This, then is the story of those Earthlings flung into that swampy alien hell of a world by the freakish blast of an experimental patchwork of wires, tubes, and odd scraps of quartz. It is the tale of their battle for survival in a sodden unfriendly environment:
Glade Masson, timid, myopic history professor at Crayton College, jerked his head from the dank grayish ooze of the hollow where he lay. His eyes snapped wide as he examined the foggy outlines of bushes and twisting vines surrounding him. Further than the length of two bodies he could not see.
"'Lo," a croaking voice mumbled from close by.
Masson looked up into the blinking round dark eyes of the alien creature. He examined the naked human-shaped animal curiously as he came to his feet.
That the strange being was intelligent he realized at once; the sharp dagger of splintered bone depending from a cross band of mildewed hide told him that. But the noseless, broad-joweled face; the hairless slick grayness of the froglike body, shading to a dark purple around the two eyes and the generous slit of a mouth; the webbed hands and feet, and the drooping pointed ears were anything but human.
"A frog!" he gasped, amazed, "an intelligent batrachian!" He rubbed his hand across his eyes, and arrested the motion.
His hand was webbed and gray! He had six fingers instead of five! And his sleek body was naked save for the crossed belts of ridged hide supporting his own two daggers.
Masson belched. This strange new body of his had dined on fish he discovered, and probably very overripe fish at that. He flexed his thick gray arms, admiring the ripple of sleek hard muscle. Blood was pumping and throbbing through his body with the excitement of the moment. For almost the first time in his forty years of myopic boyhood and timid manhood Glade Masson felt alive.
Luxuriantly the man from Earth stretched. He saw an expression that he took to be amazement cross the strange being's features. The purple deepened around the other male's sunken nostrils.
"I," the frog man said, "am Doctor John Lawler!"