Come Into My Brain! — Themes and Context

Volunteers were requested; Harrell spoke up first. Now, wearing the thought-helmet, he plunged deep into the unknown areas of the Dimellian'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 in the distance. It was a long way down; he floated, eerily, in free-fall.

Finally he touched ground. It yielded under him spongily, but it was solid. He looked around. The place was alien: coarse crumbly red soil, 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, why not? Why shouldn't the inside of a man's mind--or an alien's, for that matter--resemble his home world?

Cautiously, Harrell started to walk. Mountains rose in the dim distance and he could see, glittering on a mountaintop far beyond him, the white bulk of an armored castle. Of course! His imaginative mind realized at once that here was where the Dimellian guarded his precious secrets; up there, on the mountain, was his goal.

Low-hanging vines obscured his way; he conjured up a machete and cut them down. The weapon felt firm and real in his hand but he realized that not even the hand was real; all this was but an imaginative projection.

The castle was further away than he had thought. He saw this after he had walked for perhaps 15 minutes. There was no telling duration inside the alien's skull, either. Or distance. The castle seemed just as distant now as when he had begun and his 15-minute journey through the jungle had tired him.

Suddenly demonic laughter sounded up ahead in the jungle. Harsh, ugly laughter.

And the Dimellian appeared, slashing his way through the vines with swashbuckling abandon.

"Get out of my mind, Earthman!"

The Dimellian was larger than life and twice as ugly. It was an idealized, self-glorified mental image Harrell faced.

The captured Dimellian was about five feet tall, thick-shouldered, with sturdy, corded arms and supplementary tentacles sprouting from its shoulders; its skin was green and leathery, dotted with toad-like warts.

Harrell now saw a creature close to nine feet tall, swaggering, with a mighty barrel of a chest and a huge broad-sword clutched in one of its arms. The tentacles writhed purposefully.

"You know why I'm here, alien. I want to know certain facts. And I'm not getting out of your mind until I've wrung them from you."

The alien's lipless mouth curved in a bleak smile. "Big words, little Earthman. But first you'll have to vanquish _me_."

And the Dimellian stepped forward.

Harrell met the downcrashing blow of the alien's broad-sword fully; the shock of impact sent numbing shivers up his arm as far as his shoulder but he held on and turned aside the blow. It wasn't fair; the Dimellian had a vaster reach than he could ever hope for....

No! He saw there was no reason why he couldn't control the size of his own mental image. Instantly he was 10 feet high and advancing remorselessly toward the alien.

Swords clashed clangorously, the forest-birds screamed. Harrell drove the alien back ... back....

And the Dimellian was eleven feet high.

"We can keep this up forever," Harrell said. "Getting larger and larger. This is only a mental conflict." He shot up until he again towered a foot above the alien's head. He swung downward two-handedly with the machete....

And reappeared five feet to the right, "Enough of this foolishness, Earthman. Physical conflict will be endless stalemate, since we're only mental projections. You're beaten; there's no possible way you can defeat me, or I defeat you. Don't waste your time and mine. Get out of my mind!"

Harrell shook his head doggedly. "I'm in here to do a job and I'm not leaving until I've done it." He sprang forward, sword high, and thrust down at the grinning Dimellian.

Again the Dimellian sidestepped. Harrell's sword cut air.

"Don't tire yourself out, Earthman," the alien said mockingly, and vanished.

Harrell stood alone in the heart of the steaming jungle, leaning on his sword. Maybe he was only a mental projection, he thought, but a mental projection could still get thoroughly drenched with its own mental sweat.

The castle still gleamed enigmatically on the distant mountain. He couldn't get there by walking--at least, it hadn't seemed to draw any nearer during his jaunt through the jungle. Hand-to-hand combat with the alien appeared fruitless. A fight in which both participants could change size at will, vanish, reappear, and do other such things was as pointless as a game of poker with every card wild.