He had become simply a great head! A huge hairless head fully a yard in diameter, supported on tiny legs, the arms having dwindled to mere hands that projected just below the head! The eyes were enormous, saucer-like, but the ears were mere pin-holes at either side of the head, the nose and mouth being similar holes below the eyes!
He was stepping out of the chamber on his ridiculously little limbs, and as Dutton and I reeled back in unreasoning horror, his voice came to us as an almost inaudible piping. And it held pride!
"You tried to keep me from going on, and you see what I have become? To such as you, no doubt, I seem terrible, yet you two and all like you seem as low to me as the worms that crawl!"
"Good God, Pollard, you've made yourself a monster!" The words burst from me without thought.
His enormous eyes turned on me. "You call me Pollard, yet I am no more the Pollard you knew, and who entered that chamber first, than you are the ape of millions of years ago from whom you sprang! And all mankind is like you two! Well, they will all learn the powers of one who is a hundred and fifty million years in advance of them!"
"What do you mean?" Dutton exclaimed.
"I mean that with the colossal brain I have I will master without a struggle this man-swarming planet, and make it a huge laboratory in which to pursue the experiments that please me."
"But Pollard — remember why you started this!" I cried. "To go ahead and chart the path of future evolution for humanity — to benefit humanity and not to rule it!"
The great head's enormous eyes did not change. "I remember that the creature Pollard that I was until tonight had such foolish ambitions, yes. It would stir mirth now, if I could feel such an emotion, To benefit humanity? Do you men dream of benefiting the animal you rule over? I would no sooner think of working for the benefit you humans!
"Do you two yet realize that I am so far ahead of you in brain power now as you are ahead of the beasts that perish? Look a this. ." I