«And just as they had no language of their own, they had no real bodies of their own, nor active minds of their own. They were parasitic in a sense that earthmen can’t conceive. They were entities, apart from— Well, it’s difficult to explain, but in a way they had no real existence when not attached to a body they could animate and think with. The easiest way to put it is that a detached—uh—earring god, which is what the Ganymedean natives called them—was asleep, dormant, ineffective. Had no power of thought or motion in itself.»
Charlie and Blake were looking bewildered. Charlie said, «You’re trying to say, Hank, that when one of them came in contact with a person, they took over that person and ran him and thought with his mind but—uh—kept their own identity? And what happened to the person they took over?»
I said, «As near as I could make out, he stayed there, too, as it were, but was dominated by the entity. I mean, there remained all his memories, and his individuality, but something else was in the driver’s seat. Running him. Didn’t matter whether he was alive or dead, either, as long as his body wasn’t in too bad shape. Like Haynes—they’d had to kill him to put an earring on him. He was dead, in that if that ring was removed, he’d have fallen flat and never got up again, unless it was put back.
«Like the native whose legs had been cut off. The entity running him had decided the body was no longer practicable for use, so he handed himself back to the other native, see? And they’d find another body in better shape for him to use.
«They didn’t tell me where they came from, except that it was outside the solar system, nor just how they got to Ganymede. Not by themselves, though, because they couldn’t even exist by themselves. They must have got as far as Ganymede as parasites of visitors that had landed there at some time or other. Maybe millions of years ago. And they couldn’t get off Ganymede, of course, till we landed there. Space travel hadn’t developed on Ganymede—»
Charlie interrupted me again, «But if they were so smart, why didn’t they develop it themselves?»
«They couldn’t,» I told him. «They weren’t any smarter than the minds they occupied. Well, a little smarter, in a way, because they could use those minds to their full capacity and people—Terrestrial or Ganymedean—don’t do that. But even the full capacity of the mind of a Ganymedean savage wasn’t sufficient to develop a space-ship.
«But now they had us—I mean, they had Lecky and Haynes and Hilda and Art and Dick—and they had our space-ship, and they were going to Earth, because they knew all about it and about conditions there from our minds. They planned, simply, to take over Earth and—uh—run it. They didn’t explain the details of how they propagate, but I gathered that there wouldn’t be any shortage of earrings to go around, on Earth. Earrings or bracelets or, however they’d attach themselves.
«Bracelets, probably, or arm or leg bands, because wearing earrings like that would be too conspicuous on Earth, and they’d have to work in secret for a while. Take over a few people at a time, without letting the others know what was going on.
«And Lecky—or the thing that was running Lecky—told me they’d been using me as a guinea pig, that they could have put a ring on me, taken me over, at any time. But they wanted a check on how they were doing at imitating normal people. They wanted to know whether or not I got suspicious and guessed the truth.
«So Dick—or the thing that was running him—had kept himself out of sight under Dick’s sleeve, so if I got suspicious of the others, I’d talk it over with Dick—just as I really did do. And that let them know they needed a lot more practice animating those bodies before they took the ship back to Earth to start their campaign there.
«And, well, that was the whole story and they told it to me to watch my reactions, as a normal human. And then Lecky took a ring out of his pocket and held it out toward me with one hand, keeping the pistol on me with the other hand.
«He told me I might as well put it on because if I didn’t, he could shoot me first and then put it on me—but that they greatly preferred to take over undamaged bodies and that it would be better for me, too, if I—that is, my body—didn’t die first.
«But naturally, I didn’t see it that way. I pretended to reach out for the ring, hesitantly, but instead I batted the gun out of his hand, and made a dive for it as it hit the floor.
«I got it, too, just as they all came for me. And I fired three shots into them before I saw that it wasn’t even annoying them. The only way you can stop a body animated by one of those rings is to fix it so it can’t move, like cutting off the legs or something. A bullet in the heart doesn’t worry it.
«But I’d backed to the door and got out of it—out into the Gandymedean night, without even a coat on. It was colder than hell, too. And after I got out there, there just wasn’t any place to go. Except back in the ship, and I wasn’t going there.
«They didn’t come out after me—didn’t bother to. They knew that within three hours—four at the outside—I’d be unconscious from insufficient oxygen. If the cold, or something else, didn’t get me first.
«Maybe there was some way out, but I didn’t see one. I just sat down on a stone about a hundred yards from the ship and tried to think of something I could do. But—»
I didn’t go anywhere with the «but—» and there was a moment’s silence, and then Charlie said, «Well?»
And Blake said, «What did you do?»
«Nothing,» I said. «I couldn’t think of a thing to do. I just sat there.»
«Till morning?»
«No. I lost consciousness before morning. I came to while it was still dark, in the ship.»
Blake was looking at me with a puzzled frown. He said, «The hell. You mean—»
And then Charlie let out a sudden yip and dived headfirst out of the bunk he’d been lying on, and grabbed the gun out of my hand. I’d just finished cleaning it and slipped the cartridge-clip back in.
And then, with it in his hand, he stood there staring at me as though he’d never seen me before.
Blake said, «Sit down, Charlie. Don’t you know when you’re being ribbed? But—uh—better keep the gun, just the same.»
Charlie kept the gun all right, and turned it around to point at me. He said, «I’m making a damn fool out of myself all right, but—Hank, roll up your sleeves.»
I grinned and stood up. I said, «Don’t forget my ankles, too.»
But there was something dead serious in his face, and I didn’t push him too far. Blake said, «He could even have it on him somewhere else, with adhesive tape. I mean on the million-to-one chance that he wasn’t kidding.»
Charlie nodded without turning to look at Blake. He said, «Hank, I hate to ask it, but—»
I sighed, and then chuckled. I said, «Well, I was just going to take a shower anyway.»
It was hot in the ship, and I was wearing only shoes and a pair of coveralls. Paying no attention to Blake and Charlie, I slipped them off and stepped through the oilsilk curtains of the little shower cubicle. And turned on the water.
Over the sound of the shower, I could hear Blake laughing and Charlie cursing softly to himself.
And when I came out of the shower, drying myself, even Charlie was grinning. Blake said, «And I thought that yarn Charlie just told was a dilly. This trip is backwards; we’ll end up having to tell each other the truth.»
There was a sharp rapping on the hull beside the airlock, and Charlie Dean went to open it. He growled, «If you tell Zeb and Ray what chumps you made out of us, I’ll beat your damn ears in. You and your earring gods …»