Yet Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as:
… totally lacking in brains.
There was no doubt of the thing in the next passage. Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form, similar to the rest:
… quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man.
It didn’t relate what the final disposition of the organ was, but I didn’t really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book. Without heart, arms, eyes, brains, viscera, dividing up in two when the occasion demanded. Without a qualm.
… thereupon she gave him her hand.
I sickened. The rascal now had her hand, as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he’s done with them, by this time.
… he took her arm.
Not content to wait, he had to start dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leaped to my feet. But not in time to escape one last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track: