Devolution

yet he had thought he heard.

'We will let you move but you must not attempt to escape or harm us.'

He did hear those words in his mind, even though his ears heard no sound. And now his brain heard more.

'We are speaking to you by transference of thought impulses. Have you sufficient mentality to understand us?'

Minds? Minds in these things? Woodin was shaken by the thought as he stared at the glistening monsters.

His thought apparently had reached them. 'Of course we have minds,' came the thought answer into his brain. 'We are going to let you move now, but do not try to flee.'

'I–I won't try,' Woodin told himself mentally.

At once the paralysis that held him abruptly lifted. He stood there in the circle of the glistening monsters, his hands and body trembling violently.

There were ten of them, he saw now. Ten monstrous, humped masses of shining, translucent jelly, gathered around him like cowled and faceless genii come from some haunt of the unknown. One stood closer to him than the others, apparently spokesman and leader.

Woodin looked slowly around their circle, then down at his two dead companions. In the midst of the unfamiliar terrors that froze his soul, he felt a sudden aching pity as he looked down at them.

Came another strong thought into Woodin's mind from the creature closest him. 'We did not wish to kill them, we came here simply to capture and communicate with the three of you.

'But when we sensed that they were trying to kill us, we slew quickly. You, who did not try to kill us but fled, we harmed not.'

'What-what do you want with us, with me?' Woodin asked. He whispered it through dry lips, as well as thinking it.

There was no mental answer this time. The things stood unmoving, a silent ring of brooding, unearthly figures. Woodin felt his mind snapping under the strain of silence and he asked the question again, screamed it.

This time the mental answer came. 'I did not answer, because I was probing your mentality to ascertain whether you are of sufficient intelligence to comprehend our ideas.

'While your mind seems of an exceptionally low order, it seems possible that it can appreciate enough of what we wish to convey to understand us.

'Before beginning, however, I warn you again that it is quite impossible for you to escape or to harm any of us and that attempts to do so will result disastrously for you. It is apparent you know nothing of mental energy, so I will inform you that your two fellow-creatures were killed by the sheer power of our wills, and that your muscles were held unresponsive to your brain's commands by the same power. By our mental energy we could completely annihilate your body, if we chose.'

There was a pause, and in that little space of silence, Woodin's dazed brain clutched desperately for sanity, for steadiness.

Then came again that mental voice that seemed so like a real voice speaking in his brain.

'We are children of a galaxy whose name, as nearly as it can be approximated in your tongue, is Arctar. The galaxy of Arctar lies so many million light-years from this galaxy that it is far around the curve of the sphere of the three-dimensional cosmos.

'We came to dominance in that galaxy long ages ago. For we were creatures who could utilize our mental energy for transport, for physical power, for producing almost any effect we required. Because of this we rapidly conquered and colonized that galaxy, traveling from sun to sun without need of any vehicle.

'Having brought all the matter of the galaxy Arctar under our control, we looked out upon the realms beyond. There are approximately a thousand million galaxies in the three-dimensional cosmos, and it seemed fitting to us that we should colonize them all so that all the matter in the cosmos should in time be brought under our control.

'Our first step was to proliferate our numbers so as to multiply our number to that required for the great task of colonization of the cosmos. This was not difficult since, of course, reproduction with us is a matter of mere fission. When the requisite number of us were ready, they were divided into four forces.

'Then the whole sphere of the three-dimensional cosmos was quartered out among those four forces. Each was to colonize its division of the cosmos and so in their tremendous hosts they set out from Arctar, in four different directions.

'A part of one of these forces came to this galaxy of yours eons ago and spread out deliberately to colonize all its habitable worlds. All this took great lengths of time, of course, but our lives are of length vastly exceeding yours, and we comprehend that racial achievement is everything and individual achievement is nothing. In the colonization of this galaxy, a force of several million Arctarians came to this particular son and, finding but this one planet of its nine nearer worlds habitable, settled here.

'Now it has been the rule that the colonists of all these worlds throughout the cosmos have kept in communication with the original home of our race, the galaxy Arctar. In that way, our people, who now hold the whole cosmos, are able to concentrate at one point all their knowledge and power, and from that point go forth commands that shape great projects for the cosmos.

'But from this world no communications have ever been received since shortly after the force of colonizing Arctarians came here. When this was first noted the matter was deferred, it being thought that within a few more million years reports would surely be made from this world, too. But still no word came, until after more than a thousand million years of this silence the directing council at Arctar ordered an expedition sent to this world to ascertain the reason for such silence on the part of its colonists.

'We ten form that expedition and we started from one of the worlds of the sun you call Sirius, a short distance from your own sun, where we too are colonists. We were ordered to come with full speed to this world and ascertain why its colonists had made no report. So, wafting ourselves by mental energy through the void, we crossed the span from sun to sun and a few days ago arrived on your world.

'Imagine our perplexity when we floated down here on your world! Instead of a world peopled in every square mile by Arctarians like ourselves, descended from the original colonists, a world completely under their mental control, we find a planet that is largely a wilderness of weird forms of life!

'We remained at this spot where we had landed and for some time sent our vision forth and scanned this whole globe mentally. And our perplexity increased, for never had we seen such grotesque and degraded forms of life as presented themselves to us. And not one Arctarian was to be seen on this whole planet.

'This has sorely perplexed us, for what could have done away with the Arctarians who colonized this world? Our mighty colonists and their descendants surely could never have been overcome and destroyed by the pitifully weak mentalities that now inhabit this globe. Yet where, when, are they?

'That is why we sought to seize you and your companions. Low as we knew your mentalities must be, it seemed that surely even such as you would know what had become of our colonists who once inhabited this world.'

The thought-stream paused a moment, then raced into Woodin's mind with a clear question.

'Have you not some knowledge of what became of our colonists? Some clue as to their strange disappearance?'

The numbed biologist found himself shaking his head slowly. 'I never-I never heard before of such creatures as you, such minds. They never existed on earth that we know of, and we now know almost all of the history of earth.'

'Impossible!' exclaimed the thought of the Arctarian leader. 'Surely you must have some knowledge of our mighty people if you know all the history of this planet.'

From another Arctarian's mind came a thought, directed at the leader but impinging indirectly on Woodin's brain.

'Why not examine the past of the planet through this creature's brain and see what we can see for ourselves!'

'An excellent idea!' exclaimed the leader. 'His mentality will be easy enough to probe.'

'What are you going to do?' cried Woodin shrilly, panic edging his voice.