I recognized him: Brayley, Commander in Chief of the land, air, water
and space armies of the United States of the World. He was gigantic in
stature, with a great shock of gray-white hair. A commanding figure,
if there ever was one.
Beside him, Nippor, the Japanese representative in Greater New York,
seemed a pigmy. The acoustics of the silent hall carried his soft
voice up to us. "I would be afraid of drugs. Will we use force? It is
vital."
"Yes, by God! Anything."
It seemed that everyone in the hall must be shuddering: I could feel
it like an aura pounding up at me. Brayley lifted the box-lid, reached
in and raised the horrible thing. He held it up, a two-foot ball of
palpitating gray-white membrane. Another living brain.
"Now, damn you, you're going to talk to us! Understand that? We're
going to make you talk. Get that box out of the way."
They flung the box to the floor, and Brayley placed the brain on the
table.
A glare of light, focussed on it, showed beneath the stretched taut
membrane the convolutions of the brain, like tangled purple worms. The
blood-vessels seemed distended almost to bursting now. The gruesome
face, with popping eyes and that gaping mouth, showed a horrible
travesty of terror. From where its ears should have been, a crooked
little arm of flabby, gray-white flesh came down, one on each side and
braced the table. And I saw now that it had a shriveled body, or at
least little legs, bent, almost crushed under by its weight.
"Now, damn you," Brayley said, rubbing off his hands on a rough towel,
"for the last time: will you talk?"
The goggling eyes held a terrified but baleful gaze upon Brayley's
face. Did it understand? The eyes were fronted our way, and suddenly
their glance swung up so that I seemed for an instant to see down into
them. And it struck me then: this was a thing of greater intelligence
than my own. A humanoid, with brain so developed that through myriad
generations the body was shriveled, almost gone. A mind was housed
here, an intelligence housed in this monstrous brain.
Were these the beings of the new planet which had come to attack us?
But how could this helpless creature, incapable of almost everything,
obviously, save thought, do the work of its world?
Then I recalled again that insulated room of the Red Spark Cafe: the
thin, ten-foot hooded shape which was carrying the box. Was that,
perhaps, an opposite type of being with the brain submerged, dwarfed,
and the body paramount? Were there, on this mysterious planet, two
co-existing types, each a specialist, one for the physical work and
the other for the mental?
I stood with Snap and Grantline in that dark balcony doorway, gazing
down to where the giant brain stood braced upon its shriveled arms and
legs, and realized why we of Earth and Venus and Mars are all cast in
the same mould we call human. It is a little family of planets, here
in our solar system; for countless eons we have been close neighbors.
The same sunlight, the same general conditions of life, the same
seed, were strewn here by a wise Creator. A man from the Orient is
different from an Anglo-Saxon; a man of Mars differs a little more.
But basically they are the same.
Yet, confronting us now was a new type, from realms of interstellar
space, far beyond our solar system.
"For the last time, will you talk?" snapped Brayley.
There was another interval of silence. The eyes of the brain were very
watchful. Its gaze roved the hall as though it were seeking for help.
It shifted its little arms on the table, seemingly exhausted from the
physical effort of supporting itself.
Brayley's voice came again. "Doubtless you can feel pain acutely. We
shall see."
With what effort of will to overcome his revulsion we may only guess,
he reached forward and pinched the little arm. The result was
electrifying. From the upended slit of mouth in that goggling face,
came a scream. It pierced the heavy tense silence of the hall, ghastly
in its timbre, like nothing any of us had ever heard before. And in it
was conveyed agony as though Brayley had not merely pinched that
flabby arm, but had thrust a red-hot knife into its vitals.
The brain could feel pain indeed. It crouched with stiffened arms and
legs. The membrane of its great head seemed to bulge with greater
distension; the knotted blood-vessels were gorged with purple blood.
The eyes rolled. Then it closed its mouth. Its gaze steadied upon
Brayley's face, so baleful a gaze that as I could see the reflection
of its luminous purple glow a shudder of fear and revulsion swept me.
"So you did not like that?" Brayley steadied his voice. "If you don't
want more, you had better speak. How did you get here on Earth? What
are you trying to do here?"
There seemed an interminable silence; then Nippor took a menacing step
forward. "Speak! We will force it from you!"