“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 di
d. 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.”
“I still don’t really believe it,” Blake said. “The only thing I am firmly convinced of is my headache.”
“It’s real enough and logical enough. Logical as hell. And hell on Earth if they ever get there. Evolution is always trying to produce an animal that can survive anywhere, conquer all enemies, the fittest of, the surviving fit. All life is based on one thing: protoplasm. Basically, it’s the same in every creature, every living thing, plant and animal, amoeba and man. It is just modified slightly, hooked together in slightly different ways. The thushol are built of protoplasm -- but infinitely more adaptable protoplasm. They can do something about it, make it take the form of a bone cell and be part of a thigh bone, or be a nerve cell in a brain. From some of that ten-second-college-course Loshthu poured into me, I gather that at first the thushol were good imitations outside, but if you cut into one, you could see that the organs weren’t there. Now they have everything. They went through Martian medical colleges, of course, and know all about what makes a centaur tick, and so they make themselves with the same kind of tickers. Oh, very nice.”
“They don’t know much about us. Maybe with the X-ray fluoroscope screen we could have told those imitations of us,” suggested Blake.
“Oh, no, by no means. If we knew the right form, they’d read it in our minds, and have it. Adaptive protoplasm. Just think, you couldn’t kill it in an African jungle, because when a lion came along, it would be a little, lady lion, and when an elephant showed up, it would be a helpless baby elephant. If a snake bit it, I suppose the damned thing would turn into something immune to snake bites -- a tree, or something like that. I just wonder where it keeps the very excellent brain it evidently has.”
“Well, let’s find out what Loshthu can offer us by way of proofs.”
* * * *
Chapter 3 - Mind-Readers and Company
It developed that the Martians had once had museums. They still had them, because nobody was sufficiently interested to disturb their age-long quiet. Martians lived centuries, and their memories were long; but once or twice in a lifetime did a Martian enter the ancient museums.
Penton and Blake spent hours in them, intensive hours under Loshthu’s guidance. Loshthu had nothing but time, and Penton and Blake didn’t want to linger. They worked rapidly, collecting thin metal sheaves of documents, ancient mechanisms, a thousand things. They baled them with rope that they had brought from the ship when they moved it nearer the museum. Finally, after hours of labor, bleary-eyed from want of sleep, they started out again to the ship.
They stepped out of the gloomy dusk of the museum into the sun-lit entranceway. Immediately, from behind a dozen pillars, a leaping, flashing group of men descended upon them, tore the books, the instruments, the data sheaves from their hands. They were upset, slugged, trampled on and spun around. There were shouts and cries and curses.
Then there was silence. Twelve Pentons and thirteen Blakes sat, lay or stood about on the stone stairway. Their clothes were torn, their faces and bodies bruised, there was even one black eye, and another developing swiftly. But twelve Pentons looked exactly alike, each clasping a bit of data material. Thirteen Blakes were identical, each carrying a bit of factual mustiness under his arm or in his hand.
Loshthu looked at them, and his lined, old face broke into a pleased smile. “Ah,” he said. “There are more of you. Perhaps some can stay with us to talk now.”
Penton looked up at Loshthu, all the Pentons did. Penton was quite sure he was the Penton, but he couldn’t think of any way to prove it. It was fairly evident that thushol had decided to try Earth again. He began to wonder just -- “
“Loshthu, just why,” asked one of the Pentons in Penton’s voice, “did the thushol not stay on Earth if they could live there?”
Penton was quite sure he had been the one to think of that panic -- “Pardon me, but wasn’t that the question I was going to ask?” said another Penton in well-controlled fury. Penton smiled gently. It seemed evident that -- “I can apparently be spared the trouble of doing my own talking. You all help so,” said one of the numerous Pentons angrily.
“Say, how in hell are we going to tell who’s who?” demanded one of the Blakes abruptly.
“That damned mind-thief stole my question before I had a chance -- “
“Why you -- you -- you talking! I was just about -- “
“I think,” said one of the Pentons wearily, “you might as well stop getting peeved, Blake, because they’ll all act peeved when you do. What do you know. I beat all my imitators to the draw on that remark. A noble achievement, you’ll find, Rod. But you might just as well pipe down, and I’ll pipe down, and we’ll see what our good friend, Loshthu, has to say.”
“Eh,” sighed Loshthu. “You mean about the thushol leaving Earth? They did not like it. Earth is a poor planet, and the people were barbarians. Evidently they are not so now. But the thushol do not like work, and they found richer sustenance on Mars.”
“I thought so,” said Penton. (Does it matter which one?) “They’ve decided that Earth is richer than Mars now, and want a new host. Don’t draw that pistol, Blake! Unfortunately, my friend, we had twenty-five ionguns and twenty-five violet-guns made up. If we’d had more we would have more companions. We were exceedingly unfortunate in equipping ourselves so well in the matter of clothing, and being so. thou
ghtful as to plan all of it right, so we carried a lot of each of the few kinds. Exceedingly. However, I think we can improve things a little bit. I happen to remember that one ion-gun is out of commission, and I had the coils out of two of the violet-guns to repair them. That makes three guns out of service. We will each stand up and fire, one at a time, at the sand in front there. The line forms on the right.”
The line formed. “Now,” continued that particular Penton, “we will each fire, beginning with myself, one at a time. First ion, then violet. When one of us evidences lack of a serviceable gun, the others will join in removing him rapidly but carefully. Are we ready? Yes?” That Penton held up his ion-gun, and pushed the button.
Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s Page 114