So. Thats all there is? You thought I was afraid to come down here and be Joe, and wanted to know why? But I told you I wasnt!
I should have believed, whispered Cornelius.
Well, get out of the circuit, then. Joe continued growling it vocally. And dont ever come back in the control room, understand? K tubes or no, I dont want to see you again. And I may be a cripple, but I can still take you apart cell by cell. Now sign offleave me alone. The first ship will be landing in minutes.
You a crippleyou, Joe Anglesey?
What? The great gray being on the hill lifted his barbaric head as if to sudden trumpets. What do you mean?
Dont you understand? said the weak, dragging thought. You know how the esprojector works. You know I could have probed Angleseys mind in Angleseys brain without making enough interference to be noticed. And I could not have probed a wholly nonhuman mind at all, nor could it have been aware of me. The filters would not have passed such a signal. Yet you felt me in the first fractional second. It can only mean a human mind in a nonhuman brain.
You are not the half-corpse on Jupiter Five any longer. Youre JoeJoe Anglesey.
Well, Ill be damned, said Joe. Youre right.
He turned Anglesey off, kicked Cornelius out of his mind with a single brutal impulse, and ran down the hill to meet the spaceship.
Cornelius woke up minutes afterward. His skull felt ready to split apart. He groped for the main switch before him, clashed it down, ripped the helmet off his head and threw it clanging on the floor. But it took a little while to gather the strength to do the same for Anglesey. The other man was not able to do anything for himself.
They sat outside sick bay and waited. It was a harshly lit barrenness of metal and plastic, smelling of antisepticsdown near the heart of the satellite, with miles of rock to hide the terrible face of Jupiter.
Only Viken and Cornelius were in that cramped little room. The rest of the station went about its business mechanically, filling in the time till it could learn what had happened. Beyond the door, three biotechnicians, who were also the stations medical staff, fought with deaths angel for the thing which had been Edward Anglesey.
Nine ships got down, said Viken dully. Two males, seven females. Its enough to start a colony.
It would be genetically desirable to have more, pointed out Cornelius. He kept his own voice low, in spite of its underlying cheerfulness. There was a certain awesome quality to all this.
I still dont understand, said Viken.
Oh, its clear enoughnow. I should have guessed it before, maybe. We had all the facts, it was only that we couldnt make the simple, obvious interpretation of them. No, we had to conjure up Frankensteins monster.
Well, Vikens words grated, we have played Frankenstein, havent we? Ed is dying in there.
It depends on how you define death. Cornelius drew hard on his cigar, needing anything that might steady him. His tone grew purposely dry of emotion.
Look here. Consider the data. Joe, now: a creature with a brain of human capacity, but without a minda perfect Lockean tabula rasa for Angleseys psibeam to write on. We deduced, correctly enough if very belatedlythat when enough had been written, there would be a personality. But the question was, whose? Because, I suppose, of normal human fear of the unknown, we assumed that any personality in so alien a body had to be monstrous. Therefore it must be hostile to Anglesey, must be swamping him
The door opened. Both men jerked to their feet.
The chief surgeon shook his head. No use. Typical deep-shock traumata, close to terminus now. If we had better facilities, maybe …
No, said Cornelius. You cannot save a man who has decided not to live any more.
I know. The doctor removed his mask. I need a cigarette. Whos got one? His hands shook a little as he accepted it from Viken.
But how could hedecideanything? choked the physicist. Hes been unconscious ever since Jan pulled him away from that