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."
