The Devil's Asteroid Read online

hehad drawn free of its dead owner.

  "What's that for?" asked Shanklin.

  Parr made no answer, because he did not know. The armor was too looselyhung together for protection against weapons. It certainly was nospace-overall. And it had nothing of the elegance that might make it aMartian uniform of office. Casting back, Parr remembered that theskipper had worn it at the time when he, Parr, was landed--but notduring the voyage out. He shook his head over the mystery.

  "Let that belong to you," the girl Varina Pemberton was telling him. "Ithas plates of metal that may be turned to use. Perhaps--" She seemed tobe on the verge of saying something important, but checked herself.

  "If you'll come with us," Sadau told her respectfully, "we'll show youwhere we live and where you will rule."

  * * * * *

  They held council that night among the grass huts--the nine that wereleft after the unsuccessful attack on the patroller. Varina Pemberton,very pretty in her brief sports costume, sat on the stump that waschief's place; but Shanklin did most of the talking.

  "Nobody will argue about our life and prospects being good here," hethundered, "but there's no use in making things worse when they're badenough." He shook a thick forefinger at Fitzhugh Parr, who wore thearmor he had stripped from the dead Martian. "You were chief, and whatyou said goes. But you're not chief now--you're just the man whomurdered four of us!"

  "Mmm--yes," growled one of the lower-fallen listeners, afurry-shouldered, buck-toothed clod named Wain. "That blast almost gotme, right behind Haldocott." His eyes, grown small, gleamed nastily atParr. "We ought to condemn this man--"

  "Please," interposed Sadau, who alone remained friendly to Parr, "it'sfor the chief to condemn." He looked to Varina Pemberton, who shook herhead slowly.

  "I feel," she ventured with her eyes on Parr, "that this ought to beleft up to you as a voting body."

  Shanklin sprang to his feet. "Fair enough!" he bawled. "I call Parrguilty. All who think like me, say aye!"

  "Aye!"

  "Aye!"

  "Aye!"

  They were all agreeing except Sadau, who looked shrunken and sad andfrightened. Shanklin smirked.

  "All who think he should be killed as a murderer--"

  "Hold on," put in Varina Pemberton. "If I'm chief, I'll draw the linethere. Don't kill him."

  Shanklin bowed toward her. "I was wrong to suggest that before a woman.Then he's to be kicked out?"

  There was a chorus of approving yells, and all save Sadau jumped up tolook for sticks and stones. Parr laid his hand on the club he had bornein the skirmish that day.

  "Now wait," he said clearly and harshly, and the whole party facedhim--Sadau wanly, the girl questioningly, the rest angrily.

  "I'm to be kicked out," Parr repeated. "I'll accept that. I'll go. But,"and the club lifted itself in his right hand, "I'm not going to berough-housed. I've seen it happen here, and none of it for me."

  "Oh, no?" Shanklin had picked up a club of his own, and grinnedfiercely.

  "No. Let me go, and I leave without having to be whipped out of camp.Mob me, and I promise to die fighting, right here." He stamped a foot onthe ground. "I'll crack a skull or two before I wink out. That's asolemn statement of fact."

  "Let him go," said Varina Pemberton again, this time with a ring ofauthority. "He wears that armor, and he'll put up a fight. We can'tspare any more men."

  "Thank you," Parr told her bleakly. He gave Shanklin a last long stareof challenge, then turned on his heel and walked away toward thethickets amid deep silence. Behind him the council fire made a dwindlinghole in the blackness of night. It seemed to be his last hope, fadingaway.

  He pushed in among thick, leafy stems. A voice hailed him:

  "Hah!"

  And a figure, blacker than the gloom, tramped close to him across alittle grassy clearing.

  "You! They drive you out?" a thick, unsure voice accosted him.

  Parr hefted his club, wondering if this would be an enemy. "Yes. Theydrove me out. I'm exiled from among exiles."

  "Uh." The other seemed perplexed over these words, as though they stateda situation too complicated. Parr's eyes, growing used to the darkness,saw that this was a grotesque, shaggy form, one of the degenerateoutcasts from the village. "Uh," repeated his interrogator. "You come tous. Make one more in camp. Come."

  * * * * *

  Among tall trees, thickly grown, lay a throng of sleepers. Parr'scompanion led him there, and made an awkward gesture.

  "You lie down. You sleep. Tomorrow--boss talk. Uh!"

  So saying, the beast-man curled up at the root of a tree. Parr sat downwith his back against another trunk, the club across his knees, but hedid not sleep.

  This, plainly enough, was the outcast horde. It clung together, thegregariousness of humanity not yet winnowed out by degeneration. It hada ruler, too--"Tomorrow boss talk." Talk of what? In what fashion?

  Thus Parr meditated during the long, moonless night. He also took timeto examine once more his captured armor. Its metal plates, clamped upona garment of leatheroid, covered his body and limbs, even the backs ofhis hands, as well as his neck and scalp. Yet, as he had decided before,it was no great protection against violence. As clothing it wassuperfluous on this tropical planetoid. What then?

  He could not see, but he could feel. His fingers quested all over oneplate, probing and tapping. The plate was hollow--in reality, twosaucer-shaped plates with their concave faces together. They gave off amuffled clink of hollowness when he tapped them. When he shook thearmor, there was something extra in the sound, and that impelled him tohold a plate close to his ear. He heard a soft, rhythmic whirr ofmachinery.

  "There's a vibration in this stuff," he summed up in his mind. "Whatfor? To protect against what?"

  Then, suddenly, he had it.

  The greatest menace of the whole tiny world was the force that reversedevolution--the vibration must be designed to neutralize that force!

  "I'm immune!" cried Fitzhugh Parr aloud; and, in the early dawn that nowcrept into the grove, his sleeping companions began to wake and rise andgape at him.

  He gaped back, with the shocked fascination that any intelligent personwould feel at viewing such reconstructions of his ancestors. At almostthe first glance he saw that the newest evolutionary thought wascorrect--these were simian, but not apes. Ape and man, as he had oftenheard, sprang from the same common fore-father, low-browed,muzzle-faced, hairy. Such were these, in varying degrees of intensity.None wore clothes. Grinning mouths exhibited fanglike teeth, bare chestsbroadened powerfully, clumsy hands with short, ineffectual thumbs madefoolish gestures. But the feet, for instance, were not like hands, theywere flat pedestals with forward-projecting toes. The legs, thoughshort, were powerful. Man's father, decided Parr, must have hadsomething of the bear about his appearance ... and the most bearlike ofthe twenty or thirty beast-men heaved himself erect and came slouchingacross toward Parr.

  This thing had once been a giant of a man, and remained a giant of ananimal. None of the others present were nearly as large, nor were any ofthe men who had driven Parr forth. Six feet six towered thishair-thicketed ogre, with a chest like a drayhorse, and arms as thick asstovepipes. One hand--the thumb had trouble opposing the great cucumberfingers--flourished a club almost as long as Parr's whole body.

  "I--boss," thundered this monster impressively. "Throw down stick."

  Parr had risen, his own club poised for defense. The giant's free handpointed to the weapon. "Throw down," it repeated, with a growl asbearlike as the body.

  "Not me," said Parr, and ducked away from the tree-trunk against whichhe might be pinned. "What's the idea? I didn't do anything to you--"

  "I--boss," said his threatener again. "Nobody fight me."

  "True, true," chorused the others sycophantically. "Ling, he boss--throwdown club, you new man."

  Parr saw what they meant. With the other community, the newest andtherefore most advanced individual ruled. In
this more primitivesociety, the strongest held sway until a stronger displaced him. Thegiant called Ling was by no means the most human-seeming creature there,but he was plainly the ruler and plainly meant so to continue. Parr wasno coward, but he was no fool. As the six-foot bludgeon whirled upwardbetween him and the sky, he cast down his own stick in token ofsurrender.

  "No argument, Ling," he said sensibly.

  There was laughter at that, and silly applause. Ling swung around andstripped bare his great pointed fangs in a snarl. Silence fell abruptly,and he