deliberately. 'If you do not, it will be but the work of a moment for me to annihilate both of you and go on with this alone.'
'You'd kill us?' I said dumfoundedly. 'We two, two of your best friends?'
His narrow mouth seemed to sneer. 'Friends? I am millions of years past such irrational emotions as friendship. The only emotion you awaken in me is a contempt for your crudity. Turn on the rays!'
His eyes blazed as he snapped the last order, and as though propelled by a force outside myself, I closed the switch.
The shaft of glowing force again hid him from our view.
Of our thoughts during the following quarter-hour I can say nothing, for both Dutton and I were so rigid with awe and horror as to make our minds chaotic. I shall never forget, though, that first moment after the time had passed and I had again switched off the mechanism.
The change had continued, and Pollard — I could not call him that in my own mind — stood in the cube- chamber as a shape the sight of which stunned our minds.
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
He had climbed onto a chair beside one of the laboratory table was reaching among the retorts and apparatus there. Swiftly he poured several compounds into a lead mortar, added others, poured upon the mixed contents another mixture made as swiftly.
There was a puff of intense green smoke from the mortar instantly, and then the great head — I can only call him that — turned the mortar upside down. A lump of shining mottled metal fell out and we gasped as we recognized the yellow sheen of pure gold, made in a moment, apparently, by a mixture of common compounds!
'You see?' the grotesque figure was asking. 'What is the tranformation of elements to a mind like mine? You two cannot even realize the scope of my intelligence!
'I can destroy all life on this earth from this room, if I desire. I can construct a telescope that will allow me to look on the planets the farthest galaxies! I can send my mind forth to make contact with other minds without the slightest material connection. And you think it terrible that I should rule your race! I will not rule them, I will
'You couldn't!' I cried. 'Pollard, if there is anything of Pollard left in you, give up that thought! We'll kill you ourselves before we'll let you start a monstrous rule of men!'
'We will — by God, we will!' Dutton cried, his face twitching.
We had started desperately forward toward the great head but stopped suddenly in our tracks as his great eyes met ours. I found myself walking backward to where I had stood, walking back and Dutton with me, like two automatons.
'So you two would try to kill me?' queried the head that had been Pollard. 'Why, I could direct you without a word to kill yourselves and you'd do so in an instant! What chance has your puny will and brain against mine? And what chance will all the force of men have against me when a glance from me will make them puppets of my will?'
A desperate inspiration flashed through my brain. 'Pollard, wait!' I exclaimed. 'You were going on with the process, with the rays! If you stop here you'll not know what changes lie beyond your present form!'
He seemed to consider. 'That is true,' he admitted, 'and though it seems impossible to me that by going on I can attain to greater intelligence than I now have, I want to find out for certain.'
'Then you'll go under the rays for another fifteen minutes?' I asked quickly.
'I will,' he answered, 'but lest you harbor any foolish ideas, you may know that even inside the chamber I will be able to read your thoughts and can kill both of you before you can make a move to harm me.'
He stepped up into the chamber again, and as I reached for the switch, Dutton trembling beside me, we glimpsed for a moment the huge head before the down-smiting white force hid it from our sight.
The minutes of this period seemed dragging even more slowly than before. It seemed hours before I reached at last to snap off the lays. We gazed into the chamber, shaking.
At first glance the great head inside seemed unchanged, but then we saw that it had changed, and greatly. Instead of being a skin-covered head with at least rudimentary arms and legs, it was now a great gray head-like shape of even greater size, supported by two gray muscular tentacles. The surface of this gray head-thing was wrinkled and folded, and its only features were two eyes as small as our own.
'Oh my God!' quaked Dutton. 'He's changing from a head into a brain — he's losing all human appearance!'
Into our minds came a thought from the gray head-thing before us, a thought as clear as though spoken. 'You have guessed it, for even my former head-body is disappearing, all atrophying except the brain. I am become a walking, seeing brain. As I am so all of your race will be in two hundred million years, gradually losing more and more of their atrophied bodies and developing more and more their great brains.'
His eyes seemed to read us. 'You need not fear now the things I threatened in my last stage of development. My mind, grown infinitely greater, would no more now want to rule you men and your little planet than you would want to rule an anthill and its inhabitants!
My mind, gone fifty million years further ahead in development, can soar out now to vistas of power and knowledge unimagined by me in that last stage, and unimaginable to you.'
'Great God, Pollard!' I cried. 'What have you become?'
'Pollard?' Dutton was laughing hysterically. 'You call that thing Pollard? Why, we had dinner with Pollard three hours ago — he was a human being, and not a thing like this!'
'I have become what all men will become in time,' the thing's thought answered me. 'I have gone this far along the road of man's future evolution, and am going on to the end of that road, am going to attain the development that the last mutation possible will give me!'
'Turn on the rays,' his thought continued. 'I think that I must be approaching now the last possible mutation.'
I snapped over the switch again and the white shaft of the concentrated rays veiled from us the great gray shape. I felt my own mind giving beneath the strain of horror of the last hour, and Dutton was still half- hysterical.
The humming and crackling of the great apparatus seemed thunderous to my ears as the minutes passed.
