The Devils Asteroid | Page 2

back. It was erect and coarsely hairy--Parr saw that much before the enigma gave up the unequal fight and ran clumsily away into a mass of bright-flowered scrub. Execrations and a volley of sticks and stones speeded its flight.
Then the mob was aware of Parr. Every man--they were all male Terrestrials--turned toward him, with something like respect. One of them, tall and thin, spoke diffidently:
"You just arrived?"
"I was just booted out, ten minutes ago," Parr informed him. "Why?"
"Because you're our new chief," responded the thin man, bowing. "The latest comer always commands here."
Parr must have goggled, for the thin one smiled through tawny stubble. "The latest comer is always highest and wisest," he elaborated. "He is healthiest. Best. The longer you stay on this asteroid, the lower you fall."
Parr thought he was being joked with, and scowled. But his informant smiled the broader. "My name's Sadau--here under sentence for theft of Martian government property."
"I'm Fitzhugh Parr. They said I was a murderer. It's a lie."
One or two chuckled at that, and the one who called himself Sadau said: "We all feel unjustly condemned. Meet the others--Jeffords, Wain, Haldocott...." Each man, as named, bowed to Parr. The final introduction was of a sallow, frowning lump of a fellow called Shanklin.
"I was boss until you came," volunteered this last man. "Now you take over." He waved toward a little cluster of grass huts, half hidden among ferny palms. "This is our capital city. You get the largest house--until somebody new shows up. Then you step down, like me."
He spoke with ill grace. Parr did not reply at once, but studied these folk who were putting themselves under his rule. They would not have been handsome even if shaved and dressed properly. Indeed, two or three had the coarse, low-browed look of profound degenerates. Back into Parr's mind came the words of Sadau: "The longer you stay ... the lower you fall."
"Gentlemen," said Parr at last, "before I accept command or other office, give me information. Just now you were acting violently. You, Sadau, started explaining. Go ahead."
Sadau shrugged a lean freckled shoulder, and with a jerk of his head directed his companions to retire toward the huts. They obeyed, with one or two backward glances. Left alone with Parr, Sadau looked up with a wise, friendly expression.
"I won't waste time trying to be scientific or convincing. I'll give you facts--we older exiles know them only too well. This asteroid seems a sort of Eden to you, I daresay."
"I told the Martians that I knew there was a catch somewhere."
"Your instinct's sound. The catch is this: Living creatures--Terrestrials anyway--degenerate here. They go backward in evolution, become--" Sadau broke off a moment, for his lips had begun to quiver. "They become beasts," he finished.
"What?" growled Parr. "You mean that men turn into apes?"
"Yes. And the apes turn into lower creatures. Those become lower creatures still." Sadau's eyes were earnest and doleful. "The process may run back and down to the worm, for all we can judge. We try not to think too much about it."
"This is a joke of some kind," protested Parr, but Sadau was not smiling.
"Martian joke, perhaps. The treaty keeps them from killing us--and this is their alternative punishment. It makes death trivial by comparison.... You don't believe. It's hard. But you see that some of us, oldest in point of exile, are sliding back into bestiality. And you saw us drive away, as our custom is, a man who had definitely become a beast."
"That thing was a man?" prompted Parr, his spine chilling.
"It had been a man. As you wander here and there, you'll come upon queer sights--sickening ones."
Parr squinted at the huts, around the doors of which lounged the other men. "That looks like a permanent community, Sadau."
"It is, but the population's floating. I came here three months ago--Earth months--and the place was operating under the rules I outlined. Latest comer, necessarily the highest-grade human being, to be chief; those who degenerate beyond a certain point to be driven out; the rest to live peaceably together, helping each other."
Parr only half heard him. "Evolution turned backward--it can't be true. It's against nature."
"Martians war against nature," replied Sadau pithily. "Mars is a dead world, and its people are devils. They'd be the logical explorers to find a place where such things can be, and to make use of it. Don't believe me if you don't want to. Time and life here will convince you."
* * * * *
In the days that followed--the asteroid turned once in approximately twenty-two hours--Parr was driven to belief. Perhaps the slowness of the idea's dawning kept him from some form of insanity.
Every man of the little group that called him chief was on the way to be a man no more. There were stooped backs