rred our vision. The glimpse was an accident. Molo, taken
by surprise at this appearance of his visitor, could hardly have
guarded against it. The waiting figure was very tall, some ten feet,
and very thin. The hood shrouded his face and head. In his hand he
held a large circular box of black shiny leather, of the sort in which
women carry wide-brimmed hats. As Molo joined him he put the box
gently on the floor. He handled it as though it were extraordinarily
heavy; and as he took a step or two, he seemed weighted down. Just as
the room door was hastily closing, Meka sliding it from the inside, we
caught a fleeting glimpse of horror.

The lid of the hat box had lifted up. Inside was a great round thing
of gray-white, a living thing; a distended ball of membrane, with a
network of veins and blood-vessels showing beneath the transparent
skin.

For the instant we gazed, stricken. The ball was palpitating,
breathing! I saw convolutions of inner tissue under the transparent
skin of membrane; a little tentacle, like an arm with a flat-webbed
hand, was holding up the lid of the box. The lid rose a trifle
higher; the colored lights overhead gave us a brief but clear view of
it.

The thing in the box was a huge living brain. I saw goggling,
protruding eyes; an orifice that could have been a nose, and a gash
upended for a vertical mouth. It was a face. And the little tentacle
arm holding up the box-lid was joined to where the ear should have
been.

Was this something human? A huge distended human brain, with the body
withered to that tiny arm?

The palpitating thing sank down in the box and the lid dropped. And
upon our horrified gaze the insulated door of the room slid too.

"By the gods!" exclaimed Halsey. "One of them dares come to the Red
Spark. Here, almost in public."

So Halsey knew what this meant. His eyes were blazing now; his face
was white, with an intensity of emotion that transfigured it.

"Francis, tell Foley I'll be in the manager's office in five minutes."

He snapped off; our image connection with the Red Spark went dead.

"We're going to the Red Spark," he announced. "This changes
everything, yet I don't know. Venza, I may need you more than ever,
now."

Halsey herded us to the office door. From his desk he had snatched up
a few portable instruments, and he flung on a cloak.

It was a brief trip to the Red Spark, on foot through the sub-cellar
arcade to where, under Park Circle 29, we went up in