Hanlon started away ... then stopped short. He had wondered at that curiously sluggish feeling in his mind. Now, with a start he had trouble concealing, he suddenly realized a mind-numbing fact!
He had seen and heard that exchange of conversation from two separate and distinct points! And now he was watching himself leave!
He had heard and seen both from his own ... and from the dog's mind!
Yes, he suddenly comprehended that the dog had heard and understood every word of that brief conversation—not as a dog might, but as a man would!
Suddenly drenched with a cold sweat, Hanlon knew he had not merely been inside the dog's mind, observing and controlling, but that he had actually transferred a portion of his own mind into the dog's brain!
No wonder his own mind—what was left in his own brain—had felt somewhat inadequate and lacking for the moment. It was not his complete mind. When the steward startled him, he had forgotten to withdraw from the bull's brain.
Now he carefully did so, and with senses reeling, almost ran back to his stateroom.
Hanlon threw himself onto the bed and lay there, trembling with awe at realization of the immensity of what he had done.
How in the name of Snyder was such a thing possible? Reading a mind's impressions, even the surface thoughts, was well within the realms of possibility he knew, for he had done it himself. Even hundreds of years before, such things had been believed possible, and had been studied extensively and scientifically. Many people throughout the centuries had claimed the ability to read minds, though only a few had ever proven their powers satisfactorily under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.
He himself, until the past day or so, had not been able to read a mind directly, nor could he do it perfectly even yet, with humans.