ATAVISM

The amphibious force moved in with big guns ready, with rockets and flame throwers and LCI's and LCT's and planes and thousands of combat-hardened men, expecting to shoot the works against the fog-shrouded little island that might have held the northern key to invasion.

The men were all tensely expectant. All, that is, except the nurse and the Air Force radioman whom one of the LCT's had picked up en route, drifting in a rubber life raft. But their apparent indifference to the impending battle aroused little comment. The task force had its own problems to consider, and that pair had already had it rugged. Their plane, they said, had been shot down weeks before and they'd been dodging Japs ever since.

When the ramp of the first landing craft grated on the gravel and word went back to the waiting ships that the battle was off, that the Japs for some unknown reason of their own had pulled out without even pausing to destroy their equipment, the nurse and the radioman seemed as calm as though it were what they had expected all along. But in the excitement over the startling new development their peculiar behavior was overlooked. They didn't complain, for they had no desire to do any more lying than necessary....

... Yark was a Great Brain. Even the more advanced embryos were conscious of his revered status. But his three eyes blinked in rotation—a sure sign of pleasure in a Martian—and in the pleasure of addressing the most distinguished Martians from every field of endeavor his outlines wavered and grew dim. For seconds at a time he thinned out almost to transparency.

He addressed the gathering orally, though of course all present were sufficiently advanced for direct brain-to-brain communication. Yark fancied himself as an orator—the one atavistic trait he consciously allowed himself—and mental contact did not allow the little frills of speech-making.

"The outer hull of the spaceship is made of oxides," he declared, "because the planet selected for initial exploration has an unconscionable amount of oxygen in its atmosphere, and oxides will not oxidize."

Mental applause resounded through the great Hall. This was excellent Martian logic.

"Construction of the vessel was relatively simple. The great problem lay in developing a life form which could withstand the rigors of the journey.

"What sets us apart from the lower forms of life?"

The question was purely rhetorical. Every Martian knew it was the ability to change form at will.

"This trait is of course due to superior mental ability and training. But even for us there has been a definite limitation, caused of course by residual atavisms ... atavisms which we must, and some day will, extirpate completely from our glorious race."

Excitement overcame his mental control and for a moment he became completely invisible. He frowned mentally as he caught a tittering reaction from some individual in the audience. Invisibility, too, was an aspect of shape adaptation, of superiority, though because it no longer served a useful purpose it had come to be regarded with suspicion as an atavistic trait. This was particularly true of the involuntary invisibility which sometimes accompanied high emotional tension. A powerful and growing school of thought even considered emotions themselves as atavisms.

A human audience would have fidgeted as Yark recounted in minutest detail the processes by which Erg, to whom had been granted the honor of becoming the first Martian to visit another planet, had been reduced to the lowest common denominator of Martian consciousness, a mass of specialized but undifferentiated cells. And Yark, Yark of the Council of Great Brains, had been in charge since the very earliest stages of Erg's embryohood.

"This reduction," Yark declared, "has been possible only by complete elimination of all atavistic traits. Even latent ones." He told with obvious satisfaction of Erg's unprecedented perfect zero score on the famous Yark Anti-Atavism Test.

"Erg will remain in full telepathic contact with me," the Great Brain continued. "Immediately following the landing there will be a period of quiescence, necessary to allow Erg to adjust himself to his new environment. During this period he will be able to gather and retransmit mental impressions from any intelligent creatures nearby—providing of course any such creatures exist upon this barbarously un-Martian planet—but his individuality will remain passive.

"Following the period of quiescence, differentiation of cells will take place. Erg will then be a full-fledged Martian and will explore the entire planet. After that, who knows what vistas of greatness lie ahead?

"In his present form only I, his mentor and creator, can retain contact. But you honored Martians will be allowed to become attuned to my brain and thus receive Erg's reports."

He paused and held aloft a transparent cylinder. The Martians stirred with interest. They were all greatly impressed, although Erg resembled nothing so much as a pot roast in a jar. They had never heard of a pot roast.

"We shall now dispatch Erg upon his epochal journey."

Gunnar Viborg paced restlessly to keep warm, kicking irritably at the pile of mouldy straw in the back of the cave and the deflated life raft from which they had sneaked ashore the night after their plane had been shot down at sea.

"Martha," he said, "this is no good. If we don't get food now, tonight, we'll be too weak if we ever do get a chance for a getaway. I say, let's make a grab now and take our chances afterward. How about it?"

The nurse, her attractive face now pinched with cold and hunger, nodded. Both were well aware that a raid on a Jap supply cache would start an intensive search, but hunger and desperation are companions.

They checked their pistols, their only weapons except Gunnar's trench knife, and started out. They had already chosen their objective, but were only halfway there when the raid began. Probing searchlight beams broke futilely against the hovering clouds and the night rocked with falling bombs and the insane yammer of anti-aircraft fire.

One raid more or less meant little in their situation and, even while they crouched between two huge boulders, Gunnar kept remembering that wonderful restaurant in his Minnesota home town, its strong black coffee and thick steaks and beautiful apple pie.

"Quit that, stomach!" he told himself.

The raid seemed to have ended and they were moving on again when, without warning, the night was shattered by a blue flash somewhere above. The glare penetrated even the blanketing fog and for an instant left the island starkly outlined in a brilliance exceeding daylight. Instantly the ack-ack resumed its uproar, firing blindly. A thousand freight trains seemed to rumble by overhead.

Then a ball-shaped object, emitting a dying trail of flame, whistled out of the overcast like a gigantic bomb. Sparks flashed from a rock as it struck and rebounded. It bounced again and came tumbling down the hill, clanging against boulders, hissing and steaming with its own heat as it encountered patches of snow.

"What—what the hell is it?" Martha whispered.

"Some sort of rocket plane. I didn't know we had anything like that."

Gunnar ran forward to investigate as it came to rest near them. It was metal, but battered completely beyond recognition. Part of it was ripped and torn as though by a shell.

"Let's get out of here," Martha urged as Gunnar probed the wreckage. "The Japs are coming."

Gunnar prodded once more at a loosened section, which swung aside to disclose a padded compartment. The transparent cylindrical container he hauled out was scorched but unbroken.

"Let's go!" Martha pleaded.

They had to endure an eternity of anxious waiting, huddled in a snowbank while a Nip patrol went by. Gunnar held on to his loot. He had gotten one glimpse of the contents, and it looked like food.

Their clothing was soaked with melted snow and sweat when at last they regained the comparative safety of their cave.

Gunnar had trouble with the container. The fastenings refused to unfasten.

"Quit stalling," Martha complained. "I'm hungry."

Finally Gunnar smashed the thing open with a chunk of rock and hacked off a couple of pieces with his trench knife. The meat resembled an outstandingly low grade of Spam, interspersed with bits of gristle that made tough chewing, and it had a strong gamey taste.

"Not American," Gunnar remarked.

"Some kind of ersatz, probably Jap," Martha commented between bites. They were too hungry to be choosey.

A sound from the cave's mouth interrupted their meal. Gunnar gripped his trench knife and pistol as he moved stealthily forward. Then he laughed.

"What is it?" Martha inquired, her gun ready, too.

The half-breed husky growled again, sniffed hungrily and entered the cave snarling. Old scars and new gashes in his flea-bitten hide showed his familiarity with the ways of Jap soldiery.

"One of the dogs the Aleuts left behind when the Japs drove them out," Gunnar said.

He threw a small chunk of gristle. The dog cowered at the motion but darted forward as the piece fell and wolfed it down without chewing.

"Here you are, pooch," Gunnar called.

"Why, he's starved," Martha observed.

Gunnar held more meat in his hand and backed into the cave. The dog followed, wagging his stumpy tail, all growling and menace forgotten as he found the humans friendly.

"We can't let him live," he said reluctantly as the dog accepted the food from his hand. "He'd run in and out and lead the Japs here."

"I guess you're right," the nurse agreed, "But—"

Gunnar picked up his knife, but the dog chose that moment to lick his wrist with a rough, wet tongue, place one paw on his knee and look up inquiringly. Gunnar extended it toward Martha. "Here, you do it. I can't."

She made no move to take the weapon. "I can't, either. He trusts us."

She yawned. A few seconds later he did likewise. Then the dog yawned, too. Gunnar fought another yawn.

"Something—aangh—wrong—aangh—with that meat!" he cried, sudden alarm struggling with drowsiness. "I feel doped!"

Drowsiness won. He leaned back against the straw in the darkness and closed his eyes.

Martha's eyelids were heavy but she was still a nurse. She shook him violently. "Sleep in those wet clothes and you'll wake up with pneumonia. Get them off!" she ordered.

Dizzily they undressed in the blackness, wringing out their sopping clothing and hanging it on projecting points of rock in the cave. Before they finished the dog was snoring loudly in the straw.

Martha felt silly and lightheaded. "Gunnar," she said. "Let's call him Frankie. He sings." She giggled.

Then she yawned once more, burrowed into the straw and was sound asleep.

Gunnar had just time to place the two guns and his knife nearby before he too lost consciousness....

... Heat. Cold. Heat again. Violent motion. A ripping shock. The sensations would have been excruciatingly painful to any Martian still possessed of anything so atavistic as a pain sense.

Motion impulses were replaced by vague manifestations of the presence of alien life forms nearby. Two units of alien life. Sensations of Erg becoming the center of some unintelligible, barbaric scene of jubilation, as though he were being received with great joy.

Yark was mildly surprised. Life on this distant planet had evolved further than he had anticipated. The ceremony was confusing, but at least those organisms had developed sufficiently to recognize Erg's inherent superiority and to receive him accordingly.

Rapidly the jubilation died away. Erg was entering the stage of total quiescence, and evidently these alien creatures had quiescent periods too.

The flow of thought impulses ceased and the assembly waited, members gossiping mentally while Yark kept his brain receptive.

Time passed, and suddenly an inaudible scream of mental anguish was ripped from Yark's brain before he could repress it. The assembly came to instant attention, all mental small talk forgotten.

Yark writhed. Differentiation had begun—but what differentiation! Erg, the incomparable Erg, the most carefully normalized of all Martian personalities—had suddenly developed advanced multiple schizophrenia. He had split into three personalities, two disgustingly atavistic, while the third—ugh! That one was indescribably horrid. Yark had just time to distinguish between the three when their thought trains impinged on his brain, all three at once.

Yark's brain was shaken to its very foundations by the intensity of their un-Martian confusion. Fear and anger and snarling hatred and despair and the nearness of deadly peril and the desire to do something to protect something else, emotions which Yark had never encountered in the entire span of his existence, all swirled through his mind at once in sickening profusion.

Erg, pure, beautiful, perfect, non-atavistic Erg, thinking such black and unenlightened emotion-thoughts!

Yark was outraged, nonplussed and confounded by Erg's incontrovertible symptoms of atavistic schizophrenia. Once more his mind registered a mental titter, this time from more than one member of the audience....

... Gunnar reached out to quiet the growling dog, but Frankie was gone. Instead his hand encountered Martha's and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. He listened, hardly breathing.

From just outside the cave came the peculiar faint sound made only by split-toed Japanese shoes.

"This is it," he whispered as he pressed Martha's pistol into her hand. "They've found us. Better save one shot for yourself."

Flashlights glimmered around the bend of the cave and the clothing hanging from the rocks shuddered and fell as a burst of Nambu fire roared. A Jap ran toward the huddled garments, chattering wildly.

Gunnar knew they could hope only to take as many Nips as possible with them. Even as he opened fire he could hear Martha's pistol start up beside him. The first Japs went down.

Then his pistol clicked empty.

"Just one more," Gunnar prayed as he threw the useless weapon into the nearest yellow face and drew his knife for a final charge.

He expected to be met by a burst of fire as he stepped out, but the bullets did not come. Instead a Jap tripped and kicked at something near his feet, then tumbled violently backward with his hands coming up as though to protect his face. The Jap started to scream but stopped abruptly as blood spurted from a throat suddenly raw and mangled. A snarling growl echoed through the cave.

A snarling growl echoed through the cave.

Another Nip went down, struggling with something invisible.

Panic gripped the Jap patrol. Two surviving soldiers broke and ran, but the lieutenant in charge snatched up a gun. Bullets whined off the rocks as he fired wildly, without a target.

All at once Frankie lay in the middle of the floor, his spine shattered by a chance bullet but his fangs still bared in a snarl of defiance. The Jap kicked at the dog, then jumped aside and stared unbelievingly as his outlines blurred momentarily. He kicked again with deliberate brutality, and the dog gave one convulsive shudder and lay still.

Without conscious volition Gunnar raised his arm. Twenty feet away bones crunched under the brass handle-studs of the trench knife. Gunnar felt the impact up his arm, and then the snick as the double-edged blade plunged between two ribs.

Then he and Martha were alone with several dead Japanese and the body of a dog.

Gunnar felt a pulling sensation in his shoulder. The bloody knife surged toward him through the air. He looked down.

And he wasn't there at all!

"M—Martha!" he called unsteadily.

"Yes, Gunnar," her voice answered from nearby.

"Where are you?"

"Here."

"Where?"

He glanced wildly around. Her pistol was floating in the air beside him, and then by the light of a flash the Japs had dropped he could just discern the tenuous, transparent outlines of her figure. He stared.

She must have seen him too, for instantly she was completely invisible again.

"What the hell—?" he asked.

"I—I don't know." Her voice was shaky now. Her coveralls lifted themselves from the floor and fastened themselves.

"Get them off," he begged after one look. "I can see you that way, sort of."

Bullets had ripped through the garments and the rents disclosed large patches of nothingness inside. The result was both indecent and terrifying. Hurriedly she slipped them off.

"I can't see myself and I don't feel cold at all," she mused. "Are we dead?"

Gunnar had a practical mind.

"I don't think so," he decided. "I don't know what's happened to us, but if we can't see ourselves or each other they sure as hell can't see us either. And we're going to damn well take advantage of it. Their radar station, first."

They floundered out into a snowstorm, keeping together by the sound of their voices and an occasional touch of hands.

"I wish we had feet like snowshoes," he remarked, trying to break the spell of spookiness with conversation.

He felt a tug, a spreading, and found himself stepping lightly over the drifts.

"Judas!" he said in awe. "If we're dead, which place is this?"

The confidential agent from Imperial Headquarters confronted the garrison's commandant. "You are a disgrace to the Imperial Army," he snorted. "You have the mentality of an Ainu."

"But Excellency—"

"Radar station destroyed. Coastal guns useless. Ammunition set afire. Supplies stolen. Sentries killed. But, instead of taking proper measures against these Yankee saboteurs who have very evidently sneaked ashore—due to more of your incompetence—you send us fables to cover your own deficiencies. Ghost hands. Ghost Yankees. All fables. Bah!

"That is as absurd as the idea of my own pistol rising from its holster by itself and turning upon me."

"Excellency," shrieked the overwrought officer. "Don't say such things on this island!"

The agent stared in horror-struck rigidity as his gun jerked itself clear, rose, and pointed. The gun spat twice, then floated rapidly across the room and placed itself gently in the commandant's trembling hand.

The headquarters bodyguard rushed in and jumped at conclusions as they saw their superior's body. Their crossfire cut the unfortunate commandant almost in half.

The major who was second in command stuck his head in the doorway for one horrified look. But when something unseen in that room of death laughed harshly in triumph he dashed hastily out again, screaming frantic orders....

... Yark was unhappy. The majority reaction was profound shock at the realization that the great Yark was not infallible.

"What shall we do?" a mental voice asked.

"Destroy him!" The response was overwhelming.

Yark recoiled. Erg was his masterpiece, and to destroy him would be to acknowledge utter failure. But his very status as a Great Brain was now in jeopardy.

"It will be difficult to reach the real, the actual Erg, submerged as he is beneath his false schizophrenic personalities, but through me it can be accomplished...."

"... We'd better get some clothes on," Martha said bashfully. She could feel her outlines showing again. For the past couple of days it had become increasingly difficult to maintain complete invisibility. She and Gunnar were both beginning to flicker, to appear dimly and then vanish again.

"That's right. I'm beginning to feel the cold again, too." Gunnar was a gentleman and spared her modesty. "Whatever it is, it's wearing off."

The island lay several hours behind them when Martha glanced around once more at Gunnar's apparently empty clothing and the dent the weight of his body made in the rubber boat. She gave a little squeal of surprise this time, for the dent and the clothes were occupied—by Gunnar, solid and in the flesh.

He looked, and saw her, too. For a minute, neither said a word....