That was not the thing's mental voice! Jim knew it, even as he whirled to face Bhruulo who had come from nowhere to stand behind him. Bhruulo was furious. His grayish, lined face was a mask of hate—but not for Jim. He hurried forward like a scuttling crab, supporting himself on his cane with both hands. He approached the glassite barrier, and began to manipulate tiny wheels there which Jim had not noticed before. A network of wiring led down to several complicated box-like affairs set in the floor.
Then a very curious thing happened. If a writhing, pulsing, spinning globe of evil can cower, that is what the entity did! No sooner had Bhruulo's hands touched the wheels, than the entity sank down to the floor, then darted frightenedly up again, to cringe against the furthermost confines of its prison. It poised there, hesitant, as if watching Bhruulo. It ventured out from the wall and then back again. It hardly pulsed at all now, as if holding its breath in fear.
A tiny hum came from the machinery Bhruulo was manipulating. It rose to a shrill whine and then passed beyond the audible. A sudden criss-cross of pencil-thin beams leaped about the confines of the well. They were pale, scarcely visible, but Jim sensed the power of them. He heard a mental shriek of agony from the spinning globe, then it was tumbling up the sides of the well, out of range. It vanished fifty feet overhead, in a haze of greenish light.
Using his cane as a pivot, Bhruulo pirouetted slowly to face Jim.
"Now," he said, "we can talk to each other without interruption from that thing. Too bad that it hates me and I hate it. For we need each other.
"I do not know," Bhruulo continued, "how much the Dim-Ing told you of itself or of me and my plans. It does not particularly matter, now."
"Dim-Ing?" Jim repeated querulously, trying to focus his mind again.
"Yes. 'Dimensional-Thing.' Facetious? I have my moments of humor. It has only a dim remembrance of its past before it came to Mars; but through certain conversation with it I have come to the conclusion that it somehow had birth in another dimension impinging delicately upon ours. How or why it was flung across to us we shall never know. But it is nearly finished on Mars."
Something caught at Jim's brain. He started a little.
Bhruulo laughed shrilly.