THE VEGANS (1932)

SOURCES: "Zehru of Xollar" by Hal K. Wells (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1932)

DESCRIPTION: “As the creatures came shambling rapidly forward on powerful bowed legs, and with the tips of their long hairy arms brushing the ground, they looked like grotesquely distorted apes. The crowning horror of those shambling figures, however, lay in the fact that they were completely headless! Even when the things approached to a distance of less than ten feet before halting in momentary indecision, Blake could detect no sign of any normal skull in the blunt space at the top of the powerful hairy torso. There was a furry-lipped mouth opening of some kind in the hollow between the bulging shoulders, but of eyes, ears, nose, or brain cavity there was no discernible trace. For a long moment the headless ape-things and the three human beings stood silently facing each other. Mapes' pistol was leveled pointblank at the nearest of the creatures, but their overwhelming numbers made the gangster hold his fire.There were two distinct groups of the things. At least twenty members of each group were in the crowd facing the Earthlings. To the rear of these attackers two oddly repulsive objects were carried and carefully shielded by picked guards of four unusually large and powerful ape-things.The nature of those two guarded objects puzzled Blake. They looked like large eggs of dirty-gray jelly, about a yard in length. They were obviously alive, for their gelatinous masses quivered and trembled in constant activity. Blake noted that there seemed to be a curious connection between the ebb and flow of pulsations in the egg-masses and the movements of the ape-things.” ("Zehru of Xollar" by Hal K. Wells)

NOTES: The Vegans are a collective entity made up of headless ape bodies controlled by a protoplasmic brain. The ape-things are rubbery with long claws and impervious to injury. The brain is quite easily harmed and has to be protected by the more mobile ape forms. Zehru of Xollar brings the Vegans to Xollar as potential hosts for his own consciousness.

HISTORY: The Vegans are a little reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft's Gugs, having no heads. It is unlikely Lovecraft influenced Wells for the story the Gugs appear in remained unpublished for decades after HPL wrote it. What probably did have an influence, was Wells's fight scene in this story, for it looks like an early version of Fredric Brown's "Arena" (1944) with its alien Roller.