had the much softer job of simply controlling and coordinating any information relayed by Jerry, leaned out through the open circle in the hull.

"All set, sir," said the tech. Jerry nodded and settled a heavily wired helmet onto his head, while Bob made a hookup between the helmet and the power outlet that was concealed under a flap of metal on the tailfin.

Helmet secured, Jerry lay back upon the couch and closed his eyes. "Any time you're ready, Ensign."

Bob hurried back inside, found the panel he sought among the jumble of high-powered machinery there, and placed a spool of microtape on a spindle inside it.

He shut the panel and thumbed the button that started an impulse radiating from the tape into the jungle.

The impulse had been detected and taped by a roborocket which had circled the planet for months before their arrival. It was one of the two Viridian species whose types were as yet uncatalogued by the Space Corps, in its vast files of alien life. Jerry's job, as a Space Zoologist, was to complete those files, planet by planet throughout the spreading wave of slowly colonized universe.

Bob made sure the tape was functioning. Then he clicked the switch that would stimulate the Contact center in Jerry's brain and release his mind into that of the taped alien for an immutable forty minutes.

Outside the ship, recumbent in the warm green-gold shadows, Jerry's consciousness was dwarfed for an instant by a white lightning-flash of energy. And then his body went limp as his mind sprang with thought-speed into Contact....

Jerry opened his eyes to a dizzying view of the dull brown jungle floor. He blinked a moment, then looked toward his feet. He saw two sets of thin knobby Vs, extending forward and partly around the tiny limb he stood upon, their chitinous surface shiny with the wetness of the jungle air.

Slowly working his jaws, he heard the extremely gentle "click" as they came together. The endoskeleton must exist all over his host's body.

After making certain it would not disturb his balance on the limb, he attempted bringing whatever on the alien passed for hands before his face.

Sometimes aliens had no hands, nor any comparable organisms. Then Jerry would have to soft-pedal the mental nagging of being "amputated," an 

 Prev. P 2/13 next