Agruoon, a flying reptile, had started a dive across the thick air toward the fungus-covered dome of S.S.C. A giant bivalve, at least fifty meters wide, snapped open. Its lifting shell-half dripped an avalanche of tendrils and muddy slime. A pliable snout whipped upwards. On its end, a formless pliant mouth full of row after row of rasp-like teeth, closed on thegruoon, sucked it into the pallid grey pulsating interior of the bivalve. Its shells closed with slow certainty on the writhing, screaminggruoon.
"We can't make that trek on foot, Kewpie Doll. Got to get back to the ship. We landed on the wrong side. Got to rush things though, and get the Zharkon's brain before the Marties try illegal entry and ruin everything. Come on. I'll get you inside S.S.C., don't worry."
"I'll worry either way—hey, listen!" He froze. His eyes rolled up and followed the sound droning invisibly above the impenetrable envelope of mist—the longhissshowwwwof a decelerating Martian war-ship.
"That's the boys," growled Venard darkly. His jaw knotted. "Not time to go back to the ship. Probably five hours—if we made it at all." His eyes studied the hundred meter-wide barrier of quivering, snapping, hungry molluscs. "I wonder," he murmured, "if we could do it?"
But Larson, moaning and trembling, was already waist-deep in the iridescent slime. Venard grinned and followed jerkily. "We'll try to crawl from one to the other," he managed to say. "So keep your remaining hand free. Don't draw your blaster unless you have to."
Followed by Larson, now behind him, Venard started climbing gingerly up the jagged, weirdly-glowing mollusc. Larson puffed painfully, swearing. They were half way across the shell before it shifted. They crouched down, hanging on desperately. Around them, shells snapped open and shut hungrily. Mouthed probosci were snaking about, dragging things out of the air.
"If we can stay on these things," gasped Venard. "Haven't seen any of them interested in each other. This baby has a keen sense of taste and smell; not much sense of touch, though."
Their shell suddenly rocked violently. The two Guardsmen squeezed themselves between two roughly porous spines for support, drew their blasters. The top half of the bivalve was slowly lifting.
They clung precariously by friction alone while the shell shook, rose higher and higher. It shifted, and fell so that its hinge was uppermost. Larson yelped, slipped, almost fell within reach of the pulsing pink-tissued maw. His face was dead white.
The gigantic pinkish foot of the mollusc was oozing out and out, away from them toward the opposite embankment. It stopped almost across the bed; and when it withdrew toward them, in short contracting jerks, it left behind, cemented against the shell of another mollusc, a long strand of fleshy cable as big around as Larson's arm.
The mussel's foot contained a narrow groove ending at a gland which exuded a sticky substance, much like liquid glue. This hardened almost instantly when exposed to air. Their shell had placed this foot against the other mollusc, and the sticky material was forced along the groove, touched the other mollusc, adhered and hardened. Then by slowly drawing back the foot, their own shell had, with astounding speed, spun a strong cable almost across the moat.
"An anchor," shuddered Larson. "It's put out an anchor just like a ship."
"That cable's more than just an anchor, Kewpie Doll. Evolution's given him such a weak foot compared to its body weight; it has to throw out a cable and drag itself from one place to another."
The cable was tightening. The pitted shell to which they miraculously clung began to shift slightly as the cable stretched taunt. "This is too lucky a break," groaned Larson. "Getting a free ride across like this. There's a catch to it, somewhere. Venus ain't operatin' no free ferry service."
"And that's the catch!" Venard pointed. "We fastened to that other mollusc. Instead of us moving, we're pulling that other oyster out of its bed!"
Their living anchor base lifted upward slowly with a long sucking sound. Their own mollusc wasn't making enough headway even to pull himself up over other shells. Its anchor base was too weak. But not passive. It reacted violently.
"Watch out!" screamed Larson, shrinking.
The mollusc to which the cable was fastened suddenly opened its giant shells, snapped them shut with a thunderous crack. The effect was to send its great weight in a flying jump to the right about fifteen meters. The cable parted with a sighing whine, whipped out, round and back in a deadly arc. Larson screamed again. Only once. The cable swept him away into the mud. Multicolored, squid-like faces sprouting thousands of powerful filaments, writhed hungrily toward him as he struggled briefly.
A choking, helpless horror went through Venard as he saw the bivalve snap open, and then, a snaking proboscis with the filamented mouth whip out and close on Larson's twisting body to jerk him down with lightning swiftness into that pulsating abyss of hungry flesh.
It had happened awfully fast to the toughest little guy in the System.
Too fast for Venard even to try against invincible odds to avert his death. Eaten alive by a clam. He tried to think of things that would compensate as the mollusc spun another cable. He concentrated his eyes and thought on the taut flesh cable the bivalve had spun, the one remaining link with S.S.C. and the fulfillment of Jhongan's unknown plan. First Jhongan, then the Kewpie Doll.... He had to keep on to make their sacrifice seem worth while. Theirs and billions of others throughout the System.
The mollusc had reached the end of the cable. Its unpredictable nerve centers had decided, however, to settle down right there. Its migration was over, maybe for years. And Venard was still about fifty feet from the other side of the moat.
Acting on impulse, Venard hooked his arms over the cable and leaped toward the bank. He slid wildly, with little friction, along the new slickness of the cable strands, plopped into the mud. He crawled frantically up onto the thick vegetation just as a univalvular mouth missed him by inches, tried again. He burned it and the charred snout curled away.
He was across, lying against the mossy slimy uprising shell of S.S.C. But so what? He had two hands. Larson, their entry ticket, was gone. He steeled himself, didn't let himself think about it anymore. He brought the H-gun on down in a quick savage gesture across his left wrist....
He didn't lose consciousness. It was just a quick, jabbing, burning agony. He looked at the charred stub—and then quickly swallowed five para-pills. They calmed him, enabled him to climb to his feet and follow the elevated ramp until he came to the ingress to the scanning chamber.
He stood inside, before the wall, his legality being checked. The chromoplex room was barren except for the telescreen and the opening of the tubecar that would plunge him through the magnetized vacuum tube into the heart of S.S.C.—and to what?
Tendrils of a vague fear oozed insidiously into his mind. He couldn't shake free from a superstitious sensing of evil hidden danger. He heard the faint murmuring of concealed photo-electric mechanisms and relays. He was being thoroughly scanned.
A milky opalescense filled the screen, and coalesced; a misty outline solidified, looked stoically at Venard. Recognition shocked the Guardsman. It was Bronlen, greatest Solar physicist Terra had ever produced. Bronlen had been summoned to S.S.C. ten years ago to become its Director. Consequently, like all who came here, he had dropped out of all sight and sound. But how he had changed! Only a few among the allied worlds had ever come to S.S.C. for a long time now, even for such a vitally needed thing as a body part transplantation. S.S.C. had become a place of mystery and strange fear. A place shunned and hated.
The austere, smoothly-aged face seemed, somehow, not human. Unalive, a dull conscienceless face that shouldn't be Bronlen at all. The bloodless lips parted.
"You may enter, barbarian. You are entitled to have your left hand replaced, thought it's too bad you decided to annoy us, and didn't resign yourself to your barbaric fate of one-handedness like most other barbarians of the System have wisely decided to do. However, upon completion of the transplantation, you will be transported immediately and directly back out of S.S.C. Now the tubecar will take you directly to the hetero-transplant ward."
The screen faded and Venard, boiling with inner rage and hatred, entered the tubecar. Then, desperate helplessness as he felt the tingling numbness settling over his brain. Concealed hypnotic frequencies. They were blanking him out!
V
Sometime later he was violently awakened by hands shaking him. "Karl!... Karl!" There was a terrible urgency in the low, rich voice. But this was mad dreaming! He'd never really expected to hear this voice again. Subconsciously, buried deep down, he had perhaps entertained the idea that he might see her again, but—
"Karl, hurry and wake up, for the love of Heaven! They're coming back. I've got to explain before they get here!"
Venard opened his eyes, sat bolt upright on a kind of operating table. It was her all right. Vale. She was bending over him. Strangely, she didn't seem to have changed much. She appeared older, a little, with some of the blue fire gone from her eyes. "Hello, Vale," he finally managed to say rather thickly. He didn't want to sound that way. He wanted to sound cynical, tough. He didn't at all.
In her drab grey interne's robe and cap she stood trembling above him, eyes wild with fear. She shoved his H-gun at him. "I don't know why you came here, but take this gun. You'll need it. I know you didn't come here just for another hand."
Wordlessly, he took the gun, hid it under his tunic. He flexed his—yes, they had transplanted the hand. He clenched his new fist on the H-gun. The whole transplantation process probably hadn't taken more than an hour. Incredibly advanced healing acceleration—amazing bio-chemical and surgical science. Just an example of the knowledge held imprisoned inside S.S.C. Knowledge that should have been given out to the Federation.
"Vale. You don't seem the same. Why didn't you come back? You promised."
Her eyes shone wetly, and her full lips quivered. "Oh, how I wanted to come back. I tried. But it completely ended my free agency of will and mind." Then her voice became harsh and urgent.
He swung around as she said tautly, "No time for reminiscence. I know you. You're here for some desperate, mad reason or other. But it won't go here, Karl. S.S.C. is completely under its power. You haven't a chance, nothing human has a chance against it. That's why I never even tried to get word to you at first, while I still had a chance. I knew that if you came here to help me, it would only get you too. None of us here can do anything now, or ever. We're all mindless slaves."
"Except you," commented Venard sarcastically. "I.Q. Saunders. But then, you always did have a mind of your own."
Her eyes darted wildly down toward the paneled door of the operating room. "That puzzles me, Karl. My full mental faculties returned to me seven days ago, Earth time. It was a flash of white flame. And it's hold over me dropped away. But it's influence is coming back, creeping in again. Oh, it's horrible, horrible! Karl, you've got to—"
Venard felt a chill of alien cold. Seven days ago, Earth time. "The memory-crystal," he whispered. "That's the night I smashed the Venusian memory-crystal."
"Don't talk mystical nonsense," she said frenziedly. "When they come to send you out of S.S.C., don't try any mad scheme. Just go, and please say or do nothing. Just leave S.S.C. without question. Please Karl."
He liked to hear that kind of talk, especially from Vale. He stood up; he was a little weak. "I came here to get that preserved Zharkonian brain from the body banks. I'm going to give it to the Martians and they're going to replace the present Zharkonian ruler's injured brain with it. You can believe anything, even that I'm a spy working for the Marties, if you want to. Jhongan said—"
Vale interrupted. "That's the brain we have preserved here. That of the first Zharkon. An experiment in bio-chemistry. They actually succeeded in developing a synthetic brain." Her lips twisted thoughtfully. "Yes, I can see Jhongan's reasons. Ingenious, and it probably would work, but—listen!"
She gripped his shoulders. The touch did things to Venard's nervous system. Forgotten things. "But it's useless," she said, "for you to try such a scheme here, Karl. The Martians, for all their military might, are just insignificant pawns."
Venard exclaimed, "Martians—just pawns! You haven't been around lately. Those babies have taken over everything, and they intend to keep it. This other menace ... don't be so mysteriously evasive, Vale. Who, or what, is thisit? Don't tell me the Martie desert tribes' rumors about an alien god controlling S.S.C. is authentic!"
She tried to answer, but she swayed, shut her eyes, and clenched small white fists. Her body twitched violently, blood drained from her face. He shot an arm about her waist, but she was stiff, cold and unyielding. And this was too abnormal. Her head fell back over his arm. Then she opened her eyes slowly. They were glazing, dulling, as though being seared by a minute but horrific flame. Her lips moved stiffly. "It—back—jo—jo—"
He was holding her that way when the door slid noislessly open and they filed through.
He hated them thoroughly—the weird polyglot of selfish recluses, without purposes here in their rotten, sequestered borough. Greatest minds of the System withholding their marvels of science. The Martie surgeon, the Mercurian medic, the Ganymedian and Saturnian, slippery, metallic and spidery. And weirdest of all, the Jovian liquescent brain in its square, black cubicle body ... a faceless, eyeless, limbless parasite. An incredibly specialized thinking formulae sentiently bubbling in the arms of the Martian medic.
On its own world, there were special mechanisms designed to carry these Jovians around. But here in S.S.C. it evidently utilized personnel for transportation. No Jovian had ever visited another world in the System, and vice versa. They were neutrals with a strict mutual code of hands off with all other planets.
They were the sociopaths of the System. They had never entered the Federation, even on paper. Isolationists who—
Then he knew. Without that clue from poor Vale, he might never have found out the truth until it was too late. If it wasn't already much too late.
"Jo—Jo—" just what she had been trying to tell him. The menace to the Solar System that made even the Martians only insignificant pawns were the unknown completely ignored Jovians!
The Martians pawns of these little—impossible. No, not impossible. The Jovians were mysteriously uncatalogued. They possessed telepathic power by which they communicated with each other. But no being of any other planet had ever been able to communicate with a Jovian—as far as anyone knew. It was said that it demanded some time for a Jovian to familiarise itself with highly individualized brain-wave patterns.
But when they did, they were supposed to be able to control that mind—
Venard shivered, uncontrollably. The horrible implication, the tremendous scope of possibility flooded open, poured fear in Venard's desperate, groping brain. Having never entered in Solar politics, having always been withdrawn, unobtrusive, and silent on their dim dark world, they had been theoretically harmless. But what if they secretly controlled key figures in the System? Here, in S.S.C., they could have enslaved the greatest weapons and knowledges of science of the entire Solar System, and from there—
Vale had stiffened in his arms, fell away from him. She was standing there coldly watching him with no warmth and no feeling, suddenly an alien antagonistic being. The others ringed him, silently waiting and watching.
Venard's semantically-trained mind reacted quickly and efficiently. The Jovian needed a certain unspecified time to solve the intricacies of Venard's highly individualized brain patterns. In that uncertain interim, he had to get the brain of Zharkon I out of S.S.C. to the waiting Martians. If they were waiting. And, if this Jovian mentality in a cube controlled S.S.C., there was only one possible action. Capture the Jovian. With the dark world being in his power, he could control S.S.C.—that is, until the Jovian familiarized itself with his brain waves, and all the complex inter-relations of the incredibly intricate switch-board of his cerebrum.
Nothing could comprehend all the circuits in its entire complexity. The Jovian power lay in its specialized ability to probe into key centers and control them. If Venard did control the Jovian, it would be only until it grasped his individualized peculiarities of rhythm and circuits. It had taken quite long, seven days, to renew its control of Vale's big I.Q. even when it had already controlled it once. But his—how long? Maybe days, hours. Maybe only minutes. He was no complex cerebral organism.
Anyway, his H-gun suddenly in his hand, he leaped for the Martian who held the Jovian. Venard had gambled often.
A wave of evil and rather horrid thought struck him along with a snarl of material resistance from the polyglot of beings who opposed him. The Jovian knew his purpose; its sycophants were resisting him madly. Sycophants—the greatest mentalities of the System, pawns of a six-inch cube!
Venard, too late, tried to avoid the Martian's appendage raking at his H-gun; but it struck savagely downward and the H-gun fell away under the whip-like force, clattered across the plastic floor. He buried a fist in the body sac, and the Martian toppled away. Venard drove after it, clutching at the Jovian in its tentacles; and he felt it against his hands. He pulled, strained, swore. The little metallic Mercurian whined thinly and swirled its filaments at Venard. He pulled the Jovian under one arm, hugged it against his side, shivering; and then he grabbed a shocking electrifying handful of the Mercurian and wrenched savagely. A hot, leadish fluid boiled from the gaping hole as the Mercurian slumped.
Venard fell away from the Martian, holding the Jovian frantically, crawled dizzily along the floor as he scrabbled for the H-gun. Two other figures were diving for it. Vale, and the Neptunian spiderman. It wasn't really Vale now. It was just a segment of the Jovian's mind, but it wasn't easy to swing a short solid blow that connected scientifically with her small delicate jaw so that she slumped soundless. His hand went on around, gripped the grey furred neck of the spiderman, twisted it. Mandibles jerked apart, and a poisonous green juice streamed outward, missed Venard's face by inches.
Then he had the H-gun in his hand; he pressed it against the black faceless cube. He sent out quick stabbing thought messages and commands at random. He didn't know whether the H-gun's electri-power unit would effect the Jovian's shell or not. But he soon found the potentiality. "Call them off, or I'll destroy you," he kept thinking frantically.
Others had been summoned; a number of weird beings jammed the door into the operating room. But it was plain that the Jovian was vulnerable to the H-gun. Its one weapon was thought control. It had no others at all. Until it could solve the enigmatic intricacies of Venard's neuro-cerebral circuits, it was helpless. Until then, Venard controlled S.S.C. Until—then?
The minions of the Jovian were frozen in tense silent waiting; motivated by a single thought command, they stood taut, watching him dully.
Already he sensed the dark hate and growing frenzy of the Jovian rising. Evidently it was figuring out its problem.
Holding the Jovian tightly, the H-gun trained directly on it, Venard ran out the door while the knot of Solar beings parted before him in a jerky weaving enslavement. He shuddered. These were superminds—these wolfish, silently waiting ghouls. Every conceivable size and form that crawled, hopped, floated and wobbled, every type of Solar intellect from ingenious plant life to pure energy entities pulsing whitely in mid-air. All equally helpless to act until the Jovian could act.
The Martian medic had recovered and was tottering blearily on its four contracting legs. "You," Venard gestured at the Martian, at the same time jiggling the Jovian suggestively. "Lead me to the body bank section. I'm after the brain half of Zharkon I. Quick, on the double! Or I blast your Jovian dictator in a million pieces."
The Martie started down the vaulted hall, with Venard close behind him. And the rustling progress of all the others followed expectantly. A sharp, jolting shock rocketed between his temples; the Jovian had connected with a sneak punch. How long would the Jovian need? It would be easier to work against time if he knew how much time he had.
They passed massive walls lined with huge, sealed and refrigerated sterile banks containing spare body parts of every intellectual type of being among all the Solar Worlds. Bank after bank filled with fantastic arrays of alien body parts. One bank contained, for example, every variety of articulation; among these were every kind of human hand. Doubtless his hand had come from here. Then his reluctant Martie medic guide paused before one bank especially reserved for the synthetically developed mass of convoluted tissue known as the double-brain of Zharkon I, three times larger than a human brain. It boasted two completely separated brain sections, the thalamic and the cortical. The lack of ability to integrate these two seats of pure primitive emotion and pure reason resulted in the variable, unpredictable, unstable actions of most humans or other intellects. The Zharkon could turn on either and create desired levels of reaction—almost an ultimate free agency, or free will set-up. This was one of the first developed Zharkon double-brains. A thousand years old.
The Martie opened the bank at Venard's command, lifted it out in its sealed, self-containing unit. The Martie adjusted temperature and self-feeding gauges that would keep the brain preserved in transit for an unspecified length of time.
Venard staggered then, and grabbed for support where there was none. A thick slimy blackness closed in. The damn Jovian! He could feel the dark, vast depths of its alien mind opening, then merging with his own. A vaulted abyss of mental perils loomed that were thought-shattering. He felt himself falling, falling through mental parsecs. White-hot knives slashed deep into his flashing brain, wrenching, stabbing. He sobbed for air, staggered through a veiled mist in some strange and hideous mental land.
There were moaning forces of evil screaming through tortured nerves. And somehow, he was crawling through this thick, swirling evil mental land. A red roaring throbbed in his ears. His heart pumped desperately as he crawled toward something that fought him with all the strength of fear, black hate, and a massive, evil will. Huge, surrealistic, he saw his hand before his burning eyes; they were like disembodied parts of himself. Far out ahead of him, digging, clawing futilely toward some goal he had to attain. He couldn't remember what it was.
His hands gripped white-hot metal, but he couldn't let go or he would fall back away from the thing he must reach. Stench of burning flesh clouded his eyes. Pain rocketed back into his face. He couldn't fight it! He was losing, failing, sinking back and down. Then his hands were beating empty space, and he was toppling into a black well with a bottom of—there was no bottom. With a hopeless, despairing cry, he writhed frantically, found a jagged edge and hung on, straining, every nerve screaming, at a scaly wall that shivered, heavily alive.
But his hands were slipping; he knew he would fall into the well. And once he fell into that blackness, he was gone forever. He was in a world of thought, and in that world he had no defenses, not against such a highly specialized entity of thought as the Jovian. Yes—that was the goal—he was trying to reach the Jovian. That was the symbol. But he could never reach it. The pain was too great. Pain could kill. Shock could stop his brain and heart.
"Vale!"
His voice was harsh, despairing. Had he called? Had he sent that wild cry ringing out toward someone, anyone—?
"Vale!"
But she could not help him now! She was even further down in this black hell of the Jovian's. She was already lost....
"Vale...."
The voice was weak, now, weak as is the voice of one dying. Black horror rose about him—
Then, in an abrupt flooding surge of joyous change, the blackness was blotted out by light.
VI
A soft, distant shimmering glow pierced through in arrows of jeweled brilliance. A swirling mist swam toward and around him. It was a beautiful, soft enchantment. A green world of gently swaying fronds and phosphorescent bubbles climbing and bursting in clouds of multi-colored flame.
It was an underwater city, a delicate coraled Babylon of some alien beauty, with avenues of high dainty ferns swaying to the urgings of invisible currents. Enmeshed in this strange ensorcelled dream of jeweled, glimmering, glittering wonder, Venard's mind sped through emerald halls....
And suddenly, by his side, there was Vale—her presence mistily improbable, and yet somehow definite. He could not see, he could not feel, but he could know—
He and Vale were being summoned, called by frantically urging minds.
They floated into a room that was nebulous, quivering now into plainer sight, now withdrawing into indefiniteness. Then Venard saw a brilliant flame that grew, hardened, crystallized, shone brighter and more brilliantly strange. Mists of argent light, then floating shadowy shapes of incredible delicacy swam into view. He knew it now.
The Undersea City of the Venusian Sea People.
Small, round, quasi-human faces looked with deep concern into his. Not his face, but into his mind, his roving, battling mind. Opaque arms, delicate and slender as flower stems, motioned with desperate urgency.
The reality of the apparent fantasy hit Venard like a projectile from space with a shockingly familiar voice, a mental voice from the dead:
"Hey, Karl! It's me, Kewpie Doll Larson. We gotta move fast, see? It's me and the Venusian Sea people. It's us! We're helping you fight the Jovian."
Venard thought frantically, "How? You're—you're supposed to be dead!"
"No, Karl. That was just a gag. I burned loose the muscle hinges that holds them clams together, but I still couldn't get out. Then, when the tide came and backed up into that moat, the Venusians swam up and rescued me. They knew what had happened; they used their thought-crystals. Listen, it ain't fantastic at all. Them memory-spheres are mental power synthesizers, just like dynamos. The Sea People have been working on these things secretly to fight the Jovians with. Listen, Karl. You're the instrument, see? We all concentrate on our crystals and you can blast that infernal black box to Kingdom Come. I'll be in there with you in two shakes of a three-tailedghroat. I'm just outside S.S.C. now! Give him hell, Karl!"
"But—how?" his mind almost gasped.
Then he heard Vale's laugh—and it was a joyous thing. "Too many people have told you too little," her message came through. "Come—we haven't much time now. You must trust these people. They will show you how...."
Arm in arm, then, they soared up into green translucence. Curiously, as they rose, the green grew deeper, darker, and choking terror tore once again at Venard's throat—a terror cunningly without reason.
He suddenly felt the dark box nestling against his ribs. Had he been carrying the Jovian even down among the Sea People?
And where was Vale? The warming sense of her presence was withdrawn. Fear stabbed into him again. Fear—and those tendrils of white-hot anguish.
He was back in the body bank ... alone ... with the Jovian. Black fury burst once more against his reeling mind, but through it rose the faintest of echoes: "Give him hell, Karl!"
Energy, strength, courage, power flooded through him. Still, there was no reality, no visible enemy, no material hall with body banks and mosaic walls and solid plastic floors. Out of a black sea bobbed a cloudy sphere of coruscating evil hate. Venard leaped, his body bending through an arc of torture. He had the sphere in his dripping hands, holding it high. He must hurl it from him, smash it, but it clung to him, seemed a part of him. Blindness thickened his sight; then, as it thinned, he blinked. The Jovian cubicle body was smashing against the high, up-curving wall of the buried body bank hall in S.S.C.
A dazzling greenish glare exploded in a bright crackling flame that flung him full length. In his mind burst an ultimate unhuman cry of raw agony from the Jovian. It climbed beyond his auditory range so high that a stark-shock wrenched his spine and shook his brain in his skull. And the Jovian spewed out in a pulsating, semi-liquid mass, ran down the smoothly polished mosaic.
Venard rubbed his burning eyes, as he sat there wearily trying to grasp some general understanding. His body was terribly tired. The Martian medic helped him to his feet, but he couldn't stand alone. While he swayed dizzily, the Martie's body sac nodded gently. "Thank you, Lieutenant Venard. S.S.C. is free at long last. We had abandoned all hope. A burial place of knowledge is always a final graveyard of hope."
Venard was leaning wearily against the wall and the Martian medic was lifting the first Zharkon's brain-sac into the refrigerated bank when Larson and Vale came running down the hall. Larson was a spectacle for sore eyes. His uniform was waving tatters, his skin a splotched mass from digestive acids of the carnivorous clam. Vale wrapped unforgotten arms around Venard's neck and for a while he forgot Larson, the Zharkon's brain. He forgot almost everything.
"You defeated it," she breathed proudly, eyes shining. "You defeated it! We couldn't help here in S.S.C. We were powerless. But, for that few days when I was free, you would never have known about it."
"Hedefeated it?" howled Larson from a raw, flaming face. "I defeated it. Me and the Sea People did, that is. But we ain't got any time to argue about who gets the medals. The Martians are outside with a couple of Battlewagons. They're setting up electro-cannons, vibratory beams, oxo-hydro guns, and God alone knows what they got in secret. They're gonna break in here or bust."
The Martian medic said, "They can't, of course. The force fields and—"
Larson bawled out an ungentlemanly, "Don't be so smug! Comin' all the way here I bet they've got some secret weapon."
Venard said curtly, "Contact them! I suggest we tell them we'll give them their Zharkon the First's blasted brain. I'm beginning to get brains on the brain!"
They hurried to a nearby room containing an inner-S.S.C communication set. The Martian medic nervously switched through to S.S.C. control study. "This is Yhongar in the Transplant Wards," he said. "Lieutenant Venard of the Guards and an—er—Mr. Larson have defeated the Jovian, as you probably know. Director Bronlen, are you all right, sir?"
Director Bronlen's austere face swam into view, changed now. It was the face of a man who has learned the ultimate meanings of slavery and freedom of thought. It smiled with new hope, and with gentle, but firm strength. "Everything is all right now, Yhongar. However, two Martian warships have been reported just outside S.S.C."
"Yes, Director Bronlen," said the Martian. "They intend to attack S.S.C. in an attempt to obtain the brain of Zharkon I. Lieutenant Venard says we should give them the brain. Lieutenant Venard, could you explain to S.S.C. Director H. Bronlen the reason for this proposed action?"
Venard hesitated, flushed weakly. "I—really don't know, exactly, that is. A Martian subversive, Jhongan, working with the Allies, said to give the Martian High Priests every possible assistance in obtaining the Brain. He said that if the replacement in the present Zharkon is accomplished, complete peace would return to the System."
Bronlen's face remained puzzled, groping. "There must be some explanation. We owe you and Sergeant Larson an infinite debt of gratitude, but unless some logical reason is given for this unorthodox procedure, I'm afraid—"
Vale stepped forward. "I think I can explain Jhongan's purpose in wanting this transplantation to succeed."
"I.Q. Saunders," smiled Venard wryly.
"Speak," said Bronlen. "But hurry. The Martians are preparing to attack. For all we know, they may have developed some kind of atomic-penetrator."
"Well," began Vale, "the fanatical Zharkonian Royalists thought they had all authentic Martian historical documents destroyed and forgotten. But they didn't. Their own interpretation of history is based on primitive myth, legends of race and ancestor worship—the old war gods of slaughter and conflict, the hero-worship of victorious armies and of individuals killed in battle. Greatly similar to the old Nazi and Norse ideologies. So, naturally, they didn't want the newly conditioned masses acquainted withtrueMartian history which is just the opposite, being one of steady progress and peaceful aims designed for the betterment of all peoples. But Jhongan's underground faithfuls on Mars made it a point to preserve key historical Martian documents, evidently, so that they have known all the time the exact nature of the thousand-year-old brain of Zharkon I."
She paused, while Venard lit up a para-ette to steady his shaky nerves. He grinned at her thinly. "I bet you could quote the whole Solar Encyclopedia," he snapped.
She smiled at him and continued. "The amazing part is that the Zharkonian leaders forgot real history themselves. Fell for their own propaganda, which is so often the case. They believe in the myths and legends they've resurrected—in part. It's obvious they've forgotten or they certainly wouldn't be attempting this transplantation. You see, we've studied that incredible double-brain thoroughly in connection with socio-economic history of Zharkon the First's era. It was one of the first double-brain experiments and wasn't entirely successful. There was an uncontrollable influence of the thalamic half over the cortex half. You see, Zharkon I was beneficently pathological as a ruler."
"Pathological," exclaimed Director Bronlen.
"Yes. A fanatical pacifist, who went into daily trances and preached the sacred brotherhood of all races, creeds and colors. But the methods he used were impractical and revealed unintegration of his brain sections. So you can see what will happen if that kind of cortex gets in control of the present militaristic Martian government."
"A pacifist! Fanatical—pathological—" Venard grinned broadly. Larson laughed hoarsely. The Martian swelled his body sac with pride and renewed hope. Bronlen's face appeared to glow with admiration for Vale's analysis, sharpened to sudden decision. "I am going to contact the Martians immediately," he said. "I'll inform them that rather than have conflict here within the cloistered halls of science, we'll give them the brain of Zharkon I—without question. This will probably inflate their paranoic egos considerably."
The teleaudio faded and almost immediately, several attendants of as many planetary types in interne's gowns came down the long hall and took the huge Martian double-brain away to the arrogantly and triumphantly waiting Martian Priests. Their warships blasted off without delay, atomic-interplanetary drives at full acceleration, to transplant the brain into the body of their incapacitated war leader—to transform him into an incurable, pathological, fanatical lover of peace at any cost—a mind that regarded war for any cause at any time more terrible than a cosmic plague.
Meanwhile, the Solar Federation was made acquainted with the real and far more terrifying threat existing on the obscure, dark and mysterious world of the Jovians. Panic swept over these worlds, realizing as they did that there was no way to combat the pure thought power of the Jovians.
However, the Venusian Sea People had found out via S.S.C. about the thralldom of that citadel by the Jovian there, and, realizing the tremendous threat to the System, they retreated into their strange, deep laboratories to manufacture the memory-crystals by the thousands. The mystic little globes would enable other than Jovian minds to achieve a unity of mental strength. In the hands of millions of Solarians, they would mean inevitable defeat for the outnumbered Jovians.
At an unspecified date after the Jovian defeat on Luna, in the synthetic wonderland of Escapeasies and pleasure palaces, terraced gardens and the magnificent space-view translucent dome of the resort in Theophilus Crater, three figures stood on the crater's colossal rim.
Venard's arm was around Vale's shoulders as they stared with unshakable awe into the huge vault of the sky enclosing them in a black and gigantic hollow, sprinkled with the white dust of the stars. Nearby, seated on a pneumatic couch with a bottle ofstihnin one hand and a memory-crystal in the other, Louie Larson was realizing an ultimate kind of hedonistic satisfaction with life.
It was the middle of the Lunar night, and the terrific cold crept in, even through the laced seams of the dome.
"Go ahead, kiss," said Larson in a bored fashion. "Don't mind me. You two don't know what love really means, either of you." He was looking into the memory-crystal from which he never took his eyes. A willowy, flowery, translucent green body undulated in its misty depths.
Vale smiled boldly up at Venard. Venard managed to shoot a quick grin at Larson. "I suppose you're going to say that Venusian Sea Woman who fell for you looks something like Glora Karstedt?"
"Don't joke about pure, cosmic love such as mine," warned Larson dreamily. "It's a love of pure thought, a spiritual delight. There never was any Glora Karstedt. I guess you'd call Glora a symbol, a dream woman. An' I've found the ideal at last, friends. Her name is Ulolalahr. Her thoughts alone in my mind are pure ecstasy."
Larson arose slowly and austerely and walked to the panel. "This physical kind of thing is positively disgustin'," he said.
"I don't agree with him at all," said Vale, closing her eyes and puckering up her lips.
A few seconds later, Venard breathed a long, "Wheeeoooow. What an I.Q.! Ideally Qualified."