PALIMPSEST

By ROGER DEE

Care to sire a brand new race? Then get aboard the Terra IV, only spaceship to escape demolished Earth, and enter the new-born Venusian sweepstakes.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The first Venusian ship to reach Earth found a single isolated tribe of human beings roving the bushlands of a large island in the southern hemisphere. The Earthmen were without exception dark of skin and eye, and their hair, which was jet-black, was as kinky as koola wool. All were backward to the point of savagery, fleeing in superstitious terror before every attempt at communication.

Val Conna and his crew—nine tall young men, fair-skinned and lordly and alike enough to have been brothers—made an exhaustive search that carefully bypassed ruined cities still radioactive past the safety point, and after ten days abandoned their quest in disappointment.

"I find no resemblance between this remnant of Earth's people and ourselves," announced Mach Bren, expedition anthropologist, "except a bipedal structure which only bears out our theory of like species developing on like worlds, and this similarity is sharply negated by impossible divergence in racial characteristics. Neither people could have changed so greatly during the four thousand years we know our culture has existed on Venus, and therefore it is obvious that we did not stem from Earthmen nor they from us."

There was no argument.

"Then the puzzle of our origin is still unsolved," said Val Conna, and gave the order to blast-off. So they left Earth for home, already planning further expeditions to the outer planets in search of the world of their birth....

Somehow Hanlon had wormed his way into their quarters and was waiting when Geddes and Lowe and Hovic, crew of the Terra IV, returned to base from their final interview with the press. Hanlon had been drunk for days, and was in pitiable condition. His hand shook violently and the bloodshot shine of his eyes was like a reflection to the fiery red of his unkempt hair.

"I had to say good-bye before the blast-off," he said, with a sorry attempt at his old assurance. "After all, I was one of you until a couple of 

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