Come Into My Brain!
By Alexander Blade
Fitted with the new thought-helmet, Dane
Harrell plunged into the venomous brain of the
alien. It was a fast way to commit suicide!...
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Dane Harrell held the thought-helmet tightly between his hands and,before putting it on, glanced over at the bound, writhing alien sittingopposite him. The alien snarled defiantly.
"You're sure you want to go through with this?" asked Dr. Phelps.
Harrell nodded. "I volunteered, didn't I? I said I'd take a look insidethis buzzard's brain and I'm going to do it. If I don't come up in halfan hour, come get me."
"Right."
Harrell slipped the cool bulk of the thought-helmet over his head andsignalled to the scientist, who pulled the actuator switch. Harrellshuddered as psionic current surged through him; he stiffened,wriggled, and felt himself glide out of his body, hover incorporeallyin the air between his now soulless shell and the alien bound opposite.
Remember, you volunteered, he told himself.
He hung for a moment outside the alien's skull; then, he drifteddownward and in. He had entered the alien's mind. Whether he wouldemerge alive, and with the troop-deployment data—well, that wasanother matter entirely.
The patrol-ships of the Terran outpost on Planetoid 113 had discoveredthe alien scout a week before. The Dimellian spy was lurking about theoutermost reaches of the Terran safety zone when he was caught.
It wasn't often that Earth captured a Dimellian alive and so theOutpost resolved to comb as much information from him as possible.The Earth-Dimell war was four years old; neither side had scored adecisive victory. It was believed that Dimell was massing its fleetsfor an all-out attack on Earth itself; confirmation of this from thecaptured scout would make Terran defensive tactics considerably moresound.
But the Dimellian resisted all forms of brainwashing until Phelps,the Base Psych-man, came forth with the experimental thought-helmet.Volunteers were requested; Harrell spoke up first. Now, wearingthe thought-helmet, he plunged deep into the unknown areas of theDimellian's mind, hoping to emerge with high-order military secrets.
His first impression was of thick grey murk—so thick it could be cut.Using a swimming motion, Harrell drifted downward, toward the light inthe distance. It was a long way down; he floated, eerily, in free-fall.
Finally he touched ground. It yielded under him spongily, but itwas solid. He looked around. The place was alien: coarse crumbly redsoil, giant spike-leaved trees that shot up hundreds of feet overhead,brutal-looking birds squawking and chattering in the low branches.
It looked just like the tridim solidos of Dimell he had seen. Well, whynot? Why shouldn't the inside of a man's mind—or an alien's, for thatmatter—resemble his home world?
Cautiously, Harrell started to walk. Mountains rose in the dim distanceand he could see, glittering on a mountaintop far beyond him, the whitebulk of an armored castle. Of course! His imaginative mind realized atonce that here was where the Dimellian guarded his precious secrets; upthere, on the mountain, was his goal.
He started to walk.
Low-hanging vines obsc