Chapter 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 this _it_? 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.