There was at first the feeling of warm sunlight on his flesh, then a
pungent scent of crushed foliage, green and heady, very strong and
familiar.
As his mind took hold, a whisper of wind hummed into his consciousness
and a shimmering golden brightness began to grow upon his closed
eyelids. Abruptly, unity of sensation was achieved. Jerry Norcriss
"was" in a sunlit part of the woods near the mines, feeling the alien's
perceptions as though they were his own.
He crinkled his eyes against the glare, then slowly opened them.
As he blinked his eyes to focus the golden glare, he spotted a strange
little cluster of tiny sticks, with miniature leaves sprouting
greenly on thread-like branches. Halfway between his face and this
fragile copse slithered a brilliant blue line, ribbon-thin, through
a serpentine gouge along the earth. On the far side of this trickle
lay a rich tumble of soft green velvet, ending at a group of more of
those twig-copses. Puzzled, Jerry turned his gaze skyward. Within the
warm blue canopy overhead he saw clouds ... but clouds unlike any he'd
ever seen for size. None of them could have been more than a foot in
diameter. They hung against the sky like cotton-covered basketballs.
He returned his gaze groundward, and for the first time saw the
scuffed grayish area of earth between himself and the trickle. A wiry
network of metal glittered there, the wires in pairs, and the pairs
disappearing into small square punctures against a wall of banked soil.
Then Jerry gasped. His mind had apprehended the implications of his
vista so suddenly that he was staggered.
All the facts sprang into proper perspective. The twigs were actually
tall trees, the tumble of velvet a wide stretch of grassy sward, the
trickle was a rushing blue river, and the tiny wire-network in the
grayish area was the tracks for the mine-cars, leading down into the
planet through those tiny square adits.
Jerry had unconsciously been receiving sensations in terms of his
host's size. A quick calculation showed him that his head must be
easily five hundred feet in the air.
Cautiously, he glanced for the first time toward the body of his host,
to see what sort of creature he was in Contact with.
There was nothing whatever to be seen.
Yet when he closed his eyelids once again, golden opacity returned.
He reopened them thoughtfully. The alien, apparently, could cut off
its vision. Yet the eyes of a creature so high must be many feet in
diameter. And, at this height, twin opacities would be spotted even
from the nearby town.
But no such sight had been reported. Therefore, the lids were opaque
only from the inside. Which was ridiculous. Yet it was happening.
Jerry's thoughts were interrupted by a giddy realization. He, in this
alien body, was not standing. He was seated cross-legged on the ground.
That meant a height of not five hundred feet, but nearer seven hundred.
* * * * *
Cautiously, he extended a hand toward one of the tiny mine-cars. He had
a little difficulty directing a hand and arm he could not see; but, by
feeling along the earth, he got hold of the dull gray object and tried
to lift it. It came up with featherweight ease.
Then, halfway to his eyes, it began to glow, to smoke, to grow terribly
hot. And as Jerry released it with a reflex of pain, it burst into
white flame and hit the ground as a shapeless gobbet of molten slag.
Jerry's hand came to his mouth automatically. He sucked and licked at
the sore surfaces of his finger and thumb, trying to drain some of the
hurt out of them.
Then he froze.
After a heartbeat, he felt carefully about the interior of his mouth
with a forefinger. Gums. Warm, wet, soft-boned toothless gums.
Whatever the alien looked like--it was still only a baby.