Prisoner of the Brain-Mistress By BRYCE WALTON The silver sphere bobbed beside the Brain. It began to glow, and suddenly to expand, and I felt myself drawn toward it. Then I became part of it, part of the heat and brightness and whirling, and I could feel myself melting away--until I became nothing.... [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] There are all kinds of men labeled with all sorts and degrees of psycho tags. For what it's worth, I have always been primarily motivated by an insatiable urge for action. I have always awakened with faculties sharp and eyes clear, ready for any emergency of which there are plenty in these chaotic years of social adjustment from the Twentieth to the Twenty-fifth Century. This awakening I knew would exceed in magnitude any I had known. I knew I was in a place to which the little alien man had brought me. I was stretched out on a smooth cold table of metal. I was also aware of a contraption of unknown purpose clamped about my skull, and my entire store of bodily faculties seemed vitally prepared for any eventuality, as though steeling itself for a subconsciously preconceived super-human effort. I still hesitated about opening my eyes. It wasn't from physical fear which I have learned to convert into mental and physical energy. There was a fear of that alienness. Alien was the word for the little man with the bulbous head and crinkled little face of a premature child. I knew that his outer dress and hairless, swollen and blue-veined skull, and the invisible electronic force that had brought us here, were all of some other time, world, dimension, or something of all three. It wasn't exceptional on my part to be thinking of such fantastic possibilities in such a calm and detached a manner. Nothing seems fantastic anymore to a Twenty-fifth Centurian. Nothing. What we have not actually seen practiced through the marvels of chemistry and electronics, we have been trained to believe possible. We have two great goals facing us around the corner of probability--an Elixir of Life from some bio-chemical laboratory, and a ship constructed for an ultimate landing on a distant star. But first, we must readjust the various political factions which prevent integration of human potential.