He could not see, but he could feel. His fingers quested all over one plate, probing and tapping. The plate was hollow—in reality, two saucer-shaped plates with their concave faces together. They gave off a muffled clink of hollowness when he tapped them. When he shook the armor, there was something extra in the sound, and that impelled him to hold a plate close to his ear. He heard a soft, rhythmic whirr of machinery.
“There’s a vibration in this stuff,” he summed up in his mind. “What for? To protect against what?”
Then, suddenly, he had it.
The greatest menace of the whole tiny world was the force that reversed evolution—the vibration must be designed to neutralize that force!
“I’m immune!” cried Fitzhugh Parr aloud; and, in the early dawn that now crept into the grove, his sleeping companions began to wake and rise and gape at him.
He gaped back, with the shocked fascination that any intelligent person would feel at viewing such reconstructions of his ancestors. At almost the first glance he saw that the newest evolutionary thought was correct—these were simian, but not apes. Ape and man, as he had often heard, sprang from the same common forefather, low-browed, muzzle-faced, hairy. Such were these, in varying degrees of intensity. None wore clothes. Grinning mouths exhibited fanglike teeth, bare chests broadened powerfully, clumsy hands with short, ineffectual thumbs made foolish gestures. But the feet, for instance, were not like hands, they were flat pedestals with forward-projecting toes. The legs, though short, were powerful. Man’s father, decided Parr, must have had something of the bear about his appearance … and the most bearlike of the twenty or thirty beast-men heaved himself erect and came slouching across toward Parr.
This thing had once been a giant of a man, and remained a giant of an animal. None of the others present were nearly as large, nor were any of the men who had driven Parr forth. Six feet six towered this hair-thicketed ogre, with a chest like a drayhorse, and arms as thick as stovepipes. One hand—the thumb had trouble opposing the great cucumber fingers—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 hand pointed to the weapon. “Throw down,” it repeated, with a growl as bearlike as the body.
“Not me,” said Parr, and ducked away from the tree-trunk against which he 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—throw down club, you new man.”
Parr saw what they meant. With the other community, the newest and therefore most advanced individual ruled. In this more primitive society, the strongest held sway until a stronger displaced him. The giant 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 was no coward, but he was no fool. As the six-foot bludgeon whirled upward between him and the sky, he cast down his own stick in token of surrender.
“No argument, Ling,” he said sensibly.
There was laughter at that, and silly applause. Ling swung around and stripped bare his great pointed fangs in a snarl. Silence fell abruptly, and he faced Parr again. “You,” he said. “You got on—” And he stepped close, tapping the plates on Parr’s chest.
“It’s armor,” said Parr.
“Huh! Ah—ar—” The word was too much for the creature, whose brain and mouth alike had forgotten most language. “Well,” said Ling, “I want. I wear.”
He fumbled at the fastenings.
Parr jumped clear of him. He had accepted authority a moment ago, but this armor was his insurance against becoming a beast. “It’s mine,” he objected.
Solemnly Ling shook his great browless head, as big as a coal-scuttle and fringed with bristly beard. “Mine,” he said roughly. “I boss. You—”
He caught Parr by the arm and dragged him close. So quick and powerful was the clutch that it almost dislocated Parr’s shoulder. By sheer instinct, Parr struck with his free fist.
Square and solid on that coarse-bearded chin landed Parr’s knuckles, with their covering of armor plate. And Ling, confident to the point of innocence because of his strength and authority, had neither guarded nor prepared. His great head jerked back as though it would fly from his shoulders. And Parr, wrenching loose, followed up the advantage because a second’s hesitation would be his downfall.
He hit Ling on the lower end of the breastbone, where his belly would be softest. Above him he heard the beast-giant grunt in pain, and then Parr swung roundabout to score on the jaw again. Ling actually gave back, dropping his immense bludgeon. A body less firmly pedestalled upon powerful legs and scoop-shovel feet would have gone down. It took a moment for him to recover.
“Aaaah!” he roared. “I kill you!”
Parr had stooped and caught up his own discarded club. Now he threw it full at the distorted face of his enemy. Ling’s hands flashed up like a shortstop’s, snatched the stick in midair, and broke it in two like a carrot. Another roar, and Ling charged, head down and arms outflung for a pulverizing grapple.
Parr sprang sidewise. Ling blundered past. His stooping head crashed against a tree, his whole body bounded back from the impact, and down he went in a quivering, moaning heap. He did not get up.
Parr backed away, gazing at the others. They stood silent in a score of attitudes, like children playing at moving statues. Then:
“Huh!” cried one. “New boss!”
A chorus of cries and howls greeted this. They gathered around Parr with fawning faces. “You boss! You fight Ling—beat ’im. Huh, you boss!”
At the racket, Ling recovered a little, and managed to squirm into a sitting posture. “Yes,” he said, “you boss.”
With one hand holding his half-smashed skull, he lifted the other in salute to Parr.
It took time—several days—but Parr got
