Part 2

But he couldn't. The sweat rolled down his face as the fight went on inside him. He had no way of knowing what would happen when Minnn, who was nearing it, reached his brain. Insanity? Convulsions? Death? At the very least, Minnn would control him, and also know his thoughts, his plan, his two aces in the hole.

* * * * *

There was a twist and a tingle at the base of his skull--the invader was entering his brainstalk. It was time to play his first ace. With a burst of determination to control his reeling motor functions, Chester reached out his hand and touched the hand of the talking-attendant. Monnn swished vengefully inside him.

When they had discussed this the others had been afraid. So had Chester. Two alien forces, one hostile, both struggling, might rip and rupture his psychic system like lightning bolts battling inside a transistor. But Chester Forge was a stubborn man, with perhaps a bureaucratic stubbornness, certainly a human stubbornness, and he was committed to an end to be achieved.

For a few split seconds there was in Chester's nervous system what might be described as a "hush." He took advantage of it to step through the open door into a dimly-lighted room. The hospital director, insulation-swathed, followed with the leather-rustling husk.

Then Minnn and Monnn locked forces, and Chester reeled with the shock and swirl of the combat. The two forces mixed, fused, separated, mingled, yet Chester somehow knew always which was which, got bursts of the reasoning of each, knew in some indescribable way the alien, indecipherable natures of each of them. For an instant he panicked. Something mysterious and terrible as the dark energy of infinity was pounding and flashing in his merely human synapses and cells, something he understood yet could not understand at all.

He felt a draining, and knew Minnn was tapping him for energy. Chester rallied to help Monnn. He pulled his energy, his thoughts, away from Minnn, rolling up, balling, clenching his powers, keeping them out of reach, probing for a chance to strike. Minnn filamented through half his body; part of the alien was needling and darting into Chester's mind, burrowing toward knowledge of his plan. Chester buried his plan in the very center of the ball of thoughts, hiding his last ace.

He could not keep this up much longer, and he could feel that both Minnn and Monnn knew this. It was time for the big assault. He sent flash after flash of willpower crisping through his nerves, and Monnn interwove himself in these assaults. Minnn was being forced back, and back, intolerably pressured.

Minnn hurled his energies at them in a sudden rush, and Chester felt something in him begin to tear like a piece of silk.

Concealed from Minnn like the kernel of a nut, Chester cupped the knowledge, his last ace. He was at the verge of cracking, now was the time to play it. He edged toward the wall of the room, where a patient sat darkly on a bench. At the same time both he and Monnn drove forth their last few ergs of pressure against Minnn.

Chester felt something raise his arm. His arm moved toward the patient; his palm touched the man's cheek. There was a sudden cleanness in him, and Minnn was gone.

He leaped backward through the door and it swung to and locked. A peep-panel was opened in it and the black fringed husk hung up before the opening. Chester touched the talking-attendant so Monnn could pass over, then leaned weakly against the wall opposite the door.

"I give him half an hour," he said. "Who's got a drink of water?"

It turned out that they had waited only twenty-two minutes when the fringed sac began to take a luster, to puff and to fill. When they were quite sure Minnn was entirely within it, they wrapped it tightly in the insulation and took it away.

"It was a good plan," said Monnn through the talking-attendant as they drove back toward the town. "We could never have forced him to leave you to enter his husk--his logic would have driven him to fight even harder and to stay, with rather unfortunate results to you, Mr. Forge, but under pressure he would leave to enter another host. And it was lucky the walls of that room held him--as you said, that was a gamble we had to take. But I wish you would again describe to me the phenomenon in that room. It sounds quite strange."

"It's something that happens to humans," said Chester, "and I knew no Ravian could put up with it. Illogic disturbs you, and you tour in human beings only for the sake of one kind of emotion, the pleasant kind. In that room there was no logic, and the emotions were of a different kind, a kind you haven't heard of. The humans there were in what is called a depressive ward. They are illogically unhappy, all the time."

"I see," said Monnn through the lips of the attendant. "You have good logic, Mr. Forge. I have a new respect for human logic. Yes."