"But—but could that be done?" He strove to collect himself, to consider logically this course that he had never dreamed would be requested. "Who could do it? I know of no man."
"Dr. Ku Sui could transplant me."
"Ku Sui? He could, but he wouldn't. He would destroy you, rather."
Almost immediately the artificial voice responded:
"You have said, Captain Carse, that you will soon have Ku Sui captive. Will you not attempt to force him to do as I desire?"
Carse considered the suggestion, but it did not seem remotely possible. Ku Sui could not be prevented from having endless opportunities for destroying the brains while enjoying the manual freedom necessary to perform the operations of re-embodying them.
"I do not see how," he began—and then he cut off his words abruptly.
Something had come into his mind, a memory of something Eliot Leithgow had told him once, long before. Slowly the details came back in full, and at their remembrance his right hand rose to the odd bangs of flaxen hair concealing his forehead and began to smooth them, and a ghost of a smile appeared on his thin lips.
"Perhaps," he murmured. "I think ... perhaps...."
He said decisively into the grille: