The Martian medic had recovered and was tottering blearily on its four contracting legs. "You," Venard gestured at the Martian, at the same time jiggling the Jovian suggestively. "Lead me to the body bank section. I'm after the brain half of Zharkon I. Quick, on the double! Or I blast your Jovian dictator in a million pieces." The Martie started down the vaulted hall, with Venard close behind him. And the rustling progress of all the others followed expectantly. A sharp, jolting shock rocketed between his temples; the Jovian had connected with a sneak punch. How long would the Jovian need? It would be easier to work against time if he knew how much time he had. They passed massive walls lined with huge, sealed and refrigerated sterile banks containing spare body parts of every intellectual type of being among all the Solar Worlds. Bank after bank filled with fantastic arrays of alien body parts. One bank contained, for example, every variety of articulation; among these were every kind of human hand. Doubtless his hand had come from here. Then his reluctant Martie medic guide paused before one bank especially reserved for the synthetically developed mass of convoluted tissue known as the double-brain of Zharkon I, three times larger than a human brain. It boasted two completely separated brain sections, the thalamic and the cortical. The lack of ability to integrate these two seats of pure primitive emotion and pure reason resulted in the variable, unpredictable, unstable actions of most humans or other intellects. The Zharkon could turn on either and create desired levels of reaction--almost an ultimate free agency, or free will set-up. This was one of the first developed Zharkon double-brains. A thousand years old. The Martie opened the bank at Venard's command, lifted it out in its sealed, self-containing unit. The Martie adjusted temperature and self-feeding gauges that would keep the brain preserved in transit for an unspecified length of time. Venard staggered then, and grabbed for support where there was none. A thick slimy blackness closed in. The damn Jovian! He could feel the dark, vast depths of its alien mind opening, then merging with his own. A vaulted abyss of mental perils loomed that were thought-shattering. He felt himself falling, falling through mental parsecs. White-hot knives slashed deep into his flashing brain, wrenching, stabbing. He sobbed for air, staggered through a veiled mist in some strange and hideous mental land.