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 re