From the depths of infinity came a menace
so dreadful Clark Dane could not comprehend the
danger. Yet his subconscious knew, crying out:
Bring Back My Brain!
By Dwight V. Swain
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
April 1957
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a world without a past or future; a shining shadow-world borne
of sheer madness, a thousand echoing eternities beyond all space and
time.
Now the pulsing radiance grew brighter--so bright it sent pain-tipped
needles stabbing through Clark Dane's brain. He writhed under its
relentless, throbbing pressure; tried to draw back, to cry out.
But the strange lethargy still clung to him, all-encumbering as a
leaden pall. As in a nightmare, he lay prostrate, paralyzed, unable to
move or speak.
Numbly, he wondered if he were dead.
Only then the silent laughter rose again--taunting; chilling--and he
knew that life still stirred within him.
The face came with the laughter, floating through the swirling radiance
as a shadow drifts through fog. Hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, hairless
as a sand-scoured, tide-washed skull, it hovered before Dane like a
living death's-head, closer than ever before.
Where previously had he known this Being-Without-A-Name, Dane wondered?
What malicious trick of circumstance had brought the two of them
together?
Only those were things somehow beyond his powers of recall at the
moment; questions that, strangely, seemed to find no answers within his
aching brain.
Shuddering, he squeezed the eyes of his mind tight shut against the
spectre.
But the face would not go away. Smirking, sardonic, evil, deep-lined
with old sins, it hung motionless now, as if mocking Dane in his
torment while it reiterated its eternal theme: "I am your master,
slave! Bow down! Bow down to your creator! Acknowledge your serfdom
here and now!"
In spite of himself, Dane cringed.
"Say it, you fool! Say you are my slave!"
"No, damn you! Never; not ever...."
"You dare not deny me! You know it!" The malevolent eyes in the
death's-head skull gleamed hot and bright as fire-jewels--probing,
penetrating, skewering to the core of Dane's very brain. "Say it, I
tell you! Say you are my slave!"
Dane's jaws ached with pressure. Desperately, he tried to fight the
nightmare image from his mind.
"Acknowledge me, slave! I am your master!"
Dane's senses reeled. He was panting now. "I--I--"
"Say it!"
"I--am--your slave...."
Thin, cruel lips peeled back from stained teeth in a grimace of
sadistic triumph. The soundless, soulless laughter rang forth louder
than ever.
Dane sobbed aloud.
As if his reaction were a signal, the mocking face began to fade, back
into the eddying radiance from whence it came. Where it had hung, a
new shape rose.
Inanimate, this one; yet clean-cut and graceful as any living thing.
Slim, silvery, needle-sharp, it poised like a gigantic lance flung
skyward from its squat, buttressed base.
Dane's raw nerves calmed a fraction. The dream-pain ebbed away.
Fascinated, he studied the shining shaft.
For even as he first glimpsed it, he knew in a rush that his life,
his fate, his very being, somehow were linked tight to it. Completely
strange to him, it yet held intangible elements of familiarity beyond
all ordinary knowledge.
Now the shaft seemed to drift closer, just as had the face before it,
and Dane saw that a vertical slot ran almost its full length, from top
to bottom, like a vastly-elongated needle-eye.
Slowly, while Dane watched, the shaft turned above its base. A second
slot appeared, precisely like the first. Then a third. Through the
openings, Dane glimpsed a maze of coils and wiring.
Frowning in spite of himself, he glanced down at the base, then
stiffened.
For the shaft hung completely free in the air as if invisibly suspended
from above, well clear of the metal-rimmed socket in its bed-plate!
A chill ran through Dane. Yet he could not tear his eyes away from the
shining needle. It was almost as if another unheard voice, soundless
as that of the vanished face, were hammering thoughts into his brain:
"Heed well, Clark Dane! Let no detail escape you, lest the lack of it
shall speed you to your doom! This shaft--it stands as symbol of all
your dreams and hopes, your destiny...."
Then thought and image alike were fading; the face and its mind-voice
back once more: "Remember, slave, I am your master, now and always!
Dare to challenge me again and instant death shall be your doom!"
Never had the hollow eyes gleamed with such menace. Never had the
bony, hairless face been etched more deeply with lines that spoke of
ruthlessness and iniquity.
Slowly, reluctantly, Dane bowed his head. "I am your slave. You are my
master."
But deep within him another voice was speaking in a savage, sullen
whisper, so low as not even to reach the frontal lobes of his brain:
"No! I'm not your slave! No man's my master! And some day, no matter
what you threaten--some day, we'll see who dies!"
CHAPTER II
At first it seemed to Dane that he was racing through space, hurtling
out in a whirling, swirling arc that left the whole solar system far
behind. The stars, the galaxies, fell into chaos in his wake. New
nebulae spread out before him, unseen by living eye until his advent.
Awe-struck, unable even to breathe, he could only stare at it all in
unnerved wonder.
Then, slowly, that stage passed. Little by little, the void about him
took on substance, until at last he found himself swimming somewhere
far beneath the surface of a viscid sea ... fighting his way upward
through the horror of dark, chimera-teeming depths inches at a time
in that agonizing, snail-slow progression known only in the world of
dreams.
But there came a moment when even swimming demanded too much effort. He
floated, limp, rising slowly towards the daylight miles above him, free
to the whim of every changing eddy of a foam-flecked, pale-green sea.
As from afar, then, a voice reached him dimly--a real voice, this time;
one that spoke words aloud and face to face instead of only in the mind.
A woman's voice, surprisingly.
"I want him at the Record Center as fast as I can get him here," the
voice said firmly. "That's why I'm coming out from Mars to make the
pickup. There hasn't been a genuine case of amnesia reported from any
of the inner planets in over a hundred years, and I've no intention of
letting this one slip by me."
Of a sudden the pale-green sea seemed to separate beneath Dane. It left
him stranded on a smooth, level surface, resilient and not too hard.
Cautiously, he moved his fingers over it, recognized the texture of
heavy synthetic kalor.
A bed, then.
The woman's voice went on, brisk and businesslike yet somehow intense:
"I can't impress all of you too much with how important it is not
to upset this man. Any shock prior to the complete celloscopic
and hypnoanalytic examination we'll give him here might do untold
damage--both to him, and to our chance of successfully working through
his case."
Very carefully, Dane opened his eyes.
He looked out upon a dully glittering expanse of green telonium
spaceship bulkhead. The viewing plate of a built-in visiscreen occupied
a spot directly before him at eye level.
Centered on the plate was the image of the woman who was speaking.
Narrow-eyed, Dane studied her.
She had turned now to a concise discussion of technical details
regarding amnesia--and that made the contrast between her words and her
appearance all the more marked. For even over the visiscreen there was
no denying her lithe, slender loveliness; and as Dane gazed up at the
smooth oval of her face ... stared into her cool grey eyes ... he could
visualize her in almost any role more easily than that of scientist or
savant.
If he ever met her, perhaps he could persuade her to play a more
feminine part.
It was a pleasant thought. But even as it struck Dane, the woman broke
off. Her soft lips parted in a sudden, half-rueful smile. "I'm talking
too much. You've better things to do than listen to my lectures, and--"
* * * * *
The click of a switch cut her off in mid-sentence. A harsh male voice
snarled, "I'll say she talks too much! And for my part, I'm all through
listening."
Dane shifted quickly; discovered for the first time that he shared
the telonium chamber with three men grouped about a table: two in
space-fleet uniform and one--the speaker--without.
The ununiformed man, squat and heavy-bodied, still gripped the
visiscreen's remote control switch, his piggish, close-set eyes glazed
hard with anger, his broad, lumpy face working.
The pig-eyes flicked to Dane as he turned. The lumpy face split in an
ugly grin. "Well! Sleeping beauty's awake! Maybe we can come up with
some answers of our own after all, before her royal highness from the
Record Center gets here."
The man surged up as he spoke, flexing corded arms thick with coarse
black hair. To Dane, he looked to be in his late twenties. His body
bulged so heavy with muscle that his half-bald bullet-head seemed to
grow directly from his shoulders.
But one of the space-fleet officers rose too. "Hold it, Pfaff!" he
rapped. "Nelva Guthrie's given us our orders--and whether you like
it or not, she's supervisor of the whole Mars Record Center. In a
situation like this that gives her the rank to make what she says
stick."
"Oh, does it, now?" sneered the man called Pfaff. "Personally, I always
thought that where the Kalquoi were concerned, Security outranked
anyone."
"The Kalquoi--?" The second space-fleet officer was on his feet now,
gesturing. "Slow down a minute on that, Pfaff. What have the Kalquoi
got to do with this poor devil?"
"We picked him off an asteroid, didn't we?" the bullet-headed Pfaff
slashed back belligerently. "If that doesn't tie him to the Kalquoi,
what would it take? They've infiltrated the whole damn' belt, and you
know it!"
"But just because he was marooned there--"
"Marooned, hell!" Pfaff hammered the butt of a rock-like fist against
the doloid table. "Who marooned him, that's what I want to know! No man
just pops up on an asteroid, naked as the day he was born, without even
a breather mask for company!"
The two officers exchanged helpless glances.
"Answer me, you chitzas!" Pfaff bellowed. Again he smashed his great
fist down upon the table. "I want to know who marooned him! And after
you've told me that, I want to know who sent out the distress signal on
him that we picked up. And who pumped that cave full of air and then
slapped an energy seal on it so he'd have something to breathe till we
got there. And finally, who"--a momentary pause while he snatched up
an object from the table--"who left him this Kalquoi yat-stick to play
with?"
"Well--" The first space-fleet officer groped futilely for words.
The second looked away, not speaking.
For a long moment Pfaff watched them--pig-eyes aglitter, bullet-head
drawn far between the massive shoulders.
Then, slowly, his snarl changed to a smirk. He straightened; made a
show of smoothing his rumpled short-sleeved, civilian tunic.
"For my money," he announced in a suddenly bland and unctuous voice
"we've got no evidence whatever that this starbo"--a gesture to
Dane--"is even human!"
In spite of himself, Dane went rigid. The officers' heads snapped round
as if on springs. "What--?"
"You heard me." Pfaff was almost purring now. "The Kalquoi are
shape-shifters; you know that. That's what makes them so dangerous. One
minute, they'll be obviously alien--crystals floating in mid-air and
radiating colored light like so many prisms. The next, one's a rock,
another's a tal-string, and the third's bouncing around pretending to
be the ball in a byul-game."
* * * * *
A thin thread of irritation began to creep through Dane. Unsteadily, he
pulled himself to a sitting position and swung his legs over the edge
of his cot. "Wait a minute, there--"
"Shut up, you stabat!" Pfaff threw out the command in the manner of a
huecco-trainer addressing a particularly doltish pupil. And then, to
the officers once more: "Don't you see? The brain-drain's stopped the
Kalquoi cold. But supposing they could masquerade as humans, the way
they do inanimate objects! Before we knew it, they'd take over the
inner planets, the way they have the outer!"
Dane drew a deep, careful breath. "The only trouble is, I'm not a
Kalquoi," he announced firmly.
"Oh." This time Pfaff turned to face him. "Then who are you, may I ask?"
"My name's Clark Dane."
"Clark Dane. Very good." Pfaff licked thick lips, as if enjoying the
whole situation. "Now, tell us some other things: where you were born;
who your parents were; your work assignment number; occupational
classification; residence registration; how and why you came to be on
the asteroid where we found you."
"Why, I--" Dane started to speak, then stopped short, groping.
"I--I...."
"Yes, yes. Go on." Pfaff was grinning openly now, head thrust forward
as he prodded.
A numbness crept through Dane. Desperately, he searched the farthest
corners of his brain for answers to the other's questions.
Answers that just weren't there.
Pfaff chuckled; goaded: "It couldn't be you don't know, could it? Nor
that you can't remember anything about the past except your name?"
Dane didn't answer. Bewilderment; confusion; sheer, stark panic--they
roiled within him; put knots in the pit of his stomach and made his
head reel till he had to cling to the edge of the cot for fear of
falling.
Again Pfaff chuckled. "Maybe I'm being too hard on you, Dane." His
mockery seared like acid. "If so, I'll apologize. Just prove to me
you're not a Kalquoi; that's all I ask."
"Damn it, Pfaff!" the officer nearest to Dane exploded. "You heard what
Nelva Guthrie said: any shock's liable to tie this man up permanently.
Quit plaguing him!"
Pfaff's air of mock-cordiality fell away like a discarded mask. "Is
that an order, lieutenant?" he demanded belligerently. "Are you telling
me what I can and can't do?"
The other's lips drew tight. "Now wait a minute, Pfaff--"
"No! You wait!" Pfaff thrust his bullet-head forward, close to the
officer's face. "This is a matter of principle, mister. We'll settle
it right now. I'm Security rep on this ship, and I say this Clark Dane
pickup's a Security matter. Are you going to contradict me?"
"If need be." The lieutenant's cheeks flamed. "It so happens, Mr.
Pfaff, that you've pushed your luck a little too far. Security rep or
not, you're overstepping your authority, and I'm not about to stand for
it. If need be, I'll take it clear to the captain."
"Well! So it's out in the open at last!" Pig-eyes glittering, thick
lips twisted in an ugly grin, Pfaff moved in even closer. "You've got a
good idea there, too--that business of taking all this to the captain.
We'll do it. And then, after that, we'll carry it another step, to a
friend of mine. You may have heard of him. His name's Thorburg Jessup."
"Thorburg Jessup--!" The lieutenant's nostrils flared. His eyes
distended.
Then, of a sudden, the angry color was draining from his face.
Uncertainly, he fell back a step. "Now wait a minute, Pfaff--"
* * * * *
It was as if the other hadn't even heard him. "Did you think you were
going to get away with it, lieutenant? Did you really?" The Security
rep exploded in a roar of contemptuous, scorn-ringing laughter. "Let me
tell you something, mister. The blocked-promotion stations are full of
brass-braided jackasses who thought they could lock horns with Security
reps. Because the minute an officer talks back or pokes his nose into
Security business, the rep calls Jessup--and that's the end of the
trouble _and_ the officer."
For a long, taut moment, then, the silence echoed; a leaden silence,
heavy with tension.
"Well, lieutenant?" Pfaff cocked his head. "Which is it going to be? Do
you shut up--or do I call Thorburg Jessup?"
The spaceship officer seemed to stop breathing. Then, abruptly, he
pivoted and, wordless, stalked from the room.
Not speaking, Pfaff turned his cold, unblinking stare upon the second
officer.
The man's gaze faltered; fell. He followed his fellow from the chamber.
Now Pfaff swung round to face Dane, lumpy features aglow with unholy
triumph. Slowly, contemplatively, he scrubbed a meaty palm back and
forth through the coarse black hair that matted the opposite forearm.
It made a whispering, scratching sort of sound that rasped Dane's
nerves worse than all the earlier verbal pyrotechnics. Uneasily, he
shifted; swallowed.
Because strive as he might, he still couldn't remember. Not anything.
The realization brought with it a feeling more frightening than
anything he'd ever known. It was as if the world--his private
world--had vanished, leaving him cast adrift in space blindfolded,
without landmarks or triangulation points, all orientation lost.
The sense of helplessness that came with it was almost more than he
could bear. Sheer lack of knowledge half-paralyzed him. Desperately, he
wondered what he should do; how his role and true identity called for
him to react.
Still gloating, Pfaff leaned back; rested his heavy hams against the
doloid table. "Well, bucko?" he prodded.
With an effort, Dane held his voice steady. "I can't tell you what I
don't know. All those questions--I simply don't remember."
"Nor this thing? You don't remember it, either?"
As he spoke, the Security rep picked up the Kalquoi yat-stick from the
table and held it out for Dane's inspection.
Frowning, Dane studied it. A good foot long, Earth measurement, and
purplish in hue, it was formed of some heavy alien metal. The basic
outline was that of a slingshot crotch--a sort of handle that forked
into two prongs to form a Y. But a bar across the top closed the fork,
and a continuation of the handle came up to meet the bar at right
angles, making a T. Bracing members from the point where the stem of
the T met the crosspiece ran to the middle of each arm of the Y, then
in their turn were joined into a triangle by another crosspiece.
With a little imagination, Dane saw, it would be easy enough to vision
the unit in its entirety as forming a word or syllable, YAT.
"It's a funny thing," Pfaff observed with an emphasis anything but
mirthful. "No one knows just what these gadgets are for. The best the
extraterrestial ethnologists can come up with is a lot of thes-gas
about symbolism and religious significance. That stuff I wouldn't know
about. But one thing's for sure: where you find yat-sticks, you find
Kalquoi."
Dane made no comment.
"This one," Pfaff pressed, extending the yat-stick, "was lying half
under you in that cave where we picked you up."
Dane shrugged.
"That's all you've got to say? You won't tell me any more about it?"
"What can I tell you?" Dane came back wearily. "Don't you understand? I
don't know. I can't remember."
The Security rep's broad face drew into a chill, expressionless mask.
His bullet-head sank deeper between his shoulders.
"All right," he clipped harshly, flinging the yat-stick back down upon
the table. "You want it hard, I'll give it to you that way. This is a
survey ship. Start talking, or I'll have 'em throw you in the bem-tank."
"The bem-tank--?" Dane stared.
"Don't give me that! You know what I mean! Survey ships bring in
samples of extraterrestial life--the kind of bug-eyed monsters that
give a man nightmares even to think about. What they do to you if they
get the chance shouldn't happen to a quontab."
A chill ran through Dane. "But I don't know--"
"Tell it to the bems!" Already, Pfaff was jamming his thumb down on a
buzzer button. "You had your chance, you stabat! Now we'll play it my
way. You and the narcoanalyst and that vidal Nelva Guthrie--you'll see
who's got the answers!"
Dane's panic was like a light-lance beam twisting in his midriff.
"Please--!" he choked. "Please...."
Pfaff laughed aloud.
* * * * *
Dane stopped short in mid-breath. The goading, the mockery, the
pig-eyes, the harsh voice, the badgering--all these he'd taken.
But the laugh went one step beyond his limit of endurance.
In the fraction of a second his panic turned to roiling, boiling rage.
What did it matter if he didn't know who he was or from whence he came?
Why should he care if his past was a blank, his future a question-mark?
Why indeed--so long as for this one moment he had a course to follow!
Such a course as erasing the grin from Pfaff's thick lips, for example.
And after that--well, he'd play the other moments as they came along,
without regard for past or future.
Savagely, then, he lunged up from the cot, straight at the
still-laughing Pfaff.
For the barest instant the Security rep stood frozen, eyes blank with
startlement. Then, with surprising agility for his heavy-bodied bulk,
the man tried to twist aside, out of the way of Dane's rush.
His hip hit the doloid table. He stumbled.
Before he could recover, Dane smashed a fist home to the blubbery lips;
felt them spurt blood as they crushed against Pfaff's teeth.
The Security rep reeled. Heart surging with fierce elation, Dane
followed up, hammering home a rain of blows to head and body alike.
For an instant the other fell back--head down, hairy arms hugged close
to protect the bulging belly.
But only for an instant. Then, with a harsh roar, the bullet-head came
up again. A fist like a maul swept out in a wide arc, bruising Dane's
rib-cage. Another blow caught his shoulders; rocked him back on his
heels.
Desperately, Dane threw himself sidewise, barely clear of the other's
lunge, and let fly a rabbit-punch.
It landed solidly, but it was still a waste of effort. Pfaff spun about
with no sign that he had even been hit, and once again, lunged for Dane.
Taking advantage of his longer reach, Dane drove in a quick one-two to
Pfaff's face, then started to leap back, away from the other's charge.
But this time it was he who forgot the doloid table. Careening against
it, he staggered for a moment off balance.
The next instant Pfaff buried a fist in the pit of Dane's belly.
Retching, half-paralyzed, Dane lurched backward; slumped to the floor.
A roar of triumph from Pfaff. He launched a kick powered to break a
man's back.
With a tremendous heave, Dane writhed clear just in time.
But already the Security man was kicking again--a bruising,
thigh-grazing blow that tore a choked cry from Dane's throat. In
desperation he rolled back and under the table, hoping against hope to
avoid the other's murderous feet.
Cursing, Pfaff heaved at the table, wrenching the nearest leg clear of
its anchor bracket. "You chitza!" he panted, "I'll kill you! D'you hear
me? I'll kill you!"
He meant it. It showed in every line and corded, bulging muscle. Stark
murder gleamed in his tiny, close-set pig-eyes ... glistened in the
flecks of bloody foam at the mouth-corners and in the sweat-greased
folds of the contorted face.
Spasmodically, Dane dragged himself to his feet on the far side of the
wrenched, warped table.
Panting, Pfaff tried to reach him; then, failing, clawed for the heavy
Kalquoi yat-stick that still lay on the slab between them.
With all his might, Dane heaved at the already-sagging table. The
yat-stick slid to the floor on his side.
Pfaff hurled himself after it bodily. Jamming him aside, Dane snatched
up the stick and swung it in a tight arc, straight for the base of the
Security rep's skull.
Pfaff twisted and it hit--snapped--a collarbone instead.
In the same instant the chamber's door swung open. Two space-fleet
guards gaped across the threshold.
Face twisted with pain, clutching at his shattered clavicle, Pfaff
roared, "Get this stabat!"
* * * * *
Dane lunged for the doorway, swinging the yat-stick. It clipped
the first guard alongside the jaw; dropped him in his tracks. Dane
stiff-armed the second and sprinted off down the passageway.
But as he ran, alarm bells all about began to jangle. Ahead, a spaceman
appeared as if from nowhere, paralyzer at the ready.
Dane veered into the first cross-passage; dropped down a pneumolift to
the next level.
More green telonium walls. More bells and guards and paralyzers.
Lurching now, staggering, Dane stumbled onward. It was as if his
body were acting independently, without his mind's volition, for
intelligence told him flatly that there would be, could be, no escape.
Not in a closed unit like a spaceship.
Yet here he was, still fleeing.
Why? Why?
Laughing, he downed another guard with the yat-stick; and even in his
own ears his mirth rang a drunken note.
Another pneumolift. Another. And after that, a long, dim-lighted
passage.
Dead end.
So this was where they'd trap him.
Only then, as he slumped to the floor, he stubbed his toe on a heavy
screw-lock; saw at last the scarlet-lidded hatch on which he squatted.
One more barrier to put behind him.
Wearily, he wrenched the screw-locks open; pried up the spring catch;
lifted the hatch-lid; peered down into the space beneath it.
An unpleasant, faintly musty odor. A wall-ladder leading down into pale
grey emptiness.
Yat-stick still in hand, Dane lowered himself gingerly through the
hatchway and let the heavy scarlet lid fall to above him, wondering as
he did so why it was painted so bright a red.
The spring catch clicked into place. No going back now.
Down the ladder, a rung at a time. Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty.
Solid decking again. Solid ... yet strangely slippery. And the
unpleasant musty smell was stronger now, too.
Something brushed Dane's hand. Something gelatinous and clammy.
Instinctively, he jerked back.
His eyes were adjusting to the pale grey light now. He could see better.
He wished he couldn't.
Because the thing that had brushed his hand ... the slimy, gelatinous
thing that now was making the flesh crawl over every inch of his
body ... was a monstrous, many-eyed, pseudopodal horror he couldn't
even classify.
But it could classify him, apparently; for already its amoeboid
protrusions were eddying in close to his feet with tiny, obscene
sucking noises.
Heart pounding, blood chilling, Dane gripped the yat-stick till his
knuckles ached. At last--at last he knew why that hatch-lid overhead
had been painted such a vivid scarlet.
It led into the spaceship's bem-tank!