your ion-gun as well as your ultraviolet. Lock the lock doors.”
“Blazes. I want to come out this afternoon. Oh well, O.K.” Blake went to work hurriedly and efficiently. It was some thirty seconds before he was through in the power room. He stepped eagerly into the lock.
He stopped dead. Penton was on his back, moving feebly, the old centaur bent over him, with his long, powerful fingers fixed around the man’s throat. Penton’s head was shaking slowly back and forth on the end of his neck, in a loose, rather detached-looking way.
Blake roared and charged out of the lock, his two powerful pistols hastily restored to his holsters. He charged out—and sailed neatly over the centaur’s back, underestimating Mars’ feeble grip. In an instant he was on his feet again, and returning toward his friend when a skillful left forefoot caught his legs, and sent him tumbling as the heavy bulk of an agile young centaur landed on his back. Blake turned; a smaller, lighter body far more powerfully muscled. In a moment the Earthman broke the centaurs’ grip and started through the six or seven others that surrounded him.
A grunted word of command dissolved the mêlée, and Blake stood up, leaping toward Penton.
Penton sat on the ground, rocking slowly back and forth, his head between his hands. “Oh, Lord, they all do it here.”
“Ted—are you all right?”
“Do I sound it?” Penton asked unhappily. “That old bird just opened up my skull and poured a new set of brains in. Hypnotic teaching—a complete university education in thirty seconds—all done with hypnotism and no mirrors used. They have the finest education system. God preserve us from it.”
“Shthuntho ishthu thiu loinal?” asked the old Martian pleasantly.
“Ishthu psoth lonthul timul,” groaned Penton. “The worst of it is, it works. I know his language as well as I know English.” Suddenly he managed a slight grin. He pointed to Blake and said: “Blake omo phusthu ptsoth.”
The old centaur’s lined, sparsely bearded face smiled like a pleased child’s. Blake looked at him uneasily.
“I don’t like that fellow’s fa—” He stopped, hypnotized. He walked toward the old Martian with blank eyes and the grace of an animated tailor’s dummy. He lay down in sections, and the old Martian’s long, supple fingers circled his neck. Gently they massaged the back of his spine up to the base of his skull.
Penton smiled sourly from where he sat. “Oh, you don’t like his face, eh? Wait and see how you like his system.”
The centaur straightened. Slowly Blake sat up. His head continued to nod and weave in a detached sort of way, till he gingerly reached up, felt around for it and took it firmly in his hands. He rested his elbows on his knees.
“We didn’t both have to know his blasted language,” he managed bitterly at last. “Languages always did give me headaches anyway.”
PENTON watched him unsympathetically.
“I hate repeating things, and you’ll find it useful, anyway.”
“You are from the third planet,” the Martian stated politely.
Penton looked at him in surprise, started up, then rose to his feet gingerly.
“Get up slowly, Blake, I advise you for your own good.” Then to the Martian: ‘Why, yes. But you knew! How?”
“My great-great grandfather told me of this trip to the third planet before he died. He was one of those that returned.”
“Returned? You Martians have been to Earth?” gasped Blake.
“I guessed that,” said Penton softly. “They’re evidently the centaurs of legend. And I think they didn’t go alone from this planet.”
“Our people tried to establish a colony there, many, many years ago. It didn’t succeed. They died of lung diseases faster than they could cross space. The main reason they went in the first place was to get away from the thushol. But the thushol simply imitated local Earth-animals and thrived. So the people came back. We built many ships, hoping that since we couldn’t go, the thushol would. But they didn’t like Earth.” He shook his head sorrowfully.
“The thushol. So that’s what you call ’em.” Blake sighed. “They must be a pest.”
“They were then. They aren’t much any more.”
“Oh, they don’t bother you any more?” asked Penton.
“No,” said the old centaur apathetically. “We’re so used to them.”
“How do you tell them from the thing they’re imitating?” Penton asked grimly. “That’s what I need to know.”
“It used to bother us because we couldn’t,” Loshthu sighed. “But it doesn’t any more.”
“I know—but how do you tell them apart? Do you do it by mindreading?”
“Oh, no. We don’t try to tell them apart. That way they don’t bother us any more.”
Penton looked at Loshthu thoughtfully for some time. Blake rose gingerly, and joined Penton in his enwrapped contemplation of the grizzled Martian. “Uhmmmm,” said Penton at last, “I suppose that is one way of looking at it. I should think it would make business rather difficult though. Also social relations, not knowing whether it was your wife or just a real good imitation.”
“I know. We found it so for many years,” Loshthu agreed. “That was why our people wanted to move to Earth. But later they found that three of the ship commanders were thushol, so the people came back to Mars where they could live at least as easily as the thushol.”
Penton mentally digested this for some moments, while the half hundred centaurs about stood patiently, apathetically motionless.
“We have myths on Earth of centaurs, people like you, and of magic creatures who seemed one thing, but when captured became snakes or tigers or other unpleasant beasts, but if held long enough reverted to human shape and would then grant a wish. Yes, the thushol are intelligent; they could have granted a simple Earth barbarian’s wish.”
Loshthu shook his head slowly.
“They are not intelligent, I believe. Maybe they are. But they have perfect memories for detail. They would imitate one of our number, attend our schools, and so learn all we knew. They never invented anything for themselves.”
“What brought about the tremendous decline in your civilization? The thushol?”
The centaur nodded.
“We forgot how to make space ships and great cities. We hoped that would discourage the thushol so they would leave us. But they forgot too, so it didn’t help.”
“Good Lord,” Blake sighed, “how in the name of the Nine Planets do you live with a bunch like that?”
Loshthu looked at Blake slowly.
“Ten,” he said. “Ten planets. You can’t see the tenth with any practicable instrument till you get out beyond Jupiter. Our people discovered it from Pluto.”
BLAKE stared at him owlishly. “But how can you live with this gang? With a civilization like that—I should think you’d have found some means of destroying them.”
“We did. We destroyed all the thushol. Some of the thushol helped us, but we thought that they were our own people. It happened because a very wise, but very foolish philosopher calculated how many thushol could live parasitically on our people. Naturally the thushol took his calculations to heart. Thirty-one percent of us are thushol.”
Blake looked around with a swiftly unhappy eye.
“You mean—some of these here are thushol?” he asked.
Loshthu nodded.
“Always. They reproduced very slowly at first, in the form of an animal that was normally something like us, and reproduced as did other animals. But then they learned to imitate the amoebae when they studied in our laboratories. Now they simply split. One big one will split into several small ones, and each small one will eat one of the young of our people, and take its place. So we never know which is which. It used to worry us.” Loshthu shook his head slowly.
Blake’s hair rose slightly away
from his head, and his jaw dropped away. “My God,” he gasped. “Why didn’t you do something?”
“If we killed one we suspected, we might be wrong, which would kill our own child. If we didn’t, and just believe it our own child anyway, it at least gave us the comfort of believing it. And if the imitation is so perfect one can’t tell the difference, what is the difference?”
Blake sat down again, quietly.
“Penton,” he sighed, at length, “those three months are up, let’s get back to Earth—fast.”
Penton looked at him. “I wanted to a long time back. Only I thought of something else. Sooner or later, some other man is going to come here with atomic power, and if he brings some of those thushol back to Earth with him, accidentally, thinking it’s his best friend—well, I’d rather kill my own child than live with one of those, but I’d rather not do either. They can reproduce as fast as they can eat, and if they eat like an amoeba—God help us. If you maroon one on a desert island, it will turn into a fish, and swim home. If you put it in jail it will turn into a snake and go down the drain pipe. If you dump it in the desert it will turn into a cactus and get along real nice, thank you.”
“Good God.”
“And they won’t believe us, of course. I’m sure as blazes not going to take one back to prove it. I’ll just have to get some kind of proof from this Loshthu.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. What can we get?”
“All I can think of is to see what they can let us have, then take all we can, and make a return trip with reputable and widely believed zoologists and biologists to look into this thing. Evolution has produced some weird freaks, but this is a freakier weirdness than has ever been conceived.”