One or two chuckled at that, and the one who called himself Sadau said: "We all feel unjustly condemned. Meet the others--Jeffords, Wain, Haldocott...." Each man, as named, bowed to Parr. The final introduction was of a sallow, frowning lump of a fellow called Shanklin. "I was boss until you came," volunteered this last man. "Now you take over." He waved toward a little cluster of grass huts, half hidden among ferny palms. "This is our capital city. You get the largest house--until somebody new shows up. Then you step down, like me." He spoke with ill grace. Parr did not reply at once, but studied these folk who were putting themselves under his rule. They would not have been handsome even if shaved and dressed properly. Indeed, two or three had the coarse, low-browed look of profound degenerates. Back into Parr's mind came the words of Sadau: "The longer you stay ... the lower you fall." "Gentlemen," said Parr at last, "before I accept command or other office, give me information. Just now you were acting violently. You, Sadau, started explaining. Go ahead." Sadau shrugged a lean freckled shoulder, and with a jerk of his head directed his companions to retire toward the huts. They obeyed, with one or two backward glances. Left alone with Parr, Sadau looked up with a wise, friendly expression. "I won't waste time trying to be scientific or convincing. I'll give you facts--we older exiles know them only too well. This asteroid seems a sort of Eden to you, I daresay." "I told the Martians that I knew there was a catch somewhere." "Your instinct's sound. The catch is this: Living creatures--Terrestrials anyway--degenerate here. They go backward in evolution, become--" Sadau broke off a moment, for his lips had begun to quiver. "They become beasts," he finished. "What?" growled Parr. "You mean that men turn into apes?" "Yes. And the apes turn into lower creatures. Those become lower creatures still." Sadau's eyes were earnest and doleful. "The process may run back and down to the worm, for all we can judge. We try not to think too much about it." "This is a joke of some kind," protested Parr, but Sadau was not smiling. "Martian joke, perhaps. The treaty keeps them from killing us--and this is their alternative punishment. It makes death trivial by comparison.... You don't believe. It's hard. But you see that some of us, oldest in point of exile, are sliding back into bestiality. And you saw us drive away, as our custom is, a man who had definitely become a beast." "That thing was a man?" prompted Parr, his spine chilling. "It had been a man. As you wander here and there, you'll come upon queer sights--sickening ones." Parr squinted at the huts, around the doors of which lounged the other men. "That looks like a permanent community, Sadau."