Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to
learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another
physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was
pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the
doctor had apparently learned to make allowances.
"Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests.
Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning
to lose consciousness.
"This is it!" he thought in panic.
He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before
consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance
to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the
conversion tank right now.
When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for
a long time he was afraid to open his eyes.
"Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings."
It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his
eyes.
Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one
stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that
his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his
lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward
so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around
as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with
broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like
claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of
hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head.
This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself.
It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong
traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly
emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under
those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could
still weep.
He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed.
"Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only
try hopping this time. And take it easy."
Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve
and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high
as Kershaw's head.
"That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll
go outside."
Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of
fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as
Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room
where they had been left to revive from conversion.
They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from
the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard
was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky
of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud
flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged
along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men.
From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them
in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were
a gun and a long knife.
"Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big
everywhere in proportion.
"Kershaw. I'm back, Furston."
"I'm Graybar."
"Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on,
you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard.
"Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty
and warden and parole officer rolled into one."
Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his
distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown
how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim
rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a
native vine. He did so and immediately vomited.
Furston laughed.
"That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning.
"Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any
ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is
where you eat."
Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He
lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from
an observation tower on the roof.
He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look.
Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session
with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr.
The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried
him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent
position to make the riddance permanent.
At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with
the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the
two were doing out here.
"The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of
the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich."
"Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel
he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the
operations."