This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself.
It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep.
He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed.
"Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy."
Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head.
"That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside."
Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion.
They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men.
From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife.