The infinite brain

Which was the dream, and which the reality? Was Andrew Galeko piloting the first rocket to Venus, or was he a miraculously revived patient in a thirtieth-century hospital? Both worlds seemed intensely real, yet one of them must be an illusion. What did he remember? Yes, he was Andrew Galeko III, heir to a vast fortune. World War II raged; the United States had been drawn into it, and he was on his way home to enlist when his yacht was torpedoed. He wound up in a Japanese prison camp, instead. There was a young man who became virtually a younger brother to him-Hunter. A strange, zealous man who had mental power that science could not classify-the power to transmit thoughts, and influence other minds. Hunter was an idealist, a tormented man who lived for his dream of a world where men cooperated with one another, instead of trying to dominate and destroy. He remembered losing contact with Hunter after the war, finding him at last in Mexico, a broken vestige of his former self. They met in the company of a man named Carrington, a scientific genius whose rocket fuel could guarantee space flight if anyone would back him. And Hunter wanted to go to the planet Venus. He remembered the years during which the rocket was built, the circumstances that had resulted in Andrew Galeko taking off alone. That was where the illusions began. Sometimes he seemed to be there in the rocket, repenting his folly in not waiting for Carrington, and leaving Hunter behind. Yet, somehow, Hunter was there in the rocket with him, helping him write his journal, his history of the entire venture. At other times, he was in the thirtieth century, with the memory of two voices, one of them a lovely girl who pleaded with him and insisted that he was not dead. And stranger still-Hunter was here, too. But this was a different Hunter, a warped Hunter whose mental powers had developed to infinity, a Hunter seeking vengeance on his old friend, Andrew Galeko.