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Ebook has 210 lines and 10543 words, and 5 pages

SURVIVAL

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.

The experiment flopped, or perhaps, more accurately speaking, it succeeded only too well.

The theory had been that of plucking the ego from one human domicile and transplanting it, temporarily of course, into the brain of another man--or animal. The machine had been built for the same purpose.

Circuits shorted and the resultant blast of power killed Doctor Brixson and his elderly assistant, Elmer Morgus. And outward the circle of unleashed power extended for a mile from Crayton College.

The egos, wrenched from their rightful places, went hurtling outward into space on the light-speeding wave of the blast and contacted that of life on our sister planet, Venus. And mindless things grovelled and mewled in the streets of Crayton, Ohio....

This, then is the story of those Earthlings flung into that swampy alien hell of a world by the freakish blast of an experimental patchwork of wires, tubes, and odd scraps of quartz. It is the tale of their 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 and twisting vines surrounding him. Further than the length of two bodies he could not see.

"'Lo," a croaking voice mumbled from close by.

Masson looked up into the blinking round dark eyes of the alien creature. He examined the naked human-shaped animal curiously as he came to his feet.

That the strange being was intelligent he realized at once; the sharp dagger of splintered bone depending from a cross band of mildewed hide told him that. But the noseless, broad-joweled face; the hairless slick grayness of the froglike body, shading to a dark purple around the two eyes and the generous slit of a mouth; the webbed hands and feet, and the drooping pointed ears were anything but human.

"A frog!" he gasped, amazed, "an intelligent batrachian!" He rubbed his hand across his eyes, and arrested the motion.

Masson belched. This strange new body of his had dined on fish he discovered, and probably very overripe fish at that. He flexed his thick gray arms, admiring the ripple of sleek hard muscle. Blood was pumping and throbbing through his body with the excitement of the moment. For almost the first time in his forty years of myopic boyhood and timid manhood Glade Masson felt alive.

Luxuriantly the man from Earth stretched. He saw an expression that he took to be amazement cross the strange being's features. The purple deepened 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 in Crayton? His last memory was of a horrible wrenching at his delicate stomach, and then an abrupt blacking out of the auditorium. Apparently his ego, and that of Doctor Lawler as well, had by some mysterious means been exchanged with that of these froglike beings.

Suddenly he smiled. This was probably another of his nightmares. He would shut his eyes, pinch himself hard, and command himself to awaken.

He pinched. He heard Lawler screech in terror. Slowly he opened his eyes.

An ugly beast, a reptilian monster of scales and gaping tooth-lined snout, came lumbering toward him on stubby crooked legs. Ten feet in length was the alligator-like saurian, its lumpy black plates sprouting an ugly ridge of yellowish spines along its back down to its broad flat tail.

Masson took to his heels. He bounded away across the springy carpet of water-logged vines after the fading sounds of the Doctor's spurting webbed feet.

Fog closed in around him. Twice he fell into seemingly bottomless pools of water and his alien body surfaced him instinctively and dragged him ashore so he could continue his flight. No longer did he hear the running feet of Doctor Lawler; yet he continued to run.

So it was that he came into a section of the vine-floored mistiness where stubby leafy-boled shrubs grew from the spongy soil, and as he approached closer to the pale-leaved little trees, he heard the excited babble of slurred half-familiar words. He looked more closely at the trees then, to discover that just above his head a thatch of living vines, leaves and grasses topped each pulpy yellowish trunk.

Gray faces, hideous and limp of ear, peered down at him. He had come across a village of the frog people! From the trees of this sunless foggy jungle they had fashioned shelters of a sort.

As his breathing eased he could hear them more plainly. No wonder their speech sounded familiar, he realized, they were speaking English! Lawler and he were not alone then. Probably all of Crayton was here--possibly all of Ohio!

"I tell you," that was Charles Ellis, the chemistry department head, "I'm positive this is not Earth. May sound crazy to you, but I'm sure this is the planet Venus."

Masson nodded his head in agreement, but some of the other men snorted their disgust.

"Impossible," grunted one scarred old frog-man, blinking his one good eye and flapping his ears at a persistent buzzing insect winging around his hairless skull. "I say this must be the Amazon River country--though how we came here I wouldn't know."

"No familiar fauna and flora," Ellis said shrugging. "Nope. I disagree. The only logical choice is Venus or perhaps a similar environment in another dimensional plane." He got to his feet and walked across the rough floor of the large hut toward the descending ladder of lashed poles. "But I'll not argue with you," he concluded. "We must hang together now as never before."

Masson followed his friend down the ladder. As he descended into the misty sea of fog he regarded the changed village that a score of this watery world's days had seen created. The boles of the trees had been utilized as foundation piles for more substantial and water-tight structures, and now the two thousand and twenty-nine exiles from Earth were well-housed.

"This is the reality, Charles," Masson said, his wide sunken nostrils drinking deep of the thick moist air. "Already our life back on Earth seems an unpleasant dream. Here the swamplands furnish us food in plenty and the temperature seldom varies more than a few degrees."

The steady dark eyes of Ellis regarded Masson seriously. Then he lifted the crude spear, bone-tipped and heavy, and touched the curved projection of the bow above his shoulder.

"Three times," he said, "we have been attacked by hostile natives. Only our superior weapons have given us the advantage." He paused. "The next time we may not be so lucky. The frogs may have copied our spears and bows.

"That is the reason we must not be satisfied. We must build machines and better weapons for our own protection. Here on Venus we are but a handful of aliens surrounded by millions of hostile savages."

Masson grunted doubtfully. "With what," he inquired, "are we to build machines? All the islands that we have visited by raft or swimming are like this one--soggy floating atolls of thidin vines and nik-nik brush. The natives have no metal weapons; even flint seems unknown."

Ellis rammed his webbed gray hand down into the pouch that hung at his side. When it emerged again a sharp fragment of black glassy rock lay in his palm. He grinned at Masson's amazement.

"One of the Frogs," he said, "that we captured yesterday had this on a loop of leather around his neck. With the few words we have learned and signs I learned that a mountain of this material lies toward the east."

"Land!" was all Masson could gasp. Reverently he fingered the bit of glassy obsidian. His eyes blinked with excitement and his grotesque slash of a mouth quivered.

"What are we waiting for?" he demanded eagerly. "Let's get going."

Ellis laughed tolerantly. "The island lies some distance away," he said. "We will need good rafts, or, better, canoes. Hostile natives probably live in the mud-lands surrounding the island."

"Let's get to work on it then," urged Glade Masson. "We can kill a lot of these alligator-jawed vallids and use their skins for boat covering. The Eskimos do that. And we can make shields of their hides, too. We'll need extra arrows, food, and other supplies."

"Go to it," laughed Ellis. "Ten or fifteen of the younger men will probably want to go along." He blinked his round black eyes solemnly. "And you're the guy that was satisfied with things as they are."

The little flotilla of skin-covered canoes threaded its way among the misty islets of pale green thidin vines. Ten of the unwieldy craft there were, and in all save the two larger boats two powerfully muscled Frogs sat. The larger boats carried three paddlers and were well-laden with dried vallid flesh, broiled thidin shoots, and heaps of the scarlet-mottled orange nik-nik fruit.

"Hear about Susan Martin?" inquired Ellis as he dipped his paddle rhythmically into the sullen waters of the mist-shrouded sea.

"Nope." Masson's head did not turn. His canoe was leading the expedition. "Heard she was visiting Crayton, but never heard what happened to her."

"Always lecturing about birth control and child psychology," chuckled Ellis. "As uncompromising a spinster as ever I met. Well, that's all changed now. She finds herself with a family of seven young Frogs on her hands."

"Whew!" gasped Masson. "Bet she hates that."

"Oddly enough," the chemistry instructor said, "she's taking to being a mother enthusiastically. Her seven little Frogs will be the neatest, best-scrubbed, insufferable little prigs in all New Crayton--even old Joe Hansel, the ex-town drunkard. He's her next-to-the youngest son."

Masson shook his hairless gray head thoughtfully. The mystery of the switching of his neighbors' and friends' egos with the former inhabitants of these tough gray bodies never ceased to amaze him. The former sex of their transferred intelligences had been preserved, but not their age.

"Something like Cunningham, the campus heart-breaker," he said. "Only he ended up an old, hideously wrinkled Frog."

"And a good end for him," cried Ellis warmly, "he was...."

"Ssst," warned Masson peering along a steaming tunnel of vision that a chance breath of moist air had opened. "A raft, and half a dozen Frogs!"

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