Masson's mouth dropped open. What must have happened back there in Crayton? His last memory was of a horrible wrenching at his delicate stomach, and then an abrupt blacking out of the auditorium. Apparently his ego, and that of Doctor Lawler as well, had by some mysterious means been exchanged with that of these froglike beings.
Suddenly he smiled. This was probably another of his nightmares. He would shut his eyes, pinch himself hard, and command himself to awaken.
He pinched. He heard Lawler screech in terror. Slowly he opened his eyes.
An ugly beast, a reptilian monster of scales and gaping tooth-lined snout, came lumbering toward him on stubby crooked legs. Ten feet in length was the alligator-like saurian, its lumpy black plates sprouting an ugly ridge of yellowish spines along its back down to its broad flat tail.
Masson took to his heels. He bounded away across the springy carpet of water-logged vines after the fading sounds of the Doctor's spurting webbed feet.
Fog closed in around him. Twice he fell into seemingly bottomless pools of water and his alien body surfaced him instinctively and dragged him ashore so he could continue his flight. No longer did he hear the running feet of Doctor Lawler; yet he continued to run.
So it was that he came into a section of the vine-floored mistiness where stubby leafy-boled shrubs grew from the spongy soil, and as he approached closer to the pale-leaved little trees, he heard the excited babble of slurred half-familiar words. He looked more closely at the trees then, to discover that just above his head a thatch of living vines, leaves and grasses topped each pulpy yellowish trunk.
Gray faces, hideous and limp of ear, peered down at him. He had come across a village of the frog people! From the trees of this sunless foggy jungle they had fashioned shelters of a sort.
As his breathing eased he could hear them more plainly. No wonder their speech sounded familiar, he realized, they were speaking English! Lawler and he were not alone then. Probably all of Crayton was here—possibly all of Ohio!
"I tell you," that was Charles Ellis, the chemistry department head, "I'm positive this is not Earth. May sound crazy to you, but I'm sure this is the planet Venus."