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.
There were moaning forces of evil screaming through tortured nerves. And somehow, he was crawling through this thick, swirling evil mental land. A red roaring throbbed in his ears. His heart pumped desperately as he crawled toward something that fought him with all the strength of fear, black hate, and a massive, evil will. Huge, surrealistic, he saw his hand before his burning eyes; they were like disembodied parts of himself. Far out ahead of him, digging, clawing futilely toward some goal he had to attain. He couldn't remember what it was.
His hands gripped white-hot metal, but he couldn't let go or he would fall back away from the thing he must reach. Stench of burning flesh clouded his eyes. Pain rocketed back into his face. He couldn't fight it! He was losing, failing, sinking back and down. Then his hands were beating empty space, and he was toppling into a black well with a bottom of—there was no bottom. With a hopeless, despairing cry, he writhed frantically, found a jagged edge and hung on, straining, every nerve screaming, at a scaly wall that shivered, heavily alive.
But his hands were slipping; he knew he would fall into the well. And once he fell into that blackness, he was gone forever. He was in a world of thought, and in that world he had no defenses, not against such a highly specialized entity of thought as the Jovian. Yes—that was the goal—he was trying to reach the Jovian. That was the symbol. But he could never reach it. The pain was too great. Pain could kill. Shock could stop his brain and heart.
"Vale!"
His voice was harsh, despairing. Had he called? Had he sent that wild cry ringing out toward someone, anyone—?
"Vale!"
But she could not help him now! She was even further down in this black hell of the Jovian's. She was already lost....