"I won't go back," said Towser.
"We can't let them down," said Fowler.
Fowler took a step or two, back towards the dome, then stopped.
Back to the dome. Back to that aching, poison-laden body he had left. It hadn't seemed aching before, but now he knew it was. Back to the fuzzy brain. Back to muddled thinking. Back to the flapping mouths that formed signals others understood. Back to eyes that now would be worse than no sight at all. Back to squalor, back to crawling, back to ignorance.
"Perhaps some day," he said, muttering to himself.
"We got a lot to do and a lot to see," said Towser. "We got a lot to learn. We'll find things-"
Yes, they could find things. Civilizations, perhaps. Civilizations that would make the civilization of Man seem puny by comparison. Beauty and, more important, an understanding of that beauty. And a comradeship no one had ever known before – that no man, no dog had ever known before.
And life. The quickness of life after what seemed a drugged existence.
"I can't go back," said Towser.
"Nor I," said Fowler.
"They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser, "And me," said. Fowler, "back into a man."
NOTES ON THE FIFTH TALE
Bit by bit, as the legend unfolds, the reader gets a more accurate picture of the human race. By degrees, one gains the conviction that here is a race which can be little more than pure fantasy. It is not the kind of race which could rise from humble beginnings to the eminence of culture with which it is gifted in these tales. Its equipment is too poor.
So far its lack of stability has become apparent. Its preoccupation with a mechanical civilization rather than with a culture based on some of the sounder, more worthwhile concepts of life indicates a lack of basic character.
And now, in this tale, we learn of the limited communications which it possessed, a situation which certainly is not conducive to advancement. Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and the viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.
That Man himself realized this is quite apparent in his anxiety to obtain the Juwain philosophy, but it will be noted that he did not wish it for the understanding that it might give him, but for the power and glory and the knowledge that it might make possible. The philosophy was seen by Man as something which would advance him a hundred thousand years in the space of two short generations.
Throughout these tales it becomes clear that Man was running a race, if not with himself, then with some imagined follower who pressed close upon his heels, breathing on his back. Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it.
He has, according to the legend, come from the caves a million years before. And yet, only a little over a hundred years before the time of this tale, has he been able to eliminate killing as a basic part of his way of life. Here, then, is the true measure of his savagery: After a million years he has rid himself of killing and he regards it as a great accomplishment.
To most readers it will be easy, after reading this tale, to accept Rover's theory that Man is set up deliberately as the antithesis of everything the Dogs stand for, a sort of mythical strawman, a sociological fable.
This is underlined by the recurring evidence of Man's aimlessness, his constant running hither and yon, his grasping at a way of life which continually eludes him, possibly because he never knows exactly what he wants.
V. PARADISE
The dome was a squatted, alien shape that did not belong beneath the purple mist of Jupiter, a huddled, frightened structure that seemed to cower against the massive planet.
The creature that had been Kent Fowler stood spraddling on its thick-set legs.
An alien thing, he thought. That's how far I've left the human race. For it's not alien at all. Not alien to me. It is the place I lived in, dreamed in, planned in. It is the place I left – afraid. And it is the place I come back to – driven and afraid.
Driven by the memory of the people who were like me before I became the thing I am, before I knew the aliveness and the fitness and the pleasure that is possible if one is not a human being.
Towser stirred beside him and Fowler sensed the bumbling friendliness of the one-time dog, the expressed friendliness and comradeship and love that had existed all the time, perhaps, but was never, known so long as they were man and dog.
The dog's thoughts seeped into his brain. "You can't do it, pal," said Towser.
Fowler's answer was almost a wail. "But I have to, Towser. That's what I went out for. To find what Jupiter really is like. And now I can tell them, now I can bring them word."
You should have done it long ago, said a voice deep inside of him, a faint, far-off human voice that struggled up through his Jovian self. But you were a coward and you put it off – and put it off. You ran away because you were afraid to go back. Afraid to be turned into a man again.
"I'll be lonesome," said Towser, and yet he did not say it. At least there were no words – rather a feeling of loneliness, a heart-wrench cry at parting. As if, for the moment, Fowler had moved over and shared Towser's mind.
Fowler stood silent, revulsion growing in him. Revulsion at the thought of being turned back into a man – into the inadequacy that was the human body and the human mind.
"I'd come with you," Towser told him, "but I couldn't stand it. I might die before I could get back. I was nearly done for, you remember, I was old and full of fleas. My teeth were worn right down to nubbins and my digestion was all shot. And I had terrible dreams. Used to chase rabbits when I was a pup, but towards the last it was the rabbits that were chasing me."
"You stay here," said Fowler. "I'll be coming back."
If can make them understand , he thought. If only I can. If I can explain.
He lifted his massive head and stared at the lift of hills which swelled to mountain peaks shrouded in the rose and purple mist. A lightning bolt snaked across the sky and the clouds and mist were lighted with a fire of ecstasy.
He shambled forwards, slowly, reluctantly. A whiff of scent came down the breeze and his body drank it in – like a cat rolling in catnip. And yet it wasn't scent – although that was the closest he could come to it, the nearest word he had. In years to come the human race would develop a new terminology.
How could one, he wondered, explain the mist that drifted on the land and the scent that was pure delight. Other things they'd understand, he knew. That one never had to eat, that one never slept, that one was done with the whole range of depressive neurosis of which Man was victim. Those things they would understand, because they were things that could be told in simple terms, things which could be explained in existent language.