Brand was nauseated. He turned away.
For a while the creature snuffled about the ship’s port, and leaped this way and that. “I didn’t see this beast in the Chid hut,” Brand remarked.
“Perhaps they made it.” Ruiger watched until the animal apparently wearied of what it was doing and loped back the way it had come, disappearing inside the hut.
“I’m tired,” Ruiger said. “I’d like to get some sleep.”
“O.K.”
But Brand himself could not sleep. He felt restless and uneasy. Nervously he settled down with a full percolator of coffee and kept his eye on the external viewer.
From time to time other animals left the hut and approached the ship. None were particularly alien-looking, except, that was, that they were all apt to expose their innards to view as they moved. One vaguely resembled a pig, another a hairless llama, another a kangaroo. Were they all, perhaps, one animal, made over and over from the same bits and pieces?
The Chid had better not fix Wessel up that way, Brand thought aggressively. He wondered if he and Ruiger were expected to respond to these sorties. But when one didn’t know, it was safer to do nothing.
Steadily the stars, illuminating the landscape with shadowless light, moved across the sky. A short time after the pale sun had risen, Ruiger came stumbling back into the room.
“Anything happen?”
Brand gave him some coffee and told him about the animals. Ruiger sat down, staring at the viewscreen and sipping from his cup.
By now Brand felt tired himself, but his nervousness had not decreased. “You think it will be all right?” he asked Brand anxiously.
“Sure it will be all right,” Ruiger said gruffly. “Don’t be put off by that wood. Probably the whole Chid planet is like that.”
It was the first time either of them had mentioned the wood. “Listen,” Brand said, “I’ve been thinking about those animals they keep sending—”
Ruiger gave a shout. On the screen, Wessel had appeared in the open door of the Chid hut. He stood there uncertainly, and then took a step forward.
“There he is!” Ruiger crowed. “They’ve delivered the goods!”
He jumped to his feet and swept from the room. Brand followed him down to the port and out onto the coarse grass. Wessel was walking towards them. But it was not his usual walk. He plodded rather than strode, moving leadenly and awkwardly, his arms hanging loose, his face slack.
Nevertheless they both loped out to meet him. And then, as they came closer, the grin on Ruiger’s face froze. Wessel’s eye-sockets were empty. The eyelids framed nothing; even the orbital bones had been removed. And Brand now realised that this eyeless Wessel wasn’t even walking towards the ship. He was making for the cliff a short distance away.
“Wessel,” he called softly. And then something else caught his attention. Crawling some yards behind Wessel there came a rounded greyish object no larger than his boot. The thing had a wrinkled, convoluted surface, with a deep crevice running down its back, and glistened as if encased in a transparent jelly.
The creature moved after the manner of a snail, on a single splayed podium. It followed after Wessel with every appearance of effort, just managing to keep up with his erratic pace. Brand and Ruiger watched the procession dumbly. The crawling creature’s front end supported a pair of white balls, their whiteness broken by neat circles of colour. These white balls were obviously human eyes, the same eyes that were missing from Wessel’s eye-sockets. The grey mass, however improbable it seemed logically, was without doubt Wessel’s own brain, alive but without a body, given its own means of locomotion.
Suddenly the decerebrated body stumbled and fell. The brain seemed avid for the body. Before the body could rise it had caught up with it and clambered on to a leg. When the body started to walk again the brain clung to it like a leech, and began to climb.
The body lurched towards the cliff; the brain ascended painfully. Its rate of progress was impressive. It negotiated the hips, climbed up the back and reached a shoulder, momentarily perching there. Then, as if hinged somehow, the back of Wessel’s head opened, the two halves coming apart and revealing an empty cavern. Into this empty skull the brain nosed its way, like a hermit crab edging into a discarded shell or a fat grey rat disappearing down a hole, and the head closed up behind it.
The Wessel body abruptly stopped walking. A shudder passed through it. Then it stood motionless, facing the sea.
Brand and Ruiger glanced at one another.
“Christ!” Ruiger said hoarsely.
“What shall we do?”
Gingerly, continuing to glance at one another for support, they approached Wessel. Wessel’s eyes were now in place and peered from their sockets, somewhat bloodshot. He might have been taken for normal, except that he seemed very, very dazed.
Angrily Ruiger unholstered his pistol and glared towards the Chid hut. “Those alien bastards aren’t getting away with this,” he said. “They’re going to put this right.”
“Wait a minute,” said Brand, holding up his hand. He turned to Wessel. “Wessel,” he said quietly, “can you hear me?”
Wessel blinked. “Sure,” he said.
“How long have you been conscious?”
No answer.
“Can you move?”
“Sure.” Wessel turned round and took a step towards them. Ruiger stumbled back, feeling that he was in the presence of something unclean. Brand, however, stood his ground.
“Can you make it back to the ship?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Then let’s walk.”
Stepping more naturally than before, Wessel accompanied Brand. Slowly they walked towards the gleaming shape of the starship.
Ruiger glowered again at the Chid hut. Then, holstering his pistol, he followed.
Inside, they sat Wessel down in the living quarters. He sat passively, not volunteering anything, not looking at anything in particular.
Brand swallowed. “Do you remember being out of your body?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
Wessel answered in a dull monotone. “All right.”
“Is that all you can say about it?”
Wessel was silent.
“Would you like anything to eat or drink?”
“No.”
“You do recognise us, don’t you?”
“Sure I do.”
Brand looked worriedly at Ruiger, then tossed his head, indicating the door.
Leaving Wessel, they withdrew to the control cabin. “Well, I don’t know,” Brand said. “Perhaps he’s going to be all right.”
“All right?” Ruiger was incredulous, his face red with anger. “Christ, just look at what’s happened!”
“He’s dazed right now. But the brain has already knitted itself to the body. It’s in complete control. Did you notice?—no scar, no seam. Fantastic.”
“It’s hideous, grotesque, perverted—” Ruiger slumped. “I don’t get you. You’re actually taking it in your stride.”
“We were warned about the Chid,” Brand pointed out. “Their ways aren’t our ways. Perhaps to them this sort of thing is some little joke, without any malicious intent. And after all, Wessel is in one piece now. He’s whole, mended.”
Ruiger sighed. He seemed defeated. “If you say so. Me, I can’t even believe what I’ve seen. It’s not possible.”
“You mean you can’t accept that a brain could lead a freelance existence outside its body?”
Ruiger nodded.
“That isn’t really so very extraordinary. I’ve seen a brain kept alive in a hospital on Earth, in a glass tank.”
“Yes, but that’s in hospital conditions, with every kind of back-up. Here…”