22512	----	THE STUTTERER BY R. R. MERLISS _A man can be killed by a toy gun--he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete--a thing or an idea?_ Illustrated by Riley [Illustration] Out of the twenty only one managed to escape the planet. And he did it very simply, merely by walking up to the crowded ticket window at one of the rocket ports and buying passage to Earth. His Army identification papers passed the harassed inspection of the agent, and he gratefully and silently pocketed the small plastic stub that was handed him in exchange for his money. He picked his way with infinite care through the hordes of ex-soldiers clamoring for passage back to the multitudinous planets from which they had come. Then he slowly climbed the heavy ramp into the waiting rocket. He saw with relief that the seats were strongly constructed, built to survive the pressure of many gravities and he chose one as far removed as possible from the other passengers. He was still very apprehensive, and, as he waited for the rocket to take off, he tried hard to remember the principles of the pulse drive that powered the ship, and whether his additional weight would upset its efficiency enough to awaken suspicion. The seats filled quickly with excited hurrying passengers. Soon he heard the great door clang shut, and saw the red light flicker on, warning of the take-off. He felt a slow surge of pressure as the ship arose from the ground, and his chair creaked ominously with the extra weight. He became fearful that it might collapse, and he strained forward trying to shift some of the pressure through his feet to the floor. He sat that way, tense and immobile, for what seemed a long time until abruptly the strain was relieved and he heard the rising and falling whine of the rockets that told him the ship was in pulse drive, flickering back and forth across the speed of light. He realized that the pilots had not discovered his extra weight, and that the initial hazards were over. The important thing was to look like a passenger, a returning soldier like the others, so that no one would notice him and remember his presence. His fellow travelers were by this time chatting with one another, some playing cards, and others watching the teledepth screens. These were the adventurers who had flocked from all corners of the galaxy to fight in the first national war in centuries. They were the uncivilized few who had read about battle and armed struggle in their history books and found the old stories exciting. They paid no attention to their silent companion who sat quietly looking through the quartz windows at the diamond-bright stars, tacked against the blackness of infinity. The fugitive scarcely moved the entire time of the passage. Finally when Earth hung out in the sky like a blue balloon, the ship cut its pulsations and swung around for a tail landing. The atmosphere screamed through the fins of the rocket, and the continents and the countries, and then the rivers and the mountains took shape. The big ship settled down as gently as a snowflake, shuddered a few times and was quiet. * * * * * The passengers hurriedly gathered up their scattered belongings and pushed toward the exit in a great rush to be out and back on Earth. The fugitive was the last to leave. He stayed well away from the others, being fearful that, if he should touch or brush up against someone, his identity might be recognized. When he saw the ramp running from the ship to the ground, he was dismayed. It seemed a flimsy structure, supported only by tubular steel. Five people were walking down it, and he made a mental calculation of their weight--about eight hundred pounds he thought. He weighed five times that. The ramp was obviously never built to support such a load. He hesitated, and then he realized that he had caught the eye of the stewardess waiting on the ground. A little panicky, he stepped out with one foot and he was horrified to feel the steel buckle. He drew back hastily and threw a quick glance at the stewardess. Fortunately at the moment she was looking down one field and waving at someone. The ramp floor was supported by steel tubes at its edges and in its exact center. He tentatively put one foot in the middle over the support and gradually shifted his weight to it. The metal complained creakily, but held, and he slowly trod the exact center line to Earth. The stewardess' back was turned toward him as he walked off across the field toward the customhouse. He found it comforting to have under his feet what felt like at least one yard of cement. He could step briskly and not be fearful of betraying himself. There was one further danger: the customs inspector. He took his place at the end of the line and waited patiently until it led him up to a desk at which a uniformed man sat, busily checking and stamping declarations and traveling papers. The official, however, did not even look up when he handed him his passport and identification. "Human. You don't have to go through immigration," the agent said. "Do you have anything to declare?" "N-no," the traveler said. "I d-didn't bring anything in." "Sign the affidavit," the agent said and pushed a sheet of paper toward him. The traveler picked up a pen from the desk and signed "Jon Hall" in a clear, perfect script. The agent gave it a passing glance and tossed it into a wire basket. Then he pushed his uniform cap back exposing a bald head. "You're my last customer for a while, until the rocket from Sirius comes in. Guess I might as well relax for a minute." He reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a package of cigarettes, of which he lit one. "You been in the war, too?" he asked. Hall nodded. He did not want to talk any more than he had to. The agent studied his face. "That's funny," he said after a minute. "I never would have picked you for one of these so-called adventurers. You're too quiet and peaceful looking. I would have put you down as a doctor or maybe a writer." "N-no," Hall said. "I w-was in the war." "Well, that shows you can't tell by looking at a fellow," the agent said philosophically. He handed Hall his papers. "There you are. The left door leads out to the copter field. Good luck on Earth!" Hall pocketed the stamped documents. "Thanks," he said. "I'm glad to be here." He walked down the wide station room to a far exit and pushed the door open. A few steps farther and he was standing on a cement path dug into a hillside. * * * * * Across the valley, bright in the noon sun lay the pine covered slopes of the Argus mountains, and at his feet the green Mojave flowering with orchards stretched far to the north and south. Between the trees, in the center of the valley, the Sacramento River rolled southward in a man-made bed of concrete and steel giving water and life to what had a century before been dry dead earth. There was a small outcropping of limestone near the cement walk, and he stepped over to it and sat down. He would have been happy to rest and enjoy for a few moments his escape and his triumph, but he had to let the others know so that they might have hope. He closed his eyes and groped across the stars toward Grismet. Almost immediately he felt an impatient tug at his mind, strong because there were many clamoring at once to be heard. He counted them. There were seventeen. So one more had been captured since he had left Grismet. "Be quiet," the told them. "I'll let you see, after a while. First I have to reach the two of us that are still free." Obediently, the seventeen were still, and he groped some more and found another of his kind deep in an ice cave in the polar regions of Grismet. "How goes it?" he asked. The figure on Grismet lay stretched out at full length on the blue ice, his eyes closed. He answered without moving: "They discovered my radiation about an hour ago. Pretty soon, they'll start blasting through the ice." The one on Earth felt the chill despair of his comrade and let go. He groped about again until he found the last one, the only other one left. He was squatting in the cellar of a warehouse in the main city of Grismet. "Have they picked up your trail yet?" he asked. "No," answered the one in the cellar. "They won't for a while. I've scattered depots of radiation all through the town. They'll be some time tracking them all down, before they can get to me." In a flash of his mind, Hall revealed his escape and the one on Grismet nodded and said: "Be careful. Be very careful. You are our only hope." Hall returned then to the seventeen, and he said with his thoughts: "All right, now you can look." Immobile in their darkness, they snatched at his mind, and as he opened his eyes, they, too, saw the splendors of the mountains and the valley, the blue sky, and the gold sun high overhead. * * * * * The new man was young, only twenty-six. He was lean and dark and very enthusiastic about his work. He sat straight in his chair waiting attentively while his superior across the desk leafed through a folder. "Jordan. Tom Jordan," the older man finally said. "A nice old Earth name. I suppose your folks came from there." "Yes, sir," the new man said briskly. The chief closed the folder. "Well," he said, "your first job is a pretty important one." "I realize that, sir," Jordan said. "I know it's a great responsibility for a man just starting with the Commission, but I'll give it every thing I have." The chief leaned back in his seat and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Normally we start a beginner like you working in a pair with an older man. But we just haven't got enough men to go around. There are eight thousand planets there"--he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to a wall-sized map of the galaxy--"and we've got to cover every one. It seems reasonable that if he escaped this planet, he'll go to another that will by its atmosphere or its temperature give him some natural advantage over us--some place that is either burning hot or at absolute zero, or perhaps with a chlorine or sulfur dioxide atmosphere. That's why"--he hesitated a minute, but continued because he was a truthful man--"I picked you for Earth. It's the most populated of all the planets and it seems the least likely one that he would choose." Jordan's face dropped a little bit when he heard the last piece of information, but he said: "I understand, sir, and if he's there, I'll bring him back." The chief slouched farther back in his seat. He picked up a shard of rubidium that served as a paper weight and toyed with it. "I guess you know most of the facts. They are made out of permallium. Have you ever seen any of the stuff?" The new man shook his head. "I read about it though--some new alloy, isn't it?" "Plenty new. It's the hardest stuff anybody has ever made. If you set off one hundred successive atom blasts over a lump of permallium, you might crystallize and scale maybe a micron off the surface. It will stand any temperature or pressure we can produce. That just means there's no way to destroy it." Jordan nodded. He felt a little honored that the chief was giving him this explanation in person rather than just turning him over to one of the scientific personnel for a briefing. He did not understand that the old man was troubled and was talking the situation through as much for his own sake as for anyone else's. * * * * * "That's the problem," the chief continued. "Essentially an indestructible machine with a built-in source of power that one can't reach. It had to be built that way--a war instrument, you know." He stopped and looked squarely at the bright young man sitting across the desk. "This lousy war. You'd think the human race would grow up some time, wouldn't you?" He filled a pipe with imported Earth tobacco and lit it, and took a few deep puffs. "There's something else. I don't know how they do it, but they can communicate with one another over long distances. That made them very useful for military purposes. "They are loyal to one another, too. They try to protect each other and keep one another from being captured. Do you find that surprising?" The question caught Jordan unprepared. "Well, yes. It is, kind of--" he said. "They are only machines." The chief closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed tired. "Yes," he repeated, "they are only machines. Anyway, we don't know everything about them, even yet. There are still a few secret angles, I think. The men who could tell us are either dead or in hiding. "There's one fact though that gives us a great advantage. Their brain"--he stopped on the word and considered it--"I mean their thinking apparatus gives off a very penetrating short-wave length radiation which you can pick up on your meters anywhere in a radius of two thousand miles, and you can locate the source accurately if you get within fifty miles. "The only real problem you'll have in finding them is the confusion created by illegal atomic piles. You'd be surprised how many of them we have turned up recently. They are owned by private parties and are run illegally to keep from paying the tax on sources of power. You have to track those down, but once you get them labeled it will be clear sailing." He stopped to take a few puffs on his pipe. "Don't try to be a hero," he said after a few moments. "Don't get close to the thing you are hunting. None of them yet has injured any of us, but if one should want to, he could crush you to death with two fingers. Use the permallium nets and net bombs if you locate him." He tamped his pipe out. "Well, that's it," he said. The new man arose. "I want you to know that I appreciate the trust you have put in me." "Sure, sure," the chief said, but it was not unfriendly. "Do you like the job?" "It is a great opportunity," Jordan said, and he meant it. "What do you think about what we do to them after we capture them?" The new man shrugged. "I suppose it's the only thing to do. It's not as though they were human." "Yeah," the chief said. "I guess so. Anyway, good luck." Jordan arose and shook the chief's hand. However, just as he was stepping through the door, his superior asked him another question. "Did you know that one of them stutters?" He turned back, puzzled. "Stutters? Why should he stutter? How could that be?" The chief shook his head and started cleaning out his pipe. "I don't know for sure. You'd better get started." He sat back in his seat and watched the back of the new man as he disappeared through the doorway. That young fellow has a lot to learn, he thought to himself. But even so, maybe he's better off than I am. Maybe I've had too much experience. Maybe too much experience puts you back where you started from. You've done the wrong thing so many times and profited so many times from your mistakes that you see errors and tragedies in everything. He was depressed, and he did something that usually made him feel better again. He reached under the edge of his desk and pulled a little switch that made the galactic map on the wall light up in three-dimensional depth, then he swung around in his chair so he could see it. Eight thousand planets that his race had conquered, eight thousand planets hundreds of light-years apart. Looking at the map gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride in humanity which even a stupid war and its aftermath could not completely destroy. * * * * * Jon Hall, the fugitive, walked along the highway leading south from the rocket port. There was very little traffic, only an occasional delivery truck carrying meat or groceries. The real highway was half a mile overhead where the copters shuttled back and forth up and down the state in neat orderly layers. The seventeen were inside his head, looking through his eyes, and feasting on the blueness of the sky, and the rich green vegetation that covered the fertile fields. From time to time they talked to him, giving advice, asking questions, or making comments, but mostly they looked, each knowing that the hours of their sight might be very few. After walking a while, Hall became aware of someone's footsteps behind him. He stopped suddenly in apprehension and swung around. A dozen or so paces away was a red-headed boy of about ten or eleven, dressed in plastic overalls, and carrying a basket of ripe raspberries. The stains about his mouth showed that not all the raspberries were carried in the basket. Hall's anxiety faded, and he was glad to see the child. He had hoped to meet someone who was not so old that they would become suspicious, but old enough that they might give him directions. He waited for the lad to catch up. "Hello," the boy said. "I've been walking behind you most of a mile, but I guess you didn't hear me." "It looks as though you've been p-p-picking raspberries," Hall said. "Yup. My dad owns a patch by the river. Want some?" He proffered the basket. "No, thank you," Hall answered. He resumed his walk up the highway with the boy at his side. "D-do you live around here," he asked. "Just up the road a ways." The lad studied his companion for a minute. "You stutter, don't you?" "A little." "There was a boy in my class who used to stutter. The teacher said it was because he thought so far ahead of what he said he got all tangled up." The boy reached in his basket for a handful of berries and chewed them thoughtfully. "She was always after him to talk slower, but I guess it didn't do any good. He still stutters." "Is there a p-power plant around here?" Hall asked. "You know, where the electricity comes from." "You mean the place where they have the nu-nuclear fission"--the boy stumbled on the unfamiliar word, but got it out--"and they don't let you in because you get poisoned or something?" "Yes, I think that's it." "There are two places. There's one over at Red Mountain and another over at Ballarat." "Where are they?" "Well--" The boy stopped to think. "Red Mountain's straight ahead, maybe ten miles, and Ballarat's over there"--he pointed west across the orange groves--"maybe fifteen miles." "Good," Hall said. "Good." And he felt glad inside of himself. Maybe it could be done, he thought. * * * * * They walked along together. Hall sometimes listening to the chattering of the boy beside him, sometimes listening to and answering the distant voices of the seventeen. Abruptly, a few hundred yards before the house that the boy had pointed out as his father's, a small sports car whipped down the highway, coming on them almost without warning. The lad jumped sideways, and Hall, to avoid touching him, stepped off the concrete road. His leg sank into the earth up to the mid-calf. He pulled it out as quickly as he could. The boy was looking at the fast retreating rear of the sports car. "Gee," he said. "I sure didn't see them coming." Then he caught sight of the deep hole alongside the road, and he stared at it. "Gosh, you sure made a footprint there," he said wonderingly. "The ground was soft," Hall said. "C-come along." But instead of following, the boy walked over to the edge of the road and stared into the hole. He tentatively stamped on the earth around it. "This ground isn't soft," he said. "It's hard as a rock." He turned and looked at Hall with big eyes. Hall came close to the boy and took hold of his jacket. "D-don't pay any attention to it, son. I just stepped into a soft spot." The boy tried to pull away. "I know who you are," he said. "I heard about you on the teledepth." Suddenly, in the way of children, panic engulfed him and he flung his basket away and threw himself back and forth, trying to tear free. "Let me go," he screamed. "Let me go. Let me go." "Just l-listen to me, son," Hall pleaded. "Just listen to me. I won't hurt you." But the boy was beyond reasoning. Terror stricken, he screamed at the top of his voice, using all his little strength to escape. "If you p-promise to l-listen to me, I'll let you go," Hall said. "I promise," the boy sobbed, still struggling. But the moment Hall let go of his coat, he tore away and ran as fast as he could over the adjacent field. "W-wait--don't run away," Hall shouted. "I won't hurt you. Stay where you are. I couldn't follow you anyway. I'd sink to my hips." The logic of the last sentence appealed to the frightened lad. He hesitated and then stopped and turned around, a hundred feet or so from the highway. "L-listen," said Hall earnestly. "The teledepths are wr-wrong. They d-didn't tell you the t-truth about us. I d-don't want to hurt anyone. All I n-need is a few hours. D-don't tell anyone for j-just a few hours and it'll be all right." He paused because he didn't know what to say next. The boy, now that he seemed secure from danger had recovered his wits. He plucked a blade of grass from the ground and chewed on an end of it, looking for all the world like a grownup farmer thoughtfully considering his fields. "Well, I guess you could have hurt me plenty, but you didn't," he said. "That's something." "Just a few hours," Hall said. "It won't take long. Y-you can tell your father tonight." The boy suddenly remembered his raspberries when he saw his basket and its spilled contents on the highway. "Why don't you go along a bit," he said. "I would like to pick up those berries I dropped." "Remember," Hall said, "just a few hours." He turned and started walking again toward Red Mountain. Inside his mind, the seventeen asked anxiously, "Do you think he'll give the alarm? Will he report your presence?" [Illustration] Back on the highway, the boy was gathering the berries back into his basket while he tried to make his mind up. * * * * * Jordan reached Earth atmosphere about two o'clock in the afternoon. He immediately reported in to the Terrestrial police force, and via the teledepth screen spoke with a bored lieutenant. The lieutenant, after listening to Jordan's account of his mission, assured him without any particular enthusiasm of the willingness of the Terrestrial forces to coöperate, and of more value, gave him the location of all licensed sources of radiation in the western hemisphere. The galactic agent set eagerly to work, and in the next several hours uncovered two unlisted radiation sources, both of which he promptly investigated. In one case, north of Eugene, he found in the backyard of a metal die company a small atomic pile. The owner was using it as an illegal generator of electricity, and when he saw Jordan snooping about with his detection instruments, he immediately offered the agent a sizable bribe. It was a grave mistake since Jordan filed charges against him, via teledepth, not only for evading taxes, but also for attempted bribery. The second strike seemed more hopeful. He picked up strong radiation in a rather barren area of Montana; however when he landed, he found that it was arising from the earth itself. From a short conversation with the local authorities, he learned that the phenomenon was well known: an atomic fission plant had been destroyed at that site during the Third World War. He was flying over the lovely blue water of Lake Bonneville, when his teledepth screen flickered. He flipped the switch on and the lieutenant's picture flooded in. "I have a call I think you ought to take," the Earth official said. "It seems as though it might be in your line. It's from a sheriff in a small town in California. I'll have the operator plug him in." * * * * * Abruptly the picture switched to that of a stout red-faced man wearing the brown uniform of a county peace officer. "You're the galactic man?" the sheriff asked. "Yes. My name is Tom Jordan," Jordan said. "Mine's Berkhammer." It must have been warm in California because the sheriff pulled out a large handkerchief and mopped his brow. When he was done with that he blew his nose loudly. "Hay fever," he announced. "Want to see my credentials?" "Oh sure, sure," the sheriff hastily replied. He scrutinized the card and badge that Jordan displayed. After a moment, he said, "I don't know why I'm looking at those. They might be fakes for all I know. Never saw them before and I'll probably never see them again." "They're genuine." "The deuce with formality," the sheriff said heavily. "There's some kid around here who thinks he saw that ... that machine you're supposed to be looking for." "When was that?" Jordan asked. "About four hours ago. Here, I'll let you talk to him yourself." He pulled his big bulk to one side, and a boy and his father walked into the picture. The boy was red-eyed, as though he had been crying. The father was a tall, stoop-shouldered farmer, dressed like his son in plastic overalls. * * * * * The sheriff patted the boy on the back. "Come on, Jimmy. Tell the man what you saw." "I saw him," the boy said sullenly. "I walked up the highway with him." Jordan leaned forward toward the screen. "How did you know who he was?" "I knew because when he stepped on the ground, he sank into it up to his knee. He tried to say the ground was soft, but it was hard. I know it was hard." "Why did you wait so long to tell anybody?" Jordan asked softly. The boy looked at him with defiance and dislike in his eyes and kept his small mouth clamped shut. His father nudged him roughly in the ribs. "Answer the man," he commanded. Jimmy looked down at his shoes. "Because he asked me not to tell for a while," he said curtly. "Stubborn as nails," the father said not without pride in his voice. "Got more loyalty to a lousy machine than to the whole human race." "Which way did he go, Jimmy?" "Toward Red Mountain. I think maybe to the power house. He asked me where it was." "What do you think he wants with that?" the sheriff asked of Jordan. Jordan shrugged and shook his head. "Maybe it's all in the kid's head," the sheriff suggested. "These wild teledepth programs they look at give them all kinds of ideas." "It isn't in my head," Jimmy said violently. "I saw him. He stepped on the ground and stuck his foot into it. I talked to him. And I know something else. He stutters." "What?" said the sheriff. "Now I know you're lying." The father started dragging the boy by the arm. "Come on home, Jimmy. You got one more licking coming." Jordan, however, was sure the boy was not lying. "Leave him alone," he said. "He's right. He did see him." He took a fast look at the timepiece on his panel board. "I'll be down in an hour and a half. Wait for me." He flicked the switch off, and kicked up the motors. The ship shot southward almost as rapidly as a projectile. He had topped the Sierras and had just turned into the great central valley of California when, with the impact of a blow, a frightening thought occurred to him. He flicked the screen on again, and he caught the sheriff sitting behind his desk industriously scratching himself in one armpit. "Listen," Jordan said, speaking very fast. "You've got to send out a national alarm. You must get every man you can down to the power plant. You've got to stop him from getting in." The sheriff stopped scratching himself and stared at Jordan. "What are you so het up about, young man?" "Do it, and do it now," Jordan almost shouted. "He'll tear the pile apart and let the hafnium go off. It'll blow half the state off the planet." The sheriff was unperturbed. "Mr. Star boy," he said sarcastically, "any grammar school kid knows that if someone came within a hundred yards of one of those power-house piles, he'd burn like a match stick. And besides why would he want to blow himself to pieces?" "He's made out of permallium." Jordan was shouting now. The sheriff suddenly grew pale. "Get off my screen. I'm calling Sacramento." * * * * * Jordan set the ship for maximum speed, well beyond the safety limit. He kept peering ahead into the dusk, momentarily fearful that the whole countryside would light up in one brilliant flash. In a few minutes he was sweating and trembling with the tension. Over Walnut Grove, he recognized the series of dams, reservoirs and water-lifts where the Sacramento was raised up out of its bed and turned south. For greater speed, he came close to Earth, flying at emergency height, reserved ordinarily for police, firemen, doctors and ambulances. He set his course by sight following the silver road of the river, losing it for ten or fifteen miles at a time where it passed through subterranean tunnels, picking it up again at the surface, always shooting south as fast as the atmosphere permitted. At seven thirty, when the sun had finally set, he sighted the lights of Red Mountain, and he cut his speed and swung in to land. There was no trouble picking out the power plant; it was a big dome-shaped building surrounded by a high wall. It was so brilliantly lit up, that it stood out like a beacon, and there were several hundred men milling about before it. He settled down on the lawn inside the walls, and the sheriff came bustling up, a little more red in the face than usual. "I've been trying to figure for the last hour what the devil I would do to stop him if he decided to come here," Berkhammer said. "He's not here then?" The sheriff shook his head. "Not a sign of him. We've gone over the place three times." Jordan settled back in relief, sitting down in the open doorway of his ship. "Good," he said wearily. "Good!" the sheriff exploded. "I don't know whether I'd rather have him show up or not. If this whole business is nothing more than the crazy imagination of some kid who ought to get tanned and a star-cop with milk behind his ears, I'm really in the soup. I've sent out an alarm and I've got the whole state jumping. There's a full mechanized battalion of state troops waiting in there." He pointed toward the power plant. "They've got artillery and tanks all around the place." Jordan jumped down out of the ship. "Let's see what you've got set up here. In the meantime, stop fretting. I'd rather see you fired than vaporized along with fifty million other people." "I guess you're right there," Berkhammer conceded, "but I don't like to have anyone make a fool out of me." * * * * * At Ballarat, an old man, Eddie Yudovich, was the watchman and general caretaker of the electrical generation plant. Actually, his job was a completely unnecessary one, since the plant ran itself. In its very center, buried in a mine of graphite were the tubes of hafnium, from whose nuclear explosions flowed a river of electricity without the need of human thought or direction. He had worked for the company for a long time and when he became crippled with arthritis, the directors gave him the job so that he might have security in his latter years. Yudovich, however, was a proud old man, and he never once acknowledged to himself or to anyone else that his work was useless. He guarded and checked the plant as though it were the storehouse of the Terrestrial Treasury. Every hour punctually, he made his rounds through the building. At approximately seven thirty he was making his usual circuit when he came to the second level. What he discovered justified all the years of punctilious discharge of his duties. He was startled to see a man kneeling on the floor, just above where the main power lines ran. He had torn a hole in the composition floor, and as Yudovich watched, he reached in and pulled out the great cable. Immediately the intruder glowed in the semidarkness with an unearthly blue shine and sparkles crackled off of his face, hands and feet. Yudovich stood rooted to the floor. He knew very well that no man could touch that cable and live. But as he watched, the intruder handled it with impunity, pulling a length of wire out of his pocket and making some sort of a connection. It was too much for the old man. Electricity was obviously being stolen. He roared out at the top of his voice, and stumped over to the wall where he threw the alarm switch. Immediately, a hundred arc lights flashed on, lighting the level brighter than the noon sun, and a tremendously loud siren started wailing its warning to the whole countryside. The intruder jumped up as though he had been stabbed. He dropped the wires, and after a wild look around him, he ran at full speed toward the far exit. "Hold on there," Yudovich shouted and tried to give chase, but his swollen, crooked knees almost collapsed with the effort. His eyes fell on a large wrench lying on a worktable, and he snatched it up and threw it with all his strength. In his youth he had been a ball player with some local fame as a pitcher, and in his later life, he was addicted to playing horseshoes. His aim was, therefore, good, and the wrench sailed through the air striking the runner on the back of the head. Sparks flew and there was a loud metallic clang, the wrench rebounding high in the air. The man who was struck did not even turn his head, but continued his panicky flight and was gone in a second. When he realized there was no hope of effecting a capture, Yudovich stumped over to see the amount of the damage. A hole had been torn in the floor, but the cable itself was intact. Something strange caught his attention. Wherever the intruder had put his foot down, there were many radiating cracks in the composition floor, just as though someone had struck a sheet of ice with a sledge hammer. "I'll be danged," he said to himself. "I'll be danged and double danged." He turned off the alarm and then went downstairs to the teledepth screen to notify the sheriff's office. A few hundred yards from the powerhouse, Jon Hall stood in the darkness, listening to the voices of his fellows. There were eighteen of them, not seventeen, for a short while before the one in the ice cave had been captured, and they railed at him with a bitter hopeless anger. He looked toward the bright lights of the powerhouse, considering whether he should return. "It's too late," said one of them. "The alarm is already out." "Go into the town and mix with the people," another suggested. "If you stay within a half mile of the hafnium pile, the detection man will not be able to pick up your radiation and maybe you will have a second chance." They all assented in that, and Hall, weary of making his own decisions turned toward the town. He walked through a tree-lined residential street, the houses with neatly trimmed lawns, and each with a copter parked on the roof. In almost every house the teledepths were turned on and he caught snatches of bulletins about himself: "... Is known to be in the Mojave area." "... About six feet in height and very similar to a human being. When last seen, he was dressed in--" "Governor Leibowitz has promised speedy action and attorney general Markle has stated--" The main street of Ballarat was brilliantly lighted. Many of the residents, aroused by the alarm from the powerhouse, were out, standing in small groups in front of the stores and talking excitedly to one another. He hesitated, unwilling to walk through the bright street, but uncertain where to turn. Two men talking loudly came around the corner suddenly and he stepped back into a store entrance to avoid them. They stopped directly in front of him. One of them, an overalled farm hand from his looks, said, "He killed a kid just a little while ago. My brother-in-law heard it." "Murderer," the other said viciously. The farmer turned his head and his glance fell on Hall. "Well, a new face in town," he said after a moment's inspection. "Say I bet you're a reporter from one of the papers, aren't you?" Hall came out of the entrance and tried to walk around the two men, but the farmer caught him by the sleeve. "A reporter, huh? Well, I got some news for you. That thing from Grismet just killed a kid." Hall could restrain himself no longer. "That's a lie," he said coldly. The farmer looked him up and down. "What do you know about it," he demanded. "My brother-in-law got it from somebody in the state guard." "It's still a lie." "Just because it's not on the teledepth, you say it's a lie," the farmer said belligerently. "Not everything is told on the teledepth, Mr. Wiseheimer. They're keeping it a secret. They don't want to scare the people." Hall started to walk away, but the farmer blocked his path. "Who are you anyway? Where do you live? I never saw you before," he said suspiciously. "Aw, Randy," his companion said, "don't go suspecting everybody." "I don't like anyone to call me a liar." Hall stepped around the man in his path, and turned down the street. He was boiling inside with an almost uncontrollable fury. * * * * * A few feet away, catastrophe suddenly broke loose. A faulty section of the sidewalk split without warning under his feet and he went pitching forward into the street. He clutched desperately at the trunk of a tall palm tree, but with a loud snap, it broke, throwing him head on into a parked road car. The entire front end of the car collapsed like an egg shell under his weight. For a long moment, the entire street was dead quiet. With difficulty, Hall pulled himself to his feet. Pale, astonished faces were staring at him from all sides. Suddenly the farmer started screaming. "That's him. I knew it. That's him." He was jumping up and down with excitement. Hall turned his back and walked in the other direction. The people in front of him faded away, leaving a clear path. He had gone a dozen steps when a man with a huge double-barreled shotgun popped out from a store front just ahead. He aimed for the middle of Hall's chest and fired both barrels. The blast and the shot struck Hall squarely, burning a large hole in his shirt front. He did not change his pace, but continued step by step. The man with the gun snatched two shells out of his pocket and frantically tried to reload. Hall reached out and closed his hand over the barrel of the gun and the blue steel crumpled like wet paper. From across the street, someone was shooting at him with a rifle. Several times a bullet smacked warmly against his head or his back. He continued walking slowly up the street. At its far end several men appeared dragging a small howitzer--probably the only piece in the local armory. They scurried around it, trying to get it aimed and loaded. "Fools. Stupid fools," Hall shouted at them. The men could not seem to get the muzzle of the gun down, and when he was a dozen paces from it they took to their heels. He tore the heavy cannon off of its carriage and with one blow of his fist caved it in. He left it lying in the street broken and useless. Almost as suddenly as it came, his anger left him. He stopped and looked back at the people cringing in the doorways. "You poor, cruel fools," Hall said again. He sat down in the middle of the street on the twisted howitzer barrel and buried his head in his hands. There was nothing else for him to do. He knew that in just a matter of seconds, the ships with their permallium nets and snares would be on him. * * * * * Since Jordan's ship was not large enough to transport Jon Hall's great weight back to Grismet, the terrestrial government put at the agent's disposal a much heavier vessel, one room of which had been hastily lined with permallium and outfitted as a prison cell. A pilot by the name of Wilkins went with the ship. He was a battered old veteran, given to cigar smoking, clandestine drinking and card playing. The vessel took off, rose straight through the atmosphere for about forty miles, and then hung, idly circling Earth, awaiting clearance before launching into the pulse drive. A full course between Earth and Grismet had to be plotted and cleared by the technicians at the dispatch center because the mass of the vessel increased so greatly with its pulsating speed that if any two ships passed within a hundred thousand miles of each other, they would at least be torn from their course, and might even be totally destroyed. Wilkins had proposed a pinochle game, and he and Jordan sat playing in the control room. The pilot had been winning and he was elated. "Seventy-six dollars so far," he announced after some arithmetic. "The easiest day's pay I made this month." Jordan shuffled the cards and dealt them out, three at a time. He was troubled by his own thoughts, and so preoccupied that he scarcely followed the game. "Spades, again," the pilot commented gleefully. "Well, ain't that too bad for you." He gave his cigar a few chomps and played a card. Jordan had been looking out of the window. The ship had tilted and he could see without rising the rim of Earth forming a beautiful geometric arc, hazy and blue in its shimmering atmosphere. "Come on, play," the pilot said, impatiently. "I just led an ace." Jordan put down his cards. "I guess I better quit," he said. "What the devil!" the pilot said angrily. "You can't quit like that in the middle of a deal. I got a flush and aces." "I'm sorry," Jordan said, "but I'm going to lie down in my cabin until we are given clearance." He opened the door of the little room and went into the hall. He walked down past his own cabin and stopped in front of another door, a new one that was sheathed in permallium. He hesitated a few moments; then he snapped open the outside latch and walked in, letting the door swing closed behind him. * * * * * Hall lay unmoving in the middle of the floor, his legs and arms fastened in greaves of permallium. Jordan was embarrassed. He did not look directly at the robot. "I don't know whether you want to talk to me or not," he started. "If you don't want to, that's all right. But, I've followed you since you landed on Earth, and I don't understand why you did what you did. You don't have to tell me, but I wish you would. It would make me feel better." The robot shrugged--a very human gesture, Jordan noted. "G-go ahead and ask me," he said. "It d-doesn't make any difference now." Jordan sat down on the floor. "The boy was the one who gave you away. If not for him, no one would have ever known what planet you were on. Why did you let the kid get away?" The robot looked straight at the agent. "Would you kill a child?" he asked. "No, of course not," Jordan said a little bit annoyed, "but I'm not a robot either." He waited for a further explanation, but when he saw none was coming, he said: "I don't know what you were trying to do in that powerhouse at Ballarat, but, whatever it was, that old man couldn't have stopped you. What happened?" "I l-lost my head," the robot said quietly. "The alarm and the lights rattled me, and I got into a p-panic." "I see," said Jordan, frustrated, not really seeing at all. He sat back and thought for a moment. "Let me put it this way. Why do you stutter?" Hall smiled a wry smile. "Th-that used to be a m-military secret," he said. "It's our one weakness--the one Achilles heel in a m-machine that was meant to be invulnerable." He struggled to a sitting position. "You see, we were m-made as s-soldiers and had to have a certain loyalty to the country that m-made us. Only living things are loyal--machines are not. We had to think like human beings." Jordan's brows contracted as he tried to understand the robot. "You mean you have a transplanted human brain?" he asked incredulously. "In a way," Hall said. "Our b-brains are permallium strips on which the mind of some human donor was m-magnetically imprinted. My mind was copied f-from a man who stuttered and who got panicky when the going got rough, and who couldn't kill a child no matter what was at s-stake." Jordan felt physically ill. Hall was human and he was immortal. And according to galactic decree, he, like his fellows, was to be manacled in permallium and fixed in a great block of cement, and that block was to be dropped into the deep silent depths of the Grismet ocean, to be slowly covered by the blue sediment that gradually filters down through the miles of ocean water to stay immobile and blind for countless millions of years. Jordan arose to his feet. He could think of nothing further to say. He stopped, however, with the door half open, and asked: "One more question--what did you want with the electrical generator plants on Earth?" [Illustration] Slowly and without emotion Hall told him, and when he understood, he became even sicker. * * * * * He went across to his cabin and stood for a while looking out the window. Then he lit a cigarette and lay down on his bunk thinking. After a time, he put out the cigarette and walked into the hall where he paced up and down. As he passed the cell door for about the tenth time, he suddenly swung around and lifted the latch and entered. He went over to the robot, and with a key that he took from his pocket, he unlocked the greaves and chains. "There's no point in keeping you bound up like this," he said. "I don't think you're very dangerous." He put the key back in his pocket. "I suppose you know that this ship runs on an atomic pile," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor in the control room and they can be reached through a little trap door." Jordan looked directly into Hall's face. The robot was listening with great intentness. "Well," the agent said, "we'll probably be leaving Earth's atmosphere in about fifteen minutes. I think I'll go play pinochle with the pilot." He carefully left the door of the cell unlatched as he left. He walked to the control room and found Wilkins, a dry cigar butt clenched between his teeth, absorbed in a magazine. "Let's have another game," Jordan said. "I want some of that seventy-six dollars back." Wilkins shook his head. "I'm in the middle of a good story here. Real sexy. I'll play you after we take off." "Nothing doing," Jordan said sharply. "Let's play right now." Wilkins kept reading. "We got an eighteen-hour flight in front of us. You have lots of time." The agent snatched the magazine out of his hands. "We're going to play right now in my cabin," he said. "You quit when I have aces and a flush, and now you come back and want to play again. That's not sportsmanlike," Wilkins complained, but he allowed himself to be led back to Jordan's cabin. "I never saw anybody so upset about losing a miserable seventy-six bucks," was his final comment. * * * * * The robot lay perfectly still until he heard the door to Jordan's cabin slam shut, and then he arose as quietly as he could and stole out into the hall. The steel of the hall floor groaned, but bore his weight, and carefully, trembling with excitement inside of his ponderous metallic body, he made his way to the control room. He knelt and lifted the little trap door and found the naked power cable, pulsating with electrical current. In a locker under the panel board he found a length of copper wire. It was all he needed for the necessary connection. Since his capture, his fellows on Grismet had been silent with despair, but as he knelt to close the circuit, their minds flooded in on him and he realized with a tremendous horror that there were now nineteen, that all except he had been bound and fixed in their eternal cement prisons. "We are going to have our chance," he told them. "We won't have much time, but we will have our chance." He closed the circuit and a tremendous tide of electric power flowed into his head. Inside that two-inch shell of permallium was a small strip of metal tape on whose electrons and atoms were written the borrowed mind of a man. Connected to the tape was a minute instrument for receiving and sending electromagnetic impulses--the chain by which the mind of one robot was tied to that of another. The current surged in and the tiny impulses swelled in strength and poured out through the hull of the ship in a great cone that penetrated Earth's atmosphere in a quadrant that extended from Baffin land to Omaha, and from Hawaii to Labrador. The waves swept through skin and bone and entered the sluggish gelatinous brain of sentient beings, setting up in those organs the same thoughts and pictures that played among the electrons of the permallium strip that constituted Jon Hall's mind. All nineteen clamored to be heard, for Hall to relay their voices to Earth, but he held them off and first he told his story. * * * * * The Casseiopeian delegate to the Galactic Senate was at the moment finishing his breakfast. He was small and furry, not unlike a very large squirrel, and he sat perched on a high chair eating salted roast almonds of which he was very fond. Suddenly a voice started talking inside of his head, just as it did at that very second inside the heads of thirteen billion other inhabitants of the northwest corner of Earth. The Casseiopeian delegate was so startled that he dropped the dish of almonds, his mouth popping open, his tiny red tongue inside flickering nervously. He listened spellbound. The voice told him of the war on Grismet and of the permallium constructed robots, and of the cement blocks. This, however, he already knew, because he had been one of the delegates to the Peace Conference who had decided to dispose of the robots. The voice, however, also told him things he did not know, such as the inability of the robots to commit any crime that any other sane human being would not commit, of their very simple desire to be allowed to live in peace, and most of all of their utter horror for the fate a civilized galaxy had decreed for them. When the voice stopped, the Casseiopeian delegate was a greatly shaken little being. * * * * * Back on the ship, Hall opened the circuit to the nineteen, and they spoke in words, in memory pictures and in sensations. * * * * * A copter cab driver was hurrying with his fare from Manhattan to Oyster Bay. Suddenly, in his mind, he became a permallium robot. He was bound with cables of the heavy metal, and was suspended upside down in a huge cement block. The stone pressed firmly on his eyes, his ears, and his chest. He was completely immobile, and worst of all, he knew that above his head for six miles lay the great Grismet Ocean, with the blue mud slowly settling down encasing the cement in a stony stratum that would last till the planet broke apart. The cab driver gasped: "What the hell." His throat was so dry he could scarcely talk. He turned around to his fare, and the passenger, a young man, was pale and trembling. "You seeing things, too?" the driver asked. "I sure am," the fare said unsteadily. "What a thing to do." * * * * * For fifteen minutes, over the northwest quadrant of Earth, the words and the pictures went out, and thirteen billion people knew suddenly what lay in the hearts and minds of nineteen robots. * * * * * A housewife in San Rafael was at the moment in a butcher shop buying meat for her family. As the thoughts and images started pouring into her mind, she remained stock-still, her package of meat forgotten on the counter. The butcher, wiping his bloodied hands on his apron froze in that position, an expression of horror and incredulity on his face. When the thoughts stopped coming in, the butcher was the first to come out of the trancelike state. "Boy," he said, "that's sure some way of sending messages. Sure beats the teledepths." The housewife snatched her meat off the counter. "Is that all you think of," she demanded angrily. "That's a terrible thing that those barbarians on Grismet are doing to those ... those people. Why didn't they tell us that they were human." She stalked out of the shop, not certain what she would do, but determined to do something. * * * * * In the ship Hall reluctantly broke off the connection and replaced the trap door. Then he went back to his cell and locked himself in. He had accomplished his mission; its results now lay in the opinions of men. * * * * * Jordan left the ship immediately on landing, and took a copter over to the agency building. His conversation with his superior was something he wanted to get over with as soon as possible. The young woman at the secretary's desk looked at him coldly and led him directly into the inner office. The chief was standing up in front of the map of the galaxy, his hands in his pockets, his eyes an icy blue. "I've been hearing about you," he said without a greeting. Jordan sat down. He was tense and jumpy but tried not to show it. "I suppose you have," he said, adding, after a moment, "Sir." "How did that robot manage to break out of his cell and get to the power source on the ship in the first place?" "He didn't break out," Jordan said slowly. "I let him out." "I see," the chief said, nodding. "You let him out. I see. No doubt you had your reasons." "Yes, I did. Look--" Jordan wanted to explain, but he could not find the words. It would have been different if the robots' messages had reached Grismet; he would not have had to justify himself then. But they had not, and he could not find a way to tell this cold old man of what he had learned about the robots and their unity with men. "I did it because it was the only decent thing to do." "I see," the chief said. "You did it because you have a heart." He leaned suddenly forward, both hands on his desk. "It's good for a man to have a heart and be compassionate. He's not worth anything if he isn't. But"--and he shook his finger at Jordan as he spoke--"that man is going to be compassionate at his own expense, not at the expense of the agency. Do you understand that?" "I certainly do," Jordan answered, "but you have me wrong if you think I'm here to make excuses or to apologize. Now, if you will get on with my firing, sir, I'll go home and have my supper." The chief looked at him for a long minute. "Don't you care about your position in the agency?" he asked quietly. "Sure I do," Jordan said almost roughly. "It's the work I wanted to do all my life. But, as you said, what I did, I did at my own expense. Look, sir, I don't like this any better than you do. Why don't you fire me and let me go home? Your prisoner's safely locked up in the ship." For answer the chief tossed him a stellogram. Jordan glanced at the first few words and saw that it was from Galactic Headquarters on Earth. He put it back on the desk without reading it through. "I know that I must have kicked up a fuss. You don't have to spell it out for me." "Read it," the chief said impatiently. Jordan took back the stellogram and examined it. It read. To: Captain Lawrence Macrae Detection Agency, Grismet. From: Prantal Aminopterin Delegate from Casseiopeia Chairman, Grismet Peace Committee of the Galactic Senate. Message: You are hereby notified that the committee by a vote of 17-0 has decided to rescind its order of January 18, 2214, directing the disposal of the permallium robots of Grismet. Instead, the committee directs that you remove from their confinement all the robots and put them in some safe place where they will be afforded reasonable and humane treatment. The committee will arrive in Grismet some time during the next month to decide on permanent disposition. Jordan's heart swelled as he read the gram. "It worked," he said. "They have changed their minds. It won't be so bad being discharged now." He put the paper back on the desk and arose to go. The chief smiled and it was like sunlight suddenly flooding over an arctic glacier. "Discharged? Now who's discharging you? I'd sooner do without my right arm." He reached in a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of old Earth bourbon and two glasses. He carefully poured out a shot into each glass, and handed one to Jordan. "I like a man with a heart, and if you get away with it, why then you get away with it. And that's just what you've done." He sat down and started sipping his whisky. Jordan stood uncertainly above him, his glass in his hand. "Sit down, son," the old man said. "Sit down and tell me about your adventures on Earth." Jordan sat down, put his feet on the desk and took a sizable swallow of his whisky. "Well, Larry," he started, "I got into Earth atmosphere about 2:40 o'clock--" THE END Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ April 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 
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23657	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ September and October 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Subscript characters are shown within {braces}. [Illustration: That Sweet Little Old Lady] _Usually, the toughest part of the job is stating the problem clearly, and the solution is then easy. This time the FBI could state the problem easily; solving it, though was not. How do you catch a telepathic spy?_ BY MARK PHILLIPS Illustrated by Freas _"What are we going to call that sweet little old lady, now that_ mother _is a dirty word?"_ --_Dave Foley_ I In 1914, it was enemy aliens. In 1930, it was Wobblies. In 1957, it was fellow travelers. And, in 1971.... "They could be anywhere," Andrew J. Burris said, with an expression which bordered on exasperated horror. "They could be all around us. Heaven only knows." He pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up--a chunky little man with bright blue eyes and large hands. He paced to the window and looked out at Washington, and then he came back to the desk. A persistent office rumor held that he had become head of the FBI purely because he happened to have an initial _J_ in his name, but in his case the _J_ stood for Jeremiah. And, at the moment, his tone expressed all the hopelessness of that Old Testament prophet's lamentations. "We're helpless," he said, looking at the young man with the crisp brown hair who was sitting across the desk. "That's what it is, we're helpless." Kenneth Malone tried to look dependable. "Just tell me what to do," he said. "You're a good agent, Kenneth," Burris said. "You're one of the best. That's why you've been picked for this job. And I want to say that I picked you personally. Believe me, there's never been anything like it before." "I'll do my best," Malone said at random. He was twenty-eight, and he had been an FBI agent for three years. In that time, he had, among other things, managed to break up a gang of smugglers, track down a counterfeiting ring, and capture three kidnapers. For reasons which he could neither understand nor explain, no one seemed willing to attribute his record to luck. "I know you will," Burris said. "And if anybody can crack this case, Malone, you're the man. It's just that--everything sounds so _impossible_. Even after all the conferences we've had." "Conferences?" Malone said vaguely. He wished the chief would get to the point. Any point. He smiled gently across the desk and tried to look competent and dependable and reassuring. Burris' expression didn't change. "You'll get the conference tapes later," Burris said. "You can study them before you leave. I suggest you study them very carefully, Malone. Don't be like me. Don't get confused." He buried his face in his hands. Malone waited patiently. After a few seconds, Burris looked up. "Did you read books when you were a child?" he asked. Malone said: "What?" "Books," Burris said. "When you were a child. Read them." "Sure I did," Malone said. "'Bomba the Jungle Boy,' and 'Doolittle,' and 'Lucky Starr,' and 'Little Women'--" "'Little Women'?" "When Beth died," Malone said, "I wanted to cry. But I didn't. My father said big boys don't cry." "And your father was right," Burris said. "Why, when I was a ... never mind. Forget about Beth and your father. Think about 'Lucky Starr' for a minute. Remember him?" "Sure," Malone said. "I liked those books. You know, it's funny, but the books you read when you're a kid, they kind of stay with you. Know what I mean? I can still remember that one about Venus, for instance. Gee, that was--" "Never mind about Venus, too," Burris said sharply. "Keep your mind on the problem." "Yes, sir," Malone said. He paused. "What problem, sir?" he added. "The problem we're discussing," Burris said. He gave Malone a bright, blank stare. "Just listen to me." "Yes, sir." "All right, then." Burris took a deep breath. He seemed nervous. Once again he stood up and went to the window. This time, he spoke without turning. "Remember how everybody used to laugh about spaceships, and orbital satellites, and life on other planets? That was just in those 'Lucky Starr' books. That was all just for kids, wasn't it?" "Well, I don't know," Malone said slowly. "Sure it was all for kids," Burris said. "It was laughable. Nobody took it seriously." "Well, _somebody_ must--" "You just keep quiet and listen," Burris said. "Yes, sir," Malone said. Burris nodded. His hands were clasped behind his back. "We're not laughing any more, are we, Malone?" he said without moving. There was silence. "Well, are we?" "Did you want me to answer, sir?" "Of course I did!" Burris snapped. "You told me to keep quiet and--" "Never mind what I told you," Burris said. "Just do what I told you." "Yes, sir," Malone said. "No, sir," he added after a second. "No, sir, what?" Burris asked softly. "No, sir, we're not laughing any more," Malone said. "Ah," Burris said. "And why aren't we laughing any more?" There was a little pause. Malone said, tentatively: "Because there's nothing to laugh about, sir?" Burris whirled. "On the head!" he said happily. "You've hit the nail on the head, Kenneth. I knew I could depend on you." His voice grew serious again, and thoughtful. "We're not laughing any more because there's nothing to laugh about. We have orbital satellites, and we've landed on the Moon with an atomic rocket. The planets are the next step, and after that the stars. Man's heritage, Kenneth. The stars. And the stars, Kenneth, belong to Man--not to the Soviets!" "Yes, sir," Malone said soberly. "So," Burris said, "we should learn not to laugh any more. But have we?" "I don't know, sir." "We haven't," Burris said with decision. "Can you read my mind?" "No, sir," Malone said. "Can I read your mind?" Malone hesitated. At last he said: "Not that I know of, sir." "Well, I can't," Burris snapped. "And can any of us read each other's mind?" Malone shook his head. "No, sir," he said. Burris nodded. "That's the problem," he said. "That's the case I'm sending you out to crack." This time, the silence was a long one. At last, Malone said: "What problem, sir?" "Mind reading," Burris said. "There's a spy at work in the Nevada plant, Kenneth. And the spy is a telepath." * * * * * The video tapes were very clear and very complete. There were a great many of them, and it was long after nine o'clock when Kenneth Malone decided to take a break and get some fresh air. Washington was a good city for walking, even at night, and Malone liked to walk. Sometimes he pretended, even to himself, that he got his best ideas while walking, but he knew perfectly well that wasn't true. His best ideas just seemed to come to him, out of nowhere, precisely as the situation demanded them. He was just lucky, that was all. He had a talent for being lucky. But nobody would ever believe that. A record like his was spectacular, even in the annals of the FBI, and Burris himself believed that the record showed some kind of superior ability. Malone knew that wasn't true, but what could he do about it? After all, he didn't want to resign, did he? It was kind of romantic and exciting to be an FBI agent, even after three years. A man got a chance to travel around a lot and see things, and it was interesting. The pay was pretty good, too. The only trouble was that, if he didn't quit, he was going to have to find a telepath. The notion of telepathic spies just didn't sound right to Malone. It bothered him in a remote sort of way. Not that the idea of telepathy itself was alien to him--after all, he was even more aware than the average citizen that research had been going on in that field for something over a quarter of a century, and that the research was even speeding up. But the cold fact that a telepathy-detecting device had been invented somehow shocked his sense of propriety, and his notions of privacy. It wasn't decent, that was all. There ought to be something sacred, he told himself angrily. He stopped walking and looked up. He was on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading toward the White House. That was no good. He went to the corner and turned off, down the block. He had, he told himself, nothing at all to see the President about. Not yet, anyhow. The streets were dark and very peaceful. _I get my best ideas while walking_, Malone said without convincing himself. He thought back to the video tapes. The report on the original use of the machine itself had been on one of the first tapes, and Malone could still see and hear it. That was one thing he did have, he reflected; his memory was pretty good. Burris had been the first speaker on the tapes, and he'd given the serial and reference number in a cold, matter-of-fact voice. His face had been perfectly blank, and he looked just like the head of the FBI people were accustomed to seeing on their TV and newsreel screens. Malone wondered what had happened to him between the time the tapes had been made and the time he'd sent for Malone. Maybe the whole notion of telepathy was beginning to get him, Malone thought. Burris recited the standard tape opening in a rapid mumble: "Any person or agent unauthorized for this tape please refrain from viewing further, under penalties as prescribed by law." Then he looked off, out past the screen to the left, and said: "Dr. Thomas O'Connor, of Westinghouse Laboratories. Will you come here, Dr. O'Connor?" Dr. O'Connor came into the lighted square of screen slowly, looking all around him. "This is very fascinating," he said, blinking in the lamplight. "I hadn't realized that you people took so many precautions--" He was, Malone thought, somewhere between fifty and sixty, tall and thin with skin so transparent that he nearly looked like a living X ray. He had pale blue eyes and pale white hair and, Malone thought, if there ever were a contest for the best-looking ghost, Dr. Thomas O'Connor would win it hands--or phalanges--down. "This is all necessary for the national security," Burris said, a little sternly. "Oh," Dr. O'Connor said quickly, "I realize that, of course. Naturally. I can certainly see that." "Let's go ahead, shall we?" Burris said. O'Connor nodded. "Certainly. Certainly." Burris said: "Well, then," and paused. After a second he started again: "Now, Dr. O'Connor, would you please give us a sort of verbal run-down on this for our records?" "Of course," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled into the video cameras and cleared his throat. "I take it you don't want an explanation of how this machine works. I mean: you don't want a technical exposition, do you?" "No," Burris said, and added: "Not by any means. Just tell us what it does." * * * * * Dr. O'Connor suddenly reminded Malone of a professor he'd had in college for one of the law courses. He had, Malone thought, the same smiling gravity of demeanor, the same condescending attitude of absolute authority. It was clear that Dr. O'Connor lived in a world of his own, a world that was not even touched by the common run of men. "Well," he began, "to put it very simply, the device indicates whether or not a man's mental ... ah ... processes are being influenced by outside ... by outside influences." He gave the cameras another little smile. "If you will allow me, I will demonstrate on the machine itself." He took two steps that carried him out of camera range, and returned wheeling a large heavy-looking box. Dangling from the metal covering were a number of wires and attachments. A long cord led from the box to the floor, and snaked out of sight to the left. "Now," Dr. O'Connor said. He selected a single lead, apparently, Malone thought, at random. "This electrode--" "Just a moment, doctor," Burris said. He was eying the machine with a combination of suspicion and awe. "A while back you mentioned something about 'outside influences.' Just what, specifically, does that mean?" With some regret, Dr. O'Connor dropped the lead. "Telepathy," he said. "By outside influences, I meant influences on the mind, such as telepathy or mind reading of some nature." "I see," Burris said. "You can detect a telepath with this machine." "I'm afraid--" "Well, some kind of a mind reader anyhow," Burris said. "We won't quarrel about terms." "Certainly not," Dr. O'Connor said. The smile he turned on Burris was as cold and empty as the inside of Orbital Station One. "What I meant was ... if you will permit me to continue ... that we cannot detect any sort of telepath or mind reader with this device. To be frank, I very much wish that we could; it would make everything a great deal simpler. However, the laws of psionics don't seem to operate that way." "Well, then," Burris said, "what does the thing do?" His face wore a mask of confusion. Momentarily, Malone felt sorry for his chief. He could remember how he'd felt, himself, when that law professor had come up with a particularly baffling question in class. "This machine," Dr. O'Connor said with authority, "detects the slight variations in mental activity that occur when a person's mind is _being_ read." "You mean, if my mind were being read right now--" "Not right now," Dr. O'Connor said. "You see, the bulk of this machine is in Nevada; the structure is both too heavy and too delicate for transport. And there are other qualifications--" "I meant theoretically," Burris said. "Theoretically," Dr. O'Connor began, and smiled again, "if your mind were being read, this machine would detect it, supposing that the machine were in operating condition and all of the other qualifications had been met. You see, Mr. Burris, no matter how poor a telepath a man may be, he has some slight ability--even if only very slight--to detect the fact that his mind is being read." "You mean, if somebody were reading my mind, I'd know it?" Burris said. His face showed, Malone realized, that he plainly disbelieved this statement. "You would know it," Dr. O'Connor said, "but you would never know you knew it. To elucidate: in a normal person--like you, for instance, or even like myself--the state of having one's mind read merely results in a vague, almost subconscious feeling of irritation, something that could easily be attributed to minor worries, or fluctuations in one's hormonal balance. The hormonal balance, Mr. Burris, is--" "Thank you," Burris said with a trace of irritation. "I know what hormones are." "Ah. Good," Dr. O'Connor said equably. "In any case, to continue: this machine interprets those specific feelings as indications that the mind is being ... ah ... 'eavesdropped' upon." You could almost see the quotation marks around what Dr. O'Connor considered slang dropping into place, Malone thought. * * * * * "I see," Burris said with a disappointed air. "But what do you mean, it won't detect a telepath? Have you ever actually worked with a telepath?" "Certainly we have," Dr. O'Connor said. "If we hadn't, how would we be able to tell that the machine was, in fact, indicating the presence of telepathy? The theoretical state of the art is not, at present, sufficiently developed to enable us to--" "I see," Burris said hurriedly. "Only wait a minute." "Yes?" "You mean you've actually got a real mind reader? You've found one? One that works?" Dr. O'Connor shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were able to judge." "An imbecile?" Burris said. "But how were you able to--" "He could repeat a person's thoughts word for word," Dr. O'Connor said. "Of course, he was utterly incapable of understanding the meaning behind them. That didn't matter; he simply repeated whatever you were thinking. Rather disconcerting." "I'm sure," Burris said. "But he was really an imbecile? There wasn't any chance of--" "Of curing him?" Dr. O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's life, and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity--and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and wait for lightning to strike." Burris sighed. "I see your problem," he said. "But what happened to this imbecile boy of yours?" "Very sad," Dr. O'Connor said. "Six months ago, at the age of fifteen, the boy simply died. He simply--gave up, and died." "Gave up?" "That was as good an explanation as our medical department was able to provide, Mr. Burris. There was some malfunction, but--we like to say that he simply gave up. Living became too difficult for him." "All right," Burris said after a pause. "This telepath of yours is dead, and there aren't any more where he came from. Or if there are, you don't know how to look for them. All right. But to get back to this machine of yours: it couldn't detect the boy's ability?" Dr. O'Connor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. We've worked hard on that problem at Westinghouse, Mr. Burris, but we haven't yet been able to find a method of actually detecting telepaths." "But you can detect--" "That's right," Dr. O'Connor said. "We can detect the fact that a man's mind is being read." He stopped, and his face became suddenly morose. When he spoke again, he sounded guilty, as if he were making an admission that pained him. "Of course, Mr. Burris, there's nothing we can _do_ about a man's mind being read. Nothing whatever." He essayed a grin that didn't look very healthy. "But at least," he said, "you know you're being spied on." Burris grimaced. There was a little silence while Dr. O'Connor stroked the metal box meditatively, as if it were the head of his beloved. At last, Burris said: "Dr. O'Connor, how sure can you be of all this?" The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm and friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that froze the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk you could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr. O'Connor had gone and you could get into the room without any danger of being quick-frozen by the man's unfriendly eye. "Mr. Burris," Dr. O'Connor said in a voice that matched the temperature of his gaze, "please. Remember our slogan." * * * * * Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and started fishing in various pockets for his lighter. He sighed again. He preferred cigars, a habit he'd acquired from the days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar case, but his mental picture of the fearless and alert young FBI agent didn't include a cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither fearless nor, exactly, alert--anyway, not the way the movies and the TV screens liked to picture the words--he had the impression that cigars looked out of place on FBI agents. And it was, in any case, a small sacrifice to make. He found his lighter and shielded it from the brisk wind. He looked out over water at the Jefferson Memorial, and was surprised that he'd managed to walk as far as he had. Then he stopped thinking about walking, and took a puff of his cigarette, and forced himself to think about the job in hand. Naturally, the Westinghouse gadget had been declared Ultra Top Secret as soon as it had been worked out. Virtually everything was, these days. And the whole group involved in the machine and its workings had been transferred without delay to the United States Laboratories out in Yucca Flats, Nevada. Out there in the desert, there just wasn't much to do, Malone supposed, except to play with the machine. And, of course, look at the scenery. But when you've seen one desert, Malone thought confusedly, you've seen them all. So, the scientists ran experiments on the machine, and they made a discovery of a kind they hadn't been looking for. Somebody, they discovered, was picking the brains of the scientists there. Not the brains of the people working with the telepathy machine. And not the brains of the people working on the several other Earth-limited projects at Yucca Flats. They'd been reading the minds of some of the scientists working on the new and highly classified non-rocket space drive. In other words, the Yucca Flats plant was infested with a telepathic spy. And how do you go about finding a telepath? Malone sighed. Spies that got information in any of the usual ways were tough enough to locate. A telepathic spy was a lot tougher proposition. Well, one thing about Andrew J. Burris--he had an answer for everything. Malone thought of what his chief had said: "It takes a thief to catch a thief. And if the Westinghouse machine won't locate a telepathic spy, I know what will." "What?" Malone had asked. "It's simple," Burris had said. "Another telepath. There has to be one around somewhere. Westinghouse _did_ have one, after all, and the Russians _still_ have one. Malone, that's your job: go out and find me a telepath." Burris had an answer for everything, all right, Malone thought. But he couldn't see where the answer did him very much good. After all, if it takes a telepath to catch a telepath, how do you catch the telepath you're going to use to catch the first telepath? [Illustration] Malone ran that through his mind again, and then gave it up. It sounded as if it should have made sense, somehow, but it just didn't, and that was all there was to that. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe of his shoe. Then he looked up. Out there, over the water, was the Jefferson Memorial. It stood, white in the floodlights, beautiful and untouchable in the darkness. Malone stared at it. What would Thomas Jefferson have done in a crisis like this? Jefferson, he told himself without much conviction, would have been just as confused as he was. But he'd have had to find a telepath, Malone thought. Malone determined that he would do likewise. If Thomas Jefferson could do it, the least he, Malone, could do was to give it a good try. There was only one little problem: _Where_, Malone thought, _do I start looking?_ II Early the next morning, Malone awoke on a plane, heading across the continent toward Nevada. He had gone home to sleep, and he'd had to wake up to get on the plane, and now here he was, waking up again. It seemed, somehow, like a vicious circle. The engines hummed gently as they pushed the big ship through the middle stratosphere's thinly distributed molecules. Malone looked out at the purple-dark sky and set himself to think out his problem again. He was still mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing gear and rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone sighed and climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for him at the airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time; Malone remembered calling Dr. O'Connor the night before, and congratulated himself on his foresight. Unfortunately, when he reached the main gate of the high double fence that surrounded the more than ninety square miles of United States Laboratories, he found out that entrance into that sanctum sanctorum of Security wasn't as easy as he'd imagined--not even for an FBI man. His credentials were checked with the kind of minute care Malone had always thought people reserved for disputed art masterpieces, and it was with a great show of reluctance that the Special Security guards passed him inside as far as the office of the Chief Security Officer. There, the Chief Security Officer himself, a man who could have doubled for Torquemada, eyed Malone with ill-concealed suspicion while he called Burris at FBI headquarters back in Washington. Burris identified Malone on the video screen and the Chief Security Officer, looking faintly disappointed, stamped the agent's pass and thanked the FBI chief. Malone had the run of the place. Then he had to find a courier jeep. The Westinghouse division, it seemed, was a good two miles away. As Malone knew perfectly well, the main portion of the entire Yucca Flats area was devoted solely to research on the new space drive which was expected to make the rocket as obsolete as the blunderbuss--at least as far as space travel was concerned. Not, Malone thought uneasily, that the blunderbuss had ever been used for space travel, but-- He got off the subject hurriedly. The jeep whizzed by buildings, most of them devoted to aspects of the non-rocket drive. The other projects based at Yucca Flats had to share what space was left--and that included, of course, the Westinghouse research project. It turned out to be a single, rather small white building with a fence around it. The fence bothered Malone a little, but there was no need to worry; this time he was introduced at once into Dr. O'Connor's office. It was paneled in wallpaper manufactured to look like pine, and the telepathy expert sat behind a large black desk bigger than any Malone had ever seen in the FBI offices. There wasn't a scrap of paper on the desk; its surface was smooth and shiny, and behind it the nearly transparent Dr. Thomas O'Connor was close to invisible. He looked, in person, just about the same as he'd looked on the FBI tapes. Malone closed the door of the office behind him, looked for a chair and didn't find one. In Dr. O'Connor's office, it was perfectly obvious, Dr. O'Connor sat down. You stood, and were uncomfortable. * * * * * Malone took off his hat. He reached across the desk to shake hands with the telepathy expert, and Dr. O'Connor gave him a limp and fragile paw. "Thanks for giving me a little time," Malone said. "I really appreciate it." He smiled across the desk. His feet were already beginning to hurt. "Not at all," Dr. O'Connor said, returning the smile with one of his own special quick-frozen brand. "I realize how important FBI work is to all of us, Mr. Malone. What can I do to help you?" Malone shifted his feet. "I'm afraid I wasn't very specific on the phone last night," he said. "It wasn't anything I wanted to discuss over a line that might have been tapped. You see, I'm on the telepathy case." Dr. O'Connor's eyes widened the merest trifle. "I see," he said. "Well, I'll certainly do everything I can to help you." "Fine," Malone said. "Let's get right down to business, then. The first thing I want to ask you about is this detector of yours. I understand it's too big to carry around--but how about making a smaller model?" "Smaller?" Dr. O'Connor permitted himself a ghostly chuckle. "I'm afraid that isn't possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you have a small model of the machine if we had one available--more than happy. I would like to see such a machine myself, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, Mr. Malone--" "There just isn't one, right?" Malone said. "Correct," Dr. O'Connor said. "And there are a few other factors. In the first place, the person being analyzed has to be in a specially shielded room, such as is used in encephalographic analysis. Otherwise, the mental activity of the other persons around him would interfere with the analysis." He frowned a little. "I wish that we knew a bit more about psionic machines. The trouble with the present device, frankly, is that it is partly psionic and partly electronic, and we can't be entirely sure where one part leaves off and the other begins. Very trying. Very trying indeed." "I'll bet it is," Malone said sympathetically, wishing he understood what Dr. O'Connor was talking about. The telepathy expert sighed. "However," he said, "we keep working at it." Then he looked at Malone expectantly. Malone shrugged. "Well, if I can't carry the thing around, I guess that's that," he said. "But here's the next question: Do you happen to know the maximum range of a telepath? I mean: How far away can he get from another person and still read his mind?" Dr. O'Connor frowned again. "We don't have definite information on that, I'm afraid," he said. "Poor little Charlie was rather difficult to work with. He was mentally incapable of co-operating in any way, you see." "Little Charlie?" "Charles O'Neill was the name of the telepath we worked with," Dr. O'Connor explained. "I remember," Malone said. The name had been on one of the tapes, but he just hadn't associated "Charles O'Neill" with "Little Charlie." He felt as if he'd been caught with his homework undone. "How did you manage to find him, anyway?" he said. Maybe, if he knew how Westinghouse had found their imbecile-telepath, he'd have some kind of clue that would enable him to find one, too. Anyhow, it was worth a try. "It wasn't difficult in Charlie's case," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled. "The child babbled all the time, you see." "You mean he talked about being a telepath?" Dr. O'Connor shook his head impatiently. "No," he said. "Not at all. I mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in my files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned to his desk. "I'm sorry we didn't get full video on this," he said, "but we didn't feel it was necessary." He opened a panel in the upper surface of the desk, and slipped the spool in. "If you like, there are other tapes--" "Maybe later," Malone said. * * * * * Dr. O'Connor nodded and pressed the playback switch at the side of the great desk. For a second the room was silent. Then there was the hiss of empty tape, and a brisk masculine voice that overrode it: "Westinghouse Laboratories," it said, "sixteen April nineteen-seventy. Dr. Walker speaking. The voice you are about to hear belongs to Charles O'Neill: chronological age fourteen years, three months; mental age, approximately five years. Further data on this case will be found in the file _O'Neill_." There was a slight pause, filled with more tape hiss. Then the voice began. "... push the switch for record ... in the park last Wednesday ... and perhaps a different set of ... poor kid never makes any sense in ... trees and leaves all sunny with the ... electronic components of the reducing stage might be ... not as predictable when others are around but ... to go with Sally some night in the...." It was a childish, alto voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would be spoken, the voice would hesitate for just an instant, and then another, totally disconnected phrase would come. The enunciation and pronunciation would vary from phrase to phrase, but the tone remained essentially the same, drained of all emotional content. "... in receiving psychocerebral impulses there isn't any ... nonsense and nothing but nonsense all the ... tomorrow or maybe Saturday with the girl ... tube might be replaceable only if ... something ought to be done for the ... Saturday would be a good time for ... work on the schematics tonight if...." There was a click as the tape was turned off, and Dr. O'Connor looked up. "It doesn't make much sense," Malone said. "But the kid sure has a hell of a vocabulary for an imbecile." "Vocabulary?" Dr. O'Connor said softly. "That's right," Malone said. "Where'd an imbecile get words like 'psychocerebral'? I don't think I know what that means, myself." "Ah," Dr. O'Connor said. "But that's not _his_ vocabulary, you see. What Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the very thought that's in your mind." Malone nodded unhappily. It didn't seem as if O'Connor's information was going to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was concerned. An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were a telepath. But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And imbeciles didn't look like very good material for catching spies with. Then he brightened. "Is it possible that the spy we're looking for really isn't a spy?" "Eh?" "I mean, suppose he's an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an imbecile would really be a spy, if you see what I mean." Dr. O'Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while he said: "It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine don't give us the same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even the same sort of timing." "I don't quite follow you," Malone said. Truthfully, he felt about three miles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so. On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more. "Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said, "things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Malone shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right hand to his left hand. "We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connor said, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--a book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the chance that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might have read it in the past. We picked 'The Blood is the Death,' by Hieronymus Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book indeed." "Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after all, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it. The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully, scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the reactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me." Malone nodded helplessly. "At the same time," Dr. O'Connor continued blithely, "we had Charlie in a nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would come out with quotations from 'The Blood is the Death,' and these quotations corresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading at the time, and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of the detector." * * * * * Dr. O'Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him. He thought of several responses and chose one. "I see," he said. "But the important thing here," Dr. O'Connor said, "is the timing. You see, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not keep his mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped to still another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given mind at any single given period varied from a minimum of one point three seconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when plotted graphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed bell curve with a mode at two point oh seconds." "Ah," Malone said, wondering if a skewed bell curve was the same thing as a belled skew curve, and if not, why not? "It was, in fact," Dr. O'Connor continued relentlessly, "a sudden variation in those timings which convinced us that there was another telepath somewhere in the vicinity. We were conducting a second set of reading experiments, in precisely the same manner as the first set, and, for the first part of the experiment, our figures were substantially the same. But--" He stopped. "Yes?" Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight off his left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his left leg. It didn't seem to do any good. "I should explain," Dr. O'Connor said, "that we were conducting this series with a new set of test subjects: some of the scientists here at Yucca Flats. We wanted to see if the intelligence quotients of the subjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able to maintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, the two men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative genius class." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course, since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as much as possible." "Of course," Malone said without surprise. "The other two geniuses," Dr. O'Connor said, "happen to be connected with the project known as Project Isle--an operation whose function I neither know, nor care to know, anything at all about." Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified. Top Secret. Ultra-Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else you could think of. "At first," Dr. O'Connor was saying, "our detector recorded the time periods of ... ah mental invasion as being the same as before. Then, one day, anomalies began to appear. The detector showed that the minds of our subjects were being held for as long as two or three minutes. But the phrases repeated by Charlie during these periods showed that his own contact time remained the same; that is, they fell within the same skewed bell curve as before, and the mode remained constant if nothing but the phrase length were recorded." "Hm-m-m," Malone said, feeling that he ought to be saying something. Dr. O'Connor didn't notice him. "At first we thought of errors in the detector machine," he went on. "That worried us not somewhat, since our understanding of the detector is definitely limited at this time. We do feel that it would be possible to replace some of the electronic components with appropriate symbolization like that already used in the purely psionic sections, but we have, as yet, been unable to determine exactly which electronic components must be replaced by what symbolic components." Malone nodded, silently this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr. O'Connor's flow of words had broken itself up into a vast sea of alphabet soup, and that he, Malone, was occupied in drowning in it. "However," Dr. O'Connor said, breaking what was left of Malone's train of thought, "young Charlie died soon thereafter, and we decided to go on checking the machine. It was during this period that we found someone else reading the minds of our test subjects--sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for several minutes." "Aha," Malone said. Things were beginning to make sense again. _Someone else._ That, of course, was the spy. "I found," Dr. O'Connor said, "on interrogating the subjects more closely, that they were, in effect, thinking on two levels. They were reading the book mechanically, noting the words and sense, but simply shuttling the material directly into their memories without actually thinking about it. The actual thinking portions of their minds were concentrating on aspects of Project Isle." * * * * * "In other words," Malone said, "someone was spying on them for information about Project Isle?" "Precisely," Dr. O'Connor said with a frosty, teacher-to-student smile. "And whoever it was had a much higher concentration time than Charlie had ever attained. He seems to be able to retain contact as long as he can find useful information flowing in the mind being read." "Wait a minute," Malone said. "Wait a minute. If this spy is so clever, how come he didn't read _your_ mind?" "It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have to do with it?" "Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working on telepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off on the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your machine?" Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and it was clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure, no one in the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have a theory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle. Malone waited patiently. "He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must be perfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can _do_ about him. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should he worry? He can afford to ignore us--or even bait us. We're helpless, and he knows it." That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heard in some time. "You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent said after a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?" Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionic phenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields." "Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been a little silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the place where all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, doctor," he said after a pause, "but there are a couple of other questions." "Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to help you." Malone thought of mentioning how little help the doctor had been to date, but decided against it. Why antagonize a perfectly good scientist without any reason? Instead, he selected his first question, and asked it. "Have you got any idea how we might lay our hands on another telepath? Preferably one that's not an imbecile, of course." Dr. O Connor's expression changed from patient wisdom to irritation. "I wish we could, Mr. Malone. I wish we could. We certainly need one here to help us with our work--and I'm sure that _your_ work is important, too. But I'm afraid we have no ideas at all about finding another telepath. Finding little Charlie was purely fortuitous--purely, Mr. Malone, fortuitous." "Ah," Malone said. "Sure. Of course." He thought rapidly and discovered that he couldn't come up with one more question. As a matter of fact, he'd asked a couple of questions already, and he could barely remember the answers. "Well," he said, "I guess that's about it, then, doctor. If you come across anything else, be sure and let me know." He leaned across the desk, extending a hand. "And thanks for your time," he added. Dr. O'Connor stood up and shook his hand. "No trouble, I assure you," he said. "And I'll certainly give you all the information I can." Malone turned and walked out. Surprisingly, he discovered that his feet and legs still worked. He had thought they'd turned to stone in the office long before. * * * * * It was on the plane back to Washington that Malone got his first inkling of an idea. The only telepath that the Westinghouse boys had been able to turn up was Charles O'Neill, the youthful imbecile. All right, then. Suppose there were another one like him. Imbeciles weren't very difficult to locate. Most of them would be in institutions, and the others would certainly be on record. It might be possible to find someone, anyway, who could be handled and used as a tool to find a telepathic spy. And--happy thought!--maybe one of them would turn out to be a high-grade imbecile, or even a moron. [Illustration] Even if they only turned up another imbecile, he thought wearily, at least Dr. O'Connor would have something to work with. He reported back to Burris when he arrived in Washington, told him about the interview with Dr. O'Connor, and explained what had come to seem a rather feeble brainstorm. "It doesn't seem too productive," Burris said, with a shade of disappointment in his voice, "but we'll try it." At that, it was a better verdict than Malone had hoped for. He had nothing to do but wait, while orders went out to field agents all over the United States, and quietly, but efficiently, the FBI went to work. Agents probed and pried and poked their noses into the files and data sheets of every mental institution in the fifty states--as far, at any rate, as they were able. It was not an easy job. The inalienable right of a physician to refuse to disclose confidences respecting a patient applied even to idiots, imbeciles, and morons. Not even the FBI could open the private files of a licensed and registered psychiatrist. But the field agents did the best they could and, considering the circumstances, their best was pretty good. Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washington desk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformly depressing. The United States of America contained more subnormal minds than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of them to explain the results of any election you were unhappy over. Unfortunately, subnormal was all you could call them. Not one of them appeared to possess any abnormal psionic abilities whatever. There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists--but in neither case was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate the claim. At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that his idea had been a total washout. A full fortnight had been spent on digging up imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right on his merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle as though he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughing himself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI. Who could he be? _Anyone_, Malone told himself unhappily. _Anyone at all._ He could be the janitor that swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate, one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some old prospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter. Is there any limit to telepathic range? The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin, probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the brains of the men on Project Isle. That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea. Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United States--that, in other words, there was some effective range to telepathic communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to continue the search. Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to the job of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of the country. He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. And Malone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be sure that the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathic imbeciles. He was right. They never did. III The telephone rang. Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered under his breath. Was it absolutely necessary for someone to call him at seven in the morning? He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his cigar from the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be awakened from a sound sleep--but when a man hadn't been sleeping at all, it was even worse. He'd been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying about the telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more than he wanted phone calls. "Gur?" he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he'd never had a visiphone installed in his apartment. A feminine voice said: "Mr. Kenneth J. Malone?" "Who's this?" Malone said peevishly, beginning to discover himself capable of semirational English speech. "Long distance from San Francisco," the voice said. "It certainly is," Malone said. "Who's calling?" "San Francisco is calling," the voice said primly. Malone repressed a desire to tell the voice off, and said instead: "_Who_ in San Francisco?" There was a momentary hiatus, and then the voice said: "Mr. Thomas Boyd is calling, sir. He says this is a scramble call." Malone took a drag from his cigar and closed his eyes. Obviously the call was a scramble. If it had been clear, the man would have dialed direct, instead of going through what Malone now recognized as an operator. "Mr. Boyd says he is the Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco office of the FBI," the voice offered. "And quite right, too," Malone told her. "All right. Put him on." "One moment." There was a pause, a click, another pause and then another click. At last the operator said: "Your party is ready, sir." Then there was still another pause. Malone stared at the audio receiver. He began to whistle "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." * * * * * "Hello? Malone?" "I'm here, Tom," Malone said guiltily. "This is me. What's the trouble?" "Trouble?" Boyd said. "There isn't any trouble. Well, not really. Or maybe it is. I don't know." Malone scowled at the audio receiver, and for the first time wished he had gone ahead and had a video circuit put in, so that Boyd could see the horrendous expression on his face. "Look," he said. "It's seven here and that's too early. Out there, it's four, and that's practically ridiculous. What's so important?" He knew perfectly well that Boyd wasn't calling him just for the fun of it. The man was a good agent. But why a call at this hour? Malone muttered under his breath. Then, self-consciously, he squashed out his cigar and lit a cigarette while Boyd was saying: "Ken, I think we may have found what you've been looking for." It wasn't safe to say too much, even over a scrambled circuit. But Malone got the message without difficulty. "Yeah?" he said, sitting up on the edge of the couch. "You sure?" "Well," Boyd said, "no. Not absolutely sure. Not absolutely. But it is worth your taking a personal look, I think." "Ah," Malone said cautiously. "An imbecile?" "No," Boyd said flatly. "Not an imbecile. Definitely not an imbecile. As a matter of fact, a hell of a fat long way from an imbecile." Malone glanced at his watch and skimmed over the airline timetables in his mind. "I'll be there nine o'clock, your time," he said. "Have a car waiting for me at the field." * * * * * As usual, Malone managed to sleep better on the plane than he'd been able to do at home. He slept so well, in fact, that he was still groggy when he stepped into the waiting car. "Good to see you, Ken," Boyd said briskly, as he shook Malone's hand. "You, too, Tom," Malone said sleepily. "Now what's all this about?" He looked around apprehensively. "No bugs in this car, I hope?" he said. Boyd gunned the motor and headed toward the San Francisco Freeway. "Better not be," he said, "or I'll fire me a technician or two." "Well, then," Malone said, relaxing against the upholstery, "where is this guy, and who is he? And how did you find him?" Boyd looked uncomfortable. It was, somehow, both an awe-inspiring and a slightly risible sight. Six feet one and one half inches tall in his flat feet, Boyd ported around over two hundred and twenty pounds of bone, flesh and muscle. He swung a potbelly of startling proportions under the silk shirting he wore, and his face, with its wide nose, small eyes and high forehead, was half highly mature, half startlingly childlike. In an apparent effort to erase those childlike qualities, Boyd sported a fringe of beard and a mustache which reminded Malone of somebody he couldn't quite place. But whoever the somebody was, his hair hadn't been black, as Boyd's was-- He decided it didn't make any difference. Anyhow, Boyd was speaking. "In the first place," he said, "it isn't a guy. In the second, I'm not exactly sure who it is. And in the third, Ken, I didn't find it." There was a little silence. "Don't tell me," Malone said. "It's a telepathic horse, isn't it? Tom, I just don't think I could stand a telepathic horse--" "No," Boyd said hastily. "No. Not at all. No horse. It's a dame. I mean a lady." He looked away from the road and flashed a glance at Malone. His eyes seemed to be pleading for something--understanding, possibly, Malone thought. "Frankly," Boyd said, "I'd rather not tell you anything about her just yet. I'd rather you met her first. Then you could make up your own mind. All right?" "All right," Malone said wearily. "Do it your own way. How far do we have to go?" "Just about an hour's drive," Boyd said. "That's all." Malone slumped back in the seat and pushed his hat over his eyes. "Fine," he said. "Suppose you wake me up when we get there." But, groggy as he was, he couldn't sleep. He wished he'd had some coffee on the plane. Maybe it would have made him feel better. Then again, coffee was only coffee. True, he had never acquired his father's taste for gin, but there was always bourbon. He thought about bourbon for a few minutes. It was a nice thought. It warmed him and made him feel a lot better. After a while, he even felt awake enough to do some talking. He pushed his hat back and struggled to a reasonable sitting position. "I don't suppose you have a drink hidden away in the car somewhere?" he said tentatively. "Or would the technicians have found that, too?" "Better not have," Boyd said in the same tone as before, "or I'll fire a couple of technicians." He grinned without turning. "It's in the door compartment, next to the forty-five cartridges and the Tommy gun." Malone opened the compartment in the thick door of the car and extracted a bottle. It was brandy instead of the bourbon he had been thinking about, but he discovered that he didn't mind at all. It went down as smoothly as milk. Boyd glanced at it momentarily as Malone screwed the top back on. "No," Malone said in answer to the unspoken question. "You're driving." Then he settled back again and tipped his hat forward. He didn't sleep a wink. He was perfectly sure of that. But it wasn't over two seconds later that Boyd said: "We're here, Ken. Wake up." "Whadyamean, wakeup," Malone said. "I wasn't asleep." He thumbed his hat back and sat up rapidly. "Where's 'here'?" "Bayview Neuropsychiatric Hospital," Boyd said. "This is where Dr. Harman works, you know." "No," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I don't know. You didn't tell me--remember? And who is Dr. Harman, anyhow?" The car was moving up a long, curving driveway toward a large, lawn-surrounded building. Boyd spoke without looking away from the road. "Well," he said, "this Dr. Willard Harman is the man who phoned us yesterday. One of my field agents was out here asking around about imbeciles and so on. Found nothing, by the way. And then this Dr. Harman called, later. Said he had someone here I might be interested in. So I came on out myself for a look, yesterday afternoon ... after all, we had instructions to follow up every possible lead." "I know," Malone said. "I wrote them." "Oh," Boyd said. "Sure. Well, anyhow, I talked to this dame. Lady." "And?" "And I talked to her," Boyd said. "I'm not entirely sure of anything myself. But ... well, hell. You take a look at her." He pulled the car up to a parking space, slid nonchalantly into a slot marked _Reserved--Executive Director Sutton_, and slid out from under the wheel while Malone got out the other side. * * * * * They marched up the broad steps, through the doorway and into the glass-fronted office of the receptionist. Boyd showed her his little golden badge, and got an appropriate gasp. "FBI," he said. "Dr. Harman's expecting us." The wait wasn't over fifteen seconds. Boyd and Malone marched down the hall and around a couple of corners, and came to the doctor's office. The door was opaqued glass with nothing but a room number stenciled on it. Without ceremony, Boyd pushed the door open. Malone followed him inside. The office was small but sunny. Dr. Willard Harman sat behind a blond-wood desk, a chunky little man with crew-cut blond hair and rimless eyeglasses, who looked about thirty-two and couldn't possibly, Malone thought, have been anywhere near that young. On a second look, Malone noticed a better age indication in the eyes and forehead, and revised his first guess upward between ten and fifteen years. "Come in, gentlemen," Dr. Harman boomed. His voice was that rarity, a really loud high tenor. "Dr. Harman," Boyd said, "this is my superior, Mr. Malone. We'd like to have a talk with Miss Thompson." "I anticipated that, sir," Dr. Harman said. "Miss Thompson is in the next room. Have you explained to Mr. Malone that--" "I haven't explained a thing," Boyd said quickly, and added in what was obviously intended to be a casual tone: "Mr. Malone wants to get a picture of Miss Thompson directly--without any preconceptions." "I see," Dr. Harman said. "Very well, gentlemen. Through this door." He opened the door in the right-hand wall of the room, and Malone took one look. It was a long, long look. Standing framed in the doorway, dressed in the starched white of a nurse's uniform, was the most beautiful blonde he had ever seen. She had curves. She definitely had curves. As a matter of fact, Malone didn't really think he had ever seen curves before. These were something new and different and truly three-dimensional. But it wasn't the curves, or the long straight lines of her legs, or the quiet beauty of her face, that made her so special. After all, Malone had seen legs and bodies and faces before. At least, he thought he had. Off-hand, he couldn't remember where. Looking at the girl, Malone was ready to write brand-new definitions for every anatomical term. Even a term like "hands." Malone had never seen anything especially arousing in the human hand before--anyway, not when the hand was just lying around, so to speak, attached to its wrist but not doing anything in particular. But these hands, long, slender and tapering, white and cool-looking.... And yet, it wasn't just the sheer physical beauty of the girl. She had something else, something more and something different. (_Something borrowed_, Malone thought in a semi-delirious haze, _and something blue_.) Personality? Character? Soul? Whatever it was, Malone decided, this girl had it. She had enough of it to supply the entire human race, and any others that might exist in the Universe. Malone smiled at the girl and she smiled back. After seeing the smile, Malone wasn't sure he could still walk evenly. Somehow, though, he managed to go over to her and extend his hand. The notion that a telepath would turn out to be this mind-searing Epitome had never crossed his mind, but now, somehow, it seemed perfectly fitting and proper. "Good morning, Miss Thompson," he said in what he hoped was a winning voice. The smile disappeared. It was like the sun going out. The vision appeared to be troubled. Malone was about to volunteer his help--if necessary, for the next seventy years--when she spoke. "I'm not Miss Thompson," she said. "This is one of our nurses," Dr. Harman put in. "Miss Wilson, Mr. Malone. And Mr. Boyd. Miss Thompson, gentlemen, is over there." Malone turned. * * * * * There, in a corner of the room, an old lady sat. She was a small old lady, with apple-red cheeks and twinkling eyes. She held some knitting in her hands, and she smiled up at the FBI men as if they were her grandsons come for tea and cookies, of a Sunday afternoon. She had snow-white hair that shone like a crown around her old head in the lights of the room. Malone blinked at her. She didn't disappear. "_You're_ Miss Thompson?" he said. She smiled sweetly. "Oh, my, no," she said. There was a long silence. Malone looked at her. Then he looked at the unbelievably beautiful Miss Wilson. Then he looked at Dr. Harman. And, at last, he looked at Boyd. "All right," he said. "I get it. _You're_ Miss Thompson." "Now, wait a minute, Malone," Boyd began. "Wait a minute?" Malone said. "There are four people here, not counting me. I know I'm not Miss Thompson. I never was, not even as a child. And Dr. Harman isn't, and Miss Wilson isn't, and Whistler's Great-Grandmother isn't, either. So you must be. Unless she isn't here. Or unless she's invisible. Or unless I'm crazy." "It isn't _you_, Malone," Boyd said. "What isn't me?" "That's crazy," Boyd said. "O.K.," Malone said. "I'm not crazy. Then will somebody please tell me--" The little old lady cleared her throat. A silence fell. When it was complete she spoke, and her voice was as sweet and kindly as anything Malone had ever heard. "You may call me Miss Thompson," she said. "For the present, at any rate. They all do here. It's a pseudonym I have to use." "A pseudonym?" Malone said. "You see, Mr. Malone," Miss Wilson began. Malone stopped her. "Don't talk," he said. "I have to concentrate and if you talk I can barely think." He took off his hat suddenly, and began twisting the brim in his hands. "You understand, don't you?" The trace of a smile appeared on her face. "I think I do," she said. "Now," Malone said, "you're Miss Thompson, but not really, because you have to use a pseudonym." He blinked at the little old lady. "Why?" "Well," she said, "otherwise people would find out about my little secret." "Your little secret," Malone said. "That's right," the little old lady said. "I'm immortal, you see." Malone said: "Oh." Then he kept quiet for a long time. It didn't seem to him that anyone in the room was breathing. He said: "Oh," again, but it didn't sound any better than it had the first time. He tried another phrase. "You're immortal," he said. "That's right," the little old lady agreed sweetly. There was only one other question to ask, and Malone set his teeth grimly and asked it. It came out just a trifle indistinct, but the little old lady nodded. "My real name?" she said. "Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tudor, of course. I used to be Queen." "Of England," Malone said faintly. "Malone, look--" Boyd began. "Let me get it all at once," Malone told him. "I'm strong. I can take it." He twisted his hat again and turned back to the little old lady. "You're immortal, and you're not really Miss Thompson, but Queen Elizabeth I?" he said slowly. "That's right," she said. "How clever of you. Of course, after little Jimmy--cousin Mary's boy, I mean--said I was dead and claimed the Throne, I decided to change my name and all. And that's what I did. But I am Elizabeth Regina." She smiled, and her eyes twinkled merrily. Malone stared at her for a long minute. _Burris_, he thought, _is going to love this_. "Oh, I'm so glad," the little old lady said. "Do you really think he will? Because I'm sure I'll like your Mr. Burris, too. All of you FBI men are so charming. Just like poor, poor Essex." Well, Malone told himself, that was that. He'd found himself a telepath. And she wasn't an imbecile. Oh, no. That would have been simple. Instead, she was battier than a cathedral spire. * * * * * The long silence was broken by the voice of Miss Wilson. "Mr. Malone," she said, "you've been thinking." She stopped. "I mean, you've been so quiet." "I like being quiet," Malone said patiently. "Besides--" He stopped and turned to the little old lady. _Can you really read my mind?_ he thought deliberately. After a second he added: _... your majesty?_ "How sweet of you, Mr. Malone," she said. "Nobody's called me that for centuries. But of course I can. Although it's not reading, really. After all, that would be like asking if I can read your voice. Of course I can, Mr. Malone." "That does it," Malone said. "I'm not a hard man to convince. And when I see the truth, I'm the first one to admit it, even if it makes me look like a nut." He turned back to the little old lady. "Begging your pardon," he said. "Oh, my," the little old lady said. "I really don't mind at all. Sticks and stones, you know, can break my bones. But being called nuts, Mr. Malone, can never hurt me. After all, it's been so many years--so many hundreds of years--" "Sure," Malone said easily. Boyd broke in. "Listen, Malone," he said, "do you mind telling me what is going on?" "It's very simple," Malone said. "Miss Thompson here ... pardon me; I mean Queen Elizabeth I ... really is a telepath. That's all. I think I want to lie down somewhere until it goes away." "Until what goes away?" Miss Wilson said. Malone stared at her almost without seeing her, if not quite. "Everything," he said. He closed his eyes. "My goodness," the little old lady said after a second. "Everything's so confused. Poor Mr. Malone is terribly shaken up by everything." She stood up, still holding her knitting, and went across the room. Before the astonished eyes of the doctor and nurse, and Tom Boyd, she patted the FBI agent on the shoulder. "There, there, Mr. Malone," she said. "It will all be perfectly all right. You'll see." Then she returned to her seat. Malone opened his eyes. He turned to Dr. Harman. "You called up Boyd here," he said, "and told him that ... er ... Miss Thompson was a telepath. Howd' you know?" "It's all right," the little old lady put in from her chair. "I don't mind your calling me Miss Thompson, not right now, anyhow." "Thanks," Malone said faintly. Dr. Harman was blinking in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean she really _is_ a--" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said. "If you'll just come into my office--" "Oh, _bosh_, Dr. Harman," the little old lady said primly. "I do wish you'd give your own Queen credit for some ability. Goodness knows you think _you're_ smart enough." "Now, now, Miss Thompson," he said in what was obviously his best Grade A Choice Government Inspected couchside manner. "Don't...." "... Upset yourself," she finished for him. "Now, really, doctor. I know what you're going to tell them." "But Miss Thompson, I--" "You didn't honestly think I _was_ a telepath," the little old lady said. "Heavens, we know that. And you're going to tell them how I used to say I could read minds ... oh, years and years ago. And because of that you thought it might be worth while to tell the FBI about me--which wasn't very kind of you, doctor, before you knew anything about why they wanted somebody like me." * * * * * "Now, now, Miss Thompson," Miss Wilson said, walking across the room to put an arm around the little old lady's shoulder. Malone wished for one brief second that he were the old little old lady. Maybe if he were a patient in the hospital he would get the same treatment. He wondered if he could possibly work such a deal. Then he wondered if it would be worth while, being nuts. But of course it would. He was nuts anyhow, wasn't he? Sure, he told himself. They were all nuts. "Nobody's going to hurt you," Miss Wilson said. She was talking to the old lady. "You'll be perfectly all right and you don't have to worry about a thing." "Oh, yes, dear, I know that," the little old lady said. "You only want to help me, dear. You're so kind. And these FBI men really don't mean any harm. But Dr. Harman didn't know that. He just thinks I'm crazy and that's all." "Please, Miss Thompson--" Dr. Harman began. "Just crazy, that's all," the little old lady said. She turned away for a second and nobody said anything. Then she turned back. "Do you all know what he's thinking now?" she said. Dr. Harman turned a dull purple, but she ignored him. "He's wondering why I didn't take the trouble to prove all this to you years ago. And besides that, he's thinking about--" [Illustration] "Miss Thompson," Dr. Harman said. His bedside manner had cracked through and his voice was harsh and strained. "Please." "Oh, all right," she said, a little petulantly. "If you want to keep all that private." Malone broke in suddenly, fascinated. "Why didn't you prove you were telepathic before now?" he said. The little old lady smiled at him. "Why, because you wouldn't have believed me," she said. She dropped her knitting neatly in her lap and folded her hands over it. "None of you _wanted_ to believe me," she said, and sniffed. Miss Wilson moved nervously and she looked up. "And don't tell me it's going to be all right. I know it's going to be all right. I'm going to make sure of that." Malone felt a sudden chill. But it was obvious, he told himself, that the little old lady didn't mean what she was saying. She smiled at him again, and her smile was as sweet and guileless as the smile on the face of his very own sainted grandmother. Not that Malone remembered his grandmother; she had died before he'd been born. But if he'd had a grandmother, and if he'd remembered her, he was sure she would have had the same sweet smile. So she couldn't have meant what she'd said. Would Malone's own grandmother make things difficult for him? The very idea was ridiculous. Dr. Harman opened his mouth, apparently changed his mind, and shut it again. The little old lady turned to him. "Were you going to ask why I bothered to prove anything to Mr. Malone?" she said. "Of course you were, and I shall tell you. It's because Mr. Malone _wanted_ to believe me. He _wants_ me. He _needs_ me. I'm a telepath, and that's enough for Mr. Malone. Isn't it?" "Gur," Malone said, taken by surprise. After a second he added: "I guess so." "You see, doctor?" the little old lady said. "But you--" Dr. Harman began. "I read minds," the little old lady said. "That's right, doctor. That's what makes me a telepath." Malone's brain was whirling rapidly, like a distant galaxy. "Telepath" was a nice word, he thought. How did you telepath from a road? Simple. A road is paved. Malone thought that was pretty funny, but he didn't laugh. He thought he would never laugh again. He wanted to cry, a little, but he didn't think he'd be able to manage that either. He twisted his hat, but it didn't make him feel any better. Gradually, he became aware that the little old lady was talking to Dr. Harman again. "But," she said, "since it will make you feel so much better, doctor, we give you our Royal permission to retire, and to speak to Mr. Malone alone." "Malone alone," Dr. Harman muttered. "Hm-m-m. My. Well." He turned and seemed to be surprised that Malone was actually standing near him. "Yes," he said. "Well. Mr. Alone ... Malone ... please, whoever you are, just come into my office, please?" Malone looked at the little old lady. One of her eyes closed and opened. It was an unmistakable wink. Malone grinned at her in what he hoped was a cheerful manner. "All right," he said to the psychiatrist, "let's go." He turned with the barest trace of regret, and Boyd followed him. Leaving the little old lady and, unfortunately, the startling Miss Wilson, behind, the procession filed back into Dr. Harman's office. * * * * * The doctor closed the door, and leaned against it for a second. He looked as though someone had suddenly revealed to him that the world was square. But when he spoke his voice was almost even. "Sit down, gentlemen," he said, and indicated chairs. "I really ... well, I don't know what to say. All this time, all these years, she's been reading my mind! My mind. She's been reading ... looking right into my mind, or whatever it is." "Whatever what is?" Malone asked, sincerely interested. He had dropped gratefully into a chair near Boyd's, across the desk from Dr. Harman. "Whatever my _mind_ is," Dr. Harman said. "Reading it. Oh, my." "Dr. Harman," Malone began, but the psychiatrist gave him a bright blank stare. "Don't you understand?" he said. "She's a telepath." "We--" The phone on Dr. Harman's desk chimed gently. He glanced at it and said: "Excuse me. The phone." He picked up the receiver and said: "Hello?" There was no image on the screen. But the voice was image enough. "This is Andrew J. Burris," it said. "Is Kenneth J. Malone there?" "Mr. Malone?" the psychiatrist said. "I mean, Mr. Burris? Mr. Malone is here. Yes. Oh, my. Do you want to talk to him?" "No, you idiot," the voice said. "I just want to know if he's all tucked in." "Tucked in?" Dr. Harman gave the phone a sudden smile. "A joke," he said. "It _is_ a joke, isn't it? The way things have been happening, you never know whether--" "A joke," Burris' voice said. "That's right. Yes. Am I talking to one of the patients?" Dr. Harman gulped, got mad, and thought better of it. At last he said, very gently: "I'm not at all sure," and handed the phone to Malone. The FBI agent said: "Hello, chief. Things are a little confused." Burris' face appeared on the screen. "Confused, sure," he said. "I feel confused already." He took a breath. "I called the San Francisco office, and they told me you and Boyd were out there. What's going on?" Malone said cautiously: "We've found a telepath." Burris' eyes widened slightly. "Another one?" "What are you talking about, another one?" Malone said. "We have one. Does anybody else have any more?" "Well," Burris said, "we just got a report on another one--maybe. Besides yours, I mean." "I hope the one you've got is in better shape than the one I've got," Malone said. He took a deep breath, and then spat it all out at once: "The one we've found is a little old lady. She thinks she's Queen Elizabeth I. She's a telepath, sure, but she's nuts." "Queen Elizabeth?" Burris said. "Of England?" "That's right," Malone said. He held his breath. "Damn it," Burris exploded, "they've already got one." Malone sighed. "This is another one," he said. "Or, rather, the original one. She also claims she's immortal." "Lives forever?" Burris said. "You mean like that?" "Immortal," Malone said. "Right." Burris nodded. Then he looked worried. "Tell me, Malone," he said. "She _isn't_, is she?" "Isn't immortal, you mean?" Malone said. Burris nodded. Malone said confidently: "Of course not." There was a little pause. Malone thought things over. Hell, maybe she was immortal. Stranger things had happened, hadn't they? He looked over at Dr. Harman. "How about that?" he said. "Could she be immortal?" The psychiatrist shook his head decisively. "She's been here for over forty years, Mr. Malone, ever since her late teens. Her records show all that, and her birth certificate is in perfect order. Not a chance." Malone sighed and turned back to the phone. "Of course she isn't immortal, chief," he said. "She couldn't be. Nobody is. Just a nut." "I was afraid of that," Burris said. "Afraid?" Malone said. Burris nodded. "We've got another one--if he checks out," he said. "Right here in Washington--St. Elizabeths." "Another nut?" "Strait-jacket case," Burris said. "Delusions of persecution. Paranoia. And a lot of other things I can't pronounce. But I'm sending him on out to Yucca Flats anyhow, under guard. You might find a use for him." "Oh, sure," Malone said. "We can't afford to overlook a thing," Burris said. Malone sighed. "I know," he said. "But all the same--" "Don't worry about a thing, Malone," Burris said with a palpably false air of confidence. "You get this Queen Elizabeth of yours out of there and take her to Yucca Flats, too." Malone considered the possibilities. Maybe they would find more telepaths. Maybe all the telepaths would be nuts. It didn't seem unlikely. Imagine having a talent that nobody would believe you had. It might very easily drive you crazy to be faced with a situation like that. And there they would be in Yucca Flats. Kenneth J. Malone, and a convention of looney-bin inhabitants. Fun! Malone began to wonder why he had gone into FBI work in the first place. "Listen, chief," he said. "I--" "Sure, I understand," Burris said quickly. "She's batty. But what else can we do? Malone, don't do anything you'll regret." "What?" "I mean, don't resign." "Chief, how did you know--you're not telepathic too, are you?" "Of course not," Burris said. "But that's what I would do in your place. And don't do it." "Look, chief," Malone said. "These nuts--" "Malone, you've done a wonderful job so far," Burris said. "You'll get a raise and a better job when all this is over. Who else would have thought of looking in the twitch-bins for telepaths? But you did, Malone, and I'm proud of you, and you're stuck with it. We've got to use them now. We have to find that spy!" He took a breath. "On to Yucca Flats!" he said. Malone gave up. "Yes, sir," he said. "Anything else?" "Not right now," Burris said. "If there is, I'll let you know." * * * * * Malone hung up unhappily as the image vanished. He looked at Dr. Harman. "Well," he said, "that's that. What do I have to do to get a release for Miss Thompson?" Harman stared at him. "But, Mr. Malone," he said, "that just isn't possible. Really. Miss Thompson is a ward of the state, and we couldn't possibly allow her release without a court order." Malone thought that over. "O.K.," he said at last. "I can see that." He turned to Boyd. "Here's a job for you, Tom," he said. "Get one of the judges on the phone. You'll know which one will do us the most good, fastest." "Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Say Judge Dunning," he said. "Good man. Fast worker." "I don't care who," Malone said. "Just get going, and get us a release for Miss Thompson." He turned back to the doctor. "By the way," he said, "has she got any other name? Besides Elizabeth Tudor, I mean," he added hurriedly. "Her full name," Dr. Harman said, "is Rose Walker Thompson. She is not Queen Elizabeth I, II, or XXVIII, and she is not immortal." "But she is," Malone pointed out, "a telepath. And that's why I want her." "She may," Dr. Harman said, "be a telepath." It was obvious that he had partly managed to forget the disturbing incidents that had happened a few minutes before. "I don't even want to discuss that part of it." "O.K., never mind it," Malone said agreeably. "Tom, get us a court order for Rose Walker Thompson. Effective yesterday--day before, if possible." Boyd nodded, but before he could get to the phone Dr. Harman spoke again. "Now, wait a moment, gentlemen," he said. "Court order or no court order, Miss Thompson is definitely not a well woman, and I can't see my way clear to--" "I'm not well myself," Malone said. "I need sleep and I probably have a cold. But I've got to work for the national security, and--" "This is important," Boyd put in. "I don't dispute that," Dr. Harman said. "Nevertheless, I--" The door that led into the other room suddenly burst open. The three men turned to stare at Miss Wilson, who stood in the doorway for a long second and then stepped into the office, closing the door quietly behind her. "I'm sorry to interrupt," she said. "Not at all," Malone said. "It's a pleasure to have you. Come again soon." He smiled at her. She didn't smile back. "Doctor," she said, "you better talk to Miss Thompson. I'm not at all sure what I can do. It's something new." "New?" he said. The worry lines on his face were increasing, but he spoke softly. "The poor dear thinks she's going to get out of the hospital now," Miss Wilson said. "For some reason, she's convinced that the FBI is going to get her released, and--" As she saw the expressions on three faces, she stopped. "What's wrong?" she said. "Miss Wilson," Malone said, "we ... may I call you by your first name?" "Of course, Mr. Malone," she said. There was a little silence. "Miss Wilson," Malone said, "what _is_ your first name?" She smiled now, very gently. Malone wanted to walk through mountains, or climb fire. He felt confused, but wonderful. "Barbara," she said. "Lovely," he said. "Well, Barbara ... and please call me Ken. It's short for Kenneth." The smile on her face broadened. "I thought it might be," she said. "Well," Malone said softly, "it is. Kenneth. That's my name. And you're Barbara." Boyd cleared his throat. "Ah," Malone said. "Yes. Of course. Well, Barbara ... well, that's just what we intend to do. Take Miss Thompson away. We need her--badly." Dr. Harman had said nothing at all, and had barely moved. He was staring at a point on his desk. "She couldn't possibly have heard us," he muttered. "That's a soundproof door. She couldn't have heard us." "But you can't take Miss Thompson away," Miss Wilson said. "We have to, Barbara," Malone said gently. "Try to understand. It's for the national security." "She heard us thinking," Dr. Harman muttered. "That's what; she heard us thinking. Behind a soundproof door. She can see inside their minds. She can even see inside _my_ mind." "She's a sick woman," Barbara said. "But you have to understand--" "Vital necessity," Boyd put in. "Absolutely vital." "Nevertheless--" Barbara said. "She can read minds," Dr. Harman whispered in an awed tone. "She knows. Everything. She _knows_." "It's out of the question," Barbara said. "Whether you like it or not. Miss Thompson is not going to leave this hospital. Why, what could she do outside these walls? She hasn't left in over forty years! And furthermore, Mr. Malone--" "Kenneth," Malone put in, as the door opened again. "I mean Ken." * * * * * The little old lady put her haloed head into the room. "Now, now, Barbara," she said. "Don't you go spoiling things. Just let these nice men take me away and everything will be fine, believe me. Besides, I've been outside more often than you imagine." "Outside?" Barbara said. "Of course," the little old lady said. "In other people's minds. Even yours. I remember that nice young man ... what was his name?" "Never mind his name," Barbara said, flushing furiously. Malone felt instantly jealous of every nice young man he had ever even heard of. _He_ wasn't a nice young man; he was an FBI agent, and he liked to drink and smoke cigars and carouse. All nice young men, he decided, should be turned into ugly old men as soon as possible. That'd fix them! He noticed the little old lady smiling at him, and tried to change his thoughts rapidly. But the little old lady said nothing at all. "At any rate," Barbara said, "I'm afraid that we just can't--" Dr. Harman cleared his throat imperiously. It was a most impressive noise, and everyone turned to look at him. His face was a little gray, but he looked, otherwise, like a rather pudgy, blond, crew-cut Roman emperor. "Just a moment," he said with dignity, "I think you're doing the United States of America a grave injustice, Miss Wilson--and that you're doing an injustice to Miss Thompson, too." "What do you mean?" she said. "I think it would be nice for her to get away from me--I mean from here," the psychiatrist said. "Where did you say you were taking her?" he asked Malone. "Yucca Flats," Malone said. "Ah." The news seemed to please the psychiatrist. "That's a long distance from here, isn't it? It's quite a few hundred miles away. Perhaps even a few thousand miles away. I feel sure that will be the best thing for me ... I mean, of course, for Miss Thompson. I shall recommend that the court so order." "Doctor--" But even Barbara saw, Malone could tell, that it was no good arguing with Dr. Harman. She tried a last attack. "Doctor, who's going to take care of her?" A light the size and shape of North America burst in Malone's mind. He almost chortled. But he managed to keep his voice under control. "What she needs," he said, "is a trained psychiatric nurse." Barbara Wilson gave him a look that had carloads of U{235} stacked away in it, but Malone barely minded. She'd get over it, he told himself. "Now, wasn't that sweet of you to think of that," the little old lady said. Malone looked at her and was rewarded with another wink. "I'm certainly glad you thought of Barbara," the little old lady went on. "You will go with me won't you, dear? I'll make you a duchess. Wouldn't you like to be a duchess, dear?" Barbara looked from Malone to the little old lady, and then she looked at Dr. Harman. Apparently what she saw failed to make her happy. "We'll take good care of her, Barbara," Malone said. She didn't even bother to give him an answer. After a second Boyd said: "Well, I guess that settles it. If you'll let me use your phone, Dr. Harman, I'll call Judge Dunning." "Go right ahead," Dr. Harman said. "Go right ahead." The little old lady smiled softly without looking at anybody at all. "Won't it be wonderful?" she whispered. "At last I've been recognized. My country is about to pay me for my services. My loyal subjects--" She stopped and wiped what Malone thought was a tear from one cornflower-blue eye. "Now, now, Miss Thompson," Barbara said. "I'm not sad," the little old lady said, smiling up at her. "I'm just so very happy. I am about to get my reward, my well-deserved reward at last, from all of my loyal subjects. You'll see." She paused and Malone felt a faint stirring of stark, chill fear. "Won't it be wonderful?" said the little old lady. IV "You're _where_?" Andrew J. Burris said. Malone looked at the surprised face on the screen and wished he hadn't called. He had to report in, of course--but, if he'd had any sense, he'd have ordered Boyd to do the job for him. Oh, well, it was too late for that now. "I'm in Las Vegas," he said. "I tried to get you last night, but I couldn't, so I--" "Las Vegas," Burris said. "Well, well. Las Vegas." His face darkened and his voice became very loud. "Why aren't you in Yucca Flats?" he screamed. "Because she insisted on it," Malone said. "The old lady. Miss Thompson. She says there's another telepath here." Burris closed his eyes. "Well, that's a relief," he said at last. "Somebody in one of the gambling houses, I suppose. Fine, Malone." He went right on without a pause: "The boys have uncovered two more in various parts of the nation. Not one of them is even close to sane." He opened his eyes. "Where's this one?" he said. Malone sighed. "In the looney bin," he said. Burris' eyes closed again. Malone waited in silence. At last Burris said: "All right. Get him out." "Right," Malone said. "Tell me," Burris said. "Why did Miss Thompson insist that you go to Las Vegas? Somebody else could have done the job. You could have sent Boyd, couldn't you?" "Chief," Malone said slowly, "what sort of mental condition are those other telepaths in?" "Pretty bad," Burris said. "As a matter of fact, very bad. Miss Thompson may be off her trolley, but the others haven't even got any tracks." He paused. "What's that got to do with it?" he said. "Well," Malone said, "I figured we'd better handle Miss Thompson with kid gloves--at least until we find a better telepath to work with." He didn't mention Barbara Wilson. The chief, he told himself, didn't want to be bothered with details. [Illustration] "Doggone right you'd better," Burris said. "You treat that old lady as if she were the Queen herself, understand?" "Don't worry," Malone said unhappily. "We are." He hesitated. "She says she'll help us find our spy, all right, but we've got to do it her way--or else she won't co-operate." "Do it her way, then," Burris said. "That spy--" "Chief, are you sure?" Burris blinked. "Well, then," he said, "what _is_ her way?" Malone took a deep breath. "First," he said, "we had to come here and pick this guy up. This William Logan, who's in a private sanitarium just outside of Las Vegas. That's number one. Miss Thompson wants to get all the telepaths together, so they can hold mental conversations or something." "And all of them batty," Burris said. "Sure," Malone said. "A convention of nuts--and me in the middle. Listen, chief--" "Later," Burris said. "When this is over we can all resign, or go fishing, or just plain shoot ourselves. But right now the national security is primary, Malone. Remember that." "O.K.," Malone sighed. "O.K. But she wants all the nuts here." "Go along with her," Burris snapped. "Keep her happy. So far, Malone, she's the only lead we have on the guy who's swiping information from Yucca Flats. If she wants something, Malone, you do it." "But, chief--" "Don't interrupt me," Burris said. "If she wants to be treated like a queen, you treat her like one. Malone, that's an order!" "Yes, sir," Malone said sadly. "But, chief, she wants us to buy her some new clothes." Burris exploded: "Is that all? New clothes? Get 'em. Put 'em on the expense account. New clothes are a drop in the bucket." "Well ... she thinks we need new clothes, too." "Maybe you do," Burris said. "Put the whole thing on the expense account. You don't think I'm going to quibble about a few dollars, do you?" "Well--" "Get the clothes. Just don't bother me with details like this. Handle the job yourself, Malone--you're in charge out there. And get to Yucca Flats as soon as possible." Malone gave up. "Yes, sir," he said. "All right, then," Burris said. "Call me tomorrow. Meanwhile--good luck, Malone. Chin up." Malone said: "Yes, sir," and reached for the switch. But Burris' voice stopped him. "Just one thing," he said. "Yes, chief?" Malone said. Burris frowned. "Don't spend any more for the clothes than you have to," he said. Malone nodded, and cut off. * * * * * When the director's image had vanished, he got up and went to the window of the hotel room. Outside, a huge sign told the world, and Malone, that this was the Thunderbird-Hilton-Zeckendorf Hotel, but Malone ignored it. He didn't need a sign; he knew where he was. In hot water, he thought. _That's_ where he was. Behind him, the door opened. Malone turned as Boyd came in. "I found a costume shop, Ken," he said. "Great," Malone said. "The chief authorized it." "He did?" Boyd's round face fell at the news. "He said to buy her whatever she wants. He says to treat her like a queen." "That," Boyd said, "we're doing now." "I know it," Malone said. "I know it altogether too well." "Anyhow," Boyd said, brightening, "the costume shop doesn't do us any good. They've only got cowboy stuff and bullfighters' costumes and Mexican stuff--you know, for their Helldorado Week here." "You didn't give up, did you?" Malone said. Boyd shook his head. "Of course not," he said. "Ken, this is on the expense account, isn't it?" "Expense account," Malone said. "Sure it is." Boyd looked relieved. "Good," he said. "Because I had the proprietor phone her size in, to New York." "Better get two of 'em," Malone said. "The chief said anything she wanted, she was supposed to have." "I'll go back right away. I told him we wanted the stuff on the afternoon plane, so--" "And give him Bar ... Miss Wilson's size, and yours, and mine. Tell him to dig up something appropriate." "For us?" Boyd blanched visibly. "For us," Malone said grimly. Boyd set his jaw. "No," he said. "Listen, Tom," Malone said, "I don't like this any better than you do. But if I can't resign, you can't either. Costumes for everybody." "But," Boyd said, and stopped. After a second he went on: "Malone ... Ken ... FBI agents are supposed to be inconspicuous, aren't they?" Malone nodded. "Well, how inconspicuous are we going to be in this stuff?" "It's an idea," Malone said. "But it isn't a very good one. Our first job is to keep Miss Thompson happy. And that means costumes. And what's more," Malone added, "from now on she's 'Your Majesty'. Got that?" "Ken," Boyd said, "you've gone nuts." Malone shook his head. "No, I haven't," he said. "I just wish I had. It would be a relief." "Me, too," Boyd said. He started for the door and turned. "I wish I could have stayed in San Francisco," he said. "Why should she insist on taking _me_ along?" "The beard," Malone said. "_My_ beard?" Boyd recoiled. "Right," Malone said. "She says it reminds her of someone she knows. Frankly, it reminds me of someone, too. Only I don't know who." Boyd gulped. "I'll shave it off," he said, with the air of a man who can do no more to propitiate the Gods. "You will not," Malone said firmly. "Touch but a hair of yon black chin, and I'll peel off your entire skin." Boyd winced. "Now," Malone said, "go back to that costume shop and arrange things. Here." He fished in his pockets, came out with a crumpled slip of paper and handed it to Boyd. "That's a list of my clothing sizes. Get another list from B ... Miss Wilson." Boyd nodded. Malone thought he detected a strange glint in the other man's eye. "Don't measure her yourself," he said. "Just ask her." Boyd scratched his bearded chin and nodded slowly. "All right, Ken," he said. "But if we just don't get anywhere, don't blame me." "If you get anywhere," Malone said, "I'll snatch you baldheaded. And I'll leave the beard." "I didn't mean with Miss Wilson, Ken," Boyd said. "I meant in general." He left, with the air of a man whose world has betrayed him. His back looked, to Malone, like the back of a man on his way to the scaffold or guillotine. The door closed. Now, Malone thought, who does that beard remind me of? Who do I know who knows Miss Thompson? And what difference does it make? Nevertheless, he told himself, Boyd's beard was really an admirable fact of nature. Ever since beards had become popular again in the mid-sixties, and FBI agents had been permitted to wear them, Malone had thought about growing one. But, somehow, it didn't seem right. Now, looking at Boyd, he began to think about the prospect again. He shrugged the notion away. There were things to do. He picked up the phone and called Information. "Can you give me," he said, "the number of the Desert Edge Sanitarium?" * * * * * The crimson blob of the setting sun was already painting the desert sky with its customary purples and oranges by the time the little caravan arrived at the Desert Edge Sanitarium, a square white building several miles out of Las Vegas. Malone, in the first car, wondered briefly about the kind of patients they catered to? People driven mad by vingt-et-un or poker-dice? Neurotic chorus ponies? Gambling czars with delusions of non-persecution? Sitting in the front seat next to Boyd, he watched the unhappy San Francisco agent manipulating the wheel. In the back seat, Queen Elizabeth Thompson and Lady Barbara, the nurse, were located, and Her Majesty was chattering away like a magpie. Malone eyed the rear-view mirror to get a look at the car following them and the two local FBI agents in it. They were, he thought, unbelievably lucky. He had to sit and listen to the Royal Personage in the back seat. "Of course, as soon as Parliament convenes and recognizes me," she was saying, "I shall confer personages on all of you. Right now, the best I can do is to knight you all, and of course that's hardly enough. But I think I shall make Sir Kenneth the Duke of Columbia." Sir Kenneth, Malone realized, was himself. He wondered how he'd like being Duke of Columbia--and wouldn't the President be surprised! "And Sir Thomas," the queen continued, "will be the Duke of ... what? Sir Thomas?" "Yes, Your Majesty?" Boyd said, trying to sound both eager and properly respectful. "What would you like to be Duke of?" she said. "Oh," Boyd said after a second's thought, "anything that pleases Your Majesty." But, apparently, his thoughts gave him away. "You're from upstate New York?" the Queen said. "How very nice. Then you must be made the Duke of Poughkeepsie." "Thank you, Your Majesty," Boyd said. Malone thought he detected a note of pride in the man's voice, and shot a glance at Boyd, but the agent was driving with a serene face and an economy of motion. _Duke of Poughkeepsie!_ Malone thought. _Hah!_ He leaned back and adjusted his fur-trimmed coat. The plume that fell from his cap kept tickling his neck, and he brushed at it without success. All four of the inhabitants of the car were dressed in late Sixteenth Century costumes, complete with ruffs and velvet and lace filigree. Her Majesty and Lady Barbara were wearing the full skirts and small skullcaps of the era--and on Barbara, Malone thought privately, the low-cut gowns didn't look at all disappointing--and Sir Thomas and Malone--Sir Kenneth, he thought sourly--were clad in doublet, hose and long coats with fur trim and slashed sleeves. And all of them were loaded down, weighted down, staggeringly, with gems. Naturally, the gems were fake. But then, Malone thought, the Queen was mad. It all balanced out in the end. As they approached the sanitarium, Malone breathed a thankful prayer that he'd called up to tell the head physician how they'd all be dressed. If he hadn't-- He didn't want to think about that. He didn't even want to pass it by hurriedly on a dark night. The head physician, Dr. Frederic Dowson, was waiting for them on the steps of the building. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man with almost no hair and very deep-sunken eyes. He had the kind of face that a gushing female would probably describe, Malone thought, as "craggy," but it didn't look in the least attractive to Malone. Instead, it looked tough and forbidding. He didn't turn a hair as the magnificently robed Boyd slid from the front seat, opened the rear door, doffed his plumed hat, and in one low sweep made a great bow. "We are here, Your Majesty," Boyd said. Her Majesty got out, clutching at her voluminous skirts in a worried manner, to keep from catching them on the door jamb. "You know, Sir Thomas," she said when she was standing free of the car, "I think we must be related." "Ah?" Boyd said worriedly. "I'm certain of it, in fact," Her Majesty went on. "You look just exactly like my poor father. Just exactly. I dare say you come from one of the sinister branches of the family. Perhaps you are a half-brother of mine--removed, of course." Malone grinned, and tried to hide the expression. Boyd was looking puzzled, then distantly angered. Nobody had ever called him illegitimate in just that way before. But Her Majesty was absolutely right, Malone thought. The agent had always reminded him of someone, and now, at last, he knew exactly who. The hair hadn't been black, either, but red. Boyd was, in Elizabethan costume, the deadest of dead ringers for Henry VIII. * * * * * Malone went up the steps to where Dr. Dowson was standing. "I'm Malone," he said, checking a tendency to bow. "I called earlier today. Is this William Logan of yours ready to go? We can take him back with us in the second car." Dr. Dowson compressed his lips and looked worried. "Come in, Mr. Malone," he said. He turned just as the second carload of FBI agents began emptying itself over the hospital grounds. The entire procession filed into the hospital office, the two local agents bringing up the rear. Since they were not a part of Her Majesty's personal retinue, they had not been required to wear court costumes. In a way, Malone was beginning to feel sorry for them. He himself cut a nice figure in the outfit, he thought--rather like Errol Flynn in the old black-and-white print of "The Prince and the Pauper." But there was no denying that the procession looked strange. File clerks and receptionists stopped their work to gape at the four bedizened walkers and their plainly dressed satellites. Malone needed no telepathic talent to tell what they were thinking. "A whole roundup of nuts," they were thinking. "And those two fellows in the back must be bringing them in--along with Dr. Dowson." Malone straightened his spine. Really, he didn't see why Elizabethan costumes had ever gone out of style. Elizabeth was back, wasn't she--either Elizabeth II, on the throne, or Elizabeth I, right behind him. Either way you looked at it-- When they were all inside the waiting room, Dr. Dowson said: "Now, Mr. Malone, just what is all this about?" He rubbed his long hands together. "I fail to see the humor of the situation." "Humor?" Malone said. "Doctor," Barbara Wilson began, "let me explain. You see--" "These ridiculous costumes," Dr. Dowson said, waving a hand at them. "You may feel that poking fun at insanity is humorous, Mr. Malone, but let me tell you--" "It wasn't like that at all," Boyd said. "And," Dr. Dowson continued in a somewhat louder voice, "wanting to take Mr. Logan away from us. Mr. Logan is a very sick man, Mr. Malone. He should be properly cared for." "I promise we'll take good care of him." Malone said earnestly. The Elizabethan clothes were fine outdoors, but in a heated room one had a tendency to sweat. "I take leave to doubt that," Dr. Dowson said, eying their costumes pointedly. "Miss Wilson here," Malone volunteered, "is a trained psychiatric nurse." Barbara, in her gown, stepped forward. "Dr. Dowson," she said, "let me assure you that these costumes have their purpose. We--" "Not only that," Malone said. "There are a group of trained men from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington who are going to take the best of care of him." He said nothing whatever about Yucca Flats, or about telepathy. Why spread around information unnecessarily? "But I don't understand," Dr. Dowson said. "What interest could the FBI have in an insane man?" "That's none of your business," Malone said. He reached inside his fur-trimmed robe and, again suppressing a tendency to bow deeply, withdrew an impressive-looking legal document. "This," he said, "is a court order, instructing you to hand over to us the person of one William Logan, herein identified and described." He waved it at the doctor. "That's your William Logan," he said, "only now he's ours." * * * * * Dr. Dowson took the papers and put in some time frowning at them. Then he looked up again at Malone. "I assume that I have some discretion in this matter," he said. "And I wonder if you realize just how ill Mr. Logan is? We have his case histories here, and we have worked with him for some time." Barbara Wilson said: "But--" "I might say that we are beginning to understand his illness," Dr. Dowson said. "I honestly don't think it would be proper to transfer this work to another group of therapists. It might set his illness back--cause, as it were, a relapse. All our work could easily be nullified." "Please, doctor," Barbara Wilson began. "I'm afraid the court order's got to stand," Malone said. Privately, he felt sorry for Dr. Dowson, who was, obviously enough, a conscientious man trying to do the best he could for his patient. But-- "I'm sorry, Dr. Dowson," he said. "We'll expect you to send all of your data to the government psychiatrists--and, naturally, any concern for the patient's welfare will be our concern also. The FBI isn't anxious for its workers to get the reputation of careless men." He paused, wondering what other bone he could throw the man. "I have no doubt that the St. Elizabeths men will be happy to accept your co-operation," he said at last. "But, I'm afraid that our duty is clear. William Logan goes with us." Dr. Dowson looked at them sourly. "Does he have to get dressed up like a masquerade, too?" Before Malone could answer, the psychiatrist added: "Anyhow, I don't even know you're FBI men. After all, why should I comply with orders from a group of men, dressed insanely, whom I don't even know?" Malone didn't say anything. He just got up and walked to a phone on a small table, near the wall. Next to it was a door, and Malone wondered uncomfortably what was behind it. Maybe Dr. Dowson had a small arsenal there, to protect his patients and prevent people from pirating them. He looked back at the set and dialed Burris' private number in Washington. When the director's face appeared on the screen, Malone said: "Mr. Burris, will you please identify me to Dr. Dowson?" He looked over at Dowson. "You recognize Mr. Andrew J. Burris, I suppose?" he said. Dowson nodded. His grim face showed a faint shock. He walked to the phone, and Malone stepped back to let him talk with Burris. "My name is Dowson," he said. "I'm psychiatric director here at Desert Edge Sanitarium. And your men--" "My men have orders to take a William Logan from your care," Burris said. "That's right," Dowson said. "But--" While they were talking, Queen Elizabeth I sidled quietly up to Malone and tapped him on the shoulder. "Sir Kenneth," she whispered in the faintest of voices, "I know where your telepathic spy is. And I know _who_ he is." "Who?" Malone said. "What? Why? Where?" He blinked and whirled. It couldn't be true. They couldn't solve the case so easily. But the Queen's face was full of a majestic assurance. "He's right there," she said, and she pointed. Malone followed her finger. It was aimed directly at the glowing image of Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI. [Illustration: "Not legally responsible, of course...."] V Malone opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not even air. He wasn't breathing. He stared at Burris for a long moment, then took a breath and looked again at Her Majesty. "The spy?" he whispered. "That's right," she said. "But that's--" He had to fight for control. "That's the head of the FBI," he managed to say. "Do you mean to say he's a spy?" Burris was saying: "... I'm afraid this is a matter of importance, Dr. Dowson. We cannot tolerate delay. You have the court order. Obey it." "Very well, Mr. Burris," Dowson said with an obvious lack of grace. "I'll release him to Mr. Malone immediately, since you insist." Malone stared, fascinated. Then he turned back to the little old lady. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that Andrew J. Burris is a telepathic spy?" "Oh, dear me," Her Majesty said, obviously aghast. "My goodness gracious. Is that Mr. Burris on the screen?" "It is," Malone assured her. A look out of the corner of his eye told him that neither Burris, in Washington, nor Dowson or any others in the room, had heard any of the conversation. Malone lowered his whisper some more, just in case. "That's the head of the FBI," he said. "Well, then," Her Majesty said, "Mr. Burris couldn't possibly be a spy, then, could he? Not if he's the head of the FBI. Of course not. Mr. Burris simply isn't a spy. He isn't the type. Forget all about Mr. Burris." "I can't," Malone said at random. "I work for him." He closed his eyes. The room, he had discovered, was spinning slightly. "Now," he said, "you're sure he's not a spy?" "Certainly I'm sure," she said, with her most regal tones. "Do you doubt the word of your sovereign?" "Not exactly," Malone said. Truthfully, he wasn't at all sure. Not at all. But why tell that to the Queen? "Shame on you," she said. "You shouldn't even think such things. After all, I am the Queen, aren't I?" But there was a sweet, gentle smile on her face when she spoke; she did not seem to be really irritated. "Sure you are," Malone said. "But--" "Malone!" It was Burris' voice, from the phone. Malone spun around. "Take Mr. Logan," Burris said, "and get going. There's been enough delay as it is." "Yes, sir," Malone said. "Right away, sir. Anything else?" "That's all," Burris said. "Good night." The screen blanked. There was a little silence. "All right, doctor," Boyd said. He looked every inch a king, and Malone knew exactly what king. "Bring him out." Dr. Dowson heaved a great sigh. "Very well," he said heavily. "But I want it known that I resent this high-handed treatment, and I shall write a letter complaining of it." He pressed a button on an instrument panel in his desk. "Bring Mr. Logan in," he said. Malone wasn't in the least worried about the letter. Burris, he knew, would take care of anything like that. And, besides, he had other things to think about. The door to the next room had opened almost immediately, and two husky, white-clad men were bringing in a strait-jacketed figure whose arms were wrapped against his chest, while the jacket's extra-long sleeves were tied behind his back. He walked where the attendants led him, but his eyes weren't looking at anything in the room. They stared at something far away and invisible, an impalpable shifting nothingness somewhere in the infinite distances beyond the world. For the first time, Malone felt the chill of panic. Here, he thought, was insanity of a very real and frightening kind. Queen Elizabeth Thompson was one thing--and she was almost funny, and likable, after all. But William Logan was something else, and something that sent a wave of cold shivering into the room. What made it worse was that Logan wasn't a man, but a boy, barely nineteen. Malone had known that, of course--but seeing it was something different. The lanky, awkward figure wrapped in a hospital strait jacket was horrible, and the smooth, unconcerned face was, somehow, worse. There was no threat in that face, no terror or anger or fear. It was merely--a blank. It was not a human face. Its complete lack of emotion or expression could have belonged to a sleeping child of ten--or to a member of a different race. Malone looked at the boy, and looked away. Was it possible that Logan knew what he was thinking? _Answer me_, he thought, directly at the still boy. There was no reply, none at all. Malone forced himself to look away. But the air in the room seemed to have become much colder. The attendants stood on either side of him, waiting. For one long second no one moved, and then Dr. Dowson reached into his desk drawer and produced a sheaf of papers. "If you'll sign these for the government," he said, "you may have Mr. Logan. There seems little else that I can do, Mr. Malone--in spite of my earnest pleas--" "I'm sorry," Malone said. After all, he _needed_ Logan, didn't he? After a look at the boy, he wasn't sure any more--but the Queen had said she wanted him, and the Queen's word was law. Or what passed for law, anyhow, at least for the moment. Malone took the papers and looked them over. There was nothing special about them; they were merely standard release forms, absolving the staff and management of Desert Edge Sanitarium from every conceivable responsibility under any conceivable circumstances, as far as William Logan was concerned. Dr. Dowson gave Malone a look that said: "Very well, Mr. Malone; I will play Pilate and wash my hands of the matter--but you needn't think I like it." It was a lot for one look to say, but Dr. Dowson's dark and sunken eyes got the message across with no loss in transmission. As a matter of fact, there seemed to be more coming--a much less printable message was apparently on the way through those glittering, sad and angry eyes. Malone avoided them nervously, and went over the papers again instead. At last he signed them and handed them back. "Thanks for your co-operation, Dr. Dowson," he said briskly, feeling ten kinds of a traitor. "Not at all," Dowson said bitterly. "Mr. Logan is now in your custody. I must trust you to take good care of him." "The best care we can," Malone said. It didn't seem sufficient. He added: "The best possible care, doctor," and tried to look dependable and trustworthy, like a Boy Scout. He was aware that the effort failed miserably. At his signal, the two plainclothes FBI men took over from the attendants. They marched Logan out to their car, and Malone led the procession back to Boyd's automobile, a procession that consisted--in order--of Sir Kenneth Malone, prospective Duke of Columbia, Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Barbara, prospective Duchess of an unspecified county, and Sir Thomas Boyd, prospective Duke of Poughkeepsie. Malone hummed a little of "Pomp and Circumstance" as they walked; somehow, he thought it was called for. They piled into the car, Boyd at the wheel with Malone next to him, and the two ladies in back, with Queen Elizabeth sitting directly behind Sir Thomas. Boyd started the engine and they turned and roared off. "Well," said Her Majesty with an air of great complacence, "that's that. That makes six of us." Malone looked around the car. He counted the people. There were four. He said, puzzled: "Six?" "That's right, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "You have it exactly. Six." "You mean six telepaths?" Sir Thomas asked in a deferent tone of voice. "Certainly I do," Her Majesty replied. "We telepaths, you know, must stick together. That's the reason I got poor little Willie out of that sanitarium of his, you know--and, of course, the others will be joining us." "Don't you think it's time for your nap, dear?" Lady Barbara put in suddenly. "My _what_?" It was obvious that Queen Elizabeth was Not Amused. "Your nap, dear," Lady Barbara said. "Don't call me 'dear,'" Her Majesty snapped. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty," Barbara murmured. "But really--" "My dear girl," Her Majesty said, "I am not a child. I am your sovereign. Do try to have a little respect. Why, I remember when Shakespeare used to say to me--but that's no matter, not now." "About those telepaths--" Boyd began. "Telepaths," Her Majesty said. "Ah, yes. We must all stick together. In the hospital, you know, we had a little joke--the patients for Insulin Shock Therapy used to say: 'If we don't stick together, we'll all be stuck separately.' Do you see, Sir Thomas?" "But," Sir Kenneth Malone said, trying desperately to return to the point. "_Six?_" He had counted them up in his mind. Burris had mentioned one found in St. Elizabeths, and two more picked up later. With Queen Elizabeth, and now William Logan, that made five. Unless the Queen was counting him in. There didn't seem any good reason why not. "Oh, no," Her Majesty said with a little trill of laughter, "not you, Sir Kenneth. I meant Mr. Miles." Sir Thomas Boyd asked: "Mr. Miles?" "That's right," Her Majesty said. "His name is Barry Miles, and your FBI men found him an hour ago in New Orleans. They're bringing him to Yucca Flats to meet the rest of us; isn't that nice?" Lady Barbara cleared her throat. "It really isn't necessary for you to try to get my attention, dear," the Queen said. "After all, I do know what you're thinking." Lady Barbara blinked. "I still want to suggest, respectfully, about that nap--" she began. "My dear girl," the Queen said, with the faintest trace of impatience, "I do not feel the least bit tired, and this is such an exciting day that I just don't want to miss any of it. Besides, I've already told you I don't want a nap. It isn't polite to be insistent to your Queen--no matter how strongly you feel about a matter. I'm sure you'll learn to understand that, dear." Lady Barbara opened her mouth, shut it again, and opened it once more. "My goodness," she said. "That's the idea," Her Majesty said approvingly. "Think before you speak--and then don't speak. It really isn't necessary, since I know what you're thinking." Malone said grimly: "About this new telepath ... this Barry Miles. Did they find him--" "In a nut-house?" Her Majesty said sweetly. "Why, of course, Sir Kenneth. You were quite right when you thought that telepaths went insane because they had a sense they couldn't effectively use, and because no one believed them. How would you feel, if nobody believed you could see?" "Strange," Malone admitted. "There," Her Majesty said. "You see? Telepaths do go insane--it's sort of an occupational disease. Of course, not all of them are insane." "Not all of them?" Malone felt the faint stirrings of hope. Perhaps they would turn up a telepath yet who was completely sane and rational. "There's me, of course," Her Majesty said. Lady Barbara gulped audibly. Boyd said nothing, but gripped the wheel of the car more tightly. And Malone thought to himself: _That's right. There's Queen Elizabeth--who says she isn't crazy._ And then he thought of one more sane telepath. But the knowledge did not make him feel any better. It was, of course, the spy. How many more are going to turn up? Malone wondered. "Oh, that's about all of us," the Queen said. "There is one more, but she's in a hospital in Honolulu, and your men won't find her until tomorrow." [Illustration: Sir Thomas Boyd ... looking majestic.] Boyd turned. "Do you mean you can foretell the future, too?" he asked in a strained voice. Lady Barbara screamed: "Keep your eyes on the wheel and your hands on the road!" "What?" Boyd said. There was a terrific blast of noise, and a truck went by in the opposite direction. The driver, a big, ugly man with no hair on his head, leaned out to curse at the quartet, but his mouth remained open. He stared at the four Elizabethans and said nothing at all as he whizzed by. "What was that?" Boyd asked faintly. "That," Malone snapped, "was a truck. And it was due entirely to the mercy of God that we didn't hit it. Barbara's right. Keep your eyes on the wheel and your hands on the road." He paused and thought that over. Then he said: "Does that mean anything at all?" "Lady Barbara was confused by the excitement," the Queen said calmly. "It's all right now, dear." Lady Barbara blinked across the seat. "I was--afraid," she said. "It's all right," the Queen said. "I'll take care of you." "This," Malone announced to no one in particular, "is ridiculous." * * * * * Boyd swept the car around a curve and concentrated grimly on the road. After a second the Queen said: "Since you're still thinking about the question, I'll answer you." "What question?" Malone said, thoroughly baffled. "Sir Thomas asked me if I could foretell the future," the Queen said equably. "Of course I can't. That's silly. Just because I'm immortal and I'm a telepath, don't go hog-wild." "Then how did you know the FBI agents were going to find the girl in Honolulu tomorrow?" Boyd said. "Because," the Queen said, "they're thinking about looking in the hospital tomorrow, and when they look they'll certainly find her." Boyd said: "Oh," and was silent. But Malone had a grim question. "Why didn't you tell me about these other telepaths before?" he said. "You could have saved us a lot of work." "Oh, heavens to Betsy, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty exclaimed. "How could I? After all, the proper precautions had to be taken first, didn't they? I told you all the others were crazy--_really_ crazy, I mean. And they just wouldn't be safe without the proper precautions." "Perhaps you ought to go back to the hospital, too," Barbara said, and added: "Your Majesty," just in time. "But if I did, dear," Her Majesty said, "you'd lose your chance to become a Duchess, and that wouldn't be at all nice. Besides, I'm having so much _fun_!" She trilled a laugh again. "Riding around like this is just wonderful!" she said. _And you're important for national security_, Malone said to himself. "That's right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "The country needs me, and I'm happy to serve. That is the job of a sovereign." "Fine," Malone said, hoping it was. "Well, then," said Her Majesty, "that settles that. We have a whole night ahead of us, Sir Kenneth. What do you say we make a night _of_ it?" "Knight who?" Malone said. He felt confused again. It seemed as if he was always feeling confused lately. "Don't be silly, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "There are times and times." "Sure," Malone said at random. _And time and a half_, he thought. _Possibly for overtime._ "What is Your Majesty thinking of?" he asked with trepidation. "I want to take a tour of Las Vegas," Her Majesty said primly. Lady Barbara shook her head. "I'm afraid that's not possible, Your Majesty," she said. "And why not, pray?" Her Majesty said. "No. I can see what you're thinking. It's not safe to let me go wandering around in a strange city, and particularly if that city is Las Vegas. Well, dear, I can assure you that it's perfectly safe." "We've got work to do," Boyd contributed. Malone said nothing. He stared bleakly at the hood ornament on the car. "I have made my wishes known," the Queen said. Lady Barbara said: "But--" Boyd, however, knew when to give in. "Yes, Your Majesty," he said. She smiled graciously at him, and answered Lady Barbara only by a slight lift of her regal eyebrow. Malone had been thinking about something else. When he was sure he had a firm grip on himself he turned. "Your Majesty, tell me something," he said. "You can read my mind, right?" "Well, of course, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "I thought I'd proved that to you. And, as for what you're about to ask--" "No," Malone said. "Please. Let me ask the questions before you answer them. It's less confusing that way. I'll cheerfully admit that it shouldn't be--but it is. Please?" "Certainly, Sir Kenneth, if you wish," the Queen said. She folded her hands in her lap and waited quietly. * * * * * "O.K.," Malone said. "Now, if you can read my mind, then you must know that I don't _really_ believe that you are Queen Elizabeth of England. The First, I mean." "Mr. Malone," Barbara Wilson said suddenly. "I--" "It's all right, child," the Queen said. "He doesn't disturb me. And I do wish you'd call him Sir Kenneth. That's his title, you know." "Now that's what I mean," Malone said. "Why do you want us to _act_ as if we believe you, when you know we don't?" "Because that's the way people do act," the Queen said calmly. "Very few people really believe that their so-called superiors _are_ superior. Almost none of them do, in fact." "Now wait a minute," Boyd began. "No, no, it's quite true," the Queen said, "and, unpleasant as it may be, we must learn to face the truth. That's the path of sanity." Lady Barbara made a strangled noise but Her Majesty continued, unruffled. "Nearly everybody suffers from the silly delusion that he's possibly equal to, but very probably superior to, everybody else ... my goodness, where would we be if that were true?" Malone felt that a comment was called for, and he made one. "Who knows?" he said. "All the things people do toward their superiors," the Queen said, "are done for social reasons. For instance, Sir Kenneth: you don't realize fully how you feel about Mr. Burris." "He's a nice guy," Malone said. "I work for him. He's a good Director of the FBI." "Of course," the Queen said. "But you believe you could do the job just as well, or perhaps a little better." "I do not," Malone said angrily. Her Majesty reserved a dignified silence. After a while Malone said: "And what if I do?" "Why, nothing," Her Majesty said. "You don't think Mr. Burris is any smarter or better than you are--but you treat him as if you did. All I am insisting on is the same treatment." "But if we don't believe--" Boyd began. "Bless you," Her Majesty said, "I can't help the way you _think_, but, as Queen, I do have some control over the way you _act_." Malone thought it over. "You have a point there," he said at last. Barbara said: "But--" "Yes, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said, "I do." She seemed to be ignoring Lady Barbara. Perhaps, Malone thought, she was still angry over the nap affair. "It's not that," the Queen said. "Not what?" Boyd said, thoroughly confused. "Not the naps," the Queen said. "What naps?" Boyd said. Malone said: "I was thinking--" "Good," Boyd said. "Keep it up. I'm driving. Everything's going to hell around me, but I'm driving." A red light appeared ahead. Boyd jammed on the brakes with somewhat more than the necessary force, and Malone was thrown forward with a grunt. Behind him there were two ladylike squeals. Malone struggled upright. "Barbara?" he called. "Are you all right--" Then he remembered the Queen. "It's all right," Her Majesty said. "I can understand your concern for Lady Barbara." She smiled at Malone as he turned. Malone gaped at her. Of course she knew what he thought about Barbara; she'd been reading his mind. And, apparently, she was on his side. That was good, even though it made him slightly nervous to think about. "Now," the Queen said suddenly, "what about tonight?" "Tonight?" "Yes, of course," the Queen said. She smiled, and put up a hand to pat at her white hair under the Elizabethan skullcap. "I think I should like to go to the Palace," she said. "After all, isn't that where a Queen should be?" Boyd said, in a kind of explosion: "London? England?" "Oh, dear me--" the Queen began, and Barbara said: "I'm afraid that I simply can't allow anything like that. Overseas--" "I didn't mean overseas, dear," Her Majesty said. "Sir Kenneth, please explain to these people." The Palace, Malone knew, was more properly known as the Golden Palace. It was right in Las Vegas--convenient to all sources of money. As a matter of fact, it was one of the biggest gambling houses along the Las Vegas strip, a veritable chaos of wheels, cards, dice, chips and other such devices. Malone explained all this to the others, wondering meanwhile why Miss Thompson wanted to go there. "_Not_ Miss Thompson, _please_, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Not Miss Thompson what?" Boyd said. "What's going on anyhow?" "She's reading my mind," Malone said. "Well, then," Boyd snapped, "tell her to keep it to herself." The car started up again with a roar and Malone and the others were thrown around again, this time toward the back. There was a chorus of groans and squeals, and they were on their way once more. * * * * * "To reply to your question, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. Lady Barbara said, with some composure: "What question ... Your Majesty?" The Queen nodded regally at her. "Sir Kenneth was wondering why I wished to go to the Golden Palace," she said. "And my reply is this: it is none of your business why I want to go there. After all, is my word law, or isn't it?" There didn't seem to be a good enough answer to that, Malone thought sadly. He kept quiet and was relieved to note that the others did the same. However, after a second he thought of something else. "Your Majesty," he began carefully, "we've got to go to Yucca Flats tomorrow. Remember?" "Certainly," the Queen said. "My memory is quite good, thank you. But that is tomorrow morning. We have the rest of the night left. It's only a little after nine, you know." "Heavens," Barbara said. "Is it that late?" "It's even later," Boyd said sourly. "It's much later than you think." "And it's getting later all the time," Malone added. "Pretty soon the sun will go out and all life on earth will end. Won't that be nice and peaceful?" "I'm looking forward to it," Boyd said. "I'm not," Barbara said. "But I've got to get some sleep tonight, if I'm going to be any good at all tomorrow." _You're pretty good right now_, Malone thought, but he didn't say a word. He felt the Queen's eye on him but didn't turn around. After all, she was on his side--wasn't she? At any rate, she didn't say anything. "Perhaps it would be best," Barbara said, "if you and I ... Your Majesty ... just went home and rested up. Some other time, then, when there's nothing vital to do, we could--" "No," the Queen said. "We couldn't. Really, Lady Barbara, how often will I have to remind you of the duties you owe your sovereign--not the least of which is obedience, as dear old Ben used to say." "Ben?" Malone said, and immediately wished he hadn't. "Jonson, dear boy," the Queen said. "Really a remarkable man--and such a good friend to poor Will. Why, did you ever hear the story of how he actually paid Will's rent in London once upon a time? That was while Will and that Anne of his were having one of their arguments, of course. I didn't tell you that story, did I?" "No," Malone said truthfully, but his voice was full of foreboding. "If I might remind Your Majesty of the subject," he added tentatively, "I should like to say--" "Remind me of the subject!" the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor--could you be a descendant of Sir Richard Greene, I wonder?" "I doubt it," Malone said. "My ancestors were all poor but Irish." He paused. "Or, if you prefer, Irish but poor." Another pause, and then he added: "If that means anything at all. Which I doubt." "In any case," the Queen said, her eyes twinkling, "you were about to enter a new objection to our little visit to the Palace, were you not?" Malone admitted as much. "I really think that--" Her eyes grew suddenly cold. "If I hear any more objections, Sir Kenneth, I shall not only rescind your knighthood and--when I regain my rightful kingdom--deny you your dukedom, but I shall refuse to co-operate any further in the business of Project Isle." Malone turned cold. His face, he knew without glancing in the mirror, was white and pale. He thought of what Burris would do to him if he didn't follow through on his assigned job. Even if he wasn't as good as Burris thought he was, he really liked being an FBI agent. He didn't want to be fired. And Burris had said: "_Give her anything she wants._" He gulped and tried to make his face look normal. "All right," he said. "Fine. We'll go to the Palace." He tried to ignore the pall of apprehension that fell over the car. VI The management of the Golden Palace had been in business for many long, dreary, profitable years, and each member of the staff thought he or she had seen just about everything there was to be seen. And those that were new felt an obligation to _look_ as if they'd seen everything. Therefore, when the entourage of Queen Elizabeth I strolled into the main salon, not a single eye was batted. Not a single gasp was heard. Nevertheless, the staff kept a discreet eye on the crew. Drunks, rich men or Arabian millionaires were all familiar. But a group out of the Sixteenth Century was something else again. Malone almost strutted, conscious of the sidelong glances the group was drawing. But it was obvious that Sir Thomas was the major attraction. Even if you could accept the idea of people in strange costumes, the sight of a living, breathing absolute duplicate of King Henry VIII was a little too much to take. It has been reported that two ladies named Jane, and one named Catherine, came down with sudden headaches and left the salon within five minutes of the group's arrival. Malone felt he knew, however, why he wasn't drawing his full share of attention. He felt a little out of place. The costume was one thing, and, to tell the truth, he was beginning to enjoy it. Even with the weight of the stuff, it was going to be a wrench to go back to single-breasted suits and plain white shirts. But he did feel that he should have been carrying a sword. Instead, he had a .44 Magnum Colt snuggled beneath his left armpit. Somehow, a .44 Magnum Colt didn't seem as romantic as a sword. Malone pictured himself saying: "Take that, varlet." Was varlet what you called them? he wondered. Maybe it was valet. "Take that, valet," he muttered. No, that sounded even worse. Oh, well, he could look it up later. The truth was that he had been born in the wrong century. He could imagine himself at the Mermaid Tavern, hob-nobbing with Shakespeare and all the rest of them. He wondered if Sir Richard Greene would be there. Then he wondered who Sir Richard Greene was. Behind Sir Kenneth, Sir Thomas Boyd strode, looking majestic, as if he were about to fling purses of gold to the citizenry. As a matter of fact, Malone thought, he was. They all were. Purses of good old United States of America gold. Behind Sir Thomas came Queen Elizabeth and her Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Barbara Wilson. They made a beautiful foursome. "The roulette table," Her Majesty said with dignity. "Precede me." They pushed their way through the crowd. Most of the customers were either excited enough, drunk enough, or both to see nothing in the least incongruous about a Royal Family of the Tudors invading the Golden Palace. Very few of them, as a matter of fact, seemed to notice the group. They were roulette players. They noticed nothing but the table and the wheel. Malone wondered what they were thinking about, decided to ask Queen Elizabeth, and then decided against it. He felt it would make him nervous to know. Her Majesty took a handful of chips. The handful was worth, Malone knew, exactly five thousand dollars. That, he'd thought, ought to last them an evening, even in the Golden Palace. In the center of the strip, inside the city limits of Las Vegas itself, the five thousand would have lasted much longer--but Her Majesty wanted the Palace, and the Palace it was. Malone began to smile. Since he couldn't avoid the evening, he was determined to enjoy it. It was sort of fun, in its way, indulging a sweet harmless old lady. And there was nothing they could do until the next morning, anyhow. His indulgent smile faded very suddenly. Her Majesty plunked the entire handful of chips--_five thousand dollars!_ Malone thought dazedly--onto the table. "Five thousand," she said in clear, cool measured tones, "on Number One." The croupier blinked only slightly. He bowed. "Yes, Your Majesty," he said. Malone was briefly thankful, in the midst of his black horror, that he had called the management and told them that the Queen's plays were backed by the United States Government. Her Majesty was going to get unlimited credit--and a good deal of awed and somewhat puzzled respect. Malone watched the spin begin with mixed feelings. There was five thousand dollars riding on the little ball. But, after all, Her Majesty was a telepath. Did that mean anything? He hadn't decided by the time the wheel stopped, and by then he didn't have to decide. "Thirty-four," the croupier said tonelessly. "Red, Even and High." He raked in the chips with a nonchalant air. Malone felt as if he had swallowed his stomach. Boyd and Lady Barbara, standing nearby, had absolutely no expressions on their faces. Malone needed no telepath to tell him what they were thinking. They were exactly the same as he was. They were incapable of thought. But Her Majesty never batted an eyelash. "Come, Sir Kenneth," she said. "Let's go on to the poker tables." She swept out. Her entourage followed her, shambling a little, and blank-eyed. Malone was still thinking about the five thousand dollars. Oh, well, Burris had said to give the lady anything she wanted. _But!_ he thought. _Did she have to play for royal stakes?_ "I am, after all, a Queen," she whispered back to him. Malone thought about the National Debt. He wondered if a million more or less would make any real difference. There would be questions asked in committees about it. He tried to imagine himself explaining the evening to a group of congressmen. "Well, you see, gentlemen, there was this roulette wheel--" He gave it up. Then he wondered how much hotter the water was going to get, and he stopped thinking altogether in self-defense. * * * * * In the next room, there were scattered tables. At one, a poker game was in full swing. Only five were playing; one, by his white-tie-and-tails uniform, was easily recognizable as a house dealer. The other four were all men, one of them in full cowboy regalia. The Tudors descended upon them with great suddenness, and the house dealer looked up and almost lost his cigarette. "We haven't any money, Your Majesty," Malone whispered. She smiled up at him sweetly, and then drew him aside. "If you were a telepath," she said, "how would _you_ play poker?" Malone thought about that for a minute, and then turned to look for Boyd. But Sir Thomas didn't even have to be given instructions. "Another five hundred?" he said. Her Majesty sniffed audibly. "Another five thousand," she said regally. Boyd looked Malone-wards. Malone looked defeated. Boyd turned with a small sigh and headed for the cashier's booth. Three minutes later, he was back with a fat fistful of chips. "Five grand?" Malone whispered to him. "Ten," Boyd said. "I know when to back a winner." Her Majesty went over to the table. The dealer had regained control, but looked up at them with a puzzled stare. "You know," the Queen said, with an obvious attempt to put the man at his ease, "I've always wanted to visit a gambling hall." "Sure, lady," the dealer said. "Naturally." "May I sit down?" The dealer looked at the group. "How about your friends?" he said cautiously. The Queen shook her head. "They would rather watch, I'm sure." For once Malone blessed the woman's telepathic talent. He, Boyd and Barbara Wilson formed a kind of Guard of Honor around the chair which Her Majesty occupied. Boyd handed over the new pile of chips, and was favored with a royal smile. "This is a poker game, ma'am," the dealer said to her, quietly. "I know, I know," Her Majesty said with a trace of testiness. "Roll 'em." The dealer stared at her popeyed. Next to her, the gentleman in the cowboy outfit turned. "Ma'am, are you from around these parts?" he said. "Oh, no," the Queen said. "I'm from England." "England?" The cowboy looked puzzled. "You don't seem to have any accent, ma'am," he said at last. "Certainly not," the Queen said. "I've lost that; I've been over here a great many years." Malone hoped fervently that Her Majesty wouldn't mention just how many years. He didn't think he could stand it, and he was almost grateful for the cowboy's nasal twang. "Oil?" he said. "Oh, no," Her Majesty said. "The Government is providing this money." "The Government?" "Certainly," Her Majesty said. "The FBI, you know." There was a long silence. At last, the dealer said: "Five-card draw your game, ma'am?" "If you please," Her Majesty said. The dealer shrugged and, apparently, commended his soul to a gambler's God. He passed the pasteboards around the table with the air of one who will have nothing more to do with the world. Her Majesty picked up her hand. [Illustration: "May I raise ... five thousand?"] "The ante's ten, ma'am," the dealer said softly. Without looking, Her Majesty removed a ten-dollar chip from the pile before her and sent it spinning to the middle of the table. The dealer opened his mouth, but said nothing. Malone, meanwhile, was peering over the Queen's shoulder. She held a pair of nines, a four, a three and a Jack. The man to the left of the dealer announced glumly: "Can't open." The next man grinned. "Open for twenty," he said. Malone closed his eyes. He heard the cowboy say: "I'm in," and he opened his eyes again. The Queen was pushing two ten-dollar chips toward the center of the table. The next man dropped, and the dealer looked round the table. "How many?" The man who couldn't open took three cards. The man who'd opened for twenty stood pat. Malone shuddered invisibly. That, he figured, meant at least a straight. And Queen Elizabeth Thompson was going in against a straight or better with a pair of nines, Jack high. For the first time, it was borne in on Malone that being a telepath did not necessarily mean that you were a good poker player. Even if you knew what every other person at the table held, you could still make a whole lot of stupid mistakes. He looked nervously at Queen Elizabeth, but her face was serene. Apparently she'd been following the thoughts of the poker players, and not concentrating on him at all. That was a relief. He felt, for the first time in days, as if he could think freely. The cowboy said: "Two," and took them. It was Her Majesty's turn. "I'll take two," she said, and threw away the three and four. It left her with the nine of spades and the nine of hearts, and the Jack of diamonds. These were joined, in a matter of seconds, by two bright new cards: the six of clubs and the three of hearts. Malone closed his eyes. Oh, well, he thought. It was only thirty bucks down the drain. Practically nothing. Of course Her Majesty dropped at once; knowing what the other players held, she knew she couldn't beat them after the draw. But she did like to take long chances, Malone thought miserably. Imagine trying to fill a full house on one pair! * * * * * Slowly, as the minutes passed, the pile of chips before Her Majesty dwindled. Once Malone saw her win with two pair against a reckless man trying to fill a straight on the other side of the table. But whatever was going on, Her Majesty's face was as calm as if she were asleep. Malone's worked overtime. If the Queen hadn't been losing so obviously, the dealer might have mistaken the play of naked emotion across his visage for a series of particularly obvious signals. An hour went by. Barbara left to find a ladies' lounge where she could sit down and try to relax. Fascinated in a horrible sort of way, both Malone and Boyd stood, rooted to the spot, while hand after hand went by and the ten thousand dollars dwindled to half that, to a quarter, and even less-- Her Majesty, it seemed, was a mighty poor poker player. The ante had been raised by this time. Her Majesty was losing one hundred dollars a hand, even before the betting began. But she showed not the slightest indication to stop. "We've got to get up in the morning," Malone announced to no one in particular, when he thought he couldn't possibly stand another half hour of the game. "So we do," Her Majesty said with a little regretful sigh. "Very well, then. Just one more hand." "It's a shame to lose you," the cowboy said to her, quite sincerely. He had been winning steadily ever since Her Majesty sat down, and Malone thought that the man should, by this time, be awfully grateful to the United States Government. Somehow, he doubted that this gratitude existed. Malone wondered if she should be allowed to stay for one more hand. There was, he estimated, about two thousand dollars in front of her. Then he wondered how he was going to stop her. The cards were dealt. The first man said quietly: "Open for two hundred." Malone looked at the Queen's hand. It contained the Ace, King, Queen and ten of clubs--and the seven of spades. _Oh, no_, he thought. _She couldn't possibly be thinking of filling a flush._ He knew perfectly well that she was. The second man said: "And raise two hundred." The Queen equably tossed--counting, Malone thought, the ante--five hundred into the pot. The cowboy muttered to himself for a second, and finally shoved in his money. "I think I'll raise it another five hundred," the Queen said calmly. Malone wanted to die of shock. Unfortunately, he remained alive and watching. He was the last man, after some debate internal, to shove a total of one thousand dollars into the pot. "Cards?" said the dealer. The first man said: "One." It was too much to hope for, Malone thought. If that first man were trying to fill a straight or a flush, maybe he wouldn't make it. And maybe something final would happen to all the other players. But that was the only way he could see for Her Majesty to win. The card was dealt. The second man stood pat and Malone's green tinge became obvious to the veriest dunce. The cowboy, on Her Majesty's right, asked for a card, received it and sat back without a trace of expression. The Queen said: "I'll try one for size." She'd picked up poker lingo, and the basic rules of the game, Malone realized, from the other players--or possibly from someone at the hospital itself, years ago. He wished she'd picked up something less dangerous instead, like a love of big-game hunting, or stunt-flying. But no. It had to be poker. The Queen threw away her seven of spades, showing more sense than Malone had given her credit for at any time during the game. She let the other card fall and didn't look at it. She smiled up at Malone and Boyd. "Live dangerously," she said gaily. Malone gave her a hollow laugh. The last man drew one card, too, and the betting began. The Queen's remaining thousand was gone before an eye could notice it. She turned to Boyd. "Sir Thomas," she said. "Another five thousand, please. At once." Boyd said nothing at all, but marched off. Malone noticed, however, that his step was neither as springy nor as confident as it had been before. For himself, Malone was sure that he could not walk at all. Maybe, he thought hopefully, the floor would open up and swallow them all. He tried to imagine explaining the loss of twenty thousand dollars to Burris and some congressmen, and after that he watched the floor narrowly, hoping for the smallest hint of a crack in the palazzo marble. * * * * * "May I raise the whole five thousand?" the Queen said. "It's O.K. with me," the dealer said. "How about the rest of you?" The four grunts he got expressed a suppressed eagerness. The Queen took the new chips Boyd had brought her and shoved them into the center of the table with a fine, careless gesture of her hand. She smiled gaily at everybody. "Seeing me?" she said. Everybody was. "Well, you see, it was this way," Malone muttered to himself, rehearsing. He half-thought that one of the others would raise again, but no one did. After all, each of them must be convinced that he held a great hand, and though raising had gone on throughout the hand, each must now be afraid of going the least little bit too far and scaring the others out. "Mr. Congressman," Malone muttered, "there's this game called poker. You play it with cards and money. Chiefly money." That wasn't any good. "You've been called," the dealer said to the first man, who'd opened the hand a year or so before. "Why, sure," the player said, and laid down a pair of aces, a pair of threes--and a four. One of the threes, and the four, were clubs. That reduced the already improbable chances of the Queen's coming up with a flush. "Sorry," said the second man, and laid down a straight with a single gesture. The straight was nine-high and there were no clubs in it. Malone felt devoutly thankful for that. The second man reached for the money but, under the popeyed gaze of the dealer, the fifth man laid down another straight--this one ten-high. The nine was a club. Malone felt the odds go down, right in his own stomach. And now the cowboy put down his cards. The King of diamonds. The King of hearts. The Jack of diamonds. The Jack of spades. And--the Jack of hearts. Full house. "Well," said the cowboy. "I suppose that does it." The Queen said: "Please. One moment." The cowboy stopped halfway in his reach for the enormous pile of chips. The Queen laid down her four clubs--Ace, King, Queen and ten--and for the first time flipped over her fifth card. It was the Jack of clubs. "My God," the cowboy said, and it sounded like a prayer. "A royal flush." "Naturally," the Queen said. "What else?" Her Majesty calmly scooped up the tremendous pile of chips. The cowboy's hands fell away. Five mouths were open around the table. Her Majesty stood up. She smiled sweetly at the men around the table. "Thank you very much, gentlemen," she said. She handed the chips to Malone, who took them in nerveless fingers. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I hereby appoint you temporary Chancellor of the Exchequer--at least until Parliament convenes." There was, Malone thought, at least thirty-five thousand dollars in the pile. He could think of nothing to say. So, instead of using up words, he went and cashed in the chips. For once, he realized, the Government had made money on an investment. It was probably the first time since 1775. Malone thought vaguely that the Government ought to make more investments like the one he was cashing in. If it did, the National Debt could be wiped out in a matter of days. He brought the money back. Boyd and the Queen were waiting for him, but Barbara was still in the ladies' lounge. "She's on the way out," the Queen informed him, and, sure enough, in a minute they saw the figure approaching them. Malone smiled at her, and, tentatively, she smiled back. They began the long march to the exit of the club, slowly and regally, though not by choice. The crowd, it seemed, wouldn't let them go. Malone never found out, then or later, how the news of Her Majesty's winnings had gone through the place so fast, but everyone seemed to know about it. The Queen was the recipient of several low bows and a few drunken curtsies, and, when they reached the front door at last, the doorman said in a most respectful tone: "Good evening, Your Majesty." The Queen positively beamed at him. So, to his own great surprise, did Sir Kenneth Malone. Outside, it was about four in the morning. They climbed into the car and headed back toward the hotel. * * * * * Malone was the first to speak. "How did you know that was a Jack of clubs?" he said in a strangled sort of voice. The little old lady said calmly: "He was cheating." "The dealer?" Malone asked. The little old lady nodded. "In _your_ favor?" "He couldn't have been cheating," Boyd said at the same instant. "Why would he want to give you all that money?" The little old lady shook her head. "He didn't want to give it to me," she said. "He wanted to give it to the man in the cowboy's suit. His name is Elliott, by the way--Bernard L. Elliott. And he comes from Weehawken. But he pretends to be a Westerner so nobody will be suspicious of him. He and the dealer are in cahoots ... isn't that the word?" "Yes, Your Majesty," Boyd said. "That's the word." His tone was awed and respectful, and the little old lady gave a nod and became Queen Elizabeth I once more. "Well," she said, "the dealer and Mr. Elliott were in cahoots, and the dealer wanted to give the hand to Mr. Elliott. But he made a mistake, and dealt the Jack of clubs to me. I watched him, and, of course, I knew what he was thinking. The rest was easy." "My God," Malone said. "Easy." Barbara said: "Did she win?" "She won," Malone said with what he felt was positively magnificent understatement. "Good," Barbara said, and lost interest at once. * * * * * Malone had seen the lights of a car in the rear-view mirror a few minutes before. When he looked now, the lights were still there--but the fact just didn't register until, a couple of blocks later, the car began to pull around them on the left. It was a Buick, while Boyd's was a new Lincoln, but the edge wasn't too apparent yet. Malone spotted the gun barrel protruding from the Buick and yelled just before the first shot went off. Boyd, at the wheel, didn't even bother to look. His reflexes took over and he slammed his foot down on the brake. The specially-built FBI Lincoln slowed down instantly. The shotgun blast splattered the glass of the curved windshield all over--but none of it came into the car itself. Malone already had his hand on the butt of the .44 Magnum under his left armpit, and he even had time to be grateful, for once, that it wasn't a smallsword. The women were in the back seat, frozen, and he yelled: "Duck!" and felt, rather than saw, both of them sink down onto the floor of the car. The Buick had slowed down, too, and the gun barrel was swiveling back for a second shot. Malone felt naked and unprotected. The Buick and the Lincoln were even on the road now. Malone had his revolver out. He fired the first shot without even realizing fully that he'd done so, and he heard a piercing scream from Barbara in the back seat. He had no time to look back. A .44 Magnum is not, by any means, a small gun. As hand guns go--revolvers and automatics--it is about as large as a gun can get to be. An ordinary car has absolutely no chance against it. Much less the glass in an ordinary car. The first slug drilled its way through the window glass as though it were not there, and slammed its way through an even more unprotected obstacle, the frontal bones of the triggerman's skull. The second slug from Malone's gun missed the hole the first slug had made by something less than an inch. The big, apelike thug who was holding the shotgun had a chance to pull the trigger once more, but he wasn't aiming very well. The blast merely scored the paint off the top of the Lincoln. The rear window of the Buick was open, and Malone caught sight of another glint of blued steel from the corner of his eye. There was no time to shift aim--not with bullets flying like swallows on the way to Capistrano. Malone thought faster than he had ever imagined himself capable of doing, and decided to aim for the driver. Evidently the man in the rear seat of the Buick had had the same inspiration. Malone blasted two more high-velocity lead slugs at the driver of the big Buick, and at the same time the man in the Buick's rear seat fired at Boyd. But Boyd had shifted tactics. He'd hit the brakes. Now he came down hard on the accelerator instead. * * * * * The chorus of shrieks from the Lincoln's back seat increased slightly in volume. Barbara, Malone knew, wasn't badly hurt; she hadn't even stopped for breath since the first shot had been fired. Anybody who could scream like that, he told himself, had to be healthy. As the Lincoln leaped ahead, Malone pulled the trigger of his .44 twice more. The heavy, high-speed chunks of streamlined copper-coated lead leaped from the muzzle of the gun and slammed into the driver of the Buick without wasting any time. The Buick slewed across the highway. The two shots fired by the man in the back seat went past Malone's head with a _whizz_, missing both him and Boyd by a margin too narrow to think about. But those were the last shots. The only difference between the FBI and the Enemy seemed to be determination and practice. The Buick spun into a flat sideskid, swiveled on its wheels and slammed into the ditch at the side of the road, turning over and over, making a horrible noise, as it broke up. Boyd slowed the car again, just as there was a sudden blast of fire. The Buick had burst into flame and was spitting heat and smoke and fire in all directions. Malone sent one more bullet after it in a last flurry of action--saving his last one for possible later emergencies. Boyd jammed on the brakes and the Lincoln came to a screaming halt. In silence he and Malone watched the burning Buick roll over and over into the desert beyond the shoulder. "My God," Boyd said. "My ears!" Malone understood at once. The blast from his own still-smoking .44 had roared past Boyd's head during the gun battle. No wonder the man's ears hurt. It was a wonder he wasn't altogether deaf. But Boyd shook off the pain and brought out his own .44 as he stepped out of the car. Malone followed him, his gun trained. From the rear, Her Majesty said: "It's safe to rise now, isn't it?" "You ought to know," Malone said. "You can tell if they're still alive." There was silence while Queen Elizabeth frowned for a moment in concentration. A look of pain crossed her face, and then, as her expression smoothed again, she said: "The traitors are dead. All except one, and he's--" She paused. "He's dying," she finished. "He can't hurt you." There was no need for further battle. Malone reholstered his .44 and turned to Boyd. "Tom, call the State Police," he said. "Get 'em down here fast." He waited while Boyd climbed back under the wheel and began punching buttons on the dashboard. Then Malone went toward the burning Buick. He tried to drag the men out, but it wasn't any use. The first two, in the front seat, had the kind of holes in them people talked about throwing elephants through. Head and chest had been hit. Malone couldn't get close enough to the fiercely blazing automobile to make even a try for the men in the back seat. * * * * * He was sitting quietly on the edge of the rear seat when the Nevada Highway Patrol cars drove up next to them. Barbara Wilson had stopped screaming, but she was still sobbing on Malone's shoulder. "It's all right," he told her, feeling ineffectual. "I never saw anybody killed before," she said. "It's all right," Malone said. "Nothing's going to hurt you. I'll protect you." He wondered if he meant it, and found, to his surprise, that he did. Barbara Wilson sniffled and looked up at him. "Mr. Malone--" "Ken," he said. "I'm sorry," she said. "Ken--I'm so afraid. I saw the hole in one of the men's heads, when you fired ... it was--" "Don't think about it," Malone said. To him, the job had been an unpleasant occurrence, but a job, that was all. He could see, though, how it might affect people who were new to it. "You're so brave," she said. Malone tightened his arm around the girl's shoulder. "Just depend on me," he said. "You'll be all right if you--" The State Trooper walked up then, and looked at them. "Mr. Malone?" he said. He seemed to be taken slightly aback at the costuming. "That's right," Malone said. He pulled out his ID card and the little golden badge. The State Patrolman looked at them, and looked back at Malone. "What's with the getup?" he said. "FBI," Malone said, hoping his voice carried conviction. "Official business." "In costume?" "Never mind about the details," Malone snapped. "He's an FBI agent, sir," Barbara said. "And what are you?" the Patrolman said. "Lady Jane Grey?" "I'm a nurse," Barbara said. "A psychiatric nurse." "For nuts?" "For disturbed patients." The patrolman thought that over. "You've got the identity cards and stuff," he said at last. "Maybe you've got a reason to dress up. How would I know? I'm only a State Patrolman." "Let's cut the monologue," Malone said savagely, "and get to business." The patrolman stared. Then he said: "All right, sir. Yes, sir. I'm Lieutenant Adams, Mr. Malone. Suppose you tell me what happened?" Carefully and concisely, Malone told him the story of the Buick that had pulled up beside them, and what had happened afterward. Meanwhile, the other cops had been looking over the wreck. When Malone had finished his story, Lieutenant Adams flipped his notebook shut and looked over toward them. "I guess it's O.K., sir," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's justifiable homicide. Self-defense. Any reason why they'd want to kill you?" Malone thought about the Golden Palace. That might be a reason--but it might not. And why burden an innocent State Patrolman with the facts of FBI life? "Official," he said. "Your chief will get the report." The patrolman nodded. "I'll have to take a deposition tomorrow, but--" "I know," Malone said. "Thanks. Can we go on to our hotel now?" "I guess," the patrolman said. "Go ahead. We'll take care of the rest of this. You'll be getting a call later." "Fine," Malone said. "Trace those hoods, and any connections they might have had. Get the information to me as soon as possible." Lieutenant Adams nodded. "You won't have to leave the state, will you?" he asked. "I don't mean that you _can't_, exactly ... hell, you're FBI. But it'd be easier--" "Call Burris in Washington," Malone said. "He can get hold of me--and if the Governor wants to know where we are, or the State's Attorney, put them in touch with Burris, too. O.K.?" "O.K.," Lieutenant Adams said. "Sure." He blinked at Malone. "Listen," he said. "About those costumes--" "We're trying to catch Henry VIII for the murder of Anne Boleyn," Malone said with a polite smile. "O.K.?" "I was only asking," Lieutenant Adams said. "Can't blame a man for asking, now, can you?" Malone climbed into his front seat. "Call me later," he said. The car started. "Back to the hotel, Sir Thomas," Malone said, and the car roared off. VII Yucca Flats, Malone thought, certainly deserved its name. It was about as flat as land could get, and it contained millions upon millions of useless yuccas. Perhaps they were good for something, Malone thought, but they weren't good for _him_. The place might, of course, have been called Cactus Flats, but the cacti were neither as big nor as impressive as the yuccas. [Illustration: "I knight thee Sir Andrew...."] Or was that yucci? Possibly, Malone mused, it was simply yucks. And whatever it was, there were millions of it. Malone felt he couldn't stand the sight of another yucca. He was grateful for only one thing. It wasn't summer. If the Elizabethans had been forced to drive in closed cars through the Nevada desert in the summertime, they might have started a cult of nudity, Malone felt. It was bad enough now, in what was supposed to be winter. The sun was certainly bright enough, for one thing. It glared through the cloudless sky and glanced with blinding force off the road. Sir Thomas Boyd squinted at it through the rather incongruous sunglasses he was wearing, while Malone wondered idly if it was the sunglasses, or the rest of the world, that was an anachronism. But Sir Thomas kept his eyes grimly on the road as he gunned the powerful Lincoln toward the Yucca Flats Labs at eighty miles an hour. Malone twisted himself around and faced the women in the back seat. Past them, through the rear window of the Lincoln, he could see the second car. It followed them gamely, carrying the newest addition to Sir Kenneth Malone's Collection of Bats. "Bats?" Her Majesty said suddenly, but gently. "Shame on you, Sir Kenneth. These are poor, sick people. We must do our best to help them--not to think up silly names for them. For shame!" "I suppose so," Malone said wearily. He sighed and, for the fifth time that day, he asked: "Does Your Majesty have any idea where our spy is now?" "Well, really, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said with the slightest of hesitations, "it isn't easy, you know. Telepathy has certain laws, just like everything else. After all, even a game has laws. Being telepathic did not help me to play poker--I still had to learn the rules. And telepathy has rules, too. A telepath can easily confuse another telepath by using some of those rules." "Oh, fine," Malone said. "Well, have you got into contact with his mind yet?" "Oh, yes," Her Majesty said happily. "And my goodness, he's certainly digging up a lot of information, isn't he?" Malone moaned softly. "But who _is_ he?" he asked after a second. The Queen stared at the roof of the car in what looked like concentration. "He hasn't thought of his name yet," she said. "I mean, at least if he has, he hasn't mentioned it to me. Really, Sir Kenneth, you have no idea how difficult all this is." Malone swallowed with difficulty. "_Where_ is he, then?" he said. "Can you tell me that, at least? His location?" Her Majesty looked positively desolated with sadness. "I can't be sure," she said. "I really can't be exactly sure just where he is. He does keep moving around, I know that. But you have to remember that he doesn't want me to find him. He certainly doesn't want to be found by the FBI ... would you?" "Your Majesty," Malone said, "I _am_ the FBI." "Yes," the Queen said, "but suppose you weren't? He's doing his best to hide himself, even from me. It's sort of a game he's playing." "A game!" Her Majesty looked contrite. "Believe me, Sir Kenneth, the minute I know exactly where he is, I'll tell you. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die--which I can't, of course, being immortal." Nevertheless, she made an X-mark over her left breast. "All right?" "All right," Malone said, out of sheer necessity. "O.K. But don't waste any time telling me. Do it right away. We've _got_ to find that spy and isolate him somehow." "Please don't worry yourself, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Your Queen is doing everything she can." "I know that, Your Majesty," Malone said. "I'm sure of it." Privately, he wondered just how much even she could do. Then he realized--for perhaps the ten-thousandth time--that there was no such thing as wondering privately any more. "That's quite right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said sweetly. "And it's about time you got used to it." "What's going on?" Boyd said. "More reading minds back there?" "That's right, Sir Thomas," the Queen said. "I've about gotten used to it," Boyd said almost cheerfully. "Pretty soon they'll come and take me away, but I don't mind at all." He whipped the car around a bend in the road savagely. "Pretty soon they'll put me with the other sane people and let the bats inherit the world. But I don't mind at all." "Sir Thomas!" Her Majesty said in shocked tones. "Please," Boyd said with a deceptive calmness. "Just Mr. Boyd. Not even Lieutenant Boyd, or Sergeant Boyd. Just Mr. Boyd. Or, if you prefer, Tom." "Sir Thomas," Her Majesty said, "I really can't understand this sudden--" "Then don't understand it," Boyd said. "All I know is everybody's nuts, and I'm sick and tired of it." A pall of silence fell over the company. "Look, Tom," Malone began at last. "Don't you try smoothing me down," Boyd snapped. Malone's eyebrows rose. "O.K.," he said. "I won't smooth you down. I'll just tell you to shut up, to keep driving--and to show some respect to Her Majesty." "I--" Boyd stopped. There was a second of silence. "_That's_ better," Her Majesty said with satisfaction. Lady Barbara stretched in the back seat, next to Her Majesty. "This is certainly a long drive," she said. "Have we got much farther to go?" "Not too far," Malone said. "We ought to be there soon." "I ... I'm sorry for the way I acted," Barbara said. "What do you mean, the way you acted?" "Crying like that," Barbara said with some hesitation. "Making an--absolute idiot of myself. When that other car--tried to get us." "Don't worry about it," Malone said. "It was nothing." "I just--made trouble for you," Barbara said. Her Majesty touched the girl on the shoulder. "He's not thinking about the trouble you cause him," she said quietly. "Of course I'm not," Malone told her. "But I--" "My dear girl," Her Majesty said, "I believe that Sir Kenneth is, at least partly, in love with you." Malone blinked. It was perfectly true--even if he hadn't quite known it himself until now. Telepaths, he was discovering, were occasionally handy things to have around. "In ... love--" Barbara said. "And you, my dear--" Her Majesty began. "Please, Your Majesty," Lady Barbara said. "No more. Not just now." The Queen smiled, almost to herself. "Certainly, dear," she said. * * * * * The car sped on. In the distance, Malone could see the blot on the desert that indicated the broad expanse of Yucca Flats Labs. Just the fact that it could be seen, he knew, didn't mean an awful lot. Malone had been able to see it for the past fifteen minutes, and it didn't look as if they'd gained an inch on it. Desert distances are deceptive. At long last, however, the main gate of the laboratories hove into view. Boyd made a left turn off the highway and drove a full seven miles along the restricted road, right up to the big gate that marked the entrance of the laboratories themselves. Once again, they were faced with the army of suspicious guards and security officers. This time, suspicion was somewhat heightened by the dress of the visitors. Malone had to explain about six times that the costumes were part of an FBI arrangement, that he had not stolen his identity cards, that Boyd's cards were Boyd's, too, and in general that the four of them were not insane, not spies, and not jokesters out for a lark in the sunshine. Malone had expected all of that. He went through the rigmarole wearily but without any sense of surprise. The one thing he hadn't been expecting was the man who was waiting for him on the other side of the gate. When he'd finished identifying everybody for the fifth or sixth time, he began to climb back into the car. A familiar voice stopped him cold. "Just a minute, Malone," Andrew J. Burris said. He erupted from the guardhouse like an avenging angel, followed closely by a thin man, about five feet ten inches in height, with brush-cut brown hair, round horn-rimmed spectacles, large hands and a small Sir Francis Drake beard. Malone looked at the two figures blankly. "Something wrong, chief?" he said. Burris came toward the car. The thin gentleman followed him, walking with an odd bouncing step that must have been acquired, Malone thought, over years of treading on rubber eggs. "I don't know," Burris said when he'd reached the door. "When I was in Washington, I seemed to know--but when I get out here in this desert, everything just goes haywire." He rubbed at his forehead. Then he looked into the car. "Hello, Boyd," he said pleasantly. "Hello, chief," Boyd said. Burris blinked. "Boyd, you look like Henry VIII," he said with only the faintest trace of surprise. "Doesn't he, though?" Her Majesty said from the rear seat. "I've noticed that resemblance myself." Burris gave her a tiny smile. "Oh," he said. "Hello, Your Majesty. I'm--" "Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI," the Queen finished for him. "Yes, I know. It's very nice to meet you at last. I've seen you on television, and over the video phone. You photograph badly, you know." "I do?" Burris said pleasantly. It was obvious that he was keeping himself under very tight control. Malone felt remotely sorry for the man--but only remotely. Burris might as well know, he thought, what they had all been going through the past several days. Her Majesty was saying something about the honorable estate of knighthood, and the Queen's List. Malone began paying attention when she came to: "... And I hereby dub thee--" She stopped suddenly, turned and said: "Sir Kenneth, give me your weapon." Malone hesitated for a long, long second. But Burris' eye was on him, and he could interpret the look without much trouble. There was only one thing for him to do. He pulled out his .44, ejected the remaining cartridge in his palm--and reminded himself to reload the gun as soon as he got it back--and handed the weapon to the Queen, butt foremost. She took the butt of the revolver in her right hand, leaned out the window of the car, and said in a fine, distinct voice: "Kneel, Andrew." Malone watched with wide, astonished eyes as Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI, went to one knee in a low and solemn genuflection. Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded her satisfaction. She tapped Burris gently on each shoulder with the muzzle of the gun. "I knight thee Sir Andrew," she said. She cleared her throat. "My, this desert air is dry--Rise, Sir Andrew, and know that you are henceforth Knight Commander of the Queen's Own FBI." "Thank you, Your Majesty," Burris said humbly. He rose to his feet silently. The Queen withdrew into the car again and handed the gun back to Malone. He thumbed cartridges into the chambers of the cylinder and listened dumbly. "Your Majesty," Burris said, "this is Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle. Dr. Gamble, this is Her Majesty the Queen; Lady Barbara Wilson, her ... uh ... her lady in waiting; Sir Kenneth Malone; and King ... I mean Sir Thomas Boyd." He gave the four a single bright impartial smile. Then he tore his eyes away from the others, and bent his gaze on Sir Kenneth Malone. "Come over here a minute, Malone," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I want to talk to you." * * * * * Malone climbed out of the car and went around to meet Burris. He felt just a little worried as he followed the Director away from the car. True, he had sent Burris a long telegram the night before, in code. But he hadn't expected the man to show up at Yucca Flats. There didn't seem to be any reason for it. And when there isn't any reason, Malone told himself sagely, it's a bad one. "What's the trouble, chief?" he asked. Burris sighed. "None so far," he said quietly. "I got a report from the Nevada State Patrol, and ran it through R&I. They identified the men you killed, all right--but it didn't do us any good. They're hired hoods." "Who hired them?" Malone said. Burris shrugged. "Somebody with money," he said. "Hell, men like that would kill their own grandmothers if the price were right--you know that. We can't trace them back any farther." Malone nodded. That was, he had to admit, bad news. But then, when had he last had any good news? "We're nowhere near our telepathic spy," Burris said. "We haven't come any closer than we were when we started. Have you got anything? Anything at all, no matter how small?" "Not that I know of, sir," Malone said. "What about the little old lady ... what's her name? Thompson. Anything from her?" Malone hesitated. "She has a close fix on the spy, sir," he said slowly, "but she doesn't seem able to identify him right away." "What else does she want?" Burris said. "We've made her Queen and given her a full retinue in costume; we've let her play roulette and poker with Government money. Does she want to hold a mass execution? If she does, I can supply some congressmen, Malone. I'm sure it could be arranged." He looked at the agent narrowly. "I might even be able to supply an FBI man or two," he added. Malone swallowed hard. "I'm trying the best I can, sir," he said. "What about the others?" Burris looked even unhappier than usual. "Come along," he said. "I'll show you." When they got back to the car, Dr. Gamble was talking spiritedly with Her Majesty about Roger Bacon. "Before my time, of course," the Queen was saying, "but I'm sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dear old Marlowe wrote his 'Faust,' he and I had several long discussions about such matters. Alchemy--" Burris interrupted with: "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but we must get on. Perhaps you'll be able to continue your ... ah ... audience later." He turned to Boyd. "Sir Thomas," he said with an effort, "drive directly to the Westinghouse buildings. Over that way." He pointed. "Dr. Gamble will ride with you, and the rest of us will follow in the second car. Let's move." He stepped back as the project head got into the car, and watched it roar off. Then he and Malone went to the second car, another FBI Lincoln. Two agents were sitting in the back seat, with a still figure between them. With a shock, Malone recognized William Logan and the agents he'd detailed to watch the telepath. Logan's face did not seem to have changed expression since Malone had seen it last, and he wondered wildly if perhaps it had to be dusted once a week. He got in behind the wheel and Burris slid in next to him. "Westinghouse." Burris said. "And let's get there in a hurry." "Right," Malone said, and started the car. "We just haven't had a single lead," Burris said. "I was hoping you'd come up with something. Your telegram detailed the fight, of course, and the rest of what's been happening--but I hoped there'd be something more." "There isn't," Malone was forced to admit. "All we can do is try to persuade Her Majesty to tell us--" "Oh, I know it isn't easy," Burris said. "But it seems to me--" By the time they'd arrived at the administrative offices of Westinghouse's psionics research area, Malone found himself wishing that something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning might strike, or an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly, profoundly tired of the entire affair. VIII Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The six psychopaths--including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I--had been housed in a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with four highly nervous and even more highly trained and investigated psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Washington. The Convention of Nuts, as Malone called it privately, was in full swing. And it was every bit as strange as he'd thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, five of the six--Her Majesty being the only exception--were completely out of contact with the world. The psychiatrists referred to them in worried tones as "unavailable for therapy," and spent most of their time brooding over possible ways of bringing them back into the real world for a while. Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. The weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert Cassiday were simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each was frightening and remote; all together, they wove a picture of insanity that chilled him more than he wanted to admit. When the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn't even bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly, and simply avoided their sessions. Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable. According to the psych boys, she had been--as both Malone and Her Majesty had theorized--heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a talent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of other minds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of identity which seemed to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a single, over-ruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of her throne. "It's a beautiful rationalization," one of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly consistent. She's just traded identities--and everything else she does--_everything_ else--stems logically out of her delusional premise. Beautiful." She might have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way from stupid. The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were no nearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before. With five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixth Queen Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, the girl from Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she had apparently regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called a "non-identity childhood syndrome." Malone didn't know what it meant, but it sounded terrible.) Malone could see why progress was their most difficult commodity. Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by the hour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it. Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary office within the Westinghouse area. The director had left his assistant in charge in Washington. Nothing, he said over and over again, was as important as the spy in Project Isle. Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he was still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion. * * * * * But, on the fourth day: "What do we do now?" Burris asked. "Shoot ourselves," Boyd said promptly. "Now, look here--" Malone began, but he was overruled. "Boyd," Burris said levelly, "if I hear any more of that sort of pessimism, you're going to be an exception to the beard rule. One more crack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor." Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all. "Wait a minute," Malone said. "Aren't there any _sane_ telepaths in the world?" "We can't find any," Burris said. "We--" There was a knock at the office door. "Who's there?" Burris called. "Dr. Gamble," said the man's surprisingly baritone voice. Burris called: "Come in, doctor," and the door opened. Dr. Gamble's lean face looked almost haggard. "Mr. Burris," he said, extending his arms a trifle, "can't anything be done?" Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if it would be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind his back. Apparently it wouldn't be. "We feel that we are approaching a critical stage in Project Isle," the scientist said, enclosing one fist within the other hand. "If anything more gets out to the Soviets, we might as well publish our findings"--a wide, outflung gesture of both arms--"in the newspapers." Burris stepped back. "We're doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble," he said. All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidence was nearly successful. "After all," he went on, "we know a great deal more than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has assured us that the spy is right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We've bottled everything up in this compound, and I'm confident that no information is at present getting through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson agrees with me." "Miss Thompson?" Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin. "The Queen," Burris said. Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. "Ah," he said. "Of course." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "But we can't keep everybody who's here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we'll have to let them"--his left hand described the gesture of a man tossing away a wad of paper--"go." His hands fell to his sides. "We're lost, unless we can find that spy." "We'll find him," Burris said with a show of great confidence. "But--" "Give her time," Burris said. "Give her time. Remember her mental condition." Boyd looked up. "Rome," he said in an absent fashion, "wasn't built in a daze." Burris glared at him, but said nothing. Malone filled the conversational hole with what he thought would be nice, and hopeful, and untrue. "We know he's someone on the reservation, so we'll catch him eventually," he said. "And as long as his information isn't getting into Soviet hands, we're safe." He glanced at his wrist watch. Dr. Gamble said: "But--" "My, my," Malone said. "Almost lunchtime. I have to go over and have lunch with Her Majesty. Maybe she's dug up something more." "I hope so," Dr. Gamble said, apparently successfully deflected. "I do hope so." [Illustration: "One more crack out of you...."] "Well," Malone said, "pardon me." He shucked off his coat and trousers. Then he proceeded to put on the doublet and hose that hung in the little office closet. He shrugged into the fur-trimmed, slash-sleeved coat, adjusted the plumed hat to his satisfaction with great care, and gave Burris and the others a small bow. "I go to an audience with Her Majesty, gentlemen," he said in a grave, well-modulated voice. "I shall return anon." He went out the door and closed it carefully behind him. When he had gone a few steps he allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh. * * * * * Then he went outside and across the dusty street to the barracks where Her Majesty and the other telepaths were housed. No one paid any attention to him, and he rather missed the stares he'd become used to drawing. But by now, everyone was used to seeing Elizabethan clothing. Her Majesty had arrived at a new plateau. She would now allow no one to have audience with her unless he was properly dressed. Even the psychiatrists--whom she had, with a careful sense of meiosis, appointed Physicians to the Royal House--had to wear the stuff. Malone went over the whole case in his mind--for about the thousandth time, he told himself bitterly. Who could the telepathic spy be? It was like looking for a needle in a rolling stone, he thought. Or something. He did remember clearly that a stitch in time saved nine, but he didn't know nine what, and suspected it had nothing to do with his present problem. How about Dr. Harry Gamble, Malone thought. It seemed a little unlikely that the head of Project Isle would be spying on his own men--particularly since he already had all the information. But, on the other hand, he was just as probable a spy as anybody else. Malone moved onward. Dr. Thomas O'Connor, the Westinghouse psionics man, was the next nominee. Before Malone had actually found Her Majesty, he had had a suspicion that O'Connor had cooked the whole thing up to throw the FBI off the trail and confuse everybody, and that he'd intended merely to have the FBI chase ghosts while the real spy did his work undetected. But what if O'Connor were the spy himself--a telepath? What if he were so confident of his ability to throw the Queen off the track that he had allowed the FBI to find all the other telepaths? There was another argument for that: he'd had to report the findings of his machine no matter what it cost him; there were too many other men on his staff who knew about it. O'Connor was a perfectly plausible spy, too. But he didn't seem very likely. The head of a Government project is likely to be a much-investigated man. Could any tie-up with Russia--even a psionic one--stand against that kind of investigation? Malone doubted it. Malone thought of the psychiatrists. There wasn't any evidence, that was the trouble. There wasn't any evidence either way. Then he wondered if Boyd had been thinking of him, Malone, as the possible spy. Certainly it worked in reverse. Boyd-- No. That was silly. Malone told himself that he might as well consider Andrew J. Burris. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridic-- Well, Queen Elizabeth had seemed pretty certain when she'd pointed him out in Dr. Dowson's office. And even though she'd changed her mind, how much faith could be placed in Her Majesty? After all, if she'd made a mistake about Burris, she could just as easily have made a mistake about the spy's being at Yucca Flats. In that case, Malone thought sadly, they were right back where they'd started from. Behind their own goal line. One way or another, though, Her Majesty had made a mistake. She'd pointed Burris out as the spy, and then she'd said she'd been wrong. Either Burris was a spy or he wasn't. You couldn't have it both ways. Why couldn't you? Malone thought suddenly. And then something Burris himself had said came back to him, something that-- _I'll be damned_, he thought. He came to a dead stop in the middle of the street. In one sudden flash of insight, all the pieces of the case he'd been looking at for so long fell together and formed one consistent picture. The pattern was complete. Malone blinked. In that second, he knew exactly who the spy was. A jeep honked raucously and swerved around him. The driver leaned out to curse and remained to stare. Malone was already halfway back to the offices. On the way, he stopped in at another small office, this one inhabited by the two FBI men from Las Vegas. He gave a series of quick orders, and got the satisfaction, as he left, of seeing one of the FBI men grabbing for a phone in a hurry. It was good to be _doing_ things again, important things. Burris, Boyd and Dr. Gamble were still talking as Malone entered. "That," Burris said, "was one hell of a quick lunch. What's Her Majesty doing now--running a diner?" Malone ignored the bait. "Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "Her Majesty has asked that all of us attend her in audience. She has information of the utmost gravity to impart, and wishes an audience at once." Burris looked startled. "Has she--" he began, and stopped, leaving his mouth open and the rest of the sentence unfinished. Malone nodded gravely. "I believe, gentlemen," he said, "that Her Majesty is about to reveal the identity of the spy who has been battening on Project Isle." The silence didn't last three seconds. "Let's go," Burris snapped. He and the others headed for the door. "Gentlemen!" Malone sounded properly shocked and offended. "Your dress!" "Oh, _no_," Boyd said. "Not now." Burris simply said: "You're quite right. Get dressed, Boyd ... I mean, of course, Sir Thomas." While Burris, Boyd and Dr. Gamble were dressing, Malone put in a call to Dr. O'Connor and told him to be at Her Majesty's court in ten minutes--and in full panoply. O'Connor, not unnaturally, balked a little at first. But Malone talked fast and sounded as urgent as he felt. At last he got the psionicist's agreement. Then he put in a second call to the psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths and told them the same thing. More used to the strange demands of neurotic and psychotic patients, they were readier to comply. Everyone, Malone realized with satisfaction, was assembled. Even Burris and the others were ready to go. Beaming, he led them out. * * * * * Ten minutes later, there were nine men in Elizabethan costume standing outside the room which had been designated as the Queen's Court. Dr. Gamble's costume did not quite fit him; his sleeve ruffs were halfway up to his elbows and his doublet had an unfortunate tendency to creep. The St. Elizabeths men, all four of them, looked just a little like moth-eaten versions of old silent pictures. Malone looked them over with a somewhat sardonic eye. Not only did he have the answer to the whole problem that had been plaguing them, but _his_ costume was a stunning, perfect fit. "Now, I want you men to let me handle this," Malone said. "I know just what I want to say, and I think I can get the information without too much trouble." One of the psychiatrists spoke up. "I trust you won't disturb the patient, Mr. Malone," he said. "Sir Kenneth," Malone snapped. The psychiatrist looked both abashed and worried. "I'm sorry," he said doubtfully. Malone nodded. "That's all right," he said. "I'll try not to disturb Her Majesty unduly." The psychiatrists conferred. When they came out of the huddle one of them--Malone was never able to tell them apart--said: "Very well, we'll let you handle it. But we will be forced to interfere if we feel you're ... ah ... going too far." Malone said: "That's fair enough, gentlemen. Let's go." He opened the door. It was a magnificent room. The whole place had been done over in plastic and synthetic fibers to look like something out of the Sixteenth Century. It was as garish, and as perfect, as a Hollywood movie set--which wasn't surprising, since two stage designers had been hired away from color-TV spectaculars to set it up. At the far end of the room, past the rich hangings and the flaming chandeliers, was a great throne, and on it Her Majesty was seated. Lady Barbara reclined on the steps at her feet. Malone saw the expression on Her Majesty's face. He wanted to talk to Barbara--but there wasn't time. Later, there might be. Now, he collected his mind and drove one thought at the Queen, one single powerful thought: _Read me! You know by this time that I have the truth--but read deeper!_ The expression on her face changed suddenly. She was smiling a sad, gentle little smile. Lady Barbara, who had looked up at the approach of Sir Kenneth and his entourage, relaxed again, but her eyes remained on Malone. "You may approach, my lords," said the Queen. Sir Kenneth led the procession, with Sir Thomas and Sir Andrew close behind him. O'Connor and Gamble came next, and bringing up the rear were the four psychiatrists. They strode slowly along the red carpet that stretched from the door to the foot of the throne. They came to a halt a few feet from the steps leading up to the throne, and bowed in unison. "You may explain, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Your Majesty understands the conditions?" Malone asked. "Perfectly," said the Queen. "Proceed." Now the expression on Barbara's face changed, to wonder and a kind of fright. Malone didn't look at her. Instead, he turned to Dr. O'Connor. "Dr. O'Connor, what are your plans for the telepaths who have been brought here?" He shot the question out quickly, and O'Connor was caught off-balance. "Well ... ah ... we would like their co-operation in further research which we ... ah ... plan to do into the actual mechanisms of telepathy. Provided, of course"--he coughed gently--"provided that they become ... ah ... accessible. Miss ... I mean, of course, Her Majesty has ... already been a great deal of help." He gave Malone an odd look. It seemed to say: _what's coming next?_ Malone simply gave him a nod, and a "Thank you, doctor," and turned to Burris. He could feel Barbara's eyes on him, but he went on with his prepared questions. "Chief," he said, "what about you? After we nail our spy, what happens ... to Her Majesty, I mean? You don't intend to stop giving her the homage due her, do you?" Burris stared, openmouthed. After a second he managed to say: "Why, no, of course not, Sir Kenneth. That is"--and he glanced over at the psychiatrists--"if the doctors think--" There was another hurried consultation. The four psychiatrists came out of it with a somewhat shaky statement to the effect that treatments which had been proven to have some therapeutic value ought not to be discontinued, although of course there was always the chance that-- "Thank you, gentlemen," Malone said smoothly. He could see that they were nervous, and no wonder; he could imagine how difficult it was for a psychiatrist to talk about a patient in her presence. But they'd already realized that it didn't make any difference; their thoughts were an open book, anyway. Lady Barbara said: "Sir ... I mean Ken ... are you going to--" "What's this all about?" Burris snapped. "Just a minute, Sir Andrew," Malone said. "I'd like to ask one of the doctors here--or all of them, for that matter--one more question." He whirled and faced them. "I'm assuming that not one of these persons is legally responsible for his or her actions. Is that correct?" Another hurried huddle. The psych boys were beginning to remind Malone of a semi-pro football team in rather unusual uniforms. Finally one of them said: "You are correct. According to the latest statutes, all of these persons are legally insane--including Her Majesty." He paused and gulped. "I except the FBI, of course--and ourselves." Another pause. "And Dr. O'Connor and Dr. Gamble." "And," said Lady Barbara, "me." She smiled sweetly at them all. "Ah," the psychiatrist said. "Certainly. Of course." He retired into his group with some confusion. Malone was looking straight at the throne. Her Majesty's countenance was serene and unruffled. Barbara said suddenly: "You don't mean ... but she--" and closed her mouth. Malone shot her one quick look, and then turned to the Queen. "Well, Your Majesty?" he said. "You have seen the thoughts of every man here. How do they appear to you?" Her voice contained both tension and relief. "They are all good men, basically--and kind men," she said. "And they believe us. That's the important thing, you know. Their belief in us-- Just as you did that first day we met. We've needed belief for so long ... for so long--" Her voice trailed off; it seemed to become lost in a constellation of thoughts. Barbara had turned to look up at Her Majesty. Malone took a step forward, but Burris interrupted him. "How about the spy?" he said. Then his eyes widened. Boyd, standing next to him, leaned suddenly forward. "That's why you mentioned all that about legal immunity because of insanity," he whispered. "Because--" "No," Barbara said. "No. She couldn't ... she's not--" They were all looking at Her Majesty, now. She returned them stare for stare, her back stiff and straight and her white hair enhaloed in the room's light. "Sir Kenneth," she said--and her voice was only the least bit unsteady--"they all think _I'm_ the spy." Barbara stood up. "Listen," she said. "I didn't like Her Majesty at first ... well, she was a patient, and that was all, and when she started putting on airs ... but since I've gotten to know her I do like her. I like her because she's good and kind herself, and because ... because she wouldn't be a spy. She couldn't be. No matter what any of you think ... even you ... Sir Kenneth!" There was a second of silence. "Of course she's not," Malone said quietly. "She's no spy." "Would I spy on my own subjects?" she said. "Use your reason!" "You mean...." Burris began, and Boyd finished for him: "... She isn't?" "No," Malone snapped. "She isn't. Remember, you said it would take a telepath to catch a telepath?" "Well--" Burris began. "Well, Her Majesty remembered it," Malone said. "And acted on it." Barbara remained standing. She went to the Queen and put an arm around the little old lady's shoulder. Her Majesty did not object. "I knew," she said. "You couldn't have been a spy." "Listen, dear," the Queen said. "Your Kenneth has seen the truth of the matter. Listen to him." "Her Majesty not only caught the spy," Malone said, "but she turned the spy right over to us." He turned at once and went back down the long red carpet to the door. _I really ought to get a sword_, he thought, and didn't see Her Majesty smile. He opened the door with a great flourish and said quietly: "Bring him in, boys." * * * * * The FBI men from Las Vegas marched in. Between them was their prisoner, a boy with a vacuous face, clad in a strait jacket that seemed to make no difference at all to him. His mind was--somewhere else. But his body was trapped between the FBI agents: the body of William Logan. "Impossible," one of the psychiatrists said. Malone spun on his heel and led the way back to the throne. Logan and his guards followed closely. "Your Majesty," Malone said, "may I present the prisoner?" "Perfectly correct, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "Poor Willie is your spy. You won't be too hard on him, will you?" "I don't think so. Your Majesty," Malone said. "After all--" "Now wait a minute," Burris exploded. "How did _you_ know any of this?" Malone bowed to Her Majesty, and winked at Barbara. He turned to Burris. "Well," he said, "I had one piece of information none of the rest of you had. When we were in the Desert Edge Sanitarium, Dr. Dowson called you on the phone. Remember?" "Sure I remember," Burris said. "So?" "Well," Malone said, "Her Majesty said she knew just where the spy was. I asked her where--" "Why didn't you tell me?" Burris screamed. "You knew all this time and you didn't tell me?" "Hold on," Malone said. "I asked her where--and she said: 'He's right there.' And she was pointing right at your image on the screen." Burris opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed it and tried again. At last he managed one word. "Me?" he said. "You," Malone said. "But that's what I realized later. She wasn't pointing at you. She was pointing at Logan, who was in the next room." Barbara whispered: "Is that right, Your Majesty?" "Certainly, dear," the Queen said calmly. "Would I lie to Sir Kenneth?" Malone was still talking. "The thing that set me off this noon was something you said, Sir Andrew," he went on. "You said there weren't any sane telepaths--remember?" Burris, incapable of speech, merely nodded. "But according to Her Majesty," Malone said, "we had every telepath in the United States right here. She told me that--and I didn't even see it!" "Don't blame yourself, Sir Kenneth," the Queen put in. "I did do my best to mislead you, you know." "You sure did!" Malone said. "And later on, when we were driving here, you said the spy was 'moving around.' That's right; he was in the car behind us, going eighty miles an hour." Barbara stared. Malone got a lot of satisfaction out of that stare. But there was still more ground to cover. "Then," he said, "you told us he was here at Yucca Flats--after we brought him here! It had to be one of the other six telepaths." The psychiatrist who'd muttered: "Impossible," was still muttering it. Malone ignored him. "And when I remembered her pointing at you," Malone told Burris, "and remembered that she'd only said: 'He's right there,' I knew it had to be Logan. You weren't there. You were only an image on a TV screen. Logan was there--in the room behind the phone." Burris had found his tongue. "All right," he said. "O.K. But what's all this about misleading us--and why didn't she tell us right away, anyhow?" Malone turned to Her Majesty on the throne. "I think that the Queen had better explain that--if she will." * * * * * Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded very slowly. "I ... I only wanted you to respect me," she said. "To treat me properly." Her voice sounded uneven, and her eyes were glistening with unspilled tears. Lady Barbara tightened her arm about the Queen's shoulders once more. "It's all right," she said. "We do--respect you." The Queen smiled up at her. Malone waited. After a second Her Majesty continued. "I was afraid that as soon as you found poor Willie you'd send me back to the hospital," she said. "And Willie couldn't tell the Russian agents any more once he'd been taken away. So I thought I'd just ... just let things stay the way they were as long as I could. That's ... that's all." Malone nodded. After a second he said: "You see that we couldn't possibly send you back now, don't you?" "I--" "You know all the State Secrets, Your Majesty," Malone said. "We would rather that Dr. Harman in San Francisco didn't try to talk you out of them. Or anyone else." The Queen smiled tremulously. "I know too much, do I?" she said. Then her grin faded. "Poor Dr. Harman," she said. "Poor Dr. Harman?" "You'll hear about him in a day or so," she said. "I ... peeked inside his mind. He's very ill." "Ill?" Lady Barbara asked. "Oh, yes," the Queen said. The trace of a smile appeared on her face. "He thinks that all the patients in the hospital can see inside his mind." "Oh, my," Lady Barbara said--and began to laugh. It was the nicest sound Malone had ever heard. "Forget Harman," Burris snapped. "What about this spy ring? How was Logan getting his information out?" "I've already taken care of that," Malone said. "I had Desert Edge Sanitarium surrounded as soon as I knew what the score was." He looked at one of the agents holding Logan. "They ought to be in the Las Vegas jail within half an hour," the agent said in confirmation. "Dr. Dowson was in on it, wasn't he, Your Majesty?" Malone said. "Certainly," the Queen said. Her eyes were suddenly very cold. "I hope he tries to escape. I hope he tries it." Malone knew just how she felt. One of the psychiatrists spoke up suddenly. "I don't understand it," he said. "Logan is completely catatonic. Even if he could read minds, how could he tell Dowson what he'd read? It doesn't make sense." "In the first place," the Queen said patiently, "Willie isn't catatonic. He's just _busy_, that's all. He's only a boy, and ... well, he doesn't much like being who he is. So he visits other people's minds, and that way he becomes _them_ for a while. You see?" "Vaguely," Malone said. "But how did Dowson get his information? I had everything worked out but that." "I know you did," the Queen said, "and I'm proud of you. I intend to award you with the Order of the Bath for this day's work." Unaccountably, Malone's chest swelled with pride. "As for Dr. Dowson," the Queen said, "that traitor ... _hurt_ Willie. If he's hurt enough, he'll come back." Her eyes weren't hard any more. "He didn't want to be a spy, really," she said, "but he's just a boy, and it must have sounded rather exciting. He knew that if he told Dowson everything he'd found out, they'd let him go--go away again." There was a long silence. "Well," Malone said, "that about wraps it up. Any questions?" He looked around at the men, but before any of them could speak up Her Majesty rose. "I'm sure there are questions," she said, "but I'm really very tired. My lords, you are excused." She extended a hand. "Come, Lady Barbara," she said. "I think I really may need that nap, now." * * * * * Malone put the cuff links in his shirt with great care. They were great stones, and Malone thought that they gave his costume that necessary Elizabethan flair. Not that he was wearing the costume of the Queen's Court now. Instead, he was dressed in a tailor-proud suit of dark blue, a white-on-white shirt and no tie. He selected one of a gorgeous peacock pattern from his closet rack. Boyd yawned at him from the bed in the room they were sharing. "Stepping out?" he said. "I am," Malone said with restraint. He whipped the tie round his neck and drew it under the collar. "Anybody I know?" "I am meeting Lady Barbara, if you wish to know," Malone said. "Come down," Boyd said. "Relax. Anyhow, I've got a question for you. There was one little thing Her Everlovin' Majesty didn't explain." "Yes?" said Malone. "Well, about those hoods who tried to gun us down," Boyd said. "Who hired 'em? And why?" "Dowson," Malone said. "He wanted to kill us off, and then kidnap Logan from the hotel room. But we foiled his plan--by killing his hoods. By the time he could work up something else, we were on our way to Yucca Flats." "Great," Boyd said. "And how did you find out this startling piece of information? There haven't been any reports in from Las Vegas, have there?" "No," Malone said. "O.K.," Boyd said. "I give up, Mastermind." Malone wished Boyd would stop using that nickname. The fact was--as he, and apparently nobody else, was willing to recognize--that he wasn't anything like a really terrific FBI agent. Even Barbara thought he was something special. He wasn't, he knew. He was just lucky. "Her Majesty informed me," Malone said. "Her--" Boyd stood with his mouth dropped open, like a fish waiting for some bait. "You mean she knew?" "Well," Malone said, "she did know the guys in the Buick weren't the best in the business--and she knew all about the specially-built FBI Lincoln. She got that from our minds." He knotted his tie with an air of great aplomb, and went, slowly to the door. "And she knew we were a good team. She got that from our minds, too." "But," Boyd said. After a second he said: "But," again, and followed it with: "Why didn't she tell us?" Malone opened the door. "Her Majesty wished to see the Queen's Own FBI in action," said Sir Kenneth Malone. THE END 
26761	----	CEREBRUM By ALBERT TEICHNER _For thousands of years the big brain served as a master switchboard for the thoughts and emotions of humanity. Now the central mind was showing signs of decay ... and men went mad._ Illustrated by BIRMINGHAM [Illustration] The trouble began in a seemingly trivial way. Connor had wanted to speak to Rhoda, his wife, wished himself onto a trunk line and then waited. "Dallas Shipping here, Mars and points Jupiterward, at your service," said a business-is-business, unwifely voice in his mind. "I was not calling you," he thought back into the line, now also getting a picture, first flat, then properly 3-D and in color. It was a paraNormally luxurious commercial office. "I am the receptionist at Dallas Shipping," the woman thought back firmly. "You rang and I answered." "I'm sure I rang right," Connor insisted. "And I'm sure I know my job," Dallas Shipping answered. "I have received as many as five hundred thought messages a day, some of them highly detailed and technical and--" "Forget it," snapped Connor. "Let's say I focussed wrong." He pulled back and twenty seconds later finally had Rhoda on the line. "Queerest thing happened," he projected. "I just got a wrong party." "Nothing queer about it," his wife smiled, springing to warm life on his inner eye. "You just weren't concentrating, Connor." "Don't you hand me that too," he grumbled. "I _know_ I thought on the right line into Central. Haven't I been using the System for sixty years?" "Exactly--all habit and no attention." How smugly soothing she was some days! "I think the trouble's in Central itself. The Switcher isn't receiving me clearly." "Lately I've had some peculiar miscalls myself," Rhoda said nervously. "But you _can't_ blame Central Switching!" "Oh, I didn't mean that!" By now he was equally nervous and only too happy to end the conversation. Ordinarily communications were not monitored but if this one had been there could certainly be a slander complaint. * * * On his way home in the monorail Connor tried to reach his office and had the frightening experience of having his telepathic call refused by Central. Then he refused in turn to accept a call being projected at him, but when an Urgent classification was added he had to take it. "For your unfounded slander of Central Switching's functioning," announced the mechanically-synthesized voice, "you are hereby Suspended indefinitely from the telepathic net. From this point on all paraNormal privileges are withdrawn and you will be able to communicate with your fellows only in person or by written message." Stunned, Connor looked about at his fellow passengers. Most of them had their eyes closed and their faces showed the mild little smile which was the outer hallmark of a mind at rest, tuned in to a music channel or some other of the hundreds of entertainment lines available from Central. How much he had taken that for granted just a few minutes ago! Three men, more shabbily dressed, were unsmilingly reading books. They were fellow pariahs, Suspended for one reason or another from paraNormal privileges. Only the dullest, lowest-paying jobs were available to them while anyone inside the System could have Central read any book and transmit the information directly into his cortex. The shabbiest one of all looked up and his sympathetic glance showed that he had instantly grasped Connor's changed situation. Connor looked hastily away; he didn't want any sympathy from that kind of 'human' being! Then he shuddered. Wasn't he, himself, now that kind in every way except his ability to admit it? When he stepped onto the lushly hydroponic platform at the suburban stop the paraNormals, ordinarily friendly, showed that they, too, already realized what had happened. Each pair of suddenly icy eyes went past him as if he were not there at all. He walked up the turf-covered lane toward his house, feeling hopelessly defeated. How would he manage to maintain a home here in the middle of green and luxuriant beauty? More people than ever were now outside the System for one reason or another and most of these unfortunates were crowded in metropolitan centers which were slumhells to anyone who had known something better. How could he have been so thoughtless because of a little lapse in Central's mechanism? Now that it was denied him, probably forever, he saw more clearly the essential perfection of the system that had brought order into the chaos following the discovery of universal paraNormal capacities. At first there had been endless interference between minds trying to reach each other while fighting off unwanted calls. Men had even suggested this blessing turned curse be annulled. The Central Synaptic Computation Receptor and Transmitter System had ended all such negative thinking. For the past century and a half it had neatly routed telepathic transmissions with an efficiency that made ancient telephone exchanges look like Stone Age toys. A mind could instantly exchange information with any other Subscribing mind and still shut itself off through the Central machine if and when it needed privacy. Except, he shuddered once more, if Central put that Urgent rating on a call. Now only Rhoda could get a job to keep them from the inner slumlands. He turned into his garden and watched Max, the robot, spading in the petunia bed. The chrysanthemums really needed more attention and he was going to think the order to Max when he realized with a new shock that all orders would have to be oral now. He gave up the idea of saying anything and stomped gloomily into the house. * * * As he hung his jacket in the hall closet he heard Rhoda coming downstairs. "Queer thing happened today," he said with forced cheerfulness, "but we'll manage." He stopped as Rhoda appeared. Her eyes were red and puffed. "I tried to reach you," she sobbed. "Oh, you already know. Well, we can manage, you know, honey. You can work two days a week and--" "You don't understand," she screamed at him. "_I'm_ Suspended too! I tried to tell it I hadn't done anything but it said I was guilty by being associated with you." Stunned, he fell back into a chair. "Not you, too, darling!" He had been getting used to the idea of his own reduced status but this was too brutal. "Tell Central you'll leave me and the guilt will be gone." "You fool, I did say that and my defense was refused!" Tears welled in his eyes. Was there no bottom to this horror? "You yourself suggested that?" "Why shouldn't I?" she cried. "It wasn't my fault at all." He sat there and tried not to listen as waves of hate rolled over him. Then the front bell rang and Rhoda answered it. "I haven't been able to reach you," someone was saying through the door. It was Sheila Williams who lived just down the lane. "Lately lines seem to get tied up more and more. It's about tonight's game." Just then Rhoda opened the door and Sheila came to an abrupt halt as she saw her old friend's face. Her expression turned stony and she said, "I wanted you to know the game is off." Then she strode away. Unbelieving, Rhoda watched her go. "After forty years!" she exclaimed. She slowly came back to her husband and stared down at him. "Forty years of 'undying' friendship, gone like that!" Her eyes softened a little. "Maybe I'm wrong, Connor, maybe I said too much through Central myself. And maybe I'd have acted like Sheila if _they_ had been the ones." He withdrew his hands from his face. "I've done the same thing to other wretches myself. We'll just have to get used to it somehow. I've enough social credits to hang on here a year anyway." "Get used to it," she repeated dully. This time there was no denunciation but she had to flee up the stairs to be alone. He went to the big bay window and, trying to keep his mind blank, watched Max re-spading the petunia bed. He really should go out and tell the robot to stop, he decided, otherwise the same work would be repeated again and again. But he just watched for the next hour as Max kept returning to the far end of the bed and working his way up to the window, nodding mindlessly with each neat twist of his spade attachment. Rhoda came back downstairs and said, "It's six-thirty. The first time since the boys left that they didn't call us at six." He thought of Ted on Mars and Phil on Venus and sighed. "By now," she went on, "they know what's happened. Usually colonial children just refuse to have anything more to do with parents like us. And they're right--they have their own futures to consider." "They'll still write to us," he started reassuring her but she had already gone outside where he could hear her giving Max vocal instructions for preparing dinner. Which was just as well--she would know the truth soon enough. Without a doubt the boys were now also guilty by association and they'd have nothing left to lose by maintaining contact. At dinner, though, he felt less kindly toward her and snapped a few times. Then it was Rhoda's turn to exercise forebearance and to try to smooth things over. Once she looked out the picture window at the perfect synthetic thatch of the Williams' great cottage, peeping over the hollyhock-topped rise of ground at the end of the garden. "Well?" he demanded. "Well?" "Nothing, Connor." "You sighed and I want to know what the devil--" "Since you insist--I was thinking how lucky Sheila Williams always is. Ten years ago the government authorized twins for her while I haven't had a child in thirty years, and now our disaster forewarns her. She'll never get caught off guard on a paraNormal line." * * * He snapped his fingers and Max brought out the pudding in a softly shining silver bowl. Above it hovered a bluish halo of flaming brandy. "Maybe not. I've heard of people even being Suspended without a reason." He slowly savored the first spoonful as if it might be the last ever. From now on every privileged pleasure would have that special value. "One more year of such delights." "If we can stand the ostracism." "We can." Suddenly he was all angry determination. "I did the wrong thing today, admitted, but it really was the truth, what I said. I've concentrated right and still got wrong numbers!" "Me too, but I kept thinking it was my own fault." "The real truth's that while the System assumes more authority each decade it keeps getting less efficient." "Well, why doesn't the government do something, get everything back in working order?" His grin showed no pleasure. "Do you know anybody who could help repair a Master Central Computer?" "Not personally but there must be--" "Must be nothing! People are slack from having it so good, don't think as much as they used to. Why bother when you can tap Central for any information? _Almost_ any information." "How can it all end?" "Who knows and who cares?" He was angry all over again. "It will still be working well enough for a few centuries and we, we're just left out in the cold! I'm only ninety, I can live another sixty years, and you, you're going to have a good seventy-five more of this deprivation." Max was standing at the foot of the table, metal visual lids closed as he waited for instructions. Rhoda considered him unthinkingly, then snapped back to attention. "Nothing more, Max, go to the kitchen and disconnect until you hear from us." "Yes," he said in that programmed tone which indicated endless gratitude for the privilege of half-being. "That ends my sad day," Connor sighed. "I'm taking a blackout pill and intend to stay that way for the next fourteen hours." * * * * * The next morning he rode into the city in the same car as the one that had brought him back the day before. None of the regulars even deigned to look in his direction. There was another change today. Only two fellow Suspendeds were reading their books even though there had been three for the past few months. Which meant another one had exhausted his income and was being forced into the inner city. At the office none of Connor's associates greeted him. They didn't even have to contrast the new tension in his face with the easy-going, flannelled contentment of their fellows. Undoubtedly somebody had tried to reach him or Rhoda and heard the Suspension Notice on their severed thought-lines. As was also to be expected, there was a notice on his desk that his executive services would no longer be needed. He quickly gathered up his personal things and went downstairs, passing through the office workers pool. Miss Wilson, his Suspended secretary, came up to him. She looked saddened yet, curiously, almost triumphant too. "We all heard the bad news this morning," she said, her blue eyes never wavering. "We want you to know how sorry we are since you're not accustomed--" "I'll never be accustomed to it," he said bitterly. "No, Mr. Newman, you mustn't think that way. Human beings can get accustomed to whatever's necessary." "Necessary? Not in my books!" "Some day you may feel differently. I was born into a Suspended family and we've managed. Being on the outside has its compensations." "Such as?" "We-l-l--," she faltered, "I really don't know exactly. But you must have faith it will be so." She pulled out a card from a pocket of her sheath dress. "Maybe you'll want to use this some day." He glanced at the card which said, _John Newbridge, Doctor at Mind, 96th Level, Harker Building, Appointments by Writing Only_. There was no thought-line coding. "I have no doubt," he muttered. But she was starting to look hurt so he carefully slid the card into his wallet. "He's very helpful," she said. "I mean, helpful for people who have adjustment problems." "You're a good girl," he said huskily. "Maybe we'll meet someday again. I'll have my wife call--write to you so you can visit us before we have to come into the city." "That," she smiled happily, "would be so wonderful, Mr. Newman. I've never been in a home like that." Then, choking with emotion, she turned and hurried away. * * * When he reached home and told Rhoda what had happened, his wife was not in the least bit moved. "I'll never let that girl in my house," she said through thin lips. "A classless nothing! I'm going to keep my pride while I can." There was some sense to her viewpoint but, he felt uncertainly, not enough for him to remain silent. "We have to adjust, darling, can't go on thinking we're what we're not." "Why can't we?" she exploded. "I couldn't even order food today. Max had to go to the AutoMart and pick it up!" "What are you trying to say?" "That _you_ made this mess!" For a while he listened, dully unresponsive, but eventually the vituperation became too bitter and he came back at her with equal vigor. Until, weeping, she rushed upstairs once more. That was the first of many arguments. Anything could bring them on, instructions for Max that she chose to consider erroneous, a biting statement from him that she was deliberately making herself physically unattractive. More and more Rhoda took to going into the city while he killed time making crude, tentative adjustments on Max. What the devil, he occasionally wondered, could she be doing there? But most of the time he did not bother about it; he had found a consolation of his own. At first it had been impossible to make the slightest changes in Max, even those that permitted the robot to remain conscious and give advice. Again and again his mind strained toward Central until the icy-edged truth cut into his brain--there was no line. Out of boredom, though, he plugged away, walked past the disdainfully-staring eyes of neighbors to the village library, and withdrew dusty microfiles on robotry. Eventually he had acquired a little skill at contemplating what, essentially, remained a mystery to his easily-tired mind. It was not completely satisfactory but it would be enough to get him a better-than-average menial job when he had finally accepted his new condition. At long last a letter came from Ted on Mars. It said: Guilty by association, that's what I am! When it first happened I was furious with the two of you but resignation has its own consolations and I've given up the ranting. Of course, I've lost my job and my new one will keep me from Earth a longer time but the real loss is not being able to think on Earth Central once a day. As you know, it's a funny civilization here anyway. As yet, there's no local telepathic Central but all Active Communicators are permitted to think in on Earth Central once a day--except for the big shots who can even telepath social engagements to each other by way of Earth! Privileged but a pretty dull crowd anyway. Oh yes, another exception to the general ration, Suspendeds like me. Funny thing about that, seems to me there are more Suspended from the Earth System all the time. Maybe I'm imagining it. As lovingly as ever, your son, Ted. (NO. _More_ than ever!) Rhoda really went to pieces for a while after that letter but, oddly enough, all recriminations soon stopped. She began going into the city every day and after each visit seemed a little calmer for having done so. * * * Finally Connor could no longer remain silent about it. But by now all conversations had to be broached by tactful beating around the bush so he began by saying he had decided to take a lower level job in the metropolis. Rhoda was not surprised. "I know. A good idea but I think you should wait a while longer and do something else first." That made him suspicious. "Are you developing a new kind of unblockable ESP? How'd you know?" "No," she laughed. "Some day we will maybe and people will use it better this time. But right now I'm just going by what I see. You've been studying Max and I knew you were bound to get restless." She became thoughtful. "What you really want to know, though, is what I've been doing in the city. Well, at first I did very little. I kept ending up in theatres where we Suspendeds can go. That gave a little relief. But since Ted's letter it's been different. I finally got up the courage to see Dr. Newbridge." "Newbridge!" "Connor, he's a great man. You should see him too." "My mind may have smaller scope outside the System but what's left of it isn't cracking, Rhoda." Working himself into a spasm of righteous rage, he stalked out into the garden and tried to convince himself he was calmly studying the rose bushes' growth. But Sheila and Tony Williams came down the lane that skirted the garden and, as their eyes moved haughtily past him, his rage shifted its focus. He came back into the house and remained in sullen silence. Rhoda went on as if there had been no interruption. "I still say Dr. Newbridge is a great man. He dropped out of the System of his own free will and that certainly took courage!" "He willingly gave up his advantages and privileges?" "Yes. And he's explained why to me. He felt it was destroying every Subscriber's ability to think and that it could not last. Some day we would be without anything to do our thinking and he wanted out." Connor sat down and stared thoughtfully out the window. Max had just lumbered into the garden and, having unscrewed one hand to replace it with a flexible spade, was starting on the evening schedule for turning over the soil at the base of the plants. He would go methodically down one flower bed, then up the next one, until all had been worked over, then would start all over again unless ordered to stop. "Are we to end up the same way?" Connor shuddered. He slapped his knee. "All right, I'll go with you tomorrow. I've got to see what he's like--a man who'd voluntarily surrender ninety percent of his powers!" * * * * * The next morning they rode into the city together and went to the Harker Building. It was in an area dense with non-telepaths each one showing that telltale cleft of anxiety in his forehead but briskly going about his business as if anxiety were actually a liveable quality. Newbridge had the same look but there was a nonetheless reassuring ease to the way he greeted them. He was tall and white-haired and his face frequently assumed an abstracted look as if his mind were reaching far away. "You've come here," he said, "for two reasons. The first is dissatisfaction with your life. More precisely, you're dissatisfied with your attitude toward life but you wouldn't be willing to put it that way, not yet. Secondly, you want to know why anyone would willingly leave the System." Connor leaned back in his chair. "That'll do for a starter." "Right. Well, there aren't many anomalies like me but we do exist. Most people outside the System are there because they've been Suspended for supposed infractions, or they've been put out through guilt by association, or because they were born into a family already in that condition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood I was trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential of my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received my education by tapping Central for contact with information centers and other minds. But I was a fluke." His dark blue eyes twinkled. "Biological units are never so standardized that _all_ of them fall under any system that can be devised. I functioned in this System, true, but I could imagine my mind existing outside, could see my functioning _from the outside_. This is terribly rare--most people are limited to the functions which sustain them. They experience nothing else except when circumstances force them to. I, though, could see the System was not all-powerful." "Not all-powerful!" Connor exploded. "It got rid of me awfully easily." His wife tried to calm him. "Listen, dear, then decide." "You're surviving as a pariah, Mr. Newman, aren't you? Your wife tells me you've even started to study robot controls, valuable knowledge for the future and personally satisfying now. Millions of people do survive as outsiders, as do the planetary colonists who only have limited access so far to social telepathy. The System has built into it defenses against Subscribers who lack confidence in it--if it didn't it would collapse. But people _in_ the System are not forced to remain there. They can _will_ themselves out any time they close their minds to it, as I did. But they don't want to will themselves out of it--you certainly didn't--and their comfortable inertia keeps everything going. I think you have to know a little about its history, a history which never would have interested you if you were still comfortably inside it." He slowly outlined the way it had developed. First those uncertain steps toward understanding the universally latent powers of telepathy, then growing chaos as each individual spent most of his time fighting off unwanted messages. After a period of desperate discomfort a few great minds, made superhuman by their ability to tap each others' resources, had devised the Central System Switchboard. Only living units, delicately poised between rigid order and sheer chaos, could receive mental messages but this problem had been solved by the molecular biologists with their synthesized, self-replicating axons, vastly elongated and cunningly intertwined by the billions. These responded to every properly-modulated thought wave passing through them and made the same careful sortings as a human cell absorbing matter from the world. Then, to make certain this central mind would never become chaotic, there was programmed into it an automatic rejection of all sceptical challenges. "That was the highest moment of our race," Newbridge sighed. "We had harnessed infinite complexities to our needs. But the success was too complete. Ever since then humanity has become more and more dependent on what was to be essentially a tool and nothing more. Each generation became lazier and there's no one alive who can keep this Central System in proper working order." He leaned forward to emphasize his point. "You see, it's very slowly breaking down. There's a steady accretion of inefficiency mutations in the axons and that's why more and more switching mistakes are being made--as in your case." * * * Connor was dazed by it all. "What's going to be the upshot, I mean, _how_ is it going to break down?" Newbridge threw up his hands. "I don't know--it's probably a long way off anyway. I guess the most likely thing is that more and more errors will accumulate and plenty of people will be Suspended just because Central is developing irrational quirks. Maybe the critical social mass for change will exist only when more are outside the System than inside. I suspect when that happens we'll be able to return to _direct_ telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are always blocked." A buzzing sound came out of a small black box on the doctor's desk, startling Connor who in his executive days had received all such signals directly in his head. "Well, I've another patient waiting so this will have to be the end of our chat." Connor and his wife exchanged glances. He said, "I'd like to come back. I'll probably have a twenty-hour week so I'll be in town a few days a week." "More than welcome to come again," Newbridge grinned. "Just make the arrangements with Miss Richards, my nurse." When they were in the street Rhoda asked, "Well, what do you think now?" "I don't know what to think yet--but I do feel better. Rhoda, would you mind going home alone? I think I'll find a job right away." "Mind?" she laughed. "It's wonderful news!" After he left her he wandered around the city awhile. In his paraNormal days he had never noticed them but it certainly was true that there were a lot of Suspendeds about. He studied some of them as he went along, trying to fathom their likes and dislikes by the way they moved and their expressions. But, unlike the paraNormals, each was different and it was impossible to see deeply into them. Then, as he rounded a corner, he was suddenly face to face with his new enemy. A large flat park stood before him and there in the middle was a hundred-story tower of smooth seamless material, the home of the Central System's brain. There were smaller towers at many points in the world but this was the most important, capable of receiving on its mile-long axons, antennas of the very soul itself, every thought projected at it from any point in the solar system. The housing gleamed blindingly in the sun of high noon, as perfect as the day it had been completed. That surface was designed to repel all but the most unusual of the radiation barrages that could bring on subtle changes in the brain within. The breakdown, he thought bitterly, would take too many centuries to consider. He turned away and headed into an Employment Exchange. The man behind the desk there was a Suspended, too, and showed himself to be sympathetically understanding as soon as he studied the application form. "ParaNormal until a few months ago," he nodded. "Tough change to make, I guess." Connor managed a little grin. "Maybe I'll be grateful it happened some day." "A curious thought, to say the least." He glanced down the application again. "Always some kind of work available although there do seem to be more Suspendeds all the time. Robot repair--that's good! Always a shortage there." So Connor went to work in a large building downtown along with several hundred other men whose principal duty was overseeing the repair of robot servitors by other servitors and rectifying any minor errors that persisted. He was pleased to find that, while some of his fellow workmen knew much more about the work than he did, there were as many who knew less. But the most pleasing thing of all was the way they cooperated with one another. They could not reach directly into each other's minds but the very denial of this power gave them a sense of common need. * * * He visited Newbridge once a week and that, too, proved increasingly helpful. As time went on, he found he was spending less of it regretting what he had lost. But once in a while a paraNormal came through the workshop, eyes moving past the Suspendeds as if they did not exist and the old resentment would return in all its bitterness. And when he himself did not feel this way he could still sense it in men around him. "Perfectly natural way to feel," Rhoda said, "not that it serves any purpose." "It's paraNormal lack of reaction," he tried to explain, "that's what really bothers me. They don't even bother to notice our hatred because we have the strength of insects next to theirs. They can all draw on each others' resources and that totals to infinitely more than any of us have, even if as individuals they're so much less. The perfect form of security." But for a moment one day that security seemed to be collapsing. Above the work floor in Connor's factory there was a gallery of small but luxurious offices in which the executive staff of paraNormals 'worked.' None of them came in more than two days a week but use of these offices was rotated among them so all were ordinarily occupied and workers, going upstairs to the stock depot, could see paraNormals in various stages of relaxation. Usually the paraNormal kept his feet on a desk rest and, eyes closed, contemplated incoming entertainment. On rarer occasions he would be leaning over a document on the desk as his mind received the proper decision from Central. This particular morning Connor was feeling bitterly envious as he went by the offices. He had already seen seven smugly-similar faces when he came by Room Eight. Suddenly the face of its occupant contorted in agony, then the man got up and paced about as if in a trap. Deciding he had seen more than was good for him, Connor hurried on. But the man in Nine was acting out the same curious drama. He quickly retraced his steps, passing one scene of consternation after another, and went back down to the work floor, wondering what it all meant. Soon everybody knew something extraordinary was afoot as all the paraNormals swarmed noisily onto the runway overlooking the floor. They were shouting wordless sounds at each other, floundering about as they did so. Then, with equal suddenness, everything was calm again and, faces more relaxed, they went back into their offices. That evening Connor heard the same story everywhere--for ten minutes all paraNormals had gone berserk. On the monorail he noticed that, though still more relaxed than their unwelcome fellows, they no longer exuded that grating _absolute_ sense of security. No doubt about it--for a few minutes something had gone wrong, completely wrong, with the Central System. "I don't like it," Rhoda said. "Let's see Dr. Newbridge tomorrow." "I'll bet it's a good sign." Newbridge, though, was also worried when they got to see him. "They're losing some of their self-confidence," he said, "and that means they're going to start noticing us. Figure it out, Newman, about one-third the population of Earth--nobody can get exact figures--is outside the System. The paraNormals will want to reduce our numbers if more breakdowns take place. I'll have to go into hiding soon." "But why you of all people?" Connor protested. "Because I and a few thousand others like me represent not only an alternative way of life--all Suspendeds do that--but we possess more intensive knowledge for rehabilitating society after Central's collapse. That collapse may come much sooner than we've been expecting. When it does we're going to have enormous hordes of paras milling around, helplessly waiting to learn how to think for themselves again. Well, when we finally reach the telepath stage next time we'll have to manage it better." He took out an envelope. "If anything happens to me, this contains the names of some people you're to contact." "Why don't you come to our place now?" asked Rhoda. "We'll still be able to hold it for a few more months." "Can't go yet, too many things to clear up. But maybe later." He rose and extended his hand to them. "Anyway it's a kind--and brave--offer." "Sounds overly melodramatic to me," Connor said when they were outside. "Who'd want to harm a psychiatric worker with no knowledge except what's in his head and his personal library?" * * * But he stopped harping on the point when they reached the monorail station. Three Suspendeds, obviously better educated than most, were being led away by a large group of paraNormals. The paraNormals had their smug expressions back but there was a strange gleam of determination in their eyes. "Sometimes life itself gets overly melodramatic," Rhoda said nervously. The possible fate of these arrested men haunted him all the way home as did the hostile stares of the people in the monorail car. At home, though, there was the momentary consolation of a pair of letters from the boys. There was little information in them but they did at least convey in every line love for their parents. But even this consolation did not last long. Why, Connor muttered to himself, did they have to wait for letters when telephone and radio systems could have eased their loneliness so much more effectively? Because the paras did not need such systems and their needs were the only ones that mattered! His fingers itched to achieve something more substantial than the work, now childishly routine, that he was doing at the factory. Just from studying Max he knew he could devise such workable communication systems. But all that was idle daydreaming--it wouldn't be in his lifetime. The next morning Rhoda insisted they go back into the city to try once more to persuade Newbridge to leave. When they arrived at the Harker Building it seemed strangely quiet. The few people who were about kept avoiding each others' glances and they found themselves alone in the elevator to the 96th level. But Miss Richards, the doctor's nurse-secretary, was standing in the corridor as they got out. She was trembling and found it difficult to talk. "Don't--don't go in," she stuttered. "No help now." He pushed past her, took one glance at the fire-charred consulting room where a few blackened splinters of bone remained and turned away, leading the two women to the elevator. At first Miss Richards did not want to go but he forced her to come along. "You have to get away from here--can't do any good for him now." She sucked in air desperately, blinked back her tears and nodded. "There was another ten-minute breakdown this morning. A lot of paraNormals panicked and a vigilante pack came here to fire-blast the Doctor. They said I'd be next if things got any worse." Connor pinched his forehead to hold back his own anguish, then pulled out a sheet of paper. "Dr. Newbridge was afraid of something like this. He gave me a list of names." "I know, Mr. Newman, I know them by heart." "Shouldn't we try to contact one of them?" As they came out into the street, she stopped and thought a moment. "Crane would be the easiest to reach. He's an untitled psychiatrist and one of the alternate leaders for the underground." "Underground?" "Oh, they tried to be prepared for every eventual--" "It's impossible!" Rhoda broke in. She had been looking up and down the great avenue as they talked. "There isn't one person in the street, not one!" An abandoned robot cab stood at the curb and he threw open the door. "Come on, get in! Something's happening. Miss Richards, set it for this Crane's address." The cab started to shoot uptown, turning a corner into another deserted boulevard. As it skirted the great Park, he pointed at Central Tower. There seemed to be a slight crack in the smooth surface half way up but, as a moment's mist engulfed the tower, it looked flawless again. Then all the mist was gone and the crack was back, a little larger than before. * * * Connor leaned forward and set the cab for top speed as they rounded into the straight-away of another uptown street. Occasionally they caught glimpses of frightened faces, clumped in lobby entrances, and once two bodies came flying out of a window far ahead. "They're killing our people everywhere," moaned the nurse. As they approached the crushed forms, Connor slowed down a little. "They're dressed too well--what's left of them. They're paraNormals!" A minute later they were at the large apartment block where Crane lived. They entered the building through a lobby jammed with more silent people. All were Suspendeds. At first Crane did not want to let the trio in but when he recognized Newbridge's nurse he unlocked the heavily-bolted door. He was a massively-built man with dark eyes set deeply beneath a jutting brow and the eyes did not blink as Miss Richards told him what had happened. "We'll miss him," he said, then turned abruptly on Connor. "Have you any skills?" "Robotics," he answered. The great head nodded as Connor told of his experience at work and on Max. "Good, we're going to need people like you for rebuilding." He pulled a radio sender and receiver from a cabinet and held an earphone close to his temple, continuing to nod. Then he put it down again. "I know what you're going to say--illegal, won't work and all that. Well, a few of us have been waiting for the chance to build our own communication web and now we can do it." "I just want to know why you keep mentioning _our_ rebuilding. They're more likely to destroy all of us in their present mood." "_Us?_" He took them to the window and pointed toward the harbor where thousands of black specks were tumbling into the water. "They're destroying themselves! Some jumping from buildings but most pouring toward the sea, a kind of oceanic urge to escape completely from themselves, to bury themselves in something infinitely bigger than their separate hollow beings. Before they were more like contented robots. Now they're more like suicidal lemmings because they can't exist without this common brain to which they've given so little and from which they've taken so much." Connor squared his shoulders. "We'll have our work cut out for us. Dr. Newbridge saw it all coming, you did too." "Not quite," Crane sighed. "We assumed that at the time of complete breakdown the System would open up, throwing all the Subscribers out of it, leaving them disconnected from each other and waiting for our help. But it worked out in just the opposite manner!" "You mean that the System is staying closed as it breaks down? Like a telephone exchange in which all the lines remained connected and every call went to all telephones." "Exactly," Crane replied. "I don't understand this technical talk," Rhoda protested, watching in hypnotized horror as the speck swarm swelled ever larger in the sea. "I'll put it this way," Crane explained. "Their only hope was to have time to develop the desire for release from the System as it died. But they are dying _inside_ it. You see, Mrs. Newman, every thought in every paraNormal's head, every notion, every image, no matter how stupidly trivial, is now pouring into every other paraNormal's head. They're over-communicating to the point where there's nothing left to communicate but death itself!" THE END Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ January 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 
60897	----	THE NON-ELECTRONIC BUG By E. MITTLEMAN _There couldn't be a better tip-off system than mine--it wasn't possible--but he had one!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I wouldn't take five cents off a legitimate man, but if they want to gamble that's another story. What I am is a genius, and I give you a piece of advice: Do not ever play cards with a stranger. The stranger might be me. Where there are degenerate card players around, I sometimes get a call. Not dice--I don't have a machine to handle them. But with cards I have a machine to force the advantage. The first thing is a little radio receiver, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. You don't hear any music. You feel it on your skin. The next thing is two dimes. You stick them onto you, anywhere you like. Some like to put them on their legs, some on their belly. Makes no difference, just so they're out of sight. Each dime has a wire soldered to it, and the wires are attached to the little receiver that goes in your pocket. The other thing is the transmitter I carry around. My partner was a fellow named Henry. He had an electronic surplus hardware business, but business wasn't good and he was looking for a little extra cash on the side. It turns out that the other little wholesalers in the loft building where he has his business are all card players, and no pikers, either. So Henry spread the word that he was available for a gin game--any time at all, but he would only play in his own place--he was expecting an important phone call and he didn't want to be away and maybe miss it.... It never came; but the card players did. I was supposed to be his stock clerk. While Henry and the other fellow were working on the cards at one end of the room, I would be moving around the other--checking the stock, packing the stuff for shipment, arranging it on the shelves, sweeping the floor. I was a regular model worker, busy every second. I had to be. In order to see the man's hand I had to be nearby, but I had to keep moving so he wouldn't pay attention to me. And every time I got a look at his hand, I pushed the little button on the transmitter in my pocket. Every push on the button was a shock on Henry's leg. One for spades, two for hearts, three for diamonds, four for clubs. Then I would tip the card: a short shock for an ace, two for a king, three for a queen, and so on down to the ten. A long and a short for nine, a long and two shorts for an eight ... it took a little memorizing, but it was worth it. Henry knew every card the other man held every time. And I got fifty per cent. * * * * * We didn't annihilate the fish. They hardly felt they were being hurt, but we got a steady advantage, day after day. We did so well we took on another man--I can take physical labor or leave it alone, and I leave it alone every chance I get. That was where we first felt the trouble. Our new boy was around twenty. He had a swept-wing haircut, complete with tail fins. Also he had a silly laugh. Now, there are jokes in a card game--somebody taking a beating will sound off, to take away some of the sting, but nobody laughs because the cracks are never funny. But they were to our new boy. He laughed. He laughed not only when the mark made some crack, but a lot of the time when he didn't. It got so the customers were looking at him with a lot of dislike, and that was bad for business. So I called him out into the hall. "Skippy," I said--that's what we called him, "lay off. _Never_ rub it in to a sucker. It's enough to take his money." He ran his fingers back along his hair. "Can't a fellow express himself?" I gave him a long, hard unhealthy look. _Express_ himself? He wouldn't have to. I'd express him myself--express him right out of our setup. But before I got a chance, this fellow from Chicago came in, a big manufacturer named Chapo; a wheel, and he looked it. He was red-faced, with hanging jowls and a big dollar cigar; he announced that he only played for big stakes ... and, nodding toward the kid and me, that he didn't like an audience. Henry looked at us miserably. But what was he going to do? If he didn't go along, the word could spread that maybe there was something wrong going on. He had to play. "Take the day off, you two," he said, but he wasn't happy. I thought fast. There was still one chance. I got behind Chapo long enough to give Henry a wink and a nod toward the window. Then I took Skippy by the elbow and steered him out of there. Down in the street I said, fast: "You want to earn your pay? You have to give me a hand--an eye is really what I mean. Don't argue--just say yes or no." He didn't stop to think. "Sure," he said. "Why not?" "All right." I took him down the street to where they had genuine imported Japanese field glasses and laid out twenty bucks for a pair. The man was a thief, but I didn't have time to argue. Right across the street from Henry's place was a rundown hotel. That was our next stop. The desk man in the scratch house looked up from his comic book. "A room," I said. "Me and my nephew want a room facing the street." And I pointed to the window of Henry's place, where I wanted it to face. Because we still had a chance. With the field glasses and Skippy's young, good eyes to look through them, with the transmitter that would carry an extra hundred yards easy enough--with everything going for us, we had a chance. Provided Henry had been able to maneuver Chapo so his back was to the window. The bed merchant gave us a long stall about how the only room we wanted belonged to a sweet old lady that was sick and couldn't be moved. But for ten bucks she could be. All the time I was wondering how many hands were being played, if we were stuck money and how much--all kinds of things. But finally we got into the room and I laid it out for Skippy. "You aim those field glasses out the window," I told him. "Read Chapo's cards and let me know; that's all. I'll take care of the rest." I'll say this for him, duck-tail haircut and all, he settled right down to business. I made myself comfortable on the bed and rattled them off on the transmitter as he read the cards to me. I couldn't see the players, didn't know the score; but if he was giving the cards to me right, I was getting them out to Henry. I felt pretty good. I even began to feel kindly toward the kid. At my age, bifocals are standard equipment, but to judge from Skippy's fast, sure call of the cards, his eyesight was twenty-twenty or better. After about an hour, Skippy put down the glasses and broke the news: the game was over. We took our time getting back to Henry's place, so Chapo would have time to clear out. Henry greeted us with eight fingers in the air. Eight hundred? But before I could ask him, he was already talking: "Eight big ones! Eight thousand bucks! And how you did it, I'll never know!" Well, eight thousand was good news, no doubt of that. I said, "That's the old system, Henry. But we couldn't have done it if you hadn't steered the fish up to the window." And I showed him the Japanese field glasses, grinning. But he didn't grin back. He looked puzzled. He glanced toward the window. I looked too, and then I saw what he was puzzled about. It was pretty obvious that Henry had missed my signal. He and the fish had played by the window, all right. But the shade was down. * * * * * When I turned around to look for Skippy, to ask him some questions, he was gone. Evidently he didn't want to answer. I beat up and down every block in the neighborhood until I spotted him in a beanery, drinking a cup of coffee and looking worried. I sat down beside him, quiet. He didn't look around. The counterman opened his mouth to say hello. I shook my head, but Skippy said, "That's all right. I know you're there." I blinked. This was a creep! But I had to find out what was going on. I said, "You made a mistake, kid." "Running out?" He shrugged. "It's not the first mistake I made," he said bitterly. "Getting into your little setup with the bugged game came before that." I said, "You can always quit," but then stopped. Because it was a lie. He couldn't quit--not until I found out how he read Chapo's cards through a drawn shade. He said drearily, "You've all got me marked lousy, haven't you? Don't kid me about Henry--I know. I'm not so sure about you, but it wouldn't surprise me." "What are you talking about?" "I can hear every word that's on Henry's mind," he said somberly. "You, no. Some people I can hear, some I can't; you're one I can't." "What kind of goofy talk is that?" I demanded. But, to tell you the truth, I didn't think it was so goofy. The window shade was a lot goofier. "All my life," said Skippy, "I've been hearing the voices. It doesn't matter if they talk out loud or not. Most people I can hear, even when they don't want me to. Field glasses? I didn't need field glasses. I could hear every thought that went through Chapo's mind, clear across the street. Henry too. That's how I know." He hesitated, looking at me. "You think Henry took eight thousand off Chapo, don't you? It was ten." I said, "Prove it." The kid finished his coffee. "Well," he said, "you want to know what the counterman's got on his mind?" He leaned over and whispered to me. I yelled, "That's a lousy thing to say!" Everybody was looking at us. He said softly, "You see what it's like? I don't want to hear all this stuff! You think the counterman's got a bad mind, you ought to listen in on Henry's." He looked along the stools. "See that fat little woman down at the end? She's going to order another cheese Danish." He hadn't even finished talking when the woman was calling the counterman, and she got another cheese Danish. I thought it over. What he said about Henry holding out on me made it real serious. I had to have more proof. But I didn't like Skippy's idea of proof. He offered to call off what everybody in the beanery was going to do next, barring three or four he said were silent, like me. That wasn't good enough. "Come along with me," I told him, and we took off for Jake's spot. That's a twenty-four-hour place and the doorman knows me. I knew Jake and I knew his roulette wheel was gaffed. I walked right up to the wheel, and whispered to the kid, "Can you read the dealer?" He smiled and nodded. "All right. Call black or red." The wheel spun, but that didn't stop the betting. Jake's hungry. In his place you can still bet for a few seconds after the wheel starts turning. "Black," Skippy said. I threw down fifty bucks. Black it was. That rattled me. "Call again," I said. When Skippy said black, I put the fifty on red. Black won it. "Let's go," I said, and led the kid out of there. He was looking puzzled. "How come--" "How come I played to lose?" I patted his shoulder. "Sonny, you got a lot to learn. Jake's is no fair game. This was only a dry run." Then I got rid of him, because I had something to do. * * * * * Henry came across. He even looked embarrassed. "I figured," he said, "uh, I figured that the expenses--" "Save it," I told him. "All I want is my split." He handed it over, but I kept my hand out, waiting. After a minute he got the idea. He reached down inside the waistband of his pants, pulled loose the tape that held the dimes to his skin and handed over the radio receiver. "That's it, huh?" he said. "That's it." "Take your best shot," he said glumly. "But mark my words. You're not going to make out on your own." "I won't be on my own," I told him, and left him then. By myself? Not a chance! It was going to be Skippy and me, all the way. Not only could he read minds, but the capper was that he couldn't read mine! Otherwise, you can understand, I might not want him around all the time. But this way I had my own personal bug in every game in town, and I didn't even have to spend for batteries. Card games, gaffed wheels, everything. Down at the track he could follow the smart-money guys around and let me know what they knew, which was plenty. We could even go up against the legit games in Nevada, with no worry about bluffs. And think of the fringe benefits! With Skippy giving the women a preliminary screening, I could save a lot of wasted time. At my age, time is nothing to be wasted. I could understand a lot about Skippy now--why he didn't like most people, why he laughed at jokes nobody else thought were funny, or even could hear. But everybody has got to like somebody, and I had the edge over most of the human race. He didn't know what I was thinking. And then, take away the voices in his head, and Skippy didn't have much left. He wasn't very smart. If he had half as much in the way of brains as he did in the way of private radar, he would have figured all these angles out for himself long ago. No, he needed me. And I needed him. We were all set to make a big score together, so I went back to his rooming house where I'd told him to wait, to get going on the big time. However, Henry had more brains than Skippy. I hadn't told Henry who tipped me off, but it didn't take him long to work out. After all, I had told him I was going out to look for Skippy, and I came right back and called him for holding out. No, it didn't take much brains. All he had to do was come around to Skippy's place and give him a little lesson about talking. So when I walked in the door, Skippy was there, but he was out cold, with lumps on his forehead and a stupid grin on his face. I woke him up and he recognized me. But you don't make your TV set play better by kicking it. You don't help a fine Swiss watch by pounding it on an anvil. Skippy could walk and talk all right, but something was missing. "The voices!" he yelled, sitting up on the edge of the bed. I got a quick attack of cold fear. "Skippy! What's the matter? Don't you hear them any more?" He looked at me in a panic. "Oh, I hear them all right. But they're all different now. I mean--it isn't English any more. In fact, it isn't any language at all!" * * * * * Like I say, I'm a genius. Skippy wouldn't lie to me; he's not smart enough. If he says he hears voices, he hears voices. Being a genius, my theory is that when Henry worked Skippy over, he jarred his tuning strips, or whatever it is, so now Skippy's receiving on another frequency. Make sense? I'm positive about it. He sticks to the same story, telling me about what he's hearing inside his head, and he's too stupid to make it all up. There are some parts of it I don't have all figured out yet, but I'll get them. Like what he tells me about the people--I _guess_ they're people--whose voices he hears. They're skinny and furry and very religious. He can't understand their language, but he gets pictures from them, and he told me what he saw. They worship the Moon, he says. Only that's wrong too, because he says they worship two moons, and everybody knows there's only one. But I'll figure it out; I have to, because I have to get Skippy back in business. Meanwhile it's pretty lonesome. I spend a lot of time down around the old neighborhood, but I haven't set up another partner for taking the card players. That seems like pretty small stuff now. And I don't talk to Henry when I see him. And I _never_ go in the beanery when that counterman is on duty. I've got enough troubles in the world; I don't have to add to them by associating with _his_ kind. 
31612	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction November 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. THE VERY SECRET AGENT BY MARI WOLF Illustrated by Ed Emsh _Poor Riuku!... Not being a member of the human race, how was he supposed to understand what goes on in a woman's mind when the male of the same species didn't even know?_ * * * * * In their ship just beyond the orbit of Mars the two aliens sat looking at each other. "No," Riuku said. "I haven't had any luck. And I can tell you right now that I'm not going to have any, and no one else is going to have any either. The Earthmen are too well shielded." "You contacted the factory?" Nagor asked. "Easily. It's the right one. The parking lot attendant knows there's a new weapon being produced in there. The waitress at the Jumbo Burger Grill across the street knows it. Everybody I reached knows it. But not one knows anything about what it is." Nagor looked out through the ports of the spaceship, which didn't in the least resemble an Earth spaceship, any more than what Nagor considered sight resembled the corresponding Earth sense perception. He frowned. "What about the research scientists? We know who some of them are. The supervisors? The technicians?" "No," Riuku said flatly. "They're shielded. Perfectly I can't make contact with a single mind down there that has the faintest inkling of what's going on. We never should have let them develop the shield." "Have you tried contacting everyone? What about the workers?" "Shielded. All ten thousand of them. Of course I haven't checked all of them yet, but--" "Do it," Nagor said grimly. "We've got to find out what that weapon is. Or else get out of this solar system." Riuku sighed. "I'll try," he said. * * * * * Someone put another dollar in the juke box, and the theremins started in on Mare Indrium Mary for the tenth time since Pete Ganley had come into the bar. "Aw shut up," he said, wishing there was some way to turn them off. Twelve-ten. Alice got off work at Houston's at twelve. She ought to be here by now. She would be, if it weren't Thursday. Shield boosting night for her. Why, he asked himself irritably, couldn't those scientists figure out some way to keep the shields up longer than a week? Or else why didn't they have boosting night the same for all departments? He had to stay late every Friday and Alice every Thursday, and all the time there was Susan at home ready to jump him if he wasn't in at a reasonable time.... "Surprised, Pete?" Alice Hendricks said at his elbow. He swung about, grinned at her. "Am I? You said it. And here I was about to go. I never thought you'd make it before one." His grin faded a little. "How'd you do it? Sweet-talk one of the guards into letting you in at the head of the line?" She shook her bandanaed head, slid onto the stool beside him and crossed her knees--a not very convincing sign of femininity in a woman wearing baggy denim coveralls. "Aren't you going to buy me a drink, honey?" "Oh, sure." He glanced over at the bartender. "Another beer. No, make it two." He pulled the five dollars out of his pocket, shoved it across the bar, and looked back at Alice, more closely this time. The ID badge, pinned to her hip. The badge, with her name, number, department, and picture--and the little meter that measured the strength of her Mind Shield. The dial should have pointed to full charge. It didn't. It registered about seventy per cent loss. Alice followed his gaze. She giggled. "It was easy," she said. "The guards don't do more than glance at us, you know. And everyone who's supposed to go through Shielding on Thursday has the department number stamped on a yellow background. So all I did was make a red background, like yours, and slip it on in the restroom at Clean-up time." "But Alice...." Pete Ganley swallowed his beer and signaled for another. "This is serious. You've got to keep the shields up. The enemy is everywhere. Why, right now, one could be probing you." "So what? The dial isn't down to Danger yet. And tomorrow I'll just put the red tag back on over the yellow one and go through Shielding in the same line with you. They won't notice." She giggled again. "I thought it was smart, Petey. You oughta think so too. You know why I did it, don't you?" Her round, smooth face looked up at him, wide-eyed and full-lipped. She had no worry wrinkles like Susan's, no mouth pulled down at the corners like Susan's, and under that shapeless coverall.... "Sure, baby, I'm glad you did it," Pete Ganley said huskily. Riuku was glad too, the next afternoon when the swing shift started pouring through the gates. It was easy, once he'd found her. He had tested hundreds, all shielded, some almost accessible to him, but none vulnerable enough. Then this one came. The shield was so far down that contact was almost easy. Painful, tiring, but not really difficult. He could feel her momentary sense of alarm, of nausea, and then he was through, integrated with her, his thoughts at home with her thoughts. He rested, inside her mind. "Oh, hi, Joan. No, I'm all right. Just a little dizzy for a moment. A hangover? Of course not. Not on a Friday." Riuku listened to her half of the conversation. Stupid Earthman. If only she'd start thinking about the job. Or if only his contact with her were better. If he could use her sense perceptions, see through her eyes, hear through her ears, feel through her fingers, then everything would be easy. But he couldn't. All he could do was read her thoughts. Earth thoughts at that.... _... The time clock. Where's my card? Oh, here it is. Only 3:57. Why did I have to hurry so? I had lots of time...._ "Why, Mary, how nice you look today. That's a new hairdo, isn't it? A permanent? Yeah, what kind?" _... What a microbe! Looks like pink straw, her hair does, and of course she thinks it's beautiful...._ "I'd better get down to my station. Old Liverlips will be ranting again. You oughta be glad you have Eddie for a lead man. Eddie's cute. So's Dave, over in 77. But Liverlips, ugh...." She was walking down the aisle to her station now. A procession of names: _Maisie, and Edith, and that fat slob Natalie, and if Jean Andrews comes around tonight flashing that diamond in my face again, I'll--I'll kill her...._ "Oh hello, Clinton. What do you mean, late? The whistle just blew. Of course I'm ready to go to work." _Liverlips, that's what you are. And still in that same blue shirt. What a wife you must have. Probably as sloppy as you are...._ Good, Riuku thought. Now she'll be working. Now he'd find out whatever it was she was doing. Not that it would be important, of course, but let him learn what her job was, and what those other girls' jobs were, and in a little while he'd have all the data he needed. Maybe even before the shift ended tonight, before she went through the Shielding boost. He shivered a little, thinking of the boost. He'd survive it, of course. He'd be too well integrated with her by then. But it was nothing to look forward to. Still, he needn't worry about it. He had the whole shift to find out what the weapon was. The whole shift, here inside Alice's mind, inside the most closely guarded factory on or under or above the surface of the Earth. He settled down and waited, expectantly. Alice Hendricks turned her back on the lead man and looked down the work table to her place. The other girls were there already. Lois and Marge and Coralie, the other three members of the Plug table, Line 73. "Hey, how'd you make out?" Marge said. She glanced around to make sure none of the lead men or timekeepers were close enough to overhear her, then went on. "Did you get away with it?" "Sure," Alice said. "And you should of seen Pete's face when I walked in." She took the soldering iron out of her locker, plugged it in, and reached out for the pan of 731 wires. "You know, it's funny. Pete's not so good looking, and he's sort of a careless dresser and all that, but oh, what he does to me." She filled the 731 plug with solder and reached for the white, black, red wire. "You'd better watch out," Lois said. "Or Susan's going to be doing something to you." "Oh, her." Alice touched the tip of the iron to the solder filled pin, worked the wire down into position. "What can she do? Pete doesn't give a damn about her." "He's still living with her, isn't he?" Lois said. Alice shrugged.... _What a mealy-mouthed little snip Lois could be, sometimes. You'd think to hear her that she was better than any of them, and luckier too, with her Joe and the kids. What a laugh! Joe was probably the only guy who'd ever looked at her, and she'd hooked him right out of school, and now with three kids in five years and her working nights...._ Alice finished soldering the first row of wires in the plug and started in on the second. So old Liverlips thought she wasted time, did he? Well, she'd show him. She'd get out her sixteen plugs tonight. "Junior kept me up all night last night," Lois said. "He's cutting a tooth." "Yeah," Coralie said, "It's pretty rough at that age. I remember right after Mike was born...." Don't they ever think of anything but their kids? Alice thought. She stopped listening to them. She heard Pete's voice again, husky and sending little chills all through her, and his face came between her and the plug and the white green wire she was soldering. His face, with those blue eyes that went right through a girl and that little scar that quirked up the corner of his mouth.... "Oh, oh," Alice said suddenly. "I've got solder on the outside of the pin." She looked around for the alcohol. Riuku probed. Her thoughts were easy enough to read, but just try to translate them into anything useful.... He probed deeper. The plugs she was soldering. He could get a good picture of them, of the wires, of the harness lacing that Coralie was doing. But it meant nothing. They could be making anything. Radios, monitor units, sound equipment. Only they weren't. They were making a weapon, and this bit of electronic equipment was part of that weapon. What part? What did the 731 plug do? Alice Hendricks didn't know. Alice Hendricks didn't care. The first break. Ten minutes away from work. Alice was walking back along the aisle that separated Assembly from the men's Machine Shop. A chance, perhaps. She was looking at the machines, or rather past them, at the men. "Hello, Tommy. How's the love life?" He's not bad at all. Real cute. Though not like Pete, oh no. The machines. Riuku prodded at her thoughts, wishing he could influence them, wishing that just for a moment he could see, hear, feel, _think_ as she would never think. The machines were--machines. That big funny one where Ned works, and Tommy's spot welder, and over in the corner where the superintendent is--he's a snappy dresser, tie and everything. The corner. Restricted area. Can't go over. High voltage or something.... Her thoughts slid away from the restricted area. Should she go out for lunch or eat off the sandwich machine? And Riuku curled inside her mind and cursed her with his rapidly growing Earthwoman's vocabulary. At the end of the shift he had learned nothing. Nothing about the weapon, that is. He had found out a good deal about the sex life of Genus Homo--information that made him even more glad than before that his was a one-sexed race. * * * * * With work over and tools put away and Alice in the restroom gleefully thinking about the red Friday night tag she was slipping onto her ID badge, he was as far from success as ever. For a moment he considered leaving her, looking for another subject. But he'd probably not be able to find one. No, the only thing to do was stay with her, curl deep in her mind and go through the Shielding boost, and later on.... The line. Alice's nervousness.... _Oh, oh, there's that guy with the meter--the one from maintenance. What's he want?_ "Whaddya mean, my shield's low? How could it be?" _... If he checks the tag I'll be fired for sure. It's a lot of nonsense anyway. The enemy is everywhere, they keep telling us. Whoever saw one of them?_ "No, honest, I didn't notice anything. Can I help it if.... It's okay, huh? It'll pass...." Down to fifteen per cent, the guy said. Well, that's safe, I guess. Whew. "Oh, hello, Paula. Whatcha talking about, what am I doing here tonight? Shut up...." And then, in the midst of her thoughts, the pain, driving deep into Riuku, twisting at him, wrenching at him, until there was no consciousness of anything at all. He struggled back. He was confused, and there was blankness around him, and for a moment he thought he'd lost contact altogether. Then he came into focus again. Alice's thoughts were clearer than ever suddenly. He could feel her emotions; they were a part of him now. He smiled. The Shielding boost had helped him. Integration--much more complete integration than he had ever known before. "But Pete, honey," Alice said. "What did you come over to the gate for? You shouldn't of done it." "Why not? I wanted to see you." "What if one of Susan's pals sees us?" "So what? I'm getting tired of checking in every night, like a baby. Besides, one of her pals did see us, last night, at the bar." _Fear. What'll she do? Susan's a hellcat. I know she is. But maybe Pete'll get really sick and tired of her. He looks it. He looks mad. I'd sure hate to have him mad at me...._ "Let's go for a spin, baby. Out in the suburbs somewhere. How about it?" "Well--why sure, Pete...." Sitting beside him in the copter. _All alone up here. Real romantic, like something on the video. But I shouldn't with him married, and all that. It's not right. But it's different, with Susan such a mean thing. Poor Petey...._ Riuku prodded. He found it so much easier since the Shielding boost. If only these Earthmen were more telepathic, so that they could be controlled directly. Still, perhaps with this new integration he could accomplish the same results. He prodded again. "Pete," Alice said suddenly. "What are we working on, anyway?" "What do you mean, working on?" He frowned at her. "At the plant. All I ever do is sit there soldering plugs, and no one ever tells me what for." "Course not. You're not supposed to talk about any part of the job except your own. You know that. The slip of a lip--" "Can cost Earth a ship. I know. Quit spouting poster talk at me, Pete Ganley. The enemy isn't even human. And there aren't any around here." Pete looked over at her. She was pouting, the upper lip drawn under the lower. Someone must have told her that was cute. Well, so what--it was cute. "What makes you think I know anything more than you do?" he said. "Well, gee." She looked up at him, so near to her in the moonlight that she wondered why she wanted to talk about the plant anyway. "You're in Final Assembly, aren't you? You check the whatsits before they go out." "Sure," he said. No harm in telling her. No spies now, not in this kind of war. Besides, she was too dumb to know anything. "It's a simple enough gadget," Pete Ganley said. "A new type of force field weapon that the enemy can't spot until it hits them. They don't even know there's an Earth ship within a million miles, until _Bingo_!..." She drank it in, and in her mind Riuku did too. Wonderful integration, wonderful. Partial thought control. And now, he'd learn the secret.... "You really want to know how it works?" Pete Ganley said. When she nodded he couldn't help grinning. "Well, it's analogous to the field set up by animal neurones, in a way. You've just got to damp that field, and not only damp it but blot it out, so that the frequency shows nothing at all there, and then--well, that's where those Corcoran assemblies you're soldering on come in. You produce the field...." Alice Hendricks listened. For some reason she wanted to listen. She was really curious about the field. But, gee, how did he expect her to understand all that stuff? He sounded like her algebra teacher, or was it chemistry? Lord, how she'd hated school. Maybe she shouldn't have quit. _... Corcoran fields. E and IR and nine-space something or other. She'd never seen Pete like this before. He looked real different. Sort of like a professor, or something. He must be real smart. And so--well, not good-looking especially but, well, appealing. Real SA, he had...._ "So that's how it works," Pete Ganley said. "Quite a weapon, against them. It wouldn't work on a human being, of course." She was staring at him dreamy-eyed. He laughed. "Silly, I bet you haven't understood a word I said." "I have too." "Liar." He locked the automatic pilot on the copter and held out his arms. "Come here, you." "Oh, Petey...." Who cared about the weapon? He was right, even if she wouldn't admit it. She hadn't even listened, hardly. She hadn't understood. And neither had Riuku. * * * * * Riuku waited until she'd fallen soundly asleep that night before he tried contacting Nagor. He'd learned nothing useful. He'd picked up nothing in her mind except more thoughts of Pete, and gee, maybe someday they'd get married, if he only had guts enough to tell Susan where to get off.... But she was asleep at last. Riuku was free enough of her thoughts to break contact, partially of course, since if he broke it completely he wouldn't be able to get back through the Shielding. It was hard enough to reach out through it. He sent a painful probing feeler out into space, to the spot where Nagor and the others waited for his report. "Nagor...." "Riuku? Is that you?" "Yes. I've got a contact. A girl. But I haven't learned anything yet that can help us." "Louder, Riuku. I can hardly hear you...." Alice Hendricks stirred in her sleep. The dream images slipped through her subconscious, almost waking her, beating against Riuku. Pete, baby, you shouldn't be like that.... Riuku cursed the bisexual species in their own language. "Riuku!" Nagor's call was harsh, urgent. "You've got to find out. We haven't much time. We lost three more ships today, and there wasn't a sign of danger. No Earthman nearby, no force fields, nothing. You've got to find out why." Those ships just disappeared. Riuku forced his way up through the erotic dreams of Alice Hendricks. "I know a little," he said. "They damp their thought waves somehow, and keep us from spotting the Corcoran field." "Corcoran field? What's that?" "I don't know." Alice's thoughts washed over him, pulling him back into complete integration, away from Nagor, into a medley of heroic Petes with gleaming eyes and clutching hands and good little Alices pushing them away--for the moment. "But surely you can find out through the girl," Nagor insisted from far away, almost out of phase altogether. "No, Pete!" Alice Hendricks said aloud. "Riuku, you're the only one of us with any possible sort of contact. You've got to find out, if we're to stay here at all." "Well," Alice Hendricks thought, "maybe...." Riuku cursed her again, in the lingua franca of a dozen systems. Nagor's voice faded. Riuku switched back to English. * * * * * Saturday. Into the plant at 3:58. Jean's diamond again.... _Wish it would choke her; she's got a horsey enough face for it to. Where's old Liverlips? Don't see him around. Might as well go to the restroom for a while...._ That's it, Riuku thought. Get her over past the machine shop, over by that Restricted Area. There must be something there we can go on.... "Hello, Tommy," Alice Hendricks said. "How's the love life?" "It could be better if someone I know would, uh, cooperate...." She looked past him, toward the corner where the big panels were with all the dials and the meters and the chart that was almost like the kind they drew pictures of earthquakes on. What was it for, anyway? And why couldn't anyone go over to it except those longhairs? High voltage her foot.... "What're you looking at, Alice?" Tommy said. "Oh, that." She pointed. "Wonder what it's for? It doesn't look like much of anything, really." "I wouldn't know. I've got something better to look at." "Oh, _you_!" Compared to Pete, he didn't have anything, not anything at all. ... _Pete. Gee, he must have got home awful late last night. Wonder what Susan said to him. Why does he keep taking her lip, anyway?_ Riuku waited. He prodded. He understood the Restricted Area as she understood it--which was not at all. He found out some things about the 731 plugs--that a lot of them were real crummy ones the fool day shift girls had set up wrong, and besides she'd rather solder on the 717's any day. He got her talking about the weapon again, and he found out what the other girls thought about it. Nothing. Except where else could you get twelve-fifty an hour soldering? She was stretched out on the couch in the restroom lobby taking a short nap--on company time, old Liverlips being tied up with the new girls down at the other end of the line--when Riuku finally managed to call Nagor again. "Have you found out anything, Riuku?" "Not yet." Silence. Then: "We've lost another ship. Maybe you'd better turn her loose and come on back. It looks as if we'll have to run for it, after all." Defeat. The long, interstellar search for another race, a race less technologically advanced than this one, and all because of a stupid Earth female. "Not yet, Nagor," he said. "Her boy friend knows. I'll find out. I'll make her listen to him." "Well," Nagor said doubtfully. "All right. But hurry. We haven't much time at all." "I'll hurry," Riuku promised. "I'll be back with you tonight." That night after work Pete Ganley was waiting outside the gate again. Alice spotted his copter right away, even though he had the lights turned way down. "Gee, Pete, I didn't think...." "Get in. Quick." "What's the matter?" She climbed in beside him. He didn't answer until the copter had lifted itself into the air, away from the factory landing lots and the bright overhead lights and the home-bound workers. "It's Susan, who else," he said grimly. "She was really sounding off today. She kept saying she had a lot of evidence and I'd better be careful. And, well, I sure didn't want you turning up at the bar tonight of all nights." He didn't sound like Pete. "Why?" Alice said. "Are you afraid she'll divorce you?" "Oh, Alice, you're as bad as--look, baby, don't you see? It would be awful for you. All the publicity, the things she'd call you, maybe even in the papers...." He was staring straight ahead, his hands locked about the controls. He was sort of--well, distant. Not her Petey any more. Someone else's Pete. Susan's Pete.... "I think we should be more careful," he said. Riuku twisted his way through her thoughts, tried to push them down.... _Does he love me, he's got to love me, sure he does, he just doesn't want me to get hurt...._ And far away, almost completely out of phase, Nagor's call. "Riuku, another ship's gone. You'd better come back. Bring what you've learned so far and we can withdraw from the system and maybe piece it together...." "In a little while. Just a little while." Stop thinking about Susan, you biological schizo. Change the subject. You'll never get anything out of that man by having hysterics.... "I suppose," Alice cried bitterly, "you've been leading me on all the time. You don't love me. You'd rather have _her_!" "That's not so. Hell, baby...." _He's angry. He's not even going to kiss me. I'm just cutting my own throat when I act like that...._ "Okay, Pete. I'm sorry. I know it's tough on you. Let's have a drink, okay? Still got some in the glove compartment?" "Huh? Oh, sure." She poured two drinks, neat, and he swallowed his with one impatient gulp. She poured him another. * * * * * Riuku prodded. The drink made his job easier. Alice's thoughts calmed, swirled away from Susan and what am I going to do and why didn't I pick up with some single guy, anyway? A single guy, like Tommy maybe. Tommy and his spot welder, over there by the Restricted Area. The Restricted Area.... "Pete." "Yeah, baby?" "How come they let so much voltage loose in the plant, so we can't even go over in the Restricted Area?" "Whatever made you think of that?" He laughed suddenly. He turned to her, still laughing. He was the old Pete again, she thought, with his face happy and his mouth quirked up at the corner. "Voltage loose ... oh, baby, baby. Don't you know what that is?" "No. What?" "That's the control panel for one of the weapons, silly. It's only a duplicate, actually--a monitor station. But it's tuned to the frequencies of all the ships in this sector and--" She listened. She wanted to listen. She had to want to listen, now. "Nagor, I'm getting it," Riuku called. "I'll bring it all back with me. Just a minute and I'll have it." "How does it work, honey?" Alice Hendricks said. "You really want to know? Okay. Now the Corcoran field is generated between the ships and areas like that one, only a lot more powerful, by--" "It's coming through now, Nagor." "--a very simple power source, once you get the basics of it. You--oh, oh!" He grabbed her arm. "Duck, Alice!" A spotlight flashed out of the darkness, turned on them, outlined them. A siren whirred briefly, and then another copter pulled up beside them and a loudspeaker blared tinnily. "Okay, bud, pull down to the landing lane." The police. Police. Fear, all the way through Alice's thoughts, all the way through Riuku. Police. Earth law. That meant--it must mean he'd been discovered, that they had some other means of protection besides the Shielding.... "Nagor! I've been discovered!" "Come away then, you fool!" He twisted, trying to pull free of Alice's fear, away from the integration of their separate terrors. But he couldn't push her thoughts back from his. She was too frightened. He was too frightened. The bond held. "Oh, Pete, Pete, what did you do?" He didn't answer. He landed the copter, stepped out of it, walked back to the other copter that was just dropping down behind him. "But officer, what's the matter?" Alice Hendricks huddled down in the seat, already seeing tomorrow's papers, and her picture, and she wasn't really photogenic, either.... And then, from the other copter, she heard the woman laugh. "Pete Ganley, you fall for anything, don't you?" "Susan!" "You didn't expect me to follow you, did you? Didn't it ever occur to you that detectives could put a bug in your copter? My, what we've been hearing!" "Yeah," the detective who was driving said. "And those pictures we took last night weren't bad either." "Susan, I can explain everything...." "I'm sure you can, Pete. You always try. But as for you--you little--" Alice ducked down away from her. Pictures. Oh God, what it would make her look like. Still, this hag with the pinched up face who couldn't hold a man with all the cosmetics in the drugstore to camouflage her--she had her nerve, yelling like that. "Yeah, and I know a lot about you too!" Alice Hendricks cried. "Why, let me get my hands on you...." "Riuku!" Riuku prodded. Calm down, you fool. You're not gaining anything this way. Calm down, so I can get out of here.... Alice Hendricks stopped yelling abruptly. "That's better," Susan said. "Pete, your taste in women gets worse each time. I don't know why I always take you back." "I can explain everything." "Oh, Pete," Alice Hendricks whispered. "Petey, you're not--" "Sure he is," Susan Ganley said. "He's coming with me. The nice detectives will take you home, dear. But I don't think you'd better try anything with them--they're not your type. They're single." "Pete...." But he wouldn't meet Alice's eyes. And when Susan took his arm, he followed her. "How could you do it, Petey...." Numb whispers, numb thoughts, over and over, but no longer frightened, no longer binding on Riuku. Fools, he thought. Idiotic Earthmen. If it weren't for your ridiculous reproductive habits I'd have found out everything. As it is.... "Nagor, I'm coming! I didn't get anything. This woman--" "Well, come on then. We're leaving. Right now. There'll be other systems." _Petey, Petey, Petey...._ Contact thinned as he reached out away from her, toward Nagor, toward the ship. He fought his way out through the Shielding, away from her and her thoughts and every detestable thing about her. Break free, break free.... "What's the matter, Riuku? Why don't you come? Have the police caught you?" The others were fleeing, getting farther away even as he listened to Nagor's call. Contact was hard to maintain now; he could feel communication fading. "Riuku, if you don't come now...." He fought, but Alice's thoughts were still with him; Alice's tears still kept bringing him back into full awareness of her. "Riuku!" "I--I can't!" The Shielding boost, that had integrated him so completely with Alice Hendricks, would never let him go. "Oh, Petey, I've lost you...." And Nagor's sad farewell slipped completely out of phase, leaving him alone, with her. The plant. The Restricted Area. The useless secret of Earth's now unneeded weapon. Alice Hendricks glancing past it, at the spot welding machine, at Tommy. "How's the love life?" "You really interested in finding out, Alice?" "Well--maybe--" And Riuku gibbered unheard in her mind. * * * * * 
30434	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction November 1960, December 1960, January 1961, February 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. OCCASION ... for DISASTER By MARK PHILLIPS Illustrated by van Dongen _A very small slip, at just the wrong place, can devastate any enterprise. One tiny transistor can go wrong ... and ruin a multi-million dollar missile. Which would be one way to stop the missiles...._ "_We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster._" Theodore Roosevelt * * * * * In 1914, it was enemy aliens. In 1930, it was Wobblies. In 1957, it was fellow-travelers. In 1971, it was insane telepaths. And, in 1973: "We don't know _what_ it is," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI. He threw his hands in the air and looked baffled and confused. Kenneth J. Malone tried to appear sympathetic. "What what is?" Burris frowned and drummed his fingers on his big desk. "Malone," he said, "make sense. And don't stutter." "Stutter?" Malone said. "You said you didn't know what it was. And I wanted to know what it was." "That's just it," Burris said. "I don't know." Malone sighed and repressed an impulse to scream. "Now, wait a minute, Chief--" he started. Burris frowned again. "Don't call me Chief," he said. Malone nodded, "O.K.," he said. "But--if you don't know what it is, you must have some idea of what you don't know. I mean, is it larger than a breadbox? Does it perform helpful tasks? Is it self-employed?" "Malone," Burris sighed, "you ought to be on television." "But--" "Let me explain," Burris said. His voice was calmer now, and he spoke as if he were enunciating nothing but the most obvious and eternal truths. "The country," he said, "is going to Hell in a handbasket." Malone nodded again. "Well, after all, Chief--" he started. "Don't call me Chief," Burris said wearily. "Anything you say," Malone agreed peacefully. He eyed the Director of the FBI warily. "After all, it isn't anything new," he went on. "The country's always been going to Hell in a handbasket, one way or another. Look at Rome." "Rome?" Burris said. "Sure," Malone said. "Rome was always going to Hell in a handbasket, and finally it--" He paused. "Finally it did, I guess," he said. "Exactly," Burris said. "And so are we. Finally." He passed a hand over his forehead and stared past Malone at a spot on the wall. Malone turned and looked at the spot, but saw nothing of interest. "Malone," Burris said, and the FBI Agent whirled around again. "Yes, Ch--Yes?" he said. "This time," Burris said, "it isn't the same old story at all. This time it's different." "Different?" Malone said. Burris nodded. "Look at it this way," he said. His eyes returned to the FBI Agent. "Suppose you're a congressman," he went on, "and you find evidence of inefficiency in the government." "All right," Malone said agreeably. He had the feeling that if he waited around a little while everything would make sense, and he was willing to wait. After all, he wasn't on assignment at the moment, and there was nothing pressing waiting for him. He was even between romances. If he waited long enough, he told himself, Andrew J. Burris might say something worth hearing. He looked attentive and eager. He considered leaning over the desk a little, to look even more eager, but decided against it; Burris might think he looked threatening. There was no telling. "You're a congressman," Burris said, "and the government is inefficient. You find evidence of it. What do you do?" * * * * * Malone blinked and thought for a second. It didn't take any longer than that to come up with the old, old answer. "I start an investigation," he said. "I get a committee and I talk to a lot of newspaper editors and magazine editors and maybe I go on television and talk some more, and my committee has a lot of meetings--" "Exactly," Burris said. "And we talk a lot at the meetings," Malone went on, carried away, "and get a lot of publicity, and we subpoena famous people, just as famous as we can get, except governors or presidents, because you can't--they tried that back in the '50s, and it didn't work very well--and that gives us some more publicity, and then when we have all the publicity we can possibly get--" "You stop," Burris said hurriedly. "That's right," Malone said. "We stop. And that's what I'd do." "Of course, the problem of inefficiency is left exactly where it always was," Burris said. "Nothing's been done about it." "Naturally," Malone said. "But think of all the lovely publicity. And all the nice talk. And the subpoenas and committees and everything." "Sure," Burris said wearily. "It's happened a thousand times. But, Malone, that's the difference. It isn't happening this time." There was a short pause. "What do you mean?" Malone said at last. "This time," Burris said, in a tone that sounded almost awed, "they want to keep it a secret." "A secret?" Malone said, blinking. "But that's ... that's not the American way." Burris shrugged. "It's un-congressman-like, anyhow," he said. "But that's what they've done. Tiptoed over to me and whispered softly that the thing has to be investigated quietly. Naturally, they didn't give me any orders--but only because they know they can't make one stick. They suggested it pretty strongly." "Any reasons?" Malone said. The whole idea interested him strangely. It was odd--and he found himself almost liking odd cases, lately. That is, he amended hurriedly, if they didn't get _too_ odd. "Oh, they had reasons, all right," Burris said. "It took a little coaxing, but I managed to pry some loose. You see, every one of them found inefficiency in his own department. And every one knows that other men are investigating inefficiency." "Oh," Malone said. "That's right," Burris said. "Every one of them came to me to get me to prove that the goof-ups in his particular department weren't his fault. That covers them in case one of the others happens to light into the department." "Well, it must be _somebody's_ fault," Malone said. "It isn't theirs," Burris said wearily. "I ought to know. They told me. At great length, Malone." Malone felt a stab of honest pity. "How many so far?" he said. "Six," Burris said. "Four representatives, and two senators." "Only two?" Malone said. "Well," Burris said, "the Senate is so much smaller. And, besides, we may get more. As a matter of fact, Senator Lefferts is worth any six representatives all by himself." "He is?" Malone said, puzzled. Senator Lefferts was not one of his favorite people. Nor, as far as he knew, did the somewhat excitable senator hold any place of honor in the heart of Andrew J. Burris. "I mean his story," Burris said. "I've never heard anything like it--at least, not since the Bilbo days. And I've only heard about those," he added hurriedly. "What story?" Malone said. "He talked about inefficiency--" "Not exactly," Burris said carefully. "He said that somebody was out to get him--him, personally. He said somebody was trying to discredit him by sabotaging all his legislative plans." "Well," Malone said, feeling that some comment was called for, "three cheers." "That isn't the point," Burris snapped. "No matter how we felt about Senator Lefferts or his legislative plans, we're sworn to protect him. And he says 'they' are out to get him." "They?" Malone said. "You know," Burris said, shrugging. "The great 'they.' The invisible enemies all around, working against him." "Oh," Malone said. "Paranoid?" He had always thought Senator Lefferts was slightly on the batty side, and the idea of real paranoia didn't come as too much of a surprise. After all, when a man was batty to start out with ... and he even _looked_ like a vampire, Malone thought confusedly. "As far as paranoia is concerned," Burris said, "I checked with one of our own psych men, and he'll back it up. Lefferts has definite paranoid tendencies, he says." Malone said, "That's that." Burris shook his head. "It isn't that simple," he said. "You see, Malone, there's some evidence that somebody _is_ working against him." "The American public, with any luck at all," Malone said. "No," Burris said. "An enemy. Somebody sabotaging his plans. Really." Malone shook his head. "You're crazy," he said. Burris looked shocked. "Malone, I'm the Director of the FBI," he said. "And if you insist on being disrespectful--" "Sorry," Malone murmured. "But--" "I am perfectly sane," Burris said slowly. "It's Senator Lefferts who's crazy. The only trouble is, he has evidence to show he's not." Malone thought about odd cases, and suddenly wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else. This one showed sudden signs of developing into something positively bizarre. "I see," he said, wondering if he did. "After all," Burris said, in a voice that attempted to sound reasonable, "a paranoid has just as much right to be persecuted as anybody else, doesn't he?" "Sure," Malone said. "Everybody has rights. But what do you want me to do about that?" "About their rights?" Burris said. "Nothing, Malone. Nothing." "I mean," Malone said patiently, "about whatever it is that's going on." Burris took a deep breath. His hands clasped behind his head, and he looked up at the ceiling. He seemed perfectly relaxed. That, Malone knew, was a bad sign. It meant that there was a dirty job coming, a job nobody wanted to do, and one Burris was determined to pass off on him. He sighed and tried to feel resigned. * * * * * "Well," the FBI Director said, "the only actual trouble we can pinpoint is that there seem to be a great many errors occurring in the paperwork--more than usual." "People get tired," Malone said tentatively. "But computer-secretary calculating machines don't," Burris said. "And that's where the errors are--in the computer-secretaries down in the Senate Office Building. I think you'd better start out there." "Sure," Malone said sadly. "See if there's any mechanical or electrical defect in any of those computers," Burris said. "Talk to the computer technicians. Find out what's causing all these errors." "Yes, sir," Malone said. He was still trying to feel resigned, but he wasn't succeeding very well. "And if you don't find anything--" Burris began. "I'll come right back," Malone said instantly. "No," Burris said. "You keep on looking." "I do?" "You do," Burris said. "After all, there has to be _something_ wrong." "Sure," Malone said, "if you say so. But--" "There are the interview tapes," Burris said, "and the reports the congressmen brought in. You can go through those." Malone sighed. "I guess so," he said. "And there must be thousands of other things to do," Burris said. "Well--" Malone began cautiously. "You'll be able to think of them," Burris said heartily. "I know you will. I have confidence in you, Malone. Confidence." "Thanks," Malone said sadly. "You just keep me posted from time to time on what you're doing, and what ideas you get," Burris said. "I'm leaving the whole thing in your hands, Malone, and I'm sure you won't disappoint me." "I'll try," Malone said. "I know you will," Burris said warmly. "And no matter how long it takes--I know you'll succeed." "No matter how long it takes?" Malone said hesitantly. "That's right!" Burris said. "You can do it, Malone! You can do it." Malone nodded slowly. "I hope so," he said. "Well, I ... well, I'll start out right away, then." He turned. Before he could make another move Burris said: "Wait!" Malone turned again, hope in his eyes. "Yes, sir?" he said. "When you leave--" Burris began, and the hope disappeared "please do one little favor for me. Just one little favor, because I'm an old, tired man and I'm not used to things any more." "Sure," Malone said. "Anything, Chief." "Don't call me--" "Sorry," Malone said. Burris breathed heavily. "When you leave," he said, "please, please use the door." "But--" "Malone," Burris said, "I've tried. I've really tried. Believe me. I've tried to get used to the fact that you can teleport. But--" "It's useful," Malone said, "in my work." "I can see that," Burris said. "And I don't want you to ... well, to stop doing it. By no means. It's just that it sort of unnerves me, if you see what I mean. No matter how useful it is for the FBI to have an agent who can go instantaneously from one place to another, it unnerves me." He sighed. "I can't get used to seeing you disappear like an over-dried soap bubble, Malone. It does something to me--here." He placed a hand directly over his sternum and sighed again. "I can understand that," Malone said. "It unnerved me, too, the first time I saw it. I thought I was going crazy, when that kid--Mike Fueyo--winked out like a light. But then we got him, and some FBI agents besides me have learned the trick." He stopped there, wondering if he'd been tactful. After all, it took a latent ability to learn teleportation, and some people had it, while others didn't. Malone, along with a few other agents, did. Burris evidently didn't--so he couldn't teleport, no matter how hard he tried or how many lessons he took. "Well," Burris said, "I'm still unnerved. So ... please, Malone ... when you come in here, or go out, use the door. All right?" "Yes, sir," Malone said. He turned and went out. As he opened the door, he could almost hear Burris' sigh of relief. Then he banged it shut behind him and, feeling that he might as well continue with his spacebound existence, walked all the way to the elevator, and rode it downstairs to the FBI laboratories. The labs, highly efficient and divided into dozens of departments, covered several floors. Malone passed through the Fingerprint section, filled with technicians doing strange things to great charts and slides, and frowning over tiny pieces of material and photographs. Then came Forgery Detection, involving many more technicians, many more slides and charts and tiny pieces of things and photographs, and even a witness or two sitting on the white bench at one side and looking lost and somehow civilian. Identification Classified was next, a great barn of a room filled with index files. The real indexes were in the sub-basement; here, on microfilm, were only the basic division. A man was standing in front of one of the files, frowning at it. Malone went on by without stopping. Cosmetic Surgery Classification came next. Here there were more indexes, and there were also charts and slides. There was an FBI agent sitting on a bench looking bored while two female technicians--classified as O&U for Old and Ugly in Malone's mind--fluttered around him, deciding what disguises were possible, and which of those was indicated for the particular job on hand. Malone waved to the agent, whom he knew very slightly, and went on. He felt vaguely regretful that the FBI couldn't hire prettier girls for the Cosmetic Surgery Division, but the trouble was that pretty girls fell for the agents--and vice versa--and this led to an unfortunate tendency toward only handsome and virile-looking disguises. The O&U Division was unfortunate, he decided, but a necessity. Chemical Analysis (III) was next. The Chemical Analysis section was scattered over several floors, with the first stages up above. Division III, Malone remembered, was devoted to non-poisonous substances--like clay or sand found in boots or trouser cuffs, cigar ashes and such. They were placed on the same floor as Fingerprints to allow free and frequent passage between the sections on the problems of plastic prints--made in putty or like substances--and visible prints, made when the hand is covered with a visible substance like blood, ketchup or glue. Malone found what he was looking for at the very end of the floor. It was the Computer Section, a large room filled with humming, clacking and buzzing machines of an ancient vintage, muttering to themselves as they worked, and newer machines which were smaller and more silent. Lights were lighting and bells were ringing softly, relays were relaying and the whole room was a gigantic maze of calculating and control machines. What space wasn't filled by the machines themselves was filled by workbenches, all littered with an assortment of gears, tubes, spare relays, transistors, wires, rods, bolts, resistors and all the other paraphernalia used in building the machines and repairing them. Beyond the basic room were other, smaller rooms, each assigned to a particular kind of computer work. The narrow aisles were choked here and there with men who looked up as Malone passed by, but most of them gave him one quick glance and went back to work. A few didn't even do that, but went right on concentrating on their jobs. Malone headed for a man working all alone in front of a workbench, frowning down at a complicated-looking mechanism that seemed to have neither head nor tail, and prodding at it with a long, thin screwdriver. The man was thin, too, but not very long; he was a little under average height, and he had straight black hair, thick-lensed glasses and a studious expression, even when he was frowning. He looked as if the mechanism were a student who had cut too many classes, and he was being kindly but firm with it. * * * * * Malone managed to get to the man's side, and coughed discreetly. There was no response. "Fred?" he said. The screwdriver waggled a little. Malone wasn't quite sure that the man was breathing. "Fred Mitchell," he said. Mitchell didn't look up. Another second passed. "Hey," Malone said. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Fred," he said in a loud, reasonable-sounding voice, "the State Department's translator has started to talk pig-Latin." Mitchell straightened up as if somebody had jabbed him with a pin. The screwdriver waved wildly in the air for a second, and then pointed at Malone. "That's impossible," Mitchell said in a flat, precise voice. "Simply impossible. It doesn't have a pig-Latin circuit. It can't possibly--" He blinked and seemed to see Malone for the first time. "Oh," he said. "Hello, Malone. What can I do for you?" Malone smiled, feeling a little victorious at having got through the Mitchell armor, which was almost impregnable when there was a job in hand. "I've been standing here talking to you for some time." "Oh, have you?" Mitchell said. "I was busy." That, obviously, explained that. Malone shrugged. "I want you to help me check over some calculators, Fred," he said. "We've had some reports that some of the government machines are out of kilter, and I'd like you to go over them for me." "Out of kilter?" Fred Mitchell said. "No, you can forget about it. It's absolutely unnecessary to make a check--believe me. Absolutely. Forget it." He smiled suddenly. "I suppose it's some kind of a joke, isn't it?" he said, just a trifle uncertainly. Fred Mitchell's world, while pleasant, did not include much humor, Malone knew. "It's supposed to be funny," he said in the same flat, precise voice. "It isn't funny," Malone said. Fred sighed. "Then they're obviously lying," he said, "and that's all there is to it. Why bother me with it?" "Certainly," Fred said. He looked at the machinery with longing. Malone took a breath. "How do you know?" he said. Fred sighed. "It's perfectly obvious," he said in a patient tone. "Since the State Department translator has no pig-Latin circuit, it can't possibly be talking pig-Latin. I will admit that such a circuit would be relatively easy to build, though it would have no utility as far as I can see. Except, of course, for a joke." He paused. "Joke?" he said, in a slightly uneasy tone. "Sure," Malone said. "Joke." Mitchell looked relieved. "Very well, then," he began. "Since--" "Wait a minute," Malone said. "The pig-Latin is a joke. That's right. But I'm not talking about the pig-Latin." "You're not?" Mitchell asked, surprised. "No," Malone said. Mitchell frowned. "But you said--" he began. "A joke," Malone said. "You were perfectly right. The pig-Latin is a joke." He waited for Fred's expression to clear, and then added: "But what I want to talk to you about isn't." "It sounds very confused," Fred said after a pause. "Not at all the sort of thing that ... that usually goes on." "You have no idea," Malone said. "It's about the political machines, all right, but it isn't anything as simple as pig-Latin." He explained, taking his time over it. When he had finished, Fred was nodding his head slowly. "I see," he said. "I understand just what you want me to do." "Good," Malone said. "I'll take a team over to the Senate Office Building," Fred said, "and check the computer-secretaries there. That way, you see, I'll be able to do a full running check on them without taking any one machine out of operation for too long." "Sure," Malone said. "And it shouldn't take long," Fred went on, "to find out just what the trouble is." He looked very confident. "How long?" Malone asked. Fred shrugged. "Oh," he said, "five or six days." Malone repressed an impulse to scream. "Days?" he said. "I mean ... well, look, Fred, it's important. Very important. Can't you do the job any faster?" Fred gave a little sigh. "Checking and repairing all those machines," he said, "is an extremely complex job. Sometimes, Malone, I don't think you realize quite how complex, and how delicate a job it is to deal with such a high-order machine. Why--" "Wait a minute," Malone said. "Check and repair them?" "Of course," Fred said. "But I don't want them repaired," Malone said. Seeing the look of horror on Fred's face, he added hastily: "I only want a report from you on what's wrong, whether they are actually making errors or not. And if they are making errors, just what's making them do it. And just what kind of errors. See?" Fred nodded very slowly. "But I can't just ... just leave them there," he said piteously. "In ... pieces and everything. It isn't right, Malone. It just isn't right." "Well, then," Malone said with energy, "you go right ahead and repair them, if you want to. Fix 'em all up. But you can do that _after_ you make the report to me, can't you?" "I--" Fred hesitated. "I had planned to check and repair each machine on an individual basis--" "The Congress can allow for a short suspension," Malone said. "Anyhow, they can now--or as soon as I get the word to them. Suppose you check all the machines first, and then get around to the repair work." "It's not the best way," Fred demurred. Malone discovered that it was his turn to sigh. "Is it the fastest?" he said. Fred nodded. "Then it's the best," Malone said. "How long?" Fred rolled his eyes to the ceiling and calculated silently for a second. "Tomorrow morning," he announced, returning his gaze to Malone. "Fine," Malone said. "Fine." "But--" "Never mind the buts," Malone said hurriedly. "I'll count on hearing from you tomorrow morning." "Oh--" Fred said. "All right." "And if it looks like sabotage," Malone added, "if the errors aren't caused by normal wear and tear on the machines--you let me know right away. Phone me. Don't waste an instant." [Illustration] "I'll ... I'll start right away," Fred said heavily. He looked sadly at the mechanism he had been working on, and put his screwdriver down next to it. It looked to Malone as if he were putting flowers on the grave of a dear departed. "I'll get a team together," Fred added. He gave the mechanism and screwdriver one last fond parting look. Malone looked after him for a second, thinking of nothing in particular, and then turned in the opposite direction and headed back toward the elevator. As he walked, he began to feel more and more pleased with himself. After all, he'd gotten the investigation started, hadn't he? And now all he had to do was go back to his office and read some reports and listen to some interview tapes, and then he could go home. The reports and the interview tapes didn't exactly sound like fun, Malone thought, but at the same time they seemed fairly innocent. He would work his way through them grimly, and maybe he would even indulge his most secret vice and smoke a cigar or two to make the work pass more pleasantly. Soon enough, he told himself, they would be finished with. Sometimes, though, he regretted the reputation he'd gotten. It had been bad enough in the old days--the pre-1971 days when Malone had thought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then, when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky had made it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label--after all, Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if he'd done anything. But since 1971 and the case of the Telepathic Spy, things had gotten worse. Much worse. Now Malone wasn't just lucky any more. Instead, he could teleport and he could even foretell the future a little, in a dim sort of way. He'd caught the Telepathic Spy that way, and when the case of the Teleporting Juvenile Delinquents had come up he'd been assigned to that one too, and he'd cracked it. Now Burris seemed to think of him as a kind of god, and gave him all the tough dirty jobs. And if he wasn't just lucky any more, Malone couldn't think of himself as a Fearless, Heroic FBI Agent, either. He just wasn't the type. He was--well, talented. That was the word, he told himself: talented. He had all these talents and they made him look like something spectacular to Burris and the other FBI men. But he wasn't, really. He hadn't done anything really tough to get his talents; they'd just happened to him. Nobody, though, seemed to believe that. He heaved a little sigh and stepped into the waiting elevator. There were, after all, he thought, compensations. He'd had some good times, and the talents did come in handy. And he did have his pick of the vacation schedule lately. And he'd met some lovely girls-- And besides, he told himself savagely as the elevator shot upward, he wasn't going to do anything except return to his office and read some reports and listen to some tapes. And then he was going to go home and sleep all night, peacefully. And in the morning Mitchell was going to call him up and tell him that the computer-secretaries needed nothing more than a little repair. He'd say they were getting old, and he'd be a little pathetic about it; but it wouldn't be anything serious. Malone would send out orders to get the machines repaired, and that would be that. And then the next case would be something both normal and exciting, like a bank robbery or a kidnapping involving a gorgeous blonde who would be so grateful to Malone that-- He had stepped out of the elevator and gone down the corridor without noticing it. He pushed at his own office door and walked into the outer room. The train of thought he had been following was very nice, and sounded very attractive indeed, he told himself. Unfortunately, he didn't believe it. His prescient ability, functioning with its usual efficient aplomb, told Malone that things would not be better, or simpler, in the morning. They would be worse, and more complicated. They would be quite a lot worse. And, as usual, that prescience was perfectly accurate. II The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularly nasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news. As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known. "Nothing at all wrong?" he said into the mouthpiece. "Not with any of the computers?" He blinked. "Not even one of them?" "Not a thing," Mitchell said. "I'll be sending a report up to you in a little while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it's all detailed there." "I'm sure you were very thorough," Malone said helplessly. "Of course we were," Mitchell said. "Of course. And the machines passed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful." "Goody," Malone said at random. "But there's got to be something--" "There is, Malone," Fred said. "There is. I think there's definitely something odd going on. Something funny. I mean peculiar, not humorous." "I thought so," Malone put in. "Right," Fred said. "Malone, try and relax. This is a hard thing to say, and it must be even harder to hear. But--" "Tell me," Malone said. "Who's dead? Who's been killed?" "I know it's tough, Malone," Fred went on. "Is everybody dead?" Malone said. "It can't be just one person, not from that tone in your voice. Has somebody assassinated the entire Senate? Or the President and his Cabinet? Or--" "It's nothing like that, Malone," Fred said, in a tone that implied that such occurrences were really rather minor. "It's the machines." "The machines?" "That's right," Fred said grimly. "After we checked them over and found they were in good shape, I asked for samples of both the input and the output of each machine. I wanted to do a thorough job." "Congratulations," Malone said. "What happened?" Fred took a deep breath. "They don't agree," he said. "They don't?" Malone said. The phrase sounded as if it meant something momentous, but he couldn't quite figure out what. In a minute, he thought confusedly, it would come to him. But did he want it to? "They definitely do not agree," Fred was saying. "The correlation is erratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there are two possibilities." "Tell me about them," Malone said. He was beginning to feel relieved. To Fred, the malfunction of a machine was more serious than the murder of the entire Congress. But Malone couldn't quite bring himself to feel that way about things. "First," Fred said in a tense tone, "it's possible that the technicians feeding information to the machines are making all kinds of mistakes." Malone nodded at the phone. "That sounds possible," he said. "Which ones?" "All of them," Fred said. "They're all making errors--and they're all making about the same number of errors. There don't seem to be any real peaks or valleys, Malone; everybody's doing it." Malone thought of the Varsity Drag and repressed the thought. "A bunch of fumblebums," he said. "All fumbling alike. It does sound unlikely, but I guess it's possible. We'll get after them right away, and--" "Wait," Fred said. "There is a second possibility." "Oh," Malone said. "Maybe they aren't mistakes," Fred said. "Maybe the technicians are deliberately feeding the machine with wrong answers." Malone hated to admit, even to himself, but that answer sounded a lot more probable. Machine technicians weren't exactly picked off the streets at random; they were highly trained for their work, and the idea of a whole crew of them starting to fumble at once, in a big way, was a little hard to swallow. The idea of all of them sabotaging the machines they worked on, Malone thought, was a tough one to take, too. But it had the advantage of making some sense. People, he told himself dully, will do nutty things deliberately. It's harder to think of them doing the same nutty things without knowing it. "Well," he said at last, "however it turns out, we'll get to the bottom of it. Frankly, I think it's being done on purpose." "So do I," Fred said. "And when you find out just who's making the technicians do such things--when you find out who gives them their orders--you let me know." "Let you know?" Malone said. "But--" "Any man who would give false data to a perfectly innocent computer," Fred said savagely, "would ... would--" For a second he was apparently lost for comparisons. Then he finished: "Would kill his own mother." He paused a second and added, in an even more savage voice: "And then lie about it!" * * * * * The image on the screen snapped off, and Malone sat back in his chair and sighed. He spent a few minutes regretting that he hadn't chosen, early in life, to be a missionary to the Fiji Islanders, or possibly simply a drunken bum without any trouble, and then the report Mitchell had mentioned arrived. Malone picked it up without much eagerness, and began going through it carefully. It was beautifully typed and arranged; somebody on Mitchell's team had obviously been up all night at the job. Malone admired the work, without being able to get enthusiastic about the contents. Like all technical reports, it tended to be boring and just a trifle obscure to someone who wasn't completely familiar with the field involved. Malone and cybernetics were not exactly bosom buddies, and by the time he finished reading through the report he was suffering from an extreme case of _ennui_. There were no new clues in the report, either; Mitchell's phone conversation had covered all of the main points. Malone put the sheaf of papers down on his desk and looked at them for a minute as if he expected an answer to leap out from the pile and greet him with a glad cry, but nothing happened. Unfortunately, he had to do some more work. The obvious next step was to start checking on the technicians who were working on the machines. Malone determined privately that he would give none of his reports to Fred Mitchell; he didn't like the idea of being responsible for murder, and that was the least Fred would do to someone who confused his precious calculators. He picked up the phone, punched for the Records Division, and waited until a bald, middle-aged face appeared. He asked the face to send up the dossiers of the technicians concerned to his office. The face nodded. "You want them right away?" it said in a mild, slightly scratchy voice. "Sooner than right away," Malone said. "They're coming up by messenger," the voice said. Malone nodded and broke the connection. The technicians had, of course, been investigated by the FBI before they'd been hired, but it wouldn't do any harm to check them out again. He felt grateful that he wouldn't have to do all that work himself; he would just go through the dossiers and assign field agents to the actual checking when he had a picture of what might need to be checked. He sighed again and leaned back in his chair. He put his feet up on the desk, remembered that he was entirely alone, and swung them down again. He fished in a private compartment in his top desk drawer, drew out a cigar and unwrapped it. Putting his feet back on the desk, he lit the cigar, drew in a cloud of smoke, and lapsed into deep thought. Cigar smoke billowed around him, making strange, fantastic shapes in the air of the office. Malone puffed away, frowning slightly and trying to force the puzzle he was working on to make some sense. It certainly looked as though something were going on, he thought. But, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out just what it was. After all, what could be anybody's purpose in goofing up a bunch of calculators the way they had? Of course, the whole thing could be a series of accidents, but the series was a pretty long one, and made Malone suspicious to start with. It was easier to assume that the goof-ups were being done deliberately. Unfortunately, they didn't make much sense as sabotage, either. Senator Deeds, for instance, had sent out a ten-thousand-copy form letter to his constituents, blasting an Administration power bill in extremely strong language, and asking for some comments on the Deeds-Hartshorn Air Ownership Bill, a pending piece of legislation that provided for private, personal ownership, based on land title, to the upper stratosphere--with a strong hint that rights of passage no longer applied without some recompense to the owner of the air. Naturally, Deeds had filed the original with a computer-secretary to turn out ten thousand duplicate copies, and the machine had done so, folding the copies, slipping them into addressed envelopes and sending them out under the senator's franking stamp. The addresses on the envelopes, however, had not been those of the senator's supporters. The letter had been sent to ten thousand stockholders in major airline companies, and the senator's head was still ringing from the force of the denunciatory letters, telegrams and telephone calls he'd been getting. * * * * * And then there was Representative Follansbee of South Dakota. A set of news releases on the proposed Follansbee Waterworks Bill contained the statement that the artificial lake which Follansbee proposed in the Black Hills country "be formed by controlled atomic power blasts, and filled with water obtained from collecting the tears of widows and orphans." Newsmen who saw this release immediately checked the bill. The wording was exactly the same. Follansbee claimed that the "widows and orphans" phrase had appeared in his speech on the bill, and not in the proposed bill itself. "It's completely absurd," he said, with commendable calm, "to consider this method of filling an artificial lake." Unfortunately, the absurdity was now contained in the bill, which would have to go back to committee for redefinition, and probably wouldn't come up again in the present session of Congress. Judging from the amount of laughter that had greeted the error when it had come to light, Malone privately doubted whether any amount of redefinition was going to save it from a landslide defeat. Representative Keller of Idaho had made a speech which contained so many errors in fact that newspaper editorials, and his enemies on the floor of Congress, cut him to pieces with ease and pleasure. Keller complained of his innocence and said he'd gotten his facts from a computer-secretary, but this didn't save him. His re-election was a matter for grave concern in his own party, and the opposition was, naturally, tickled. They would not, Malone thought, dare to be tickled pink. And these were not the only casualties. They were the most blatant foul-ups, but there were others, such as the mistake in numbering of a House Bill that resulted in a two-month delay during which the opposition to the bill raised enough votes to defeat it on the floor. Communications were diverted or lost or scrambled in small ways that made for confusion--including, Malone recalled the perfectly horrible mixup that resulted when a freshman senator, thinking he was talking to his girlfriend on a blanked-vision circuit, discovered he was talking to his wife. The flow of information was being blocked by bottlenecks that suddenly existed where there had never been bottlenecks before. And it wasn't only the computers, Malone knew. He remembered the reports the senators and representatives had made. Someone forgot to send an important message here, or sent one too soon over there. Both courses were equally disturbing, and both resulted in more snarl-ups. Reports that should have been sent in weeks before arrived too late; reports meant for the eyes of only one man were turned out in triplicate and passed all over the offices of Congress. Each snarl-up was a little one. But, together, they added up to inefficiency of a kind and extent that hadn't been seen, Malone told himself with some wonder, since the Harding administration fifty years before. And there didn't seem to be anyone to blame anything on. Malone thought hopefully of sabotage, infiltration and mass treason, but it didn't make him feel much better. He puffed out some more smoke and frowned at nothing. There was a knock at the door of his office. Speedily and guiltily, he swung his feet off the desk and snatched the cigar out of his mouth. He jammed it into a deep ashtray and put the ashtray back into his desk drawer. He locked the drawer, waved ineffectively at the clouds of smoke that surrounded him, and said in a resigned voice: "Come in." The door opened. A tall, solidly built man stood there, wearing a fringe of beard and a cheerful expression. The man had an enormous amount of muscle distributed more or less evenly over his chunky body, and a potbelly that looked as if he had swallowed a globe of the world. In addition, he was smoking a cigarette and letting out little puffs of smoke, rather like a toy locomotive. "Well, well," Malone said, brushing feebly at the smoke that still wreathed him faintly. "If it isn't Thomas Boyd, the FBI's answer to Nero Wolfe." "And if the physique holds true, you're Sherlock Holmes, I suppose," Boyd said. Malone shook his head, thinking sadly of his father and the cigar. "Not exactly," he said. "Not ex--" And then it came to him. It wasn't that he was ashamed of smoking cigars like his father, exactly--but cigars just weren't right for a fearless, dedicated FBI agent. And he had just thought of a way to keep Boyd from knowing what he'd been doing. "That's a hell of a cigarette you're smoking, by the way," he said. Boyd looked at it. "It is?" he said. "Sure is," Malone said, hoping he sounded sufficiently innocent. "Smells like a cigar or something." Boyd sniffed the air for a second, his face wrinkled. Then he looked down at his cigarette again. "You're right, Ken. It _does_ smell like a cigar." He came over to Malone's desk, looked around for an ashtray and didn't find one, and finally went to the window and tossed the cigarette out into the Washington breeze. "How are things, anyhow, Ken?" he said. "Things are confused," Malone said. "Aren't they always?" Boyd came back to the desk and sat down in a chair at one side of it. He put his elbow on the desk. "Sure they are," he said. "I'm confused myself, as a matter of fact. Only I think I know where I can get some help." "Really?" Malone said. Boyd nodded. "Burris told me I might be able to get some information from a certain famous and highly respected person," he said. "Well, well," Malone said. "Who?" "You," Boyd said. "Oh," Malone said, trying to look disappointed, flattered and modest all at the same time. "Well," he went on after a second, "anything I can do--" "Burris thought you might have some answers," Boyd said. "Burris is getting optimistic in his old age," Malone said. "I don't even have many questions." Boyd nodded. "Well," he said, "you know this California thing?" "Sure I do," Malone said. "You're looking into the resignation out there, aren't you?" "Senator Burley," Boyd said. "That's right. But Senator Burley's resignation isn't all of it, by any means." "It isn't?" Malone said, trying to sound interested. "Not at all," Boyd said. "It goes a lot deeper than it looks on the surface. In the past year, Ken, five senators have announced their resignations from the Senate of the United States. It isn't exactly a record--" "It sounds like a record," Malone said. "Well," Boyd said, "there was 1860 and the Civil War, when a whole lot of senators and representatives resigned all at once." "Oh," Malone said. "But there isn't any Civil War going on now. At least," he added, "I haven't heard of any." "That's what makes it so funny," Boyd said. "Of course, Senator Burley said it was ill health, and so did two others, while Senator Davidson said it was old age." "Well," Malone said, "people do get old. And sick." "Sure," Boyd said. "The only trouble is--" He paused. "Ken," he said, "do you mind if I smoke? I mean, do you mind the smell of cigars?" "Mind?" Malone said. "Not at all. Not at all." He blinked. "Besides," he added, "maybe this one won't smell like a cigar." "Well, the last one did," Boyd said. He took a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket, and lit it. He sniffed. "You know," he said, "You're right. This one doesn't." "I told you," Malone said. "Must have been a bad cigarette. Spoiled or something." "I guess so," Boyd said vaguely. "But about these retirements--the FBI wanted me to look into it because of Burley's being mixed up with the space program scandal last year. Remember? "Vaguely," Malone said. "I was busy last year." "Sure you were," Boyd said. "We were both busy getting famous and well-known." Malone grinned. "Go on with the story," he said. Boyd puffed at his cigarette. "Anyhow, we couldn't find anything really wrong," he said. "Three senators retiring because of ill health, one because of old age. And Farnsworth, the youngest. He had a nervous breakdown." "I didn't hear about it," Malone said. Boyd shrugged. "We hushed it up," he said. "But Farnsworth's got delusions of persecution. He apparently thinks somebody's out to get him. As a matter of fact, he thinks _everybody's_ out to get him." "Now that," Malone said, "sounds familiar." Boyd leaned back a little more in his chair. "Here's the funny thing, though," he said. "The others all act as if they're suspicious of everybody who talks to them. Not anything obvious, you understand. Just--worried. Apprehensive. Always looking at you out of the corners of their eyes. That kind of thing." Malone thought of Senator Lefferts, who was also suffering from delusions of persecution--delusions that had real evidence to back them up. "It does sound funny," he said cautiously. "Well, I reported everything to Burris," Boyd went on. "And he said you were working on something similar, and we might as well pool our resources." "Here we go again," Malone said. He took a deep breath, filling his nostrils with what remained of the cigar odor in the room, and felt more peaceful. Quickly, he told Boyd about what had been happening in Congress. "It seems pretty obvious," he finished, "that there is some kind of a tie-up between the two cases." "Maybe it's obvious," Boyd said, "But it is just a little bit odd. Fun and games. You know, Ken, Burris was right." "How?" Malone said. "He said everything was all mixed up," Boyd went on. "He told me the country was going to Rome in a handbasket, or something like that." Wondering vaguely if Burris had really been predicting mass religious conversions, Malone nodded silently. "And he's right," Boyd said. "Look at the newspapers. Everything's screwy lately." "Everything always is screwy," Malone said. "Not like now," Boyd said. "So many big-shot gangsters have been killed lately we might as well bring back Prohibition. And the labor unions are so busy with internal battles that they haven't had time to go on strike for over a year." "Is that bad?" Malone said. Boyd shrugged. "God knows," he said. "But it's sure confusing as all hell." "And now," Malone said, "with all that going on--" "The Congress of the United States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about all these here wives. [Illustration] Then he looked up at Malone. "Ken," he said in a strained voice, "there seem to be a lot of nutty cases lately." Malone considered. "No," he said at last. "It's just that when a nutty one comes along, we get it." "That's what I mean," Boyd said. "I wonder why that is." Malone shrugged. "It takes a thief to catch a thief," he said. "But these aren't thieves," Boyd said. "I mean--they're just nutty." He paused. "Oh," he said. "And, two thieves are better than one," Malone said. "Anyhow," Boyd said with a small, gusty sigh, "it's company." "Sure," Malone said. Boyd looked for an ashtray, failed again to find one, and walked over to flip a second cigarette out onto Washington. He came back to his chair, sat down, and said: "What's our next step, Ken?" Malone considered carefully. "First," he said finally, "we'll start assuming something. We'll start assuming that there is some kind of organization behind all this--behind all the senators' resignations and everything like that." "It sounds like a big assumption," Boyd said. Malone shook his head. "It isn't really," he said. "After all, we can't figure it's the work of one person: it's too widespread for that. And it's silly to assume that everything's accidental." "All right," Boyd said equably. "It's an organization." "Trying to subvert the United States," Malone went on. "Reducing everything to chaos. And that brings in everything else, Tom. That brings in the unions and the gang wars and everything." Boyd blinked. "How?" he said. "Obvious," Malone said. "Strife brought on by internal confusion--that's what's going on all over. It's the same pattern. And if we assume an organization trying to jam up the United States, it even makes sense." He leaned back and beamed. "Sure it makes sense," Boyd said. "But who's the organization?" Malone shrugged. "If I were doing the picking," Boyd said, "I'd pick the Russians. Or the Chinese. Or both. Probably both." "It's a possibility," Malone said. "Anyhow, if it's sabotage, who else would be interested in sabotaging the United States? There's some Russian or Chinese organization fouling up Congress, and the unions, and the gangs. Come to think of it, why the gangs? It seems to me that if you left the professional gangsters strong, it would do even more to foul things up." "Who knows?" Boyd said. "Maybe they're trying to get rid of American gangsters so they can import some of their own." "That doesn't make any sense," Malone said, "but I'll think about it. In the meantime, we have one more interesting question." "We do?" Boyd said. "Sure we do," Malone said. "The question is: How?" Boyd said: "Hm-m-m." Then there was silence for a little while. "How are the saboteurs doing all this?" Malone said. "It just doesn't seem very probable that _all_ the technicians in the Senate Office Building, for instance, are spies. It makes even less sense that the labor unions are composed mostly of spies. Or, for that matter, the Mafia and the organizations like it. What would spies be doing in the Mafia?" "Learning Italian," Boyd said instantly. "Don't be silly," Malone said. "If there were that many spies in this country, the Russians wouldn't have to fight at all. They could _vote_ the Communists into power--and by a nice big landslide, too." "Wait a minute," Boyd said. "If there aren't so many spies, then how is all this getting done?" Malone beamed. "That's the question," he said. "And I think I have the answer." "You do?" Boyd said. After a second he said: "Oh, no." "Suppose you tell me," Malone said. Boyd opened his mouth. Nothing emerged. He shut it. A second passed and he opened it again. "Magic?" he said weakly. "Not exactly," Malone said cheerfully. "But you're getting warm." Boyd shut his eyes. "I'm not going to stand for it," he announced. "I'm not going to take any more." "Any more what?" Malone said. "Tell me what you have in mind." "I won't even consider it," Boyd said. "It haunts me. It gets into my dreams. Now, look, Ken: I can't even see a pitchfork any more without thinking of Greek letters." Malone took a breath. "Which Greek letter?" he said. "You know very well," Boyd said. "What a pitchfork looks like. _Psi_. And I'm not even going to think about it." "Well," Malone said equably, "you won't have to. If you'd rather start with the Russian spy end of things, you can do that." "What I'd rather do," Boyd said, "is resign." "Next year," Malone said instantly. "For now, you can wait around until the dossiers come up--they're for the Senate Office Building technicians, and they're on the way. You can go over them, and start checking on any known Russian agents in the country for contacts. You can also start checking on the dossiers, and in general for any hanky-panky." Boyd blinked. "Hanky-panky?" he said. "It's a perfectly good word," Malone said, offended. "Or two words. Anyhow, you can start on that end, and not worry about anything else." "It's going to haunt me," Boyd said. "Well," Malone said, "eat lots of ectoplasm and get enough sleep, and everything will be fine. After all, I'm going to have to do the real end of the work--the psionics end. I may be wrong, but--" He was interrupted by the phone. He flicked the switch and Andrew J. Burris' face appeared on the screen. "Malone," Burris said instantly, "I just got a complaint from the State Department that ties in with your work. Their translator has been acting up." Malone couldn't say anything for a minute. "Malone," Burris went on. "I said--" "I heard you," Malone said. "And it doesn't have one." "It doesn't have one what?" Burris said. "A pig-Latin circuit," Malone said. "What else?" Burris' voice was very calm. "Malone," he said, "what does pig-Latin have to do with anything?" "You said--" "I said one of the State Department translators was acting up," Burris said. "If you want details--" "I don't think I can stand them," Malone said. "Some of the Russian and Chinese releases have come through with the meaning slightly altered," Burris went on doggedly. "And I want you to check on it right away. I--" "Thank God," Malone said. Burris blinked. "What?" "Never mind," Malone said. "Never mind. I'm glad you told me, Chief. I'll get to work on it right away, and--" "You do that, Malone," Burris said. "And stop calling me Chief! Do I look like an Indian? Do I have feathers in my hair?" "Anything," Malone said grandly, "is possible." He broke the connection in a hurry. III The summer sun beat down on the white city of Washington, D. C. as if it had mistaken its instructions slightly, and was convinced that the city had been put down somewhere in the Sahara. The sun seemed confused, Malone thought. If this were the Sahara, obviously there was no reason whatever for the Potomac to be running through it. The sun was doing its best to correct this small error, however, by exerting even more heat in a valiant attempt to dry up the river. Its attempt was succeeding, at least partially. The Potomac was still there, but quite a lot of it was not in the river bed any more. Instead, it had gone into the air, which was so humid by now that Malone was willing to swear that it was splashing into his lungs at every inhalation. Resisting an impulse to try the breast-stroke, he stood in the full glare of the straining sun, just outside the Senate Office Building. He looked across at the Capitol, squinting his eyes manfully against the glare of its dome in the brightness. The Capitol was, at any rate, some relief from the sight of Thomas Boyd and a group of agents busily grilling two technicians. That was going on in the Senate Office Building, and Malone had come over to watch the proceedings. Everything had been set up in what Malone considered the most complicated fashion possible. A big room had been turned into a projection chamber, and films were being run off over and over. The films, taken by hidden cameras watching the computer-secretaries, had caught two technicians red-handed punching errors into the machines. Boyd had leaped on this evidence, and he and his crew were showing the movies to the technicians and questioning them under bright lights in an effort to break down their resistance. But it didn't look as though they were going to have any more success than the sun was having, turning Washington into the Sahara. After all, Malone told himself, wiping his streaming brow, there were no Pyramids in Washington. He tried to discover whether that made any sense, but it was too much work. He went back to thinking about Boyd. The technicians were sticking to their original stories, that the mistakes had been honest ones. It sounded like a sensible idea to Malone; after all, people did make mistakes. And the FBI didn't have a single shred of evidence to prove that the technicians were engaged in deliberate sabotage. But Boyd wasn't giving up. Over and over he got the technicians to repeat their stories, looking for discrepancies or slips. Over and over he ran off the films of their mistakes, looking for some clue, some shred of evidence. Even the sight of the Capitol, Malone told himself sadly, was better than any more of Boyd's massive investigation techniques. He had come out to do some thinking. He believed, in spite of a good deal of evidence to the contrary, that his best ideas came to him while walking. At any rate, it was a way of getting away from four walls and from the prying eyes and anxious looks of superiors. He sighed gently, crammed his hat onto his head and started out. Only a maniac, he reflected, would wear a hat on a day like the one he was swimming through. But the people who passed him as he trudged onward to no particular destination didn't seem to notice; they gave him a fairly wide berth, and seemed very polite, but that wasn't because they thought he was nuts, Malone knew. It was because they knew he was an FBI man. That was the result of an FBI regulation. All agents had to wear hats. Malone wasn't sure why, and his thinking on the matter had only dredged up the idea that you had to have a hat in case somebody asked you to keep something under it. But the FBI was firm about its rulings. No matter what the weather, an agent wore a hat. Malone thought bitterly that he might just as well wear a red, white and blue luminous sign that said _FBI_ in great winking letters, and maybe a hooting siren, too. Still, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not supposed to be a secret organization--no matter what occasional critics might say. And the hats, at least as long as the weather remained broiling, were enough proof of that for anybody. Malone could feel water collecting under his hat and soaking his head. He removed the hat quickly, wiped his head with a handkerchief and replaced the hat, feeling as if he had become incognito for a few seconds. The hat was back on now, feeling official but terrible, and about the same was true of the fully-loaded Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver which hung in his shoulder holster. The harness chafed at his shoulder and chest and the weight of the gun itself was an added and unwelcome burden. But even without the gun and the hat, Malone did not feel exactly chipper. His shirt and undershirt were no longer two garments, but one, welded together by seamless sweat and plastered heavily and not too skillfully to his skin. His trouser legs clung damply to calves and thighs, rubbing as he walked, and at the knees each trouser leg attached and detached itself with the unpleasant regularity of a wet bastinado. Inside Malone's shoes, his socks were completely awash, and he seemed to squish as he walked. It was hard to tell, but there seemed to be a small fish in his left shoe. It might, he told himself, be no more than a pebble or a wrinkle in his sock. But he was willing to swear that it was swimming upstream. And the forecast, he told himself bitterly, was for continued warm. He forced himself to take his mind off his own troubles and get back to the troubles of the FBI in general, such as the problem at hand. It was an effort, but he frowned and kept walking, and within a block he was concentrating again on the _psi_ powers. * * * * * _Psi_, he told himself, was behind the whole mess. In spite of Boyd's horrified refusal to believe such a thing, Malone was sure of it. Three years ago, of course, he wouldn't have considered the notion either. But since then a great many things had happened, and his horizons had widened. After all, capturing a double handful of totally insane, if perfectly genuine telepaths, from asylums all over the country, was enough by itself to widen quite a few stunned horizons. And then, later, there had been the gang of juvenile delinquents. They had been perfectly normal juvenile delinquents, stealing cars and bopping a stray policeman or two. It just happened, though, that they had solved the secret of instantaneous teleportation, too. This made them just a trifle unusual. In capturing them, Malone, too, had learned the teleportation secret. Unlike Boyd, he thought, or Burris, the idea of psionic power didn't bother him much. After all, the psionic spectrum--if it was a spectrum at all--was just as much a natural phenomenon as gravity, or magnetism. It was just a little hard for some people to get used to. And, of course, he didn't fully understand _how_ it worked, or _why_. This put him in the position, he told himself, of an Australian aborigine. He tried to imagine an Australian aborigine in a hat on a hot day, decided the aborigine would have too much sense, and got back off the subject again. However, he thought grimly, there was this Australian aborigine. And he had a magnifying glass, which he'd picked up from the wreck of some ship. Using that--assuming that experience, or a friendly missionary, taught him how--he could manage to light a fire, using the sun's thermonuclear processes to do the job. Malone doubted that the aborigine knew anything about thermonuclear processes, but he could start a fire with them. As a matter of fact, he told himself, the aborigine didn't understand oxidation, either. But he could use that fire, when he got it going. In spite of his lack of knowledge, the aborigine could use that nice, hot, burning fire ... Hurriedly, Malone pried his thoughts away from aborigines and heat, and tried to focus his mind elsewhere. He didn't understand psionic processes, he thought; but then, nobody did, really, as far as he knew. But he could use them. And, obviously, somebody else could use them, too. Only what kind of force was being used? What kind of psionic force would it take to make so many people in the United States goof up the way they were doing? That, Malone told himself, was a good question, a basic and an important question. He was proud of himself for thinking of it. Unfortunately, he didn't have the answer. But he thought he knew a way of getting one. It was perfectly true that nobody knew much about how psionics worked. For that matter, nobody knew very much about how gravity worked. But there was still some information--and, in the case of psionics, Malone knew where it was to be found. It was to be found in Yucca Flats, Nevada. It was, of course, true that Nevada would probably be even hotter than Washington, D. C. But there was no help for that, Malone told himself sadly; and, besides, the cold chill of the expert himself would probably cool things off quite rapidly. Malone thought of Dr. Thomas O'Connor, the Westinghouse psionics expert and frowned. O'Connor was not exactly what might be called a friendly man. But he did know more about psionics than anyone else Malone could think of. And his help had been invaluable in solving the two previous psionic cases Malone had worked on. For a second he thought of calling O'Connor, but he brushed that thought aside bravely. In spite of the heat of Yucca Flats, he would have to talk to the man personally. He thought again of O'Connor's congealed personality, and wondered if it would really be effective in combating the heat. If it were, he told himself, he would take the man right back to Washington with him, and plug him into the air-conditioning lines. He sighed deeply, thought about a cigar and decided regretfully against it, here on the public street where he would be visible to anyone. Instead, he looked around him, discovered that he was only a block from a large, neon-lit drugstore and headed for it. Less than a minute later he was in a phone booth. * * * * * The operators throughout the country seemed to suffer from heat prostration, and Malone was hardly inclined to blame them. But, all the same, it took several minutes for him to get through to Dr. O'Connor's office, and a minute or so more before he could convince a security-addled secretary that, after all, he would hardly blow O'Connor to bits over the long-distance phone. Finally the secretary, with a sigh of reluctance, said she would see if Dr. O'Connor were available. Malone waited in the phone booth, opening the door every few seconds to breathe. The booth was air-conditioned, but remained for some mystical reason an even ten degrees above the boiling point of Malone's temper. Finally Dr. O'Connor's lean, pallid face appeared on the screen. He had not changed since Malone had last seen him. He still looked, and acted, like one of Malone's more disliked law professors. "Ah," the scientist said in a cold, precise voice. "Mr. Malone. I am sorry for our precautions, but you understand that security must be served." "Sure," Malone said. "Being an FBI man, of course you would," Dr. O'Connor went on, his face changing slightly and his voice warming almost to the boiling point of nitrogen. It was obvious that the phrase was Dr. O'Connor's idea of a little joke, and Malone smiled politely and nodded. The scientist seemed to feel some friendliness toward Malone, though it was hard to tell for sure. But Malone had brought him some fine specimens to work with--telepaths and teleports, though human, being no more than specimens to such a very precise scientific mind--and he seemed grateful for Malone's diligence and effort in finding such fascinating objects of study. That Malone certainly hadn't started out to find them made, it appeared, very little difference. "Well, then," O'Connor said, returning to his normal, serious tone, "what can I do for you, Mr. Malone?" "If you have the time, doctor," Malone said respectfully, "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes." He had the absurd feeling that O'Connor was going to tell him to stop by after class, but the scientist only nodded. "Your call is timed very well," he said. "As it happens, Mr. Malone, I do have a few seconds to spare just now." "Fine," Malone said. "I should be glad to talk with you," O'Connor said, without looking any more glad than ever. "I'll be right there," Malone said. O'Connor nodded again, and blanked out. Malone switched off and took a deep, superheated breath of phone booth air. For a second he considered starting his trip from outside the phone booth, but that was dangerous--if not to Malone, then to innocent spectators. Psionics was by no means a household word, and the sight of Malone leaving for Nevada might send several citizens straight to the wagon. Which was not a place, he thought judiciously, for anybody to be on such a hot day. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. In that time he reconstructed from memory a detailed, three-dimensional, full-color image of Dr. O'Connor's office in his mind. It was perfect in detail; he checked it over mentally and then, by a special effort of will, he gave himself the psychic push that made the transition possible. When he opened his eyes, he was in O'Connor's office, standing in front of the scientist's wide desk. He hoped nobody had been looking into the phone booth at the instant he had disappeared; but he was reasonably sure he'd been unobserved. People didn't go around peering into phone booths, after all, and he had seen no one. O'Connor looked up without surprise. "Ah," he said. "Sit down, Mr. Malone." Malone looked around for the chair, which was an uncomfortably straight-backed affair, and sat down in it gingerly. Remembering past visits to O'Connor, he was grateful for even the small amount of relaxation the hard wood afforded him. O'Connor had only recently unbent to the point of supplying a spare chair in his office for visitors, and, apparently, especially for Malone. Perhaps, Malone thought, it was more gratitude for the lovely specimens. Malone still felt uncomfortable, but tried bravely not to show it. He felt slightly guilty, too, as he always did when he popped into O'Connor's office without bothering to stay spacebound. By law, after all, he knew he should check in and out at the main gate of the huge, ultra-top-secret government reservation whenever he visited Yucca Flats. But that meant wasting a lot of time and going through a lot of trouble. Malone had rationalized it out for himself that way, and had got just far enough to do things the quick and easy way, and not quite far enough to feel undisturbed about it. After all, he told himself grimly, anything that saved time and trouble increased the efficiency of the FBI, so it was all to the good. He swallowed hard. "Dr. O'Connor--" he began. O'Connor looked up again. "Yes?" he said. He'd had plenty of practice in watching people appear and disappear, between Malone and the specimens Malone had brought him; he was beyond surprise or shock by now. "I came here to talk to you," Malone began again. O'Connor nodded, a trifle impatiently. "Yes," he said. "I know that." "Well--" Malone thought fast. Presenting the case to O'Connor was impossible; it was too complicated, and it might violate governmental secrecy somewhere along the line. He decided to wrap it up in a hypothetical situation. "Doctor," he said, "I know that all the various manifestations of the _psi_ powers were investigated and named long before responsible scientists became interested in the subject." "That," O'Connor said with some reluctance, "is true." He looked sad, as if he wished they'd waited on naming some of the psionic manifestations until he'd been born and started investigating them. Malone tried to imagine a person doing something called O'Connorizing, and decided he was grateful for history. "Well, then--" he said. "At least," O'Connor cut in, "it is true in a rather vague and general way. You see, Mr. Malone, any precise description of a psionic manifestation must wait until a metalanguage has grown up to encompass it; that is, until understanding and knowledge have reached the point where careful and accurate description can take place." "Oh," Malone said helplessly. "Sure." He wondered if what O'Connor had said meant anything, and decided that it probably did, but he didn't want to know about it. "While we have not yet reached that point," O'Connor said, "we are approaching it in our experiments. I am hopeful that, in the near future--" "Well," Malone cut in desperately, "sure. Of course. Naturally." * * * * * Dr. O'Connor looked miffed. The temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees, and Malone swallowed hard and tried to look ingratiating and helpful, like a student with nothing but A's on his record. Before O'Connor could pick up the thread of his sentence, Malone went on: "What I mean is something like this. Picking up the mental activity of another person is called telepathy. Floating in the air is called levitation. Moving objects around is psychokinesis. Going from one place to another instantaneously is teleportation. And so on." "The language you use," O'Connor said, still miffed, "is extremely loose. I might go so far as to say that the statements you have made are, essentially, meaningless as a result of their lack of rigor." Malone took a deep breath. "Dr. O'Connor," he said, "you know what I mean, don't you?" "I believe so," O'Connor said, with the air of a king granting a pardon to a particularly repulsive-looking subject in the lowest income brackets. "Well, then," Malone said. "Yes or no?" O'Connor frowned. "Yes or no what?" he said. "I" Malone blinked. "I meant, the things have names," he said at last. "All the various psionic manifestations have names." "Ah," O'Connor said. "Well. I should say." He put his fingertips together and stared at a point on the white ceiling for a second. "Yes," he said at last. Malone breathed a sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "That's what I wanted to know." He leaned forward. "And if they all do have names," he went on, "what is it called, when a large group of people are forced to act in a certain manner?" O'Connor shrugged. "Forced?" he said. "Forced by mental power," Malone said. There was a second of silence. "At first," O'Connor said, "I might think of various examples: the actions of a mob, for example, or the demonstrations of the Indian Rope Trick, or perhaps the sale of a useless product through television or through other advertising." Again his face moved, ever so slightly, in what he obviously believed to be a smile. "The usual name for such a phenomenon is 'mass hypnotism,' Mr. Malone," he said. "But that is not, strictly speaking, a _psi_ phenomenon at all. Studies in that area belong to the field of mob psychology; they are not properly in my scope." He looked vastly superior to anything and everything that was outside his scope. Malone concentrated on looking receptive and understanding. "Yes?" he said. O'Connor gave him a look that made Malone feel he'd been caught cribbing during an exam, but the scientist said nothing to back up the look. Instead, he went on: "I will grant that there may be an amplification of the telepathic faculty in the normal individual in such cases." "Good," Malone said doubtfully. "Such an amplification," O'Connor went on, as if he hadn't heard, "would account for the apparent ... ah ... mental linkage that makes a mob appear to act as a single organism during certain periods of ... ah ... stress." He looked judicious for a second, and then nodded. "However," he said, "other than that, I would doubt that there is any psionic force involved." Malone spent a second or two digesting O'Connor's reply. "Well," he said at last, "I'm not sure that's what I meant. I mean, I'm not sure I meant to ask that question." He took a breath and decided to start all over. "It's not like a mob," he said, "with everybody all doing the same thing at the same time. It's more like a group of men, all separated, without any apparent connections between any of the men. And they're all working toward a common goal. All doing different things, but all with the same objective. See?" "Of course I do," O'Connor said flatly. "But what you're suggesting--" He looked straight at Malone. "Have you had any experience of this ... phenomenon?" "Experience?" Malone said. "I believe you have had," O'Connor said. "Such a concept could not have come to you in a theoretical manner. You must be involved with an actual situation very much like the one you describe." Malone swallowed. "Me?" he said. "Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. "May I remind you that this is Yucca Flats? That the security checks here are as careful as anywhere in the world? That I, myself, have top-security clearance for my special projects? You do not need to watch your words here." "It's not security," Malone said. "Anyhow, it's not only security. But things are pretty complicated." "I assure you," O'Connor said, "that I will be able to understand even events which you feel are complex." Malone swallowed again, hard. "I didn't mean--" he started. "Please, Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. His voice was colder than usual. Malone had the feeling that he was about to take the extra chair away. "Go on," O'Connor said. "Explain yourself." Malone took a deep breath. He started with the facts he'd been told by Burris, and went straight through to the interviews of the two computer-secretary technicians by Boyd and Company. It took quite a while. By the time he had finished, O'Connor wasn't looking frozen any more; he'd apparently forgotten to keep the freezer coils running. Instead, his face showed frank bewilderment, and great interest. "I never heard of such a thing," he said. "Never. Not at any time." "But--" O'Connor shook his head. "I have never heard of a psionic manifestation on that order," he said. It seemed to be a painful admission. "Something that would make a random group of men co-operate in that manner--why, it's completely new." "It is?" Malone said, wondering if, when it was all investigated and described, it might be called O'Connorizing. Then he wondered how anybody was going to go about investigating it and describing it, and sank even deeper into gloom. [Illustration] "Completely new," O'Connor said. "You may take my word." Then, slowly, he began to brighten again, with all the glitter of newly-formed ice. "As a matter of fact," he said, in a tone more like his usual one, "Mr. Malone, I don't think it's possible." "But it happened," Malone said. "It's still happening. All over." O'Connor's lips tightened. "I have given my opinion," he said. "I do not believe that such a thing is possible. There must be some other explanation." "All right," Malone said agreeably. "I'll bite. What is it?" O'Connor frowned. "Your levity," he said, "is uncalled-for." Malone shrugged. "I didn't mean to be--" he paused. "Anyhow, I didn't mean to be funny," he went on. "But I would like to have another idea of what's causing all this." "Scientific theories," O'Connor said sternly, "are not invented on the spur of the moment. Only after long, careful thought--" "You mean you can't think of anything," Malone said. "There must be some other explanation," O'Connor said. "Naturally, since the facts have only now been presented to me, it is impossible for me to display at once a fully constructed theory." Malone nodded slowly. "O.K.," he said. "Have you got any hints, then? Any ideas at all?" O'Connor shook his head. "I have not," he said. "But I strongly suggest, Mr. Malone, that you recheck your data. The fault may very well lie in your own interpretations of the actual facts." "I don't think so," Malone said. O'Connor grimaced. "I do," he said firmly. Malone sighed, very faintly. He shifted in the chair and began to realize, for the first time, just how uncomfortable it really was. He also felt a little chilly, and the chill was growing. That, he told himself, was the effect of Dr. O'Connor. He no longer regretted wearing his hat. As a matter of fact, he thought wistfully for a second of a small, light overcoat. O'Connor, he told himself, was definitely not the warm, friendly type. "Well, then," he said, conquering the chilly feeling for a second, "maybe there's somebody else. Somebody who knows something more about psionics, and who might have some other ideas about--" "Please, Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. "The United States Government would hardly have chosen me had I not been uniquely qualified in my field." Malone sighed again. "I mean ... maybe there are some books on the subject," he said quietly, hoping he sounded tactful. "Maybe there's something I could look up." "Mr. Malone." The temperature of the office, Malone realized, was definitely lowering. O'Connor's built-in freezer coils were working overtime, he told himself. "The field of psionics is so young that I can say, without qualification, that I am acquainted with everything written on the subject. By that, of course, I mean scientific works. I do not doubt that the American Society for Psychical Research, for instance, has hundreds of crackpot books which I have never read, or even heard of. But in the strictly scientific field, I must say that--" He broke off, looking narrowly at Malone with what might have been concern, but looked more like discouragement and boredom. "Mr. Malone," he said, "are you ill?" Malone thought about it. He wasn't quite sure, he discovered. The chill in the office was bothering him more and more, and as it grew he began to doubt that it was all due to the O'Connor influence. Suddenly a distinct shudder started somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulders and rippled its way down his body. Another one followed it, and then a third. "Me?" Malone said. "I'm ... I'm all right." "You seem to have contracted a chill," O'Connor said. A fourth shudder followed the other three. "I ... guess so," Malone said. "I d-d ... I do s-seem to be r-r-rather chilly." O'Connor nodded. "Ah," he said. "I thought so. Although a chill is certainly odd at seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit." He looked at the thermometer just outside the window of his office, then turned back to Malone. "Pardon me," he said. "Seventy-one point six." "Is ... is that all it is?" Malone said. Seventy-one point six degrees, or even seventy-two, hardly sounded like the broiling Nevada desert he'd expected. "Of course," O'Connor said. "At nine o'clock in the morning, one would hardly expect great temperatures. The desert becomes quite hot during the day, but cools off rapidly; I assume you are familiar with the laws covering the system." "Sure," Malone said. "S-sure." The chills were not getting any better. They continued to travel up and down his body with the dignified regularity of Pennsylvania Railroad commuter trains. O'Connor frowned for a second. It was obvious that his keen scientific eye was sizing up the phenomenon, and reporting events to his keen scientific brain. In a second or less, the keen scientific brain had come up with an answer, and Dr. O'Connor spoke in his very keenest scientific voice. "I should have warned you," he said, without an audible trace of regret. "The answer is childishly simple, Mr. Malone. You left Washington at noon." "Just a little before noon," Malone said. Remembering the burning sun, he added: "High noon. Very high." "Just so," O'Connor said. "And not only the heat was intense; the humidity, I assume, was also high." "Very," Malone said, thinking back. He shivered again. "In Washington," O'Connor said, "it was noon. Here it is nine o'clock, and hardly as warm. The atmosphere is quite arid, and about twenty degrees below that obtaining in Washington." Malone thought about it, trying to ignore the chills. "Oh," he said at last. "And all the time I thought it was you." "What?" O'Connor leaned forward. "Nothing," Malone said hastily. "My suggestion," O'Connor said, putting his fingertips together again, "is that you take off your clothes, which are undoubtedly damp, and--" Naturally, Malone had not brought any clothes to Yucca Flats to change into. And when he tried to picture himself in a spare suit of Dr. O'Connor's, the picture just wouldn't come. Besides, the idea of doing a modified strip-tease in, or near, the O'Connor office was thoroughly unattractive. "Well," he said slowly, "thanks a lot, doctor, but no thanks. I really have a better idea." "Better?" O'Connor said. "Well, I--" Malone took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He heard Dr. O'Connor say: "Well, Mr. Malone--good-by. And good luck." Then the office in Yucca Flats was gone, and Malone was standing in the bedroom of his own apartment, on the fringes of Washington, D. C. IV He walked over to the wall control and shut off the air-conditioning in a hurry. He threw open a window and breathed great gulps of the hot, humid air from the streets. In a small corner at the back of his mind, he wondered why he was grateful for the air he had suffered under only a few minutes before. But that, he reflected, was life. And a very silly kind of life, too, he told himself without rancor. In a few minutes he left the window, somewhat restored, and headed for the shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started to sing. But his voice didn't sound as much like the voice of Lauritz Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize that he was bothered. He climbed out of the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying, trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and _psi_ phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of living version of an extremely good edition of the _Britannica_, always available for reference. And now O'Connor had failed him. That, Malone thought, was hardly fair. O'Connor had no business failing him--particularly when there was no place else to go. The scientist had been right, of course, Malone knew. There was no other scientist who knew as much about psionics as O'Connor, and if O'Connor said there were no books, then that was that: there were no books. He reached for a drawer in his dresser, opened it and pulled out some underclothes, humming tunelessly under his breath as he dressed. If there was no one to ask, he thought, and if there were no books-- He stopped with a sock in his hand, and stared at it in wonder. O'Connor hadn't said there were no books. As a matter of fact, Malone realized, he'd said exactly the opposite. There were books. But they were "crackpot" books. O'Connor had never read them. He had, he said, probably never even heard of many of them. "Crackpot" was a fighting word to O'Connor. But to Malone it had all the sweetness of flattery. After all, he'd found telepaths in insane asylums, and teleports among the juvenile delinquents of New York. "Crackpot" was a word that was rapidly ceasing to have any meaning at all in Malone's mind. He realized that he was still staring at the sock, which was black with a gold clock. Hurriedly, he put it on, and finished dressing. He reached for the phone and made a few fast calls, and then teleported himself to his locked office in FBI Headquarters, on East Sixty-ninth Street in New York. He let himself out, and strolled down the corridor. The agent-in-charge looked up from his desk as Malone passed, blinked, and said: "Hello, Malone. What's up now?" "I'm going prowling," Malone said. "But there won't be any work for you, as far as I can see." "Oh?" "Just relax," Malone said. "Breathe easy." "I'll try to," the agent-in-charge said, a little sadly. "But every time you show up, I think about that wave of red Cadillacs you started. I'll never feel really secure again." "Relax," Malone said. "Next time it won't be Cadillacs. But it might be spirits, blowing on ear-trumpets. Or whatever it is they do." "Spirits, Malone?" the agent-in-charge said. "No, thanks," Malone said sternly. "I never drink on duty." He gave the agent a cheery wave of his hand and went out to the street. * * * * * The Psychical Research Society had offices in the Ravell Building, a large structure composed mostly of plate glass and anodized aluminum that looked just a little like a bright blue, partially transparent crackerbox that had been stood on end for purposes unknown. Having walked all the way down to this box on Fifty-sixth Street, Malone had recovered his former sensitivity range to temperature and felt pathetically grateful for the coolish sea breeze that made New York somewhat less of an unbearable Summer Festival than was normal. The lobby of the building was glittering and polished, as if human beings could not possibly exist in it. Malone took an elevator to the sixth floor, stepped out into a small, equally polished hall, and hurriedly looked off to his right. A small door stood there, with a legend engraved in elegantly small letters. It said: _The Psychical Research Society_ _Push_ Malone obeyed instructions. The door swung noiselessly open, and then closed behind him. He was in a large square-looking room which had a couch and chair set at one corner, and a desk at the far end. Behind the desk was a brass plate, on which was engraved: _The Psychical Research Society_ _Main Offices_ To Malone's left was a hall that angled off into invisibility, and to the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors and two radiators until it ran into a right-angled turn and also disappeared. Malone took in the details of his surroundings almost automatically, filing them in his memory just in case he ever needed to use them. One detail, however, required more than automatic attention. Sitting behind the desk, her head just below the brass plaque, was a redhead. She was, Malone thought, positively beautiful. Of course, he could not see the lower two-thirds of her body, but if they were half as interesting as the upper third and the face and head, he was willing to spend days, weeks or even months on their investigation. Some jobs, he told himself, feeling a strong sense of duty, were definitely worth taking time over. She was turned slightly away from Malone, and had obviously not heard him come in. Malone wondered how best to announce himself, and regretfully gave up the idea of tiptoeing up to the girl, placing his hands over her eyes, kissing the back of her neck and crying: "Surprise!" It was elegant, he felt, but it just wasn't right. He compromised at last on the old established method of throat-clearing to attract her attention. He was sure he could take it from there, to an eminently satisfying conclusion. He tiptoed on the deep-pile rug right up to her desk. And the expected happened. He sneezed. The sneeze was loud and long, and it echoed through the room and throughout the corridors. It sounded to Malone like the blast of a small bomb, or possibly a grenade. Startled himself by the volume of sound he had managed to generate, he jumped back. The girl had jumped, too--but her leap had been straight upward, about an inch and a half. She came down on her chair and reached up a hand. The hand wiped the back of her neck with a slow, lingering motion of complete loathing. Then, equally slowly, she turned. "That," she said in a low, sweet voice, "was a dirty trick." "It was an accident," Malone said. She regarded Malone darkly. "Do you always do that to strangers? Is it some new sort of perversion?" "I have never done such a thing before," Malone said sternly. "Oh," the girl said. "An experimenter. Avid for new sensations. Probably a jaded scion of a rich New York family." She paused. "Tell me," she said. "Is it fun?" Malone opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He shut it, thought for a second and then tried again. He got as far as: "I--" before Nemesis overtook him. The second sneeze was even louder and more powerful than the first had been. "It must be fun," the girl said acidly, producing a handkerchief from somewhere and going to work on her face. "You just can't seem to wait to do it again. Would it do any good to tell you that the fascination with this form of greeting is not universal? Or don't you care?" Malone said, goaded, "I've got a cold." "And you feel you should share it with the world," the girl said. "I quite understand. Tell me, is there anything I can do for you? Or has your mission been accomplished?" "My mission?" Malone said. "Having sneezed twice at me," the girl said, "do you now feel satisfied? Will you vanish softly and silently away? Or do you want to sneeze at somebody else?" "I want the President of the Society," Malone said. "According to my information, his name is Sir Lewis Carter." "And if you sneeze at him," the girl said, "yours is going to be mud. He isn't much on novelty." "I--" "Besides which," she said, "he's extremely busy. And I don't think he'll see you at all. Why don't you go and sneeze at somebody else? There must be lots of people who would consider themselves honored to be noticed, especially in such a startling way. Why don't you try and find one somewhere? Somewhere very far away?" Malone was beyond speech. He fumbled for his wallet, flipped it open and showed the girl his identification. "My, my," she said. "And hasn't the FBI anything better to do? I mean, can't you go and sneeze at counterfeiters in their lairs, or wherever they might be?" "I want to see Sir Lewis Carter," Malone said doggedly. The girl shrugged and picked up the phone on her desk. It was a blank-vision device, of course; many office intercoms were. She dialed, waited and then said: "Sir Lewis, please." Another second went by. Then she spoke again. "Sir Lewis," she said, "this is Lou, at the front desk. There's a man here named Malone, who wants to see you." She waited a second. "I don't know what he wants," she told the phone. "But he's from the FBI." A second's pause. "That's right, the FBI," she said. "All right, Sir Lewis. Right away." She hung up the phone and turned to watch Malone warily. "Sir Lewis," she said, "will see you. I couldn't say why. But take the side corridor to the rear of the suite. His office has his name on it, and I won't tell you you can't miss it because I have every faith that you will. Good luck." Malone blinked. "Look," he said. "I know I startled you, but I didn't mean to. I--" He started to sneeze, but this time he got his own handkerchief out in time and muffled the explosion slightly. "Good work," the girl said approvingly. * * * * * There was nothing at all to say to that remark, Malone reflected as he wended his way down the side corridor. It seemed endless, and kept branching off unexpectedly. Once he blundered into a large open room filled with people at desks. A woman who seemed to have a great many teeth and rather bulbous eyes looked up at him. "Can I help you?" she said in a fervent whine. "I sincerely hope not," Malone said, backing away and managing to find the corridor once more. After what seemed like a long time, and two more sneezes, he found a small door which was labeled in capital letters: THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY SIR LEWIS CARTER PRESIDENT Malone sighed. "Well," he muttered, "they certainly aren't hiding anything." He pushed at the door, and it swung open. Sir Lewis was a tall, solidly-built man with a kindly expression. He wore gray flannel trousers and a brown tweed jacket, which made an interesting color contrast with his iron-gray hair. His teeth were clenched so firmly on the bit of a calabash pipe with a meerschaum bowl that Malone wondered if he could ever get loose. Malone shut the door behind him, and Sir Lewis rose and extended a hand. Malone went to the desk and reached across to take the hand. It was firm and dry. "I'm Kenneth Malone," Malone said. "Ah, yes," Sir Lewis said. "Pleased to meet you; always happy, of course, to do whatever I can for your FBI. Not only a duty, so to speak, but a pleasure. Sit down. Please do sit down." Malone found a chair at the side of the desk, and sank into it. It was soft and comfortable. It provided such a contrast to O'Connor's furnishings that Malone began to wish it was Sir Lewis who was employed at Yucca Flats. Then he could tell Sir Lewis everything about the case. Now, of course, he could only hedge and try to make do without stating very many facts. "Sir Lewis," he said, "I trust you'll keep this conversation confidential." "Naturally," Sir Lewis said. He removed the pipe, stared at it, and replaced it. "I can't give you the full details," Malone went on, "but the FBI is presently engaged in an investigation which requires the specialized knowledge your organization seems to have." "FBI?" Sir Lewis said. "Specialized investigation?" He seemed pleased, but a trifle puzzled. "Dear boy, anything we have is at your disposal, of course. But I quite fail to see how you can consider us--" "It's rather an unusual problem," Malone said, feeling that that was the understatement of the year. "But I understand that your records go back nearly a century." "Quite true," Sir Lewis murmured. "During that time," Malone said, "the Society investigated a great many supposedly supernatural or supernormal incidents." "Many of them," Sir Lewis said, "were discovered to be fraudulent, I'm afraid. The great majority, in fact." "That's what I'd assume," Malone said. He fished in his pockets, found a cigarette and lit it. Sir Lewis went on chewing at his unlit pipe. "What we're interested in," Malone said, "is some description of the various methods by which these frauds were perpetrated." "Ah," Sir Lewis said. "The tricks of the trade, so to speak?" "Exactly," Malone said. "Well, then," Sir Lewis said. "The luminous gauze, for instance, that passes for ectoplasm; the various methods of table-lifting; control of the ouija board--things like that?" "Not quite that elementary," Malone said. He puffed on the cigarette, wishing it was a cigar. "We're pretty much up to that kind of thing. But had it ever occurred to you that many of the methods used by phony mind-reading acts, for instance, might be used as communication methods by spies?" "Why, I believe some have been," Sir Lewis said. "Though I don't know much about that, of course; there was a case during the First World War--" "Exactly," Malone said. He took a deep breath. "It's things like that we're interested in," he said, and spent the next twenty minutes slowly approaching his subject. Sir Lewis, apparently fascinated, was perfectly willing to unbend in any direction, and jotted down notes on some of Malone's more interesting cases, murmuring: "Most unusual, most unusual," as he wrote. The various types of phenomena that the Society had investigated came into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond, the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of fairies, goblins and elves. "But, Sir Lewis--" he said. "I make no claims personally," Sir Lewis said. "But I understand that there is a large and somewhat vocal group which does make rather solid-sounding claims in that direction. They say that they have seen fairies, talked with goblins, danced with the elves." "They must be very unusual people," Malone said, understating heavily. "Oh," Sir Lewis said, "without a that it goes through Accounting." Talk like this passed away nearly a half hour, until Malone finally felt that it was the right time to introduce some of his real questions. "Tell me, Sir Lewis," he said, "have you had many instances of a single man, or a small group of men, controlling the actions of a much larger group? And doing it in such a way that the larger group doesn't even know it is being manipulated?" "Of course I have," Sir Lewis said. "And so have you. They call it advertising." Malone flicked his cigarette into an ashtray. "I didn't mean exactly that," he said. "Suppose they're doing it in such a way that the larger group doesn't even suspect that manipulation is going on?" Sir Lewis removed his pipe and frowned at it. "I may be able to give you a little information," he said slowly, "but not much." "Ah?" Malone said, trying to sound only mildly interested. "Outside of mob psychology," Sir Lewis said, "and all that sort of thing, I really haven't seen any record of a case of such a thing happening. And I can't quite imagine anyone faking it." "But you have got some information?" Malone said. "Certainly," Sir Lewis said. "There is always spirit control." "Spirit control?" Malone blinked. "Demonic intervention," Sir Lewis said. "'My name is Legion,' you know." Sir Lewis Legion, Malone thought confusedly, was a rather unusual name. He took a breath and caught hold of his revolving mind. "How would you go about that?" he said, a little hopelessly. "I haven't the foggiest," Sir Lewis admitted cheerfully. "But I will have it looked up for you." He made a note. "Anything else?" Malone tried to think. "Yes," he said at last. "Can you give me a condensed report on what is known--and I mean _known_--on telepathy and teleportation?" "What you want," Sir Lewis said, "are those cases proven genuine, not the ones in which we have established fraud, or those still in doubt." "Exactly," Malone said. If he got no other use out of the data, it would provide a measuring-stick for the Society. The general public didn't know that the government was actually using psionic powers, and the Society's theories, checked against actual fact, would provide a rough index of reliability to use on the Society's other data. But spirits, somehow, didn't seem very likely. Malone sighed and stood up. "I'll have copies made of all the relevant material," Sir Lewis said, "from our library and research files. Where do you want the material sent? I do want to warn you of its bulk; there may be quite a lot of it." "FBI Headquarters, on Sixty-ninth Street," Malone said. "And send a statement of expenses along with it. As long as the bill's within reason, don't worry about itemizing; I'll see that it goes through Accounting." Sir Lewis nodded. "Fine," he said. "And, if you should have any difficulties with the material, please let me know. I'll always be glad to help." "Thanks for your co-operation," Malone said. He went to the door, and walked on out. He blundered back into the same big room again, on his way through the corridors. The bulbous-eyed woman, who seemed to have inherited a full set of thirty-two teeth from each of her parents, gave him a friendly if somewhat crowded smile, but Malone pressed on without a word. After a while, he found the reception room again. * * * * * The girl behind the desk looked up. "How did he react?" she said. Malone blinked. "React?" he said. "When you sneezed at him," she said. "Because I've been thinking it over, and I've got a new theory. You're doing a survey on how people act when encountering sneezes. Like Kinsey." This girl--Lou something, Malone thought, and with difficulty refrained from adding "Gehrig"--had an unusual effect, he decided. He wondered if there were anyone in the world she couldn't reduce to paralyzed silence. "Of course," she went on, "Kinsey was dealing with sex, and you aren't. At least, you aren't during business hours." She smiled politely at Malone. "No," he said helplessly, "I'm not." "It is sneezing, then," she said. "Will I be in the book when it's published?" "Book?" Malone said, feeling more and more like a rather low-grade moron. "The book on sneezing, when you get it published," she said. "I can see it now--the Case of Miss X, a Receptionist." "There isn't going to be any book," Malone said. She shook her head. "That's a shame," she said. "I've always wanted to be a Miss X. It sounds exciting." "X," Malone said at random, "marks the spot." "Why, that's the sweetest thing that's been said to me all day," the girl said. "I thought you could hardly talk, and here you come out with lovely things like that. But I'll bet you say it to all the girls." "I have never said it to anybody before," Malone said flatly. "And I never will again." The girl sighed. "I'll treasure it," she said. "My one great moment. Good-by, Mr. ... Malone, isn't it?" "Ken," Malone said. "Just call me Ken." "And I'm Lou," the girl said. "Good-by." An elevator arrived and Malone ducked into it. Louie? he thought. Louise? Luke? Of course, there was Sir Lewis Carter, who might be called Lou. Was he related to the girl? No, Malone thought wildly. Relations went by last names. There was no reason for Lou to be related to Sir Lewis. They didn't even look alike. For instance, he had no desire whatever to make a date with Sir Lewis Carter, or to take him to a glittering nightclub. And the very idea of Sir Lewis Carter sitting on the Malone lap was enough to give him indigestion and spots before the eyes. Sternly, he told himself to get back to business. The elevator stopped at the lobby and he got out and started down the street, feeling that consideration of the Lady Known As Lou was much more pleasant. After all, what did he have to work with, as far as his job was concerned? So far, two experts had told him that his theory was full of lovely little holes. Worse than that, they had told him that mass control of human beings was impossible, as far as they knew. And maybe it was impossible, he told himself sadly. Maybe he should just junk his whole theory and think up a new one. Maybe there was no psionics involved in the thing at all, and Boyd and O'Connor were right. Of course, he had a deep-seated conviction that psionics was somewhere at the root of everything, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. A lot of people had deep-seated convictions that they were beetles, or that the world was flat. And then again, murderers often suffered as a result of deep-seated convictions. On the other hand, maybe he had invented a whole new psionic theory--or, at least, observed some new psionic facts. Maybe they would call the results Maloneizing, instead of O'Connorizing. He tried to picture a man opening a door and saying: "Come out quick--Mr. Frembits is Maloneizing again." It didn't sound very plausible. But, after all, he did have a deep-seated conviction. He tried to think of a shallow-seated conviction, and failed. Didn't convictions ever stand up, anyhow, or lie down? He shook his head, discovered that he was on Sixty-ninth Street, and headed for the FBI headquarters. His convictions, he had found, were sometimes an expression of his precognitive powers; he determined to ride with them, at least for a while. By the time he came to the office of the agent-in-charge, he had figured out the beginnings of a new line of attack. "How about the ghosts?" the agent-in-charge asked as he passed. "They'll be along," Malone said. "In a big bundle, addressed to me personally. And don't open the bundle." "Why not?" the agent-in-charge asked. "Because I don't want the things to get loose and run around saying _Boo!_ to everybody," Malone said brightly, and went on. * * * * * He opened the door of his private office, went inside and sat down at the desk there. He took his time about framing a thought, a single, clear, deliberate thought: _Your Majesty, I'd like to speak to you._ [Illustration] He hardly had time to finish it. A flash of color appeared in the room, just a few feet from his desk. The flash resolved itself into a tiny, grandmotherly-looking woman with a corona of white hair and a kindly, twinkling expression. She was dressed in the full court costume of the First Elizabethan period, and this was hardly surprising to Malone. The little old lady believed, quite firmly, that she was Queen Elizabeth I, miraculously preserved over all these centuries. Malone, himself, had practically forgotten that the woman's real name was Rose Thompson, and that she had only been alive for sixty-five years or so. For most of that time, she had been insane. For all of that time, however, she had been a genuine telepath. She had been discovered during the course of Malone's first psionic case, and by now she had even learned to teleport by "reading" the process in Malone's mind. "Good afternoon, Sir Kenneth," she said in a regal, kindly voice. She was mad, he knew, but her delusion was nicely kept within bounds. All of her bright world hinged on the single fact that she was unshakably certain of her royalty. As long as the FBI catered to that notion--which included a Royal dwelling for her in Yucca Flats, and the privilege of occasionally knighting FBI Agents who had pleased her unpredictable fancy--she was perfectly rational on all other points. She co-operated with Dr. O'Connor and with the FBI in the investigation of her psionic powers, and she had given her Royal word not to teleport except at Malone's personal request. "I'd like to talk to you," Malone said, "Your Majesty." There was an odd note in the Queen's voice, and an odd, haunted expression on her face. "I've been hoping you'd ask me to come," she said. "I had a hunch you were following me telepathically," Malone said. "Can you give me any help?" "I ... I really don't know," she said. "It's something new, and something ... disturbing. I've never come across anything like it before." "Like what?" Malone asked. "It's the--" She made a gesture that conveyed nothing at all to Malone. "The ... the static," she said at last. Malone blinked. "Static?" he said. "Yes," she said. "You're not telepathic, so I can't tell you what it's really like. But ... well, Sir Kenneth, have you ever seen disturbance on a TV screen, when there's some powerful electric output nearby? The bright, senseless snowstorms, the meaningless hash?" "Sure," Malone said. "It's like that," she said. "It's a ... a sudden, meaningless, disturbing blare of telepathic energy." The telephone rang once. Malone ignored it. "What's causing these disturbances?" he asked. She shook her head. "I don't know, Sir Kenneth. I don't know," she said. "I can't pick up a person's mind over a distance unless I know him--and I can't see what's causing this at all. It's ... frankly, Sir Kenneth, it's rather terrifying." The phone rang again. "How long have you been experiencing this disturbance?" Malone asked. He looked at the phone. "The telephone isn't important," Her Majesty said. "It's only Sir Thomas, calling to tell you he's arrested three spies, and that doesn't matter at all." "It doesn't?" "Not at all," Her Majesty said. "What does matter is that I've only been picking up these flashes since you were assigned to this new case, Sir Kenneth. And--" She paused. "Well?" Malone said. "And they only appear," Her Majesty said, "when I'm tuned to _your_ mind!" [Illustration] V Malone stared. He tried to say something but he couldn't find any words. The telephone rang again and he pushed the switch with a sense of relief. The beard-fringed face of Thomas Boyd appeared on the screen. "You're getting hard to find," Boyd said. "I think you're letting fame and fortune go to your head." "I left word at the office that I was coming here," Malone said aggrievedly. "Sure you did," Boyd said. "How do you think I found you? Am I telepathic? Do I have strange powers?" "Wouldn't surprise me in the least," Malone said. "Now, about those spies--" "See what I mean?" Boyd said. "How did you know?" "Just lucky, I guess," Malone murmured. "But what about them?" "Well," Boyd said, "we picked up two men working in the Senate Office Building, and another one working for the State Department." "And they are spies?" Malone said. "Real spies?" "Oh, they're real enough," Boyd said. "We've known about 'em for years, and I finally decided to pick them up for questioning. Maybe they have something to do with all this mess that's bothering everybody." "You haven't the faintest idea what you mean," Malone said. "Mess is hardly the word." Boyd snorted. "You go on getting yourself confused," he said, "while some of us do the real work. After all--" "Never mind the insults," Malone said. "How about the spies?" "Well," Boyd said, a trifle reluctantly, "they've been working as janitors and maintenance men, and of course we've made sure they haven't been able to get their hands on any really valuable information." "So they've suddenly turned into criminal masterminds," Malone said. "After being under careful surveillance for years--" "Well, it's possible," Boyd said defensively. "Almost anything is possible," Malone said. "Some things," Boyd said carefully, "are more possible than others." "Thank you, Charles W. Aristotle," Malone said. "I hope you realize what you've done, picking up those three men. We might have been able to get some good lines on them, if you'd left them where they were." There is an old story about a general who went on an inspection tour of the front during World War I, and, putting his head incautiously up out of a trench, was narrowly missed by a sniper's bullet. He turned to a nearby sergeant and bellowed: "Get that sniper!" "Oh, we've got him spotted, sir," the sergeant said. "He's been there for six days now." "Well, then," the general said, "why don't you blast him out of there?" "Well, sir, it's this way," the sergeant explained. "He's fired about sixty rounds since he's been out there, and he hasn't hit anything yet. We're afraid if we get rid of him they'll put up somebody who _can_ shoot." This was standard FBI policy when dealing with minor spies. A great many had been spotted, including four in the Department of Fisheries. But known spies are easier to keep track of than unknown ones. And, as long as they're allowed to think they haven't been spotted, they may lead the way to other spies or spy networks. "I thought it was worth the risk," Boyd said. "After all, if they have something to do with the case--" "But they don't," Malone said. Boyd exploded, "Let me find out for myself, will you? You're spoiling all the fun." "Well, anyhow," Malone said, "they don't." "You can't afford to take any chances," Boyd said. "After all, when I think about William Logan, I tell myself we'd better take care of every lead." "Well," Malone said finally, "you may be right. And then again, you may be normally wrong." "What is that supposed to mean?" Boyd said. "How should I know?" Malone said "I'm too busy to go around and around like this. But since you've picked up the spies, I suppose it won't do any harm to find out if they know anything." Boyd snorted again. "Thank you," he said, "for your kind permission." "I'll be right down," Malone said. "I'll be waiting," Boyd said. "In Interrogation Room 7. You'll recognize me by the bullet hole in my forehead and the strange South American poison, hitherto unknown to science, in my oesophagus." "Very funny," Malone said. "Don't give up the ship." * * * * * Boyd switched off without a word. Malone shrugged at the blank screen and pushed his own switch. Then he turned slowly back to Her Majesty, who was standing, waiting patiently, at the opposite side of the desk. Interference, he thought, located around him-- "Why, yes," she said. "That's exactly what I did say." Malone blinked. "Your Majesty," he said, "would you mind terribly if I asked you questions before you answered them? I know you can see them in my mind, but it's simpler for me to do things the normal way, just now." "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I do agree that matters are confused enough already. Please go on." "Thank you, Your Majesty," Malone said. "Well, then. Do you mean that _I'm_ the one causing all this ... mental static?" "Oh, no," she said. "Not at all. It's definitely coming from somewhere else, and it's beamed at you, or beamed around you." "But--" "It's just that I can only pick it up when I'm tuned to your mind," she said. "Like now?" Malone said. She shook her head. "Right now," she said, "there isn't any. It only happens every once in a while--every so often, and not continuously." "Does it happen at regular intervals?" Malone said. "Not as far as I've been able to tell," Her Majesty said. "It just ... happens, that's all. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Except that it did start when you were assigned to this case." "Lovely," Malone said. "And what is it supposed to mean?" "Interference," she said. "Static. Jumble. That's all it means. I just don't know any more than that, Sir Kenneth; I've never experienced anything like it in my life. It really does disturb me." That, Malone told himself, he could believe. It must be an experience, he told himself, like having someone you were looking at suddenly dissolve into a jumble of meaningless shapes and lights. "That's a very good analogy," Her Majesty said. "If you'll pardon me speaking before you've voiced your thought--" "Not at all," Malone said. "Go right ahead." "Well, then," Her Majesty said. "The analogy you use is a good one. It's just as disturbing and as meaningless as that." "And you don't know what's causing it?" Malone said. "I don't know," she said. "Nor what the purpose of it is?" he said. Her Majesty shook her head slowly. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I don't even know whether or not there _is_ any purpose." Malone sighed deeply. Nothing in the case seemed to make any sense. It wasn't that there were no clues, or no information for him to work with. There were a lot of clues, and there was a lot of information. But nothing seemed to link up with anything else. Every new fact was a bright, shiny arrow pointing nowhere in particular. "Well, then--" he started. The intercom buzzed. Malone jabbed ferociously at the button. "Yes," he said. "The ghosts are here," the agent-in-charge's voice said. Malone blinked. "What?" he said. "You said you were going to get some ghosts," the agent-in-charge said. "From the Psychical Research Society, in a couple of large bundles And they're here now. Want me to exorcise 'em for you?" "No," Malone said wearily. "Just send them in to join the crowd. Got a messenger?" "I'll send them down," the agent-in-charge said. "About one minute." Malone nodded, realized the man couldn't see him, said: "Fine," and switched off. He looked at his watch. A little over half an hour had passed since he had left the Psychical Research Society offices. That, he told himself, was efficiency. Not that the books would mean anything, he thought. They would just take their places at the end of the long row of meaningless, disturbing, vicious facts that cluttered up his mind. He wasn't an FBI agent any more; he was a clown and a failure, and he was through. He was going to resign and go to South Dakota and live the life of a hermit. He would drink goat's milk and eat old shoes or something, and whenever another human being came near he would run away and hide. They would call him Old Kenneth, and people would write articles for magazines about The Twentieth Century Hermit. And that would make him famous, he thought wearily, and the whole circle would start all over again. "Now, now, Sir Kenneth," Queen Elizabeth said. "Things aren't quite that bad." "Oh, yes, they are," Malone said. "They're even worse." "I'm sure we can find an answer to all your questions," Her Majesty said. "Sure," Malone said. "Even I can find an answer. But it isn't the right one." "You can?" Her Majesty said. "That's right," Malone said. "My answer is: To Hell with everything." * * * * * Malone's Washington offices didn't look any different. He sighed and put the two big packages from the Psychical Research Society down on his desk, and then turned to Her Majesty. "I wanted you to teleport along with me," he said, "because I need your help." "Yes," she said. "I know." He blinked. "Oh. Sure you do. But let me go over the details." Her Majesty waved a gracious hand. "If you like, Sir Kenneth," she said. Malone nodded. "We're going on down to Interrogation Room 7 now," he said. "Next door to it, there's an observation room, with a one-way panel in the wall. You'll be able to see us, but we won't be able to see you." "I really don't require an observation panel," Her Majesty said. "If I enter your mind, I can see through your eyes--" "Oh, sure," Malone said. "But the observation room was built for more normal people--saving your presence, Your Majesty." "Of course," she said. "Now," Malone went on, "I want you to watch all three of the men we're going to bring in, and dig everything you can out of their minds." "Everything?" she said. "We don't know what might be useful," Malone said. "Anything you can find. And if you want any questions asked--if there's anything you think I ought to ask the men, or say to them--there's a nonvision phone in the observation room. Just lift the receiver. That automatically rings the one in the Interrogation Room and I'll pick it up. Understand?" "Perfectly, Sir Kenneth," she said. "O.K., then," Malone said. "Let's go." They headed for the door. Malone stopped as he opened it. "And by the way," he said. "Yes?" "If you get any more of those--disturbances, let me know." "At once," Her Majesty promised. They went on down the hall and took the elevator down to Interrogation Room 7, on the lowest level. There was no particular reason for putting the Interrogation section down there, except that it tended to make prisoners more nervous. And a nervous prisoner, Malone knew, was very possibly a confessing prisoner. Malone ushered Her Majesty through the unmarked door of the observation chamber, made sure that the panel and phone were in working order, and went out. He stepped into Interrogation Room 7 trying hard to look bored, businesslike and unbeatable. Boyd and four other agents were already there, all standing around and talking desultorily in low tones. None of them looked as if they had ever had a moment's worry in their lives. It was all part of the same technique, of course, Malone thought. Make the prisoner feel resistance is useless, and you've practically got him working for you. The prisoner was a hulking, flabby fat man in work coveralls. He had black hair that spilled all over his forehead, and tiny button eyes. He was the only man in the room who was sitting down, and that was meant to make him feel even more inferior and insecure. His hands were clasped fatly in his lap, and he was staring down at them in a regretful manner. None of the FBI agents paid the slightest attention to him. The general impression was that something really tough was coming up, but that they were in no hurry for it. They were willing to wait for the Third Degree, it seemed, until the blacksmith had done a really good job with the new spikes for the Iron Maiden. The prisoner looked up apprehensively as Malone shut the door. Malone paid no attention to him, and the prisoner unclasped his hands, rubbed them on his coveralls and then reclasped them in his lap. His eyes fell again. Boyd looked up, too. "Hello, Ken," he said. He tapped a sheaf of papers on the single table in the room. Malone went over and picked them up. They were the abbreviated condensations of three dossiers. All three of the men covered in the dossiers were naturalized citizens, but all had come in us "political refugees"--from Hungary, from Czechoslovakia, and from East Germany. Further checking had turned up the fact that all three were actually Russians. They had been using false names during their stay in the United States, but their real ones were appended to the dossiers. The fat one in the Interrogation Room was named Alexis Brubitsch. The other two, who were presumably waiting separately in other rooms, were Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. The collection sounded, to Malone, like a seedy musical-comedy firm of lawyers: Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch. He could picture them dancing gaily across a stage while the strains of music followed them, waving legal forms and telephones and singing away. Brubitsch did not, however, look very gay. Malone went over to him now, walking slowly, and looked down. Boyd came and stood next to him. * * * * * "This is the one who won't talk, eh?" Malone said, wondering if he sounded as much like Dick Tracy as he thought he did. It was a standard opening, meant to make the prisoner think his fellows had already confessed. "That's him," Boyd said. "Hm-m-m," Malone said, trying to look as if he were deciding between the rack and the boiling oil. Brubitsch fidgeted slightly, but he didn't say anything. "We didn't know whether we had to get this one to talk, too," Boyd said. "What with the others, and all. But we did think you ought to have a look at him." He sounded very bored. It was obvious from his tone that the FBI didn't care in the least if Alexis Brubitsch never opened his mouth again, in what was likely to be a very short lifetime. "Well," Malone said, equally bored, "we might be able to get a few corroborative details." Brubitsch swallowed hard. Malone ignored him. "Now, just look at him," Boyd said. "He certainly doesn't _look_ like the head of a spy ring, does he?" "Of course he doesn't," Malone said. "That's probably why the Russians used him. They figured nobody would ever look twice at a fat slob like this. Nobody would ever suspect him of being the head man." "I guess you're right," Boyd said. He yawned, which Malone thought was overacting a trifle. Brubitsch saw the yawn, and one hand came up to jerk at his collar. "Who'd ever think," Malone said, "that he plotted those killings in Redstone--all three of them?" "It is surprising," Boyd said. "But, then," Malone said, "we know he did. There isn't any doubt of that." Brubitsch seemed to be turning a pale green. It was a fascinating color, unlike any other Malone had ever seen. He watched it with interest. "Oh, sure," Boyd said. "We've got enough evidence from the other two to send this one to the chair tomorrow, if we want to." "More than enough," Malone agreed. Brubitsch opened his mouth, shut it again and closed his eyes. His lips moved silently. "Tell me," Boyd said conversationally, leaning down to the fat man, "Did your orders on that job come from Moscow, or did you mastermind it all by yourself?" Brubitsch's eyes stirred, then snapped open as if they'd been pulled by a string. "Me?" he said in a hoarse bass voice. "I know nothing about this murder. What murder?" There were no such murders, of course. But Malone was not ready to let Brubitsch know anything about that. "Oh, the ones you shot in Redstone," he said in an offhand way. "The what?" Brubitsch said. "I shot people? Never." "Oh, sure you did," Boyd said. "The others say you did." Brubitsch's head seemed to sink into his neck. "Borbitsch and Garbitsch, they tell you about a murder? It is not true. Is a lie." "Really?" Malone said. "We think it's true." "Is a lie," Brubitsch said, his little eyes peering anxiously from side to side. "Is not true," he went on hopefully. "I have alibi." "You do?" Boyd said. "For what time?" "For time when murder happened," Brubitsch said. "I was some place else." "Well, then," Malone said, "how do you know when the murders were done? They were kept out of the newspapers." That, he reflected, was quite true, since the murders had never happened. But he watched Brubitsch with a wary eye. "I know nothing about time," Brubitsch said, jerking at his collar. "I don't know when they happened." "Then how can you have an alibi?" Boyd snapped. "Because I didn't do them!" Brubitsch said tearfully. "If I didn't, then I _must_ have alibi!" "You'd be surprised," Malone said. "Now, about these murders--" "Was no murder, not by me," Brubitsch said firmly. "Was never any killing of anybody, not even by accident." "But your two friends say--" Boyd began. "My two friends are not my friends," Brubitsch said firmly. "If they tell you about murder and say it was me, they are no friends. I did not murder anybody. I have alibi. I did not even murder anybody a little bit. They are no friends. This is terrible." "There," Malone said reflectively, "I agree with you. It's positively awful. And I think we might as well give it up. After all, we don't need your testimony. The other two are enough; they'll get maybe ten years apiece, but you're going to get the chair." "I will not sit down," Brubitsch said firmly. "I am innocent. I am innocent like a small child. Does a small child commit a murder? It is ridiculous." * * * * * Boyd picked up his cue with ease. "You might as well give us your side of the story, then," he said easily. "If you didn't commit any murders--" "I am a small child," Brubitsch announced. "O.K.," Boyd said. "But if you didn't commit any murders, just what _have_ you been doing since you've been in this country as a Soviet agent?" [Illustration] "I will say nothing," Brubitsch announced. "I am a small child. It is enough." He paused, blinked, and went on: "I will only tell you this: no murders were done by our group in any of our activities." "And what were your activities?" "Oh, many things," Brubitsch said. "Many, many things. We--" The telephone rang loudly, and Malone scooped it up with a practiced hand. "Malone here," he said. Her Majesty's voice was excited. "Sir Kenneth!" she said. "I just got a tremendous burst of--static!" Malone blinked. _Is my mind acting up again?_ he thought, knowing she would pick it up. _Am I being interfered with?_ He didn't feel any different. But then, how was he supposed to feel? "It's not _your_ mind, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Not this time. It's _his_ mind. That sneaky-thinking Brubitsch fellow." _Brubitsch?_ Malone thought. _Now what is that supposed to mean?_ "I don't know, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But get on back to your questioning. He's ready to talk now." "O.K.," Malone said aloud. "Fine." He hung up and looked back to the Russian sitting on his chair. Brubitsch was ready to talk, and that was one good thing, anyhow. But what was all the static about? What was going on? "Now, then," Malone said. "You were telling us about your group activities." "True," Brubitsch said. "I did not commit any murders. It is possible that Borbitsch committed murders. It is possible that Garbitsch committed murders. But I do not think so." "Why not?" Boyd said. "They are my friends," Brubitsch said. "Even if they tell lies. They are also small children. Besides, I am not even the head of the group." "Who is?" Malone said. "Garbitsch," Brubitsch said instantly. "He worked in the State Department, and he told us what to look for in the Senate Office Building." "What were you supposed to look for?" Boyd said. "For information," Brubitsch said. "For scraps of paper, or things we overheard. But it was very bad, very bad." "What do you mean, bad?" Malone said. "Everything was terrible," Brubitsch said mournfully. "Sometimes Borbitsch heard something and forgot to tell Garbitsch about it. Garbitsch did not like this. He is a very inflamed person. Once he threatened to send Borbitsch to the island of Yap as a spy. That is a very bad place to go to. There are no enjoyments on the island of Yap, and no one likes strangers there." "What did you do with your information?" Boyd said. "We remembered it," Brubitsch said. "Or, if we had a scrap of paper, we saved it for Garbitsch and gave it to him. But I remember once that I had some paper. It had a formula on it. I do not know what the formula said." "What was it about?" Malone said. Brubitsch gave a massive shrug. "It was about an X and some numbers," he said. "It was not very interesting, but it was a formula, and Garbitsch would have liked it. Unfortunately, I did not give it to him." "Why not?" Boyd said. "I am ashamed," Brubitsch said, looking ashamed. "I was lighting a cigarette in the afternoon, when I had the formula. It is a very relaxing thing to smoke a cigarette in the afternoon. It is soothing to the soul." He looked very sad. "I was holding the piece of paper in one hand," he said. "Unfortunately, the match and the paper came into contact. I burned my finger. Here." He stuck out a finger toward Malone and Boyd, who looked at it without much interest for a second. "The paper is gone," he said. "Don't tell Garbitsch. He is very inflamed." Malone sighed. "But you remember the formula," he said. "Don't you?" Brubitsch shook his massive head very slowly. "It was not very interesting," he said. "And I do not have a mathematical mind." "We know," Malone said, "You are a small child." * * * * * "It was terrible," Brubitsch said. "Garbitsch was not happy about our activities." "What did Garbitsch do with the information?" Boyd said. "He passed it on," Brubitsch said. "Every week he would send a short-wave message to the homeland, in code. Some weeks he did not send the message." "Why not?" Malone said. "The radio did not work," Brubitsch said simply. "We received orders by short-wave, but sometimes we did not receive the orders. The radio was of very poor quality, and some weeks it refused to send any messages. On other weeks, it refused to receive any messages." "Who was your contact in Russia?" Boyd said. "A man named X," Brubitsch said. "Like in the formula." "But what was his real name?" Malone said. "Who knows?" Brubitsch said. "What else did you do?" Boyd said. "We met twice a week," Brubitsch said. "Sometimes in Garbitsch's home, sometimes in other places. Sometimes we had information. At other times, we were friends, having a social gathering." "Friends?" Malone said. Brubitsch nodded. "We drank together, talked, played chess. Garbitsch is the best chess player in the group. I am not very good. But once we had some trouble." He paused. "We had been drinking Russian liquors. They are very strong. We decided to uphold the honor of our country." "I think," Malone murmured sadly, "I know what's coming." "Ah?" Brubitsch said, interested. "At any rate, we decided to honor our country in song. And a policeman came and talked to us. He took us down to the police station." "Why?" Boyd said. "He was suspicious," Brubitsch said. "We were singing the _Internationale_, and he was suspicious. It is unreasonable." "Oh, I don't know," Boyd said. "What happened then?" "He took us to the police station," Brubitsch said, "and then after a little while he let us go. I do not understand this." "It's all right," Malone said. "I do." He drew Boyd aside for a second, and whispered to him: "The cops were ready to charge these three clowns with everything in the book. We had a time springing them so we could go on watching them. I remember the stir-up, though I never did know their names until now." Boyd nodded, and they returned to Brubitsch, who was staring up at them with surly eyes. "It is a secret you are telling him," Brubitsch said. "That is not right." "What do you mean, it's not right?" Malone said. "It is wrong," Brubitsch went on. "It is not the American way." He went on, with some prodding, to tell about the activities of the spy ring. It did not seem to be a very efficient spy ring; Brubitsch's long sad tale of forgotten messages, mixed orders, misplaced documents and strange mishaps was a marvel and a revelation to the listening officers. "I've never heard anything like it," one of them whispered in a tone of absolute wonder. "They're almost working on our side." Over an hour later, Malone turned wearily away from the prisoner. "All right, Brubitsch," he said. "I guess that pretty much covers things for the moment. If we want any more information, though--" "Call on me," Brubitsch said sadly. "I am not going any place. And I will give you all the information you desire. But I did not commit any murders--" "Good-bye, small child," Malone said, as two agents led the fat man away. The other two left soon afterward, and Malone and Boyd were alone. * * * * * "Think he was telling the truth?" Boyd said. Malone nodded. "Nobody," he said, "could make up a story like that." "I suppose so," Boyd said, and the phone rang. Malone picked it up. "Well?" he asked. "He was telling the truth, all right," Her Majesty said. "There are a few more details, of course--there was a girl Brubitsch was involved with, Sir Kenneth. But she doesn't seem to have anything to do with the spy ring, and besides, she isn't a very nice person. She always wants money." "Sounds perfectly lovely," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I think I know her. I know a lot of girls who always want money." "You don't know this one, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "and besides, she wouldn't be a good influence on you." Malone sighed. "How about the static explosions?" he said. "Pick up any more?" "No," she said. "Just that one." Malone nodded at the receiver. "All right," he said. "We're going to bring in the second one now. Keep up the good work." He hung up. "Who've you got in the Observation Room?" Boyd asked. "Queen Elizabeth I," Malone said. "Her Royal Majesty." "Oh," Boyd said without surprise. "Well, was Brubitsch telling the truth?" "He wasn't holding back anything important," Malone said, thinking about the girl. It would be nice to meet a bad influence, he thought mournfully. It would be nice to go somewhere with a bad influence--a bad influence, he amended, with a good figure--and forget all about his job, about the spies, about telepathy, teleportation, psionics and everything else. It might be restful. Unfortunately, it was impossible. "What's this business about a static explosion?" Boyd said. "Don't ask silly questions," Malone said. "A static explosion is a contradiction in terms. If something is static, it doesn't move--and whoever heard of a motionless explosion?" "If it is a contradiction in terms," Boyd said, "they're your terms." "Sure," Malone said. "But I don't know what they mean. I don't even know what I mean." "You're in a bad way," Boyd said, looking sympathetic. "I'm in a perfectly terrible way," Malone said, "and it's going to get worse. You wait and see." "Of course I'll wait and see," Boyd said. "I wouldn't miss the end of the world for anything. It ought to be a great spectacle." He paused. "Want them to bring in the next one?" "Sure," Malone said. "What have we got to lose but our minds? And who is the next one?" "Borbitsch," Boyd said. "They're saving Garbitsch for a big finish." Malone nodded wearily. "Onward," he said, and picked up the phone. He punched a number, spoke a few words and hung up. A minute later, the four FBI agents came back, leading a man. This one was tall and thin, with the expression of a gloomy, degenerate and slightly nauseated bloodhound. He was led to the chair and he sat down in it as if he expected the worst to start happening at once. "Well," Malone said in a bored, tired voice. "So this is the one who won't talk." VI Midnight. Kenneth J. Malone sat at his desk, in his Washington office, surrounded by piles of papers covering the desk, spilling off onto the floor and decorating his lap. He was staring at the papers as if he expected them to leap up, dance round him and shout the solution to all his problems at him in trained choral voices. They did nothing at all. Seated cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, and looking like an impossible combination of the last Henry Tudor and Gautama Buddha, Thomas Boyd did nothing either. He was staring downward, his hands folded on his ample lap, wearing an expression of utter, burning frustration. And on a nearby chair sat the third member of the company, wearing the calm and patient expression of the gently born under all vicissitudes: Queen Elizabeth I. "All right," Malone said into the silence. "Now let's see what we've got." "I think we've got cerebral paresis," Boyd said. "It's been coming on for years." "Don't be funny," Malone said. Boyd gave a short, mirthless bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind. Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch, Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter--we're all out of our minds. If we weren't, we'd all move away to the Moon." "And drink to forget," Malone added. "Sure. But let's try and get some work done." "By all means, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. Boyd had not included her in his list of insane people, and she looked slightly miffed. It was hard for Malone to tell whether she was miffed by the mention of insanity, or at being left out. "Let's review the facts," Malone said. "This whole thing started with some inefficiency in Congress." "And some upheavals elsewhere." Boyd said. "Labor unions, gangster organizations--" "Just about all over," Malone said. "And though we've found three spies, it seems pretty obvious that they aren't causing this." "They aren't causing much of anything," Boyd said. "Except a lot of unbelieving laughter farther up the FBI line. I don't think anybody is going to believe our reports of those interviews." "But they're true," Her Majesty said. "Sure they're true," Boyd said. "That's the unbelievable part. They read like farce--and not very good farce at that." "Oh, I don't know," Malone said. "I think they're pretty funny." "Shall we get back to the business at hand?" Her Majesty said gently. "Ah," Malone said. "Anyhow, it isn't the spies. And what we now have is confusion even worse compounded." "Confounded," Boyd said. "John Milton. 'Paradise Lost.' I heard it somewhere...." "I don't mean confounded," Malone said. "I mean confusion. Anyhow, the Russian espionage rings in this country seem to be in as bad a state as the Congress, the labor unions, the Syndicates, and all the rest. And all of them seem to have some sort of weird tie-in to these flashes of telepathic interference. Right, Your Majesty?" "I ... believe so, Sir Kenneth," she said. The old woman looked tired and confused. Somehow, a lot of the brightness seemed to have gone out of her life. "That's right," she said. "I didn't realize there was so much of it going on. You see, Sir Kenneth, you're the only one I can pick up at a distance who has been having these flashes. But now that I'm here in Washington, I can feel it going on all around me." "It may not have anything to do with everything else," Boyd said. Malone shook his head. "If it doesn't," he said, "it's the weirdest coincidence I've ever even dreamed about, and my dreams can be pretty strange. No, it's got to be tied in. There's some kind of mental static that is somehow making all these people goof up." "But why?" Boyd said. "What is it being done for? Just fun?" "God only knows," Malone said. "But we're going to have to find out." "In that case," Boyd said, "I suggest lots and lots of prayers." Her Majesty looked up. "That's a fine idea," she said. "But God helps those," Malone said, "who help themselves. And we're going to help ourselves. Mostly with facts." "All right," Boyd said. "So far, all the facts have been a great help." "Well, here's one," Malone said. "We got one flash each from Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch while we were questioning them. And in each case, that flash occurred just before they started to blab everything they knew. Before the flash, they weren't talking. They were behaving just like good spies and keeping their mouths shut. After the flash, they couldn't talk fast enough." "That's true," Boyd said reflectively. "They did seem to give up pretty fast, even for amateurs." Malone nodded. "So the question is this," he said. "Just what happens during those crazy bursts of static?" He looked expectantly at Her Majesty, but she shook her head sadly. "I don't know," she said. "I simply don't know. It's just noise to me--meaningless noise." She put her hands slowly over her face. "People shouldn't do things like that to their Sovereign," she said in a muffled voice. * * * * * Malone got up and went over to her. She wasn't crying, but she wasn't far from it. He put an arm around her thin shoulders. "Now, look, Your Majesty," he said in gentle tones, "this will all clear up. We'll find out what's going on, and we'll find a way to put a stop to it." "Sure we will," Boyd said. "After all, Your Majesty, Sir Kenneth and I will work hard on this." "And the Queen's Own FBI," Malone said, "won't stop until we've finished with this whole affair, once and for all." Her Majesty brought her hands down from her face, very slowly. She was forcing a smile, but it didn't look too well. "I know you won't fail your Queen," she said. "You two have always been the most loyal of my subjects." "We'll work hard," Malone said. "No matter how long it takes." "Because, after all," Boyd said in a musing, thoughtful tone, "it is a serious crime, you know." The words seemed to have an effect on Her Majesty, like a tonic. For a second her face wore an expression of Royal anger and indignance, and the accustomed strength flowed back into her aged voice. "You're quite correct, Sir Thomas!" she said. "The security of the Throne and the Crown are at stake!" Malone blinked. "What?" he said. "Are you two talking about something? What crime is this?" "An extremely serious one," Boyd said in a grave voice. He rose unsteadily to his feet, planted them firmly on the carpet, and frowned. "Go on," Malone said, fascinated. Her Majesty was watching Boyd with an intent expression. "The crime," Boyd said, "the very serious crime involved, is that of Threatening the Welfare of the Queen. The criminal has committed the crime of Causing the Said Sovereign, Baselessly, Reasonlessly and Without Consent or Let, to Be in a State of Apprehension for Her Life or Her Well-Being. And this crime--" "Aha," Malone said. "I've got it. The crime is--" "High treason," Boyd intoned. "High treason," Her Majesty said with satisfaction and fire in her voice. "Very high treason," Malone said. "Extremely high." "Stratospheric," Boyd agreed. "That is, of course," he added, "if the perpetrators of this dastardly crime are Her Majesty's subjects." "My goodness," the Queen said. "I never thought of that. Suppose they're not?" "Then," Malone said in his most vibrant voice, "it is an Act of War." "Steps," Boyd said, "must be taken." "We must do our utmost," Malone said. "Sir Thomas--" "Yes, Sir Kenneth?" Boyd said. "This task requires our most fervent dedication," Malone said. "Please come with me." He went to the desk. Boyd followed him, walking straight-backed and tall. Malone bent and removed from a drawer of the desk a bottle of bourbon. He closed the drawer, poured some bourbon into two handy water glasses from the desk, and capped the bottle. He handed one of the water glasses to Boyd, and raised the other one aloft. "Sir Thomas," Malone said, "I give you--Her Majesty, the Queen!" "To the Queen!" Boyd echoed. They downed their drinks and turned, as one man, to hurl the glasses into the wastebasket. * * * * * In thinking it over later, Malone realized that he hadn't considered anything about that moment silly at all. Of course, an outsider might have been slightly surprised at the sequence of events, but Malone was no outsider. And, after all, it was the proper way to treat a Queen, wasn't it? And-- When Malone had first met Her Majesty, he had wondered why, although she could obviously read minds, and so knew perfectly well that neither Malone nor Boyd believed she was Queen Elizabeth I, she insisted on an outward show of respect and dedication. He'd asked her about it at last, and her reply had been simple, reasonable and to the point. According to her--and Malone didn't doubt it for an instant--most people simply didn't think their superiors were all they claimed to be. But they acted as if they did--at least while in the presence of those superiors. It was a common fiction, a sort of handy oil on the wheels of social intercourse. And all Her Majesty had ever insisted on was the same sort of treatment. "Bless you," she'd said, "I can't help the way you _think_, but, as Queen, I do have some control over the way you _act_." The funny thing, as far as Malone was concerned, was that the two parts of his personality were becoming more and more alike. He didn't actually believe that Her Majesty was Queen Elizabeth I, and he hoped fervently that he never would. But he did have a great deal of respect for her, and more affection than he had believed possible at first. She was the grandmother Malone had never known; she was good, and kind, and he wanted to keep her happy and contented. There had been nothing at all phony in the solemn toast he had proposed--nor in the righteous indignation he had felt against anyone who was giving Her Majesty even a minute's worth of discomfort. And Boyd, surprisingly enough, seemed to feel the same way. Malone felt good about that; Her Majesty needed all the loyal supporters she could get. But all of this was later. At the time, Malone was doing nothing except what came naturally--nor, apparently, was Boyd. After the glasses had been thrown, with a terrifying crash, into the metal wastebasket, and the reverberations of that second had stopped ringing in their ears, a moment of silence had followed. Then Boyd turned, briskly rubbing his hands. "All right," he said. "Let's get back to work." Malone looked at the proud, happy look on Her Majesty's face; he saw the glimmer of a tear in the corner of each eye. But he gave no indication that he had noticed anything at all out of the ordinary. "Fine," he said. "Now, getting on back to the facts, we've established something, anyhow. Some agency is causing flashes of telepathic static all over the place. And those flashes are somehow connected with the confusion that's going on all around us. Somehow, these flashes have an effect on the minds of people." "And we know at least one manifestation of that effect," Boyd said. "It makes spies blab all their secrets when they're exposed to it." "These three spies, anyhow," Malone said. "If 'spies' is the right word," Boyd said. "O.K.," Malone said. "And now we've got another obvious question." "It seems to me we've got about twelve," Boyd said. "I mean: who's doing it?" Malone said. "Who is causing these telepathic flashes?" "Maybe it's just happening," Boyd said. "Out of thin air." "Maybe," Malone said. "But let's go on the assumption that there's a human cause. The other way, we can't do a thing except sit back and watch the world go to hell." Boyd nodded. "It doesn't seem to be the Russians," he said. "Although, of course, it might be a Red herring." "What do you mean?" Malone said. "Well," Boyd said, "they might have known we were on to Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch--" He stopped. "You know," he said, "every time I say that name I have to reassure myself that we're not all walking around in the world of Florenz Ziegfeld?" "Likewise," Malone said. "But go on." "Sure," Boyd said. "Anyhow, they might have set the three of them up as patsies--just in case we stumbled on to this mess. We can't overlook that possibility." "Right," Malone said. "It's faint, but it is a possibility. In other words, the agency behind the flashes might be Russian, and it might not be Russian." "That clears that up nicely," Boyd said. "Next question?" * * * * * "The next one," Malone said grimly, "is: what's behind the flashes? Some sort of psionic power is causing them--that much is obvious." "I'll go along with that," Boyd said. "I have to go along with it. But don't think I like it." "Nobody likes it," Malone said. "But let's go on. O'Connor isn't any help; he washes his hands of the whole business." "Lucky man," Boyd said. "He says that it can't be happening," Malone said, "and if it is we're all screwy. Now, right or wrong, that isn't an opinion that gives us any handle to work with." "No," Boyd said reflectively. "A certain amount of comfort, to be sure, but no handles." "Sir Lewis Carter, on the other hand--" Malone said. He fumbled through some of the piles of paper until he had located the ones the President of the Psychical Research Society had sent. "Sir Lewis Carter," he went on, "does seem to be doing some pretty good work. At least, some of the more modern stuff he sent over looks pretty solid. They've been doing quite a bit of research into the subject, and their theories seem to be all right, or nearly all right, to me. Of course, I'm not an expert--" "Who is?" Boyd said. "Except for O'Connor, of course." "Well, somebody is," Malone said. "Whoever's doing all this, for instance. And the theories do seem O.K. In most cases, for instance, they agree with O'Connor's work--though they're not in complete agreement." "I should think so," Boyd said. "O'Connor wouldn't recognize an Astral Plane if TWA were putting them into service." "I don't mean that sort of thing," Malone said. "There's lots about astral bodies and ghosts, ectoplasm, Transcendental Yoga, theosophy, deros, the Great Pyramid, Atlantis, and other such pediculous pets. That's just silly, as far as I can see. But what they have to say about parapsychology and psionics as such does seem to be reasonably accurate." "I suppose so," Boyd said tiredly. "O.K., then," Malone said. "Did anybody notice anything in that pile of stuff that might conceivably have any bearing whatever on our problems?" "I did," Boyd said. "Or I think I did." "You both did," Her Majesty said. "And so did I, when I looked through it. But I didn't bother with it. I dismissed it." "Why?" Malone said. "Because I don't think it's true," she said. "However, my opinion is really only an opinion." She smiled around at the others. Malone picked up a thick sheaf of papers from one of the piles of his desk. "Let's get straight what it is we're talking about," he said. "All right?" "Anything's all right with me," Boyd said. "I'm easy to please." Malone nodded. "Now, this writer ... what's his name?" he said. He glanced at the copy of the cover page. "'Minds and Morons'," he read. "By Cartier Taylor." "Great title," Boyd said. "Does he say which is which?" "Let's get back to serious business," Malone said, giving Boyd a single look. There was silence for a second, and then Malone said: "He mentions something, in the book, that he calls 'telepathic projection.' As far as I understand what he's talking about, that's some method of forcing your thoughts on another person." He glanced over at the Queen. "Now, Your Majesty," he said, "you don't think it's true--and that may only be an opinion, but it's a pretty informed one. It seems to me as if Taylor makes a good case for this 'telepathic projection' of his. Why don't you think so?" "Because," Her Majesty said flatly, "it doesn't work." "You've tried it?" Boyd put in. "I have," she said. "And I have had no success with it at all. It's a complete failure." * * * * * "Now, wait a minute," Boyd said. "Just a minute." "What's the matter?" Malone said. "Have you tried it, and made it work?" Boyd snorted. "Fat chance," he said. "I just want to look at the thing, that's all." He held out his hand, and Malone gave him the sheaf of papers. Boyd leafed through them slowly, stopping every now and again to consult a page, until he found what he was looking for. "There," he said. "There, what?" Malone said. "Listen to this," Boyd said. "'For those who draw the line at demonic possession, I suggest trying telepathic projection. Apparently, it is possible to project one's own thoughts directly into the mind of another--even to the point of taking control of the other's mind. Hypnotism? You tell me, and we'll both know. Ever since the orthodox scientists have come around to accepting hypnotism, I've been chary of it. Maybe there really is an astral body or a soul that a person has stashed about him somewhere--something that he can send out to take control of another human being. But I, personally, prefer the telepathic projection theory. All you have to do is squirt your thoughts across space and spray them all over the fellow's brain. Presto-bingo, he does pretty much what you want him to do.'" "That's the quote I was thinking of," Malone said. "Of course it is," Her Majesty said. "But it really doesn't work. I've tried it." "How have you tried it?" Malone said. "There were many times, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "when I wanted someone to do something particular--for me, or for some other person. After all, you must remember that I was in a hospital for a long time. Of course, that represents only a short segment of my life span, but it seemed long to me." Malone, who was trying to view the years from age fifteen to age sixty-odd as a short segment of anybody's lifetime, remembered with a shock that this was not Rose Thompson speaking. It was Queen Elizabeth I, who had never died. "That's right, Sir Kenneth," she said kindly. "And in that hospital, there were a number of times when I wanted one of the doctors or nurses to do what I wanted them to. I tried many times, but I never succeeded." Boyd nodded his head. "Well--" he began. "Oh, yes, Sir Thomas," Her Majesty said. "What you're thinking is certainly possible. It may even be true." "What _is_ he thinking?" Malone said. "He thinks," Her Majesty said, "that I may not have the talent for this particular effect--and perhaps I don't. But, talent or not, I know what's possible and what isn't. And the way Mr. Taylor describes it is simply silly, that's all. And unladylike. Imagine any self-respecting lady 'squirting' her thoughts about in space!" "Well," Malone said carefully, "aside from its being unladylike--" "Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "you are not telepathic. Neither is Sir Thomas." "I'm nothing," Boyd said. "I don't even exist." "And it is very difficult to explain to the nontelepath just what Mr. Taylor is implying," Her Majesty went on imperturbably. "Before you could inject any thoughts into anyone else's mind, you'd have to be able to see into that mind. Is that correct?" [Illustration] "I guess so," Malone said. "And in order to do that, you'd have to be telepathic," Her Majesty said. "Am I correct?" "Correct," Malone said. "Well, then," Her Majesty said with satisfaction, and beamed at him. A second passed. "Well, then, what?" Malone said in confusion. "Telepathy," Her Majesty said patiently, "is an extremely complex affair. It involves a sort of meshing with the mind of this other person. It has nothing--absolutely nothing--in common with this simple 'squirting' of thoughts across space, as if they were orange pips you were trying to put into a wastebasket. No, Sir Kenneth, I cannot believe in what Mr. Taylor says." "But it's still possible," Malone said. "Oh," Her Majesty said, "it's certainly possible. But I should think that if any telepaths were around, and if they were changing people's minds by 'squirting' at them, I would know it." Malone frowned. "Maybe you would at that," he said. "I guess you would." "Not to mention," Boyd put in, "that if you were going to control everything we've come across like that you'd need an awful lot of telepathic operators." "That's true," Malone admitted. "And the objections seem to make some sense. But what else is there to go on?" "I don't know," Boyd said. "I haven't the faintest idea. And I'm rapidly approaching the stage where I don't care." "Well," Malone said, heaving a sigh, "let's keep looking." He bent down and picked up another sheaf of copies from the Psychical Research Society. "After all," he said, without much hope, "you never know." VII Malone looked around the office of Andrew J. Burris as if he'd never seen it before. He felt tired, and worn out, and depressed; it had been a long night, and here it was morning and the head of the FBI was talking to him about his report. It was, Malone told himself heavily, a hell of a life. "Now, Malone," Burris said in a kindly voice, "this is a very interesting report." "Yes, sir," Malone said automatically. "A very interesting report indeed, Kenneth," Burris went on, positively bursting with good-fellowship. "Thank you, sir," Malone said dully. Burris beamed a little more. "You've done a fine job," he said, "a really fine job. Hardly on the job any time at all, and here you've managed to get all three of the culprits responsible." "Now, wait a minute," Malone said in sudden panic. "That isn't what I said." "No?" Burris said, looking a little surprised. "Not at all," Malone said. "I don't think those three spies have anything to do with this at all. Not a thing." There was a brief silence, during which Burris' surprise seemed to expand like a gas and fill the room. "But they've confessed," he said at last. "Their job was to try and get information, and also to disrupt our own work here." "I know all that," Malone said. "But--" Burris held up a pink, patient hand. Malone stared at it, fascinated. It had five pink, patient fingers on it. "Malone," Burris said slowly, "just what's bothering you? Don't you think those men _are_ spies? Is that it?" "Spies?" Malone said, slightly confused. "You know," Burris said. "The men you arrested, Malone. The men you wrote this report about." Malone blinked and focused on the hand again. It still had five fingers. "Sure they are," he said. "They're spies, all right. And they're caught, and that's that. Except I don't think they're causing all the confusion around here." "Well, of course they're not," Burris said, the beam of kindliness coming back to his face. "Not any more. You caught them." "I mean," Malone said desperately, "they never were. Even before I caught them." "Then why," Burris said with great patience, "did you arrest them?" "Because they're spies," Malone said. "Besides, I didn't." "Didn't what?" Burris said, looking confused. He seemed to realize he was still holding up his hand, and dropped it to the desk. Malone felt sad as he watched it go. Now he had nothing to concentrate on except the conversation, and he didn't even want to think about what was happening to that. "Didn't arrest them," he said. "Tom Boyd did." "Acting," Burris pointed out gently, "under your orders, Kenneth." It was the second time Burris had called him Kenneth, Malone realized. It started a small warning bell in the back of his mind. When Burris called him by his first name, Burris was feeling paternal and kindly. And that, Malone thought determinedly, boded Kenneth J. Malone very little good indeed. "He was under my orders to arrest them because they were spies," he said at last. He wondered if the sentence made any real sense, but shrugged his shoulders and plunged on. "But they're not the real spies," he said. "Not the ones everybody's been looking for." "Kenneth," Burris said, his voice positively dripping with what Malone thought of as the heavy, Grade A, Government-inspected cream of human kindness, "all the confusion with the computer-secretaries has stopped. Everything is running fine in that department." "But--" Malone began. "The technicians," Burris said, hypnotized by this poem of beauty, "aren't making any more mistakes. The information is flowing through beautifully. It's a pleasure to see their reports. Believe me, Kenneth--" "Call me Chief," Malone said wearily. Burris blinked. "What?" he said. "Oh. Ha. Indeed. Very well, then: Malone, what more proof do you want?" "Is that proof?" Malone said. "The spies didn't even confess to that. They--" "Of course they didn't, Malone," Burris said. "Of course?" Malone said weakly. "Look at their confessions," Burris said. "Just look at them, in black and white." He reached for a sheaf of papers and pushed them across the desk. Malone looked at them. They were indeed, he told himself, in black and white. There was no arguing with that. None at all. * * * * * "Well?" Burris said after a second. "I don't see anything about computer-secretaries," Malone said. "The Russians," Burris began slowly, "are not stupid, Malone. You believe that, don't you?" "Of course I believe it," Malone said. "Otherwise we wouldn't need an FBI." Burris frowned. "There are still domestic cases," he said. "Like juvenile delinquents stealing cars inter-state, for instance. If you remember." He paused, then went on: "But the fact remains: Russians are not stupid. Not by a long shot." "All right," Malone said agreeably. "Do you really think, then," Burris said instantly, "that a spy ring could be as utterly inefficient as the one described in those confessions?" "Lots of people are inefficient," Malone said. "Not spies," Burris said with decision. "Do you really believe that the Russians would send over a bunch of operatives as clodheaded as these are pretending to be?" "People make mistakes," Malone said weakly. "Russian spies," Burris said, "do not make mistakes. Or, anyhow, we can't depend on it. We have to depend on the fact that they're operating at peak efficiency, Malone. Peak." Malone nearly asked: "Where?" but controlled himself at the last minute. Instead, he said: "But the confessions are right there. And, according to the confessions--" "Do you really believe," Burris said, "that a trio of Soviet agents would confess everything as easily as all that if they didn't intend to get something out of it? Such as, for instance, covering up their methods of doing damage? And do you really believe--" Malone began to feel as if he were involved in the Athanasian Creed. "I don't think the spies are the real spies," he said stubbornly. "I mean the spies we're all looking for." "Do you mean to stand there and tell me," Burris went on inexorably, "that you take the word of spies when they tell you about their own activities?" "Their confessions--" "Spies can lie, Malone," Burris said gently. "As a matter of fact, they usually do. We have come to depend on it as one of the facts of life." "But Queen Elizabeth," Malone said stubbornly, "told me they weren't lying." As he finished the sentence, he suddenly realized what it sounded like. "You know Queen Elizabeth," he said chummily. "The Virgin Queen," Burris said helpfully. "I wouldn't know," Malone said, feeling uncomfortable. "I mean Rose Thompson. She thinks she's Queen Elizabeth and I just said it that way because--" "It's all right, Malone," Burris said softly. "I know who you mean." "Well, then," Malone said. "If Queen Elizabeth says the spies aren't lying, then--" "Then nothing," Burris said flatly. "Miss Rose Thompson is a nice, sweet, little old lady. I admit that." "And she's been a lot of help," Malone said. "I admit that, too," Burris said. "But she is also somewhat battier, Malone, than the entire Order Chiroptera, including Count Dracula and all his happy friends." "She only thinks she's Queen Elizabeth I," Malone said defensively. "That," Burris said, "is a large sort of _only_. Malone, you've got to look at the facts sensibly. Square in the face." Malone pictured a lot of facts going by with square faces. He didn't like the picture. "All right," he said. "Things are going wrong in the Congressional computer-secretaries," Burris said. "So I assign you to the case. You come back to me with three spies, and the trouble stops. And what other information have you got?" "Plenty," Malone said, and stopped for thought. There was a long pause. "All this business about mysterious psionic faculties," Burris said, "comes direct from the testimony of that sweet little old twitch. Which she is. Dr. O'Connor, for instance, has told you in so many words that there's no such thing as this mysterious force. And if you don't want to take the word of the nation's foremost authority, there's this character from the Psychical Research Society--Carter, or whatever his name is. Carter told you he'd never heard of such a thing." "But that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing," Malone said. "Even your own star witness," Burris said, "even the Queen herself, told you it couldn't be done." "Nevertheless--" Malone began. But he felt puzzled. There was no way, he decided, to finish a sentence that started with _nevertheless_. It was the wrong kind of word. "What are you trying to do?" Burris said. "Beat your head against a stone wall?" Malone realized that that was just what he felt like. Of course, Burris thought the stone wall was his psionic theory. Malone knew that the stone wall was Andrew J. Burris. But it didn't matter, he thought confusedly. Where there's a stone, there's a way. "I feel," he said carefully, "like a man with a stone head." "And I don't blame you," Burris said in an understanding tone. "Here you are trying to make evidence to fit your theories. What real evidence is there, Malone, that these three spies ... these three comic-opera spies--are innocent?" "What evidence is there that they're guilty?" Malone said. "Now, listen, Chief--" "Don't call me Chief," Burris murmured. "Another five minutes," Malone said in a sudden rage, "and I won't even call you." "Malone!" Burris said. Malone swallowed hard. "Sorry," he said at last. "But isn't it just barely possible that these three spies aren't the real criminals? Suppose you were a spy." "All right," Burris said. "I'm a spy." Something in his tone made Malone look at him with a sudden suspicion. Burris, he thought, was humoring him. Is it possible, Malone asked himself, that _I_ am the one who is as a little child? Little children, he told himself with decision, do not capture Russian spies and then argue about it. They go home, eat supper and go to bed. * * * * * He stopped thinking about sleep in a hurry, and got back to the business at hand. "If you were a spy," he said, "and you knew that a lot of other spies had been arrested and charged with the crimes you were committing, what would you do?" Burris appeared to think deeply. "I would celebrate," he said at last, in a judicious tone. "I mean, would you just go on with the same crimes?" Malone said. "What are you talking about, Malone?" Burris said cautiously. "If you knew we'd arrested Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch," Malone went on doggedly, "you'd lay off for a while, just to make us think we'd caught the right men. Doesn't that make sense?" "Of course it makes sense," Burris said in what was almost a pitying tone. "But don't push it too far. Malone, I want you to know something." Malone sighed. "Yes, sir?" he said. "Contrary to popular opinion," Burris said, "I was not appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation just because I own a Hoover vacuum cleaner." "Of course not," Malone said, feeling that something of the sort was called for. "And I think you ought to know by now," Burris went on, "that I wouldn't fall for a trick like that any more than you would. There are obviously more members in this spy ring. Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch are just a start." "Well, then--" Malone began. "_I'm_ not going to be taken in by what these three say," Burris said. "But now, Malone, we know what to look for. All we have to do is pretend to be taken in. Get it?" "Sure," Malone said. "We pretend to be taken in. And in the meantime I can go on looking for--" "We don't have to look for anything," Burris said calmly. Malone took a deep breath. Somehow, he told himself, things were not working out very well. "But the other spies--" "The next time they try anything," Burris said, "we'll be able to reach out and pick them up as easy as falling off a log." "It's the wrong log!" Malone said. Burris folded his hands on the desk and looked at them for a second, frowning slightly like a psychiatrist. "Malone," he said at last, "I want you to listen to me. Calmly. Coolly. Collectedly." Malone shrugged. "All right," he said. "I'm calm and cool." "And collected," Burris added. "That, too," Malone said vaguely. "Malone," Burris began, "you've got to get rid of this idea that everything the FBI investigates these days is somehow linked with psionics. I know you've done a lot of work in that connection--" "Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "There are those errors. How did the technicians feed the wrong data into the machines?" "Errors do happen," Burris said. "If I slip on a banana peel, do I blame psionics? Do I even blame the United Fruit Growers? I do not, Malone. Instead, I tell myself that errors do happen. All the time." "Now," Malone said, "you've contradicted yourself." "I have?" Burris said with a look of complete surprise. "Sure," Malone said. He leaned forward across the desk. "If the errors were just ordinary accidental errors, then how were the spies responsible? And why did they stop after the spies were arrested? When you slip on a banana peel, does it matter whether or not the United Fruit Growers are out on strike?" "Oh," Burris said. "You see?" Malone said. "You've gone and contradicted yourself." He felt victorious, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the horrible sensation that someone was about to come up behind him and hit him on the head with a wet sock full of old sand. A long second passed. Then Burris said: "Oh. Malone, I forgot to give you the analysis report." That, Malone realized dimly, was supposed to be the wet sock. Fate, he told himself, was against him. Anyhow, something was against him. It was a few seconds before he came to the conclusion that what he had heard didn't really make any sense. "Analysis report?" he said. "On the water cooler," Burris explained cheerfully. "There is an analysis report on a water cooler," Malone said. "Everything now becomes as clear as crystal." He heard his voice begin to rise. "You analyzed a water cooler and discovered that it was a Siberian spy in disguise," he said, trying to make himself sound less hysterical. "No, no," Burris said, pushing at Malone with his palms. "The water in it, Malone. The water in it." "No Siberian spy," Malone said with decision, "could disguise himself as the water in a water cooler." "I didn't say that," Burris went on. "But what do you think was in that water cooler, Malone?" "Water," Malone said. "_Cool_ water." "Congratulations," Burris said, in the hearty tones usually reserved for announcers on programs where housewives win trips to Nome. "You are just a shade less than ninety-nine point nine nine per cent correct." "The rest of the water," Malone hazarded, "was warm?" "The rest of the water," Burris said, "wasn't water. Aside from the usual minerals, there was also a trace of one of the psychodrugs." * * * * * The word seemed to hang in mid-air, like somebody's sword. Malone knew perfectly well what the psychodrugs were. Over the past twenty years, a great number of them had been developed by confused and anxious researchers. Some were solids, some liquids and a few gaseous at normal temperatures. Some were weak and some were highly potent. Some were relatively innocuous, and quite a few were as deadly as any of the more common poisons. They could be administered by mouth, by injection, by spray, as drops, grains, whiffs or in any other way conceivable to medical science. But they all had one thing in common. They affected the mental functioning--what seemed to be the personality itself--of the person dosed with them. The effect of the drugs was, in most cases, highly specific. One might make a normally brave man a craven coward; laboratory tests on that one had presented the interesting spectacle of terrified cats running from surprised, but by no means displeased, experimental mice. Another drug reversed this picture, and made the experimental mice mad with power. They attacked cats in battalions or singly, cheering and almost waving large flags as they went over the top, completely foolhardy in the presence of any danger whatever. Others made man abnormally suspicious and still others disassociated judgment to the point where all decisions were made completely at random. The FBI had a large file on psychodrugs, Malone knew. But he didn't need the file to see what was coming. He asked the question anyhow, just for the record: "What particular psychodrug was this one?" "One of the judgment-warpers," Burris said. "Haenlingen's Mixture; it's more or less a new development, but the Russians probably know as much about it as we do. In large doses, the drug affects even the automatic nervous system and throws the involuntary functions out of whack; but it isn't usually used in killing amounts." "And in the water cooler?" Malone asked. "There wasn't much of it," Burris said, "but there was enough. The technicians could be depended on to make a great many more mistakes than usual--just how many we can't determine, but the order of magnitude seems about right. It would depend on how much water each one of them drank, of course, and we haven't a chance of getting anything like a precise determination of that now." "Oh," Malone said. "But it comes out about right, doesn't it?" He felt hopeless. "Just about," Burris said cheerfully. "And since it was Brubitsch's job to change the cooler jug--" "Wait a minute," Malone said. "I think I see a hole in that." "Really?" Burris said. He frowned slightly. Malone nodded. "Sure," he said. "If any of the spies drank the water--their judgment would be warped, too, wouldn't it?" "So they didn't drink the water," Burris said easily. "How can we be sure?" Malone asked. Burris shrugged. "Why do we have to be?" he said. "Malone, you've got to stop pressing so hard on this." "But a man who didn't drink water all day would be a little conspicuous," Malone said. "After a while, anyhow." Burris sighed. "The man is a janitor, Kenneth," he said. "Do you know what a janitor is?" "Don't baby me," Malone snapped. Burris shrugged. "A janitor doesn't work in the office with the men," he said. "He can drink out of a faucet in the broom closet--or wherever the faucets might be. Nobody would notice. Nobody would think it odd." Malone said: "But--" and stopped and thought it over. "All right," he went on at last. "But I still insist--" "Now, Kenneth," Burris said in a voice that dripped oil. "I'll admit that psionics is new and wonderful and you've done a lot of fine work with it. A lot of very fine work indeed. But you can't go around blaming everything on psionics no matter what it is or how much sense it makes." "I don't," Malone said, injured. "But--" "But you do," Burris said. "Lately, you've been acting as though magic were loose in the world. As though nothing were dependable any more." "It's not magic," Malone said. "But it is," Burris told him, "when you use it as an explanation for anything and everything." He paused, "Kenneth," he said in a more kindly tone, "don't think I blame you. I know how hard you've been working. I know how much time and effort you've put into the gallant fight against this country's enemies." Malone closed his eyes and turned slightly green. "It was nothing," he said at last. He opened his eyes but nothing had changed. Burris' expression was still kindly and concerned. "Oh, but it was," Burris said. "Something, I mean. You've been working very hard and you're just not at peak efficiency any more. You need a rest, Kenneth. A nice rest." "I do not," Malone said indignantly. "A lovely rest," Burris went on, oblivious. "Somewhere peaceful and quiet, where you can just sit around and think peacefully about peaceful things. Oh, it ought to be wonderful for you, Kenneth. A nice, peaceful, lovely, wonderful vacation." Through the haze of adjectives, Malone remembered dimly the last time Burris had offered him a vacation in that tone of voice. It had turned out to be one of the toughest cases he'd ever had: the case of the teleporting delinquents. [Illustration] "Nice?" Malone said. "Peaceful? Lovely? Wonderful? I can see it now." "What do you mean, Malone?" Burris said. "What am I going to get?" Malone said. "A nice easy job like arresting all the suspected nose-pickers in Mobile, Alabama?" Burris choked and recovered quickly. "No," he said. "No, no, no. I mean it. You've earned a vacation, Kenneth, a real vacation. A nice, peaceful--" "Lovely, wonderful vacation," Malone said. "But--" "You're one of my best agents," Burris said. "I might almost say you're my top man. My very top man. And because of that I've been overworking you." "But--" "Now, now," Burris said, waving a hand vaguely. "I have been overworking you, Kenneth, and I'm sorry. I want to make amends." "A what?" Malone said, feeling confused again. "Amends," Burris said. "I want to do something for you." Malone thought about that for a second. Burris was well-meaning, all right, but from the way the conversation was going it looked very much as if "vacation" weren't going to be the right word. The right word, he thought dismally, was going to be "rest home." Or possibly even "insane asylum." "I don't want to stop work," he said grimly. "Really, I don't." "You'll have lots of time to yourself," Burns said in a wheedling tone. Malone nodded. "Sure I will," he said. "Until they come and put me in a wet pack." Burris blinked, but recovered gamely. "You don't have to go swimming," he said, "if you don't want to go swimming. Up in the mountains, for instance--" "Where there are nice big guards to watch everything," Malone said. "And nuts." "Guides," Burris said. "But you could just sit around and take things easy." "All locked up," Malone said. "Sure. I'll love it." "If you want to go out," Burris said, "you can go out. Anywhere. Just do whatever you feel like doing." Malone sighed. "O.K.," he said. "When do the men in the white coats arrive?" "White coats?" Burris said. There was a short silence. "Kenneth," he said, "don't suspect me of trying to do anything to you. This is my way of doing you a favor. It would just be a vacation--going anywhere you want to go, doing anything you want to do." "Avacado," Malone muttered at random. Burris stared. "What?" "Nothing," Malone said shamefacedly. "An old song. It runs through my mind. And when you said that about going where I want to go--" "An old song with avacados in it?" Burris said. Malone cleared his throat and burst into shy and slightly hoarse song. "Avacado go where you go," he piped feebly, "do what you do--" "Oh," Burris said. "Oh, my." "Sorry," Malone muttered. He took a breath and waited. A second passed. "Well, Kenneth," Burris said at last, with an attempt at heartiness, "you can do anything you like. The mountains. The seashore. Hawaii. The Riviera. Just go and forget all about gangsters, spies, counter-espionage, kidnapings, mad telepaths, juvenile teleports and anything else like that." "You forgot water coolers," Malone said. Burris nodded. "And water coolers," he said, "by all means. Forget about FBI business. Forget about me. Just relax." It did sound appealing, Malone told himself. But there was a case to finish, and he was sure Burris was finishing it wrong. He wanted to argue about it some more, but he was fresh out of arguments. And besides, the idea of being able to forget all about Andrew J. Burris for a little while was almost insidious. Malone liked it more the more he thought about it. Burris went on naming vacation spots and drawing magnificent travel-agency pictures of how wonderful life could be, and after a while Malone left. There just wasn't anything else to say. Burris had given him an order for his vacation pay and another guaranteeing travel expenses. Not, he thought glumly, that he would be expected to buy return tickets. Oh, no. Once he'd been to a place he could teleport back, so there would be no point in taking a plane or a train back from wherever he went. "And suppose I like planes and trains?" he muttered, going on down the hall. But there was nothing he could do about it. He did think of looking for some sympathy, at least, but he couldn't even get much of that. Tom Boyd had apparently already talked to Burris, and was in full agreement with him. "After all," Boyd said, "there's the drug in the water--and it looks like pretty solid proof to me, Ken." "It's not proof of anything," Malone said sourly. "Sure it is," Boyd said. "Why would anybody put it there otherwise?" Malone shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "But I'm not surprised you like Burris' theory. Psionics never did make you very happy, did it?" "Not very," Boyd admitted. "This way, anyhow, I've got something I can cope with. And it makes nice, simple sense. No reason to go and complicate it, Ken. None at all." * * * * * Glumly, Malone made his farewells and then teleported himself from the Justice Department Building back to his own apartment. There, slowly and sadly, he began to pack. He hadn't yet decided just where he _was_ going, but that was a minor detail. The important thing was that he was going. If the Director of the FBI tells you that you need a rest cure, Malone thought, you do not argue with him. Argument may result in your vacation being extended indefinitely. And that is not a good thing. Of course, such a "vacation" wouldn't be the end of the world. Not quite. He could even beat Burris to the gun, hand in his resignation and go into private practice as a lawyer. The name of Malone, he told himself proudly, had not been entirely forgotten in Chicago, by any means. But he didn't feel happy about the idea. He knew, perfectly well, that he didn't want to live by trading on his father's reputation. And besides, he _liked_ being an FBI agent. It had glamour. It had standing. It had everything. It even had trouble. Malone caught his whirling mind and forced it back to a landing. Where, he asked himself, was he going? He thought about that for a second. Perhaps, as Burris had apparently suspected, he was going nuts. When he considered it, it even sounded like a good possibility. After all, what evidence _did_ he have for his psionic theory? Her Majesty had told him about those peculiar bursts of metal energy, true. But there wasn't anything else. And, come to think of it, wasn't it possible that Her Majesty had slipped just a little off the trolley of her one-track psychosis? At that thought a quick wave of guilt swept through him. Her Majesty, after all, might be reading his mind from Yucca Flats, where she had returned the previous night, right at that moment. He felt as if he had committed high, middle and low treason all in one great big package, not to mention Jack and the Game, he added disconsolately. "Nevertheless," he muttered, and stopped. He blinked and started over again. In spite of all that, he told himself, the Burris Theory certainly looked a lot sounder when you considered it objectively. The big question was whether or not he _wanted_ to consider it objectively. But he put this aside for the future, and continued packing slowly and carefully. When at last he snapped shut the last suitcase, he still hadn't made up his mind as to the best spot for a vacation. Images tumbled through his brain: mountains, seacoasts, beaches, beautiful native girls and even a few insane asylums. But nothing definite appeared. He sat down in his favorite easychair, found a cigar and lit it, and luxuriated in the soothing fumes while his mind began to wander. Her Majesty, he was quite certain, wouldn't lie purposely. Granted, she had misled him now and again, but even when she felt misleading necessary she hadn't lied; she had merely juggled the truth a little. And Malone was sure she would continue to tell him the truth as she knew it. Of course, that was the stopper: _as she knew it_. And she might have developed another delusion. In which case, he thought sadly, Burris was very probably right. But she might also be telling the actual truth. And that meant, Malone thought, that little pops of energy were occasionally bursting in various minds. These little pops had an effect, or an apparent effect: they made people change their minds about doing one thing or another. And that meant--Malone stopped, his cigar halfway to his mouth. _Wasn't it possible that just such a burst of energy had made Burris call him off the case?_ It seemed like a long time before the cigar reached his mouth. Malone felt slightly appalled. The flashes that had been going on in his own mind had already been bothering him, and he'd decided that he'd have to check every decision he made to be sure that it was not capricious; now he made a resolve that he'd kept his mental faculties on a perpetual watch for that sort of interference. Of course, it was more than barely possible that he wouldn't notice it if anything happened. But it would be pretty stupid to succumb to that sort of defeatism now, he told himself grimly. Now that everything was narrowing down so nicely, anyhow, he thought. There were only two real possibilities. Malone numbered them in his mind: 1. Her Majesty has developed a new delusion. In this case, he thought, Burris was perfectly right. I can enjoy a month of free vacation. 2. Her Majesty is no nuttier than before. If this is the case, he thought, then there's more to the case than has appeared, and Kenneth J. Malone, with or without the FBI, is going to get to the bottom of it. Therefore, he summed up, everything now hinged on whether or not Her Majesty was unhinged. That was confusing, but he managed to straighten it out after a second. He put his half-smoked cigar carefully in an ashtray and stood up. He went over to the phone and dialed the special unlisted number of the FBI. The face that appeared was faintly sallow and looked sad. "Pelham here," it said in the tones of a discouraged horse. "Hello, Pelham," Malone said. "Kenneth Malone here." "Trouble?" Pelham said. It was obvious that he expected trouble, and always had, and probably always would. "Nope," Malone said. Pelham looked even sadder. "Just checking out for vacation. You can tell the Chief I'm going to take off for Las Vegas. I'm taking his advice, tell him; I'm going to carouse and throw my money away and look at dancing girls and smoke and drink and stay out late. I'll let the local office know where I'm staying when I get there, just in case something comes up." "O.K.," Pelham said unhappily. "I'll check you out." He tried a smile, but it looked more like the blank expression on the face of a local corpse. "Have fun," he said. "Thanks," Malone said. "I'll try." But his precognitive sense suddenly rose up on its hind legs as he broke the connection. The attempt to have fun, it told him in no uncertain terms, was going to be a morbid failure. "Nevertheless," Malone muttered, heaved a great sigh, and started for the suitcase and the door. VIII The Great Universal was not the tops in every field. Not by a long shot. As Las Vegas resorts went, as a matter of fact, almost any of them could outdo the Great Universal in one respect or another. The Golden Palace, for instance, had much gaudier gaming rooms. The Moonbeam had a louder orchestra. The Barbary Coast and the Ringing Welkin both had more slot machines, and it was undeniable that the Flower of the West had fatter and pinker dancing girls. The Red Hot, the Last Fling and the Double Star all boasted more waiters and more famous guests per square foot of breathable air. But the Great Universal, in sheer size, volume of business and elegance of surroundings, outdid any three of the others combined. It stood grandly alone at the edge of the Strip, the grandiloquent Las Vegas version of Broadway or Hollywood Boulevard. It had a central Tower that climbed thirty stories into the clean desert air, and the Tower was surrounded by a quarter of a square mile of single-level structures. At the base, the building spread out for five hundred feet in every direction, and beyond that were the clusters of individual cabins interlaced by walks, small parks, an occasional pool, and a few little groves of trees "for privacy and the feeling of oneness with Nature," the brochure said. But the brochure didn't even do justice to the place. Nothing could have except the popping eyes of the thousand of tourists who saw the Great Universal every month. And they were usually in no condition to sit down and talk calmly about it. Around the entire collection of buildings rose a wall that fitted the architectural style of the place perfectly. A Hollywood writer out for a three-day bender had called it "Futuristic Mediaeval," since it seemed to be a set-designer's notion of Camelot combined with a Twenty-fifth Century city as imagined by Frank R. Paul. It had Egyptian designs on it, but no one knew exactly why. On the other hand, of course, there was no real reason why not. That was not the only decoration. Emblazoned on the Tower, in huge letters of evershifting color, was a glowing sign larger than the eye could believe. The sign proclaimed through daylight and the darkest night: Great Universal Hotel. Malone had no doubts about it. There was a running argument as to whether or not the Great Universal was actually on the Strip. Certainly the original extent of the Strip didn't include it. But the Strip itself had been spreading Westward at a slow but steady pace for two decades, and the only imaginable stopping-point was the California border. Malone had taken a taxi from the airfield, and had supplied himself with silver dollars there. He gave the cabbie one of them and added another when the man's expression showed real pain. Still unhappy but looking a little less like a figure out of the Great Depression, the cabbie gunned his machine away, leaving Malone standing in the carport surrounded by suitcases and bags of all sizes and weights. A robot redcap came gliding along. Inevitably, it was gilded, and looked absolutely brand new. Behind it, a chunky little man with bright eyes waved at Malone. "Reserved here?" he said. "That's right," Malone said. "The name is Malone." The redcap's escort shrugged. "I don't care if the name is Jack the Ripper," he said. "Just reservations, that's all I care." Malone watched the luggage being stowed away, and followed after the redcap and its escort with mixed feelings. Las Vegas glittered like mad, but the two inhabitants he had met so far seemed a little dim. However, he told himself, better things might turn up. Better things did, almost immediately. In the great lobby of the Tower, guests were lounging about in little groups. Many of the guests were dressed in tuxedos, others in sport shirts and slacks. Quite a number were wearing dresses, skirt-and-blouse combinations or evening gowns, and Malone paid most of his attention to these. New York, Washington and even Chicago had nothing to match them, he thought dazedly. They were magnificent, and almost frightening in their absolute beauty. Malone however, was not easily daunted. He followed a snappily-dressed bellman to the registration desk while his robot purred gently after him. First things first, he thought--but making friends with the other guests definitely came up number two. Or three, anyhow, he amended sadly. He signed his own name to the register, but didn't add: "Federal Bureau of Investigation" after it. After all, he thought, he was there unofficially. And even though gambling was perfectly legal in Nevada, the thought of the FBI still made many of the club owners just the least little bit nervous. Instead, Malone gave a Chicago firm as his business address--one which the FBI used as a cover for just such purposes. The clerk looked at him politely and blankly. "A room in the Tower, sir?" he said. Malone shook his head. "Ground floor," he said. "But not too far from the Tower. I get airsick easily." The clerk gave Malone a large laugh, which made him uncomfortable and a little angry. The joke hadn't been all that good, he thought. If he'd ordered a top-price room he could understand the hospitality, but the most expensive rooms were in the Tower, with the outside cabins running a close second. The other rooms dropped in price as they approached the periphery of the main building. "A humorist, sir?" the clerk said. "Not at all," Malone said pleasantly, wishing he'd signed with his full occupation and address. "I'm a gravedigger. Business has been very good this year." The clerk, apparently undecided as to whether or not to offer congratulations, settled for consulting his registry and then stabbing at a button on a huge and complex board at his right. A key slid out of a slot and the clerk handed it to Malone with a rather strained smile. "10-Q," he said. "You're very welcome," Malone said in his most unctuous tones. He took the key. The clerk blinked. "The bellman will take you to your rooms, sir," he said in a good imitation of his original voice. "There are maps of the building at intervals along the halls, and if you find that you have become lost you have only to ask one of the hall guides to show you the proper directions." "My, my," Malone said. The clerk cleared his throat. "If you wish to use one of the cars," he went on in a slightly more unsteady voice, "simply insert your key in the slot beneath one of the wall maps, and a car will be at your service." Malone shook his head and gave a deep sigh. "What," he said, "will they think of next?" * * * * * Satisfied with that for an exit line, he turned and found that the bellman had already taken his luggage from the robot redcap and put it aboard a small electric car. Malone got in beside him and the bellman started the vehicle down the hallway. It rolled along on soft, silent tires. It, too, was gilded. It didn't move very fast, Malone thought, but it certainly beat walking. Each hallway which radiated out from the central section beneath the Tower was built like a small-edition city street. The little cars scooted up and down the two center lanes while pedestrians, poor benighted souls, kept to the side walkways. Every so often Malone saw one, walking along the raised walkway and holding the rail along the outside that was meant to keep guests of every stage of drunkenness from falling into the road. At the intersections, small, Japanese-style bridges crossed over the roadway. On these, Malone saw uniformed men standing motionless, one to a bridge. They all looked identical, and each one had a small gold stripe sewn to the chest of the red uniform. Malone read the letters on the stripe as they passed the third man. It said: _Guide_. "Now, you live in Q-wing, sir," the bellman was saying in a nasal, but rather pleasant voice as Malone looked away. "You're not far from the Tower Lobby, so you won't have a lot to remember. It's not like living along, say, the D-E Passageway out near 20 or 23." "I'm sure it isn't," Malone said politely. "No," the bellman said, "you got it simple. This here is Q-Yellow--see the yellow stripe on the wall?" Malone looked. There was a yellow stripe on the wall. "I see it," he said. "So all you got to do," the bellman said, "is follow Q-Yellow to the Tower Lobby." He acted as if he had demonstrated a Euclidean proposition flawlessly. "Got it?" he asked. "Very simple," Malone said. "O.K.," the bellman said. "Now, the gaming rooms--" Malone listened with about a fifth of an ear while the bellman went on spinning out incredibly complex directions for getting around in the quasi-city that was the Great Universal. At one point he thought he caught the man saying that an elephant ramp took guests past the resplendent glass rest rooms to the roots of the roulette wheel, but that didn't sound even remotely plausible when he considered it. At last the bellman announced: "Here we are, sir. Right to your door. A courtesy of the friendly Great Universal Hotel." He pulled over to the side, pushed a button on the sidewalk, and the little car's body elevated itself on hydraulic pistons until it was even with the elevated sidewalk. The bellman pushed a stud on the walkway rail and a gate swung open. Malone stepped out and waited while luggage was unloaded. The courtesy of the Great Universal Hotel was not free, of course; Malone got rid of some more silver dollars. He fished in his pockets, found one lone crumpled ten-dollar bill and arranged it neatly and visibly in his right hand. "I notice you've got a lot of guides in the halls," he said as the bellman eyed the ten-spot. "Do that many people get lost in here?" "Well, not really, sir," the bellman said. "Not really. That's for the--what they call the protection of our guests. A courtesy." "Protection?" Malone said. He had noticed, he recalled, odd bulges beneath the left armpits of the guides. "Protection from what?" he asked, keeping a firm, loving grip on the bill. "There are a lot more guides than you'd expect, aren't there?" The bellman shifted uneasily from foot to foot. "Well, sir," he said at last in an uneasy manner, "I guess it's because of the politics around here. I mean, it's sort of confused." "Confused how?" Malone said, waving the bill ever so slightly. The bellman appeared to be hypnotized by its green color. "It's the governor shooting himself," he said at last. "And the Legislature wants to impeach the Lieutenant-governor, and the City Council of Las Vegas is having trouble with the Mayor, and the County Sheriff is having a feud with the State Police, and--Sir, it's all sort of confused right now. But it isn't serious." He grinned hopefully. Malone sighed and let go of the ten. It stayed fluttering in the air for perhaps a tenth of a second, and disappeared. "I'm sure it isn't," Malone said. "Just forget I asked you." The bellman's hand went to his pocket and came out again empty. "Asked me, sir?" he said. "Asked me what?" * * * * * The next fifteen minutes were busy ones. Malone made himself quickly at home, keeping his eyes open for hidden TV cameras or other forms of bugging. Satisfied at last that he was entirely alone, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and teleported himself to Yucca Flats. [Illustration] This time, he didn't land in Dr. O'Connor's office. Instead, he opened his eyes in the hallway in the nearby building that housed the psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists who were working with the telepaths Malone and the FBI had unearthed two years before. Apparently, telepathy was turning out to be more a curse than a blessing. Of the seven known telepaths in the world, only Her Majesty retained anything like the degree of sanity necessary for communication. The psych men who were working with the other six had been trying to establish some kind of rapport, but their efforts so far had been as fruitless as a petrified tree. Malone went down the hallway until he came to a door near the end. He looked at the sign painted on the opaqued glass for a second: ALAN MARSHALL, M.D. CHIEF OF STAFF PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT With a slight sigh, he pushed open the door and went in. Dr. Marshall was a tall, balding man with a light-brown brush mustache and a pleasant smile. He wore thick glasses but he didn't look at all scholarly; instead, he looked rather like Alec Guinness made up for a role as a Naval lieutenant. He rose as Malone entered, and stretched a hand across the desk. "Glad to see you, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Very glad." Malone shook hands and raised his eyebrows. "_Sir_ Kenneth?" he said. Dr. Marshall shrugged slightly. "She prefers it," he said. "And since there's no telling whose mind she might look into--" He smiled. "After all," he finished, "why not?" "Tell me, doctor," Malone said. "Don't you ever get uneasy about the fact that Her Majesty can look into your mind? I mean, it has disturbed some people." "Not at all," Marshall said. "Not in the least. After all, Sir Kenneth, it's all a matter of adjustment. Simple adjustment and no more." He paused, then added: "Like sex." "Sex?" Malone said in a voice he hoped was calm. "Cultural mores," Marshall said. "That sort of thing. Nothing, really." He sat down. "Make yourself comfortable," he told Malone. "As a matter of fact, the delusion Her Majesty suffers from has its compensations for the psychiatrist. Where else could I be appointed Royal Psychiatrist, Advisor to the Crown, and Earl Marshal?" Malone looked around, found a comfortable chair and dropped into it. "I suppose so," he said. "It must be sort of fun, in a way." "Oh, it is," Marshall said. "Of course, it can get to be specifically troublesome; all cases can. I remember a girl who'd managed to get herself married to the wrong man--she was trying to escape her mother, or some such thing. And she'd moved into this apartment where her next-door neighbor, a nice woman really, had rather strange sexual tendencies. Well, what with those problems, and the husband himself--a rather ill-tempered brute, but a nice fellow basically--and her eventually meeting Mr. Right, which was inevitable--" "I'm sure it was very troublesome," Malone put in. "Extremely," Marshall said. "Worked out in the end, though. Ah ... most of them do seem to, when we're lucky. When things break right." "And when they don't?" Malone said. Marshall shook his head slowly and rubbed at his forehead with two fingers. "We do what we can," he said. "It's an infant science. I remember one rather unhappy case--started at a summer theatre, but the complications didn't stop there. As I recall, there were something like seven women and three men involved deeply before it began to straighten itself out. My patient was a young boy. Ah ... he had actually precipitated the situation, or was convinced that he had. All basically nice people, by the way. All of them. But the kind of thing they managed to get mixed up in--" "I'm sure it was interesting," Malone said. "But--" "Oh, they're all interesting," Marshall said. "But for sheer complexity ... well, this is an unusual sort of case, the one I'm thinking about now. I remember it began with a girl named Ned--" "Dr. Marshall," Malone said desperately, "I'd like to hear about a girl named Ned. I really would. It doesn't even sound probable." "Ah?" Dr. Marshall said. "I'd like to tell you--" "Unfortunately," Malone went on doggedly, "there is some business I've got to talk over." Dr. Marshall's disappointment was evident for less than a second. "Yes, Sir Kenneth?" he said. Malone took a deep breath. "It's about Her Majesty's mental state," he said. "I understand that a lot of it is complicated, and I probably wouldn't understand it. But can you give me as much as you think I can digest?" Marshall nodded slowly. "Ah ... you must understand that psychiatrists differ," he said. "We appear to run in schools--like fish, which is neither here nor there. But what I tell you might not be in accord with a psychiatrist from another school, Sir Kenneth." "O.K.," Malone said. "Shoot." "An extremely interesting slang word, by the way," Marshall said. "'Shoot.' Superficially an invitation to violence. I wonder--" A glance from Malone was sufficient. "Getting back to the track, however," he went on, "I should begin by saying that Her Majesty appears to have suffered a shock of traumatic proportions early in life. That might be the telepathic faculty itself coming to the fore--or, rather, the realization that others did not share her faculty. That she was, in fact, in communication with a world which could never reach her on her own deepest and most important level." He paused. "Are you following me so far?" he asked. "Gamely," Malone admitted. "In other words, when she couldn't communicate, she went into this traumatic shock." "Nor exactly," Marshall said. "We must understand what communication is. Basically, Sir Kenneth, we can understand it as a substitute for sexual activity. That is, in its deepest sense. It is this attack on the deepest levels of the psychic organism that results in the trauma; and has results of its own, by the way, which succeed in stabilizing the traumatic shock on several levels." Malone blinked. "That last part began to get me a little," he said. "Can we go over it again, just the tune this time and leave out the harmony?" Marshall smiled. "Certainly," he said. "Remember that Her Majesty has been locked up in institutions since early adolescence. Because of this--a direct result of the original psychosis--she has been deprived, not only of the communication which serves as a sublimation for sexual activity, but, in fact, any normal sexual activity. Her identification of herself with the Virgin Queen is far from accidental, Sir Kenneth." The idea that conservation was sex was a new and somewhat frightening one to Malone, but he stuck to it grimly. "No sex," Malone said. "That's the basic trouble." Marshall nodded. "It always is," he said. "In one form or another, Sir Kenneth; it is at the root of such problems at all times. But in Her Majesty's case the psychosis has become stabilized; she is the Virgin Queen, and therefore her failure to become part of the normal sexual activity of her group has a reason. It is accepted on that basis by her own psyche." "I see," Malone said. "Or, anyhow, I think I do. But how about changes? Could she get worse or better? Could she start lying to people--for the fun of it, or for reasons of her own?" "Changes in her psychic state don't seem very probable," Marshall said. "In theory, of course, anything is possible; but in fact, I have observed and worked with Her Majesty and no such change has occurred. You may take that as definite." "And the lying?" Malone said. Marshall frowned slightly. "I've just explained," he said, "that Her Majesty has been blocked in the direction of communication--that is, in the direction of one of her most important sexual sublimations. Such communication as she can have, therefore, is to be highly treasured by her; it provides the nearest thing to sex that she may have. As the Virgin Queen, she may still certainly _converse_ in any way possible. She would not injure that valuable possession and right by falsifying it. It's quite impossible, Sir Kenneth. Quite impossible." This did not make Malone feel any better. It removed one of the two possibilities--but it left him with no vacation, and the most complicated case he had ever dreamed of sitting squarely in his lap and making rude faces at him. He had to solve the case--and he had nobody but himself to depend on. "You're sure?" he said. "Perfectly sure, Sir Kenneth," Marshall said. Malone sighed. "Well, then," he said, "can I see Her Majesty?" He knew perfectly well that he didn't have to ask Marshall's permission--or anybody else's. But it seemed more polite, somehow. "She's receiving Dr. Sheldon Lord in audience just at the moment," Marshall said. "I don't see why you shouldn't go on to the Throne Room, though. He's giving her some psychological tests, but they ought to be finished in a minute or two." "Fine," Malone said. "How about court dress? Got anything here that might fit me?" Marshall nodded. "We've got a pretty complete line of court costume now," he said. "I should say it was the most complete in existence--except possibly for the TV historical companies. Down the hall, three doors farther on, you'll find the dressing room." * * * * * Malone thanked Dr. Marshall and went out slowly. He didn't really mind the court dress or the Elizabethan etiquette Her Majesty liked to preserve; as a matter of fact, he was rather fond of it. There had been some complaints about expense when the Throne Room and the costume arrangement were first set up, but the FBI and the Government had finally decided that it was better and easier to humor Her Majesty. Malone spent ten minutes dressing himself magnificently in hose and doublet, slash-sleeved, ermine-trimmed coat, lace collar, and plumed hat. By the time he presented himself at the door to the Throne Room he felt almost cheerful. It had been a long time since he had entered the world of Elizabethan knighthood over which Her Majesty held sway, and it always made him feel taller and more sure of himself. He bowed to a chunkily-built man of medium height in a stiffly brocaded jacket, carrying a small leather briefcase. The man had a whaler's beard of blond-red hair that looked slightly out of period, but the costume managed to overpower it. "Dr. Lord?" Malone said. The bearded man peered at him. "Ah, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Yes, yes. Just been giving Her Majesty a few tests. Normal weekly check, you know." "I know," Malone said. "Any change?" "Change?" Lord said. "In Her Majesty? Sir Kenneth, you might as well expect the very rocks to change. Her Majesty remains Her Majesty--and will, in all probability, throughout the foreseeable future." "The same as ever?" Malone asked hopefully. "Exactly," Lord said. "But--if you do want background on the case--I'm flying back to New York tonight. Look me up there, if you have a chance. I'm afraid there's little information I can give you, but it's always a pleasure to talk with you." "Thanks," Malone said dully. "Barrow Street," Lord said with a cheery wave of the briefcase. "Number 69." He was gone. The Security Officer at the door, a young man in the uniform of a page, opened it and peered out at Malone. The FBI Agent nodded to him and the Security Officer announced in a firm, loud voice: "Sir Kenneth Malone, of Her Majesty's Own FBI!" The Throne Room was magnificent. The whole place had been done in plastic and synthetic fibers to look like something out of the Sixteenth Century. It was as garish, and as perfect, as a Hollywood movie set--which wasn't surprising, since two stage designers had been hired away from color-TV spectaculars to set it up. At the far end of the room, past the rich hangings and the flaming chandeliers, was a great golden throne, and on it Her Majesty was seated. Lady Barbara Wilson, Her Majesty's personal nurse, was sitting on a camp-chair arrangement nearby. She smiled slowly at Malone as he went by, and Malone returned the smile with a good deal of interest. He strode firmly down the long crimson carpet that stretched from the doorway to the throne. At the steps leading up toward the dais that held the Throne, his free hand went up and swept off the plumed hat. He sank to one knee. "Your Majesty," he said gravely. The queen looked down on him. "Rise, Sir Kenneth," she said in a tone of surprise. "We welcome your presence." Malone got up off his knee and stood, his hat in his hand. "What is your business with us?" Her Majesty asked. Malone looked her full in the face for the first time. He realized that her expression was rather puzzled and worried. She looked even more confused than she had the last time he'd seen her. He took a deep breath, wished for a cigar and plunged blindly ahead into the toils of court etiquette. "Your Majesty," he said, "I know full well that you are aware of the thoughts that I have had concerning the case we have been working on. I beg Your Majesty's pardon for having doubted Your Majesty's Royal Word. Since my first doubts, of which I am sore ashamed, I have been informed by Our Majesty's Royal Psychiatrist that my doubts were ill-founded, and I wish to convey my deepest apologies. Now, having been fully convinced of the truth of Your Majesty's statements, I have a theory I would discuss with you, the particulars of which you can doubtless see in my mind." He paused. Her Majesty was staring at him, her face pale. "Sir Kenneth," she said in a strained voice, "we appreciate your attitude. However--" She paused for a moment, and then continued. "However, Sir Kenneth, it is our painful duty to inform you--" She stopped again. And when she managed to speak, she had dropped all pretense of Court Etiquette. "Sir Kenneth, I've been so worried! I was afraid you were dead!" Malone blinked. "Dead?" he asked. "For the past twenty-four hours," Her Majesty said in a frightened voice, "I've been unable to contact your mind. And right now, as you stand there, I can't read anything! "It's as though you weren't thinking at all!" [Illustration] PART 3 IX Malone stared at Her Majesty for what seemed like a long time. "Not thinking at all?" he said at last, weakly. "But I _am_ thinking. At least, I _think_ I am." He suddenly felt as if he had gone René Descartes one better. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Her Majesty regarded Malone for an interminable, silent second. Then she turned to Lady Barbara. "My dear," she said, "I would like to speak to Sir Kenneth alone. We will go to my chambers." Malone, feeling as though his brain had suddenly turned to quince jelly, followed the two women out of a small door at the rear of the Throne Room, and into Her Majesty's private apartments. Lady Barbara left them alone with some reluctance, but she'd evidently been getting used to following her patient's orders. Which, Malone thought with admiration, must take a lot of effort for a nurse. The door closed and he was alone with the Queen. Malone opened his mouth to speak, but Her Majesty raised a monitory hand. "Please, Sir Kenneth," she said. "Just a moment. Don't say anything for a little bit." Malone shut his mouth. When the minute was up, Her Majesty began to nod her head, very slowly. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and calm. "It's as though you were almost invisible," she said. "I can see you with my eyes, of course, but mentally you are almost completely indetectable. Knowing you as well as I do, and being this close to you, it is just possible for me to detect very faint traces of activity." "Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "I am thinking. I know I am. Maybe it's not me. Your telepathy might be fading out temporarily, or something like that. It's possible, isn't it?" He was reasonably sure it wasn't, but it was a last try at making sense. Her Majesty shook her head. "I can still receive Sir Thomas, for instance, quite clearly," she said. She seemed a little miffed, but the irritation was overpowered by her worry. "I think, Sir Kenneth, that you just don't know your own power, that's all. I don't know how, but you've managed somehow to smother telepathic communication almost completely." "But not quite?" Malone said. Apparently, he was thinking, but very weakly. Like a small child, he told himself dismally. Like a small Elizabethan child. Her Majesty's face took on a look of faraway concentration. "It's like looking at a very dim light," she said, "a light just at the threshold of perception. You might say that you've got to look at such a light sideways. If you look directly at it, you can't see it. And, of course, you can't see it at all if you're a long way off." She blinked. "It's not exactly like that, you understand," she finished. "But in some ways--" "I get the idea," Malone said. "Or I think I do. But what's causing it? Sunspots? Little green men?" "Not so little," Her Majesty said with some return of her old humor, "and not green, either. As a matter of fact, _you_ are, Sir Kenneth." Malone opened his mouth, shut it again and finally managed to say: "Me?" in a batlike squeal of surprise. "I don't know how, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty went on, "but you are. It's ... rather frightening to me, as a matter of fact; I've never seen such a thing before. I've never even considered it before." "You?" Malone said. "How about me?" It was like suddenly discovering that you'd been lifting two-hundred-pound barbells and not knowing it. "How could I be doing anything like that without knowing anything about it?" Her Majesty shook her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said. But Malone, very suddenly, did. He remembered deciding to keep a close check on his mental processes to make sure those bursts of energy didn't do anything to him. Subconsciously, he knew, he was still keeping that watch. And maybe the watch itself caused the complete blanking of his telepathic faculties. It was worth a test, at least, he decided. And it was an easy test to make. "Listen," he said. He told himself that he would now allow communication between himself and Her Majesty--and only between those two. Maybe it wasn't possible to let down the barrier in a selective way, but he gave it all he had. A long second passed. "My goodness!" Her Majesty said in pleased surprise. "There you are again!" "You can read me?" Malone asked. "Why ... yes," Her Majesty said. "And I can see just what you're thinking. I'm afraid, Sir Kenneth, that I don't know whether it's selective or not. But ... oh. Just a minute. You go right on thinking, now, just the way you are." Her Majesty's eyes unfocused slightly and a long time passed, while Malone tried to keep on thinking. But it was difficult, he told himself, to think about things without having any things to think about. He felt his mind begin to spin gently with the rhythm of the last sentence, and he considered slowly the possibility of thinking about things when there weren't any things thinking about you. That seemed to make as much sense as anything else, and he was turning it over and over in his mind when a voice broke in. * * * * * "I was contacting Willie," Her Majesty said. "Ah," Malone said. "Willie. Of course. Very fine for contacting." Her Majesty frowned. "You remember Willie, don't you?" she said. "Willie Logan--who used to be a spy for the Russians, just because he didn't know any better, poor boy?" "Oh," Malone said. "Logan." He remembered the catatonic youngster who had used his telepathic powers against the United States until Her Majesty, the FBI, and Kenneth J. Malone had managed to put matters right. That had been the first time he'd met Her Majesty; it seemed like fifty years before. "Well," Her Majesty said, "Willie and I had a little argument just now. And I think you'll be interested in it." "I'm fascinated," Malone said. "Was he thinking about things or were things thinking about him?" "Really, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "you do think about the silliest notions when you don't watch yourself." Malone blushed slightly. "Anyhow," he said after a pause, "what was the argument about?" "Willie says you aren't here," Her Majesty said. "He can't detect you at all. Even when I let him take a peek at you through my own mind--making myself into sort of a relay station, so to speak--Willie wouldn't believe it. He said I was hallucinating." "Hallucinating me?" Malone said. "I think I'm flattered. Not many people would bother." "Don't underestimate yourself, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, rather severely. "But you do see what this little argument means, don't you? I think you may assume that your telepathic contact is quite selective. If Willie can't read you, Sir Kenneth, believe me, nobody at all can ... unless you let them." How he had developed this mental shield, he couldn't imagine, unless his subconscious had done it for him. Good old subconscious, he thought, always looking out for a person's welfare, preparing little surprises and things. Though he hoped vaguely that the next surprise, if there were a next one, would sneak up a little more gently. Being told flatly that your mind was not in operation was not a very good way to start an investigation. Then he thought of something else. "Do you think this ... barrier of mine will keep out those little bursts of mental energy?" he said. Her Majesty looked judicious. "I really do," she said. "It does appear quite impenetrable, Sir Kenneth. I can't understand how you're doing it. Or why, for that matter." "Well--" Malone began. Her Majesty raised a hand. "No," she said. "I'd rather not know, if you please." Her voice was stern, but just a little shaken. "The thought of blocking off thought--the only real form of communication that exists--is, frankly, quite horrible to me. I would rather be blinded, Sir Kenneth. I truly would." Malone thought of Dr. Marshall and blushed. Her Majesty peered at him narrowly, and then smiled. "You've been talking to my Royal Psychiatrist again, haven't you?" she said. Malone nodded. "Frankly, Sir Kenneth," she went on, "I think people pay too much attention to that sort of thing nowadays." The subject, Malone recognized, was firmly closed. He cleared his throat and started up another topic. "Let's talk about these energy bursts," he said. "Do you still pick them up occasionally?" "Oh, my, yes," Her Majesty said. "And it's not only me. Willie has been picking them up too. We've had some long talks about it, Willie and I. It's frightening, in a way, but you must admit that it's very interesting." "Fascinating," Malone muttered. "Tell me, have you figured out what they might be, yet?" Her Majesty shook her head. "All we know is that they do seem to occur just before a person intends to make a decision. The burst somehow appears to influence the decision. But we don't know how, and we don't know where they come from, or what causes them. Or even why." "In other words," Malone said, "we know absolutely nothing new." "I'm afraid not, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But Willie and I do intend to keep working on it. It is important, isn't it?" "Important," Malone said, "is not the word." He paused. "And now, if your Majesty will excuse me," he said, "I'll have to go. I have work to do, and your information has been most helpful." "You may go, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, returning with what appeared to be real pleasure to the etiquette of the Elizabethan Court. "We are grateful that you have done so much, and continue to do so much, to defend the peace of Our Realm." "I pledge myself to continue in those efforts which please Your Majesty," Malone said, and started back for the costume room. Once he'd changed into his regular clothing again he snapped himself back to the room he had rented in the Great Universal. He had a great deal of thinking to do, he told himself, and not much time to do it in. * * * * * However, he was alone. That meant he could light up a cigar--something which, as an FBI Agent, he didn't feel he should do in public. Cigars just weren't right for FBI Agents, though they were all right for ordinary detectives like Malone's father. As a matter of fact, he considered briefly hunting up a vest, putting it on and letting the cigar ash dribble over it. His father seemed to have gotten a lot of good ideas that way. But, in the end, he rejected the notion as being too complicated, and merely sat back in a chair, with an ashtray conveniently on a table by his side, and smoked and thought. Now, he knew with reasonable certainty that Andrew J. Burris was wrong and that he, Malone, was right. The source of all the confusion in the country was due to psionics, not to psychodrugs and Walt Disney spies. His first idea was to rush back and tell Burris. However, this looked like a useless move, and every second he thought about it made it seem more useless. He simply didn't have enough new evidence to convince Burris of anything whatever; psychiatric evidence was fine to back up something else, but on its own it was still too shaky to be accepted by the courts, in most cases. And Burris thought even more strictly than the courts in such matters. Not only that, Malone realized with alarm, but even if he did manage somehow to convince Burris there was very little chance that Burris would stay convinced. If his mind could be changed by a burst of wild mental power--and why not? Malone reflected--then he could be unconvinced as often as necessary. He could be spun round and round like a top and never end up facing the way Malone needed him to face. That left the burden of solving the problem squatting like a hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat there forever was horribly unnerving. "Quasimodo Malone," he muttered, and uttered a brief prayer of thanks that his father had been spared a classical education. "Ken" wasn't so bad. "Quasi" would have been awful. He couldn't think of any way to get a fingerhold on the thing that weighed him down. Slowly, he went over it in his mind. Situation: an unidentifiable something is attacking the United States with an untraceable something else from a completely unknown source. Problem: how do you go about latching on to anything as downright nonexistent as all that? Even the best detective, Malone told himself irritably, needed clues of some kind. And this thing, whatever it was, was not playing fair. It didn't go around leaving bloody fingerprints or lipsticked cigarette butts or packets of paper matches with _Ciro's, Hollywood_, written on them. It didn't even have an alibi for anything that could be cracked, or leave tire marks or footprints behind that could be photographed. Hell, Malone thought disgustedly, it wasn't that the trail was cold. It just _wasn't_. Of course, there were ways to get clues, he reflected. He thought of his father. His father would have gone to the scene of the crime, or questioned some of the witnesses. But the scene of the crime was anywhere and everywhere, and most of the witnesses didn't know they were witnessing anything. Except for Her Majesty, of course--but he'd already questioned her, and there hadn't been any clues he could recall in that conversation. Malone stubbed out his cigar, lit another one absent-mindedly, and rescued his tie, which was working its slow way around to the side of his collar. There were, he remembered, three classic divisions of any crime: method, motive and opportunity. Maybe thinking about those would lead somewhere. As an afterthought, he got up, found a pencil and paper with the hotel's name stamped on them in gold and came back to the chair. Clearing the ashtray aside, he put the paper on the table and divided the paper into three vertical columns with the pencil. He headed the first one _Method_, the second _Motive_ and the third _Opportunity_. He stared at the paper for a while, and decided with some trepidation to take the columns one by one. Under _Method_, he put down: "Little bursts. Who knows cause?" Some more thought gave him another item, and he set it down under the first one: "Psionic. Look for psionic people?" That apparently was all there was to the first column. After a while he moved to number two, _Motive_. "Confuse things," he wrote with scarcely a second's reflection. But that didn't seem like enough. A few minutes more gave him several other items, written down one under the other. "Disrupt entire US. Set US up for invasion? Martians? Russians? CK: Is Russia having trble?" That seemed to exhaust the subject and with some relief he went on. But the title of the next column nearly stopped him completely. [Illustration] _Opportunity._ There wasn't anything he could put down under that one, Malone told himself, until he knew a great deal more about method. As things stood at present, the best entry under _Opportunity_ was a large, tastefully done question mark. He made one, and then sat back to look at the entire list and see what help it gave him: _Method_ Little bursts. Who knows cause? Psionic. Look for psionic people? _Motive_ Confuse things. Disrupt entire US. Set US up for invasion? Martians? Russians? CK: Is Russia having trble? _Opportunity_ ? Somehow, it didn't seem to be much help, when he thought about it. It had a lot of information on it, but none of the information seemed to lead anywhere. It did seem to be established that the purpose was to confuse or disrupt the United States, but this didn't seem to point to anybody except a Russian, an alien or a cosmic practical joker. Malone could see no immediate way of deciding among the trio. However, he told himself, there are other ways to start investigating a crime. There must be. Psychological methods, for instance. People had little gray cells, he remembered from his childhood reading. Some of the more brainy fictional detectives never stooped to anything so low as an actual physical clue. They concentrated solely on finding a pattern in the crimes that indicated, infallibly, the psychology of the individual. Once his psychology had been identified, it was only a short step to actually catching him and putting him in jail until his psychology changed for the better. Or, of course, until it disappeared entirely and was buried, along with the rest of him, in a small wood box. That wasn't Malone's affair. All he had to do was take the first few steps and actually find the man. And perhaps psychology and pattern was the place to start. Anyhow, he reflected, he didn't have any other method that looked even remotely likely to lead to anything except brain-fag, disappointment, and catalepsy. But he didn't have enough cases to find a pattern. There must, he thought, be a way to get some more. After a few seconds he thought of it. * * * * * At first he thought of asking Room Service for all the local and out-of-state papers, but that, he quickly saw, was a little unwise. People didn't come to Las Vegas to catch up on the news; they came to get away from it. A man might read Las Vegas papers, and possibly even his home town's paper if he couldn't break himself of the pernicious habit. But nobody on vacation would start reading papers from everywhere. There was no sense in causing suspicion, Malone told himself. Instead, he reached for the phone and called the desk. "Great Universal, good afternoon," a pleasant voice said in his ear. Malone blinked. "What time _is_ it?" he said. "A few minutes before six," the voice said. "In the evening, sir." "Oh," Malone said. It was later than he'd thought; the list had taken some time. "This is Kenneth J. Malone," he went on, "in Room--" He tried to remember the number of his room and failed. It seemed like four or five days since he'd entered it. "Well, wherever I am," he said at last, "send up some kind of a car for me and have a taxi waiting outside." The voice sounded unperturbed. "Right away, sir," it said. "Will there be anything else?" "I guess not," Malone said. "Not now, anyhow." He hung up and stubbed out the latest in his series of cigars. The hallway car arrived in a few minutes. It was manned by a muscular little man with beady eyes and thinning black hair. "You Malone?" he said when the FBI Agent opened the door. "Kenneth J.," Malone said. "I called for a car." "Right outside, Chief," the little man said in a gravelly voice. "Just hop in and off we go into the wild blue yonder. Right?" "I guess so," Malone said helplessly. He followed the man outside, locked his door and climbed into a duplicate of the little car that had taken him to his room in the first place. "Step right in, Chief," the little man said. "We're off." Malone, overcoming an immediate distaste for the chummy little fellow, climbed in and the car retreated down to the road. It started off smoothly and they went back toward the lobby. The little man chatted incessantly and Malone tried not to listen. But there was nothing else to do except watch the gun-toting "guides" as the car passed them, and the sight was making him nervous. "You want anything--special," the driver said, giving Malone a blow in the ribs that was apparently meant to be subtle, "you just ask for Murray. Got it?" "I've got it," Malone said wearily. "You just pick up the little phone and you ask for Murray," the driver said. "Maybe you want something a little out of the ordinary--get what I mean?" Malone moved aside, but not fast enough, and Murray's stone elbow caught him again. "Something special, extra-nice. For my friends, pal. You want to be a friend of mine?" Assurances that friendship with Murray was Malone's dearest ambition in life managed to fend off further blows until the car pulled to a stop in the lobby. "Cab's outside, Mr. Malone," Murray said. "You remember me--hey?" "I will never, never forget you," Malone said fervently, and got out in a hurry. He found the cab and the driver, a heavy-set man with a face that looked as if, somewhere along the line, it had run into a Waring Blendor and barely escaped, swiveled around to look at him as he got in. "Where to, Mac?" he asked sourly. Malone shrugged. "Center of town," he said. "A nice big newsstand." The cabbie blinked. "A what?" he said. "Newsstand," Malone said pleasantly. "All right with you?" "Everybody's a little crazy, I guess," the cabbie said. "But why do I always get the real nuts?" He started the cab with a savage jerk and Malone was carried along the road at dizzying speed. They managed to make ten blocks before the cab squealed to a stop. Malone peered out and saw a nice selection of sawhorses piled up in the road, guarded by two men with guns. The men were dressed in police uniforms and the cabby, staring at them, uttered one brief and impolite word. "What's going on?" Malone said. "Roadblock," the cabbie said. "Thing's going to stay here until Hell freezes over. Not that they need it. Hell, I passed it on the way in but I figured they'd take it down pretty quick." "Roadblock?" Malone said. "What for?" The cabbie shrugged eloquently. "Who knows?" he said. "You ask questions, you might get answers you don't like. I don't ask questions, I live longer." "But--" The cops, meanwhile, had advanced toward the car. One of them looked in. "Who's the passenger?" he said. The cabbie swore again. "You want me to take loyalty oaths from people?" he said. "You want to ruin my business? I got a passenger, how do I know who he is? Maybe he's the Lone Ranger." "Don't get funny," the cop said. His partner had gone around to the back of the car. "What's this, the trunk again?" the cabbie said. "You think maybe I'm smuggling in showgirls from the edge of town?" "Ha, ha," the cop said distinctly. "One more joke and it's thirty days, buster. Just keep cool and nothing will happen." "Nothing, he calls it," the cabbie said dismally. But he stayed silent until the second cop came back to rejoin his partner. "Clean," he said. "Here, too, I guess," the first cop said, and looked in again. "You," he said to Malone. "You a tourist?" "That's right," Malone said. "Kenneth J. Malone, at the Great Universal. Arrived this afternoon. What's happening here, officer?" "I'm asking questions," the cop said. "You're answering them. Outside of that, you don't have to know a thing." He looked very tough and official. Malone didn't say anything else. After a few more seconds they went back to their positions and the cabbie started the car again. Ten yards past the roadblock he turned around and looked at Malone. "It's the sheriff's office every time," he said. "Now, you take a State cop, he's O.K. because what does he care? He's got other things to worry about, he don't have to bear down on hard-working cabbies." "Sure," Malone said helpfully. "And the city police--they're right here in the city, they're O.K. I know them, they know me, nothing goes wrong. Get what I mean?" "The sheriff's office is the worst, though?" Malone said. "The worst is nothing compared to those boys," the cabbie said. "Believe me, every time they can make life tough for a cabbie, they do it. It's hatred, that's what it is. They hate cabbies. That's the sheriff's office for you." "Tough," Malone said. "But the roadblock--what _was_ it for, anyhow?" The cabbie looked back at the road, avoided an oncoming car with a casual sweep of the wheel, and sighed gustily. "Mister," he said, "you don't ask questions, I don't give out answers. Fair?" There was, after all, nothing else to say. "Fair," Malone told him, and rode the rest of the way in total silence. * * * * * Buying the papers in Las Vegas took more time than Malone had bargained for. He had to hunt from store to store to get a good, representative selection, and there were crowds almost everywhere playing the omnipresent slot-machines. The whir of the machines and the low undertones and whispers of the bettors combined in the air to make what Malone considered the single most depressing sound he had ever heard. It sounded like a factory, old, broken-down and unwanted, that was geared only to the production of cigarette butts and old cellophane, ready-crumpled for throwing away. Malone pushed through the crowds as fast as possible, but nearly an hour had gone by when he had all his papers and hailed another cab to get him back to the hotel. This time, the cabbie had a smiling, shining face. He looked like Pollyanna, after eight or ten shots at the middleweight title. Malone beamed right back at him and got in. "Great Universal," he said. "Hey, that's a nice place," the cabbie said heartily, as they started off. "I heard there was a couple TV stars there last week and they got drunk and had a fight. You see that?" "Just arrived this afternoon," Malone said. "Sorry." "Oh, don't worry," the cabbie assured him. "Something's always going on at the Universal. I hear they posted a lot of guards there, just waiting for something to come up now. Something about some shooting, but I didn't get the straight story yet. That true?" "Far as I know," Malone said. "There's a lot of strange things happening lately, aren't there?" "Lots," the cabbie said eagerly. He meandered slowly around a couple of bright-red convertibles. "A guy owned the _Last Stand_, he killed himself with a gun today. It's in the papers. Listen, Mister, funny things happen all the time around here. I remember last week there was a lady in my cab, nice old bat, looked like she wouldn't take off an earring in public, not among strangers. You know the type. Well, sir, she asked me to take her on to the Golden Palace, and that's a fair ride. So on the way down, she--" Fascinated as he was by the unreeling story of the shy old bat, Malone interrupted. "I hear there's a roadblock up now, and they're searching all the cars. Know anything about that?" The cabbie nodded violently. "Sure, Mister," he said. "Now, it's funny you should ask. I hit the block once today and I was saying to myself, I'll bet somebody's going to ask me about this. So when I was in town I talked around with Si Deeds ... you know Si? Oh, no, you just arrived today ... anyhow, I figured Si would know." "And did he?" Malone said. "Not a thing," the cabbie said. Malone sighed disgustedly and the cabbie went on: "So I went over and talked to Bob Grindell. I figured, there was action, Bob would know. And guess what?" "He didn't know either," Malone said tiredly. "Bob?" the cabbie said. "Say, Mister, you must be new here for sure, if you say Bob wouldn't know what was going on. Why, Bob knows more about this town than guys lived in it twice as long, I'll tell you. Believe me, he knows." "And what did he say?" Malone asked. The cabbie paused. "About what?" he said. "About the roadblock," Malone said distinctly. "Oh," the cabbie said. "That. Well, that was a funny thing and no mistake. There was this fight, see? And Shellenberger got in the middle of it, see? So when he was dead they had to set up this roadblock." Malone restrained himself with some difficulty. "What fight?" he said. "And who's Shellenberger? And how did he get in the way?" "Mister," the cabbie said, "you must be new here." "A remarkable guess," Malone said. The cabbie nodded. "Sure must be," he said. "Gus Shellenberger's lived here over ten years now. I drove him around many's the time. Remember when he used to go out to this motel out on the outskirts there; there was this doll he was interested in but it never came to much. He said she wasn't right for his career, you know how guys like that are, they got to be careful all the time. Never hit the papers or anything--I mean with the doll and all--but people get to know things. You know. So with this doll--" "How long ago did all this happen?" Malone asked. "The doll?" the cabbie said. "Oh, five-six years. Maybe seven. I remember it was the year I got a new cab, business was pretty good, you know. Seven, I guess. Garage made me a price, you know, I had to be an idiot to turn it down? A nice price. Well, George Lamel who owns the place, he's an old friend, you know? I did him some favors so he gives me a nice price. Well, this new cab--" "Can we get back to the present for a little while?" Malone said. "There was this fight, and your friend Gus Shellenberger got involved in it somehow--" "Oh, that," the cabbie said. "Oh, sure. Well, there was a kind of chase. Some sheriff's officers were looking for an escaped convict, and they were chasing him and doing some shooting. And Shellenberger, he got in the way and got shot accidentally. The criminal, he got away. But it's kind of a mess, because--" A loud chorus of sirens effectively stopped all conversation. Two cars stamped with the insignia of the sheriff's office came into sight and streaked past, headed for Las Vegas. "Because Shellenberger was State's attorney, after all," the cabbie said. "It's not like just anybody got killed." "And the roadblock?" Malone said. "For the criminal, I guess," the cabbie said. Malone nodded heavily. The whole thing smelled rather loudly, he thought. The "accident" wasn't very plausible to start with. And a search for an escaped criminal that didn't even involve checking identification of strangers like Malone wasn't much of a search. The cops knew who they were looking for. And Shellenberger hadn't been killed by accident. The roadblock was down, he noticed. The sheriff's office cars had apparently carried the cheerful cops back to Las Vegas. Maybe they'd found their man, Malone thought, and maybe they just didn't care any more. "Wouldn't a State's attorney live in Carson City?" he asked after a while. "Not old Gus Shellenberger," the cabbie said. "Many's the time I talked with him and he said he loved this old town. Loved it. Like an old friend. Why, he used to say to me--" At that point the Great Universal hove into view. Malone felt extraordinarily grateful to see it. * * * * * He went to his room with the bundle of papers in his hand and locked himself in. He lit a fresh cigar and started through the papers. Las Vegas was the one on top, and he gave it a quick going-over. Sure enough, the suicide of the Golden Palace owner was on page one, along with a lot of other local news. _Mayor Resigns Under Council Pressure_, one headline read. On page 3 another story was headlined: _County Attorney Indicted by Grand Jury in Bribery Case_. And at the bottom of page 1, complete with pictures of baffled phone operators and linemen, was a double column spread: _Damage to Phone Relay Station Isolates City Five Hours_. Carson City, the State Capitol, came in for lots of interesting news, too. Three headlines caught Malone's attention: LT.-GOVERNOR MORRIS SWORN IN AS GOVERNOR TWELVE MEMBERS OF LEGISLATURE RESIGN Ill Health Given As Reason STATE'S ATTORNEY'S OFFICE: "NO COMMENT" ON RACKETS CONNECTION CHARGE. The next paper was the New York Post. Malone studied the front page with interest: MAYOR ORDERS ARREST OF POLICE COMM. The story on page 3 had a little more detail: MAYOR AMALFI ORDERS ARREST OF POLICE COMMISSIONER ON EVIDENCE SHOWING "COLLUSION WITH GAMBLING INTERESTS" But Malone didn't have time to read the story. Other headlines on pages 2 and 3 attracted his startled attention: TWELVE DIE IN BROOKLYN GANG MASSACRE Ricardo, Numbers Head, Among Slain "DANGEROUS DAN" SUGRUE LINKED WITH TRUCKER'S UNION Admits Connection "Gladly" [Illustration] HOUSING AUTHORITY DENIES, THEN CONFESSES GRAFT CHARGE Malone wiped a streaming brow. Apparently all hell was busting loose. Under the _Post_ was the San Francisco _Examiner_, its crowded front page filled with all sorts of strange and startling news items. Malone looked over a few at random. A wildcat waterfront strike had been called off after the resignation of the union local's president. The "Nob Hill Mob," which had grown notorious in the past few years, had been rounded up and captured _in toto_ after what the paper described only as a "police tipoff." Two headlines caught his special attention: BERSERK POLICE CAPTAIN KILLS TWO AIDES, SELF: CORRUPTION HINTED The second hit closer to home: FBI ARRESTS THREE STATE SENATORS ON INCOME TAX CHARGE Malone felt a pang of nostalgia. Conquering it after a brief struggle, he went on to the next paper. From Los Angeles, its front page showed that Hollywood, at least, was continuing to hold its own: LAVISH FUNERAL PLANNED FOR WONDER DOG TOMORROW But the Washington _Times-Herald_ brought things back to the mess Malone had expected. All sorts of things were going on: PRESIDENT ACCEPTS RESIGNATION OF THREE CABINET MEMBERS New Appointees Not Yet Named PENTAGON TO INVESTIGATE QUARTER-MASTER CORPS GRAFT Revelations Hinted In Closed Hearing Thursday RIOT ON SENATE FLOOR QUELLED BY GUARDS Sen. Briggs Hospitalized GENERAL BREGER, MISSILE BASE HEAD, DIES IN TESTING ACCIDENT Faulty Equipment Blamed Malone put the papers down with a deep sigh. There was some kind of a pattern there, he was sure; there had to be. More was happening in the good old United States inside of twenty-four hours than ordinarily happened in a couple of months. The big trouble was that some of it was, doubtless, completely unconnected with the work of Malone's psychological individual. It was equally certain that some of it wasn't; no normal workings of chance could account for the spate of resignations, deaths, arrests of high officials, freak accidents and everything else he'd just seen. But there was no way of telling which was which. The only one he was reasonably sure he could leave out of his calculations was Hollywood's good old Wonder Dog. And when he looked at the rest all he could see was that confusion was rampant. Which was exactly what he'd known before. He remembered once, when he was a boy, his mother had taken him to an astronomical observatory, and he had looked at Mars through the big telescope, hoping to see the canals he'd heard so much about. Sure, enough, there had been a blurred pattern of some kind. It might have represented canals--but he'd been completely unable to trace any given line. It was like looking at a spiderweb through a sheet of frosted glass. He needed a clearer view, and there wasn't any way to get it without finding some more information. Sooner or later, he told himself, everything would fall into one simple pattern, and he would give a cry of "Eureka!" There was, at any rate, no need to go to the scene of the crime. He was right in the middle of it--and would have been, apparently, no matter where he'd been. The big question was: where were all the facts he needed? He certainly wasn't going to find them all alone in his room, he decided. Mingling with the Las Vegas crowds might give him some sort of a lead--and, besides, he had to act like a man on vacation, didn't he? Satisfied of this, Malone began to change into his dress suit. People who came to Las Vegas, he told himself while fiddling with what seemed to be a left-hand-thread cufflink of a peculiarly nasty disposition, were usually rich. Rich people would be worried about the way the good old United States was acting up, just like anybody else, but they'd have access to various sources both of information and rumor. Rumor was more valuable than might at first appear, Malone thought sententiously, sneaking up on the cufflink and fastening it securely. He finished dressing with what was almost an air of hope. He surveyed himself in the mirror when he was done. Nobody, he told himself with some assurance, would recognize him as the FBI Agent who had come into the Golden Palace two years before, clad in Elizabethan costume and escorting a Queen who had turned out to be a phenomenal poker player. After all, Las Vegas was a town in which lots of strange things happened daily, and he was dressed differently, and he'd aged at least two years in the intervening two years. He put in a call for a hallway car--carefully refraining from asking for Murray. X "Business, Mr. Malone," the bartender said, "is shot all to hell. The whole country is shot all to hell." "I believe it," Malone said. "Sure," the bartender said. He finished polishing one glass and set to work on another one. "Look at the place," he went on. "Half full. You been here two weeks now, and you know how business was when you came. Now look." It wasn't necessary, but Malone turned obediently to survey the huge gambling hall. It was roofed over by a large golden dome that seemed to make the place look even emptier than it could possibly be. There were still plenty of people around the various tables, and something approaching a big crowd clustered around the _chemin de fer_ layout. But it was possible to breathe in the place, and even move from table to table without stepping into anybody's pocket. Las Vegas was definitely sliding downhill at the moment, Malone thought. The glitter of polished gold and silver ornaments, the low cries of the various dealers and officials, the buzz of conversation, were all the same. But under the great dome, Malone told himself sadly, you could almost see the people leaving, one by one. "No money around either," the bartender said. "Except maybe for a few guys like yourself. I mean, people take their chances at the wheel or the tables, but there's no big betting going on, just nickel-dime stuff. And no big spending, either. Used to be tips in a place like this, just tips, would really mount up to something worth while. Now, nothing." He put the glass and towel down and leaned across the bar. "You know what I think, Mr. Malone?" he said. "No," Malone said politely. "What do you think?" The bartender looked portentous. "I think all the big-money guys have rushed off home to look after their business and like that," he said, "everything's going to hell, and what I want to know is: What's wrong with the country? You're a big businessman, Mr. Malone. You ought to have some ideas." Malone paused and looked thoughtful. "I'll tell you what I think," he said. "I think people have decided that gambling is sinful. Maybe we all ought to go and get our souls dry-cleaned." The bartender shook his head. "You always got a little joke, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's what I like about you. But there must be some reason for what's happening." "There must be," Malone agreed. "But I'll be double-roasted for extra fresh flavor if I know what it is." His vacation pay, he told himself with a feeling of downright misery, was already down the drain. He'd been dipping into personal savings to keep up his front as a big spender, but that couldn't go on forever--even though he saved money on the front by gambling very little while he tipped lavishly. And in spite of what he'd spent he was no closer to an answer than he had been when he'd started. "Now, you take the stock market," the bartender said, picking up the glass and towel again and starting to work in a semiautomatic fashion. "It's going up and down like a regular roller coaster. I know because I got a few little things going for me there--nothing much, you understand, but I keep an eye out for developments. It doesn't make any sense, Mr. Malone. Even the financial columnists can't make sense out of it." "Terrible," Malone said. "And the Government's been cracking down on business everywhere it can," the bartender went on. "All kinds of violations. I got nothing against the law, you understand. But that kind of thing don't help profits any. Look at the Justice Department." "You look at it," Malone muttered. "No," the bartender said. "I mean it. They been arresting people all over the place for swindling on Government contracts, and falsifying tax records, and graft, and all kinds of things. Listen, every FBI man in the country must be up to his cute little derby hat in work." "I'll bet they are," Malone said. He heaved a great sigh. Every one of them except Kenneth J. Malone was probably hopping full time in an effort to straighten out the complicated mess everything was getting into. Of course, he was working, too--but not officially. As far as the FBI knew, he was on vacation, and they were perfectly willing to let him stay there. A nationwide emergency over two weeks old, and getting worse all the time--and Burris hadn't even so much as called Malone to talk about the weather. He'd said that Malone was one of his top operatives, but now that trouble was really piling up there wasn't a peep out of him. The enemy, whoever they were, were doing a great job, Malone thought bitterly. Every time Burris decided he might need Malone, apparently, they pushed a little mental burst at him and turned him around again. He could just picture Burris looking blankly at an FBI roster and saying: "Malone? Who's he?" It wasn't a nice picture. Malone took a deep swallow of his bourbon-and-water and tried forgetting about it. The bartender, called by another customer, put the glass and towel down and went to the other end of the bar. Malone finished his drink very slowly, feeling more lonely than he could ever remember being before. * * * * * At last, though, four-thirty rolled around and he got up from the plush bar stool and headed for the Universal Joint, the hotel's big show-room. It was one of the few places in the hotel that was easily reachable from the front bar on foot, and Malone walked, taking an unexpected pleasure in this novel form of locomotion. In a few minutes he was at the great curtained front doors. He pushed them open. Later, of course, when the Universal Joint was open to the public, a man in a uniform slightly more impressive than that of a South American generalissimo would be standing before the doors to save patrons the unpleasant necessity of opening them for themselves. But now, in the afternoon, the Universal Joint was closed. There was no one inside but Primo Palveri, the manager and majority stockholder of the Great Universal, and the new strip act he was watching. Malone didn't particularly like the idea of sharing his conversation with a burlesque stripper, but there was little he could do about it; he'd waited several days for the appointment already. As the doors opened he could hear a nasal voice, almost without over-tones, saying: "Now turn around, baby. Turn around." A pause, and then another voice, this one female: "Is this all right, Mr. Palveri? You want me to show you something else?" Malone shut the door quietly behind him. The female voice was coming from the throat of a semi-naked girl about five feet eight, with bright red hair and a wide, wide smile. She was staring at a chunky little black-haired man sunk in a chair, whose back was to Malone. "What else do you do, Sweetheart?" the chunky man said. "Let me see whatever you do. I want some wide-talent stuff, you know, for the place. Class." The girl smiled even wider. Malone was sure her teeth were about to fall out onto the floor, probably in a neat arrangement that spelled out _Will You Kiss Me In The Dark Baby_. That would take an awful lot of teeth, he reflected, but the stripper looked as if she could manage the job. "I dance and sing," she said. "I could do a dance for you, but my music is upstairs. You want me to go and get it?" Palveri shook his head. "How about a song, baby? You mind singing without a piano?" "I don't have anything prepared," the girl said, her eyes wide. "I didn't know this was going to be a special audition. I thought, you know, just a burlesque audition, so I didn't bring anything." Palveri sank a little lower in the chair. "O.K., Sweetheart," he said. "You got a nice shape, you'll fit in the line anyhow. But just sing a song you know. How about that? If you make it with that, you could get yourself a featured spot. More dough." The girl appeared to consider this proposition. "Gee," she said slowly. "I could do 'God Bless America'. O.K., Mr. Palveri?" The chunky man sank even deeper toward the floor. "Never mind," he said. "Go get dressed, tell Tony you got the number five spot in the line. O.K.?" "Gee," she said. "Maybe I could work on something and do it for you some other time, Mr. Palveri?" He nodded wearily. "Some other time," he said. "Sure." * * * * * The girl went off through a door at the left of the club. Malone threaded his way past tables with chairs piled on top of them until he came to Palveri's side. The club owner was sitting on a single chair dragged off the heap that stood on a table next to him. He didn't turn around. "Mr. Malone," he said, "take another chair, sit down and we'll talk. O.K.?" Malone blinked. "How'd you know I was there?" he said. "Much less who I was?" "In this business," Palveri said, still without turning, "you learn to notice things, Mr. Malone. I heard you come in and wait. Who else would you be?" Malone took a chair from the pile and set it up next to Palveri's. The chunky man turned to face him for the first time. Malone took a deep breath and tried to look hard and tough as he studied the club owner. Palveri had small, sunken eyes decorated with bluish bags below and tufted black eyebrows above. The eyes were very cold. The rest of his face didn't warm things up any; he had an almost lipless slash for a mouth, a small reddish nose and cheeks that could have used either a shave or a good sandblasting job. * * * * * "You said you wanted to see me," Palveri began after a second. "But you didn't say what about. What's up, Mr. Malone?" "I've been looking around," Malone said in what he hoped was a grim, no-nonsense tone. "Checking things. You know." "Checking?" Palveri said. "What's this about?" Malone shrugged. He fished out a cigarette and lit it. "Castelnuovo in Chicago sent me down," he said. "I've been doing some checking around for him." Palveri's eyes narrowed slightly. Malone puffed on the cigarette and tried to act cool. "You throwing names around to impress me?" the club owner said at last. "I'm not throwing names around," Malone said grimly. "Castelnuovo wants me to look around, that's all." "Castelnuovo's a big man in Chicago," Palveri said. "He wouldn't send a guy down without telling me about it." "He did," Malone said. He thought back to the FBI files on Giacomo Castelnuovo, which took up a lot of space in Washington, even on microfilm. "You want proof?" he said. "He's got a scar over his ribs on the left side--got it from a bullet in '62. He wears a little black mustache because he thinks he looks like an old-time TV star, but he doesn't, much. He's got three or four girls on the string, but the only one he cares about is Carla Bragonzi. He--" "O.K.," Palveri said. "O.K., O.K. You know him. You're not fooling, around. But how come he sends you down without telling me?" Malone shrugged. "I've been here two weeks," he said. "You didn't know I was around, did you? That's the way Castelnuovo wanted it." "He thinks I'd cheat him?" Palveri said, his face changing color slightly. "He thinks I'd dress up for him or drag down? He knows me better than that." Malone took a puff of his cigarette. "Maybe he just wants to be sure," he said. "Funny things are happening all over." The cigarette tasted terrible and he put it out in an ashtray from the chair-covered table. "You're telling me," Palveri said. "Things are crazy. What I'm thinking is this: Maybe Castelnuovo wants to keep this place operating. Maybe he wants to keep me here working for him." "And if he does?" Malone said. "If he does, he's going to have to pay for it," Palveri said firmly. "The place needs dough to keep operating. I've got to have a loan, or else I'm going under." "The place is making money," Malone said. Palveri shook his head vigorously. He reached into a pocket and took out a gold cigar case. He flipped it open. "Have one," he told Malone. An FBI Agent, Malone told himself, had no business smoking cigars and looking undignified. But as a messenger from Castelnuovo, he could do as he pleased. He almost reached for one before he realized that maybe, sometime in the future, Palveri would find out who Kenneth J. Malone really was. And then he'd remember Malone smoking cigars, and that would be bad for the dignity of the FBI. Reluctantly, he drew his hand back. "No, thanks," he said. "Never touch 'em." "To each his own," Palveri muttered. He took out a cigar, lit it and returned the case to his pocket. The immediate vicinity became crowded with smoke. Malone breathed deeply. "About the money--" Malone said after a second. Palveri snorted. "The place is making half of what I'm losing," he said. "You got to see it this way, Malone: the contacts are gone." "Contacts?" Malone said. Palveri nodded. "The mayor's resigned, remember?" he said. "You saw that. Everybody's getting investigated. A couple of weeks ago the Golden Palace guy knocked himself off, and where does that leave me? He's my only contact with half the State boys; hell, he ran the whole string of clubs here, more or less. Castelnuovo knows all that." "Sure," Malone said. "But you can make new contacts." "Where?" Palveri said. He flung out his arms. "When nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow? I tell you, Malone, it's like a curse on me." Malone decided to push the man a little farther. "Castelnuovo," he said with what he hoped was a steely glint in his eyes, "isn't going to like a curse ruining business." He took another deep breath of tobacco smoke. "Primo Palveri don't like it either," Palveri said. "You think whatever you like but that's the way things are. It's like Prohibition except we're losing all the way down the line. Listen, and I'll tell you something you didn't pick up around town." "Go ahead," Malone said. * * * * * Palveri blew out some more smoke. "You know about the shipments?" he said. "The stuff from out on the desert?" Malone nodded. The FBI had a long file on the possibility of Castelnuovo, through Palveri or someone else in the vicinity, shipping peyotl buttons from Nevada and New Mexico all over the country. Until this moment, it had only been a possibility. "Mike Sand wanted to get in on some of that," Palveri said. "Well, it's big money, a guy figures he's got to have competition. But it's business nowadays, not a shooting war. That went out forty years ago." "So?" Malone said, acting impatient. "I'm getting there," Palveri said. "I'm getting there. Mike Sand and his truckers, they tried to high jack a shipment coming through out on the desert. Now, the Trucker's Union is old and experienced, maybe, but not as old and experienced as the Mafia. It figures we can take them, right?" "It figures," Malone agreed. "But you didn't?" Palveri looked doleful. "It's like a curse," he said. "Two boys wounded and one of them dead, right there on the sand. The shipment gone, and Mike Sand on his way to the East with it. A curse." He sucked some more at the cigar. Malone looked thoughtful and concerned. "Things are certainly bad," he said. "But how's money going to make things any better?" Palveri almost dropped his cigar. Malone watched it lovingly. "Help?" the club owner said. "With money I could stay open, I could stay alive. Listen, I had investments, nice guaranteed stuff: real estate, some California oil stuff ... you know the kind of thing." "Sure," Malone said. "Now that the contacts are gone and everybody's dead or resigned or being investigated," Palveri said, "what do you think's happened to all that? Down the drain, Malone." Malone said: "But--" "And not only that," Palveri said, waving the cigar. "The club was going good, and you know I thought about building a second one a little farther out. A straight investment, get me: an honest one." Malone nodded as if he knew all about it. "So I got the foundation in, Malone," Palveri said, "and it's just sitting there, not doing anything. A whole foundation going to pot because I can't do anything more with it. Just sitting there because everything's going to hell with itself." "In a handbasket," Malone said automatically. Palveri gave him a violent nod. "You said it, Malone," he added. "Everything. My men, too." He sighed. "And the contractor after me for his dough. Good old Harry Seldon, everybody's friend. Sure. Owe him some money and find out how friendly he is. Talks about nothing but figures. Ten thousand. Twelve thousand." "Tough," Malone said. "But what do you mean about your men?" "Mistakes," Palveri said. "Book-keepers throwing the computers off and croupiers making mistakes paying off and collecting--and always mistakes against me, Malone. Always. It's like a curse. Even the hotel bills--three of them this week were made out too small and the customer paid up and went before I found out about it." "It sounds like a curse," Malone said. "Either that or there are spies in the organization." "Spies?" Palveri said. "With the checking we do? With the way I've known some of these guys from childhood? They were little kids with me, Malone. They stuck with me all the way. And with Castelnuovo, too," he added hurriedly. "Sure," Malone said. "But they could still be spies." Palveri nodded sadly. "I thought of that," he said. "I fired four of them. Four of my childhood friends, Malone. It was like cutting off an arm. And all it did was leave me with one arm less. The same mistakes go on happening." Malone stood up and heaved a sigh. "Well," he said, "I'll see what I can do." "I'd appreciate it, Malone," Palveri said. "And when Primo Palveri appreciates something, he _appreciates_ it. Get what I mean?" "Sure," Malone said. "I'll report back and let you know what happens." Palveri looked just as anxious, but a little hopeful. "I need the dough," he said. "I really need it." "With dough," Malone said, "you could fix up what's been happening?" Palveri shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "But I could stay open long enough to find out." Malone went back to the gaming room feeling that he had learned something, but not being quite sure what. Obviously whatever organization was mixing everything up was paying just as much attention to gangsters as to congressmen and businessmen. The simple justice of this arrangement did not escape Malone, but he failed to see where it led him. [Illustration] He considered the small chance that Palveri would actually call Castelnuovo and check up on Kenneth J. Malone, but he didn't think it was probable. Palveri was too desperate to take the chance of making his boss mad in case Malone's story were true. And, even if the check were made, Malone felt reasonably confident. It's hard to kill a man who has a good, accurate sense of precognition and who can teleport himself out of any danger he might get into. Not impossible, but hard. Being taken for a ride in the desert, for instance, might be an interesting experience, but could hardly prove inconvenient to anybody except the driver of the car and the men holding the guns. The gaming room wasn't any fuller, he noticed. He wended his way back to the bar for a bourbon-and-water and greeted the bartender morosely. The drink came along and he sipped at it quietly, trying to put things together in his mind. The talk with Palveri, he felt sure, had provided an essential clue--maybe _the_ essential clue--to what was going on. But he couldn't find it. "Mess," he said quietly. "Everything's in a mess. And so what?" A voice behind him picked that second to say: "Gezundheit." Malone didn't turn. Instead he looked at the bar mirror, and one glance at what was reflected there was enough to freeze him as solid as the core of Pluto. Lou was there. Lou Gehrig or whatever her name was, the girl behind the reception desk of the New York offices of the Psychical Research Society. That, in itself, didn't bother him. The company of a beautiful girl while drinking was not something Malone actually hated. But she knew he was an FBI Agent, and she might pick any second to blat it out in the face of an astonished bartender. This, Malone told himself, would not be pleasant. He wondered just how to hush her up without attracting attention. Knock-out pills in her drink? A hand over her mouth? A sudden stream of unstoppable words? He had reached no decision when she sat down on the stool beside him, turned a bright, cheerful smile in his direction and said: "I've forgotten your name. Mine's Luba Ardanko." "Oh," Malone said dully. Even the disclosure of what "Lou" stood for did nothing to raise his spirits. "I'm always forgetting things," Lou went on. "I've forgotten just about everything about you." Malone breathed a long, inaudible sigh of relief. If more people, he thought, had the brains not to greet FBI Agents by name, rank and serial number when meeting them in a strange place, there would be fewer casualties among the FBI. He realized that Luba was still smiling at him expectantly. "My name's Malone," he said. "Kenneth Malone. I'm a cookie manufacturer, remember?" "Oh," Luba said delightedly. "Sure! I remember last time I met you you gave me that lovely box of cookies. Modeled on the Seven Dwarfs." Occasionally, Malone told himself, things moved a little faster than he liked. "On the Seven Dwarfs," he said. "Oh, sure." "And I thought the model of Sneezy was awfully cute," she said. "But don't let's talk about cookies. Let's talk about Martinis." Malone opened his mouth, tried to think of something clever to say, and shut it again. Luba Ardanko was, perfectly obviously, altogether too fast for him. But then, he reflected, I've had a hard day. "All right," he said at last. "What _about_ Martinis?" Luba's smile broadened. "I'd like one," she said. "And since you're a wealthy cookie manufacturer--" "Be my guest," Malone said. "On the other hand, why not buy your own? Since they're free as long as you're in the gambling room." The bartender had approached them silently. "That's right," he said in a voice that betrayed the fact that he had memorized the entire speech, word for word. "Drinks are free for those who play the gaming tables. A courtesy of the Great Universal." He delivered a Martini and Luba drank it while Malone finished his bourbon-and-water. "Well," she said, "I suppose we've got to go to the gambling tables now. If only to be fair." "A horrible fate," Malone agreed, "but there you are: that's life." "It certainly is," she said brightly, and moved off. Malone, shaking his head, went after her and found her standing in front of a roulette wheel. "I just love roulette," she said, turning. "Don't you? It's so exciting and expensive." Malone licked dry lips, said: "Sure," and started to move off. "Oh, let's just play a little," Luba said. There was nothing to do but agree. Malone put a small stack of silver dollars on Red, and the croupier looked up with a bored expression. There were three other people in the game, including a magnificent old lady with blue hair who spent her money with a lavish hand. Two weeks before, she wouldn't even have been noticed. Now the croupier was bending over backward in an attempt not to show how grateful he was for the patronage. The wheel spun around and landed on Number Two, Black. Malone sighed and fished for more money. He felt his precognitive sense beginning to come into play and happily decided to ride with it. This time the stack of silver dollars was larger. Twenty minutes later he left the table approximately nine hundred dollars richer. Luba was beaming. "There, now," she said. "Wasn't that fun?" "Hysterical," Malone said. He glanced back over his shoulder. The blue-haired old lady was winning and losing large sums with a speed and aplomb that was certainly going to make her a twenty-four-hour legend by the end of the evening. She looked grim and secure, as if she were undergoing a penance. Malone shrugged and looked away. "Now," Luba said, "you can take me dancing." "I can?" Malone said. "I mean, do I? I mean--" "I mean the Solar Room," Luba said. "I've always wanted to enter on the arms of a handsome cookie manufacturer. It will make me the sensation of New York society." * * * * * The Solar Room was magnificently expensive. Malone had been there once, establishing his character as a man of lavish appetites, and had then avoided the place in deference to his real bankroll. He remembered it as the kind of place where an order of scrambled eggs was liable to come in, flaming, on a golden sabre. But Luba wanted the Solar Room, and Malone was not at all sure she wouldn't use blackmail if he turned her down. "Fine," he said in a lugubrious tone. The place shone, when they entered, as if they had come in from the darkness of midnight. Along with the Universal Joint, it was the pride and glory of the Great Universal Hotel and no expense had been spared in the attempt to give it what Primo Palveri called Class. Couples and foursomes were scattered around at the marble-topped tables, and red-uniformed waiters scurried around bearing drinks, food and even occasional plug-in telephones. There seemed to be more of the last than Malone remembered as usual; people were worrying about investments and businesses, and even those who had decided to stick it out grimly at Las Vegas and, _enjoy_ themselves had to check up with the home folks in order to know when to start pricing windows in high buildings. Malone wondered how many people were actually getting their calls through. Since the first breakdown two weeks before, Las Vegas and virtually every other United States city had suffered interruptions in telephone service. Las Vegas had had three breakdowns in two weeks; other cities weren't doing much better, if at all. Vaguely, Malone began looking around for handbaskets. "Let's dance," Luba said happily. "They're playing our song." On a stand at the front of the room a small orchestra was working away busily. There were two or three couples on the postage-stamp dance floor, whirling away to the strains of something Malone dimly remembered as: "My heart's in orbit out in space until I see you again." "Our song?" he said. Luba nodded. "You sang it to me the very first time we met," she said. "At the cookie-manufacturer's ball. Remember?" Malone sighed. If Luba wanted to dance, Luba was going to dance. And so was Malone. He rose and they went to the dance floor. Malone took her in his arms and for a few bars they danced silently. At the end of that time they were much closer together than they had been, and Malone realized that he was somehow managing to enjoy himself. Thoroughly. He thought dimly of the stripper he'd seen when he walked in on Palveri. Like Luba, she had red hair. But somehow, she looked less attractive undressed than Luba did in a complete wardrobe. Malone wondered what the funny feeling creeping up his spine was. After a second he realized that it wasn't love. Luba's hand was tickling him. He shifted slightly and the hand left, but the funny feeling remained. Maybe it _was_ love, he thought. He didn't know whether or not to hope so. Luba was pressed close to him. He wondered how to open the conversation, and decided that a sudden passionate declaration would be more startling than welcome. At last he said: "Thanks for not tipping my hand." Luba's whisper caressed his ear. "Don't thank me," she said. "I enjoyed it." "Why are you doing this?" Malone said. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but I thought you were sore." "Let's just say that your masterful, explosive approach was irresistible," Luba said. Malone wondered briefly whether or not they'd turned off the air-conditioning. If he moved slightly away from Luba, he thought, he could breathe more easily. But breathing just wasn't worth it. "I will cheerfully admit," he said, "that I am a ball of fire in the feathers, as they say. But I didn't realize it was that obvious--even to a woman of your tender sensitivity." Somehow, Luba had managed to get even closer to him. "You touch me deeply," she whispered into his ear. Malone swallowed hard and tried to take another breath. Just one more, he thought; that would be all he needed. "What are you doing in Las Vegas?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone. It didn't sound very casual, though. "I'm on vacation," Luba said in an off-handed manner. "I won't ask what you're doing; I can guess pretty well. Besides, you obviously want to keep it under cover." "Well," Malone said, "I certainly wouldn't want what I'm doing to be broadcast aloud to the great American public out there in television-land." It was a long speech for a man without any breath. Just one more, Malone told himself, and he could die happy. "I felt that," Luba said. "You know, Mr. Malone--" "Call me Ken," Malone said. "It is silly to be formal now, isn't it?" Luba said. "You know, Ken, I'm beginning to realize that you are really a very nice person--in spite of your rather surprising method of attack." "What's surprising about it?" Malone said. "People do it all the time." * * * * * The orchestra suddenly shifted from the previous slow number to a rapid fire tune Malone couldn't remember having heard before. "That," he announced, "is too fast for me. I'm going to get some fresh air." Luba nodded, her red hair brushing Malone's cheek silkily. "I'm coming, too," she said. Surrounding the Great Universal, Malone remembered, was a small belt of parkland. He flagged a hallway car--remembering carefully to check whether or not the driver was the sniggering Murray--and he and Luba piled in and started out for the park. In the car, he held her hand silently, feeling a little like a bashful schoolboy and a little like Sir Kenneth Malone. It was a strange mixture, but he decided that he liked it. They got out, standing in the cool darkness of the park. Overhead a moon and stars were shining. The little hallway car rolled away and they were alone. Completely alone. Malone swallowed hard. "Sleuth," Luba said softly in the darkness. Malone turned to face her. "Sleuth," she said, "don't you ever take a chance?" "Chance?" Malone said. "Damn it," Luba said in a soft, sweet voice, "kiss me, Ken." Malone had no answer to that--at least, no verbal answer. But then, one didn't seem to be needed. When he finally came up for air, he said: "Lou--" "Yes, Ken?" "Lou, how long are you going to be here? Or in New York? What I mean is--" "I'll be around," Lou said. "I will be going back to New York of course; after all, Ken, I do have a living to make, such as it is, and Sir Lewis is expecting me." "I don't know," Malone said, "but it still sounds funny. A girl like you working for ... well, for the Psychical Research people. Ghosts and ectoplasm and all that." Suddenly Lou wasn't in his arms any more. "Now, wait a minute," she said. "You seemed to need their information, all right." "But that was ... oh, well," Malone said. "Never mind. Maybe I'm silly. It really doesn't matter." "I guess it doesn't, now," Lou said in a softer tone. "Except that it does mean I'll be going back to New York pretty soon." "Oh," Malone said. "But ... look, Lou, maybe we could work something out. I could tell Sir Lewis I needed you here for something, and then he'd--" "My, my," she said. "What it must be like to have all that influence." "What?" Malone said. Lou grinned, almost invisibly. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing. But, my fine feathered Fed, I don't want to be pulled around on somebody else's string." "But--" "I mean it, Ken," Luba said. Malone shrugged. "Suppose we table it for now, then," he said, "and get around to it later. At dinner, say ... around nine?" "And just where," Luba said, "will you be before nine? Making improper advances to the local contingent of chorines?" "I will make improper advances," Malone vowed, "only to you, Lou." Lou's eyes sparkled. "Goody," she said. "I've always wanted to be a Fallen Woman." "But I have got some things to do before nine," Malone said. "I've got to work, too." "Well, then," Lou said in a suspiciously sweet voice, "suppose I talk to Sir Lewis Carter, and tell him to keep you in New York? Then--" "Enough," Malone said. "Nine o'clock." [Illustration] XI Somebody somewhere was wishing all the world "a plague on both your houses," and making it stick. Confusion is fun in a comedy--but in the pilot of a plane or an executive of a nation.... Back in his room, Malone put on a fresh shirt, checked the .44 Magnum in his shoulder holster, changed jackets, adjusted his hat to the proper angle, and vanished. He had, he'd realized, exactly one definite lead. And now he was going to follow up on it. The Government was apparently falling to pieces; so was business and so was the Mafia. Nobody Malone had heard of had gained anything. Except Mike Sand and his truckers. They'd beaten the Mafia, at least. Sand was worth a chat. Malone had a way to get in to see him, but he had to work fast. Otherwise Sand would very possibly know what Malone was trying to do. And that might easily be dangerous. He had made his appearance in the darkness beneath one of the bridges at the southwest side of Central Park, in New York. It was hardly Malone's idea of perfect comfort, but it did mean safety; there was very seldom anyone around after dark, and the shadows were thick enough so that his "appearance" would only mean, to the improbable passerby, that he had stepped out into the light. Now he strolled quietly over to Central Park West, and flagged a taxi heading downtown. He'd expected to run into one of the roving muggers who still made the Park a trap for the unwary--he'd almost looked forward to it, in a way--but nobody appeared. It was unusual, but he didn't have time to wonder about it. The headquarters for the National Brotherhood of Truckers was east of Greenwich Village, on First Avenue, so Malone had plenty of time to think things out while the cab wended its laborious southeast way. After a few minutes he realized that he would have even more time to think than he'd planned on. "Lots of traffic for this time of night," he volunteered. The cabbie, a fiftyish man with a bald, wrinkled head and surprisingly bright blue eyes, nodded without turning his head. "Maybe you think this is bad," he said. "You would not recognize the place an hour earlier, friend. During the real rush hour, I mean. Things are what they call _meshuggah_, friend. It means crazy." "How come?" Malone said. "The subway is on strike since last week," the cabbie said. "The buses are also on strike. This means that everybody is using a car. They can make it faster if they wish to walk, but they use a car. It does not help matters, believe me." "I can see that," Malone murmured. "And the cops are not doing much good either," the cabbie went on, "since they went on strike sometime last Tuesday." Malone nodded, and then did a double-take. "Cops?" he said. "On strike? But that's illegal. They could be arrested." "You can be funny," the cabbie said. "I am too sad to be funny." "But--" "Unless you are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers, but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the major's best friend working in the printing plants." "But cops can't go on strike," Malone said plaintively. "This," the cabbie said in a judicious tone, "is true. But they do not give out any parking tickets any more, or any traffic citations either. They are working on bigger things, they say, and besides all this there are not so many cops on the force now. They are spread very thin." Malone could see what was coming. "Arrests of policemen," he said, "and resignations." "And investigations," the cabbie said. "Mayor Amalfi is a good Joe and does not want anything in the papers until a real strike comes along, but the word gets out anyhow, as it always does." "Makes driving tough," Malone said. "People can make better time on their hands and knees," the cabbie said, "with the cops pulling a strike. They concentrate on big items now, and you can even smoke in the subways if you can find a subway that is running." Malone stopped to think how much of the city's income depended on parking tickets and small fines, and realized that a "strike" like the one the police were pulling might be very effective indeed. And, unlike the participants in the Boston Police Strike of sixty-odd years before, these cops would have public sentiment on their side--since they were keeping actual crime down. "How long do they think it's going to last?" Malone said. "It can be over tomorrow," the cabbie said, "but this is not generally believed in the most influential quarters. Mayor Amalfi and the new Commissioner try to straighten things out all day long, but the way things go straightening them out does no good. Something big is in the wind, friend. I--" * * * * * The cab, on Second Avenue and Seventeenth Street, stopped for a traffic light. Malone felt an itch in the back of his mind, as if his prescience were trying to warn him of something; he'd felt it for a little while, he realized, but only now could he pay attention to it. The door on the driver's side opened suddenly, and so did the door next to Malone. Two young men, obviously in their early twenties, were standing in the openings, holding guns that were plainly intended for immediate use. The one next to the driver said, in a flat voice: "Don't nobody get wise. That way nobody gets hurt. Give us--" That was as far as he got. When the rear door had opened, Malone had had a full second to prepare himself, which was plenty of time. The message from his precognitive powers had come along just in time. The second gunman thrust his gun into the cab. He seemed almost to be handing it to Malone politely, and this effect was spoiled only by Malone's twist of the gunman's wrist, which must have felt as if he'd put his hand into a loop tied to the axle of a high-speed centrifuge. The gunman let go of the gun and Malone, spurning it, let it drop. He didn't need it. His other hand had gone into his coat and come out again with the .44 Magnum. The thug at the front of the car had barely realized what was happening by the time it was all over. Automatic reflexes turned him away from the driver and toward the source of danger, his gun pointing toward Malone. But the reflexes gave out as he found himself staring down a rifled steel tube which, though hardly more than seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, must have looked as though a high-speed locomotive might come roaring out of it at any second. Malone hardly needed to bark: "_Drop it!_" The revolver hit the seat next to the cabbie. "Driver," Malone said in a conversational voice, "can you handle a gun?" "Why, it is better than even that I still can," the cabbie said. "I am in the business myself many years ago, before I see the error of my ways and buy a taxi with the profits I make. It is a high-pay business," he went on, "but very insecure." The cabbie scooped up the weapon by his side, flipped out the cylinder expertly to check the cartridges, flipped it back in and centered the muzzle on the gunman who'd dropped the revolver. "It is more than thirty years since I use one of these," he said gently, "but I do not forget how to pull the trigger, and at this range I can hardly miss." Malone noticed vaguely that he was still holding hands with the second gunman, and that this one was trying to struggle free. Malone shrugged and eased off a bit, at the same time shifting his own aim. The .44 Magnum now pointed at gunman number two, and the cabbie was aiming at gunman number one. The tableau was silent for some seconds. "Now," Malone said at last, "we wait. Driver, if you would sort of lean against your horn button, we might be able to speed things up a little. The light has turned green." "The local constables," the cabbie said, "do not bother with stalled cars in traffic these days." "But," Malone pointed out, "I have a hunch no cop could resist a taxi which is not only stalled and blocking traffic but is also blatting its horn continuously. Strike or no strike," he finished sententiously, "there are things beyond the power of man to ignore." "Friend," the cabbie said, "you convince me. It is a good move." He sagged slightly against the horn button, keeping the gun centered at all times on the man before him. The horn began to wail horribly. The first gunman swallowed nervously. "Hey, now, listen," he said, shouting slightly above the horn. "This wasn't anything. Just a gag, see? A little gag. We was playing a joke. On a friend." The driver addressed Malone. "Do you ever see either of these boys before?" "Never," Malone said. "Nor do I," the cabbie said. He eyed the gunman. "We are not your friend," he said. "Either of us." "No, no," the gunman said. "Not you. This friend, he ... uh ... owns a taxi, and we thought this was it. It was kind of a joke, see? A friendly joke, that's all. Believe me, the gun's not even loaded. Both of them aren't. Phony bullets, honest. Believe me?" "Why, naturally I believe you," the cabbie said politely. "I never doubt the word of a stranger, especially such an honest-appearing stranger as you seem to be. And since the gun is loaded with false bullets, as you say, all you have to do is reach over and take it away from me." There was a short silence. "A joke," the gunman said feebly. "Honest, just a joke." "We believe you," Malone assured him grandly. "As a matter of fact, we appreciate the joke so much that we want you to tell it to a panel of twelve citizens, a judge and a couple of lawyers, so they can appreciate it, too. They get little fun out of life and your joke may give them a few moments of happiness. Why hide your light under an alibi?" The horn continued its dismal wail for a few seconds more before two patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time to go down to the station to prefer charges. He showed his identification and the police were suitably impressed. "Lock 'em up for violating the Sullivan Law," he said. "I'm sure they don't have licenses for these lovely little guns of theirs." "Probably not," the sergeant agreed. "There's been an awful lot of this kind of thing going on lately. But here's an idea: the cabbie here can come on with us." The top of the cabbie's head turned pale. "That," he said, "is the trouble with being a law-abiding citizen such as I have been for upwards of thirty years. Because I do not want to lose twenty dollars to these young strangers, I lose twenty dollars' worth of time in a precinct station, the air of which is very bad for my asthma." Malone, taking the hint, dug a twenty out of his pockets, and then added another to it, remembering how much he had spent in Las Vegas, where his money funneled slowly into the pockets of Primo Palveri. The cabbie took the money with haste and politeness and stowed it away. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am now prepared to spend the entire night signing affidavits, if enough affidavits can be dug up." He looked pleased. "Mr. Malone," the sergeant said wearily, "people just don't realize what's going on in this town. We never did have half enough cops, and now, with so many men resigning and getting arrested and suspended, we haven't got a quarter enough. People think this strike business is funny, but if we spent any time fiddling around with traffic and parking tickets, we'd never have time to stop even crimes like this, let alone the big jobs. As it is, though, there haven't been a lot of big ones. Every hood in the city's out to make a couple of bucks--but that's it so far, thank God." Malone nodded. "How about the FBI?" he said. "Want them to come in and help?" "Mr. Malone," the sergeant said, "the City of New York can take very good care of itself, without outside interference." Some day, Malone told himself, good old New York City was going to secede from the Union and form a new country entirely. Then it would have a war with New Jersey and probably be wiped right off the map. Viewing the traffic around him as he hunted for another cab, he wasn't at all sure that that was a bad idea. He began to wish vaguely that he had borrowed one of the policemen's horses. * * * * * Malone wasn't in the least worried about arriving at Mike Sand's office late. In the first place, Sand was notorious for sleeping late and working late to make up for it. His work schedule was somewhere around forty-five degrees out of phase with the rest of the world, which made it just about average for the National Brotherhood of Truckers. It had never agitated for a nine-to-five work day. A man driving a truck, after all, worked all sorts of odd hours--and the union officials did the same, maybe just to prove that they were all good truckers at heart. The sign over the door read: National Headquarters NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TRUCKERS Welcome, Brother Malone pushed at the door and it swung open, revealing a rather dingy-looking foyer. More Good Old Truckers At Heart, he told himself. Mike Sand owned a quasi-palatial mansion in Puerto Rico for winter use, and a two-floor, completely air-conditioned apartment on Fifth Avenue for summer use. But the Headquarters Building looked dingy enough to make truckers conscience-stricken about paying back dues. Behind the reception desk there was a man whose face was the approximate shape and color of a slightly used waffle. He looked up from his crossword puzzle as Malone came in, apparently trying to decide whether or not this new visitor should be greeted with: "Welcome, Brother!" Taking pity on his indecision, Malone strode to the desk and said: "Tell Mike Sand he has a visitor." The waffle-faced man blinked. "Mr. Sand is busy right now," he said. "Who wants to talk to him?" Malone tried to look steely-eyed and tough. "You pick up the intercom," he said, "and you tell Sand there's a man out here who's in the cloak-and-suit business." "The what?" "Tell him this man is worried about a recent shipment of buttons," Malone went on. "Mister," the waffle-faced man said, "you're nuts." "So I'm nuts," Malone said. "Make the call." It was put through. After a few minutes of earnest conversation the man turned to look at Malone again, dizzied wonder in his eyes. "Mr. Sand says go right up," he told the FBI Agent in a shocked voice. "Elevator to the third floor." Malone went over to the elevator, stepped in and pressed the third-floor button. As the doors closed, the familiar itch of precognition began to assail him again. This time he had nothing else to distract him. He paid very close attention to it as he was carried slowly and creakily upward. He looked up. There was an escape-hatch in the top of the car. Standing on tiptoe, he managed to lift it aside, grasp the edges of the resulting hole and pull himself up through the hole to the top of the car. He looked back down, memorizing the elevator, and then pulled the hatch shut again. There was a small peephole in it, and Malone put his eye to it and waited. About twenty seconds later, the car stopped and the doors opened. A little more time passed, and then a gun, closely followed by a man, edged around the door frame. "What the hell," the man said. "The car's empty!" Another voice said: "Let's cover the stairway." Two pairs of footsteps receded rapidly down the hall. Malone, gun in hand, teleported himself back to the previously memorized elevator, tiptoed to the door and looked out. The two men were standing at the far end of the hall, posted at either side of the stairwell and obviously waiting for him to come on up. Instead, he tiptoed out of the elevator hefting his gun, and came up silently behind the pair. When he was within ten feet he stopped and said, very politely: "Drop the guns, boys." The guns thudded to the floor and the two men turned round. "All right," Malone said, smiling into their astonished faces. "Now, let's go on and see Mr. Sand." [Illustration] He picked up the guns with his free hand and put them into his coat pockets. Together, the three men went down toward the lighted office at the far end of the hall. "Open it," Malone said as they came to the door. He followed them into the office. Behind a battered, worm-eaten desk in a dingy room sat a very surprised-looking Mike Sand. He was only about five feet six, but he looked as if weighed over two hundred pounds. He had huge shoulders and a thick neck, and his face was sleepy-looking. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights in his long career; Sand, Malone reflected, was nearing fifty now, and he was beginning to look his age. His short hair, once black, was turning to iron-gray. He didn't say anything. Malone smiled at him pleasantly. "These boys were carrying deadly weapons," he told Sand in a polite voice. "That's hardly the way to treat a brother." His precognitive warning system wasn't ringing any alarm bells, but he kept his gun trained on the pair of thugs as he walked over to Mike Sand's desk and took the two extra revolvers from his pocket. "You'd better keep these, Sand," he said. "Your boys don't know how to handle them." Sand grinned sourly, pulled open a desk drawer and swept the guns into it with one motion of his ham-like hand. He didn't look at Malone. "You guys better go downstairs and keep Jerry company," he said. "You can do crossword puzzles together." "Now, Mike, we--" one of them began. Mike Sand snorted. "Go on," he said. "Scram." "But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--" "Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out. "Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to hell." * * * * * That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence of a bass-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those buttons--" he said. "I got nothing to do with buttons," Sand said. "You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of buttons from the Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri." "I got nothing to do with it," Sand said. Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one and sat down in the other. "I'm not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you'd know it fast enough." Sand regarded him from under eyelids made almost entirely of scar-tissue. "I guess so," he said sourly at last. "But what do you want to know about the stuff? And who are you, anyhow?" "The name's Malone," Malone said. "You might say trouble is my business. Or something like that. I see an opportunity to create a little trouble--but not for you. That is, if you want to hear some more about those buttons. Of course, if you had nothing to do with it--" "All right," Sand said. "All right. But it was strictly a legitimate proposition, understand?" "Sure," Malone said. "Strictly legitimate." "Well, it was," Sand said defensively. "We got to stop scab trucking, don't we? And that Palveri was using nonunion boys on the trucks. We had to stop them; it was a service to the Brotherhood, understand?" "And the peyotl buttons?" Malone asked. Sand shrugged. "So we had to confiscate the cargo, didn't we?" he said. "To teach them a lesson. Nonunion drivers, that's what we're against." "And you're for peyotl," Malone said, "so you can make it into peyote and get enough money to refurbish Brotherhood Headquarters." "Now, look," Sand said. "You think you're tough and you can get away with a lot of wisecracks. That's a wrong idea, brother." He didn't move, but he suddenly seemed set to spring. Malone wondered if, just maybe, his precognition had blown a fuse. "O.K., let's forget it," he said. "But I've got some inside lines, Sand. You didn't get the real shipment." "Didn't get it?" Sand said with raised eyebrows. "I got it. It's right where I can put my finger on it now." "That was the fake," Malone said easily. "They knew you were after a shipment, Sand, so they suckered you in. They fed your spies with false information and sent you out after the fake shipment." "Fake shipment?" Sand said. "It's the real stuff, brother. The real stuff." "But not enough of it," Malone said. "Their big shipments are almost three times what you got. They made one while you were suckered off with the fake--and they're making another one next week. Interested?" Sand snorted. "The hell," he said. "Didn't you hear me say I got the first shipment right where I can put my finger on it?" "So?" Malone said. "So I can't get rid of it," Sand said. "What do I want with a new load? Every day I hold the stuff is dangerous. You never know when somebody's going to look for it and maybe find it." "Can't get rid of it?" Malone said. This was a new turn of events. "What's happening?" "Everything," Sand said tersely. "Look, you want to sell me some information--but you don't know the setup. Maybe when I tell you, you'll stop bothering me." He put his head in his hands, and his voice, when he spoke again, was muffled. "The contacts are gone," he said. "With the arrests and the resignations and everything else, nobody wants to take any chances; the few guys that aren't locked up are scared they will be. I can't make any kind of a deal for anything. There just isn't any action." "Things are tough, huh?" Malone said hopelessly. Apparently even Mike Sand wasn't going to pan out for him. "Things are terrible," Sand said. "The locals are having revolutions--guys there are kicking out the men from National Headquarters. Nobody knows where he stands any more--a lot of my organizers have been goofing up and getting arrested for one thing and another. Like apes in the trees, that's what." Malone nodded very slowly and took another puff of the cigarette. "Nothing's going right," he said. "Listen," Sand said. "You want to hear trouble? My account books are in duplicate--you know? Just to keep things nice and peaceful and quiet." "One for the investigators and one for the money," Malone said. "Sure," Sand said, preoccupied with trouble. "You know the setup. But both sets are missing. Both sets." He raised his head, the picture of witless agony. "I've got an idea where they are, too. I'm just waiting for the axe to fall." "O.K.," Malone said. "Where are they?" "The U. S. Attorney's Office," Sand said dismally. He stared down at his battered desk and sighed. Malone stubbed out his cigarette. "So you're not in the market for any more buttons?" he said. "All I'm in the market for," Sand said without raising his eyes, "is a nice, painless way to commit suicide." * * * * * Malone walked several blocks without noticing where he was going. He tried to think things over, and everything seemed to fall into a pattern that remained, agonizingly, just an inch or so out of his mental reach. The mental bursts, the trouble the United States was having, Palveri, Queen Elizabeth, Burris, Mike Sand, Dr. O'Connor, Sir Lewis Carter and even Luba Ardanko juggled and flowed in his mind like pieces out of a kaleidoscope. But they refused to form any pattern he could recognize. He uttered a short curse and managed to collide with a bulky woman with frazzled black hair. "Pardon me," he said politely. "The hell with it," the woman said, looking straight past him, and went jerkily on her way. Malone blinked and looked around him. There were a lot of people still on the streets, but they didn't look like normal New York City people. They were all curiously tense and wary, as if they were suspicious not only of him and each other, but even themselves. He caught sight of several illegal-looking bulges beneath men's armpits, and many heavily sagging pockets. One or two women appeared to be unduly solicitous of their large and heavy handbags. But it wasn't his job to enforce the Sullivan Law, he told himself. Especially while he was on vacation. A single foot patrolman stood a few feet ahead, guarding a liquor store with drawn revolver, his eyes scanning the passers-by warily while he waited for help. Behind him, the smashed plate glass and broken bottles and the sprawled figure just inside the door told a fairly complete story. Down the block, Malone saw several stores that carried _Closed_ or _Gone Out Of Business_ signs. The whole depressing picture gave him the feeling that all the tragedies of the 1930-1935 period had somehow been condensed into the past two weeks. Ahead there was a chain drugstore, and Malone headed for it. Two uniformed men wearing Special Police badges were standing near the door eyeing everyone with suspicion, but Malone managed to get past them and went on to a telephone booth. He tried dialling the Washington number of the FBI, but got only a continuous _beep-beep_, indicating a service delay. Finally he managed to get a special operator, who told him sorrowfully that calls to Washington were jamming all available trunk lines. Malone glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Then he teleported himself to his apartment in Washington and, on arriving, headed for the phone there. Using that one, he dialed again, got Pelham's sad face on the screen, and asked for Thomas Boyd. Boyd didn't look any different, Malone thought, though maybe he was a little more tired. Henry VIII had obviously had a hard day trying to get his wives to stop nagging him. "Ken," he said. "I thought you were on vacation. What are you doing calling up the FBI, or do you just want to feel superior to us poor working slobs?" "I need some information," Malone said. Boyd uttered a short, mirthless laugh. "How to beat the tables, you mean?" he said. "How are things in good old Las Vegas?" Malone, realizing that with direct-dial phones Boyd had no idea where he was actually calling from, kept wisely quiet. "How about Burris?" he said after a second. "Has he come up with any new theories yet?" "New theories?" Boyd said. "What about?" "Everything," Malone said. "From all I see in the papers things haven't been quieting down any. Is it still Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch putting psychodrugs in water-coolers, or has something new been added?" "I don't know what the chief thinks," Boyd said. "Things'll straighten out in a while. We're working on it--twenty-four hours a day, or damn near, but we're working. While you take a nice, long vacation that--" "I want you to get me something," Malone said. "Just go and get it and send it to me at Las Vegas." "Money?" Boyd said with raised eyebrows. "Dossiers," Malone said. "On Mike Sand and Primo Palveri." "Palveri I can understand," Boyd said. "You want to threaten him with exposure unless he lets you beat the roulette tables. But why Sand? Ken, are you working on something psionic?" "Me?" Malone said sweetly. "I'm on vacation." "The chief won't like--" "Can you send me the dossiers?" Malone interrupted. Boyd shook his head very slowly. "Ken, I can't do it without the chief finding out about it. If you are working on something ... hell, I'd like to help you. But I don't see how I can. You don't know what things are like here." "What are they like?" Malone said. "The full force is here," Boyd said. "As far as I know, you're the only vacation leave not canceled yet. And not only that, but we've got agents in from the Sureté and New Scotland Yard, agents from Belgium and Germany and Holland and Japan ... Ken, we've even got three MVD men here working with us." "It's happening all over?" Malone said. "All over the world," Boyd said. "Ken, I'm beginning to think we've got a case of Martian Invaders on our hands. Or something like it." He paused. "But we're licking them, Ken," he went on. "Slowly but surely, we're licking them." "How do you mean?" Malone said. "Crime is down," Boyd said, "away down. Major crime, I mean--petty theft, assault, breaking and entering and that sort of thing has gone away up, but that's to be expected. Everything's going to--" "Skip the handbasket," Malone said. "But you're working things out?" "Sooner or later," Boyd said. "Every piece of equipment and every man in the FBI is working overtime; we can't be stopped forever." "I'll wave flags," Malone said bitterly. "And I wish I could join you." "Believe me," Boyd said, "you don't know when you're well off." Malone switched off. He looked at his watch; it was ten-thirty. XII That made it eight-thirty in Las Vegas. Malone opened his eyes again in his hotel room there. He had half an hour to spare until his dinner date with Luba. That gave him plenty of time to shower, shave and dress, and he felt pleased to have managed the timing so neatly. Two minutes later, he was soaking in the luxury of a hot tub allowing the warmth to relax his body while his mind turned over the facts he had collected. There were a lot of them, but they didn't seem to mean anything special. The world, he told himself, was going to hell in a handbasket. That was all very well and good, but just what was the handbasket made of? Burris' theory, the more he thought about it, was a pure case of mental soapsuds, with perhaps a dash of old cotton-candy to make confusion even worse confounded. And there wasn't any other theory, was there? Well, Malone reflected, there was one, or at least a part of one. Her Majesty had said that everything was somehow tied up with the mental bursts--and that sounded a lot more probable. Assuming that the bursts and the rest of the mixups were _not_ connected made, as a matter of fact, very little sense; it was multiplying hypotheses without reason. When two unusual things happen, they have at least one definite connection: they're both unusual. The sensible thing to do, Malone thought, was to look for more connections. Which meant asking who was causing the bursts, and why. Her Majesty had said that she didn't know, and couldn't do it herself. Obviously, though, some telepath or a team of telepaths was doing the job. And the only trouble with that, Malone reflected sadly, was that all telepaths were in the Yucca Flats laboratory. It was at this point that he sat upright in the tub, splashing water over the floor and gripping the soap with a strange excitement. Who'd ever said that _all_ the telepaths were in Yucca Flats? All the ones so far discovered were--but that, obviously, was an entirely different matter. Her majesty didn't know about any others, true. But Malone thought of his own mind-shield. If he could make himself telepathically "invisible," why couldn't someone else? Dr. Marshall's theories seemed to point the other way--but they only went for telepaths like Her Majesty, who were psychotic. A sane telepath, Malone thought, might conceivably develop such a mind-shield. All known telepaths were nuts, he told himself. Now, he began to see why. He'd started out, two years before, _hunting_ for nuts, and for idiots. But they wouldn't even know anything about sane telepaths--the sane ones probably wouldn't even want to communicate with them. A sane telepath was pretty much of an unknown quantity. But that, Malone told himself with elation, was exactly what he was looking for. Could a sane telepath do what an insane one couldn't--and project thoughts, or at least mental bursts? He got out of the cooling tub and grabbed for a terry-cloth robe. Not even bothering about the time, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again he was in the Yucca Flats apartment of Dr. Thomas O'Connor. O'Connor wasn't sleeping, exactly. He sat in a chair in his bare-looking living room, a book open on his lap, his head nodding slightly. Malone's entrance made no sounds, and O'Connor didn't move or look around. "Doctor," Malone said, "is it possible that--" O'Connor came up off the chair a good foot and a half. He went: "Eee," and came down again, still gripping the book. His head turned. "It's me," Malone said. "Indeed," O'Connor said. "Indeed indeed. My goodness." He opened his mouth some more but no words came out of it. "Eee," he said again, at last, in a conversational tone. Malone took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I startled you," he said, "but this is important and it couldn't wait." O'Connor stared blankly at him. "Dr. O'Connor," Malone said, "it's me. Kenneth J. Malone. I want to talk to you." * * * * * At last O'Connor's expression returned almost to normal. "Mr. Malone," he said, "you are undressed." Malone sighed. "This is important, doctor," he said. "Let's not waste time with all that kind of thing." "But, Mr. Malone--" O'Connor began frostily. "I need some information," Malone said, "and maybe you've got it. What do you know about telepathic projection?" "About what?" O'Connor said. "Do you mean nontelepaths receiving some sort of ... communication from telepaths?" "Right," Malone said. "Mind-to-mind communication, of course; I'm not interested in the United States mail or the telephone companies. How about it, doctor? Is it possible?" O'Connor gnawed at his lower lip for a second. "There have been cases reported," he said at last. "Very few have been written up with any accuracy, and those seem to be confined to close relatives or loved ones of the person projecting the message." "Is that necessary?" Malone said. "Isn't it possible that--" "Further," O'Connor said, getting back into his lecture-room stride, "I think you'll find that the ... ah ... message so received is one indicating that the projector of such a message is in dire peril. He has, for instance, been badly injured, or is rapidly approaching death, or else he has narrowly escaped death." "What does that have to do with it?" Malone said. "I mean, why should all those requirements be necessary?" O'Connor frowned slightly. "Because," he said, "the amount of psionic energy necessary for such a feat is tremendous. Usually, it is the final burst of energy, the outpouring of all the remaining psionic force immediately before death. And if death does not occur, the person is at the least greatly weakened; his mind, if it ever does recover, needs time and rest to do so." "And he reaches a relative or a loved one," Malone said, "because the linkage is easier; there's some thought of him in that other mind for him to 'tune in' on." "We assume so," O'Connor said. "Very well, then," Malone said. "I'll assume so, too. But if the energy is so great, then a person couldn't do this sort of thing very often." "Hardly," O'Connor said. Malone nodded. "It's like ... like giving blood to a blood bank," he said. "Giving ... oh, three quarts of blood. It might not kill you. But if it didn't, you'd be weak for a long time." "Exactly," O'Connor said. "A good analogy, Mr. Malone." Malone looked at him and felt relieved that he'd managed to get the conversation onto pure lecture-room science so quickly. O'Connor, easily at home in that world, had been able to absorb the shock of Malone's sudden appearance while providing the facts in his own inimitable, frozen manner. "So one telepath couldn't go on doing it all the time," he said. "But--how about several people?" "Several people?" O'Connor said. "I mean ... well, let's look at that blood bank again," Malone said. "You need three quarts of blood. But one person doesn't have to give it. Suppose twelve people gave half a pint each." "Ah," O'Connor said. "I see. Or twenty-four people, giving a quarter-pint each. Or--" "That's the idea," Malone said hurriedly. "I guess there'd be a point of diminishing returns, but that's the point. Would something like that be possible?" O'Connor thought for what seemed like a long time. "It might," he said at last. "At least theoretically. But it would take a great deal of mental co-ordination among the participants. They would all have to be telepaths, of course." "In order to mesh their thoughts right on the button, and direct them properly and at the correct time," Malone said. "Right?" "Ah ... correct," O'Connor said. "Given that, Mr. Malone, I imagine that it might possibly be done." "Wonderful," Malone said. "However," O'Connor said, apparently glad to throw even a little cold water on the notion, "it could not be done for very long periods of time, you understand. It would happen in rather short bursts." "That's right," Malone said, enjoying the crestfallen look on O'Connor's face. "That's exactly what I was looking for." "I'm ... ah ... glad to have been of service," O'Connor said. "However, Mr. Malone, I should like to request--" "Oh, don't worry," Malone said. "I won't slam the door." He vanished. * * * * * It was eight-fifty. Hurriedly, he rinsed himself off, shaved and put on his evening clothes. But he was still late--it was two minutes after nine when he showed up at the door that led off the lobby to the Universal Joint. Luba was, surprisingly, waiting for him there. "Ready for a vast feast?" she asked pleasantly. "In about a minute and a half," Malone said. "Do you mind waiting that long?" "Frankly," Luba said, "in five minutes I will be gnawing holes in the gold paneling around here. And I do want to catch the first floor show, too. I understand they've got a girl who has--" "That," Malone said sternly, "should interest me more than it does you." "I'm always interested in what the competition is doing," Luba said. "Nevertheless," Malone began, and stopped. After a second he started again: "Anyhow, this is important." [Illustration] "All right," she said instantly. "What is it?" He led her away from the door to an alcove in the lobby where they could talk without being overheard. "Can you get hold of Sir Lewis at this time of night?" he asked. "Sir Lewis?" she said. "If ... if it's urgent, I suppose I could." "It's urgent," Malone said. "I need all the data on telepathic projection I can get. The scientists have given me some of it--maybe Psychical Research has some more. I imagine it's all mixed up with ghosts and ectoplasm, but--" "Telepathic projection," Luba said. "Is that where a person projects a thought into somebody else's mind?" "That's it," Malone said. "Can Sir Lewis get me all the data on that tonight?" "Tonight?" Luba said. "It's pretty late and what with sending them from New York to Nevada--" "Don't bother about that," Malone said. "Just send 'em to the FBI Offices in New York. I'll have the boys there make copies and send the copies on." Instead, he thought, he would teleport to New York himself. But Luba definitely didn't have to know that. "He'd have to send the originals," Luba said. "I'll guarantee their safety," Malone said. "But I need the data right now." Luba hesitated. "Tell him to bill the FBI," Malone said. "Call him collect and he can bill the phone call, too." "All right, Ken," Luba said at last. "I'll try." She went off to make the call, and came back in a few minutes. "O.K.?" Malone said. She smiled at him, very gently. "O.K.," she said. "Now let's go in to dinner, before I get any hungrier and the Great Universal loses some of its paneling." Dinner, Malone told himself, was going to be wonderful. He was alone with Luba, and he was in a fancy, fine, expensive place. He was happy, and Luba was happy, and everything was going to be perfectly frabjous. It was. He had no desire whatever, when dinner and the floor show were over, to leave Luba. Unfortunately, he did have work to do--work that was more important than anything else he could imagine. He made a tentative date for the next day, went to his room, and from there teleported himself to FBI Headquarters, New York. The agent-in-charge looked up at him. "Hey," he said. "I thought you were on vacation, Malone." "How come everybody knows about me being on vacation?" Malone said sourly. The agent-in-charge shrugged. "The only leave not canceled?" he said. "Hell, it was all over the place in five minutes." "O.K., O.K.," Malone said. "Don't remind me. Is there a package for me?" The agent-in-charge produced a large box. "A messenger brought it," he said. "From the Psychical Research Society," he said. "What is it, ghosts?" "Dehydrated," Malone said. "Just add ectoplasm and out they come, shouting _Boo!_ at everybody." "Sounds wonderful," the agent-in-charge said. "Can I come to the party?" "First," Malone said judiciously, "you'd have to be dead. Of course I can arrange that--" "Thanks," the agent-in-charge said, leaving in a hurry. Malone went on down to his office and opened the box. It contained books, pamphlets and reports from Sir Lewis, all dealing with some area of telepathic projection. He spent a few minutes looking them over and trying to make some connected sense out of them, but finally he gave up and just sat and thought. The material seemed to be no help at all; it told him even less than Dr. O'Connor had. What he needed, he decided, was somebody to talk to. But who? He couldn't talk to the FBI, and nobody else knew much about what he was trying to investigate. He thought of Her Majesty and rejected the notion with a sigh. No, what he needed was somebody smart and quick, somebody who could be depended on, somebody with training and knowledge. And then, very suddenly, he knew who he wanted. "Well, now, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Let's put everything together and see what happens." "Indeed," said Sir Kenneth Malone, "it is high time we did so, Sirrah. Proceed: I shall attend." * * * * * "Let's start from the beginning," Malone said. "We know there's confusion in all parts of the country--in all parts of the world, I guess. And we know that confusion is being caused by carefully timed accidents and errors. We also know that these errors appear to be accompanied by violent bursts of psionic static--violent energy. And we know, further, that on three specific occasions, these bursts of energy were immediately followed by a reversal of policy in the mind of the person on the receiving end." "You mean," Sir Kenneth put in, "that these gentlemen changed their opinions." "Correct," Malone said. "I refer, of course, to the firm of Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch, Spying Done Cheap." "Indeed," Sir Kenneth said. "Then the operators of this strange force, whatever it may prove to be, must have some interest in allowing the spies' confession?" "Maybe," Malone said. "Let's leave that for later. To get back to the beginning of all this: it seems to me to follow that the accidents and errors which have caused all the confusion throughout the world happen because somebody's mind is changed just the right amount at the right time. A man does something he didn't intend to do--or else he forgets to do it at all." "Ah," Sir Kenneth said. "We have done those things we ought not to have done; we have left undone those things we ought to have done. And you feel, Sirrah, that a telepathic command is the cause of this confusion?" "A series of them," Malone said. "But we also know, from Dr. O'Connor, that it takes a great deal of psychic energy to perform this particular trick--more than a person can normally afford to expend." "Marry, now," Sir Kenneth said. "Meseemeth this is not reasonable. Changing the mind of a man indeed seems a small thing in comparison to teleportation, or psychokinesis, or levitation or any such witchery. And yet it take more power than any of these?" Malone thought for a second. "Sure it does," he said. "I'd say it was a matter of resistance. Moving an inanimate object is pretty simple--comparatively, anyhow--because inert matter has no mental resistance." "And moving oneself?" Sir Kenneth said. "There's some resistance there, probably," Malone said. "But you'll remember that the Fueyo system of training for teleportation involved overcoming your own mental resistance to the idea." "True," Sir Kenneth said. "'Tis true. Then let us agree that it takes great power to effect this change. Where does our course point from that agreement, Sirrah?" "Next," Malone said, "we have to do a little supposing. This project must be handled by a fairly large group, since no individual can do it alone. This large group has to be telepathic--and not only for the reasons Dr. O'Connor and I specified." "And why else?" Sir Kenneth demanded. "They've also got to know exactly when to make this victim of theirs change his mind," Malone said. "Right?" "Correct," Sir Kenneth said. "We've got to look for a widespread organization of telepaths," Malone said, "with enough mental discipline to hold onto a tough mental shield. Strong, trained, sane men." "A difficult assignment," Sir Kenneth commented. "Well," Malone said, "suppose you hold on for a second--don't go away--and let me figure something out." "I shall wait," sir Kenneth said, "without." "Without what?" Malone murmured. But there was no time for games. Now, then, he told himself--and sneezed. He shook his head, cursed softly and went on. Now, then.... * * * * * There was an organization, spread all over the Western world, and with what were undoubtedly secret branches in the Soviet Union. The organization had to be an old one--because it had to have trained telepaths, of a high degree of efficiency. And training took time. There was something else to consider, too. In order to organize to such a degree that they could wreak the complete havoc they were wreaking, the organization couldn't be completely secret; there are always leaks, always suspicious events, and a society that spent time covering all of those up would have no time for anything else. So the organization had to be a known one, in the Western world at least--a known group, masquerading as something else. So far, everything made sense. Malone frowned and tried to think. Where, he wondered, did he go from here? Maybe this time a list would help. He found a pencil and a piece of paper, and headed the paper: _Organization_. Then he started putting down what he knew about it, and what he'd figured out: 1. Large 2. Old 3. Disguised It sounded, so far, just a little like Frankenstein's Monster wearing a red wig. But what else did he know about it? After a second's thought, he murmured: "Nothing," and put the pencil down. But that, he realized, wasn't quite true. He knew one more thing about the organization. He knew they'd probably be immune to the confusion everybody else was suffering from. The organization would be--had to be--efficient. It would be composed of intelligent, superbly co-operative people, who could work together as a unit without in the least impairing their own individuality. He reached for the pencil again, and put down: 4. Efficient He looked at it. Now it didn't remind him so much of the Monster. But it didn't look terribly familiar, either. Who did he know, he thought, who was large, old, disguised and efficient? It sounded like an improbable combination. He set the paper down, clearing off some of the PRS books to make room for it. And then he stopped. The papers the PRS had sent him.... And he'd gotten them so quickly, so efficiently.... They were a large organization.... And an old one.... He looked for a desk phone, found one and grabbed at it frantically. * * * * * The girl who answered the phone looked familiar. Malone suddenly remembered to check the time--it was just after nine. The girl stared at him. She did not look terribly old, but she was large and she had to be disguised. There seemed to be a lot of teeth running around in this case, Malone thought, between the burlesque stripper in Las Vegas and Miss Dental Display here in New York. Nobody, he told himself, could have collected that many teeth honestly. "Psychical Research Society," she said. "Oh, Mr. Malone. Good morning." "Sir Lewis," Malone said in a rush. "Sir Lewis Carter. I want to talk to him. Hurry." "Sir Lewis Carter?" the girl said very slowly. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Malone, but he won't be in at all today." "Home number," Malone said desperately. "I've got to." "Well, I can give you that, Mr. Malone," she said, "but it wouldn't do you any good, really. Because he went away on his vacation and when he does that he never tells us where. You know? He won't be back for two or three weeks," she added as an afterthought. Malone said: "Oog," and thought for less than a second. "Somebody official," he said. "Got to talk to somebody official. Now." "Oh, I can't do that either, Mr. Malone," the toothy girl said. "All of the executives already left on their vacation. They just left a skeleton force here at the office." "They're all gone?" Malone said hollowly. "That's right," the girl said with great cheer. "As a matter of fact, I'm in charge now. You know?" "I'm afraid I do," Malone said. "It's very important, though. You don't have any idea where any of them went?" "None at all," she said. "I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Maybe if you were me you'd ask questions, but I just follow orders and those were my orders. To take over until they get back. You know? They didn't tell me where and I just didn't ask." "Great," Malone said. He wanted to shoot himself. Everything was obvious now--about twenty-four hours too late. And now, they'd all gone--for two weeks--or for good. The girl's rancid voice broke in on his thoughts. "Oh, Mr. Malone," she said. "I'm sorry, but I just remembered they left a note for you." "A note?" Malone said. "For me?" "Sir Lewis said you might call," the girl said, "and he left a message. If you'll hold on a minute I'll read it." Malone waited tensely. The girl found a slip of paper, blinked at it and read: "My dear Malone, I'm afraid that what you have deduced is quite correct; and, as you can see, that leaves us no alternative. Sorry. Miss Luba A. sends her apologies to you, since she is joining us; my apologies are also tendered." The girl looked up. "It's signed by Sir Lewis," she said. "Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Malone?" "I'm afraid it does," Malone said blankly. "It means entirely too much." XIII After Miss Dental Display had faded from Malone's screen, he just sat there, looking at the dead, gray front of the visiphone and feeling about twice as dead and at least three times as gray. Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, did nothing whatever to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been practically living on the tip of his nose for God alone knew how long, and not only had he done nothing about it, he hadn't even seen it. There was the organization, staring him in the face. There was Luba--nobody's fool, no starry-eyed dreamer of occult dreams. She was part of the Psychical Research Society, why hadn't he thought to wonder why she was connected with it? And there was his own mind-shield. Why hadn't he wondered whether other telepaths might not have the same shield? He thought about Luba and told himself bitterly that from now on she was Miss Ardanko. Enough, he told himself, was enough. From now on he was calling her by her last name, formally and distantly. In his own mind, anyhow. Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain falling on a hapless traveler, during a landslide season. And, Malone told himself, he had never possessed less hap in all of his ill-starred life. And then, very suddenly, one more fact arrived, and pushed the rest out into the black night of Malone's bitter mind. He stood up, pushing the books away, and closed his eyes. When he opened them he went to the telephone in his Las Vegas hotel suite, and switched it on. A smiling operator appeared. Malone wanted to see him die of poison, slowly. "Give me Room 4-T," he snapped. "Hurry." "Room forty?" the operator asked. "Damn it," Malone said, "I said 4-T and I meant 4-T. Four as in four and T as in--as in China. And hurry." "Oh," the operator said. "Yes, sir." He turned away from the screen. "That would have been Miss Luba Ardanko's room, sir?" he said. "Right," Malone snapped. "I ... wait a minute. Would have been?" "That's correct, sir," the operator said. "She checked out, sir, early this morning. The room is unoccupied." Malone swallowed hard. It was all true, then. Sir Lewis' note hadn't simply been one last wave of the red cape before an angry bull. Luba was one of them. _Miss Ardanko_, he corrected himself savagely. "What time?" he said. The operator consulted an information board before him. "Approximately one o'clock, sir," he said. "In the morning?" "Yes, sir," the clerk said. Malone closed his eyes. "Thanks," he said. "You're quite welcome, sir," the operator said. "A courtesy of the Great Universal Ho--" Malone cut him off. "Ho, indeed," he said bitterly. "Not to mention ha and hee--hee and yippe-ki-yay. A great life." He whisked himself back to New York in a dismal, rainy state of mind. As he sat down again to the books and papers the door to the room opened. "You still here?" the agent-in-charge said. "I'm just going off duty and I came by to check. Don't you ever sleep?" "I'm on vacation, remember?" "Some vacation," the a-in-c said. "If you're on special assignment why not tell the rest of us?" "I want it to be a surprise," Malone said. "And meantime, I'd appreciate it if I were left entirely to my own devices." "Still conjuring up ghosts?" the a-in-c said. "That," Malone said, "I don't know. I've got some long-distance calls to make." * * * * * He started with the overseas calls, leaving the rest of the United States time for the sun to get round to them. His first call, which involved a lot of cursing on Malone's part and much hard work for the operator, who claimed plaintively that she didn't know how things had gotten so snarled up, but overseas calls were getting worse and worse, went to New Scotland Yard in London. After great difficulty, Malone managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to check on the inquiry at once. It seemed like years before he called back, and Malone leaped to the phone. "Yes?" he said. Teal, red-faced and apparently masticating a stick of gum, said: "I got C. I. D. Commander Gideon to follow up on that matter, Mr. Malone. As you know, it's after noon here--" "And they're all out to lunch," Malone said. "As a matter of fact," Teal went on, "they seem to have disappeared entirely. On vacation, that sort of thing. It is rather difficult attempting any full-scale tracing job just now; our men are terribly overworked. I imagine you've had reports from the New Scotland Yard representatives working with you there--" "Oh, certainly," Malone said. "But the hour; what does that have to do with anything?" "I'm afraid I was thinking of our Inspector Ottermole," Teal said. "He was sent to locate Dr. Carnacki, President of the Psychical Research Society here. On being told that Dr. Carnacki was 'out to lunch,' Ottermole investigated every restaurant and eating-place within ten blocks of the offices. Dr. Carnacki was not present; he, like the rest of the Society here, appears to have left for places unknown." "Thorough work," Malone said. "Ottermole's a good man," Teal said. "We've checked as quickly as possible, Mr. Malone. I would like to ask you a question in return." "Ask away," Malone said. Teal looked worried. "Do you people think this may have anything to do with the present ... ah ... trouble?" he said. "Things are quite upset here, as you know; so many members of Parliament have resigned or ... ah ... died that the realm is being run by a rather shakily assembled coalition government. There is even some talk of giving executive power to Her Majesty until a general election can be held." For one brief moment, Malone thought Teal was talking about Rose Thompson. Then he recalled Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and felt better. Things weren't quite as bad as he'd thought. But they were bad enough. "We simply don't know yet," he said untruthfully. "But as soon as anything definite comes up, of course, you'll be informed." "Thank you, Mr. Malone," Teal said. "Of course, we'll do the same." And then, still masticating, he switched off. Paris was next, then Rome, Berlin and a couple more. Every one had the same result. From Maigret of the Paris Sureté to Poirot in Belgium, from Berlin's strict officialdom to the cheerful Hollanders, all the reports were identical. The PRS of each country had gone underground. Malone buried his face in his hands, thought about a cigar and decided that even a cigar might make him feel worse. Where were they? What were they doing now? What did they plan to do? Where had they gone? "Out of the everywhere," he heard himself say in a hollow, sepulchral voice, "into the here." But where was the here? He tried to make up his mind whether or not that made sense. Superficially, it sounded like extremely bad English, but he wasn't sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused. He close his eyes wearily, and vanished. When he opened them, he was in his Washington apartment. He went over to the big couch and sat down, feeling that if he were going to curse he might as well be comfortable while he did it. But, some minutes later, when the air was a bright electric blue around him, he didn't feel any better. Cursing was not the answer. Nothing seemed to be. What was his next move? Where did he go from here? The more he thought about it, the more his mind spun. He was, he realized, at an absolute, total dead end. Oh, there were things he could do. Malone knew that very well. He could make a lot of noise and go through a lot of waste motion; that was what it amounted to. He could have all the homes of all the missing PRS members checked somehow. That would undoubtedly result in the startling discovery that the PRS members involved weren't home. He could have their dossiers sent to him, which would clutter everything with a great many more pieces of paper. But he felt quite sure that the pieces of paper would do no good at all. In general, he could raise all hell--and find nothing whatever. Now, he told himself sadly, he had the evidence to start the FBI in motion. The only trouble was that he could think of nowhere for them to go. And, though he had evidence that might convince Burris--the PRS members, after all, _had_ done a rather unusual fadeout--he had nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a try at getting the case to stand up once carried in. That was one thing he couldn't do, he realized, he couldn't issue warrants for the arrest of anybody at all. [Illustration] But, vacation or no vacation, he thought solemnly, he was an FBI Agent, and his motto was: "There's always a way." No normal method of tracking down the PRS members, or finding their present whereabouts, was going to work. They'd been covering themselves for such an emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years--and if anyone got close, a burst of mental energy was quite enough to turn the seeker aside. Nobody, Malone told himself grimly, was perfect. There were clues lying around somewhere; he was sure of that. There had to be. The problem was simply to figure out where to look, and how to look, and what to look for. Somewhere, the clues were sitting quietly and waiting for him to find them. The thought cheered him slightly, but not very much. He stood up slowly and went into the kitchen to start heating water for coffee. There was, he told himself, a long night ahead of him. He sighed gently. But there was no help for it; the work had to be done--and done quickly. But when eight cigars had been reduced to ash, and what seemed like several gallons of coffee had sloshed their way into Malone's interior workings, his mind was as blank as a baby's. The lovely, opalescent dawn began to show in the East, and Malone tendered it some extremely rude words. Then, Haggard, red-eyed, confused, violently angry, and not one inch closer to a solution, he fell into a fitful doze on his couch. * * * * * When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky, and outside his window the cheerful sound of too much traffic floated in the air. Downstairs somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice reached Malone's semiaware mind in a great tinny shout: "The President, taking action on the current crisis, has declared martial law throughout the nation," a voice said in an important-sounded monotone. "Exempt from this proclamation are members of the Armed Services, Special Agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The proclamation, issued this morning, was made public in a special news conference which--" Malone ripped out a particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch. "That," he muttered, "is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was a little after two. "Later developments will be reported as and when they occur," the announcer was saying, "and in one hour a special panel of newscasters will be assembled here to discuss this latest action in the light of present happenings. Any special rules and regulations will be broadcast over this station--" "Shut up," Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a lot better and clearer-headed than he had been. Maybe the sleep had actually done him some good. He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then padded into the bathroom for a shower and shave. After he'd changed he thought about a morning or afternoon cup of coffee, but last night's dregs appeared to have taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he decided against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast and then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his shirt, he teleported himself over to his office. Now he knew that, sooner or later, he was going to have to talk to Burris. Burris _had_ to know, even if there was nothing to be done. And now was just as good--or as bad--a time as any. He didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris' office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, waiting for the well-known voice. It didn't come. Instead, Wolf, the Director's secretary, spoke up. "Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call in this afternoon." "Oh," Malone said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But why Miami?" he added. "Don't you hear about anything any more?" Wolf asked. "I've been on vacation." "Oh," Wolf said. "Well, the Governor of Mississippi was assassinated yesterday, at Miami Beach." "Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation. Not even to Mississippi." "You express my views precisely," Wolf said. "How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down." "No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. But you know how things are--everything's confused. Governor Flarion was walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight." "Professional," Malone commented. "It looks like it," Wolf said. "And he picked the right time for it, too--the way things are he was just one more confusion among the rest. Nobody even heard the sniper's shot; the governor just fell over, right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he was facing when the shot had been fired." "And as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started. "Right," Wolf said. "But it's even worse now, with everything going nuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's an awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who saw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a shot, or saw anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere near to the scene." "Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job." "You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart attack, and not even in Miami Beach. Everything happening down there isn't happening, according to them; Miami Beach is the one unsullied beauty spot in a mixed-up United States." "All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddest day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long." "Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?" "Right," Malone said, and switched off. * * * * * The assassination of Nemours P. Flarion, he told himself, obviously meant something. It pointed straight toward some entirely new kind of answer. Granted, old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a paranoid, self-centered, would-be, dictator whose final act was quite in keeping with the rest of his official life. Who else would be in Miami Beach, far away from his home state, while the President was declaring nationwide martial law? But that, Malone told himself, wasn't the point. Or not quite the point, anyhow. Maybe some work would dig up more facts. Anyhow, Malone was reasonably sure that he could reassign himself from vacation time, at least until he called Burris. And he had work to do; nobody was going to hand him anything on a silver serving salver. He punched the intercom again and got the Records office. "Yes, sir?" a familiar voice said. "Potter," Malone said, "this is Malone. I want facsimiles of everything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir Lewis Carter, and on Luba Ardanko. Both of these last are connected with the Society." "You're back on duty, Malone?" Potter said. "Right," Malone said. "Make that fast, will you?" Potter nodded. "Right away," he said. It didn't take long for the facsimile records to arrive, and Malone went right to work on them. Maybe somewhere in those records was the clue he had desperately needed. Where was the PRS? What were they doing now? What did they plan to do? And why had they started the whole row in the first place? The PRS, he saw, was even more widely spread than he had thought. It had branches in almost every major city in the United States, in Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even a small branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of such nonmaterialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research showed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in the Sino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, hardly mattered. Maybe in Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better Borschch League. He was fairly sure, from all the evidence, that the PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain. Money backing didn't seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone checked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed list that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them ordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the like, and who donated a few dollars apiece to the PRS. Besides this mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and seemed actively interested in its aims. It wasn't an unusual picture; just an exceptionally big one. Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers. Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they were all in order and they contained absolutely nothing in the way of usable clues. Sir Lewis' books on political and historical philosophy had been well-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are More Equal," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to claw its way to the bottom of the best-seller list. And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this information did him any good, and the answer came very quickly. The answer was no. He opened the second dossier. Luba Ardanko had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of Irish descent named Mary Foley, and had died in '69. Her father had been a Hungarian named Chris Yorgen Ardanko, and had died in the same year. Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know. His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete disclosure of all. And he couldn't see it. He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him? What was the clue. And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated his mind. "Mr. Malone," Malone said gently, "you are a damned fool. There are times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have seen that the obscure is the obvious." He wasn't sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew what he was saying. But, as the entire structure of facts became clear, and then turned right upside down in his mind and changed into something else entirely--something that told him not only who, and where, but also why, he became absolutely sure of one thing. He knew the final answer. And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell! XIV There was, of course, only one thing to do and only one place to go. Malone teleported to the New York offices of the FBI and went immediately downstairs to the garage, where a specially-built Lincoln awaited him at all times. One of the mechanics looked up curiously as Malone headed for the car. "Want a driver?" he said. Malone thanked his lucky stars that he didn't have to get into any lengthy and time-consuming argument about whether or not he was on vacation. "No, thanks," he said. "This is a solo job." That, he told himself, was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and into the heavy late-afternoon traffic of New York. The Lincoln handled smoothly, but Malone didn't press his luck in the traffic which he thought was even worse than the mess he'd driven through with the happy cab driver two days before. He wasn't in any hurry now, after all. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They--and, for once, Malone could put real names to that "they"--would still be waiting for him when he got there. _If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, turning a corner and being confronted with a great mass of automobiles wedged solidly fender to fender as far as the eye could see. The noise of honking horns was deafening, and great clouds of smoke rose up to make the scene look like the circle of Hell devoted to hot-rod drivers. Malone cursed and sweated until the line began to move, and then cursed and sweated some more until he was out of the city at last. It took quite a lot of time. New York traffic, in the past forty-eight hours, hadn't gotten better; it had gotten a lot worse. He was nearly exhausted by the time he finally crossed the George Washington Bridge and headed west. And, while he drove, he began to let his reflexes take over most of the automotive problems now that New York City was behind him. He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered them and arrayed them neatly before him. They were beamed, he told himself firmly, to one particular group of persons and to no one else. Everything was perfectly clear; all he had to do now was explain it. Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books. They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter, which was perfectly all right by itself. But they always had a whole crowd of suspects listening to them, too. Malone knew perfectly well that he could never manage a setup like that. People would interrupt him. Things would happen. Two dogs would rush in and start a battle royal on the floor. There would be an earthquake or an invasion of little green Venusians, or else somebody would just decide to faint and cause a furor. But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance. Nobody could interrupt him. And he could explain to his heart's content. Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Kenneth J. Malone, he thought happily, was not. Luba, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward their Pennsylvania hiding place. At least, he wanted to think so; it made things much more pleasant. And he hoped that Luba, or whoever was really tuned in, would alert everybody else, so they could all hook in and hear his grand final explanation of everything. He opened his mind in that one special direction, beaming his thoughts to nobody else but the group he'd decided on. A second of silence passed. And then a sound began. Malone had passed a company of soldiers some yards back, but he hadn't noticed them particularly; with the country under martial law, soldiers were going to be as common as tree frogs. Now, however, something different was happening. Malone felt the car tremble slightly, and stopped. Past him, rolling along the side of the highway he was on, came a parade of thirty-ton tanks. They rumbled and roared their slow, elephantine way down the highway and, after what seemed about three days, disappeared from sight. Malone wondered what the tanks were for, and then dismissed it from his mind. It certainly wasn't very pleasant to think about, no matter how necessary it turned out to be. He started up again. There were few cars on the road, although a lot of them were parked along the sides. A series of _Closed_ signs on filling stations explained that, and Malone began to be grateful for the national emergency. It allowed him to drive without much interference, anyhow. * * * * * _And a hearty good afternoon to all, he thought--especially to Miss Luba Ardanko. I hope she's tuned in ... and, if she isn't, I hope somebody alerts her. Frankly, I'd rather talk to her than to anyone else I can think of at the moment. As a matter of fact, it's a little easier to concentrate if I talk out loud, so I think I'll do that._ He swerved the car at this point, neatly avoiding a broken wooden crate that crouched in wait for him. "Road hog," he told it bitterly, and went on. "Nothing personal," he went on after a second. "I don't care if you're _all_ listening in, as a matter of fact. And I'm not going to hide anything." He thought a second, and then added: "Frankly, I'm not sure I've got anything to hide." He paused and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Luba's voice. _I'm listening, Kenneth,_ she said. _Go on._ He fished around in his mind for a second, wondering exactly where to start. Then he decided, in the best traditions of the detective story, not to mention "Alice in Wonderland," to start at the beginning. "The dear old Psychical Research Society," he said, speaking earnestly to his windshield, "has been going on for a good many years now--since the 1880's, as a matter of fact. That's a long time and it adds up to a lot of Psychical Research. A lot of famous and intelligent people have belonged to the Society. And, with all that, it's hardly surprising that, after nearly a hundred years of work, something finally turned up." At this point, there was another interruption. A couple of sawhorses blocked the road ahead of Malone. As he stared at them, he felt his prescience begin to itch. He took out his .44 Magnum and slowed the car, memorizing the road as he passed it. He stopped the car before the sawhorses. Three enlisted men carrying M-1 rifles, and a stern, pale captain, his bars pointing sideways and glittering on his shoulders, appeared from the sides of the road. The captain's voice was a military bark. "Out of the car!" Malone began to obey. "With your hands up!" the captain snapped. Malone dropped the .44 unobtrusively into his jacket pocket and complied. Then, as he came out of the car, he teleported himself back to a section of the road he'd memorized, ten feet behind the car. The four men were gaping, dumbfounded, as Malone drew his gun and shot them. Then he removed the sawhorses, got back in his car, reloaded the .44, put it back in his holster and drove on. "Now," he said in a thoughtful tone. "Where was I?" He imagined Luba's voice saying: _You were telling us how, all this time, it's hardly surprising--_ "Oh, yes," he said. "Well, then. So you solved some of the problems, you'd set. You learned how to use and control telepathy and teleportation, maybe, long before scientific boys like Dr. O'Connor became interested. But you never announced it publicly. You kept the knowledge all to yourself. 'Is this what the common folk call telepathy, Lord Bromley?' 'Yes, Lady Bromley.' 'Much too good for them, isn't it?' And maybe it is, at that; I don't know." His thoughts, he recognized, were veering slightly. After a second he got back on the track. "At any rate," he went on, "you--all of your out there--are responsible for what's happening to this country and all of Europe and Asia--and, for all I know, the suburbs of Hell. "I remember one of the book facsimiles you got me, for instance," he said. "The writer tried for an 'expose' of the Society, in which he attempted to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other members were trying to take over the world and run it to suit themselves, using their psionic powers to institute a rather horrible type of dictatorship over the world. "It was a pretty convincing book in a lot of ways. The author evidently know a lot about what he was dealing with." * * * * * At this point, Malone ran into another roadblock. There had been a fight of some kind up ahead, and a lot of cars with what looked like shell-holes in them were piled on one side of the road. The State Police were working under the confused direction of an Army major to straighten things out, while a bulldozer pushed the cars off the road onto the grass bordering it. The major stopped what he was doing and came to meet Malone as the car stopped. "Get off the road," the major said surlily. Malone looked up at him. "I've got some identification here," he said. "Mind if I get it out?" The major reached for a gun and held it. "Go ahead," he said. "Don't try anything funny. It's been hell up and down this road, mister." Malone flipped out his wallet and showed the identification. "FBI?" the Major said. "What're you doing out here?" "Special assignment," Malone said. "Oh ... by the way ... you might send some men back a ways. There are four dead mean in military uniforms lying on the road near a couple of sawhorses." The major stared. "Dead?" he said at last. "Dead how?" "I shot them," Malone said. "You--" The major's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. "Now wait a minute," Malone said. "I said they were in military uniforms. I didn't say they were soldiers." "But--" "Three enlisted men carrying M-1 rifles?" Malone said. "When the M-1's out of date? And a captain with his bars on sideways? No, major. Those were renegades. Looters of some kind; they wanted to kill me and get the car and any valuables I happened to have." The major, very slowly, relaxed his grip on the gun and his arm fell to his side. "You did the smart thing, Mr. Malone," he said. "And I've got to go on doing it," Malone said. "I'm in a hurry." He noticed a newspaper fluttering at the side of the road, not too near the cars. Somehow it made everything seem even more lonely and strange. The headlines fluttered into sight: MARTIAL LAW EDICT "MUST BE OBEYED," SAYS GOVERNOR But Riots Are Feared In Outlying Towns MAN AND WIFE CONFESS KILLING OF RELATIVES ABOARD PRIVATE PLANE: Force Kin To Drop Off There was a photo of a woman there, too, and Malone could read just a little of the caption: "Obeying the edict of martial law laid down by the President, Miss Helen A.--" He wondered vaguely if her last name were Handbasket. The major was looking at him. "O.K., then," he said. "I can go on?" Malone said. The major looked stern. "Drive on," he said. Malone got the car going; the roadblock was lifted for him and he went on by. After a moment, he said: "Pardon the interruption. I trust that all the devoted listeners to Uncle Kenneth's Happy Hour are still tuned in." _Go ahead,_ said Lou's voice. "All right, let's take a look at what you've been doing. You've caused people to change their minds about what they've been intending to do. You can cause all sorts of hell to break loose that way. You have a lot of people you want to get rid of, so you play on their neuroses and concoct errors for them to fight. You rig things so that they quit, or get fired, or lose elections, or get arrested, or just generally get put out of circulation. Some of the less stable ones just up and did away with themselves. "Sometimes, it's individuals who have to go. Sometimes, it's whole groups or maybe even whole nations. And sometimes it's in between, and you manage to foul up organizational moves with misplaced papers, mis-sent messages, errors, changed minds, and everything else you can think of. "You know," he went on, "at first I couldn't see any pattern in what was going on--though I remember telling myself that there was a kind of justice in the way this thing was just as hard on gangsters as it was on businessmen and Congressmen. "The Congressman from Gahoochie County, Arkansas, gets himself in a jam over fraudulent election returns on the same day that the accountant for the Truckers Union sends Mike Sands' books to the Attorney General. Simple justice, I call it. "And, you know, seen from that viewpoint, this whole caper might come out looking pretty good. If most of the characters you've taken care of are just the boys who needed taking care of, I'd say more power to you--except for one thing. It's all right to get rid of all the fools, idiots, maniacs, blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids, timidity-ridden, fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, and the rest of the general, all-round, no-good characters; I'm all for it. But not this way. Oh, no. "You've pressed the panic button, that's what you've done. "You've done more damage in two weeks than all those fumblebrains have been able to do in several myriads of lifetimes. You've loused up the economy of this nation and every other civilized nation. You've caused riots in which innocent people have died; you've caused thousands more to lose their businesses and their savings. And only God Himself knows how many more are going to die of starvation and murder before this thing is over. "And you can't tell me that _all_ of those people deserve to die." He slowed down as he came to a small town, and for the first time in many miles he focused on the road ahead with his full mind. The town, he saw, looked like a shambles. There were four cars tastefully arranged on the lawn of what appeared to be the local library. Across the street, a large drugstore was in flames, and surprised people were hurrying to put it out. There didn't seem to be any State Police or Army men around, but they'd passed through; Malone saw a forgotten overseas cap lying on the road ahead. With a shock, he realized that he was now in Pennsylvania, close to where he wanted to go. A signboard told him the town he was looking at was Milford. It was a mess, and Malone hoped fervently that it was a mess that could eventually be cleaned up. The town was a small one, and Malone was glad to get out of it so quickly. "That's the kind of thing I mean," he said aloud. Then he paused. "Are you there, anybody?" He imagined he heard Luba's voice saying: _Yes, Ken. Yes, I'm here. Listening to you._ Imagination was fine but, of course, there was no way for them to get through to him. They were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone, he told himself sadly, was not. "Hello, out there," he went on. "I hope you've been listening so far, because there isn't too much more for me to say. "Just this: you've wrecked my country, and you've wrecked almost all of the rest of civilization. You've brought my world down around my ears. "I have every logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence I have, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; by all the evidence, I should be doing everything in my power to exterminate you. "But I'm not. "My prescience tells me that what you've been doing is right and necessary. I'm damned if I can see it, but there it is. I just hope you can explain it to me." XV Soon, he was in the midst of the countryside. It was, of course, filled with country. It spread around him in the shape of hills, birds, trees, flowers, grass, billboards and other distractions to the passing motorist. It took Malone better than two hours more to find the place he was looking for. Long before he found it, he had come to the conclusion that finding country estates in Pennsylvania was only a shade easier than finding private homes in the Borough of Brooklyn. In both cases, he had found himself saddled with the same frantic search down what seemed likely routes which turned out to lead nowhere. He had found, in both cases, complete ignorance of the place on the part of local citizens, and even strong doubts that the place could possibly have any sort of existence. The fact that is was growing dark didn't help much, either. But he found it at last. Rounding a curve in a narrow, blacktop road, he saw the home behind a grove of trees. He recognized it instantly. He had seen it so often that he felt as if he knew it intimately. [Illustration] It was a big, rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding and beautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved front door. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before the house was a great front garden, and tall old trees. Malone half-expected Scarlett O'Hara to come tripping out of the house at any minute shouting: "Rhett! The children's mush is on fire!" or something equally inappropriate. Inside it, however, if Malone were right, was not the magnetic Scarlett. Inside the house were some of the most important members of the PRS--and one person who was not a member. But it was impossible to tell from the outside. Nothing moved on the well-kept grounds, and the windows didn't show so much as the flutter of a purple curtain. There was no sound. No cars were parked around the house--nor, Malone realized, thinking of "Gone With the Wind," were there any horses or carriages. The place looked deserted. Malone thought he knew better, but it took a few minutes for him to get up enough courage to go up the long driveway. He stared at the house. It was an old one, he knew, built long before the Civil War and originally commanding a huge tract of land. Now, all that remained of the vast acreage was the small portion that surrounded the house. But the original family still inhabited it, proud of the house and of their part in its past. Over the years, Malone knew, they had kept it up scrupulously, and the place had been both restored and modernized on the inside without harming the classic outlines of the hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure. A fence surrounded the estate, but the front gate was swinging open. Malone saw it and took a deep breath. Now, he told himself, or never. He drove the Lincoln through the opening slowly, alert for almost anything. There was no disturbance. Thirty yards from the front door he pulled the car to a cautious stop and got out. He started to walk toward the building. Each step seemed to take whole minutes, and everything he had thought raced through his mind again. Nothing seemed to move anywhere, except Malone himself. Was he right? Were the people he'd been beaming to really here? Or had he been led astray by them? Had he been manipulated, in spite of his shield, as easily as they had manipulated so many others? That was possible. But it wasn't the only possibility. Suppose, he thought, that he was perfectly right, and that the group was waiting inside. And suppose, too, that he'd misunderstood their motives. Suppose they were just waiting for him to get a little closer. Malone kept walking. In just a few steps, he could be close enough so that a bullet aimed at him from the house hadn't a real chance of missing him. And it didn't have to be bullets, either. They might have set a trap, he thought, and were waiting for him to walk into it. Then they would hold him prisoner while they devised ways to.... To what? He didn't know. And that was even worse; it called up horrible terrors from the darkest depths of Malone's mind. He continued to walk forward. Finally he reached the steps that led up to the porch, and took them one at a time. He stood on the porch. A long second passed. He took a step toward the high, wide and handsome oaken door. Then he took another step, and another. What was waiting for him inside? He took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell button. The door swung open immediately, and Malone involuntarily stepped back. The owner of the house smiled at him from the doorway. Malone let out his breath in one long sigh of relief. "I was hoping it would be you," he said weakly. "May I come in?" "Why, certainly, Malone. Come on in. We've been expecting you, you know," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI. XVI Malone sat, quietly relaxed and almost completely at ease, in the depths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Three similar chairs were clustered around a squat, massive coffee table, made of a single slab of dark wood set on short, curved legs. Malone looked around at the other three with a relaxed feeling of recognition: Andrew J. Burris, Sir Lewis Carter and Luba Ardanko. Sir Lewis softly exhaled a cloud of smoke as he removed the briar from his mouth. "Malone," he asked gently, "how did you know we would be here?" "Well," Malone said, "I just ... I mean, it was obvious as soon as I--" He stopped, frowning. "I had one thing to go on, anyway," he said. "I figured out the PRS was responsible for all the troubles because it was so efficient. And then, while I was sitting and staring at the file reports, it suddenly came to me: the FBI was just as efficient. So it was obvious." "What was?" Burris said. Malone shrugged. "I thought you'd been keeping me on vacation because your mind was being changed," he said. "Now I can see you were doing it of your own free will." "Yes," Sir Lewis said. "But how did you know you'd find us _here_, Malone?" There was a shadow in the room, but not a visible one. Malone felt the chill of sudden danger. Whatever was going to happen, he realized, he would not be around for the finish. He, Kenneth Joseph Malone, the cuddly, semi-intrepid FBI Agent he had always known and loved, would never get out of this deadly situation. If he lived, he would be so changed that-- He didn't even want to think about it. "What sort of logic," Sir Lewis was saying, "led you to the belief that we would all be here, in Andrew's house?" Malone forced his mind to consider the question. "Well," he began, "it isn't exactly logic, I guess." Luba smiled at him. He felt a little reassured, but not much. "You should have phrased that differently," she said. "It's: 'It isn't exactly logic. I guess.'" "Not guess," Sir Lewis said. "You know. Prescience, Malone. Your precognitive faculty." "All right," Malone said. "All right. So what?" "Take it easy," Burris put in. "Relax, Malone. Everything's going to be all right." Sir Lewis waved a hand negligently. "Let's continue," he said. "Tell me, Malone: if you were a mathematics professor, teaching a course in calculus, how would you grade a paper that had all the answers but didn't show the work?" "I never took calculus," Malone said. "But I imagine I'd flunk him." "Why?" Sir Lewis said. "Because if he can't back up his answer," Malone said slowly, "then it's no better than a layman's guess. He has to give reasons for his answers; otherwise nobody else can understand him." "Fine," Sir Lewis said. "Perfectly fine. Now--" he puffed at his pipe--"can you give me a logical reason for arriving at the decision you made a few hours ago?" The danger was coming closer, Malone realized. He didn't know what it was or how to guard himself against it. All he could do was answer, and play for time. "While I was driving up here," he said, "I sent you a message. I told you what I knew and what I believed about the whole world picture as it stands now. I don't know if you received it, but I--" Luba spoke without the trace of a smile. "You mean you didn't know?" she said. "You didn't know I was answering you?" That was the first pebble of the avalanche, Malone knew suddenly--the avalanche that was somehow going to destroy him. "You forced your thoughts into my mind, then," he said as coolly as he could. "Just as you forced decision on the rest of society." "Now, dammit, Malone!" Burris said suddenly. "You know those bursts take a lot of energy, and only last for a fraction of a second!" Malone blinked. "Then you ... didn't--" _Of course I didn't force anything on you, Kenneth. I can't. Not all the power of the entire PRS could force anything through your shield. But you opened it to me._ It was Luba's mental "voice." Malone opened his mouth, shut it and then, belatedly, snapped shut the channel through which he'd contacted her. Luba gave him a wry look, but said nothing. "You mean I'm a telepath?" Malone asked weakly. "Certainly," Sir Lewis snapped. "At the moment, you can only pick up Luba--but you are certainly capable of picking up anyone, eventually. Just as you learned to teleport, you can learn to be a telepath. You--" The room was whirling, but Malone tried to keep his mind steady. "Wait a minute," he said. "If you received what I sent, then you know I've got a question to ask." There was a little silence. Finally Sir Lewis looked up. "You want to know why you felt we--the PRS--were innocent of the crimes you want to charge us with. Very well." He paused. "We have wrecked civilization: granted. We could have done it more smoothly: granted." "Then--" Sir Lewis' face was serious and steady. Malone tensed. "Malone," Sir Lewis said, "do you think you're the only one with a mental shield?" Malone shook his head. "I guess stress--fixity of mind or purpose--could develop it in anyone," he said. "At least, in some people." "Very well," Sir Lewis said. "Now, among the various people of the world who have, through one necessity or another, managed to develop such shields--" Burris broke in impatiently. His words rang, and then echoed in the old house. "Some fool," he said flatly, "was going to start the Last War." * * * * * "So you had to stop it," Malone said after a long second. "But I still don't see--" "Of course you don't," Sir Lewis said. "But you've got to understand why you don't see it first." "Because I'm stupid," Malone said. Luba was shaking her head. Malone turned to face her. "Not stupid," she said. "But some people, Kenneth, have certain talents. Others have--other talents. There's no way of equating these talents; all are useful, each performs a different function." "And my talent," Malone said, "is stupidity. But--" She lit a cigarette daintily. "Not at all," she said. "You've done a really tremendous job, Kenneth. I was trained ever since I was a baby to use my psionic abilities--the PRS has known how to train children in that line ever since 1970. Only Mike Fueyo developed a system for instruction independently; the boy was, and is, a genius, as you've noticed." "Agreed," Malone said. "But--" "You, however," Luba said, "have the distinction of being the first human being who has, as an adult, achieved his full powers without childhood training. In addition, you're the only human being who has ever developed to the extent you have--in precognition, too." She puffed on the cigarette. Malone waited. "But what you don't have," she said at last, very carefully, "is the ability to reason out the steps you've taken, after you've reached the proper conclusion." "Like the calculus student," Malone said. "I flunk." Something inside him grated over the marrow in his bones. It was as though someone had decided that the best cure for worry was coarse emery in the joints, and he, Kenneth J. Malone, had been picked for the first experiment. "You're not flunking," Luba said. "You're a very long way from flunking, Kenneth." Burris cleared his throat suddenly. Malone turned to him. The Head of the FBI stuck an unlighted cigar into his mouth, chewed it a little, and then said: "Malone, we've been keeping tabs on you. Your shield was unbreakable--but we have been able to reach the minds of people you've talked to: Mike Sands, Primo Palveri, and so on. And Her Majesty, of course: you opened up a gap in your shield to talk to her, and you haven't closed it down. Until you started broadcasting here on the way up, naturally." "All right," Malone said, waiting with as much patience as possible for the point. "I tried to take you off the case," Burris went on, "because Sir Lewis and the others felt you were getting too close to the truth. Which you were, Malone, which you were." He lit his cigar and looked obscurely pleased. "But they didn't know how you'd take it," he said. "They ... we ... felt that a man who hadn't been trained since childhood to accept the extrasensory abilities of the human mind couldn't possibly learn to accept the reality of the job the PRS has to do." "I still don't," Malone said. "I'm stupid. I flunk. Remember?" "Now, now," Burris said helplessly. "Not at all, Malone. But we were worried. I lied to you about those three spies--I put the drug in the water-cooler. I tried to keep you from learning the Fueyo method of teleportation. I didn't want you to learn that you were telepathic." "But I did," Malone said, "And what does that make me?" "That," Sir Lewis cut in, "is what we're attempting to find out." Malone felt suitably crushed, but he wasn't sure by what. "I've got some questions," he said after a second. "I want to know three things." "Go ahead," Sir Lewis said. "One:" Malone said, "How come Her Majesty and the other nutty telepaths didn't spot you? Two: How come you sent me out on these jobs when you were afraid I was dangerous? And three: What was it that was so safe about busting up civilization? How did that save us from the Last War?" Sir Lewis nodded. "First," he said, "we've developed a technique of throwing up a shield and screening it with a surface of innocuous thoughts--like hiding behind a movie screen. Second ... well, we had to get the jobs done, Malone. And Andrew thought you were the most capable, dangerous or not. For one thing, we wanted to get all the insane telepaths in one place; it's difficult to work when the atmosphere's full of such telepathic ravings." "But wrecking the world because of a man with a mind-shield--why not just work things so his underlings wouldn't obey him?" Malone shook his head. "That sounds more reasonable." "It may," Sir Lewis said. "But it wouldn't work. As a matter of fact, it was tried, and it didn't work. You see, the Sino-Soviet top men were smart enough to see that their underlings were being tampered with. And they've developed a system, partly depending on automatic firing systems, partly on individuals with mind-blocks--that is, people who aren't being tampered with--which we can't disrupt directly. So we had to smash them." "And the United States at the same time," Burris said. "The economic balance had to be kept; a strong America would be forced in to fill the power vacuum otherwise, and that would make for an even worse catastrophe. And if we weren't in trouble, the Sino-Soviet Bloc would blame their mess on us. And that would start the Last War before collapse could get started. Right, Malone?" "I see," Malone said, thinking that he almost did. He told himself he could feel happy now; the danger--which hadn't been danger to him, really, but danger from him toward the PRS, toward civilization--was over. But he didn't feel happy. He didn't feel anything. "There's a crisis building in New York," Sir Lewis said suddenly, "that's going to take all our attention. Malone, why don't you ... well, go home and get some rest? We're going to be busy for a while, and you'll want to be fresh for the work coming up." "Sure," Malone said listlessly. "Sure." As the others rose, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he vanished. XVII Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone discovered; he drank two high-balls slowly, trying not to think about anything. He felt terrible. After a while he made himself a third high-ball and started on it. Maybe this would make him feel better. Maybe he thought, he ought to break out his cigars and celebrate. But there didn't seem to be very much to celebrate somehow. He felt like an amoeba on a slide being congratulated on having successfully conquered the world. He drank some more bourbon-and-soda. Amoebae, he told himself, didn't drink bourbon-and-soda. He was better off than an amoeba. He was happier than an amoeba. But somehow he couldn't imagine any amoeba in the world, no matter how heart-broken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone. He looked up. There was another amoeba in the room. Then he frowned. She wasn't an amoeba, he thought. She was the scientist the amoeba was supposed to fall in love with, so the scientist could report on everything he did, so all the other scien--psiontists could know all about him. But whoever heard of a scien--psiontist--falling in love with an amoeba? Nobody. It was fate. And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he was looking at things from the amoeba's side, and fate was terrible. "No, Ken," the psiontist said. "It needn't be at all like that." "Oh, yes, it need," Malone said positively. "It need be even worse. When I have some more to drink, it'll _be_ even worse. Wait and see." "Ken," Luba said softly, "you don't have to suffer this way." "No," Malone said agreeably, "I don't. You could shoot me and then I'd be dead. Just quit all this amoebing around, O.K.?" "You're already half shot," Luba said sharply. "Now be quiet and listen. You're angry because you've fallen in love with me and you're all choked up over the futility of it all." "Exactly," Malone said. "Ex-positively-actly. You're a psionic super-man--woman. You can figure things out in your own little head instead of just getting along on dum psionic luck like us amoebae. You're too far above me." "Ken, listen!" Luba snapped. "Look into my mind. You can link up with me: go ahead and do it. You can read me clear down to the subconscious if you want to." Malone blinked. "Now, Ken!" Luba said. Malone looked. For a long time. * * * * * Half an hour later, Kenneth J. Malone, alone in his room, was humming happily to himself as he brushed a few specks of dust from the top of his best royal blue bowler. He faced the mirror on the wall, puffed on the cigar clenched between his teeth, and adjusted the bowler to just the right angle. There was a knock on the door. He went and opened it, carefully disposing of the cigar first. "Oh," he said. "What are you doing here?" "Just saying hello," Thomas Boyd grinned. "Back at work?" Boyd didn't know, of course, what had happened. Nor need he ever know. "Just about," Malone said. "Spending the evening relaxing, though." "Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Let me guess. Her name begins with L?" "It does not," Malone said flatly. "But--" Boyd began. Malone cast about in his mind for an explanation. Telling Boyd the truth--that Luba and Kenneth J. Malone just weren't equals as far as social intercourse went--would leave him exactly nowhere. But, somehow, it had to be said. "Tom," he said, "suppose you met a beautiful girl--charming, wonderful, brilliant." "Great," Boyd said. "I like it already." "Suppose she looked about ... oh ... twenty-three," Malone went on. "Do any more supposing," Boyd said, "and I'll be pawing the ground." "And then," Malone said, very carefully, "suppose you found out, after you'd been out with her ... well, when you took her out, say, you met your grandmother." "My grandmother," Boyd said virtuously, "doesn't go to joints like that." "Use your imagination," Malone snapped. "And suppose your grandmother recognized the girl as an old schoolmate of hers." Boyd swallowed hard. "As a what?" "An old schoolmate," Malone said. "Suppose this girl were so charming and everything just because she'd had ... oh, ninety years or so to practice in." "Malone," Boyd said in a depressed tone, "you can spoil more ideas--" "Well," Malone said, "would you go out with her again?" "You kidding?" Boyd said. "Of course not." "But she's the same girl," Malone said. "You've just found out something new about her, that's all." Boyd nodded. "So," he said, "you found out something new about Luba. Like, maybe, she's ninety years old?" "No," Malone said. "Nothing like that. Just--something." He remembered Queen Elizabeth's theory of politeness toward superiors: people, she'd said, act as if they believed their bosses were superior to them, but they didn't believe it. On the other hand, he thought, when a man knows and believes that someone actually _is_ superior--then, he doesn't mind at all. He can depend on that superiority to help him. And love, ordinary man-and-woman love, just can't exist. Nor, Malone told himself, would anyone want it to. It would, after all, be damned uncomfortable. "So who's the girl?" Boyd said. "And where? The clubs are all closed, and the streets probably aren't very safe just now." "Barbara Wilson," Malone said, "and Yucca Flats. I ought to be able to get a fast plane." He shrugged. "Or maybe teleport," he added. "Sure," Boyd said. "But on a night with so many troubles--" "Oh, King Henry," Malone said, "hearken. A man who looks as historical as you do ought to know a little history." "Such as?" Boyd said, bristling slightly. "There have always been troubles," Malone said. "In the Eighth Century, it was Saracens; in the Fourteenth, the Black Death. Then there was the Reformation, and the Prussians in 1870, and the Spanish in 1898, and--" "And?" Boyd said. Malone took a deep breath. He could almost feel the court dress flowing over him, as the court manners did. Lady Barbara, after all, attendant to Her Majesty, would expect a certain character from him. After a second, he had it. "In 1914, it was enemy aliens," said Sir Kenneth Malone. THE END * * * * * 
30500	----	THE PASSENGER By KENNETH HARMON _The classic route to a man's heart is through his stomach --and she was just his dish._ Illustrated by CONNELL The transport swung past Centaurus on the last leg of her long journey to Sol. There was no flash, no roar as she swept across the darkness of space. As silent as a ghost, as quiet as a puff of moonlight she moved, riding the gravitational fields that spread like tangled, invisible spider webs between the stars. Within the ship there was also silence, but the air was stirred by a faint, persistent vibration from the field generators. This noiseless pulse stole into every corner of the ship, through long, empty passageways lined with closed stateroom doors, up spiraling stairways to the bridge and navigational decks, and down into vast and echoing holds, filled with strange cargo from distant worlds. This vibration pulsed through Lenore's stateroom. As she relaxed on her couch, she bathed in it, letting it flow through her to tingle in her fingertips and whisper behind her closed eyelids. "Home," it pulsed, "you're going home." * * * * * She repeated the word to herself, moving her lips softly but making no sound. "Home," she breathed, "back home to Earth." Back to the proud old planet that was always home, no matter how far you wandered under alien suns. Back to the shining cities clustered along blue seacoasts. Back to the golden grainlands of the central states and the high, blue grandeur of the western mountains. And back to the myriad tiny things that she remembered best, the little, friendly things ... a stretch of maple-shadowed streets heavy and still with the heat of a summer noon; a flurry of pigeons in the courthouse square; yellow dandelions in a green lawn, the whir of a lawnmower and the smell of the cut grass; ivy on old bricks and the rough feel of oak bark under her hands; water lilies and watermelons and crepe papery dances and picnics by the river in the summer dusk; and the library steps in the evening, with fireflies in the cool grass and the school chimes sounding the slow hours through the friendly dark. She thought to herself, "It's been such a long time since you were home. There will be a whole new flock of pigeons now." She smiled at the recollection of the eager, awkward girl of twenty that she had been when she had finished school and had entered the Government Education Service. "Travel While Helping Others" had been the motto of the GES. She had traveled, all right, a long, long way inside a rusty freighter without a single porthole, to a planet out on the rim of the Galaxy that was as barren and dreary as a cosmic slag heap. Five years on the rock pile, five years of knocking yourself out trying to explain history and Shakespeare and geometry to a bunch of grubby little miners' kids in a tin schoolhouse at the edge of a cluster of tin shacks that was supposed to be a town. Five years of trudging around with your nails worn and dirty and your hair chopped short, of wearing the latest thing in overalls. Five years of not talking with the young miners because they got in trouble with the foreman, and not talking with the crewmen from the ore freighters because they got in trouble with the first mate, and not talking with yourself because you got in trouble with the psychologist. They took care of you in the Education Service; they guarded your diet and your virtue, your body and your mind. Everything but your happiness. * * * * * There was lots to do, of course. You could prepare lessons and read papers and cheap novels in the miners' library, or nail some more tin on your quarters to keep out the wind and the dust and the little animals. You could go walking to the edge of town and look at all the pretty gray stones and the trees, like squashed-down barrel cactus; watch the larger sun sink behind the horizon with its little companion star circling around it, diving out of sight to the right and popping up again on the left. And Saturday night--yippee!--three-year-old movies in the tin hangar. And, after five years, they come and say, "Here's Miss So-and-So, your relief, and here's your five thousand credits and wouldn't you like to sign up for another term?" Ha! So they give you your ticket back to Earth. You're on the transport at last, and who can blame you if you act just a little crazy and eat like a pig and take baths three times a day and lie around your stateroom and just dream about getting home and waking up in your own room in the morning and getting a good cup of real coffee at the corner fountain and kissing some handsome young fellow on the library steps when the Moon is full behind the bell tower? "And will the young fellow like you?" she asked herself, knowing the answer even as she asked the question. She whirled about in the middle of the stateroom, her robe swirling around her, and ended with a deep curtsy to the full-length mirror. "Allow me to introduce myself," she murmured. "Lenore Smithson, formerly of the Government Education Service, just back from business out on the Rim. What? Why, of course you may have this dance. Your name? Mr. Fairheart! Of the billionaire Fairhearts?" She waltzed with herself a moment. Halting before the mirror again, she surveyed herself critically. "Well," she said aloud, "the five years didn't completely ruin you, after all. Your nose still turns up and your cheeks still dimple when you smile. You have a nice tan and your hair's grown long again. Concentrated food hasn't hurt your figure, either." She turned this way and that before the mirror to observe herself. Then suddenly she gave a little gasp of surprise and fright, for a cascade of laughter had flooded soundlessly inside her head. * * * * * She stood frozen before the mirror while the laughter continued. Then she slowly swung around. It ceased abruptly. She looked around the compartment, staring accusingly at each article of furniture in turn; then quickly spun around to look behind her, meeting her own startled gaze in the mirror. Opening the door slowly, she ventured to thrust her head out into the corridor. It was deserted, the long rows of doors all closed during the afternoon rest period. As she stood there, a steward came along the corridor with a tray of glasses, nodded to her, and passed on out of sight. She turned back into the room and stood there, leaning against the door, listening. Suddenly the laughter came again, bursting out as though it had been suppressed and could be held back no longer. Clear, merry, ringing and completely soundless, it poured through her mind. "What is it?" she cried aloud. "What's happening?" "My dear young lady," said a man's voice within her head, "allow me to introduce myself. My name is Fairheart. Of the billionaire Fairhearts. May I have the next dance?" "This is it," she thought. "Five years on the rock pile would do it to anyone. You've gone mad." She laughed shakily. "I can't dance with you if I can't see you." "I really should explain," the voice replied, "and apologize for my silly joke. It was frightfully rude to laugh at you, but when I saw you waltzing and preening yourself, I just couldn't help it. I'm a telepath, you see, from Dekker's star, out on the Rim." That would explain, she thought, his slightly stilted phraseology; English was apparently not his native tongue--or, rather, his native thought. "There was a mild mutation among the settlers there, and the third generation all have this ability. I shouldn't use it, I know, but I've been so lonely, confined here to my room, that I cast around to see if there were anyone that I could talk to. Then I came upon you considering your own virtues, and you were so cute and funny that I couldn't resist. Then I laughed and you caught me." * * * * * "I've heard of telepaths," she said doubtfully, "though I've never heard of Dekker's star. However, I don't think you have any right to go thinking around the ship spying on people." "Sh!" whispered the silent voice. "You needn't shout. I'll go away if you wish and never spy on you again, but don't tell Captain Blake, or he'll have me sealed in a lead-lined cell or something. We're not supposed to telepath around others, but I've been sitting here with all sorts of interesting thoughts just tickling the edges of my mind for so long that I had to go exploring." "Why not go exploring on your own two feet like anyone else? Have you so much brains, your head's too heavy to carry?" "Unfortunately," the voice mourned, "my trouble is in my foot and not in my head. On the second night out from Dekker's star, I lost my footing on the stairs from the dining hall and plunged like a comet to the bottom. I would probably have been killed but for the person of a stout steward who, at that moment, started to ascend the stairs. He took the full impact of my descent on his chest and saved my life, I'm sure. However, I still received a broken ankle that has given me so much pain that I have been forced to remain in my cabin. "I have had no one to talk to except the steward who brings me my meals, and, as he is the one whom I met on the stairs, he has little to say. In the morning he frowns at me, at noon he glowers, and in the evening he remarks hopefully, 'Foot still pretty bad?' Thus, I'm starved for conversation." [Illustration] Lenore smiled at this earnest speech. "I might talk with you for a minute or two, but you must admit that you have one advantage over me. You can see me, or so you say, and know what I look like, but I can't see you. It isn't fair." "I can show myself to you," he said, "but you'll have to help me by closing your eyes and concentrating very hard." * * * * * She closed her eyes and waited expectantly. There was a moment of darkness; then there appeared in the middle of the darkness a point of light, a globe, a giant balloon of color. Suddenly she was looking into the corner of a stateroom which appeared to hang in space. In the center of the area stood a handsome young man in a startling black and orange lounging robe, holding on to the back of a chair. She opened her eyes; for an instant the vision of the young telepath hung in the air over her couch like a ghostly double exposure. Then it faded and the room was empty. "That's a terrible effort," came his thought, "particularly when I have to balance on one foot at the same time. Well, now are we even?" Abandoning her post by the door, she moved to the couch and sat down. "I'm really disappointed," she smiled. "I was sure you'd have two heads. But I think you do have nice eyes and a terrible taste in bathrobes." She took a cigarette from her case and lit it carefully. Then she remembered her manners and extended the case to the empty air. "Won't you have one?" "I certainly would like to. I'm all out of them until the steward brings my dinner. But I'm afraid I'll have to wait, unless you can blow the smoke through the ventilators to me, or unless ... you bring me one?" Lenore blushed and changed the subject. "Tell me, what do you do all day in your stateroom? Do you read? Do you play the flute? Do you telepath sweet nothings across the light-years to your girl friend on Dekker's star?" "I'm afraid my telepathic powers are a bit short-ranged to reach Dekker's star," he replied. "Besides, what girl would commune with me through the depths of space when some other young man is calling her from the dancing pavilion? And my musical talents are limited. However, I do read. I brought some books connected with the research I intend to do on Earth for my degree, and I have spent many happy hours poring over the thrilling pages of _Extraterrestrial Entomology_ and _Galactic Arachnida_." "I came better prepared than you did," she said. "Perhaps I could lend you some of my books. I have novels, plays, poetry, and one very interesting volume called _Progressive Education under Rim Star Conditions_. But," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "I must tell you a secret about that last one." "What is it?" "I haven't even opened it." * * * * * They laughed together, her merriment bubbling aloud in her cabin, his echoing silently inside her mind. "I haven't time to read a novel," his thought came, "and drama always bored me, but I must confess to a weakness for poetry. I love to read it aloud, to throw myself into a heroic ballad and rush along, spouting grand phrases as though they were my own and feeling for a moment as though I were really striding the streets of ancient Rome, pushing west on the American frontier or venturing out into space in the first wild, reckless, heroic days of rocket travel. But I soon founder. I get swept away by the rhythm, lost in the intricacies of cadence and rhyme, and, when the pace slows down, when the poem becomes soft and delicate and the meaning is hidden behind a foliage of little gentle words, I lose myself entirely." She said softly, "Perhaps I could help you interpret some verses." Then she waited, clasping her hands to keep them from trembling with the tiny thrill of excitement she felt. "That would be kind of you," he said after a pause. "You could read, there, and I could listen, here, and feel what you feel as you read ... or, if you wished ..." Another pause. "Would you care to come down?" She could not help smiling. "You're too good a mind reader. A girl can't have any secrets any more." "Now look here," he burst out. "I wouldn't have said anything, but I was so lonely and you're the only friendly person I've come in contact with and ..." "Don't be silly," she laughed. "Of course I'll come down and read to you. I'd love to. What's your cabin number?" "It hasn't got a number because--actually I work on this ship so I'm away from the passengers' quarters. But I can direct you easily. Just start down the hall to your left and ..." "My dear sir," she cried, "just wait a minute! I can't come visiting in my robe, you know; I'll have to change. But while I dress, you must take your spying little thoughts away. If I detect you peeking in here at the wrong moment, I'll run straight to Captain Blake and have him prepare his special lead-lined cell for one unhappy telepath. So you just run along. When I'm ready, I'll call you and you can lead me to your lair." He thought only the one word, "Hurry," but in the silence after he was gone she fancied she heard her heart echoing him, loud in the stillness. * * * * * She laughed gaily to herself. "Now stop acting like a schoolgirl before the Junior Prom. You've got to get busy and wash and dress and comb and brush." And then to her reflection in the mirror: "Aren't you a lucky girl? You're still millions and billions of miles from Earth and it's starting already, and he's going to do research there for some time, and maybe at the university in your home town if you tell him just how nice it is, and he doesn't know any other girls, you'd have an inside track. Now you'd better get going or you'll never be ready. "For reading poetry, don't you think this dress is just the thing, this nice soft blue one that goes so well with your tan and shows your legs, which are really quite pretty, you know.... And your silver sandals and those silver pins ... just a touch of perfume.... That's right; and now a little lipstick. You do have a pretty smile.... There, that's right. Now stop admiring yourself and let's go." She moved to the bookshelf, frowning now, considered, selected and rejected. Finally she settled on three slim books bound in russet leather, in glossy plastic, in faded cloth. She took a little purse from the table, put the cigarette case into it. Then, with a laugh, she took one cigarette and slipped it into a tiny pocket on her skirt. "I really meant to bring you one," she whispered to the empty air, "but wasn't I mean to tease?" In the corridor, she walked quickly past the rows of closed doors to the tiny refreshment stand at the foot of the dining room stairs. The attendant rose from his stool as she approached, and came to the counter. "I'd like two frosted starlights, please," she said, "on a tray." "Two," said the attendant, and nothing more, but his eyebrow climbed up his forehead, hung for a second, then slowly drooped back to normal, as if to say that after all these years he no longer puzzled about a lovely young girl who came around in the middle of a Wednesday rest period, dressed like Saturday night and smelling of perfume, ordering two intoxicating drinks--when she was obviously traveling alone. * * * * * Lenore felt a thrill of secret pleasure go through her, a feeling of possessing a delicious secret, a delightful sensation of reckless gaiety, of life stirring throughout the sleepy ship, of a web of secrets and countersecrets hidden from everyone but this unconcerned observer. She walked back down the corridor, balancing the tray. When a little splashed over the rim of the tall glasses, she took a sip from each, tasting the sweet, cold liquid in her throat. When she came to the head of the stairs, she realized that she did not even know her telepath's name. Closing her eyes, she said very slowly and distinctly inside her head, "Mr. Fairheart?" Instantly his thought was with her, overpowering, as breathless as an embrace. "Where are you?" "At the head of the central stairs." "Down you go." She went down the stairs, through more corridors, down more stairs, while he guided her steps. Once she paused to sip again at each glass when the liquid splashed as she was going down. The ice tickled her nose and made her sneeze. "You live a long way down," she said. "I've got to be near my charges," he answered. "I told you I work on the ship; I'm a zoologist classifying any of the new specimens of extraterrestrial life they're always picking up. And I always get stuck with the worst quarters on the ship. Why, I can't even call all my suite my own. The whole front room is filled with some sort of ship's gear that my steward stumbles over every meal time." She went on and on, down and down. "How many flights?" she wondered. "Two or twelve or twenty?" Now, why couldn't she remember? Only four little sips and her mind felt so cloudy. Down another corridor, and what was that funny smell? These passages were poorly ventilated in the lower levels; probably that was what made her feel so dizzy. "Only one more flight," he whispered. "Only one more." Down and along and then the door. She paused, conscious of rising excitement, conscious of her beating heart. Dimly she noticed the sign on the door. "You--you mean whatever it is you're taking care of is in there with you?" "Don't be frightened," his persuasive thought came. "It can't hurt you. It's locked in a cage." Then she slid the bolt and turned the handle. Her head hurt for an instant; and she was inside, a blue and silver shadow in the dim anteroom, with the tray in her hand and the books under her arm and her pulse hammering. She looked around the dim anteroom, at the spidery tangle of orange and black ropes against the left-hand wall; then at the doorway in the right-hand wall with the warm light streaming through. He was standing in the second room, one hand on the chair for support, the other extended toward her. For the first time he spoke aloud. "Hello, butterfly," he said. "Hello," she said. She smiled and walked forward into the light. She reached out for his hand. Then she stopped short, her hand pressed against an impenetrable wall. * * * * * She could see him standing there, smiling, reaching for her hand, but there was an invisible barrier between them. Then, slowly, his room began to fade, the light dimmed, his figure grew watery, transparent, vanished. She was standing, staring at the riveted steel bulkhead of a compartment which was lit only by the dim light filtering through the thick glass over the transom. She stood there frozen, and the ice in the glasses tinkled nervously. Then the tray slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Icy liquid splashed the silver sandals. In the silent gloom she stood immobile, her eyes wide in her white face, her fist pressed to her mouth, stifling a scream. Something touched her gently at head and wrist and ankle--all over her body. The web clung, delicate as lace, strong as steel. Even if she had been able to move, she could not have broken free as the thing against the wall began to clamber down the strands on eight furred legs. "Hello, butterfly," he said again. --KENNETH HARMON Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ February 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 
22881	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _The Counterfeit Man More Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse_ published in 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. My Friend Bobby My name is Jimmy and I am five years old, and my friend Bobby is five years old too but he says he thinks he's really more than five years old because he's already grown up and I'm just a little boy. We live out in the country because that's where mommy and daddy live, and every morning daddy takes the car out of the barn and rides into the city to work, and every night he comes back to eat supper and to see mommy and Bobby and me. One time I asked daddy why we don't live in the city like some people do and he laughed and said you wouldn't really want to live in the city would you? After all he said you couldn't have Bobby in the city, so I guess it's better to live in the country after all. Anyway daddy says that the city is no place to raise kids these days. I asked Bobby if I am a kid and he said he guessed so but I don't think he really knows because Bobby isn't very smart. But Bobby is my friend even if he doesn't know much and I like him more than anybody else. Mommy doesn't like Bobby very much and when I am bad she makes Bobby go outdoors even when it's cold outside. Mommy says I shouldn't play with Bobby so much because after all Bobby is only a dog but I like Bobby. Everyone else is so big, and when mommy and daddy are home all I can see is their legs unless I look way up high, and when I do something bad I'm scared because they're so big and strong. Bobby is strong too but he isn't any bigger than I am, and he is always nice to me. He has a long shaggy brown coat and a long pointed nose, and a nice collar of white fur and people sometimes say to daddy what a nice collie that is and daddy says yes isn't he and he takes to the boy so. I don't know what a collie is but I have fun with Bobby all the time. Sometimes he lets me ride on his back and we talk to each other and have secrets even though I don't think he is very smart. I don't know why mommy and daddy don't understand me when I talk to them the way I talk to Bobby but maybe they just pretend they can't hear me talk that way. I am always sorry when daddy goes to work in the morning. Daddy is nice to me most times and takes me and Bobby for walks. But mommy never takes me for walks and when we are alone she is busy and she isn't nice to me. Sometimes she says I am a bad boy and makes me stay in my room even when I haven't done anything bad and sometimes she thinks things in her head that she doesn't say to me. I don't know why mommy doesn't like me and Bobby doesn't know either, but we like it best when mommy lets us go outdoors to play in the barn or down by the creek. If I get my feet wet mommy says I am very bad so I stay on the bank and let Bobby go in, but one day when Bobby went into the water just before we went home for supper mommy scolded me and told me I was bad for letting Bobby go into the water and when I told her she hadn't told me not to let Bobby go in she was angry and I could tell that she didn't like me at all that day. Almost every day I do something that mommy says is bad even when I try specially to be good. Sometimes right after daddy goes away in the morning I know that mommy is angry and is going to spank me sooner or later that day because she is already thinking how she will spank me, but she never says so out loud. Sometimes she pretends that she's not angry and takes me up on her lap and says I'm her nice little boy but all the time I can hear her thinking that she doesn't really like me even when she tries and she doesn't even want to touch me if she can help it. I can hear her wondering why my hair doesn't grow nice like the Bennet twins that live up the road. I don't see how mommy can be saying one thing out loud and something else inside her head at the same time but when I look at her she puts me down and says she's busy and will I get out from underfoot, and then pretty soon I do something that makes her angry and she makes me go to my room or she spanks me. Bobby doesn't like this. Once when she spanked me he growled at mommy, and mommy chased him outdoors with a broom before she sent me to bed. I cried all day that day because it was cold outdoors and I wanted to have Bobby with me. I wonder why mommy doesn't like me? * * * * * One day I was a bad boy and let Bobby come into the house before mommy told me I could. Bobby hadn't done anything bad but mommy hit him on the back with the broom and hurt him and chased him back outdoors and then she told me I was a very bad boy. I could tell that she was going to spank me and I knew she would hurt me because she was so big, and I ran upstairs and hid in my room. Then mommy stamped her foot hard and said Jimmy you come down here this minute. I didn't answer and then she said if I have to come upstairs and get you I'll whip you until you can't sit down, and I still didn't answer because mommy hurts me when she gets angry like that. Then I heard her coming up the stairs and into my room and she opened the closet door and found me. I said please don't hurt me mommy but she reached down and caught my ear and dragged me out of the closet. I was so scared I bit her hand and she screamed and let go and I ran and locked myself in the bathroom because I knew she would hurt me bad if I didn't. I stayed there all day long and I could hear mommy running the sweeper downstairs and I couldn't see why she wanted to hurt me so much just because I let Bobby come in before she told me I could. But somehow it seemed that mommy was afraid of me even though she was so big and strong. I don't see why anybody as big as mommy should be afraid of me but she was. When daddy came home that night I heard him talking to mommy, and then he came up to the bathroom and said open the door Jimmy I want to talk to you. I said I want Bobby first so he went down and called Bobby and then I opened the door and came out of the bathroom. Daddy reached down and lifted me high up on his shoulder and took me into my bedroom and just sat there for a long time patting Bobby's head and I couldn't hear what he was thinking very well. Finally he said out loud Jimmy you've got to be good to your mommy and do what she says and not lock yourself up in rooms any more. I said but mommy was going to hurt me and daddy said when you're a bad boy your mommy has to punish you so you'll remember to be good, but she doesn't like to spank you. She only does it because she loves you. I knew that wasn't true because mommy likes to punish me but I didn't dare say that to daddy. Daddy isn't afraid of me the way mommy is and he is nice to me most times, so I said all right if you say so. Daddy said fine, will you promise to be nice to mommy from now on? I said yes if mommy won't hit Bobby any more with the broom. And daddy said well after all Bobby can be a bad dog just the way you can be a bad boy, can't he? I knew Bobby was never a bad dog on purpose but I said yes I guessed so. Then I wanted to ask daddy why mommy was afraid of me but I didn't dare because I knew daddy liked mommy more than anybody and maybe he would be angry at me for saying things like that about her. That night I heard mommy and daddy talking down in the living room and I sat on the top step so I could hear them. Bobby sat there too, but I knew he didn't know what they were saying because Bobby isn't very smart and can't understand word-talk like I can. He can only understand think-talk, and he doesn't understand that very well. But now even I couldn't understand what mommy was saying. She was crying and saying Ben I tell you there's something wrong with the child, he knows what I'm _thinking_, I can tell it by the way he looks at me. And daddy said darling, that's ridiculous, how could he possibly know what you're thinking? Mommy said I don't know but he does! Ever since he was a little boy he's known--oh, Ben, it's horrible, I can't do anything with him because he _knows_ what I'm going to do before I do it. Then daddy said Carol, you're upset about today and you're making things up. The child is just a little smarter than most kids, there's nothing wrong with that. And mommy said no, there's more to it than that and I can't stand it any longer. We've got to take him to a doctor, I don't even like to look at him. Daddy said you're tired, you're just letting little things get on your nerves. So maybe the boy does look a little strange, you know the doctor said it was just that the fontanelles hadn't closed as soon as they should have and lots of children don't have a good growth of hair before they're six or seven. After all he said he isn't a _bad_ looking boy. Then mommy said that isn't true, he's horrible! I can't bear it, Ben, _please_ do something, and daddy said what can I do? I talked to the boy and he was sorry and promised he'd behave himself. And mommy said then there's that dog--it follows him around wherever he goes, and he's simply wicked if the dog isn't around, and daddy said isn't it perfectly normal for a boy to love his dog? Mommy said no, not like this, talking to him all the time, and the dog acting exactly as if he understands--there's something wrong with the child, something horribly wrong. Then daddy was quiet for a while, and then he said all right, if it will make you feel any better we can have Doctor Grant take another look at him. Maybe he can convince you that there's nothing wrong with the boy, and mommy said please, Ben, anything, I can't stand much more of this. When I went back to bed and Bobby curled up on the floor, I asked him what were fontanelles, and Bobby just yawned and said he didn't know but he thought I was nice, and he would always take care of me, so I didn't worry any more and went to sleep. * * * * * I have a panda out in the barn and the panda's name is Bobby too and at first Bobby the dog was jealous of Bobby the panda until I told him that the panda was only a make-believe Bobby and he was a real Bobby. Then Bobby liked the panda, and the three of us played out in the barn all day. We decided not to tell mommy and daddy about the panda, and kept it for our own secret. It was a big panda, as big as mommy and daddy, and sometimes I thought maybe I would make the panda hurt mommy but then I knew daddy would be sorry so I didn't. Bobby and I were playing with Bobby the panda the day the doctor came and mommy called me in and made Bobby stay outside. I didn't like the doctor because he smelled like a dirty old cigar and he had a big red nose with three black hairs coming out of it and he wheezed when he bent down to look at me. Daddy and mommy sat on the couch and the doctor said let me have a look at you young fellow and I said but I'm not sick and the doctor said ha ha, of course you aren't, you're a fine looking boy but just let me listen to your chest for a minute. So he put a cold thing on my chest and stuck some tubes in his ears and listened, and then he looked in my eyes with a bright light and looked into my ears, and then he felt my head all over. He had big hairy hands and I didn't like him touching me but I knew mommy would be angry if I didn't hold still so I let him finish. Then he told daddy some big words that I couldn't understand, but in think-talk he was saying that my head still hadn't closed up right and I didn't have as much hair as you'd expect but otherwise I seemed to be all right. He said I was a good stout looking boy but if they wanted a specialist in to look at me he would arrange it. Daddy asked if that would cost very much and the doctor said yes it probably would and he didn't see any real need for it because my bones were just a little slow in developing, and mommy said have you seen other children like that? The doctor said no but if the boy seems to be normal and intelligent why should she be worrying so? Then mommy told me to go upstairs, and I went but I stopped on the top stair and listened. When I was gone the doctor said now Carol what is it that's really bothering you? Then mommy told him what she had told daddy, how she thought I knew what she was thinking, and the doctor said to daddy, Ben, have you ever felt any such thing about the boy? Daddy said of course not, sometimes he gives you the feeling that he's smarter than you think he is but all parents have that feeling about their children sometimes. And then mother broke down and her voice got loud and she said he's a monster, I know it, there's something wrong and he's different from us, him and that horrible dog. The doctor said but it's a beautiful collie, and mommy said but he _talks_ to it and it _understands_ him, and the doctor said now, Carol, let's be reasonable. Mommy said I've been reasonable too long, you men just can't see it at all, don't you think I'd know a normal child if I saw one? And then she cried and cried, and finally she said all right, I know I'm making a fool of myself, maybe I'm just overtired, and the doctor said I'm sure that's the trouble, try to get some rest, and sleep longer at night, and mommy said I can't sleep at night, I just lie there and think. The doctor said well we'll fix that, enough of this nonsense now, you need your sleep and if you're not sleeping well it's _you_ that should be seeing the doctor. He gave her some pills from his bag and then he went away, and pretty soon daddy let Bobby in, and Bobby came upstairs and jumped up and licked my face as if he'd been away for a hundred million years. Later mommy called me down for supper, and she wasn't crying any more, and she and daddy didn't say anything about what they had said to the doctor. Mommy made me a special surprise for dessert, some ice cream with chocolate syrup on top, and after supper we all went for a walk, even though it was cold outside and snowing again. Then daddy said well, I think things will be all right, and mommy said I hope so, but I could tell that she didn't really think so, and she was more afraid of me than ever. * * * * * For a while I thought mommy was really going to be nice to me and Bobby then. She was especially nice when daddy was home but when daddy was away at work sometimes mommy jumped when she saw me looking at her and then sent me outdoors to play and told me not to come in until lunch. I liked that because I knew if I weren't near mommy everything would be all right. When I was with mommy I tried hard not to look at her and I tried not to hear what she was thinking, but lots of times I would see her looking first at me and then at Bobby, and those times I couldn't help hearing what she was thinking because it seemed so loud inside my head that it made my eyes hurt. But I knew mommy would be angry so I pretended I couldn't hear what she was thinking at all. One day when we were out in the barn playing with Bobby the panda we saw mommy coming down through the snow from the kitchen and Bobby said look out Jimmy mommy is coming and I quick told Bobby the panda to go hide under the hay so mommy couldn't see him. But the panda was so big his whole top and his little pink nose stuck out of the hay. Mommy came in and looked around the barn and said you've been out here for a long time, what have you been doing? I said nothing, and Bobby said nothing too, only in think-talk. And mommy said you are too, you've been doing something naughty, and I said no mommy we haven't done _anything_, and then the panda sneezed and I looked at him and he looked so funny with his nose sticking out of the hay that I laughed out loud. Mommy looked angry and said well what's so funny, what are you laughing at? I said nothing, because I knew mommy couldn't see the panda, but I couldn't stop laughing because he looked so funny sticking out of the hay. Then mommy got mad and grabbed my ear and shook me until it hurt and said you naughty boy, _don't you lie to me_, what have you been doing out here? She hurt me so much I started to cry and then Bobby snarled at mommy loud and low and curled his lips back over his teeth and snarled some more. And mommy got real white in the face and let go of me and she said get out of here you nasty dog and Bobby snarled louder and then snapped at her. She screamed and she said Jimmy you come in the house this minute and leave that nasty dog outdoors and I said I won't come, I hate you. Then mommy said Jimmy! You wicked, ugly little monster, and I said I don't care, when I get big I'm going to hurt you and throw you in the wood shed and lock you in until you die and make you eat coconut pudding and Bobby hates you too. And mommy looked terrible and I could feel how much she was afraid of me and I said you just wait, I'll hurt you bad when I get big, and then she turned and ran back to the house. And Bobby wagged his tail and said don't worry, I won't let her hurt you any more and I said Bobby you shouldn't have snapped at her because daddy won't like me when he comes home but Bobby said _I_ like you and I won't let anything ever hurt you. I'll always take care of you no matter what. And I said promise? No matter what? And Bobby said I promise. And then we told Bobby the panda to come out but it wasn't much fun playing any more. After a little while mommy called me and said lunch was ready. She was still white and I said can Bobby come too and she said of course Bobby can come, Bobby's a nice dog, so we went in to eat lunch. Mommy was talking real fast about what fun it was to play in the barn and was I sure I wasn't too cold because it was below zero outside and the radio said a snowstorm was coming, but she didn't say anything about Bobby and me being out in the barn. She was talking so fast I couldn't hear what she was thinking except for little bits while she set my lunch on the table and then she set a bowl of food on the floor for Bobby even though it wasn't Bobby's time to eat and said nice Bobby here's your dinner. Bobby came over and sniffed the bowl and then he looked up at me and said it smells funny and mommy said nice Bobby, it's good hamburger just the way you like it-- And then for just a second I saw what she was thinking and it was terrible because she was thinking that Bobby would soon be dead, and I remembered daddy saying a long time ago that somebody fed bad things to the Bennet's dog and the dog died and I said don't eat it, Bobby, and Bobby snarled at the dish. And then mommy said you tell the dog to eat it and I said no you're bad and you want to hurt Bobby, and then I picked up the dish and threw it at mommy. It missed and smashed on the wall and she screamed and turned and ran out into the other room. She was screaming for daddy and saying I can't stand it, he's a monster, a murderous little monster and we've got to get out of here before he kills us all, he knows what we're thinking, he's horrible, and then she was on the telephone, and she couldn't make the words come out right when she tried to talk. I was scared and I said come on Bobby let's lock ourselves up in my room and we ran upstairs and locked the door. Mommy was banging things and laughing and crying downstairs and screaming we've got to get out, he'll kill us if we don't, and a while later I heard the car coming up the road fast, and saw daddy run into the house just as it started to snow. Then mommy was screaming please, Ben, we've got to get out of here, he tried to kill me, and the dog is vicious, he bit me when I tried to make him stop. The next minute daddy was running up the stairs two at a time and I could feel him inside my head for the first time and I knew he was angry. He'd never been this angry before and he rattled the knob and said open this door Jimmy in a loud voice. I said no I won't and he said open the door or I'll break your neck when I get in there and then he kicked the door and kicked it again. The third time the lock broke and the door flew open and daddy stood there panting. His eyes looked terrible and he had a leather belt doubled up in his hand and he said now come out here and his voice was so loud it hurt my ears. Down below mommy was crying please Ben, take me away, he'll kill us both, he's a monster! I said don't hurt me daddy it was mommy, she was bad to me, and he said I said _come out here_ even louder. I was scared then and I said please daddy I'll be good I promise. Then he started for me with the belt and I screamed out Bobby! Don't let him hurt me, Bobby, and Bobby snarled like a wild animal and jumped at daddy and bit his wrist so bad the blood spurted out. Daddy shouted and dropped the belt and kicked at Bobby but Bobby was too quick. He jumped for daddy again and I saw his white teeth flash and heard him snap close to daddy's throat and then Bobby was snarling and snapping and I was excited and I shouted hurt him, Bobby, he's been bad to me too and he wants to hurt me and you've got to stop him. Then I saw daddy's eyes open wide, and felt something jump in his mind, something that I'd never felt there before and I knew he was understanding my think-talk. I said I want Bobby to hurt you and mommy because you're not nice to me, only Bobby and my panda are nice to me. Go ahead, Bobby, hurt him, bite him again and make him bleed. And then daddy caught Bobby by the neck and threw him across the room and slammed the door shut and dragged something heavy up to block it. In a minute he was running downstairs shouting Carol, _I heard it!_ you were right all along--_I felt him, I felt what he was thinking!_ And mommy cried please, Ben, take me away, let's leave them and never come back, never, and daddy said it's horrible, he told that dog to kill me and it went right for my throat, the boy is evil and monstrous. Even from downstairs I could feel daddy's fear pounding into my head and then I heard the door banging and looked out the window and saw daddy carrying suitcases out through the snow to the car and then mommy came out running and the car started down the hill and they were gone. Everything downstairs was very quiet. I looked out the window and I couldn't see anything but the big falling snowflakes and the sun going down over the hill. Now Bobby and I and the panda are all together and I'm glad mommy and daddy are gone. I went to sleep for a little while because my head hurt so but now I'm awake and Bobby is lying across the room licking his feet and I hope mommy and daddy never come back because Bobby will take care of me. Bobby is my friend and he said he'd always take care of me no matter what and he understands my think-talk even if he isn't very smart. It's beginning to get cold in the house now because nobody has gone down to fix the fire but I don't care about that. Pretty soon I will tell Bobby to push open the door and go down and fix the fire and then I will tell him to get supper for me and then I will stay up all night because mommy and daddy aren't here to make me go to bed. There's just me and Bobby and the panda, and Bobby promised he'd take care of me because he's my friend. It's getting very cold now, and I'm getting hungry. 
62199	----	THE THOUGHT-MEN OF MERCURY By R. R. WINTERBOTHAM Hall and Upjohn had to escape from that "No-man's-land" on Mercury. But to form a plan, they had to think--and their captors could read minds. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It was neither night nor day, but a sort of nether world of twilight. The huge fern-like plants, flashing phosphorescence under the green corona light, seemed to close in after Cappy Upjohn and Terry Hall like prison bars in the windows of a dungeon. Cappy, who was leading the way, paused and waited for Terry. As the huge, leonine man turned, his lips curled into a taunting smile. Terry's eyes moved from side to side, watching the weird shadows, dodging the sweep of the giant ferns as they moved in the wind. "Scared!" Cappy ridiculed. "I can't help it!" the younger man said. "This place gives me the creeps." Cappy's great laugh echoed above the howl of the winds. "This is Mercury. Half day, half night everlastingly. Right here is the battleground of roasting heat and perpetual cold. A twenty-mile strip of habitable land between two kinds of hell. What the devil did you expect, Tenderfoot?" Cappy grunted in disgust, turned and picked his way through the ferns. Terry, his jaw set grimly, followed. Cappy had been through all this before. Twice he'd landed on Venus, and he'd been with the only previous expedition to Mercury. But Terry knew that fear was a human emotion, and that there were things even Cappy was afraid of. The wind died a moment. Between an opening in the ferns Terry caught a glimpse of a ghostly face, more simian than an ape's, less human than a man's. At the same time he felt something that was like a breeze through his brain. A painless stab of thought, "Cappy--look!" Terry pointed at the face peering through the opening in the ferns, and his hand clawed at the rifle he had slung over his shoulder. In all respects it was like an old-fashioned gun, but it fired a deadly bullet that was capable of complete annihilation of whatever it hit. A single bullet from a flourobeam gun was powerful enough to wipe out a steel ball ten feet in diameter. But Terry's hands slipped away from his gun. He recognized his action as more than fear. It was panic. Cappy had been too surprised at the sight of the grinning face to notice Terry's action. Now the youth had control of himself. "Great guns! This is something new, lad! A living creature on Mercury!" "I tried to tell you, Cappy!" Terry said. "I've seen 'em. I've felt 'em for the past hour!" "Felt 'em? Did they touch you?" "It's something I can't describe. It's like poking a finger into our brains. It doesn't hurt, but it feels uncomfortable. It's like being watched by someone you can't see." Cappy's boldness seemed to tarnish a little. A suggestion of a shudder seemed to pass over the man. He straightened and shook it off. "Pooh! Imagination, Terry!" Cappy took a step toward the creature. The eyes seemed to flash. Perhaps it was a reflection from the corona streamers stretching above the horizon to the west. Cappy halted as the creature seemed to shrink away. "Hold on!" Cappy called. "Don't go away! We've got to see that creature, Terry. Get it back! Can you stop it!" There was no mistaking that the animal was intelligent. Perhaps it felt the same emotions that raced through Terry's body. "Let me try," Terry said. His heart was pounding, but science had to know if intelligent life existed in Mercury's twilight zone. Terry stripped the gun from his shoulders and laid it on the ground. He pushed passed Cappy and walked toward the creature. Terry's hands were extended, palms outward. The creature hesitated. Its eyes flashed again and once more Terry felt something cold in his skull. The ferns parted and the creature stepped out into view. * * * * * It had two stubby legs, two long arms. Its head was pear-shaped and hairless, and its body was an ovoid ball, bloated and ugly. But its eyes were almost human except that they seemed to flash fire. Terry halted, facing the creature. "Terryhall of the earth!" The creature's voice echoed through the ferns. "You--you speak English!" The words that fell from Terry's lips mirrored his surprise. In his mind flashed a name for this creature. Something like _Zombie_, the living dead. "Not Zombie. Name is Chomby. I am not dead, not even living dead." "You read my mind! That's what I've felt for the past hour. You were studying my thoughts, and you learned my language by reading my mind!" Chomby's rubbery lips tried to imitate a grin, but it achieved only a hideous travesty. Chomby's hand rubbed over the leathery rags he wore for clothing and reached toward the earthman. The gesture was unmistakable. Chomby wanted to shake hands. The Mercurian had been thorough in his probe of Terry's brain. His actions were more human than Terry's under the circumstances, for Terry was afraid. "Nothing to fear from Chomby," spoke the Mercurian. Terry took the hand. It was leathery and cold. "I am glad to meet you," Terry said. He forced the words from his lips. "We came to Mercury on a peaceful mission." "You're afraid, Terryhall," Chomby replied. "I do not intend to kill you. Nor will I hurt Cappyupjohn." Cappy brushed forward and shook hands with Chomby. He concealed a wince as he touched the creature's corpse-like flesh. Then he unstrapped the caseknife he wore at his side and handed it to Chomby. "A gift of friendship," he said. Chomby reached awkwardly toward the knife. As he took it, the knife fell to the ground. Chomby leaned over and fumbled. He could hardly grasp the knife. Terry noted now what had been so repulsive about Chomby's handshake. The Mercurian had no thumb. Instead of the five-fingered hand of a human being, there were only three flabby fingers on the end of a round, gristly hand. Terry stooped and picked up the knife. He handed it to the Mercurian who seized it in both hands and clutched it to his body. "You want food and drink?" Chomby asked. "Terryhall and Cappyupjohn follow me to my village. Sorry I have no gift of friendship otherwise. My people are unskilled in handicraft. We can hardly make our own clothes." Chomby led the earthmen eastward. The shadows deepened and the sky grew dark. The stars appeared; among them the brilliant blue planet that was Earth. Again Chomby read Terry's thoughts. "You come from that one?" he asked, pointing. "You are from the sky?" Terry answered, but Chomby seemed to read the thoughts that Terry flashed through his mind. "Spaceship. Machines. Rockets." The Mercurian rolled the words in his mouth. "You come from a great race, Terryhall and Cappyupjohn. My people want to learn skill with our hands, to be like you." "It would be nice if we could read your minds," Cappy said, tossing a glance toward Terry. "You are suspicious men," Chomby said. "I read your mind and I know you do not trust me. You fear a trap. That is why you carry your guns. But there is nothing to fear from Chomby's people. You will think them very primitive." The cold winds lashed at the earthmen and nipped through the heavy clothing they wore. Terry and Cappy lowered a plastic windshield from their caps to protect their faces from frostbite. Vegetation grew more scarce and at last they walked across a rocky plain toward a row of towering basalt cliffs. The feeble light that came from the outer fringe of the corona revealed a row of caves at the base of the cliffs and from these emerged a hundred or so ill-fashioned beings resembling Chomby. The Mercurian gave no cry, nor warning of his approach. He apparently had notified his people by telepathy, for they rushed silently to meet him. Chomby lapsed into silence, turning from one of his kinsfolk to another, answering questions without speaking. Cappy stared at the Mercurians. His leonine figure marched through the ill-shapen creatures confidently and unafraid. Doubts crept into Terry's mind. There were too many Mercurians. Despite the powerful weapons strapped to the earthmen's backs, they could not hope to escape imprisonment, if these savages sought to hold them. Chomby led the men to a cave in the center of the village. He turned to Terry. "My people think you are queer, Terryhall," Chomby said. "But it is evident to them that you think the same about us. But we are all one people. Terryhall and Cappyupjohn are not the same. Terryhall is afraid, while Cappyupjohn is a man of rock. Are you not of the same race?" "More or less," Cappy said, deridingly. "Terry doesn't understand you and he fears what he doesn't understand. I've learned to control fear, so I am not afraid." "You trust us?" Chomby seemed surprise. "No," Cappy replied. "I don't trust anything, but I'm not afraid of you." "What if we should intend to keep you here?" Chomby asked. "Terry sees himself as a prisoner, a slave. He fears he will never return to the earth." "I still have my gun," Cappy said. "There are many of us," Chomby said, his lips gaping again in that imitation grin. "We could overpower you and kill you." "I'd take some of you with me," Cappy replied, defiantly. "I'd go out in a blaze of glory." * * * * * Chomby studied the earthman. "I believe you would. In your world such a trait would be considered admirable. You are hard, Cappyupjohn, and brave. But it is not your kind that makes your race so great. Your world is a coward's world. It was built by men who are afraid." Cappy choked. "You lie!" "We have read your minds, earthmen," Chomby said. "We understand the civilization from the mental pictures you carry in your minds. You have great brains, but skilled as they are they are nothing in comparison with ours. It was not your brain that made your world, but your love of security. You feared wild beasts, so you killed them. You feared hunger, so you stored food. You built weapons to defend yourself against enemies. You sought out new worlds in fleeing from dangers of the old. If your race had not known fear, it would have never done these things." "Men died to win that security," Cappy replied. "That wasn't cowardice, was it?" "They died fighting, which meant that they hoped to win. Their chance of victory was more attractive than the insecurity that would come with defeat," Chomby replied. "My people wish to keep you here. We want to learn more about the emotion called fear that has made your civilization so great." "You'll never keep us!" growled Cappy. His hand automatically touched the gun on his shoulder. "That is the fear I speak of," Chomby said. "You would rather die than be a prisoner. In a different way Terryhall has the same emotion. But he does not risk so recklessly. He would rather avoid the situation that makes fighting necessary. He is a brave man, too, Cappyupjohn, but in a different way." "He's yellow!" Cappy said vehemently. "He's worse than no help at all." The earthmen rested, but they were not left alone. Chomby seemed always to be near. Although Chomby insisted the earthmen were not prisoners, he made it plain they would not be allowed to leave for a time. "We must study you," he said. "In turn, you may study us." "I'm warning you, Chomby," Cappy roared. "We'll stand just so much of this thing. We'll stay until we've studied you enough, but when we want to go, we're going--or we'll die trying." "That time is not here," Chomby said, wrinkling his lips again. * * * * * The icy mental probing of the Mercurians grew familiar to Terry and Cappy. There was nothing the earthmen could think of that these eerie, repulsive-looking creatures did not understand. That the Mercurians read Terry's thoughts so easily was often embarrassing, for Terry knew that they were aware of his repugnance toward them, as well as Terry's distrust and fear. But Chomby and his people seemed to accept Terry's opinion of them understandingly. Not one of them made a move to remove either Terry's or Cappy's guns. After a first period of mental probing Chomby urged the earthmen to instruct the Mercurians in some simple crafts. Now the earthmen enjoyed the sense of superiority that previously had been a monopoly of the Mercurians. The simplest pieces of handiwork were almost beyond, the Mercurians. The hands of these creatures, without thumbs and with stiff fingers, were clumsy. Weaving was an arduous task. Construction of a simple, primitive thatched dwelling was attempted and abandoned, when Cappy found that it would require months to complete. It was not because the Mercurians did not understand what had to be done--they knew this the instant the terrestrials pictured the idea in their minds. But the tasks were nearly impossible for the Mercurians. Terry taught a few of the creatures to write, but the rest could not master the process, although every one of them had learned to read by watching Terry's mind at work. Cappy grew more contemptuous of the Mercurians as he watched their bungling efforts at the simplest human arts. "We haven't anything to be afraid of from these creatures, Terry," he said. Terry shook his head. "They've got brains, Cappy. They know everything we know and a lot of things we don't. They read us like a book. They know our thoughts before we know them ourselves." "It isn't thought that wins battles. It's power. Oh, brains help, but only when used in the application of the proper weapons. Why with our guns and fists we probably could lick this whole village. I'm sure they haven't coordination enough to fight hand-to-hand with us singly." "But they're too smart to let us out-maneuver them," Terry said. "There's a principle that seems to work in society that makes me afraid of these Mercurians. In the history of our own planet, it has always been the brains which exploited the brawn among men. People who thought of things usually took ascendancy over those who tried to progress by the sweat of their brow. For instance, everyone knows Columbus discovered America, but who knows the name of the man who built the ships he sailed in? LeCompton designed the first successful spacecraft, but the name of the man who tooled the intricate parts of its mechanism and made it successful has been completely forgotten." "You mean we're likely to become slaves of these--these Zombies?" "Since we came to this village they've changed," Terry said. "These Zombies--as you call them--are learning fear. They see their world, lashed by cold and hot winds, freezing and roasting, as an insecure place. A violent storm might burn up their food supply, or freeze their crops. For the first time they've seen fear as a safeguard to their future. Now they want to build. They want places to store food; homes to protect them from cold. They want means of transportation, to escape uninhabitable spots. They know the value of fear, but they cannot conquer it because they are physiologically incapable of conquering their environment. When they realize this--if they don't realize it already--they'll force us to conquer their environment for them. Every earthman unfortunate enough to land on Mercury will become a slave--" "Great Scott, Terry!" Cappy exclaimed. "I believe you are right. Your fear has been warning us all along to get out of this place. Get your gun ready, we're going back to the space ship--" The light from the entrance of the cave was blotted out. Chomby stood before them, followed by a horde of his fellow beings. "You recognized fear too late, Cappyupjohn," Chomby said. The two earthmen tried to level their guns, but the Mercurians attacked too quickly. The leathery fists struck home and the guns slipped from the earthmen's grasps. * * * * * A transformation occurred in front of the row of caves in the basalt cliff. Windbreaks appeared in the openings in the wall. Rude machines were set up to build houses of stone and covered passages from cave to cave. From the fibrous ferns Terry constructed rude looms for weaving cloth. Stone mills for grinding the pulpy fruit of the Mercurian trees into flour were designed. How long the two earthmen had been prisoners on Mercury they had no way of telling, for there was neither night nor day, nor seasons in the twilight zone. But the Earth had disappeared over the south horizon and reappeared in the north and Cappy estimated that two-thirds of the Mercurian year of 88 days had passed. "We won't be here another year," Terry said. Cappy snorted. "I wouldn't bet." "They're getting careless," Terry pointed out. "They used to have a dozen men guarding us day and night. If we even got a little too far away from the village, we'd be shoved back. Now only one Zombie is guarding us. We're allowed to go almost anywhere, except near the spaceship." "They read our minds, so they're always two jumps ahead of us, Terry. No. The principle of brains over brawn can't be beaten. We're licked." "I'm not," Terry announced. "Once you called me a coward--you said I was yellow. But a coward isn't the man who is afraid, it's the man that lets fear get the upperhand. You're being a coward now, Cappy. You're admitting that Chomby and his pals have the Injun sign on us. I'm not admitting it. It isn't brains that makes men the rulers of nine planets, and it isn't fear. Man has something else that gives him a physiological edge. I'm going to find out what that is. When we find it, we'll be free men again." "When you find it, the Mercurians will know. They'll be ready to keep us from using the weapon--whatever it is--before we know we've got it." "Some day we'll have a chance. Some day we'll have a chance to slug our guard and get back to the spaceship--" Terry paused. He looked at the dozing Mercurian at the mouth of the cave. Even as Terry looked the Mercurian roused out of his sleep. The thought thread had roused the guard from a deep slumber. "Now!" Terry yelled. "Now's our chance!" Terry sprang. The guard tried to seize the stone club at his side, but his clumsy hand was not made for swift action. Terry was on him before the guard could send out a mental alarm and the young earthman's fist crashed against the base of the guard's skull. Terrestrial muscles, built for a heavier force of gravity, delivered a sledgehammer blow. The guard toppled forward. Terry leaped over the figure and darted into the open. Another figure rose before Terry, but again Terry's fist smashed. Cappy was beside Terry now and together they raced toward the path that led in the direction of the spaceship. "They'll follow us!" Cappy said. "They can trail us by our thoughts. If we miss the ship and have to double back, we'll run into them." "We won't miss!" Terry said. * * * * * The sudden formulation of the escape plan had been too quick for even the Mercurian brains to block. Terry and Cappy were racing into the forest of ferns far ahead of their pursuers. The coordinated muscles of the earthmen were far more capable of traveling swiftly than those of the Mercurians behind and sounds of pursuit grew fainter in the distance. But Terry knew that these creatures were dogged. They would follow until the spaceship's rockets blasted loose from the planet. "Remember," Terry whispered, "don't act on any set plan. Don't plan what you'll do when you meet 'em. If you do they'll be prepared for it. Act on impulse, before they know what you intend to do." "I'll remember," Cappy panted. Was it impulse that made terrestrials the masters of the universe? Terry wondered. It hardly seemed logical, yet impulse had given them their first chance of freedom. But impulse might lead them astray. First thoughts are not always the best thoughts. True enough, man had made some strides by accident, but far more of his greatest discoveries and most useful inventions had been the result of years of labor and careful planning. No, it wasn't impulse. Some other weapon had to be used to defeat the Mercurians decisively. Terry and Cappy might escape through luck, but some day there would be a final, decisive battle that would employ the one thing that gave man an advantage over the semi-human monsters of the first planet. Terry hoped he could discover that weapon now. They had been over the route to the spaceship three times. Once in company with Chomby on their first trip to the Mercurian village. They had returned in company with a guard and come back again later. Terry had noted a few landmarks and now he began to spot them again. A curious-shaped rock; a spring of moulten metal; a deep fissure in the soil. But as they traveled toward the sun's corona the air grew warmer. Vegetation became profuse and the trail was more difficult to find. But Cappy had kept his eyes open, too. Between them they made their way, slower and slower. Suddenly Terry stopped. An icy finger had passed over his brain. A wordless thought flashed into his consciousness. "This is Chomby, Terryhall. Go back, or you will be unmercifully killed." Cappy looked at Terry. The same thought had flashed through his brain. "I am ahead of you, earthmen. I am waiting in front of the spaceship. In my hands I hold a flourobeam gun. You cannot pass me, earthmen!" Cappy groaned. "They're still two jumps ahead, Terry! They've outfigured us again. They knew we might get away by accident. So they put Chomby out here to intercept us and he's armed with our weapons!" Terry was afraid. He knew the power of a flourobeam. He'd seen it blast rocks into powder and he knew that a man could never survive its charge. One blast from the gun could wipe out all trace of Terry and Cappy. Terry's face paled. Then, suddenly, he moved forward. "Come on, Cappy! You said I was yellow once. Let's see who's yellow now!" "But that gun! This isn't being brave! It's foolhardy. The better part of valor is knowing when you're licked." "Come on," Terry said, moving ahead. "You're a fool, Terry," Cappy said. "But you've got guts! Now listen to reason!" But Terry would not listen. He moved forward. Cappy, sweating, came following. "It's suicide!" cried the older man. * * * * * In the center of a clearing stood the spaceship. The streaks of the corona revealed a figure, huge, hideous and ape-like, standing before the locks. It was Chomby, holding the flourobeam gun, aiming at the two terrestrials who emerged from the forest. "If you come closer, I'll shoot!" It was a thought, not a voice, that flashed toward the men, but the words were as clear as if Chomby had spoken. "We're licked, Terry!" Cappy said. "I'll surrender." Slowly Cappy's hands went over his head. "And what about you, Terryhall?" Terry stood in the clearing, looking at the Mercurian. The young man's face was pale and green beneath the corona glow. "This is a war of the worlds, Chomby," he said. "It's a fight between your race and mine. It's a Waterloo for one of us." "You haven't a chance, Terryhall. You know the power of this gun." Terry's lips tightened into a thin, straight line. His body crouched for an instant and then he sprang. The terrestrial muscles sent him shooting toward Chomby. His feet touched the ground again, and like steel springs he shot forward a second time. Chomby's fingers tightened on the trigger of the weapon. They seemed to twitch. Cappy closed his eyes. An inhuman scream rent the Mercurian air. But the gun did not go off. Cappy opened his eyes to see Terry and the monster rolling on the ground. Terry's fingers were closed about the Mercurian's throat. Chomby struggled feebly, and then lay still. Terry rose, picked up the gun and motioned to Cappy. "Put down your hands and start moving your legs. Get into those locks before the rest of them get here!" Cappy's jaw worked up and down, but words did not come from his throat. Somehow he moved. He ran into the locks and a moment later he was at the controls. "Let 'er go!" Terry said. Cappy, still speechless, pressed the charger. The rockets roared. The machine lurched skyward and Mercury was left behind. "What happened?" Cappy asked. "I just remembered that when we were last carrying the guns we had the safety catches on. The catches are released with the thumb. Chomby couldn't do it! He couldn't have shot me, even though he wanted to. The safety catches are such a small piece of the flourobeam mechanism that we never think of them. Chomby didn't have a chance to read our minds about the safety catch until it was too late." "Terry," Cappy said. "I'll take back everything I said about you being yellow. You've got guts! More than I have, Terry." "Guts? Hell, Cappy, I was scared to death every second." 
59157	----	ESCAPE MECHANISM BY CHARLES E. FRITCH _Being a world unto one's self is lonely. Even the poor amoeba creature from Venus knew that...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, April 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] She found herself floating again in that strange half-familiar world of murky fluid where only she existed. The liquid was all around her, pressing gently on all sides with a force that cushioned but did not restrain. It was a pleasant sensation, a calming one; the cares of the outside world were non-existent and therefore meaningless. She drifted, unhampered by the fluid. There seemed to be no direction but outward. Her thoughts went out and they returned with impressions. This was her world and she was the center of it. It pleased her to think this. It was an alien pleasure that was mental and without physical counterpart. There was quiet, stillness, a peace she had never known. The fluid flowed about her like a great silent sea that held no sound, no movement. It seemed natural that she should be here. She was content. * * * * * At the accustomed time, the autohypnotics in Miss Abby Martin's body forced her to the threshold of consciousness and cleared her brain of the fog of sleep. Slowly, she opened her eyes to the morning brightness of her bedroom and stared at the vacant skylight and the blue expanse of sky beyond it, not quite comprehending where she was. The cloudfoam cushions of her bed gave credence to the floating sensation she had had during her dream, and for a few seconds she lacked orientation. Then her eyes wandered about the room, to the closed door of the raybath stall, the retracted dressing table, the chronometer label that told her it was March 14, 2123 at thirty seconds past 0700 hours. The subtle intonation of her favorite music, Czerdon's "Maze of Crystal" murmured softly from the walls. Awareness came then, and she lay back on the bed and tried to follow the intricate crystal melodies. But a frown ridged her brow, and she wondered at the strange dream instead. She had found it pleasant enough, for she rather enjoyed the languid floating sensation, the feeling of being self-sufficient, a world unto herself. Yet the very fact of the dream's existence in a world where such things were manufactured disturbed her, for she had taken no dreampills the night before, nor at any of the other times the dream had come. The incident made her almost wish that witchdoctor psychiatrics had not been outlawed twenty years ago, so she might get some inkling of the dream's meaning; but psychiatrists had been pulled forcibly from the web of society when mental derangements were put under the jurisdiction of the Somaticists. Overhead, a rocket thundered, shaking the house with a gentle hand, and Abby turned her attention to the sound, momentarily forgetting the dream. Through the one-way skylight, she saw a speck of light accelerate beyond vision. She shook her head impatiently. Rush, rush, rush--that was all people seemed to think about these days. Go to the Moon, go to Mars, go to Venus. In time they might go to the outer planets and perhaps even try to reach the stars. As though they didn't have enough trouble right here on Earth! All they did, it seemed, was hunt down poor beasts from the various planets and bring them back to Earth to put in cages and tanks on display, ostensibly to "learn more of the planets by studying their inhabitants." To Abby, it seemed cruel and unnecessary. Like that poor amoeba creature from Venus, she thought, remembering the day last week when she and her niece Linda had visited the zoo to see this latest acquisition. It was a creature captured from the giant oceans of the second planet, a giant amoeba encased in a large transparent tank of murky fluid for paying visitors to see. The creature was supposed to be primitively telepathic, but it seemed harmless enough. Abby found herself sympathizing with it, and it seemed to her at the time that the creature felt this sympathy and was grateful for it. For a brief moment she even had fancied that the Venusian's mind had reached out to her, probing with gentle fingers of thought. She shook her head at that. Here in the calm clear light of day diffused through the one-way skylight, the anthropomorphic notion was ridiculous; and she mentally chided herself for contemplating such things. "I must be getting old," she told herself aloud. In the next thought, she reminded herself that thirty-nine years was not old at all, and in the thought that followed, scolded herself for bothering to defend a statement so obviously rhetorical. The chronometer ticked silently to 0701, and sighing, Abby rose from the bed and slipped from the translucent one-piece pajamas to stand nude in the center of the bedroom. At a sudden thought she glanced quickly about the room, for she had the strange uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching her. It was impossible, of course, but she felt ill-at-ease just the same, and a blush of embarrassment stole over her at the thought. The feeling of shameful nakedness persisted even in the raybath stall, and it was a relief to dress and hurry downstairs, routing the unaccountable ideas from her mind. As usual, Gretchen had busily cleaned the house during the night, silently raying germs and dirt out of existence, and had a warm steaming breakfast-for-two ready by the time Abby had descended the escalator to the dining room. "Good morning, Gretchen," Abby said. "Good morning, Ma'm," Gretchen's mechanical voice agreed tonelessly. The robot-maid continued monotonously, "The day will be clear and sunny, with a high of 79 degrees Fahrenheit by 1300 hours--" "That will be all, Gretchen," Abby interrupted sternly, not interested in facts of temperature and humidity given so mercilessly. "Yes, Ma'm," Gretchen said obligingly. She turned and went to her closet until she would be needed again. Abby watched her disappear around a corner and frowned. Sometimes, she thought, the mechanical age could be too mechanical. A simple good morning-- "Good morning, Aunt Abby," Linda said, bounding into sight. "Good morning, Linda," Abby replied, smiling at the girl's energy. It reminded her of when she was seventeen. "Don't rush your breakfast, dear, you've plenty of time to get to school." "Yes, Aunt Abby," Linda said, rushing her breakfast. "We're going on a field trip today," she volunteered between gulps of milk. "To the zoo to see the amoebaman from Venus." Abby smiled. "Amoeba_man_?" she questioned. "Couldn't it just as easily be an amoeba_woman_?" "Amoebas don't have sex differences," Linda said matter-of-factly. "We just call it an amoebaman as a sort of classification because it seems intelligent." She finished her meal and dashed across the room. "See you later, Aunt Abby." The door whirred open and shut. * * * * * Abby went to the window to watch her, sorry she had brought up the subject of sex classification; yet the question had started out harmlessly enough.... Waiting outside, a boy stood on an island among moving metal sidewalks. Abby recognized him as one who had 'vised Linda very often on questions of homework. At Linda's approach his eyes took new life, and he laughed a greeting. Together, they stepped onto a sidewalk and slowly wound from sight, their hands interlocked. Abby shook her head disapprovingly; this would have to be discouraged. Linda was much too young to have boyfriends. She shook her head. The younger generation never seemed to move slowly--they rushed their lives away. * * * * * That afternoon, Abby sat at the broad one-way windows and watched the cars and aircabs zooming overhead like frightened hornets. Suddenly, she wondered where Dr. Gower was these days. Generally he televised her once in a while or dropped in to chat occasionally, and it pleased her that he did. He was her only male companion these days. That's the way with men, she thought bitterly, nodding to herself, as you grow old, they lose interest in you. Love cannot be founded on a physical basis. The thought of physical intimacy disturbed her, and she thrust it aside. One thing was certain, above all else: she was determined to protect Linda to the best of her ability, even as she had protected herself. "Thank goodness for Linda," she thought. "If it weren't for her...." She let the thought hang uncontemplated, for she _did_ have Linda; and she had no wish to dwell upon the memory of her brother's accidental death in an aircab crash which had brought Linda into her custody. She returned her attention to the world outside her window and found nothing there to interest her. Restlessly, she played with the button-controls on the chair's underarm, causing the walls to spring into the simulated life of a three-dimensional telecast. A program called "Old-Time Commercial" was in progress. Abby, like most people, enjoyed this one, laughing at the exaggerated claims and the tuneless melodies which had been foisted upon her ancestors during the years before commercials had been outlawed, and she was disappointed to see it fade for channel identification. It was followed by a program of the latest fashions, some of which were much too brazen for Abby to contemplate without squirming, so she changed stations again with a flick of her forefinger beneath the armrest. "... direct from the oceans of Venus," a man's voice announced enthusiastically, and Abby found herself staring at the amoeba-like creature she had seen a week earlier at the zoo. "... believed to be directly related to our own Earth amoeba," the man continued, "except, of course, this one is far from microscopic, being larger than a man. For communication purposes, these Venusian creatures seem to use a form of telepathy...." Abby mused upon what Linda had said concerning the amoeba's sex, or rather lack of it. She knew that the creatures reproduced by dividing themselves, but she wondered if reproduction came instinctively or by determination. Either way, the method was to be admired, she felt. It was a pity humans were so complicated. An image stirred deep within her, a fragment of some forgotten memory, but Abby did not notice it. The creature from Venus moved restlessly across the three dimensional screen, extending itself. It seemed to be regarding her with an intense sort of curiosity, as though it were reaching out, enveloping her.... Sunlight spilling through the window, spread a warm languorous pool about her, and she felt pleasantly drowsy. She closed her eyes. After awhile, her head tilted, and the rushing world faded as though it had never been. She floated, placidly content. She seemed, suddenly, to possess a million eyes that probed about in all directions at once. Her body stretched, elongating itself, and moved forward through a translucent fluid to an invisible wall, beyond which stood shadowy figures. She focused her mind upon these figures, and they became clear. There was a little boy gazing at her in awe, his nose pressed against the glass in fascination, not certain if he should be frightened or not. Mentally, she smiled to herself and directed her thoughts to the boy, telling him not to be afraid. There were several children there, and Abby turned her attention to another. It was Linda! Linda staring with wide, curious eyes. And next to her a man. Dr. Gower. Her heart leaped-- And she awoke with the warm sunlight streaming in upon her, her heart pounding unaccountably. She looked around. She was still in her front room before the windows. The television was going, presenting the newscast that followed the zoo program. It was just a dream, but it had seemed so real that it still disturbed her minutes after she was fully awake. For awhile, she was not even certain that the dream had not been real and that this now was not really a dream, that reality and dreaming had not somehow suddenly changed places. * * * * * Abby was still sitting at the window when Linda came home from school. She watched as Linda and the boy came down the moving sidewalk and stepped off on the island before the house. They stood talking for a moment, then Linda rushed up the walk. The door whirred open and shut, and Linda instead of looking for Abby as was her habit, went straight to the escalator. Abby called, "Linda!" The girl paused. "I--I'll be back down." "I'd like to see you right now, please," Abby's tone, though not hostile, was unrefusable. Linda appeared hesitantly in the doorway, hands behind her. Abby smiled pleasantly. "Who was that boy, dear? I don't think I know him." "Jimmy Stone," Linda said, excitement creeping into her voice. "He lives over in Sector Five, and he's in my history class at school." Abby recognized the symptoms and frowned mentally at the diagnosis. "He's probably a very nice young man, but--" "He is, he's very nice," Linda agreed quickly. "He's going to be an astronautical engineer. Look what he made me in plastics class." She drew her hands from behind her and held a scarlet rose cupped in them. It looked soft, as smooth as though it had been just plucked, as though it held a fragrance that was not artificial. "It's very nice," Abby admitted, but she wondered how in this age of intense specialization a future astronautical engineer had managed to enroll in a plastics class to waste his time making pseudo-roses. Despite her wish to the contrary, she found herself briefly admiring the youngster, then told herself it was a case of puppy love that had inspired the frivolity. "But don't you think you're a little young to be thinking about boys?" "No," Linda said defensively, pouting. "I like Jimmy and he likes me. I don't see why we shouldn't see each other." "You're in the same class," Abby pointed out; "that should be enough. After all, you're only seventeen." "Yes," Linda flared in annoyance, and rushed on in a sudden torrent, "then I'll be eighteen and then nineteen and then twenty and then thirty. If I wait long enough maybe I'll let life pass me by, like--" She paused, eyes wide and regretful at what she was about to say. Abby smiled gently, but a cold chill gripped her. "Like me?" she said. "You're afraid of being an old maid like me, is that it?" She hated to use the expression "old maid," but she knew that was what many people called her. She minded the name more than she admitted even to herself, for the words held an unpleasantness, a loneliness she didn't feel--very often anyway. But then she had Linda for company. Linda's features softened. "I'm sorry, Aunt Abby," she said quietly. "That's all right, child, I understand how you feel," Abby said. "Now, you go along up and take a shower and get yourself ready for supper, and maybe we'll talk about it later." Linda nodded soberly and turned away. Abby sat in the silence of the room, listening to the soft whisper of the escalator. It hurt her to think that Linda wasn't going to show her the plastic rose at first. You had to be firm in these matters, though, to prevent worse trouble. If care weren't taken, Linda might rush off and be married before she was ready. This was a difficult time for the poor thing, that was certain, but she'd get over it. The little things in a child's life always seemed more important than they really were; that's why there were older people to guide them. Her own mother had been very strict, and Abby saw no reason to regret it. If it hadn't been for that, she might have married the first boy she'd met. She tried to recall him, but somehow she couldn't, and only a vague image came to mind. It disturbed her to have that blank spot in her memory, but Somatic drugs had consistently failed to fill it in. Linda came in a few minutes later, freshly scrubbed but not convinced. "All ready, dear?" Abby said pleasantly. She got up and put a consoling arm about the young girl. Together they went into the dining room, where Gretchen had silently placed the appropriate food a few minutes before. * * * * * They ate in silence, with only the sounds of eating and an occasional whir from the robot-maid as she appeared and disappeared with dishes. Linda was moody, thoughtful. "How was the field trip, dear?" Abby wondered. "All right," Linda answered. "The Venusian amoeba is very much like our own, the man said. It even reproduces itself by division." "Isn't that nice," Abby said, just a bit hesitantly, uncertain that reproduction by any means should be discussed. However, if they taught it in school-- "I feel sorry for it," Linda said. Abby stared at her. "Having no one to love," Linda went on, a faraway look on her face, "no one to love it. If it has any feelings, it must be very lonely." Abby made an irritable stab at a piece of synthetic potato on her plate. "Nonsense," she snapped. "You're talking like a silly schoolgirl." On second thought, she decided that Linda _was_ a silly schoolgirl and would naturally talk like one; she was still a little girl, dependent for protection upon her Aunt Abby. That thought gave her some measure of comfort. "I feel like an amoeba sometimes," Linda said, poking restlessly at a piece of meat on her plate. "Sometimes I wish you were, dear," Abby said, feeling strangely annoyed by the statement. "Now, eat your steak before it gets cold." "Don't you ever get lonely, Aunt Abby," Linda asked. "Suppose Dr. Gower went away, wouldn't you be lonely." "Dr. Gower is not going away," Abby pointed out. "He might," Linda insisted. "You haven't seen him for three days now. He might be gone already." Despite herself, Abby felt sudden panic. "He's probably busy. Doctors are busy these days." "He could have called." "Linda, eat your supper," Abby said sternly, "and stop this nonsense. Besides, what difference would it make. One person doesn't make the world begin or end. Dr. Gower and I are good friends, but we must adjust to these things. If he is gone away, he's gone, and that's all there is to it!" She tried to make her voice sound calm, but there was a sinking feeling in her stomach, and a small questioning voice in the back of her mind kept asking did he? did he? did he? Furiously, she thrust the thought aside. "I saw him at the zoo today," Linda said. "You did?" Abby said, relieved, and then she thought of her dream of the zoo and of Linda standing there and Dr. Gower beside the girl. Could she be psychic? No, there was a simpler explanation. "I saw you both there," she went on, smiling, "on television this afternoon." Linda frowned. "But Dr. Gower didn't arrive until the program was over, Aunt Abby." "I saw you," Abby insisted. "But I'm certain of it." "You must be mistaken, dear," Abby said in a tone of finality. And that settled that. The doorbuzzer sounded, and Gretchen whirred to answer it. Abby pressed a button beneath the table, and the image of Dr. Gower appeared on a small screen set invisibly in the opposite wall. She could feel her blood accelerate at the sight of him, but she wondered why he looked disturbed. She rose. "I'm going in to see Dr. Gower, dear," she told Linda. "Now, don't rush your food." Linda nodded abstractedly. She wasn't in a rushing mood. "Abby, how are you?" Dr. Gower said warmly, at her approach. "Very well, thank you, Tom," Abby said. "I thought I might have to get sick to see you." "I was busy," he explained. "The colonization of space brings up a great many new medical problems. How's Linda?" "Fine. I'm afraid, she's beginning to have a slight case of puppy love; I'm sure it can be discouraged in time, though." Dr. Gower hesitated. Then he said, "Linda's a normal young girl, Abby. You can't stifle her natural desires forever." "I not only can, but I will." To cushion the harshness of the statement, she added, "At least until she's mature enough to decide these things for herself. She's still a child." "A great many women get married at eighteen," Dr. Gower pointed out. "Physically, it's a good age for marriage, and a psychology going against the physical grain isn't going to help." "There are such things in life, Dr. Gower," Abby said a bit coldly, "as moral considerations. We're not animals, you know." "It might help sometimes," Dr. Gower mused, "if there were a little more animal in us and a little less so-called human." Abby found her enthusiasm for seeing Dr. Gower ebbing, being replaced by what she considered a justified annoyance. Dr. Gower knew her feeling about Linda. Something seemed to have changed his tactics. She did not like the change. "If you don't mind," she said, "I'd like to bring up Linda in my own way. The courts made me legal guardian of Linda until she's twenty-one, and I intend to protect her until then to the best of my ability." "By that time, you'll have her so confused about the world she'll be defenseless against it. I never said anything before, Abby--" "And now is a poor time to start!" Abby's voice was like ice. "I'm sorry, Dr. Gower, but if you persist in talking this way, I'll have to ask you to leave. Linda is in my charge, and I won't stand for interference, even from you." The doctor's shoulders slumped dejectedly. "Do you know why you were chosen guardian, Abby," he said slowly. "Of course. I was the nearest relative. Why bring that up?" Dr. Gower shook his head. "Nothing," he said, after awhile. "Nothing at all. I came around to say goodbye, Abby." Abby wavered, the ice in her melting. "Goodbye?" "I'm leaving for Venus," he said, "the day after tomorrow. They need doctors up there, and I can probably do more good there than here. Besides, I'd like to investigate these amoeba creatures; I suspect they have more intelligence than we give them credit for." "I--I'll be sorry to see you leave, Tom." "I came to ask you to go with me. You know how I feel about you, Abby; I thought I'd try just once more." "I couldn't leave Linda," Abby said. "The standard excuse," he reminded her, his voice more weary than bitter. "What Linda has needed all these years was a father, Abby. You're giving her a warped viewpoint." "The Somaticists don't think so," Abby flung at him. He crimsoned. "Somatics aren't the answer. Our era has become so mechanical that people have come to think that pressing a button is going to cure the evils of the world. Pills and pushbuttons are fine in their place, Abby, but they're not the answer, not the complete one anyway. At one time, they thought psychiatry was the answer; they were wrong there, too. The answer's probably a combination of the two." "I'm not looking for the answer to anything," Abby said wearily. "I just want to be let alone." Dr. Gower nodded and turned to go. "Have a nice trip," Abby said, trying to sound cheerful, "I'm sorry we had to argue like this." The thought of his leaving brought a sinking sensation which she tried to thrust off and couldn't. But there was Linda to think of; the girl couldn't go to Venus. At the door, Dr. Gower hesitated. "I don't know if I should tell you this; it might help, and it might not." He paused again uncertainly and then went on in a decisive tone. "Linda's your own child, Abby." She looked at him, puzzled. "Of course. The courts--" Dr. Gower shook his head impatiently. "I don't mean that. I mean Linda was actually born to you." The words sank in, but Abby found them meaningless. Two and two did not make five no matter how many times you added them. There was a tense silence, but she didn't know what to say to fill it. "That's what happened in your blank spot, Abby," Dr. Gower went on. "You ran away from home when you were twenty-one, because your mother was too strict, because she acted just like you're acting with Linda. Before she could find you again, someone else had. You were pregnant." Abby's brow furrowed. "You mean--" the thought completed itself, and a look of horror replaced the frown. "That's a horrible thing to say, even in a lie." "I wish I were lying," Dr. Gower said earnestly. "You didn't remember anything that had happened, and were still dazed for nearly a year afterward. Your subconscious used amnesia as an escape mechanism, and you forgot the incident, repressed it without realizing it. An escape is sometimes possible only in the mind, where Somaticists are often helpless. I didn't say anything before, but now I'm afraid Linda may be made to suffer if I don't." Abby stared at him in shocked silence. She said, after awhile. "It's not true, it can't be." Dr. Gower shrugged. "I'm sorry, Abby, it is. It's not Linda you're worried about, it's yourself; you're afraid to face reality." "Get out," Abby said slowly, hating him for that. Her voice rose the least bit. "I won't listen to these lies." "I thought it might help. Say goodbye to Linda for me." The door closed behind him with a click. Abby stared at the closed door, a small portion of her was calm, the rest chaotic. The calm portion wondered why she should be so disturbed by something so obviously impossible. All these years she'd been wrong about Dr. Gower, trusting him as a friend. For what he said was untrue, of course. It had to be. And yet why couldn't she remember things? It was only eighteen years ago and important things had happened in that year, but somehow her memory bypassed their happening. It was like reading a book with several pages blank; you knew from later pages what had happened, but the actual experience of the events was lost. Could it be--the thought came despite her--could it be that she'd had amnesia, that Dr. Gower had really told her the truth, that someone had actually-- "No. He was lying," she told the room. "He never lied before," Linda said quietly from the doorway. "You--heard?" Linda nodded. Abby tried to smile. "I'm afraid, dear, that Dr. Gower is like all men. When he couldn't have what he wanted--" her face clouded at the thought--"he tried to shock me, to hurt me, to make me ashamed...." "Would it make you ashamed to have me for a daughter?" Abby's heart beat quickly. "Of course not, Linda. But the circumstances--" "I see," Linda said slowly. "They have a name for children like me; that's what you're ashamed of. Or maybe, as Dr. Gower said, you're afraid for yourself!" "But it's not true, Linda, don't you see?" Abby insisted. She put her arm on the girl's shoulder. Linda shook it off; tears welling in her eyes. "You don't even want to know," the girl accused. "You don't even care." And she turned and ran from the room. The escalator whispered, and Abby stood in the center of the room looking at the empty doorway. She stood on the brink of a great precipice, balancing precariously, and for a brief moment she found herself believing what Dr. Gower had said. He was a fine man, and good, and he would not lie to her. Things her brother had said came to mind, once-harmless statements that seemed to take on new significance, as though he'd said them to prepare her for this moment. And suddenly, very suddenly, the world was tottering; dazedly, she made her way to a chair and sat limply in it. Dr. Gower was gone now, and she would never see him again. She knew that, and she knew that despite the things she'd said, that it did matter that he was going. But then she had Linda to think of. Or was it really Linda that concerned her? She could take the girl along, certainly; that would even clear up the problem of Jimmy Stone. Was it really the marriage she feared, a fear based upon some secret mental block in her mind? The doubt returned then, and she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of anything anymore. Abby had to think. She had to quiet her nerves and the frantic jumbled thoughts that had begun to race through her mind. She felt dizzy and held a hand to one of the walls to steady herself as she walked to her bedroom. From the dressing table drawer she took a bottle of dreampills. The label was fuzzy to her eyes, but the word _Danger_ stood out in bold letters. Abby swallowed three of the pills, which was two more than the safe dosage, and lay across the bed, eyes closed. The door to the room closed automatically. "It's not true," she told herself again, a desperate urgency to her voice. "I've got to get away from these thoughts. Got to get away. Got--to--escape." She felt drowsy, but the thought of what Dr. Gower had said persisted. It couldn't be true. It couldn't. And yet it might be; it was the possibility that disturbed her. That blank spot. Eighteen years ago. Eighteen years... * * * * * She drifted into a restless sleep. Mentally, she traveled across the familiar plains of her past to that strange dark canyon she couldn't recall. Her mind hovered frightened above the depths, failing to see through its darkness; then she passed to the other side, to her childhood, to when she was a young girl and her mother was alive. The scene burst upon her with vivid clarity, and she found herself reliving it. It was there, all of it. The home life, protecting and yet restraining. Her dissatisfaction. The secret determination. The running away in the dead of night. It was all there, just as Dr. Gower had said. "But it's a dream," she murmured, "just a dream." Yet it seemed a reality. She could feel the cool night press upon her as she made her way slowly through the strange-familiar darkness and descended into the depths of the canyon. The feeling of having been here before was with her, and it brought terror with it. She walked on, looking to either side, listening fearfully. And then she stopped, her blood becoming ice. There was a man before her. She could see only his eyes, but they were cruel eyes, savage and lustful. Knowledge came then, bursting over her in a raging tide. She screamed and ran, her footsteps echoing frantically as she hurried through the darkness, looking for an opening for a protecting light. But no opening appeared, no light came. She ran until she was exhausted, and then she sank to the ground panting trying to still her spasms of breath. There was a small sound, as of the scraping of a shoe and she looked into the eyes again. She screamed again and again and again not knowing where screams ended and echoes began. She put her hands over her ears and screamed into the darkness. She could feel hands reaching out for her and she shrank away from them. Her mind was a playground for terror. She had to escape. She had to. (But sometimes the only escape is in the mind!) The hands reached out. She was suddenly falling, down, down, down. Calmness came, and a grateful thought appeared: she had escaped. Nothing else mattered; only that.... She stopped falling. The mist grew thick, thicker; it became dense; it became liquid. She could not feel the beating of her heart, but her mind was calm and it looked about with a detachment that was intellectual. She was floating again, floating silently through a world of murky fluid. The liquid was pressing with a force so gentle it almost did not exist. It enveloped her like a protecting shield. She drifted. There seemed to be no direction but outward. Her thoughts went out and they returned with impressions. This was her world and she was the center of it. There were no problems here, no encroachments on existence or security. It was like a return to the womb. Womb? she thought. She turned the word over in her mind and found the concept alien. She regarded it intellectually, at leisure. Time passed silently, without incident, without measurement. It had no meaning, no referent. Curious after awhile, she went forward, her mind impinging upon shadowy figures behind the transparent barrier. She focussed her attention upon them, and the image cleared. There was a man there, and a woman, and a girl. She could hear them as they spoke. "I don't know why you wanted to come here, Abby," the man was saying. "You'll see enough of these creatures on Venus." "This one is special," the woman said slowly, tasting the words like some unfamiliar food. "It's what made me change my mind about--things. It must be very lonely." "Bosh," the man scoffed gently. "Intelligent or not, an amoeba doesn't have feelings of loneliness." "Doesn't it?" the woman wondered. "Perhaps not at first. But being able to probe the minds of humans and sympathize with them yet not contact them can...." "We'll be late for the rocket, Mother," the girl said. "Jimmy promised he'd be down to see me off and let me know if he can go to the Venus Academy next year." "All right, Linda, we're going now." At the door, the woman turned for a last look; her thoughts were thoughts of sorrow, of pity, of--regret, perhaps. "You'll learn much of the world this way," the thoughts came, "and you'll have time to readjust. Knowledge will pyramid gently, and with it will come wisdom. After awhile, escape won't be necessary. You'll want to return then and be a part of your world. Meanwhile, I must help my own people; this is the best way for both of us to escape." The woman linked arms with the man and the girl then, and the three of them went out. Silence returned, bringing with it a troubled wonderment. Then the murky fluid flowed past all vision, and the world returned, safe and familiar. The thoughts returned briefly, as echoes, but they were unfamiliar this time and meaningless. But it was not always so, and it would not always be, for contemplation bred curiosity, and curiosity bred knowledge, and knowledge bred desire, and desire the ways and means of accomplishment. Meanwhile, there was quiet, stillness, a peace she had never known. The fluid flowed about her in a silence that held no sound, no movement. It was womb-like, protective. It seemed natural that she should be here. For the moment, she was content. 
30497	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction December 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. _The Foreign Hand Tie_ _BY DAVID GORDON_ _Just because you can "see" something doesn't mean you understand it--and that can mean that even perfect telepathy isn't perfect communication...._ ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS * * * * * From Istanbul, in Turkish Thrace, to Moscow, U.S.S.R., is only a couple of hours outing for a round trip in a fast jet plane--a shade less than eleven hundred miles in a beeline. Unfortunately, Mr. Raphael Poe had no way of chartering a bee. The United States Navy cruiser _Woonsocket_, having made its placid way across the Mediterranean, up the Aegean Sea, and through the Dardanelles to the Bosporous, stopped overnight at Istanbul and then turned around and went back. On the way in, it had stopped at Gibraltar, Barcelona, Marseilles, Genoa, Naples, and Athens--the main friendly ports on the northern side of the Mediterranean. On the way back, it performed the same ritual on the African side of the sea. Its most famous passengers were the American Secretary of State, two senators, and three representatives. Its most important passenger was Mr. Raphael Poe. During the voyage in, Mr. Raphael Poe remained locked in a stateroom, all by himself, twiddling his thumbs restlessly and playing endless games of solitaire, making bets with himself on how long it would be before the ship hit the next big wave and wondering how long it would take a man to go nuts in isolation. On the voyage back, he was not aboard the _Woonsocket_ at all, and no one missed him because only the captain and two other Navy men had known he was aboard, and they knew that he had been dropped overboard at Istanbul. The sleek, tapered cylindroid might easily have been mistaken for a Naval torpedo, since it was roughly the same size and shape. Actually, it was a sort of hybrid, combining the torpedo and the two-man submarine that the Japanese had used in World War II, plus refinements contributed by such apparently diverse arts as skin-diving, cybernetics, and nucleonics. Inside this one-man underwater vessel, Raphael Poe lay prone, guiding the little atomic-powered submarine across the Black Sea, past Odessa, and up the Dnieper. The first leg, the four hundred miles from the Bosporous to the mouth of the river, was relatively easy. The two hundred and sixty miles from there to the Dnepropetrovsk was a little more difficult, but not terribly so. It became increasingly more difficult as the Dnieper narrowed and became more shallow. On to Kiev. His course changed at Dnepropetrovsk, from northeast to northwest, for the next two hundred fifty miles. At Kiev, the river changed course again, heading north. Three hundred and fifty miles farther on, at Smolensk, he was heading almost due east. It had not been an easy trip. At night, he had surfaced to get his bearings and to recharge the air tanks. Several times, he had had to take to the land, using the caterpillar treads on the little machine, because of obstacles in the river. At the end of the ninth day, he was still one hundred eighty miles from Moscow, but, at that point, he got out of the submarine and prepared himself for the trip overland. When he was ready, he pressed a special button on the control panel of the expensive little craft. Immediately, the special robot brain took over. It had recorded the trip upstream; by applying that information in reverse--a "mirror image," so to speak--it began guiding itself back toward Istanbul, applying the necessary corrective factors that made the difference between an upstream and a downstream trip. If it had made a mistake or had been discovered, it would have blown itself to bits. As a tribute to modern robotics and ultra-microminiaturization, it is a fact that the little craft was picked up five days later a few miles from Istanbul by the U.S.S. _Paducah_. By that time, a certain Vladimir Turenski, a shambling not-too-bright deaf mute, had made his fully documented appearance in Moscow. * * * * * Spies, like fairies and other such elusive sprites, traditionally come in rings. The reason for this circumstructural metaphor is obscure, but it remains a fact that a single spy, all by himself, is usually of very little use to anybody. Espionage, on any useful scale, requires organization. There is, as there should be, a reason for this. The purpose of espionage is to gather information--preferably, _useful_ information--against the wishes of, and in spite of the efforts of, a group--usually referred to as "the enemy"--which is endeavoring to prevent that information from getting into other hands than their own. Such activities obviously imply communication. An espioneur, working for Side A, who finds a bit of important information about Side B must obviously communicate that bit of information to Side A or it is of no use whatsoever. All of these factors pose complex problems. To begin with, the espioneur must get himself into a position in which he can get hold of the information he wants. Usually, that means that he must pass himself off as something he is not, a process which requires time. Then, when he gets the information he is after, he must get it to his employers quickly. Information, like fish, becomes useless after a certain amount of time, and, unlike fish, there is no known way of refrigerating it to retard spoilage. It is difficult to transmit information these days. It is actually easier for the espioneur to transmit it than to get it, generally speaking, but it is difficult for him to do both jobs at once, so the spy ring's two major parts consist of the ones who get the information from the enemy and the ones who transmit it back to their employers. Without magic, it is difficult for a single spy to be of any benefit. And "magic," in this case, can be defined as some method by which information can be either obtained or transmitted without fear of discovery by the enemy. During World War I, a competent spy equipped with a compact transistorized short-wave communications system could have had himself a ball. If the system had included a miniature full-color television camera, he could have gone hog wild. In those days, such equipment would have been magic. All this is not _à propos_ of nothing. Mr. Raphael Poe was, in his own way, a magician. It is not to be supposed that the United States of America had no spy rings in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at that time. There were plenty of them. Raphael Poe could have, if it were so ordained, availed himself of the services of any one or all of them. He did not do so for two reasons. In the first place, the more people who are in on a secret, the more who can give it away. In other words, a ring, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest section. In the second place, Raphael Poe didn't need any assistance in the first place. That is, he needed no more assistance that most magicians do--a shill in the audience. In this particular case, the shill was his brother, Leonard Poe. * * * * * Operation Mapcase was as ultra-secret as it could possibly be. Although there were perhaps two dozen men who knew of the existence of the operation by its code name, such as the Naval officers who had helped get Raphael Poe to his destination, there were only five men who really knew what Operation Mapcase was all about. Two of these were, of course, Raphael and Leonard Poe. Two others were the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense. The fifth was Colonel Julius T. Spaulding, of United States Army Intelligence. On the seventh day after Raphael Poe's arrival in Moscow, the other four men met in Blair House, across the street from the White House, in a room especially prepared for the purpose. No one but the President knew the exact purpose of the meeting, although they had an idea that he wanted more information of some kind. The President himself was the last to arrive. Leaving two Secret Service men standing outside the room, he carefully closed the door and turned to face the Secretary of Defense, Colonel Spaulding, and Leonard Poe. "Sit down, gentlemen," he said, seating himself as he spoke. "Gentlemen, before we go any further, I must conduct one final experiment in order to justify Operation Mapcase. I will not explain it just yet." He looked at Lenny Poe, a small, dark-haired man with a largish nose. "Mr. Poe, can you contact your brother at this moment?" Lenny Poe was a man who was not overawed by anyone, and had no inclination to be formal, not even toward the President. "Yeah, sure," he said matter-of-factly. [Illustration] The President glanced at his watch. "It is now five minutes of ten. That makes it five minutes of six in the evening in Moscow. Is your brother free to move around? That is, can he go to a certain place in the city?" Lenny closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. "Rafe says he can go any place that the average citizen would be allowed to go." "Excellent," said the President. He gave Lenny an address--an intersection of two streets not far from Red Square. "Can he get there within fifteen minutes?" "Make it twenty," said Lenny. "Very well. Twenty minutes. When he gets there, I'll ask you to relay further instructions." Lenny Poe closed his eyes, folded his arms, and relaxed in his chair. The other three men waited silently. Nineteen minutes later, Lenny opened his eyes and said: "O.K. He's there. Now what?" "There is a lamppost on that corner, I believe," said the President. "Can your brother see it?" Lenny closed his eyes again. "Sure. There's a guy leaning against it." The President's eyes brightened. "Describe him!" Lenny, eyes still closed, said: "Five feet ten, heavy set, gray hair, dark-rimmed glasses, brown suit, flashy necktie. By the cut of his clothes, I'd say he was either British or American, probably American. Fifty-five or fifty-six years old." It was obvious to the Secretary of Defense and to Colonel Spaulding that the President was suppressing some inward excitement. "Very good, Mr. Poe!" he said. "Now, you will find a box of colored pencils and a sketch pad in that desk over there. Can you draw me a fairly accurate sketch of that man?" "Yeah, sure." Lenny opened his eyes, moved over to the desk, took out the pencils and sketch pad, and went to work. He had to close his eyes occasionally, but his work was incredibly rapid and, at the same time, almost photographically accurate. As the picture took form, the President's inward excitement increased perceptibly. When it was finally finished, Lenny handed the sketch to the President without a word. The President took it eagerly and his face broke out in his famous grin. "Excellent! Perfect!" He looked at Lenny. "Your brother hasn't attracted the man's attention in any way, has he?" "Nope," said Lenny. "Fine. The experiment is over. Relay my thanks to your brother. He can go ahead with whatever he was doing now." "I don't quite understand," said the Secretary of State. "I felt it necessary to make one final experiment of my own devising," the President said. "I wanted Raphael Poe to go to a particular place at a particular time, with no advance warning, to transmit a picture of something he had never seen before. I arranged this test myself, and I am positive that there could be no trickery." "Never seen before?" the Secretary repeated bewilderedly. He gestured at the sketch. "Why, that's obviously Bill Donovan, of the Moscow delegation. Poe could have seen a photograph of him somewhere before." "Even so," the President pointed out, "there would be no way of knowing that he would be at that spot. But that's beside the point. Look at that necktie!" "I had noticed it," the Defense Secretary admitted. It was certainly an outstanding piece of neckwear. As drawn by Leonard Poe, it was a piece of brilliant chartreuse silk, fully three and a half inches wide at its broadest. Against that background, rose-pink nude girls were cavorting with pale mauve satyrs. "That tie," said the President, "was sent to me fifteen years ago by on of my constituents, when I was in Congress. I never wore it, of course, but it would have been criminal to have thrown away such a magnificently obscene example of bad taste as that. "I sent it to Donovan in a sealed diplomatic pouch by special courier, with instructions to wear it at this time. He, of course, has no idea why he is standing there. He is merely obeying orders. "Gentlemen, this is completely convincing to me. Absolutely no one but myself knew what I had in mind. It would have required telepathy even to cheat. "Thank you very much, Mr. Poe. Colonel Spaulding, you may proceed with Operation Mapcase as planned." * * * * * "Dr. Malekrinova, will you initial these requisition forms, please." Dr. Sonya Malekrinova, a dowdy-looking, middle-aged woman with unplucked eyebrows and a mole on her chin, adjusted her steel-rimmed glasses, took the proffered papers from the clerk, ran her eyes over them, and then put her initials on the bottom of each page. "Thank you, Comrade Doctor," said the clerk when she handed back the sheaf of papers. "Certainly, Comrade." And the two of them went about their business. Not far away, in the Cathedral of St. Basil, Vladimir Turenski, alias Raphael Poe, was also apparently going about his business. The cathedral had not seen nor heard the Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church or any other church, for a good many decades. The Bolsheviks, in their zeal to protect the citizens of the Soviet Unions from the pernicious influence of religion, had converted it into a museum as soon as possible. It was the function of _Tovarishch_ Turenski to push a broom around the floors of the museum, and this he did with great determination and efficiency. He also cleaned windows and polished metalwork when the occasion demanded. He was only one of a large crew of similarly employed men, but he was a favorite with the Head Custodian, who not only felt sorry for the simple-minded deaf-mute, but appreciated the hard work he did. If, on occasion, Comrade Turenski would lean on his broom and fall into a short reverie, it was excusable because he still managed to get all his work done. Behind Comrade Turenski, a guide was explaining a display to a group of tourists, but Turenski ignored the distraction and kept his mind focused on the thoughts of Dr. Sonya Malekrinova. After nearly ten months of patient work, Raphael Poe had hit upon something that was, to his way of thinking, more important than all the information he had transmitted to Washington thus far. Picking brains telepathically was not, even for him, an easy job. He had the knack and the training but, in addition, there was the necessity of establishing a rapport with the other mind. Since he was a physicist and not a politician, it was much easier to get information from the mind of Sonya Malekrinova than to get it from the Premier. The only person with whom he could keep in contact over any great distance was his brother, and that only because the two of them had grown up together. He could pick up the strongest thoughts of any nearby person very easily. He did not need to hear the actual words, for instance, of a nearby conversation in order to follow it perfectly, because the words of verbal communication were strong in a person's mind. But getting deeper than that required an increasing amount of understanding of the functioning of the other person's mind. His ability to eavesdrop on conversations had been of immense benefit to Washington so far, but is was difficult for him to get close enough to the higher-ups in the Soviet government to get all the data that the President of the United States wanted. But now that he had established a firm mental linkage with one of the greatest physicists in the Soviet Union, he could begin to send information that would be of tremendous value to the United States. He brushed up a pile of trash, pushed it into a dust pan, and carried it off toward the disposal chute that led to the trash cans. In the room where the brooms were kept, he paused and closed his eyes. _Lenny! Are picking this up?_ _Sure, Rafe. I'm ready with the drawing board anytime you are._ As Dr. Sonya Malekrinova stood in her laboratory looking over the apparatus she was perfecting for the glory of the Soviet State, she had no notion that someone halfway around the world was also looking at it over her shoulder--or rather, through her own eyes. * * * * * Lenny started with the fives first, and worked his way up to the larger denominations. "Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty--forty, fifty, sixty...." he muttered happily to himself. "Two fifty, three, three-fifty, four, four-fifty." It was all there, so he smiled benevolently at the man in the pay window. "Thank you muchly." Then he stepped aside to let another lucky man cash a winning ticket. His horse had come in at fifteen, six-ten, four-fifty for Straight, Place, and Show, and sixty bucks on the nose had paid off very nicely. Lenny Poe took out his copy of the _Daily Racing Form_ and checked over the listing for the next race. _Hm-m-m, ha. Purse, $7500. Four-year-olds and up: handicap. Seven furlongs. Turf course. Hm-m-m, ha._ Lenny Poe had a passion for throwing his money away on any unpredictable event that would offer him odds. He had, deep down, an artistic soul, but he didn't let that interfere with his desire to lay a bet at the drop of an old fedora. He had already decided, several hours before, that Ducksoup, in the next race, would win handily and would pay off at something like twenty or twenty-five to one. But he felt it his duty to look one last time at the previous performance record, just to be absolutely positive. Satisfied, he folded the _Racing Form_, shoved it back into his pocket, and walked over to the fifty-dollar window. "Gimmie nine tickets on Ducksoup in the seventh," he said, plonking the handful of bills down on the counter. But before the man behind the window grating could take the money, a huge, hamlike, and rather hairy hand came down on top of his own hand, covering it and the money at the same time. "Hold it, Lenny," said a voice at the same time. Lenny jerked his head around to his right and looked up to see a largish man who had "cop" written all over him. Another such individual crowded past Lenny on his left to flash a badge on the man in the betting window, so that he would know that this wasn't a holdup. "Hey!" said Lenny. His mind was thinking fast. He decided to play his favorite role, that of the indignant Italian. "Whatsa da matta with you, hah? Thisa no a free country? A man gotta no rights?" "Come on, Mr. Poe," the big man said quietly, "this is important." "Poe? You outta you mind? Thatsa name of a river----or a raven. I'm a forgetta which. My namesa Manelli!" "_Scusi, signore_," the big man said with exaggerated politeness, "_ma se lei è veramente italiano, non' è l'uomo che cerchiamo._" Lenny's Italian was limited to a handful of words. He know he was trapped, but he faced the situation with aplomb. "Thatsa lie! I was inna Chicago that night!" "_Ah! Cosè credero. Avanti, saccentone._" He jerked his thumb toward the gate. "Let's go." Lenny muttered something that the big man didn't quite catch. "What'd you say?" "Upper United States--the northern United States," Lenny said calmly shoving his four hundred fifty dollars into his pocket. "That's where Chicago is. Never mind. Come in, boys; back to the drawing board." The two men escorted Lenny to a big, powerful Lincoln; he climbed into the back seat with the big one while the other one got behind the wheel. As soon as they had left the racetrack and were well out on the highway, the driver said: "You want to call in, Mario? This traffic is pretty heavy." The big man beside Lenny leaned forward, over the back of the front seat, unhooked the receiver of the scrambler-equipped radiophone, and sat back down. He thumbed a button on the side of the handset and said: "This is Seven Oh Two." After a short silence, he said: "You can call off the net. You want him brought in?" He listened for a moment. "O.K. Are we cleared through the main gate? O.K. Off." He leaned forward to replace the receiver, speaking to the driver as he did so. "Straight to the Air Force base. They've got a jet waiting there for him." He settled back comfortably and looked at Lenny. "You could at least tell people where you're going." "Very well," said Lenny. He folded his arms, closed his eyes, and relaxed. "Right now, I'm going off to dreamland." He waited a short while to see if the other would say anything. He didn't, so Lenny proceeded to do exactly what he had promised to do. He went off to dreamland. He had not been absolutely sure, when he made the promise, that he would actually do just that, but the odds were in favor of it. It was now one o'clock in the morning in Moscow, and Lenny's brother, Raphael, was a man of regular habits. Lenny reached out. When he made contact, all he got was a jumble of hash. It was as though someone had made a movie by cutting bits and snippets from a hundred different films, no bit more than six or seven frames long, with a sound track that might or might not match, and projected the result through a drifting fog, using an ever-changing lens that rippled like the surface of a wind-ruffled pool. Sometimes one figure would come into sharp focus for a fraction of a second, sometimes in color, sometimes not. Sometimes Lenny was merely observing the show, sometimes he was in it. _Rafe! Hey, Rafe! Wake up!_ The jumble of hash began to stabilize, becoming more coherent-- * * * * * Lenny sat behind the far desk, watching his brother come up the primrose path in a unicycle. He pulled it to a halt in front of the desk, opened the pilot's canopy, threw out a rope ladder, and climbed down. His gait was a little awkward, in spite of the sponge-rubber floor, because of the huge flowered carpetbag he was carrying. A battered top hat sat precariously on his blond, curly hair. "Lenny! Boy, am I glad to see you! I've got it! The whole trouble is in the wonkler, where the spadulator comes across the trellis grid!" He lifted the carpetbag and sat it down on the lab table. "Connect up the groffle meter! We'll show those pentagon pickles who has the push-and-go here!" "Rafe," Lenny said gently, "wake up. You're dreaming. You're asleep. I want to talk to you." "I know." He grinned widely. "And you don't want any back talk from me! Yok-yok-yok! Just wait'll I show you!" In his hands, he held an object which Lenny did not at first understand. Then Rafe's mind brought it into focus. "This"--Rafe held it up--"is a rocket motor!" "Rafe, wake up!" Lenny said. The surroundings stabilized a little more. "I will in just a minute, Lenny." Rafe was apologetic. "But let me show you this." It did bear some resemblance to a rocket motor. It was about as long as a man's forearm and consisted of a bulbous chamber at one end, which narrowed down into a throat and then widened into a hornlike exhaust nozzle. The chamber was black; the rest was shiny chrome. Rafe grasped it by the throat with one hand. The other, he clasped firmly around the combustion chamber. "Watch! Now watch!" He gave the bulbous, rubbery chamber a hard squeeze-- "_SQUAWK!_" went the horn. "Rafe!" Lenny shouted. "Wake up! WAKE UP!" Rafe blinked as the situation clarified. "What? Just A Second. Lenny. Just...." * * * * * "... _A second._" Raphael Poe blinked his eyes open. The moon was shining through the dirty windows of the dingy little room that was all he could call home--for a while, at least. Outside the window were the gray streets of Moscow. His brother's thoughts resounded in his fully awake brain. _Rafe! You awake?_ _Sure. Sure. What is it?_ The conversation that followed was not in words or pictures, but a weird combination of both, plus a strong admixture of linking concepts that were neither. In essence, Lenny merely reported that he had taken the day off to go to the races and that Colonel Spaulding was evidently upset for some reason. He wondered if Rafe were in any kind of trouble. _No trouble. Everything's fine at this end. But Dr. Malekrinova won't be back on the job until tomorrow afternoon--or,_ this _afternoon, rather._ _I know_, Lenny replied. _That's why I figured I could take time off for a go at the ponies._ _I wonder why they're in such a fuss, then?_ Rafe thought. _I'll let you know when I find out_, Lenny said. _Go back to sleep and don't worry._ [Illustration] * * * * * In a small office in the Pentagon, Colonel Julius T. Spaulding cradled the telephone on his desk and looked at the Secretary of Defense. "That was the airfield. Poe will be here shortly. We'll get to the bottom of this pretty quickly." "I hope so, Julius," the Secretary said heavily. "The president is beginning to think we're both nuts." The colonel, a lean, nervous man with dark, bushy eyebrows and a mustache to match, rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. "I'm beginning to agree with him." The Defense Secretary scowled at him. "What do you mean?" "Anybody who takes telepathy seriously is considered a nut," said the colonel. "True," said the Secretary, "but that doesn't mean we _are_ nuts." "Oh, yeah?" The colonel took the cigar out of his mouth a gestured with it. "Anybody who'd do something that convinces all his friends he's nuts must be nuts." The Secretary smiled wanly. "I wish you wouldn't be so logical. You almost convince me." "Don't worry," said the colonel. "I'm not ready to have this room measured for sponge-rubber wallpaper just yet. Operation Mapcase has helped a lot in the past few months, and it will help even more." "All you have to do is get the bugs out of it," said the Secretary. "If we did that," Colonel Spaulding said flatly, "the whole operation would fold from lack of personnel." "Just carry on the best you can," the Secretary said gloomily as he got up to leave. "I'll let you handle it." "Fine. I'll call you later." * * * * * Twenty minutes after the Defense Secretary had gone, Lenny Poe was shown into Colonel Spaulding's office. The agent who had brought him in closed the door gently, leaving him alone with the colonel. "I told you I'd be back this evening. What were you in such a hurry about?" "You're supposed to stay in touch," Colonel Spaulding pointed out. "I don't mind your penchant for ponies particularly, but I'd like to know where to find you if I need you." "I wouldn't mind in the least, colonel. I'd phone you every fifteen minutes if that's what you wanted. Except for one thing." "What's that?" Lenny jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Your linguistically talented flatfeet. Did you ever try to get into a floating crap game when you were being followed by a couple of bruisers who look more like cops than cops do?" "Look, Poe, I can find you plenty of action right here in Washington, if it won't offend your tender sensibilities to shoot crap with a senator or two. Meanwhile, sit down and listen. This is important." Lenny sat own reluctantly. "O.K. What is it?" "Dr. Davenport and his crew are unhappy about that last batch of drawings you and I gave 'em." "What's the matter? Don't they like the color scheme? I never thought scientists had any artistic taste, anyway." "It's got nothing to do with that. The--" The phone rang. Colonel Spaulding scooped it up and identified himself. Then: "What? Yeah. All right, send him in." He hung up and looked back at Lenny. "Davenport. We can get his story firsthand. Just sit there and look important." Lenny nodded. He knew that Dr. Amadeus Davenport was aware that the source of those drawings was Soviet Russia, but he did not know how they had been obtained. As far as he knew, it was just plain, ordinary spy work. He came in briskly. He was a tall, intelligent-looking man with a rather craggy face and thoughtful brown eyes. He put a large brief case on the floor, and, after the preliminaries were over, he came right to the point. "Colonel Spaulding, I spoke to the Secretary of Defense, and he agreed that perhaps this situation might be cleared up if I talked directly with you." "I hope so," the colonel said. "Just what is it that seems to be bothering you?" "These drawings," Davenport said, "don't make any sense. The device they're supposed to represent couldn't do anything. Look; I'll show you." He took from his brief case photostatic copies of some of the drawings Lenny had made. Five of them were straight blueprint-type drawings; the sixth was a copy of Lenny's near-photographic paintings of the device itself. "This component, here," he said, gesturing at the set of drawings, "simply baffles us. We're of the opinion that your agents are known to the Soviet government and have been handed a set of phony plans." "What's it supposed to do?" Lenny asked. "We don't know what it's _supposed_ to do," the scientist said, "but it's doubtful that it would _actually_ do anything." He selected one of the photocopies. "See that thing? The one shaped like the letter Q with an offset tail? According to the specifications, it is supposed to be painted emerald green, but there's no indication of what it is." * * * * * Lenny Poe reached out, picked up the photocopy and looked at it. It was--or had been--an exact copy of the drawing that was used by Dr. Sonya Malekrinova. But, whereas the original drawing has been labeled entirely in Cyrillic characters, these labels were now in English. The drawings made no sense to Lenny at all. They hadn't when he'd made them. His brother was a scientist, but Lenny understood none of it. "Who translated the Russian into English?" he asked. "A Mr. Berensky. He's one of our best experts on the subject. I assure you the translations are accurate, Dr. Davenport said. "But if you don't know what that thing is," the colonel objected, "how can you say the device won't work? Maybe it would if that Q-shaped thing was--" "I know what you mean," Davenport interrupted. "But that's not the only part of the machine that doesn't make any sense." He went on to explain other discrepancies he had detected in the drawings, but none of it penetrated to Lenny, although Colonel Spaulding seemed to be able to follow the physicist's conversation fairly readily. "Well, what's you suggestion, doctor?" the colonel asked at last. "If you agents could get further data," the physicist said carefully, "it might be of some use. At the same time, I'd check up on the possibility that your agents are known to the NKVD." "I'll see what can be done," said the colonel. "Would you mind leaving those copies of the drawings with me for a while?" "Go right ahead," Davenport said. "One other thing. If we assume this device is genuine, then it must serve some purpose. It might help if we knew what the device is supposed to _do_." "I'll see what can be done," Colonel Spaulding repeated. When Davenport had gone, Spaulding looked at Poe. "Got any explanation for that one?" "No," Lenny admitted. "All I can do is check with Rafe. He won't be awake for a few hours yet. I'll check on it and give you an answer in the morning." * * * * * Early next morning, Colonel Spaulding walked through his outer office. He stopped at the desk where the pretty brunette WAC sergeant was typing industriously, leaned across the desk, and gave her his best leer. "How about a date tonight, music lover?" he asked, "'_Das Rheingold_' is playing tonight. A night at the opera would do you good." "I'm sorry, sir," she said primly, "you know enlisted women aren't allowed to date officers." "Make out an application for OCS. I'll sign it." She smiled at him. "But then I wouldn't have any excuse for turning you down. And then what would my husband say?" "I'll bribe him. I'll send _him_ to OCS." "He's not eligible. Officers are automatically disqualified." Colonel Spaulding sighed. "A guy can't win against competition like that. Anything new this morning?" "Mr. Poe is waiting in your office. Other than that, there's just the routine things." He went on into his office. Lenny Poe was seated behind the colonel's desk, leaning back in the swivel chair, his feet on the top of the desk. He was sound asleep. The colonel walked over to the desk, took his cigar from his mouth, and said: "_Good_ morrrning, Colonel Spaulding!" Lenny snapped awake. "I'm not Colonel Spaulding," he said. "Then why are you sitting in Colonel Spaulding's chair?" "I figured if I was asleep nobody'd know the difference." Lenny got up and walked over to one of the other chairs. "These don't lean back comfortably. I can't sleep in 'em." "You can sleep later. How was your session with Rafe?" Lenny glowered glumly. "I wish you and Rafe hadn't talked me into this job. It's a strain on the brain. I don't know how he expects anyone to understand all that garbage." "All what garbage?" Lenny waved a hand aimlessly. "All this scientific guff. I'm an artist, not a scientist. If Rafe can get me a clear picture of something, I can copy it, but when he tries to explain something scientific, he might as well be thinking in Russian or Old Upper Middle High Martian or something." "I know," said Colonel Spaulding, looking almost as glum as Lenny. "Did you get anything at all that would help Dr. Davenport figure out what those drawings mean?" "Rafe says that the translations are all wrong," Lenny said, "but I can't get a clear picture of just what _is_ wrong." * * * * * Colonel Spaulding thought for a while in silence. Telepathy--at least in so far as the Poe brothers practiced it--certainly had its limitations. Lenny couldn't communicate mentally with anyone except his brother Rafe. Rafe could pick up the thoughts of almost anyone if he happened to be close by, but couldn't communicate over a long distance with anyone but Lenny. The main trouble lay in the fact that it was apparently impossible to transmit a concept directly from Brain A to Brain B unless the basic building blocks of the concept were already present in Brain B. Raphael Poe, for instance, had spent a long time studying Russian, reading Dostoevski, Tolstoy, and Turgenev in the original tongue, familiarizing himself with modern Russian thought through the courtesy of _Izvestia_, _Pravda_, and _Krokodil_, and, finally, spending time in the United Nations building and near the Russian embassy in order to be sure that he could understand the mental processes involved. Now, science has a language of its own. Or, rather, a multiplicity of languages, each derived partly from the native language of the various scientific groups and partly of borrowings from other languages. In the physical sciences especially, the language of mathematics is a further addition. More than that, the practice of the scientific method automatically induces a thought pattern that is different from the type of thought pattern that occurs in the mind of a person who is not scientifically oriented. Lenny's mind was a long way from being scientifically oriented. Worse, he was a bigot. He not only didn't know why the light in his room went on when he flipped the switch, he didn't _want_ to know. To him, science was just so much flummery, and he didn't want his brain cluttered up with it. Facts mean nothing to a bigot. He has already made up his mind, and he doesn't intend to have his solid convictions disturbed by anything so unimportant as a contradictory fact. Lenny was of the opinion that all mathematics was arcane gobbledygook, and his precise knowledge of the mathematical odds in poker and dice games didn't abate that opinion one whit. Obviously, a mind like that is utterly incapable of understanding a projected thought of scientific content; such a thought bounces off the impregnable mind shield that the bigot has set up around his little area of bigotry. Colonel Spaulding had been aware of these circumstances since the inception of the Operation Mapcase. Even though he, himself, had never experienced telepathy more than half a dozen times in his life, he had made a study of the subject and was pretty well aware of its limitations. The colonel might have dismissed--as most men do--his own fleeting experiences as "coincidence" or "imagination" if it had not been for the things he had seen and felt in Africa during World War II. He had only been a captain then, on detached duty with British Intelligence, under crusty old Colonel Sir Cecil Haversham, who didn't believe a word of "all that mystic nonsense." Colonel Haversham had made the mistake of alienating one of the most powerful of the local witch doctors. The British Government had hushed it all up afterwards, of course, but Spaulding still shuddered when he thought of the broken-spirited, shrunken caricature of his old self that Colonel Haversham had become after he told the witch doctor where to get off. Spaulding had known that there were weaknesses in the telepathic communication linkage that was the mainspring of Operation Mapcase, but he had thought that they could be overcome by the strengths of the system. Lenny had no blockage whatever against receiving visual patterns and designs. He could reproduce an electronic wiring diagram perfectly because, to him, it was not a grouping of scientific symbols, but a design of lines, angles, and curves. At first, it is true, he had had a tendency to change them here and there, to make the design balance better, to make it more aesthetically satisfying to his artistic eye, but that tendency had been easily overcome, and Colonel Spaulding was quite certain that that wasn't what was wrong now. Still-- "Lenny," he said carefully, "are you sure you didn't jigger up those drawings to make 'em look prettier?" Lenny Poe gave the colonel a look of disgust. "Positive. Rafe checked 'em over every inch of the way as I was drawing them, and he rechecked again last night--or this morning--on those photostats Davenport gave us. That's when he said there was something wrong with the translations. "But he couldn't make it clear just what was wrong, eh?" Lenny shrugged. "How anybody could make any sense out of that gobbledegook is beyond me." The colonel blew out a cloud of cigar smoke and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. As long as the diagrams were just designs on paper, Lenny Poe could pick them up fine. Which meant that everything was jim-dandy as long as the wiring diagrams were labeled in the Cyrillic alphabet. The labels were just more squiggles to be copied as a part of the design. But if the labels were in English, Lenny's mind would try to "make sense" out of them, and since scientific concepts did _not_ "make sense" to him, the labels came out as pure nonsense. In one of his drawings, a lead wire had been labeled "simply ground to powder," and if the original drawing hadn't been handy to check with, it might have taken quite a bit of thought to realize that what was meant was "to power supply ground." Another time, a GE 2N 188A transistor had come out labeled GEZNISSA. There were others--much worse. Russian characters, on the other hand, didn't have to make any sense to Lenny, so his mind didn't try to force them into a preconceived mold. * * * * * Lenny unzipped the leather portfolio he had brought with him--a specially-made carrier that looked somewhat like an oversized brief case. "Maybe these'll help," he said. "We managed to get two good sketches of the gadget--at least, as much of it as that Russian lady scientist has put together so far. I kind of like the rather abstract effect you get from all those wires snaking in and around, with that green glass tube in the center. Pretty, isn't it?" [Illustration] "Very," said the colonel without conviction. "I wonder if it will help Davenport any?" He looked at the pictures for several seconds more, then, suddenly, his eyes narrowed. "Lenny--this piece of green glass--the thing's shaped like the letter Q." "Yeah, sort of. Why?" "You said it was a tube, but you didn't make it look hollow when you drew it." "It isn't; it's solid. Does a tube have to be hollow? Yeah, I guess it does, doesn't it? Well, then, it isn't a tube." Colonel Spaulding picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Colonel Spaulding here," he said after a moment. "Let me speak to Dr. Davenport." And, after a wait: "This is Colonel Spaulding, doctor. I think we may have something for you." "Good morning, colonel. I'm glad to hear that. What is it?" "The Q-shaped gadget--the one that you said was supposed to be painted emerald green. Are you _sure_ that's the right translation of the Russian?" "Well ... uh--" Davenport hesitated. "I can't be sure on my own say-so, of course. _I_ don't understand Russian. But I assure you that Mr. Berensky is perfectly reliable." "Oh, I have no doubt of that," Colonel Spaulding said easily. "But, tell me, does Mr. Berensky know how to read a circuit diagram?" "He does," Davenport said, somewhat testily. "Of course, he wasn't shown the diagram itself. We had the Russian labels copied, and he translated from a list." "I had a sneaking suspicion that was it," said Spaulding. "Tell me, doctor, what does L-E-A-D spell?" "Lead," said the doctor promptly, pronouncing it _leed_. Then, after a pause, he said: "Or lead," this time pronouncing it _led_. "It would depend on the context." "Suppose it was on a circuit diagram," the colonel prompted. "Then it would probably be _leed_. What's all this leading up to, colonel?" "Bear with me. Suppose you had a cable coming from a storage battery, and you wanted to make sure that the cable was reasonably resistant to corrosion, so you order it made out of the metal, lead. It would be a _led leed_, wouldn't it?" "Um-m-m ... I suppose so." "You might get pretty confused if you didn't have a circuit diagram in front of you to tell you what the label was talking about, mightn't you?" "I see what you mean," the scientist said slowly. "But we can't show those circuit diagrams to Berensky. The Secretary of Defense himself has classified them as Class Triple-A Ultra-Hyper Top Secret. That puts them just below the Burn-The-Contents-Before-Reading class, and Berensky doesn't have that kind of clearance." "Then get somebody else," Colonel Spaulding said tiredly. "All you need is a man who can understand technical Russian and has a top-level secrecy clearance. If we haven't got at least one man in these United States with such simple qualifications as those, them we might as well give the country over to the Reds or back to the Redskins, since our culture is irreprievably doomed." And he lowered the phone gently to its cradle. "There's no such word as 'irreprievably'," Lenny pointed out. "There is now," said Colonel Spaulding. * * * * * Raphael Poe moseyed through the streets of Moscow in an apparently aimless manner. The expression on his face was that of a reasonably happy moron. His aimless manner was only apparent. Actually, he was heading toward the Lenin Soviet People's Higher Research Laboratories. Dr. Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova would be working late this evening, and he wanted to get as close as possible in order to pick up as much information as he could. Rafe had a great deal of admiration for that woman, he admitted to himself. She was, granted, as plain as an unsalted _matzoh_. No. That was an understatement. If it were possible to die of the uglies, Sonya Borisovna would have been dangerously ill. Her disposition did nothing to alleviate that drawback. She fancied herself as cold, hard, analytical, and ruthless; actually she was waspish, arrogant, overbearing, and treacherous. What she considered in herself to be scientific detachment was really an isolation born of fear and distrust of the entire human race. To her, Communism was a religion; "_Das Kapital_" and "_The Communist Manifesto_" were holy writ enshrining the dogmata of Marxism-Leninism, and the conflict with the West was a _jehad_, a holy war in which God, in His manifestation as Dialectic Materialism, would naturally win out in the end. All of which goes to show that a scientific bent, in itself, does not necessarily keep one from being a bigot. Rafe's admiration for the woman stemmed solely from the fact that, in spite of all the powerful drawbacks that existed in her mind, she was still capable of being a brilliant, if somewhat erratic scientist. There was a more relaxed air in Moscow these days. The per capita production of the Soviet Union still did not come up to that of the United States, but the recent advances in technology did allow a feeling of accomplishment, and the hard drive for superiority was softened a trifle. It was no longer considered the height of indolence and unpatriotic time-wasting to sit on a bench and feed pigeons. Nor was food so scarce and costly that throwing away a few bread crumbs could be considered sabotage. So Rafe Poe found himself a quiet corner near the Lenin Soviet People's Laboratories, took out a small bag of dried breadcrumbs, and was soon surrounded by pigeons. Dr. Malekrinova was carefully calibrating and balancing the electronic circuits that energized and activated and controlled the output of the newly-installed beam generator--a ring of specially-made greenish glass that had a small cylinder of the same glass projecting out at a tangent. Her assistant, Alexis, a man of small scientific ability but a gifted mechanic, worked stolidly with her. It was not an easy job for Alexis; Sonya Borisovna was by no means an easy woman to work with. There was, as there should have been, a fifty-fifty division in all things--a proper state of affairs in a People's Republic. Alexis Andreyevich did half the physical work, got all the blame when things went wrong, and none of the credit when things went right. Sonya Borisovna got the remaining fifty percent. Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova had been pushing herself too hard, and she knew it. But, she told herself, for the glory of the Soviet peoples, the work must go on. After spending two hours taking down instrument readings, she took the results to her office and began to correlate them. _Have to replace that 140-9.0 micromicrofarad frequency control on stage two with something more sensitive_, she thought. _And the field modulation coils require closer adjustment._ She took off her glasses and rubbed at her tired eyes while she thought. _Perhaps the 25 microfarad, 12 volt electrolytic condenser could be used to feed the pigeons, substituting a breadcrumb capacitor in the sidewalk circuit._ She opened her eyes suddenly and stared at the blank wall in front of her. "Pigeons?" she said wonderingly. "_Breadcrumb_ capacitor? Am I losing my mind? What kind of nonsense is that?" She looked back down at her notes, then replaced her glasses so that she could read them. Determined not to let her mind wander in that erratic fashion again, she returned her attention to the work at hand. She found herself wondering if it might not be better to chuck the whole job and get out while the getting was good. _The old gal_, she thought, _is actually tapping my mind! She's picking up everything!_ Sonya Borisovna sat bolt upright in her chair, staring at the blank wall again. "Why am I thinking such nonsense?" she said aloud. "And why should I be thinking in English?" When her words registered on her ears, she realized that she was actually _speaking_ in English. She was thoroughly acquainted with the language, of course, but it was not normal for her to think in it unless she happened to be conversing with someone in that tongue. The first whisper of a suspicion began to take form in the mind of Dr. Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova. Half a block away, Raphael Poe emptied the last of his breadcrumbs on the sidewalk and began walking away. He kept his mind as blank as possible, while his brow broke out in a cold sweat. * * * * * "That," said Colonel Julius Spaulding scathingly, "is as pretty a mess as I've seen in years." "It's a breadboard circuit, I'll admit," Dr. Davenport said defensively, "but it's built according to the schematics you gave us." "Doctor," said the colonel, "during the war the British dropped our group a radio transmitter. It was the only way to get the stuff into Africa quickly. The parachute failed to open. The transmitter fell two thousand feet, hit the side of a mountain, and tumbled down another eight hundred feet. When we found it, four days later, its wiring was in better shape than that thing is in now." "It's quite sufficient to test the operation of the device," Davenport said coldly. Spaulding had to admit to himself that it probably was. The thing was a slapdash affair--the colonel had a strong feeling that Davenport had assigned the wiring job to an apprentice and gave him half an hour to do the job--but the soldering jobs looked tight enough, and the components didn't look as though they'd all been pulled out of the salvage bin. What irritated Colonel Spaulding was Davenport's notion that the whole thing was a waste of time, energy, money, and materials, and, therefore, there was no point in doing a decent job of testing it at all. He was glad that Davenport didn't know how the information about the device had been transported to the United States. As it was, he considered the drawings a hoax on the part of the Russians; if he had been told that they had been sent telepathically, he would probably have gone into fits of acute exasperation over such idiocy. The trouble with Davenport was that, since the device didn't make any sense to him, he didn't believe it would function at all. "Oh, it will do _something_, all right," he'd said once, "but it won't be anything that needs all that apparatus. Look here--" He had pointed toward the schematic. "Where do you think all that energy is going? All you're going to get is a little light, a lot of heat, and a couple of burned out coils. I could do the same job cheaper with a dozen 250 watt light bulbs." To be perfectly honest with himself, Spaulding had to admit that he wasn't absolutely positive that the device would do anything in particular, either. His own knowledge of electronic circuitry was limited to ham radio experience, and even that was many years out of date. He couldn't be absolutely sure that the specifications for the gadget hadn't been garbled in transmission. The Q-shaped gizmo, for instance. It had taken the better part of a week for Raphael Poe to transmit the information essential to the construction of that enigmatic bit of glass. Rafe had had to sit quietly in the privacy of his own room and print out the specifications in Russian, then sit and look at the paper while Lenny copied the "design." Then each paper had to be carefully destroyed, which wasn't easy to do. You don't go around burning papers in a crowded Russian tenement unless you want the people in the next room to wonder what you're up to. Then the drawings Lenny had made had had to be translated into English and the piece carefully made to specifications. Now here it was, all hooked up and, presumably, ready for action. Colonel Spaulding fervently hoped there would _be_ some action; he didn't like the smug look on Dr. Amadeus Davenport's face. * * * * * The device was hooked up on a testing-room circuit and controlled from outside. The operation could be watched through a heavy pane of bulletproof glass. "With all that power going into it," Davenport said, "I don't want anyone to get hurt by spatters of molten metal when those field coils blow." They went outside to the control console, and Dr. Davenport flipped the energizing switch. After the device had warmed up on low power, Davenport began turning knobs slowly, increasing the power flow. In the testing room, the device just sat there, doing nothing visible, but the meters on the control console showed that something was going on. A greenish glow came from the housing that surrounded the Q-shaped gadget. "Where the Russians made their mistake in trying to fool anyone with that thing was in their design of that laser component," said Dr. Davenport. "Or, I should say, the thing that is supposed to look like a laser component." "Laser?" said Colonel Spaulding uncomprehendingly. "It means 'light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation'," Davenport explained. "Essentially, a laser consists of a gas-filled tube or a solid ruby bar with parallel mirrors at both ends. By exciting the atoms from outside, light is generated within the tube, and some of it begins to bounce back and forth between the mirrors at the ends. This tends to have a cascade effect on the atoms which have picked up the energy from outside, so that more and more of the light generated inside the tube tends to be parallel to the length of the tube. One of the mirrors is only partially silvered, and eventually the light bouncing back and forth becomes powerful enough to flash through the half-silvered end, giving a coherent beam of light." "Maybe that's what this is supposed to be," said the colonel. Davenport chuckled dryly. "Not a chance. Not with an essentially circular tube that isn't even silvered." Lenny Poe, the colonel noticed, wasn't the only person around who didn't care whether the thing he referred to as a "tube" was hollow or not. "Is it doing anything?" Colonel Spaulding asked anxiously, trying to read the meters over Davenport's shoulder. "It's heating up," Davenport said dryly. Spaulding looked back at the apparatus. A wisp of smoke was rising slowly from a big coil. A relay clicked minutely. _WHAP!_ For a confused second, everything seemed to happen at once. But it didn't; there was a definite order to it. First, a spot on the ceramic tile wall of the room became suddenly red, orange, white hot. Then there was a little crater of incandescent fury, as though a small volcano had erupted in the wall. Following that, there was a sputtering and crackling from the innards of the device itself, and a cloud of smoke arose suddenly, obscuring things in the room. Finally, there was the crash of circuit-breakers as they reacted to the overload from the short circuit. There was silence for a moment, then the hiss of the automatic fire extinguishers in the testing room as they poured a cloud of carbon dioxide snow on the smoldering apparatus. "There," said Davenport with utter satisfaction. "What did I tell you?" "You didn't tell me this thing was a heat-ray projector," said Colonel Spaulding. "What are you talking about?" Dr. Davenport said disdainfully. "Develop the film in those automatic cameras," Spaulding said, "and I'll show you what I'm talking about!" As far as Colonel Spaulding was concerned, the film showed clearly what had happened. A beam of energy had leaped from the "tail" of the Q-tube, hit the ceramic tile of the wall, and burned its way through in half a second or so. The hole in the wall, surrounded by fused ceramic, was mute evidence of the occurrence of what Spaulding had seen. But Dr. Davenport pooh-poohed the whole thing. Evidence to the contrary, he was quite certain that no such thing had happened. A piece of hot glass from a broken vacuum tube had done it, he insisted. A piece of hot glass had burned its way through half an inch of tile? And a wall? Davenport muttered something about the destructive effects of shaped charges. He was more willing to believe that something as wildly improbable as that had happened than admit that the device had done what Colonel Spaulding was quite certain it had done. Within three hours, Davenport had three possible explanations of what had happened, each of which required at least four unlikely things to happen coincidentally. Colonel Spaulding stalked back to his office in a state of angry disgust. Just because the thing was foreign to Davenport's notions, he had effectively tied his own hands--and Colonel Spaulding's, too. "Where's Lenny Poe?" he asked the WAC sergeant. "I want to talk to him." She shook her head. "I don't know, sir. Lieutenant Fesner called in half an hour ago. Mr. Poe has eluded them again." [Illustration] Colonel Spaulding gazed silently at the ceiling for a long moment. Then: "Sergeant Nugget, take a letter. To the President of the United States, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. "Dear Sir. Consider this my resignation. I have had so much experience with jackasses lately that I have decided to change my name to Hackenbush and become a veterinarian. Yours truly, et cetera. Got that?" "Yes, sir," said the sergeant. "Burn it. When Fumblefingers Fesner and his boys find Lenny Poe again, I want to know immediately." He stalked on into his office. * * * * * Raphael Poe was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Establishing a close rapport with another mind can be a distinct disadvantage at times. A spy is supposed to get information without giving any; a swapping of information is not at all to his advantage. It was impossible to keep his mind a perfect blank. What he had to do was keep his strongest surface thoughts entirely on innocuous things. The trouble with that was that it made it extremely difficult to think about some way to get out of the jam he was in. Thinking on two levels at once, while not impossible, required a nicety of control that made wire-walking over Niagara look easy. The thing to do was to make the surface thoughts automatically repetitive. A song. "_In a hall of strange description (Antiquarian Egyptian), Figuring his monthly balance sheet, a troubled monarch sat With a frown upon his forehead, hurling interjections horrid At the state of his finances, for his pocketbook was flat._" Simultaneously, he kept a picture in his mind's eye. It had to be something vivid that would be easy to concentrate on. The first thing that came to mind was the brilliant necktie that the President had used in his test several months before. He conjured it up in all its chartreuse glory, then he animated it. Mauve satyrs danced with rose-pink nymphs and chased them over the yellow-green landscape. "_Not a solitary single copper cent had he to jingle In his pocket, and his architects had gone off on a strike, Leaving pyramids unfinished, for their wages had diminished, And their credit vanished likewise, in a way they didn't like._" Rafe could tell that Dr. Malekrinova's mind was trying to reject the alien ideas that were coming into her mind. She wasn't consciously trying to pick up Rafe's thoughts. But the rejection was ineffective because of its fascination. The old business about the horse's tail. If you see a white horse, you'll soon get rich if you can keep from thinking about the horse's tail until it's out of sight. The first thought that comes to mind is: "I mustn't think about the horse's tail." A self-defeating proposition. If Sonya Borisovna had been certain that she was receiving the thoughts telepathically, she might have been able to reject them. But her mind rejected the idea of telepathy instead, so she was susceptible to the thoughts because she thought they were her own. The cavorting of the nymphs and satyrs became somewhat obscene, but Rafe didn't bother to correct it. He had more to worry about than offending the rather prim mind of Dr. Malekrinova. "_It was harder for His Royal Highness than for sons of toil, For the horny-handed workmen only ate three figs per day, While the King liked sweet potatoes, puddings, pies, and canned tomatoes, Boneless ham, and Bluepoint oysters cooked some prehistoric way._" What to do now? Should he try to get out of Russia? Was there any quick way out? He had all the information he needed on the heat-beam projector that Dr. Malekrinova was building. The theory behind it was perfectly clear; all it needed was further experimentation. If it worked out according to theory, it would be an almost perfect defense against even the fastest intercontinental ballistic missiles. "_As he growled, the Royal grumbler spied a bit of broken tumbler In a long undusted corner just behind the chamber door. When his hungry optics spied it, he stood silently and eyed it, Then he smote his thigh with ecstasy and danced about the floor._" Maybe he should try to make a run for the American Embassy. No. No one there knew him, and they probably couldn't get him out of the country, anyway. Besides, it would take him too long to explain the situation to them. "_'By the wit Osiris gave me! This same bit of glass shall save me! I shall sell it as a diamond at some stupendous price! And whoe'er I ask to take it will find, for his own sweet sake, it Will be better not to wait until I have to ask him twice!'_" The theory behind the heat projector was simply an extension of the laser theory, plus a few refinements. Inside a ring made of the proper material, the light, acted upon by exterior magnetic fields, tended to move in a circle, so that the photon cascade effect was all in one direction instead of bouncing back and forth between a pair of mirrors. That light could be bent around corners by making it travel through a glass rod was well known, and the Malekrinova Q-tube took advantage of that effect. In a way, the principle was similar to that of the cyclotron, except that instead of spinning ions around in a circle to increase their velocity a beam of coherent light was circulated to increase its intensity. Then, at the proper moment, a beam of intense coherent light shot out of the tangent that formed the tail of the Q-tube. If the material of the Q was properly constructed and contained atoms that fluoresced strongly in the infra red, you had a heat beam that delivered plenty of power. And, since the radiation was linear and "in step," the Q-tube didn't heat up much at all. The cascade effect took most of the energy out as radiation. "_Then a Royal Proclamation was dispatched throughout the nation, Most imperatively calling to appear before the King. Under penalties most cruel, every man who sold a jewel Or who bought and bartered precious stones, and all that sort of thing._" But knowing all that didn't help Raphael Poe or the United States of America one whit if the information couldn't be gotten out of Russia and into Colonel Spaulding's hands. Lenny had told him of the trouble the colonel was having with Dr. Davenport. If he could only communicate with Lenny! But if he did, Dr. Malekrinova would pick up every bit of it, and that would be the end of that. No, he had to figure out some way to get himself and the information both out of the country. Meanwhile, he had to keep thinking of an animated necktie. And he had to keep singing. "_Thereupon, the jewelers' nether joints all quaked and knocked together, As they packed their Saratogas in lugubrious despair. It was ever their misfortune to be pillaged by extortion, And they thought they smelled a rodent on the sultry desert air._" Lenny Poe shoved open the door of Colonel Spaulding's outer office with a violence that startled Sergeant Nugget. "Is Spaulding in?" he barked. "I think he's expecting you," she said. There was no time to buzz the colonel; Poe was already opening the door. "Rafe's in trouble!" Lenny said hurriedly, slamming the door behind him. "Where have you been?" snapped the colonel. "Never mind that! Rafe's in trouble, I said! We've gotta figure a way to get him out of it!" Colonel Spaulding dropped all thought of bawling out Poe. "What'd he say? What's the trouble?" "All he's doing is broadcasting that necktie--like an animated cartoon in technicolor. And he's singing." "Singing? Singing what?" "_As they faced the Great Propylon, with an apprehensive smile on, Sculptured there in heiroglyphics six feet wide and nine feet high Was the threat of King Rameses to chop every man to pieces Who, when shown the Royal diamond, would dare refuse to buy._" Colonel Spaulding blinked. "That's pretty. What does it mean?" "Nothing; it's a song, that's all. That female Russian scientist can read Rafe's mind, and he's broadcasting this stuff to cover up!" Quickly, he told Spaulding what the situation was as he had been able to piece it together from Rafe's secondary thoughts. "Ye Gods!" Colonel Spaulding slapped at his brow. Then he grabbed for the telephone and started dialing. Lenny dropped into one of the chairs, closed his eyes, and concentrated. _Rafe! Rafe! Listen to me! Rafe!_ "_Then the richest dealer, Mulai Hassan, eyed the gem and coolly Said, 'The thing is but a common tumbler-bottom, nothing more!' Whereupon, the King's Assassin drew his sword, and Mulai Hassan Never peddled rings again upon the Nile's primeval shore._" But below the interference came Rafe's thoughts. And the one thing of primary importance to him was to get the information on the heat-beam generator to the United States. No bigotry, no matter how strong, is totally impregnable. Even the most narrow-minded racial bigot will make an exception if a person of the despised race risks his own life to save the life of the bigot or someone the bigot loves. The bigotry doesn't collapse--not by a long shot. But an exception is made in that one case. Lenny Poe made an exception. Any information that was worth his brother's life was _Important_! Therefore, it was not, could not be, scientific gobbledegook, no matter how it sounded. _Rafe, give it to me! Try me! I can copy it!_ "_Then Abdullah abd Almahdi faintly said the stone was shoddy, But he thought that, in a pinch, he might bid fifty cents himself. There ensued a slight commotion where he could repent the notion, And Abdullah was promoted to the Oriental Shelf._" _Rafe! Stop singing that stupid song and give me the stuff! She can't learn anything if you just think about that theory stuff. She already knows that! Come on! Give!_ Lenny Poe grabbed a pencil and a sheaf of paper from the colonel's desk and began writing frantically as the _Song of the Egyptian Diamond_ stopped suddenly. * * * * * Words. Nonsense words. That's all most of the stuff was to Lenny. It didn't matter. He spelled them as he thought they should be, and if he made a mistake, Rafe would correct him. Rafe tried to keep a picture of the words as they would look if printed while he thought them verbally, and that helped. The information came across in the only way it could come across--not as concepts, but as symbols. Lenny hardly noticed that the Secretary of Defense and the President had come into the room. He didn't even realize that Colonel Spaulding was feeding him fresh sheets of paper. Lenny didn't seem to notice the time passing, nor the pain in his hand as the muscles tired. He kept writing. The President left with the Defense Secretary and came back again after a while, but Lenny ignored them. And when it was over, he pushed pencil and paper aside and, massaging his right hand with his left, sat there with his eyes closed. Then, slowly, a smile spread over his face. "Well, I'll be damned," he said slowly and softly. "Mr. Poe," said the President, "is there any danger that your brother will be captured within the next hour?" Lenny looked up with a startled grin. "Oh. Hi. I didn't notice you, Mr. President. What'd you say?" The President repeated his question. "Oh. No. There's nothing to worry about. The little men in white coats came after Dr. Malekrinova. She started screaming that telepathic spies were stealing her secret. She smashed all her apparatus and burned all her papers on top of the wreckage before they could stop her. She keeps shouting about a pink-and-purple orgy and singing a song about glass diamonds and Egyptian kings. I wouldn't say she was actually insane, but she is _very_ disturbed." "Then your brother is safe?" "As safe as he ever was, Mr. President." "Thank Heaven for that," said the President. "If they'd ever captured him and made him talk--" He stopped. "I forgot," he said lamely after a moment. Lenny grinned. "That's all right, Mr. President. I sometimes forget it myself. But it was his handicap, I guess, that made him concentrate on telepathy, so that he doesn't need his ears to hear what people are saying. Maybe I could read minds the way he does if I'd been born that way. "Come to think of it, I doubt if the Russians would have believed he was a spy if they'd caught him, unless they really did believe he was telepathic. A physical examination would show immediately that he was born without eardrums and that the inner ear bones are fused. They wouldn't try to make a man talk if an examination showed that he really was a deaf-mute." The buzzer on the colonel's intercom sounded. "Yes?" said Spaulding. "Dr. Davenport is here," said Sergeant Nugget. "He wants to talk to you." "Send him in," said Colonel Spaulding gleefully. "I have a nice scientific theory I want to shove down his throat." * * * * * 
34420	----	Riya's Foundling By ALGIS BUDRYS [Transcriber note: This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Sidenote: _Now, if the animal we know as a cow were to evolve into a creature with near-human intelligence, so that she thought of herself as a "person" ..._] [Illustration] The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, was a B-72, a fort, a foxhole--any number of things, depending on Phildee's moods. Today it was a jumping-off place. Phildee slipped out of his dormitory and ran across the yard to the feed-house. He dropped the big wooden latch behind him, and climbed up the ladder to the loft, depending on the slight strength of his young arms more than on his legs, which had to be lifted to straining heights before they could negotiate the man-sized rungs. He reached the loft and stood panting, looking out over the farm through the loft door, at the light wooden fences around it, and the circling antenna of the radar tower. Usually, he spent at least a little time each day crouched behind the grainsacks and being bigger and older, firing cooly and accurately into charging companies of burly, thick-lipped UES soldiers, or going over on one wing and whistling down on a flight of TT-34's that scattered like frightened ducks before the fiery sleet of his wing rockets. But today was different, today there was something he wanted to try. He stood up on his toes and searched. He felt the touch of Miss Cowan's mind, no different from that of anyone else--flat, unsystematic. He sighed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was someone else like himself. For a moment, the fright of loneliness invaded him, but then faded. He took a last look at the farm, then moved away from the open door, letting his mind slip into another way of thinking. His chubby features twisted into a scowl of concentration as he visualized reality. The scowl became a deeper grimace as he negated that reality, step by step, and substituted another. _F is for Phildee._ _O is for Out._ _R is for Reimann._ _T is for Topology._ _H is for heartsick hunger._ Abruptly, the Reimann fold became a concrete visualization. As though printed clearly in and around the air, which was simultaneously both around him and not around him, which existed/not existed in spacetime, he saw the sideslip diagram. He twisted. * * * * * Spring had come to Riya's world; spring and the thousand sounds of it. The melted snow in the mountaintops ran down in traceries of leaping water, and the spring-crests raced along the creeks into the rivers. The riverbank grasses sprang into life; the plains turned green again. Riya made her way up the path across the foothills, conscious of her shame. The green plain below her was dotted, two by two, with the figures of her people. It was spring, and Time. Only she was alone. There was a special significance in the fact that she was here on this path in this season. The plains on either side of the brown river were her people's territory. During the summer, the couples ranged over the grass until the dams were ready to drop their calves. Then it became the bulls' duty to forage for their entire families until the youngsters were able to travel south to the winter range. Through the space of years, the people had increased in numbers, the pressure of this steady growth making itself felt as the yearlings filled out on the winter range. It had become usual, as the slow drift northward was made toward the end of winter, for some of the people to split away from the main body and range beyond the gray mountains that marked the western limits of the old territories. Since these wanderers were usually the most willful and headstrong, they were regarded as quasi-outcasts by the more settled people of the old range. But--and here Riya felt the shame pierce more strongly than ever--they had their uses, occasionally. Preoccupied in her shame, she involuntarily turned her head downward, anxious that none of the people be staring derisively upward at the shaggy brown hump of fur that was she, toiling up the path. She was not the first--but that was meaningless. That other female people had been ugly or old, that the same unforgotten force that urged her up the mountain path had brought others here before her, meant only that she was incapable of accepting the verdict of the years that had thinned her pelt, dimmed her eyes, and broken the smooth rhythm of her gait. In short, it meant that Riya Sair, granddam times over, spurned by every male on the old range, was willing to cross the gray mountains and risk death from the resentful wild dams for the thin hope that there was a male among the wildlings who would sire her calf. She turned her head back to the path and hurried on, cringing in inward self-reproach at her speed. Except for her age, Riya presented a perfect average of her people. She stood two yards high and two wide at the shoulders, a yard at the haunches, and measured three and a half yards from her muzzle to the rudimentary tail. Her legs were short and stumpy, cloven-hooved. Her massive head hung slightly lower than her shoulders, and could be lowered to within an inch or two of the ground. She was herbivorous, ruminant, and mammalian. Moreover, she had intelligence--not of a very high order, but adequate for her needs. From a Terrestrial point of view, none of this was remarkable. Many years of evolution had gone into her fashioning--more years for her one species than for all the varieties of man that have ever been. Nevertheless, she did have some remarkable attributes. It was one of these attributes that now enabled her to sense what happened on the path ahead of her. She stopped still, only her long fur moving in the breeze. * * * * * Phildee--five, towheaded, round faced, chubby, dressed in a slightly grubby corduroy oversuit, and precocious--had his attributes, too. Grubby and tousled; branded with a thread of licorice from one corner of his mouth to his chin; involved in the loss of his first milk-tooth, as he was--he nevertheless slipped onto the path on Riya's world, the highest product of Terrestrial evolution. Alice followed a white rabbit down a hole. Phildee followed Reimann down into a hole that, at the same time, followed him, and emerged--where? Phildee didn't know. He could have performed the calculation necessary to the task almost instantly, but he was five. It was too much trouble. He looked up, and saw a gray slope of rock vaulting above him. He looked down, and saw it fall away toward a plain on which were scattered pairs of foraging animals. He felt a warm breeze, smelled it, saw it blow dust along the path, and saw Riya: [Illustration] _B is for big brown beast._ _L is for looming large, looking lonely._ _B? L? Bull? No--bison._ _Bison:_ bison (bi'sn) _n._ The buffalo of the N. Amer. plains. Phildee shook his head and scowled. No--not bison, either. What, then? He probed. Riya took a step forward. The sight of a living organism other than a person was completely unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless, anything that small, and undeniably covered--in most areas, at least--with some kind of fur, could not, logically, be anything but a strange kind of calf. But--she stopped, and raised her head--if a calf, then where was the call? Phildee's probe swept past the laboring mind directly into her telepathic, instinctual centers. Voiceless, with their environment so favorable that it had never been necessary for them to develop prehensile limbs, female people had nevertheless evolved a method of child care commensurate with their comparatively higher intelligence. Soft as tender fingers, gentle as the human hand that smooths the awry hair back from the young forehead, Riya's mental caress enfolded Phildee. Phildee recoiled. The feeling was: _Warm_ _Soft_ _Sweet_ Not _candy in the mouth_ _Candy in the mouth_ _Familiar_ _Good_ _Tasty_ _Nice_ _The feeling was_ _Not Familiar_ _Not Good_ _Not Tasty_ _Not Nice_ _WHY?_: _M is for many motionless months._ _T is for tense temper tantrums._ _R is for rabid--NO!--rapid rolling wrench._ _MTR. Mother._ Phildee's mother wanted Phildee's father. Phildee's mother wanted green grass and apple trees, tight skirts and fur jackets on Fifth Avenue, men to turn and look, a little room where nobody could see her. Phildee's mother had radiation burns. Phildee's mother was dead. He wavered; physically. Maintaining his position in this world was a process that demanded constant attention from the segment of his mind devoted to it. For a moment, even that small group of brain cells almost became involved in his reaction. It was that which snapped him back into functioning logically. MTR was Mother. Mother was: _Tall_ _Thin_ _White_ _Biped_ _"In Heaven's name, Doctor, when will this thing be over?"_ BL was Riya. Riya was: _Big brown beast, looming large, looking lonely._ _BL=MTR_ _Equation not meaningful, not valid._ * * * * * Almost resolved, only a few traces of the initial conflict remained. Phildee put the tips of his right fingers to his mouth. He dug his toe into the ground, gouged a semicircular furrow, and smoothed it over with his sole. Riya continued to look at him from where she was standing, two or three feet away. Haltingly, she reached out her mind again--hesitating not because of fear of another such reaction on Phildee's part, for that had been far beyond her capacity to understand, but because even the slightest rebuff on the part of a child to a gesture as instinctive as a Terrestrial mother's caress was something that none of the people had ever encountered before. While her left-behind intellectual capacity still struggled to reconcile the feel of childhood with a visual image of complete unfamiliarity, the warm mind-caress went gently forth again. Phildee made up his mind. Ordinarily, he was immune to the small emotional problems that beclouded less rational intellects. He was unused to functioning in other than a cause/effect universe. Mothers were usually--though sometimes not--matronly women who spent the greater part of roughly twenty years per child in conscious pre-occupation with, and/or subconscious or conscious rejection of, their offspring. In his special case, Mother was a warm place, a frantic, hysteric voice, the pressure of the spasmodically contractile musculature linked to her hyperthyroid metabolism. Mother was a thing from before birth. Riya--Riya bore a strong resemblance to an intelligent cow. In any physiological sense, she could no more be his mother than-- The second caress found him not unaccustomed to it. It enfolded his consciousness, tenderly, protectingly, empathetic. Phildee gave way to instinct. * * * * * The fur along the ridge of Riya's spine prickled with a well-remembered happiness as she felt the hesitant answering surge in Phildee's mind. Moving surely forward, she nuzzled his face. Phildee grinned. He ran his fingers through the thick fur at the base of her short neck. _Big warm wall of brown fur._ _Cool, happy nose._ _Happy, happy, eyes._ Great joy welled up in Riya. No shameful trot across the mountains faced her now. No hesitant approach to the huddled, suspicious wildlings was before her. The danger of sharp female hooves to be avoided, of skulking at the edge of the herd in hope of an anxious male, was a thing no longer to be half-fearfully approached. With a nudge of her head, she directed Phildee down the path to the old range while she herself turned around. She stood motionless for a sweeping scan of the plain below her. The couples were scattered over the grass--but couples only, the females as yet unfulfilled. This, too, was another joy to add to the greatest of all. So many things about her calf were incomprehensible--the only dimly-felt overtones of projected symbology that accompanied Phildee's emotional reactions, the alien structure--so many, many things. Her mind floundered vainly through the complex data. But all that was nothing. What did it matter? The Time had been, and for another season, she was a dam. * * * * * Phildee walked beside her down the path, one fist wrapped in the fur of her flank, short legs windmilling. They reached the plain, and Riya struck out across it toward the greatest concentration of people, her head proudly raised. She stopped once, and deliberately cropped a mouthful of grass with unconcern, but resumed her pace immediately thereafter. With the same unconcern, she nudged Phildee into the center of the group of people, and, ignoring them, began teaching her calf to feed. _Eat. (Picture of Phildee/calf on all fours, cropping the plains grass.)_ Phildee stared at her in puzzlement. Grass was not food. He sent the data emphatically. Riya felt the tenuous discontent. She replied with tender understanding. Sometimes the calf was hesitant. _Eat. (Gently, understandingly, but firmly. [Repetition of picture.])_ She bent her head and pushed him carefully over, then held his head down with a gentle pressure of her muzzle. _Eat._ Phildee squirmed. He slipped out from under her nose and regained his Feet. He looked at the other people, who were staring in puzzlement at Riya and himself. He felt himself pushed forward again. _Eat._ Abruptly, he realized the situation. In a culture of herbivores, what food could there be but herbiage? There would be milk, in time, but not for--he probed--months. In probing, too, he found the visualization of his life with her ready at the surface of Riya's mind. There was no shelter on the plain. His fur was all the shelter necessary. _But I don't have any fur._ In the fall, they would move to the southern range. _Walk? A thousand miles?_ He would grow big and strong. In a year, he would be a sire himself. * * * * * His reaction was simple, and practiced. He adjusted his reality concept to Reimannian topology. Not actually, but subjectively, he felt himself beginning to slip Earthward. Riya stiffened in alarm. The calf was straying. The knowledge was relayed from her mother-centers to the telepathic functions. _Stop. You cannot go there. You must be with your mother. You are not grown. Stop. Stay with me. I will protect you. I love you._ * * * * * The universe shuddered. Phildee adjusted frantically. Cutting through the delicately maintained reality concept was a scrambling, jamming frequency of thought. In terror, he flung himself backward into Riya's world. Standing completely still, he probed frantically into Riya's mind. And found her mind only fumblingly beginning to intellectualize the simple formulization of what her instinctive centers had computed, systematized, and activated before her conscious mind had even begun to doubt that everything was well. His mind accepted the data, and computed. Handless and voiceless, not so fast afoot in their bulkiness as the weakest month-old calf, the people had long ago evolved the restraints necessary for rearing their children. If the calf romped and ran, his mother ran beside him, and the calf was not permitted to run faster than she. If a calf strayed from its sleeping mother, it strayed only so far, and then the mother woke--but the calf had already long been held back by the time her intelligence awoke to the straying. The knowledge and computations were fed in Phildee's rational centers. The Universe--and Earth--were closed to him. He must remain here. But human children could not survive in this environment. He had to find a solution--instantly. He clinched his fists, feeling his arm muscles quiver. His lower lip was pulled into his mouth, and his teeth sank in. The diagram--the pattern--bigger--stronger--try--try--this is not real--_this_ is real: brown earth, white clouds, blue sky--try--mouth full of warm salt ... _F is for Phildee!_ _O is for Out!_ _R is for Riya!_ _T is for Topology!_ _H is for happiness and home!_ * * * * * Riya shook herself. She stood in the furrows of a plowed field, her eyes vacant with bewilderment. She stared uncomprehendingly at the walls and the radar tower, the concrete shoulders of the air raid bunkers. She saw antiaircraft quick-firers being hastily cranked around and down at her, heard Phildee's shout that saved her life, and understood none of it. But none of it mattered. Her strange calf was with her, standing beside her with his fingers locked in her fur, and she could feel the warm response in his mind as she touched him with her caress again. She saw the other little calves erupting out of the low dormitory buildings, and something within her crooned. Riya nuzzled her foundling. She looked about her at the War Orphans' Relocation Farm with her happy, happy eyes. [Illustration] 
50863	----	ALIEN MINDS by E. Everett Evans FANTASY PRESS, INC. READING, PENNSYLVANIA Copyright 1955 by E. Everett Evans No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] FIRST EDITION Printed in U. S. A. by E. Everett Evans Man of Many Minds The Planet Mappers Alien Minds For Mother to whom I owe so much ALIEN MINDS CHAPTER 1 "Were you looking for a roch, nyer?" An oily voice spoke up just by the elbow of George Hanlon. "I have some excellent ones here, sir." "Yes, nyer, I want several, if I can find ones to suit me," the young man replied. Nor could anyone, glancing at him, know he was not a native of this planet, Szstruyyah, which the Inter-Stellar Corpsmen, in self-defense, called "Estrella." For the cosmetic-specialist who handled the secret servicemen's disguises had done a marvelous job in transforming the blond young Corpsman into an Estrellan native. Hanlon continued looking into the outside cages containing these tailless roches, the Estrellan equivalent of wild dogs. "I want eight, all as near the same size, coloring and age as possible." "Eight, did you say?" the merchant looked at him in astonishment. Hanlon, carefully reading the surface of the man's mind, sensed the conflict there between the ethics his religion and philosophy had taught him, his natural love of haggling, and a desire to make as much profit as possible. But he could not sense the slightest suspicion that the man confronting him was not another Estrellan. This was a great relief to Hanlon, for he was still afraid he might be recognized as a stranger and an alien. In his disguise he was still humanoid in shape, and still his five feet eleven inches in height. But in addition to the ragged beard and longish hair, he had undergone outward structural differences that made him seem almost totally unhuman. "That's right. Eight. I want them to be about two years old, in good health. Can you supply them?" "I can if you can pay for them," the native looked somewhat questioningly at Hanlon's cheap clothing. The young secret serviceman smiled, and jingled coins in his pocket. "I can pay." "Then come with me, nyer, and we will find the ones you want." Hanlon followed him inside the peculiar little open-faced stall that was one of the hundreds surrounding the great market square of this city of Stearra, largest on the West Continent of Estrella. His nose wrinkled against the stench of the uncleaned kennels. The roches, seeing a stranger and, perhaps, being somewhat upset by his strange, alien effluvia, set up the peculiar, frenzied yelping that was their customary sound. To Hanlon, it was reminiscent of the wail of earthly coyotes. The young Corpsman was on a very hair-trigger of caution and tenseness. Despite his splendid disguise, he had plodded through the crowd of the market place with a great deal of trepidation. He had seemingly come through all right so far, and he began to relax a bit, yet was still somewhat fearful that he might give himself away by some difference of action, or speech, or by breaking one of their customs or taboos about which he knew all too little, despite his briefing and study before coming here. "Have you decided which ones you want, nyer?" the proprietor asked, waving his hand toward the various cages, hardly able to believe he was to make such a large sale. Hanlon said nothing, continuing to scan closely the roches, for his thoughts were still very much on this, his first prolonged venture into the streets and among the crowds of this strange new world to which he had been assigned on his second problem. His mind was constantly contacting others, for George Spencer Newton Hanlon was the only member of the secret service who was at all able to read minds. But he could read only their surface thoughts--and these Estrellans had such peculiar mental processes, so different from those of the humans with whom he was familiar, that they were almost non-understandable. So he was still a bit hesitant to start the bickering he knew he must engage in to stay in character. To delay a bit further he continued examining the animals in the cages, not only with his eyes but mentally scanning the brain of each, that he might be sure of finding those in perfect health, with minds he could most easily control. "Though how I can expect to find healthy ones in a filthy dump like this, I don't know," he thought. But he finally did. While he was doing this, however, he was reminded of the time he had discovered this ability to "read" animal minds, and how his subsequent studies had enabled him to control their minds and bodily actions with amazing skill. It was this ability that had led him to this market place on his unusual quest. "I'll take that one, and that, and that," he said at last, pointing out, one after another, the eight animals he wanted. "Yes, nyer, yes," the puzzled but delighted proprietor said, as he transferred the indicated animals to a single, large cage. "That will cost you ..." he eyed Hanlon carefully to see if he could get away with an exorbitant price. Something seemed to tell him the stranger did not know just how much roches customarily sold for, and he decided to raise his asking price considerably. "... they will be seven silver pentas each, nyer, and believe me, you are getting a fine price. I usually get ten each,"--he was lucky to get two, Hanlon read in his mind--"but since this is such a large sale I can afford to make you a bargain." Hanlon grinned to himself as he computed quickly. Five iron pentas, he knew, made one copper penta, five coppers one tin penta, five of these one silver penta, and five silvers a gold one. This made the silver piece worth about one-half a Federation credit. The price seemed ridiculously low, even with this big mark-up. Hanlon would willingly have paid it, but he had learned from the briefing tapes, and again now from his reading of this merchant's mind, that they loved to haggle over their sales--made a sort of game of it--so he turned away, registering disgust. "A fool you think me, perhaps," he said witheringly. "Seven silver pentas, indeed. One would be a great price for such ill-fed, scrawny, pitiable animals as those." The merchant raised his hands and voice in simulated rage--which did not prevent him from running around to face Hanlon's retreating figure, and bar his way. "'Robber', he calls me, then tries to rob me in turn. Six?" he suggested hopefully. Hanlon was now enjoying the game, and threw himself into it with vigor. "I call on Zappa to witness that you are, indeed, the worst thief unhung," he also spoke loudly, angrily, largely for the benefit of the crowd of natives that was swiftly gathering to watch and listen to this sport. "Look, that one is crooked of leg, this one's hair is ready to fall out, that one is fifteen years old if a day. I'll give you two." Yet he knew all the animals were in perfect health, and all about two years old. He had carefully selected only such. "I ask anyone here," the seller wailed as he waved toward the crowd that was watching and listening with huge enjoyment, "I ask anyone here who knows roches to examine these you have chosen. They are all exceptional, all perfect. The best in my shop. Five and a half." Hanlon turned away again. "I'll go find an _honest_ dealer," he started to push through the crowd, but the merchant hurried after him and grasped his smock. "Wait, nyer, wait. It breaks my heart to do this. I'll lose a month's profit, but I'll sell them to you for five pentas each. To my best friend I wouldn't give a better price." "That shows why you have no friends. Three even, take it or leave it," Hanlon was still pretending indifference. "I'm ruined; I'll be forced out of business," the dealer screamed. "They cost me more than that. Oh, why did I rise this morning. Give me four?" Hanlon grinned and dug out a handful of the pentagonal-shaped gold and silver pieces. He counted into the merchant's quivering but dirty hands the agreed-upon thirty-two pentas. The native looked at them, wordlessly, but his face was a battleground of mixed emotions. Finally he reluctantly counted out half of them into his other hand, and held them out to Hanlon. "No, nyer, I cannot over-charge you. Two is the price." "You're an honest man after all, and I apologize," Hanlon said, smiling, as he pushed back the outstretched hand. "Those I chose are fine animals, perfect, and the best in your shop. So keep the money. Send them to my room this midday," he commanded. "It's on the street of the Seven Moons, at the corner of the street of the Limping Caval--the house painted pink in front. Second floor to the rear. My name--Gor Anlo--is on the door." He had taken that name on this planet since it most nearly corresponded to his own from among the common Estrellan names. The roch-dealer, well pleased with the outcome, bobbed obsequiously. "It shall be done as you say, nyer, and I shall include feeding and drinking dishes. What about food for them?" "That's right, they'll need dishes, and thank you. Let's see your meat." But after examining the poor quality food the merchant displayed, he would not buy. "I'll get something elsewhere, if this is the best you have," Hanlon told the man with a disarming smile. "Such fine roches deserve the best." "Yes, my food is poor," the dealer moved his hand deprecatingly. "I'm glad the roches are to have such a considerate master." And Hanlon could read in his mind that the merchant actually was pleased. The S S man felt that he had passed this first public test with high grades. In one of the better-class food stalls Hanlon found some good, clean meat, and the other foods such animals ate. After the customary game of haggling, he ordered a two days' supply to be delivered at once, and the order duplicated every other day until further notice. Then he hunted up a suit-maker. Here it took a lot of persuasion, and the showing of his money, before the tailor would even believe that Hanlon really meant what he said when he tried to order nine uniforms, eight of them of such outlandish shape and size. For one of them was for himself, the others for his newly-bought roches. It was only when Hanlon finally lost patience and said sharply, "You stupid lout, I want them for a theatrical act," that the uniform-maker realized the reason for such an unusual order. Then things ran smoothly. The design was sketched, and material of a red to harmonize with the grayish-tan of the roches was chosen. The tailor consented also, for an added fee, to rush the job. Hanlon's way home led through part of the district where the larger, better-class shops were located. He stopped in front of one of these. He knew from his studies and from what he had seen here, that Estrella was just at the beginning of a mechanical culture. What sciences and machines they had were unbelievably crude and primitive to him, accustomed as he was to the high technologies of Terra and the colonized planets. This display he was scanning featured their means of personal transportation. There were, of course, no moving slideways, nor even automobiles nor ground cabs nor copters. Instead, the Estrellans used motorized tricycles. Even the smallest of these was heavy, cumbersome, crude and inefficient, but they were speedier and easier than walking--when they worked. The tricycles had large wheels, about three feet in diameter, with semi-hard, rubber-like tires. There were two wheels in back and one in front, steered by a tiller lever. Because of the weight of the engine and tank for the gas, even the smallest trike weighed several hundred pounds. The fuel was acetylene gas, Hanlon found to his dismay. Electricity had been discovered here, but as yet they knew only direct current. No AC--no vacuum tubes--no telephones--no radios--no television--"ner nothing," Hanlon snorted in disgust. But the native scientists and technicians had found how to use their D C to manufacture calcium carbide. Thus, they had plenty of acetylene gas, and many ways of using this for power. "I'd lots rather have a good two-wheeled bike," Hanlon thought to himself, but decided, "guess I'd better buy one of these. Probably have to do a lot of chasing around, and since there's no 'for hire' ground cabs, I don't want to have to walk all the time. Besides, I might have to get somewhere in a hurry." The salesman had first tried to sell him one of the larger three- or four-place family-sized tricycles that steered with a wheel. But Hanlon finally made the man understand that he wanted only a one-man machine, and the purchase was haggled into completion--at a price so low it surprised the young secret serviceman. "Sure is one screwy world," he shook his head as he rode back toward his apartment, after learning how to operate his new machine and its tricky engine. Back in his room, Hanlon reviewed the situation to date on this, his second assignment for the secret service of the Inter-Stellar Corps. He had been at the head of the commission sent to Algon where he (Hanlon) had been largely instrumental in freeing from slavery the strange, vegetable-like people, the Guddus.[1] The commission had helped them make a treaty with the Federated Planets by which the natives allowed the humans to mine certain valuable metals from their planet, and to maintain the spaceship-yards that had been built by the men who had formerly enslaved them, in return for protection from exploiters, and for certain cultural assistance. Just as his work there was about finished, a message had come for Captain Hanlon to report back to the planet Simonides. [Footnote 1: See "MAN OF MANY MINDS," Fantasy Press, 1953.] There he met his father, Regional Admiral Newton, second in command of the secret service. (This discrepancy of names was due to the fact that after young Spencer Newton's mother died, and his father "disappeared"--at the time he joined the secret service--the boy was adopted by George Hanlon, an ex-Corpsman, and his wife, and had taken his foster-father's name.) "We're not getting anywhere on Estrella," his father had begun abruptly once they had warmly greeted each other. "I've come to the conclusion, and the Council agrees, that we need your special mental abilities there. But take it easy, Spence ... er, I never can seem to get used to calling you 'George'. Don't try to go it alone ... and you can wipe that cocky smirk off your face, mister," he commanded sternly. "This time it's an official order from the top brass. Those Estrellans are distinctly alien--not humans gone wrong." Hanlon sobered down a bit, but secretly could not entirely shake off his attitude, feeling sure he was more than a match for any trouble he might run into. Hadn't he proved it, on Algon and right here on Simonides? Sure he had. Great Snyder, he wasn't a kid any more. He was a secret serviceman of the Inter-Stellar Corps, whom they called in when the rest of them, even his adored dad, failed. "Just what's the problem there?" he asked, trying not to let these thoughts show in his face. "The people of Estrella are not colonists from Terra or any of the colonized planets," the admiral explained slowly. "They are native to that world--the first such, by the way, that we have discovered who are advanced enough to be asked to join the Federation with equal status. They are quite man-like in shape, and of a high order of civilization. Their culture is much like Earth's was two hundred and fifty or three hundred years ago." "Just beginning their real introduction to scientific and mechanical technologies on a planetary scale, eh?" "That's it. Their system was discovered and mapped a few years ago. The Colonial Board immediately sent psychologists and linguists there to learn their language and study the natives and their form of government, their economics and general advancement. What they found, although far different from our own, was so surprisingly high that we sent them a formal offer to join the Federation. But ..." he stopped, frowning. "Yes?" Hanlon was interested now, and paying close attention. "But what?" "That's what we don't know. At first they seemed very pleased with the offer. They studied it carefully and, at our suggestion, sent a picked group of statesmen, scientists and merchants on a trip to our various worlds in one of our ships. These men and women seemed delighted with what they found, and enthusiastic about their world joining us. But, shortly after their return home and before the final treaties were signed, opposition began to develop." "What kind of...?" "All kinds. Enough to make the plans slow down and halt. The embassy sent there couldn't discover the reason--we have trouble enough understanding their way of thinking at all--and they yelled for help. We sent a couple of S S men there, and when they failed, I went there myself, to help them, and the embassy came home." He shook his head. "I can't find a thing, either, that seems significant. Oh, the surface opposition is easily discernable. Papers, handbills, inflammatory speeches by spellbinders, whispering campaigns, all calling for keeping Estrella for the Estrellans and running out all foreigners bent on plundering the planet for their own enrichment--that sort of thing." "Maybe some natives who want to take over, themselves," Hanlon ventured. "Could be. We've thought of that, but have found no proof. We have no proof of anything except the opposition. Only one thing, that may or may not have something to do with this. We've discovered that almost simultaneously with this opposition an unprecedented crime wave started there--every type of criminal activity imaginable, and that is almost unheard of on that world. But we can't even get the first leads as to _who_ is behind it all. That's why I suggested you be called in, and the staff agreed." The admiral paused and his piercing gray eyes bored earnestly into the blue ones of his son. "Keep this in mind at all times, Spence, for it is most important. We _must_ succeed there. This is the first non-Terran world we've found equal in cultural advancement to ours. But surely it won't be the last. And we must win them over. All civilized worlds must band together for mutual growth and well-being. So this is our most important project just now." "Yes," seriously, "I can see that. Also, that if we do get them to join us, we can point out that fact to any other planets we may discover and try to bring into the Federation in the future." _And lying at ease on a heavily-padded bench before the control board of a space cruiser, a stranger looked deeply into a multiphased scanner that worked on scientific principles not yet discovered by humans._ _For long, long months its mind had been studying this new world and its inhabitants. The language had been learned, after a fashion, as had much of the planetary economics and governmental intricacies. Now the minds of the people were being studied; it was searching, always searching, for certain types._ _But part of that mind remained continually in that of one certain Estrellan it had long ago selected._ CHAPTER 2 So now SSM George Hanlon was here on this planet they called Estrella, trying to see what he could find out. It was hard, devilishly and maddeningly hard, to discern what these people were really thinking. It wasn't their language--that had been fairly easy to sleep-learn from the reels. No, it was their mental processes--the way they thought. He was not too sure of himself yet, even with his ability to read their surface thoughts, for so often those thoughts held connotations he was not sure he understood. For the Estrellan mind was so different from those of humans--its texture was coarser, for one thing, and the thought-concept symbols largely non-understandable to him so far. He had studied--he winced to think how hard he had studied--and he had practiced assiduously since arriving here. But he still could get only an occasional thought-idea of whose meaning he felt at all sure ... it was far worse than with humans. True, he was making some progress, but it was so--he grinned mirthlessly--"fast like a turtle." Yet he did not allow discouragement to keep him from continuing with his work. For during the week he had been here he had managed to pick up some facts of which he felt sure. He decided his best method of approach lay with this new criminal element, for he was convinced from his study of the problem that they were, somehow, tied in with whoever was behind all the opposition to Estrella's joining the Federation of Planets. The tremendous increase in crime, so foreign to the general nature of these high-principled beings, and coming simultaneously with the development of that opposition, was not, he felt sure, coincidental. Working from the inside against a criminal gang had worked on Simonides--it might be equally successful here. He had found what he felt was proof that a certain Ino Yandor, this world's greatest purveyor of entertainment, was actually a ring-leader in the criminal web, in this city, at least. And he had figured that the best way to get acquainted with this man was to pose as an entertainer. Because of his ability to control the minds and muscles of animals, he decided to be an animal trainer. Hence his apparently strange action in buying eight Estrellan roches, or dogs. He had figured out an act that he thought was a dilly. "At least," he grinned to himself, "it would knock 'em in the aisles on Terra or the human planets. But with these folks ..." he shrugged away the doubts. Suddenly, as Hanlon was sitting there thinking all these things, he heard a tremendous commotion outside the house. There were the excited yells of many children, a terrific uproar of yelps and whines that he recognized as made by his roches, and the shrill complainings of the elders living in this and the adjacent houses. "Oh, oh, my pups are being delivered," Hanlon grinned, and ran out to meet the messenger. As soon as he was in sight of the crowd, he began touching one rochian mind after another, sending them calming thoughts, and quieting their frenzied yelpings. By the time the eight dogs were in his rooms, they were well under control, and lay down as soon as they were inside. Hanlon good-naturedly answered many of the questions hurled at him by the inquisitive youngsters; assured the apprehensive neighbors that he would see to it that the roches did not bother them; dismissed the man who had delivered the animals, with thanks and a gold penta, then hurriedly closed the door against the crowd still in the hallway. He then settled down into a comfortable seat, and proceeded to get acquainted with his new pets. He first had to learn the texture of their individual minds, which were like yet different from those of earthly animals. Then each roch's individual characteristics had to be studied and learned, and the animal's wild nature more or less tamed and subdued, which last he found quite easy to do--from within. The animals, in turn, had to become used to Hanlon's taking control of their minds and bodily functions, and of allowing him to handle them mentally without fighting back or trying not to obey. This was eminently tricky work, but Hanlon's previous practice with many animals, birds and insects, both here and on Simonides and Algon, had given him facility so he was able to do it fairly easily. "Why, they're really just nice little pooches at heart, in spite of that snout that looks like a pig's, set in that flat face. But I like 'em, and I think this'll work out OK." He fed and watered his pseudo-dogs, then let them go to sleep, as he was preparing to do. Right after he and the roches had breakfasted the next morning, he set to work in earnest on their training for the special routines he had planned. As the day sped swiftly by he found his ideas working out even more satisfactorily than he had hoped. It would not be too long before he was ready to make contact with that Ino Yandor, the theatrical agent. The following day Hanlon stayed in his room again, working with the animals, training them in group maneuvers, having learned how to handle them individually. It was a weird feeling, dissociating part of his mind and placing it in that of a roch, and with that portion of his mind consciously controlling the animal's brain to direct its nerves and muscles to do what he wanted done. And when he did this to eight roches simultaneously--well, even though he had done similar things before, it was still hard to get used to the idea that it was possible. So hard had he been working that he was surprised when he happened to notice how dark it was getting. He went over and looked out of the window in his room, and saw it was night outside. A glance at the Estrellan time-teller on the wall, and he saw it was the dinner hour. He rose and stretched, yawning vigorously. "Better get out and get some fresh air," he thought. He took the dogs for a half hour's run outside, then brought them back, fed and watered them. He impressed on their minds that when they were finished they were to go to sleep. Then again he left the building. He couldn't help grinning a bit as he was walking down the street, thinking of the screwy way these people handled the problem of where to live. For the common, ordinary, not-too-rich people, there were apartment buildings, such as the one in which he lived, owned and operated by the government. When anyone wanted a room or an apartment, he merely hunted around in the district in which he wished to live until he found an empty place that suited him, then moved in. There was no landlord, no rent. Taxes paid for it. You were supposed to take care of your own cleaning and minor repairs, or any special decorating you wanted done. Major repairs were handled upon request, by men paid by the government. If your furniture wore out, or no longer suited you, you simply moved to a place you liked better--and some other poorer person had to take what you had left, if all other rooms were occupied. Yet so considerate of others were the average Estrellans, that they seldom did this, preferring to replace the worn-out things themselves, if financially able to do so. "Imagine the average Terran doing that," Hanlon had thought, wonderingly, when he first heard of it. He had been lucky enough to find a three-room apartment fairly close to the downtown section of the city, yet far enough away so the crowd-noise did not bother him. The building in which he lived was of four stories, and he was on the second floor, near the back. It was the third place he had looked at when he first came to Estrella. He could not at first make himself believe that all the rooms had such bad smells in them. But he soon found it to be true, largely because these natives had nothing that could be called efficient plumbing. When he had finally picked these rooms, he spent a full day airing them out, cleaning them thoroughly, and using what disinfectants and smell-eradicators he was able to find and buy in the stalls here. The peculiar-looking, five-sided rooms were comfortably furnished, by Estrellan standards, and not too bad even from Earthly ones. The walls and ceilings and floors were painted in fairly harmonious colors, and there was a sort of half-matting, half-carpet rug on the floors. What corresponded to the living room contained two of their low, backless stools, and one quite comfortable lounging chair. There was a large and a small table, and an empty case where one could store any reading scrolls he might possess. The bedroom had a low, foot-high, five-sided bed, but it was hard and uncomfortable until Hanlon figured how to make it softer, and more to his liking. There were several pegs on the wall from which to hang his clothing, two more of the backless stools, and the open place--a sort of well running from roof to basement--that was the toilet. Hanlon found a large piece of heavy cloth something like canvas, in one of the stalls, and made a hanging to cover this in lieu of a door, which shut out some of the smell-source. The kitchen had shelves, a stove, and table and backless stools. In one corner, suspended through the ceiling, was an open water pipe with a sort of concrete drain beneath. This was both the source of water for cooking or drinking, and the bathing place--a primitive shower. The reels furnished by Survey had told Hanlon that few of the Estrellan buildings were more than five stories high. "Some, in the business districts, may run to six or seven stories. We have concluded that the main reason for this is that the natives do not have elevators, except a few crude rope-and-pulley freight elevators in some of the stores and office buildings." Now Hanlon sauntered slowly along the street, enjoying the fresh night air, warmed to about sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, while he worked the kinks out of his tension-wearied body. This business of controlling the roches demanded such intense concentration that his mind and body were highly keyed up when he finished, and he had trouble relaxing. He saw, almost without noticing this time, the primitive street lighting system that made flickering lights and shadows on the tree-shaded walks and roads. These people used natural gas for their nighttime outdoor illuminating--just semi-ornate standards with the flames rising a foot or so above them. Men went around at dusk to light them, and again at dawn to turn them off. Hanlon had walked slowly for several blocks when he saw a native approaching him. When they came abreast the man stopped him. "I do not remember seeing you about here before," he said, looking closely at Hanlon in the flickering light. "I am the peace keeper for this district," he added as he saw Hanlon's questioning look. "No, I just moved in a few days ago," Hanlon answered. "What do you do here? Do you have a job?" "He thinks I'm a vag," Hanlon grinned to himself, and said aloud, in a courteous voice, "I just came from the Eastern Continent, nyer, and hope to become a public entertainer. I have enough money to support myself until I can earn more." "That is good. If I can ever be of service in helping you to get acquainted, please look me up. I like to see all the people in my district happy and busy." "I shall do that, nyer, and thank you for your courtesy." And as the man moved to one side, Hanlon gave him a cheery half-salute, and went on his way. "Darned nice people, really," he said to himself. "They'll make good Federation citizens." When Hanlon had started out on this stroll he had had no special destination--was merely out for a breather. But as he ambled along a thought came to him, and he quickened his pace and walked more purposefully toward the downtown section and a certain building he had previously spotted. It was a small "place where men drank," and his investigations had convinced him that many of this city's criminal element went there for relaxation. The cafe occupied the street floor of a small two-storied building that was, as were almost all the Estrellan buildings, a five-sided one. For _five_ was the sacred number of the native religion and philosophy. Hanlon had learned that the number five was consistently used wherever possible, even in their architecture, their ornaments, and their coined money. Their religion was based on five basic Truths taught by He Who Died For Them. These were: Love, Faith, Brotherliness, Honor, and Loyalty. Their philosophy (they called it their "Code of Living") was also composed of five parts: to be religious; to attain the highest possible mentality; to live physically clean lives; to be considerate of others always, and to be honest in all dealings. The Terrans had found that while, of course, there were individuals who did not subscribe either to their religion or their Code of Living, that on the whole the race held a very high standard of ethics. Now, as he walked inside the drinking place, the young S S man saw that the pentagonal room was brilliantly lighted, rather than kept dim as were most Terran and Simonidean cafes. "Probably because they can't turn 'em low," he thought. For the lights were lamps burning a carbide compound, that gave out a harsh but very bright light. As Hanlon took a seat at a small table, he looked about him interestedly. There was a bar across the back or third side, where the drinks were mixed. On the other four sides, except where the windows or doors interferred, were several small booths, with drawn curtains across their entrances for privacy. The balance of the floor was filled with two-, three- and five-place pentagonal tables, and their chairs, or rather, backless stools. "What is your wish?" an attendant came to Hanlon's table. "Glass of mykkyl, please." While the waiter was bringing the barely-intoxicating but very popular drink, and later as Hanlon was slowly sipping it, the S S man let his mind roam throughout the small room, touching mind after mind, seeking and hoping to find those he had come here trying to locate. He had to grit his teeth to keep from showing the frustration he felt on this world when trying to understand what these people were thinking. For he had long since found that, whatever a human might be speaking in words, his thoughts showed his true feelings simultaneously with and despite what he was saying. And Hanlon could usually read those surface thoughts and understand them fully. But with the Estrellans, he had found this was not always true. There was sometimes an ... an _obliqueness_ ... that could not be directly translated by one no more used to their thought-patterns than he was so far. George Hanlon was the only member of the Inter-Stellar Corps' secret service who could read minds at all--one of the very few humans ever to possess this ability to any demonstrable extent. And he was still young enough to feel occasionally that he was being badly treated by his inability to read these native minds at will. While he was on that Simonidean assignment, and on the planet of Algon, he had even learned to telepath with the natives, the Guddu "Greenies," or plant-men. But here he could not do that at all. He could read and control animal minds, "and these lousy Estrellans are almost animals," he had growled beneath his breath at first, "so why can't I handle their minds?" But even through this rude shock to his vanity he did not entirely lose his ability to think and reason logically. He had studied the problem intensively for these past days, and had come to certain preliminary conclusions. "It's not, after all, that they're lower in the evolutionary scale than we Terrans are," he finally concluded. "It's just that they haven't advanced as far in scientific and technological knowledge. They may look like apes, but they sure aren't. Probably, when we get to really know them--if we ever do--we'll find they are 'way ahead of us in many things. They certainly, as a whole, practice their 'Code of Living' far better than most of our people do their professed religion." This conclusion was another shock to his confident young mind. For he had more than half expected, when he first came here, to have an easy time of it in solving the problem on which he and the other secret servicemen were working. Yet how quickly he had been disabused. And now, in this little place where men drank, he was finding it out anew. None of the minds he was scanning with all the ability he possessed, was quite of the calibre he sought, although most of them displayed leanings toward larceny and other criminal tendencies. For this drinking place was not one which the more generally law-abiding and decent people of Stearra cared to patronize. Maddeningly meager were the thoughts he could interpret, but when he finally came to scan the minds of four natives who were seated at a five-place table near the back, close to the bar, he made an almost unconscious exclamation of surprise and delight. He "listened in" more closely to the four, who were leaning toward each other, talking together in low, earnest tones. Hanlon could read the surface thoughts in each mind, but only occasionally at first could he understand what they were discussing. However, as he became more accustomed to their individual peculiarities of thought, he began to get enough to convince him that these were the ones he was seeking. At least, they were planning some deviltries, and one spoke as though he had received orders as to what they were to do. Hanlon even finally got their names, although of the latter he soon became interested mainly in that of the slender, blondishly-hairy native with the steely blue eyes. That one, Ran Auldin, was their leader, Hanlon decided. More intently now, Hanlon studied their minds, paying no further attention to the others in the room. He lingered over his drinks for nearly an hour, "listening in" on the conversation of these mobsters, and learning quite a bit about their criminal activities, and better how to interpret their thoughts. Suddenly he stiffened in even closer attention. "The leader," Auldin was saying to his henchmen, but Hanlon knew from his side thoughts that the fellow meant Ino Yandor, "wants us to start a series of fires and wreckings about the city. We'll get a list of places tomorrow or next day, and that night we'll do the job." "In the name of Zappa, why?" one of the men asked. "Why would he want us to do that?" "Who cares why?" Auldin shrugged. "The leader, he tells us 'do this', and we do it, that's all." "Sure," another chimed in. "We get paid for our work, and good pay, too. So let the big fellows worry about why they want certain things done." "That's the way to look at it," Auldin said. "We'll meet here tomorrow evening, and I'll probably have the list. If not tomorrow, then next day. But meet here tomorrow, anyway." So, Hanlon thought swiftly. Just like small-time crooks everywhere. Somebody with brains does the bossing, and they stupidly follow orders, interested only in the pay they receive, caring nothing about who or what gets hurt. These fellows were certainly worth watching, he decided. Even if it did not lead him to the larger goal he was seeking--and he felt sure it would--he would spike their plans somehow. He felt he had heard enough for the time being, so he rose and left the drinking place before they should notice him. He walked slowly back to his apartment, thinking about this new plan, wondering, as the mobster had done, why such orders were given. It made no sense to him, unless it was that the chief criminals were merely intent on spreading a reign of terror and destruction. "Or are they," he thought suddenly, "planning later to make it seem as though we Terrans are doing it? Perhaps planning to start a whispering campaign of such rumors?" More than ever now he was determined that such activities must be stopped. "We've got to clean up this planet, and get it into the Federation. If they keep on this way, they can be a real menace. But with this criminal activity wiped out, and Estrella a member of the Federation, we can help them so much--and they have a lot to teach us, too." CHAPTER 3 The following day Hanlon continued working with his roches. He now "drilled" them as soldiers are drilled. He taught himself how to control their minds in unison, making them march in all the various complicated maneuvers of squads and columns, all in perfect alignment and cadence. It was tricky, delicate work, requiring as it did placing a portion of his mind in each roch's brain, giving that mind and body individual commands, yet keeping enough central control in his own mind so they all performed exactly together. So much of his mind was transferred to theirs, that he had to learn how to make his own body "stand at attention" during these maneuvers, with but minimum control over his own functions. Hour after hour he worked with them, giving them fifteen minutes of rest out of each half-hour--and thus giving his own brain rest at the same time. For this was tiring work for him, as well as for them. When dusk fell he stopped the training, saw to it that the roches were well-fed and watered, then put them all to sleep. He dressed for the street, went out and found an eating place, where he did full justice to a good meal. "One thing you've got to hand these folks," he thought thankfully, "they certainly can cook, even though some of their dishes have a most unusual taste." It had taken him several days to discover which native dishes he liked and could digest, for some of them almost made him ill, others had a taste he could not stomach, but most of them were delicious--and Hanlon was ordinarily a good trencherman. His meal finished, Hanlon paid and went back to the drinking place where he sat, toying with a glass of mykkyl while waiting for Auldin and the others to appear. They came in shortly, one by one, and Hanlon "listened in" on Auldin's mind as the chief mobster gave his fellows directions as to the places they were to burn or wreck. Hanlon had already prepared a note, addressed to the head of the local peace-keepers. To this he now added the addresses Auldin was giving. When he was sure he had them all, he slipped out of the little cafe. He went swiftly along the streets toward the Stearra police headquarters, which he had previously located, keeping watch until he saw a dog-like roch running along. Quickly reaching out and taking control of its mind, Hanlon made the animal follow him until he could duck into a deserted doorway. Hanlon made his messenger take the prepared note carefully in its mouth, then trot down the street and into the "police station." There it ran up to the man in charge, and raised itself up with its front paws on the man's knees. "What in the name of...?" the official looked down, eyes bugging and mouth slack at the beast's unexpected action. For several moments he seemed not even to notice the paper in the roch's mouth. When he did, he took it gingerly, opened and read it. "An attempt will be made just before half-night," Hanlon had written, "to set fire to or wreck the following places of business. If you watch carefully, you can catch the criminals in the act, and save these pieces of property from damage or destruction." Then followed the five addresses. The man read the note twice, a puzzled, anxious frown on his face. He did not quite know what to make of it--or so his attitude seemed to indicate. There had been no "crime" on this planet that he had ever had occasion to try to stop. For he was not a police officer in the ordinary sense. The Estrellan "peace keepers" merely watched to see that crowds or individuals did not get too boisterous, aided in handling crowds at large gatherings, or assisted home those who may have imbibed too freely. The fellow scratched the back of his head while he considered the matter at length. "Some phidi trying to make a fool of me," he finally said aloud, as Hanlon heard through his roch's ears, as he had been watching through its eyes. "But how in the name of Zappa did whoever it was train this roch to bring me the note like this?" This latter problem seemed to have greater interest for him than the warning. For his eyes were still watching the roch with puzzled inquiry ... but he did nothing about acting upon Hanlon's suggestion. As the S S man watched the roch leave the peace keeper's headquarters, he fumed because it was apparent that the official was going to take no action on his warning. Were they in on this criminal activity, he wondered? Was it that wide-spread, that even the supposed law-keepers were party to it? No, he finally decided, probably this fellow was just a dumb, unimaginative sort of dope. He watched miserably as the fires were set and the business buildings wrecked. There was nothing else he could do to stop it, for he knew it would only put himself in useless danger to try--would jeopardize what he and the other secret servicemen were trying to accomplish here. But as soon as the damage had been done he found another roch, and sent it back to headquarters with another scathing note. "You paid no attention to my previous warning, and as a result two of the buildings I told you about have been set on fire, the windows smashed on another, and two others have been wrecked by explosions. Why don't you use what small brains you possess, and stop this wave of crime? Or are you being paid to ignore it?" Through the eyes of the roch Hanlon watched the official read the note, and saw him fly into a rage and pace the floor ... but what the man was thinking Hanlon was too far away to read. "One thing sure, I'll have to get busy and make contact with these gangsters," Hanlon thought bitterly as he went back to his room and to bed. "Guess I'm near enough ready to tackle Yandor now. Let's see, shall I do it directly, or...?" He undressed and climbed into the low, foot-high, five-sided bed these Estrellans used. There was no mattress or springs, but fortunately his rooms had several extra blankets, and these he had folded beneath him to make his sleeping more comfortable. He was still wrestling with his problem when he finally dropped off to sleep. But the next day he figured it out to his satisfaction. He worked with his roches until evening, then went out and got himself a meal. Later he went, purposefully late, into the drinking place. Seeing Auldin and his men already at their table, he went directly up to them. "Greetings, Ran Auldin," he said boldly. "I've been looking for you, for I want to join your group. I'm fast and clever with knife or flamegun, and I've got plenty of ideas. I can do us both a lot of good." The other three half-rose, staring at him with hostile eyes. But their chief made a gesture that said "Wait", and himself looked Hanlon up and down coolly. "You are mistaken, my friend," he said at last. "We are not engaged in such activities as might require the use of ... of knife or gun. We are lawful businessmen." Hanlon fitted his face to a crooked smile and his voice was almost sarcastic as he replied, "Sure, sure, I know. But listen, friend. A fellow out to make a big pile of pentas doesn't do it by being asleep. I've done a lot of scouting 'round and asking questions in a discreet way. I know who I'm talking to." His mind, always in touch with that of the others, read in their surface thoughts the surprised, "Oh, so that's why we've had the feeling the past few days we were being watched." He could tell that this conclusion made them jittery, and more cautious and ready for instant action. But Hanlon had to keep on the path he had taken. Aloud, Auldin merely said again, in a voice he kept mild and low, "I'm sorry, my friend, but you are still mistaken. We work for another man, helping him hunt out talented people and make entertainers out of them." "During the day, yes," Hanlon gave him a wise smile, "and I can help him a lot in that, too." He knew the three other men had been growing more and more angry at his interruption. He could interpret their thoughts well enough so he was tensed for quick-action, determined not to be caught off guard. "But what I'm really interested in," Hanlon continued, "is your evening activities. By the way, I hope none of you got hurt or burned last...." He wheeled swiftly, for one of the natives had suddenly leaped up and toward him, a dagger in his hand, slashing at him. Hanlon met him with a light, contemptuous laugh. He ducked beneath the other's knife-slash, then stepped in close. His left fist traveled only a few inches, but all the strength of his powerful shoulder and arm muscles was in the blow. His fist sank to the wrist in the man's solar plexus. Wind _whooshing_ out, the gangster doubled up in pain. Hanlon chopped down with the edge of his hand on the other's wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor. The Corpsman swung viciously with a right uppercut that lifted his attacker and drove him backward. He crashed into a chair with such force that as man and stool fell to the floor, the wooden seat was splintered. The other two leaped to their feet and started forward. As though he had eyes in the back of his head and had seen them coming, Hanlon swivelled toward them, his lips thinned in a fighting grin, while several of the cafe attendants were running up. "Leave him alone," Ran Auldin commanded sharply, and his men looked back at him in astonishment. "The stranger was only defending himself against an unprovoked attack by Ugen," Auldin explained to the cafe's men. He turned to his fellows. "You two take Ugen home and put him to bed. I want to talk to this stranger." As the surly guards picked up the limp body of their fallen companion and bore him out, the drink-servers returned to their posts. Evidently Ran Auldin was known and respected here. He now faced Hanlon and motioned toward one of the stools. "Sit down, my friend," he said courteously. "Perhaps we can do a bit of talking." "No use for knives, eh?" Hanlon grinned as he sat down. But immediately he sobered. "I figured maybe you'd be willing to talk, although I didn't expect to have to slap down one of your boys to make you. I'm sorry if I hurt him." And Hanlon was sincere in this. He had momentarily forgotten that he was on a lighter planet, with a gravity only about 90% that of Terra, and that consequently he would naturally be stronger than the average Estrellan native. While this would not have kept him from defending himself from that sudden, vicious attack, he would have pulled his punches a bit had he thought. He did not like killing or injuring people. But Auldin was answering, and Hanlon knew he had better be on his toes and pay strict attention. There were undertones and concepts behind the spoken words that were hard for his Terran mind to interpret. "You needn't be sorry," Auldin assured him. "Ugen was useful, in a way, but he's stupid. I don't especially like stupid people." He studied Hanlon closely. "I don't think you're stupid." "I don't know it all, by any means," the S S man said with disarming candor, "but I never considered myself simple." "Now, what makes you think we are engaged in anything ... illegal ... during our evenings?" "Look, nyer, let's not you and me chase ourselves around a flowertree. If I'm out of line, say so and I'll take a run. But since we're talking here together, all peaceful-like, and there's nobody within hearing distance if we talk low, let's put it on the penta, shall we, huh?" Ran Auldin looked at Hanlon another moment, his face and thoughts showing puzzlement at the stranger's choice of words. Then he laughed quietly. "By Zappa, I like you, my friend. What's your name?" "Gor Anlo." "You're a cool one, all right. Where are you from? I've not seen you around Stearra before." "No, I'm from Lura, over on the Eastern Continent. The goody-goodies are mostly in charge there, and there's no way for a hustler to make a fast pile. So I came here, hoping there'd be more chances for me. I've been here six-seven days, looking over the ground, and making a little investigation. The best leads pointed to your boss, Ino Yandor." Auldin started at that name, and while he was staring anew at Hanlon, the latter's mind flashed back over that investigation. His first day had been spent getting the "feel" of the city through wide-open mental searchings. Not so much from individuals at first, but from the mass-thoughts of the many. He had later touched hundreds of minds and studied them, trying to learn how to interpret those alien thoughts. He had no trouble getting the thoughts themselves--it was what they meant that puzzled and troubled him. Now, having noted the start Auldin made at mention of Ino Yandor's name, and the close, searching look the mobster bent toward him, Hanlon continued quickly with an appearance of great intensity and seriousness. "I figured that I could get to him easier through one of his seconds in command, and picked on you." "One of his...?" Auldin started to ask, then quickly changed his mind. "Because you thought I was more weak-minded?" There was now a hint of anger in the cold eyes. "Not on your life, Ran Auldin. Because I figured, after studying the set-up, that you were about ready to take over in his place one of these days, probably soon, and that would put me closer to the real power ... and the big money." "Hmmm, I see." Auldin was silent for some time, digesting all this in his mind. He was pleased at the compliment, but somewhat startled at two pieces of information Hanlon had so carelessly tossed out. One, that apparently Auldin was not Yandor's chief or only "second in command" and, two, that this stranger had so quickly and easily divined his secret ambition. Hanlon, reading his mind, could discern and understand all this. Also, he knew when Auldin began trying to figure out whether this newcomer was legitimately on the make, or whether he was a spy sent by someone--perhaps even Yandor--to check up on him. That last statement of Hanlon's really upset him more than the first, which he had sometimes suspected. He worried about the latter now. It was the truth, all right, but he had not thought anyone else knew it or even suspected it. Did Yandor suspect it? If so, Auldin knew he was in for trouble ... bad trouble. Hanlon decided it was time for him to do a little steering. "Look, Auldin," he interrupted the other's somewhat frightened thinking. "Why not take me to Yandor and introduce me? Let him decide whether he wants to let me in or not?" For a long moment Auldin stared again at Hanlon, but when he finally answered there was a note of relief in his voice he tried to conceal. Yet he was not entirely convinced that this might not be all part of an espionage trick formed in the fertile but hellishly devious mind of his superior, Ino Yandor. But Auldin was one who preferred to meet his dangers face to face ... when they could not be avoided. "That might not be a bad idea," he said as calmly as he could. "But look, my friend. Don't try to play me for an easy fool. I'd do things about it if you did." "Sure, I know that," Hanlon's voice was bland and ingenuous. "I'm not figuring on your job--being a yunner I know I've got to begin low and work up. A chance to get started is all I want ... for now." Auldin rose, took some of the five-sided silver pentas from his pocket and dropped them on the table. "Fair enough. Come on." The two were mostly silent as they walked along the narrow, unpaved, crooked streets, past the not-too-tall, five-sided buildings of the mercantile establishments of this district. After a few blocks of the winding, twisted streets--"didn't these folks ever learn anything about surveying?" Hanlon often wondered--they turned down a tree-shaded residential street. They walked past increasingly pretentious houses, which Hanlon knew were of the ubiquitous pentagonal construction so general on this planet. It was this unusual type of buildings that Hanlon found it hard to adjust to. The first day or two on this planet and in this city the odd shapes and crooked streets had so distracted him he had trouble concentrating on his job. Now he looked interestedly at the almost-universal green-tiled roofs, and also at the gardens of beautiful but strangely-unearthly flowers. He saw, too, the thick-trunked, low but wide-spreading flowertrees that lined the streets and were heavily planted in most of the yards surrounding the houses. He tried, naturally, to see if these latter had any minds he could touch--ever since knowing those plant-like Guddus this had become almost automatic with him at sight of any new kind of tree, bush or plant. But he drew a blank here, as he had elsewhere. Those alien growths on Algon might be unique in the universe, he thought. Hanlon was glad of Auldin's silence as they walked along. It enabled him to get his own thoughts in order, and to try to plan as best he could for this coming interview with Yandor, not knowing what to expect ... except that it would undoubtedly try his abilities to the utmost. There were some slight traces of fear in his mind, for he was, after all, still a very young and inexperienced man playing a dangerous game. But his success in his first assignment--the dangers he had faced and the victories he had wrested because of his unusual and growing wild talent--thought of them brought back his self-confidence and with it an almost contemptuous view of the dangers here. There was really nothing to fear after all, he told himself. But still.... Hanlon and Auldin came to a place in the street where it climbed a fairly steep hill--there were many such throughout this city--and were nearly winded when they finally reached the top. Still wordless, they were both glad of the chance to stop and rest a moment. Then they started on again, along a much nicer part of the street, rapidly approaching the home of Ino Yandor. This entertainment entrepreneur (that was, in effect, the nearest approach to a familiar profession of which Hanlon could think) was the one the young secret serviceman's investigations had led him to believe was the first rung on the ladder he must climb to find the knowledge that lay at the top. "Ah, here's the place," Auldin said at last, as they turned up a sort of cobbled walk leading to the fairly imposing residence. It was an ornately-decorated, two-story house, pentagonal in shape, and with a green-tiled roof, of course. The three sides Hanlon could see were painted in different, though mutually complementary colors. The surrounding lawns were made of the peculiar grass so general here, with its minutely-petalled flower-tips. There were also numerous beds of the strange, native flowers, highly-perfumed, but not heavily blossomed except in the mass. Hanlon thought he caught large numbers of thought-emanations from animal minds of various kinds, but before he could investigate, Auldin spoke. "One word of warning. Don't be too eager. Yandor may seem slow thinking and calculating, but don't make the mistake of thinking him stupid. And don't irritate him--he seldom shows his temper, but he is deadly vindictive to those he takes a dislike to. But he is a good employer--and generous to those who serve him well and efficiently." "Thanks for the tip. I'll be on my good behavior." But Hanlon grinned to himself as he read the reason for that warning in Auldin's mind. If this stranger was spying for Yandor, he would have to make a good report on Auldin. Then, as the mobster used the ornate knocker, Hanlon tensed himself for--literally--anything. CHAPTER 4 After a considerable wait the door was opened. By the light from inside George Hanlon saw a fairly tall native, his hair and beard sleek and burnished from much brushing, and trimmed with unusual care. He was wearing a sort of slip-on gown of heavy cloth, probably a lounging robe. Perhaps the man had already gone to bed--in which case he would undoubtedly be quite provoked at their untimely call, Hanlon thought. Indeed, the man's face showed surprise and petulance at this interruption. But Hanlon could see shrewdness and a crafty trickiness inherent in the black eyes, that caused an inward tremor. "I'd sure better be on my toes with this fellow," he thought. Yandor scanned the two for a long moment, without a word, then beckoned them inside. But as soon as the door was shut--and locked--he turned angrily on Auldin. "Well now, what's the big idea, you stupid idiot, of coming here, and at night, and bringing someone with you. Are you trying to cross me, Ran? You know that isn't healthy." Ran Auldin cringed somewhat and made his voice apologetic. "It's because it was night, nyer, and we wouldn't be noticed, that I came now. Besides, I think this is important. I want you to meet Gor Anlo, who's just come from Lura, looking for a chance, he says, to get into our businesses." Auldin slightly emphasized that last word, and Yandor's eyes snapped wide. He swung about and faced Hanlon, studying him carefully. The young man bore the scrutiny without flinching, a smile of greeting on his face, but without a sign of boldness or brashness. After a moment Yandor motioned them into an adjoining room, and himself went to sit behind a large, ornate, wooden table-desk. "Sit," he waved a delicate hand at the two chairs facing him in such a manner that the desk-lamp's light was strong in the faces of the two, while leaving his own more or less in the shadows. Hanlon could barely repress a grin at this--it smacked so intimately of the old Terran police-questioning technique. During the short moments they had been in the hallway, however, Hanlon had noticed a small roch standing there, apparently one that Yandor must have partially tamed and kept as a pet. Quickly the S S man had transferred a part of his mind into that of the beast. Now, while his own body and nine-tenths of his mind were in that office room for the interview with Ino Yandor, the other tenth, inside the brain of the roch, was making the animal roam the house, seeking whatever secrets it might find there. The impresario looked at Hanlon searchingly. "Well now, so you think you'd like to get into the entertainment business, eh?" he said with an attempt at joviality. "Yes, nyer, that ... and other things," Hanlon answered calmly. "Back in Lura where I come from, sir, the people seem to be against the idea of a young fellow getting ahead in the world. So," shrugging, "I came here where I thought there was a better chance of doing myself some good. Me, I'm out after a basketful of gold pentas ... and not too particular how I get 'em," he added levelly, but in his eyes was an unmistakable message the Estrellan could not help reading correctly. "But there are entertainment procurers on the Eastern Continent," Yandor was sparring for time to evaluate this situation better. "If you have a good way of pleasing the people, they would be glad to take you in hand." "Anlo isn't stupid, Yandor," Auldin interrupted ... and Hanlon was glad he did at just that moment. For the roch had just peered through the half-open doorway of a room upstairs, and found a man, probably a servant, lying there on the bed, apparently reading from a scroll. Hanlon did not especially like this spying on anyone, but he _had_ to learn all he could about what was going on here, no matter how he gained the information. So he reached out and studied the man's mind. The fellow was not reading at the moment, he found, but was thinking of the "payback" he owed someone named Ovil Esbor, who had obtained this position for him. This Esbor was much like a Terran "ward boss"--a minor politician, but connected with many shady dealings. Hanlon had not previously heard that name, but made a mental note to investigate the man further. He might be another lead. The S S man withdrew his mind after a bit, and sent the roch searching the other rooms. He noticed quite a few animal pets about the house, but thought nothing special of it at the moment. Meanwhile he, in his own person, began paying more attention to what Auldin and Yandor were saying. "... been in town several days, he says, looking over the situation. How he found out I don't know, but he knows _all_ our businesses." Yandor barely repressed a start of surprise, and his crafty black eyes narrowed. "Why are you spying on ... no, _who_ are you spying on us _for_?" he demanded in cold tones that again sent a shiver down Hanlon's spine. For there was no mercy or lack of ruthlessness in that tone. Nor in the man's attitude. Yet, at the same time, the young man realized stunningly that Yandor, too, was as much afraid of _his_ superior as Auldin was of Yandor ... and Hanlon knew after a fleet scanning of the gangster's mind that he now felt relief that Yandor had not been investigating him through Hanlon. But the young S S man had been reading the impresario's thoughts as best he could, as well as hearing what he was saying. He felt that he knew now how to handle this agent. "As Auldin said, I'm not stupid, and I am on the make for my fortune. I knew the only way was to check first and talk later. So I asked seemingly innocuous questions here and there--and I'm wise enough never to ask more than one from any one person. That way I found out a lot. I do know something about the entertainment business and can hold up my end of the performance. But I also know the really big money is in the other things you control." Yandor did gasp at that. His face grew black and he half-rose and opened his mouth to say something--but Hanlon beat him to it. "Incidentally," he lowered his voice but still kept it penetrant as he leaned forward confidentially, "there's someone in the next room, listening through that door there, to what we're saying." At Hanlon's quiet words, Ino Yandor's eyes opened wide, while Ran Auldin barely repressed an exclamation. Neither guessed, of course, that the stranger was looking through the eyes of Yandor's pet roch which, in the course of its investigation of the house for Hanlon's benefit, had come to the open doorway of that adjoining room, and had seen the man kneeling there, his ear pressed against the door-panels, listening intently. Now Yandor reached into a sort of pigeon-hole in his table-desk and quietly took out a flamegun. Tensing himself, he suddenly swung his chair about and leaped to the door. Flinging it open he found, indeed, another man there, before that other could rise and run. Grabbing the spy's collar with one surprisingly strong hand, Yandor yanked him to his feet and into the light. "_Ondo!_" he exclaimed. "Well now, what in the name of Zappa were you doing?" The small man cringed. "Pardon, nyer, I was ... was only trying to make sure that no one was attempting to harm you ... and ... and standing by to help you if they were." "I think he's lying," Hanlon said, knowing from his quick probe into the other's mind that he was. "I'll bet he's a spy for someone." This last, he knew however, was not correct. Ondo was regularly employed by Yandor as a houseman. But he was one of those intensely curious and inquisitive people who always try to find out everything that goes on in any house they happen to be working in. "By Zappa, you'll never spy again," Yandor's face grew livid. "You know better'n to cross me. You know it isn't healthy." And before anyone could guess what he was about to do, the raging impresario chopped down with the butt of his flamer, and Ondo fell unconscious to the floor, blood welling from a gash in his forehead. The furious entrepreneur was swinging the weapon into firing position to kill the fallen man when Hanlon leaped forward and grasped his arm, holding him back. "Wait, nyer. Don't cinder him," he said almost in a tone of command. "It wouldn't look well for a man of your public position, if word of it ever leaked out." "I say kill the snake," Ran Auldin spat. "There's no sense taking chances with a man we know is a spy." "No!" Hanlon was still quietly determined to save Ondo's life. He spoke as impressively as he could. "Such a killing, with a body to dispose of, would most certainly be traced back to you in time, nyer, and you would lose much of the respect the public holds for you. Your success in your ... other ... endeavors is largely due to the fact that everyone knows you for such a high-principled, public-spirited citizen, that no one suspects you of being anything else. Don't take chances on spoiling that reputation." Yandor was swayed by this impassioned appeal, it was plain to be seen. His respect for Hanlon's quick good sense and sound judgment mounted, and he looked at the young man with new interest. "Anlo's right, Ran," he told his lieutenant. "We mustn't have a killing on our hands that can be so easily traced to us." He turned back to Hanlon, who was grinning inwardly at Yandor's almost-panic that made him forget for the moment that there were no real police detectives on this world who could so easily trace back a killing, especially if only ordinary precautions were used to dispose of the body. "Well now, I thank you for saving me from the risk my temper might have caused. What would you suggest we do with this ... this ...", he pushed at the body with his foot. "It's easy to see that Ondo is only a scared rat, and when he wakes up he'll know he'd better keep away from you or he'll really be killed," Hanlon spoke carelessly. "Just have Auldin take him out and dump him on the next street. Ondo will never bother you again, I'm positive." Auldin seemed about to protest, but Yandor forestalled him. "That's good advice. Take care of it, Auldin." And after the gangster had left the house with his burden, Yandor resumed his seat and motioned Hanlon to take the one he had formerly occupied. But while they were doing this, the young S S man had sent his mind outdoors, found a sleeping bird and taken over its mind. He made it follow Auldin, so he would know where Ondo's body was taken. He would try to save the fellow's life if he could--he had got him into this predicament, it was up to him to get the chap safely out of it. "Well now," Yandor was saying, "I'm beginning to believe you will be a valuable man in our group. I'll think about it some more, and see you sometime tomorrow and we'll talk further about it. But I'm only promising to talk," he added hurriedly, "I'm not saying what my decision will be." "That's all I could ask for now, for I know I can prove my worth." He rose and bowed courteously. "So I'll see you at your place of business in the morning." "You know where it is?" surprisedly. "But of course." As soon as he was out of the house, Hanlon went carefully to the weed-infested vacant lot where Auldin had dumped Ondo's body. When he saw the gangster returning, Hanlon quickly hid behind a great flowertree. Hanlon had brought the bird back to Yandor's house, and now made it perch where it could look through a window. Through the bird's eyes he saw the two inside, talking together for some minutes, Yandor apparently very angry, Auldin on the defensive. Then the slender mobster slunk from the house, and started back toward the downtown section. Hanlon made the bird follow him, to make sure Auldin was really going home, and was not circling about to try to find out what Hanlon was doing or where he was going. Then the SS man went to the vacant lot to find Ondo sitting up, holding his aching head. Almost roughly he jerked him to his feet. "Look, you phidi," Hanlon made his voice deadly menacing, "I don't like people who go around trying to find out about me and my business. Yandor merely insisted that I see to it that you left town immediately, but I'm not that soft-hearted. I'm going to kill you, then I'll know you've done your last snooping." He reached toward his pocket, as though for a knife or flamegun. The man was a small, terror-stricken rat. But he was not entirely lacking in the universal will to live. Suddenly he half-stooped, then jumped forward, his shoulder crashing into Hanlon's body. The young Corpsman could have maintained his balance, but he let himself fall, as though he had been knocked down by the blow. Ondo took off like a scared dara, and in brief seconds was out of sight. Hanlon waited several minutes, then went down the street toward his rooming house, grinning to himself. He was happy that it could be worked out this way. He was sure this Ondo would leave Stearra without delay. Hanlon's hint about that was enough, he was sure--especially since he knew Ondo was convinced that he would be killed out of hand if he ever allowed himself to be seen hereabouts again. As he walked swiftly along, Hanlon released the bird from its mental spell, for it was now apparent Auldin was really going downtown, or home. But before releasing the bird, Hanlon guided it back to a comfortable perch in a tree, and put it to sleep. He could not help feeling gratitude--yet still with an awed sense of wonder--about his ability to control animal minds. He remembered so vividly that day on the great spaceliner _Hellene_, when he had discovered this tremendous ability with the little puppy ... what was its name...? oh, yes, Gypsy. And the still greater thrill when he was experimenting later with the dogs on the kennel deck, and had found that he could not only read their complete minds and control their nerves and muscles to make them follow his bidding, but that he could also _dissociate_ a portion of his mind, put it in their brains and leave it there, connected with the balance of his own mind merely by a slender thread of consciousness, yet able to think and act independently. But it certainly came in mighty handy in his work as a secret serviceman, and he was thankful to whatever powers may be that had given him this ability to do these amazing things. Now if he could only learn how to read and control the whole mind and body of a human, instead of being able to read only their surface thoughts! But he was trying to learn to be content with what he had, and to use it thankfully. Yet he never ceased trying to learn more--to be able to do more along these lines. Finally back in his room Hanlon grinned again to himself as he began undressing. He felt good. He had put it over again. He was sure he was "in". He sat down on a chair and removed the special shoes he was wearing. These native Estrellans were very man-like in shape as well as mentality, but there were enough structural differences so it had taken the expert cosmetician many hours to fix him up to look like one of them. These shoes, for instance, because Estrellans had unusually large feet, were really shoes-within-shoes, to fit his feet correctly inside and yet appear large enough on the outside not to attract attention. * * * * * _In the spaceship high above, intent thoughts had been coursing through the mind of the being. Finally, certain commands were impressed upon the mind of the Estrellan native the being controlled, that would set in motion a new train of events._ _The native cringed as those thoughts came into his mind. They were not the kind of things he would ever consider, of himself. They outraged his every sense of right and justice. It made him actually, physically sick even to contemplate them, and he wondered briefly how he had ever come to get such ideas._ _Yet something, he could not guess what, forced him to do them, despite his every struggling, heartsick effort not to obey the commands he did not even know were commands._ CHAPTER 5 As SSM George Hanlon continued undressing, he recalled his parting with his father on Simonides. "How soon do I start?" he had asked, boyishly eager, at the close of their interview. "Right away?" "Whoa, son, not so fast," the admiral laughed. "You'll have to have a series of inoculation-shots against the Estrellan diseases. Then you'll have to learn a lot, and especially, you'll have to be disguised to look like a native, which isn't easy. Here are reels of the language, customs and geography. Get a room in the hotel here and sleep-learn them. I think you'll find the language not too hard--it's a simple, uncomplicated one, outside of their habit of putting the verbs ahead of the nouns, and then the adjectives or adverbs. As to their way of thought--well, that's far different. Even with your ability to read their minds, I'll bet you have trouble in really understanding them for some time. I'm not always sure I do, even yet." "Tough, eh?" "That they are. You can't work them like you do humans--their concepts seem not at all like ours in so many things. We can get in serious trouble through misunderstanding their apparently straight-forward words. So go slow and easy." "I'll watch for that, dad, and bone up on the rest as fast as I can. Meanwhile, how's about going out and wrapping ourselves around a couple of thick steaks--or some of that good _poyka_ at the Golden Web? I'd like to see Hooper again." "The grub I'll buy. But Curt isn't here--he's one of the boys working Estrella with me." The lessons learned in time, Hanlon visiphoned Admiral Hawarden at Base, who sent the cosmetician to him at the hotel. The shoes had been only part of the job. There was the smock-coat, which Hanlon was now removing in his room in Stearra. Estrellans had narrow, sloping shoulders, so a tailor had made special clothes--the coat almost like a knee-length, slipover sweater only of a heavy cloth like homespun, with shoulders whose cut and padding gave them the proper sloping look. There was also the divided-skirt sort of pantaloons, that gathered at the ankle. As he undressed Hanlon looked at himself in the mirror, and grinned. Trevor had dyed his skin all over--not the dark red of Terran Indians, not yet the black of negroes nor the brown of Malayans, but a sort of deep pink. Hanlon had been warned not to take either tub or shower baths, but had been supplied with a bottle of a special chemical. Naked at last, he scratched luxuriously and stretched hugely. He poured a bowlful of water, added seven drops of the chemical, then gave himself a sponge bath. As he was washing his face he noticed with amusement the way his ears had been built up with plastic to almost twice their natural size, and the way his nose had been made so much broader--like a giant ape's it spread over half the width of his face. He was careful not to pull off any of the hair that had been so painstakingly glued to his body to simulate the general hairiness of the Estrellans. And, of course, he had neither shaved nor had a haircut since being assigned this job, and his beard was growing nicely. But it, and the body hair, was the most uncomfortable part of his imposture--the darned stuff itched, but bad. He scratched. Anyway, he thought thankfully, Trevor had really done a job on him. No one yet met here had seemed to notice anything out of the way with him, as far as his looks went. He had easily passed everywhere as a real native. A two-man speedster had brought him to this planet, and had landed him just outside this city they called Stearra, in the dead of night. His father, he knew, had preceded him by nearly two weeks, was here somewhere, as were Manning and Hooper, the two other S S men assigned here. A sneak boat came every two weeks, and stayed at a designated spot near the principal city on each continent from midnight until three in the morning, in case any of the men wanted to send messages or needed assistance of any kind. Undressed--and scratched--and washed--and scratched--Hanlon lay down on his bed and gave himself up to thoughts of the coming interview at Ino Yandor's office. He tried to analyze what he had learned and its possible connection with whatever it was that was keeping Estrella from joining the Federation of Planets; from becoming the fifty-eighth member of that far-flung union of self-governing worlds. It seemed to him he had made a good start--although he was slightly dissatisfied with the speed at which he was _not_ getting ahead. Yet he had felt all along--and still so thought--that with his way of working his best course lay through the criminal gangs of Stearra--that by working up through them he would eventually come to the ones who were behind all this. And he was sure this Ino Yandor was his best lead to date, even though it seemed strange that an entertainment agent would be the top man in the criminal world. His father had not been too certain that this was a logical channel of investigation, but was quite willing to let Hanlon try it--the Corps _had_ to have that information, and each man of the secret service should work the way that seemed best to him. Nor could the admiral argue against Hanlon's insistence that this sudden rise of hitherto-unknown criminal activity just at this time was not purely coincidental. But the whole thing was such a seemingly insoluble puzzle. From his own investigation since he had arrived--from the "feel" of the city and its inhabitants to his sensitive perceptions--Hanlon knew the people on the whole were such swell folks; the kind that would make wonderful Federation citizens, even if they did look so peculiar and animal-like to Terrans. Any race with a religion and a code of living based on such common decencies and high-principled honesties as theirs, was bound to be a good one. From all he had been able to learn, Hanlon thought the Ruler, Elus Amir, a decent fellow and extremely capable. Amir certainly had shown by his actions all during his tenure of office that while their system of government was a sort of limited autocracy, that he, at least, was trying to make it a benevolent one. Unless all the information Hanlon and the S S had gathered was haywire, this Amir was certainly not behind all this sudden opposition. He had seemed--especially at first--to be very much in favor of joining. Then who in the name of Snyder was? Suddenly a new idea brought Hanlon upright on the bed. Was Amir merely a tool--like the emperor of Sime had been under Bohr? Was there someone here who was comparable to that devilish Highness? Somebody with Bohr's brains and driving lust for power and ever more power? Hanlon sucked in his breath in sudden wonder--and worry. Was this unknown another alien from the same, or some other advanced and far-away planet as yet unknown to the Corps, working to take over Estrella and possibly--or finally--the rest of the Federated Planets and the whole galaxy? It took Hanlon a long time to go to sleep... nor had he found the answers to his puzzle when he finally did drop off. * * * * * When George Hanlon appeared in Ino Yandor's office just before midday, the dapper impresario ushered his visitor into an inner room and closed the door. "I think Ondo has left town--or died. For I have heard nothing more of him, nor have any of my men. You were right about a killing that could be traced to me being bad for my carefully-built reputation. Well now, about your working for me. You said you knew something about the entertainment business. What can you do?" "Well, I can't sing or posture, and I'm not much good at acrobatics. I can whistle a little, and...." "'Blow'? What is that?" Yandor used his definition of the word Hanlon had translated as meaning "whistle." Oh, oh. Hanlon knew he had blundered. In an effort to cover up he said, "This," and puckered up his lips and whistled a few discordant notes, concealing the fact that he was an excellent whistler, and could do perfectly dozens of bird-call imitations. "No, I'm afraid that is nothing our people would care for." "Then how about an animal act?" This was the crucial point. Hanlon had given a lot of thought to this, and had worked out the idea he thought might apply here. It certainly would go big back on Terra, he knew, but he was not yet conversant enough with Estrellan theatrical acts--even though he had gone to the theatre several times to study them--to know if these strange people would like it or not. But he had to get in the good graces of Yandor. "What sort of an animal act do you have in mind?" the impresario asked doubtfully. "Our audiences are very particular. It has to be good, very good, and unusual." "I think they'll like mine," confidently. "I have eight pet roches, and as...." "Roches!" Yandor looked incredulous. "You mean you've actually trained some roches?" "That's right. I've trained them as a hobby. I drill 'em just like our Ruler's residence guards do--and other things as well. I'm sure the people will like the act. I'll bring 'em down and show you what they can do." "Well now," still hesitantly, "that may be all right. It sounds most unusual, to say the least. I'll look at them, say, the day after tomorrow--yes, I think I'll have time then." "Thank you, nyer. Then, after I've shown you what I can do about that, we can talk about ... other things." There was a flash of anger in the snapping, black eyes. "Don't press me, Anlo. I go slow about things like this, and I'll want to know all about you first." "Sure, I know that. I didn't mean to hurry you--I just wanted to remind you I was still thinking about the main thing, not merely about a little matter like being an animal trainer." He left the offices then, and started toward home. But on the way he began thinking about that man, Ovil Esbor, he had heard mentioned. He took a couple of hours out, then, to investigate many minds to see what he could learn about the fellow. He found that his initial information was correct--Esbor was a small-time, local politician, but was also connected with many other businesses about the city. He ran a sort of employment agency as his business "front", but there were rumors that he was also a "fence" for stolen goods, a panderer and narcotics agent, and many other illegal things. These latter, however, Hanlon registered in his mind as merely rumors, not facts, for he could get no direct evidence of them, even though he "read" about such things in many minds. But he was convinced that the man was one about whom he should learn a lot more, as he had time for such investigation. He felt sure that Esbor fitted in somewhere in the chain of criminals Hanlon was so sure was tied in with the group who were trying to keep Estrella out of the Federation. He went back to his apartment then, and to the training of his roches. He was well satisfied with them--he liked them as pets, and they had learned to like him. When he first came in they swarmed all over him, and all of them had a good romp before he got them down to serious business. He was also quite happy about the way things were going. He was putting it over again, for he felt certain that through Yandor he could get the dope he needed on the higher-ups. Yandor had never even so much as denied that he had other irons in the fire than his theatrical business. And from vague ideas Hanlon had seen in the man's mind from time to time, he felt surer than ever that he was on the right track. That evening he again went out for some fresh air. As he was strolling aimlessly down the street he saw an elderly Estrellan native approaching. The fellow seemed very friendly, wanting to stop and chat--and Hanlon found himself grinning inwardly at the old man's garrulous good nature, so like that of Terran elders, something he had not before found here. The young S S man touched the other's mind almost as a matter of course at the outset, and discovered that the man had lived in Stearra all his life, but was now a lonesome old widower, all his family and friends gone on before him or moved away. Here was a good chance, Hanlon thought, both to be nice to an oldster and to get some more general and perhaps specific information. "Will you do me the honor to have a drink with me, nyer?" he asked courteously the first time the old chap gave him an opening. "There is a very nice place where men drink close by." "That's mighty kind of you, yunner, mighty kind. Don't many people act that way to me any more. But there was a time ..." his voice trailed off, but Hanlon read in his thoughts of the days when the fellow was an important and popular man in this city. As they walked along the street to the drinking place, Hanlon listened with half an ear to the old fellow's chatter, while he was thinking swiftly. It had not taken him long to learn that in this secret service business he had to take information wherever, and from whomever, it was to be gained. And this old geezer ought to be quite a mine of gossip. Hanlon hoped he could steer it into channels of real information. Once seated at a small table, and their glasses of mykkyl before them, Hanlon broke into the monologue to say engagingly, "I've been in Stearra such a short time, nyer, that I don't know much about it. And since I intend to make it my home from now on, I want to know all I can about things and people here." "Heh, heh, you came to the right place for that, yunner. Where you from?" "I was born in Lura, over on the Eastern Continent. But I found there was not much chance for a young fellow to make his fortune over there--everything is owned by a few rich people who keep all the businesses in their own families. So I came here." "Yes, you did right. There are plenty of chances for bright young fellows to make fortunes here in Stearra. Hey ah, I remember well ..." and the old fellow started in on what Hanlon knew would be a long, uninteresting resume of his past life. So he interrupted with a question, or rather, a request. "Please tell me who are the most important people here, and what you know about them." For nearly an hour he kept the old fellow on this topic, in spite of the innumerable lapses when the man started wandering in his reminiscences. Once, when Hanlon had ventured to ask directly about Yandor, he learned a very interesting fact that he gave considerable thought to when he was back in his own room. This was the fact that the impresario was crazy about animal pets. "He has what almost amounts to a menagerie at his home," the old fellow cackled. "Always on the lookout for new and unusual types and kinds. Why, they say he even has cages outdoors, containing lots of wild animals--even has them brought to him from the East Continent and the polar regions." Hanlon remembered now, that when he first went to Yandor's house he had seemed to sense many animal minds near him, but had not taken the time to investigate. Also, that the roch had shown him quite an unusual number of pets about the house. So, after Hanlon had bid the old man good night, the young S S man settled himself in his most comfortable seat to consider this angle, as well as the other things he had learned that night. Actually, while great in quantity they had been meager in quality, telling him little that he desired to know. The oldster had not known anything about any organized opposition to Estrella's joining the Federation nor, more particularly, who was behind it. Oh, he could repeat glibly much of the propaganda that was making the rounds, and which Hanlon already knew. How, if Estrella joined the Terran planets it would lose its own planetary sovereignty, and become merely a minor cog in the great schemes of the people led by Terra, who were out to grab the whole galaxy for their own ends of power and greed. That Estrella's people would have to conform to human standards rather than their own, and that their splendid Estrellan culture would soon be entirely lost. That they would end up by being little more than slaves. "Why," he cried with genuine dismay and anger at one point, "it is those Terrans who are doing all the criminal things that have been making life here so dangerous recently--all those robberies, fires, murders, and so on, that our people would never even dream of doing." "Where'd you hear that?" Hanlon queried sharply, aghast that his surmise should thus quickly prove correct. "Why, everyone knows that; everyone's talking about it," there was surprise at his question. "You mean you didn't know it? "But it's true. That's the sort Terrans are. They don't even consider us real people," he added indignantly, almost crying in his drink. "They actually think we are inferior to them--that we are just semi-intelligent animals. Hey ah, how stupid can they get? They should know we Estrellans are the highest form of life in the whole universe!" Hanlon knew this vicious propaganda was false, of course. He wanted to tell the oldster about how they actually worked with the primitive but intelligent races of other planets--what he, himself, had helped plan for the Guddus. But, of course, he could not. He could have told this old man that while the Corps and the Federation statesmen recognized that the Estrellans were not as far advanced in some sciences and technologies as were the Terrans and their colonists on other worlds, they did respect these people as possessors of excellent minds and abilities. That they readily acknowledged that the Estrellans were far ahead of them in ethics and in ways of living together peacefully. He could have added that these statesmen knew, and stated, that if the Estrellans wanted to learn the sciences and techniques the Federationists possessed, they could assimilate that knowledge in a very short time. But, also, that the Federation would never try to _force_ their knowledge or culture on the Estrellans or any other peoples. That they never tried to make any of the less-educated or less-advanced beings of other worlds conform to any mold those people, themselves, did not desire and specifically request be taught them. But at the moment this other thought interested Hanlon more than a political review. So Yandor liked pets, did he? Well, how better get in his good graces than give him one never seen on Estrella before? Hanlon would get him a brand new animal, one far different from those on this planet, where all the native animals were tailless. Yes, and it would be one with a brain that could give Hanlon a real chance to see and hear what was going on in the man's private life when Hanlon could not be near him. "Let's see now, when's that sneakboat due ... hey, it's tomorrow night. That's great. I'll be there to meet it." CHAPTER 6 _It was nearing dawn on the eastern Continent of Estrella, and high above in the stratosphere, in its spaceship, the strange being that had been studying this planet so carefully, suddenly stiffened to closer attention. Its mind had just contacted a group of beings below whose minds were of a far different texture--finer, somehow--than those of the natives of this world. The language was different, too, which did not make so much difference. But the thought-processes of these newcomers, in many cases, were almost incomprehensible to the alien._ _What were they? Was there more than one race here on this planet, after all? The being activated its multiphased scanners, and studied and pondered._ * * * * * SSM George Hanlon was waiting in the shadows of the great forest enclosing the hidden clearing when the spacer came in. When it had landed, the lock-door opened. Hanlon ran over and, after giving the correct password, was helped inside the ship. "Hi, fellows," he greeted the two secret servicemen who were assigned as crew of this ship, and went with them into the control room. "How's everything in the great big universe outside of this dump?" "Not bad," they grinned. "Nothing special going on. Mars just won the interplanet baseball championship...." "... and there's a new singer on stereo that's a doll, boy, a doll...." "... We saw Hoop and Manny at our stop on the other side, and they said the admiral was coming here. We got some letters for him, but you'd better take 'em in case he doesn't show before we have to leave." "Oke, will do. Hey, you fellows got any candy bars? Can't get sweets here, and I'm sugar starved." "Sure, plenty." And while one of the men went to the storeroom, the other asked Hanlon if he would like a cup of coffee. "Gee, I sure would. That's another thing these folks don't have. That herb tea of theirs ... ugh!" The first returned with a dozen candy bars that Hanlon stuffed in his pocket, and continued drinking his coffee. "Oh, yes, better give me some Estrellan money. I've had to spend quite a bit recently. About five hundred credit's worth should be enough." They gave him that from a supply in a drawer. "Now for the most important thing," Hanlon said. "Next trip I want you to bring me a cat--a nice black...." "A cat?" It was a duet of surprise. "Yeh, a nice, tame, house-broken Earth cat. All black, or maybe with a white star in its forehead. About a year old, and quite large. Be sure it has nice, sleek fur." "Can do, all right," doubtfully, "but for John's sake, why?" "One of the men I'm working on here loves pets and collects all the different kinds he can get. So I want to give him something he doesn't have. All the animals here are tailless, so get me one with a really nice, long, well-furred tail. A thorough-bred, not an alley-cat. I figure it will help me get in good with him." "Right." One of them made a note. "Anything else?" "Not a thing, thanks. 'Specially for the coffee and candy. Wonder when da ... the admiral will get here?" He hoped they had not noticed that near-slip, for it had been decided the relationship should not be generally told, and so far only a few S S men and high officials knew of it. "Haven't the faintest." "Then I guess I'll stick around awhile and see, if you don't mind." "Glad to have you aboard, mister. We have to stay here several hours anyway, and we like company. Getting sick of old Tom's ugly face anyway," one of them quipped. "Yeh, I 'spose you think you're a beauty queen." "You play poker?" "Lead me to it." Though Hanlon carefully avoided using his special mental abilities, when Admiral Newton came aboard an hour or so later, the young Corpsman was a few credits ahead. The cards had just fallen right for him. After the two secret servicemen had left the cruiser and it had blasted off, they started back toward town. Hanlon had very much wanted to see his father, for he had been vaguely disturbed and dissatisfied with his rate of progress. True, he was making a good start at getting where he wanted to go, but it seemed to him he was taking far too much time for what little he had accomplished. He said as much to his father. "Well, I don't know," the admiral said thoughtfully, as they rode along the flowertree-shaded but dusty road. "These things take time, and it seems to me you haven't done so badly, considering the short time you've been here." "Thanks for being generous, but I seem to be taking so long for next to nothing." "What do you plan to do now?" Newton asked, and Hanlon explained more in detail what he was after. "What makes you so sure this fellow Yandor leads to the higher ups?" the admiral asked slowly at last. "All the clues I've managed to pick up so far point to him as a key figure," Hanlon said earnestly. "I've read in a number of minds facts--or snatches--that point to him as one of the leaders, despite his reputable position as the leading theatrical entrepreneur...." "Or because of it," his father interjected. "Yes, perhaps because of it. When Auldin introduced us and I hinted at my knowledge of his 'other activities'--and when I've mentioned them since--Yandor didn't react as I'm sure he would if he wasn't engaged in something off-color." "Hmmm, it all sounds reasonable. And as far as the time it is taking you is concerned, you needn't worry yet. It always takes time to open up a line of investigation. You took three months or more off to go to Algon, remember, but you got the answers finally." They had arrived at the house where Hanlon lived so they parked their trikes in the back yard, and went up to his room. "Yes, what you say is true," Hanlon seemed more relieved now. "What have you and the others found out?" His father's short laugh was not a pleased one. "Hardly a thing worth mentioning. We don't even have any leads that may be successful, as you have. Manning has been working as a clerk in a government office, but can't find a thing. Hooper is in Lumina, the secondary capital where the study and suggestion body holds forth...." Hanlon's mind remembered from the reels that this body was not exactly a legislature or congress, since it had no power to make laws. It studied all questions and problems that came up, and reported or made suggestions to the Ruler, who had the final say. It was something fairly recent, introduced by Elus Amir. "... and managed to get a job on an Estrellan equivalent of a newspaper there. But he hasn't found a thing, either, except that he's been in a position to learn where the propaganda is strongest, and is keeping charts and graphs, with dates and percentages, of its spread. But so far they haven't shown anything conclusive, except that the rumors are spreading rapidly, and that lately they have included the whispers that Terrans are back of the crime wave." "Yeh, I've heard that. Obviously a 'whisper campaign' started by the real conspirators. But what're you doing, dad?" "Mostly I'm just traveling here and there, keeping as quiet and undercover as possible, trying to find out what people all over the planet are really thinking. The percentage who believe the propaganda seems very small, but is growing. About the only thing I've found out at all curious or extraordinary is that Adwal Irad, the Second-In-Line seems to have a much greater than ordinary place in the counsel and affections of Amir, the Ruler." Hanlon laughed. "That 'Second-In-Line' business is screwy, isn't it?" The admiral sat back in his chair, lighted a cigarro, and grew thoughtful. "Yes, from our standpoint it is most peculiar, and one of the things that make it so hard for us to understand the Estrellans at all well. How it is done I haven't been able to find out, but the men of the ruling class are specially bred--reminds me of the way queen bees are developed. They are larger physically, less hairy, and far more brainy than the average males here. However, it seems to sap their strength to handle the job, for while the new ruler takes over at the age of thirty, at the end of his fifteen-year term of office he is an old man--yet the average Estrellan life-expectancy is ninety." He shook his head. "Sure is alien all right," the younger S S man furrowed his brow in concentration. "Never heard of anything like it before." He was silent a moment, then looked up. "But what about Irad that's different--I should think the rulers would want their successors to learn as much as possible about the job before they took over." "I gather they do, but usually in a perfunctory sort of way. However, ever since he came back to Estrella--Irad was one of the natives who went on that personally-conducted tour of the Federation--he has been with the ruler almost every day. It is said the old man treats him more like a son than a successor; they seem, from reports, to be closer even than Amir and his own son." "Aren't the two related?" "Not that closely. I believe Irad is a sort of second-cousin's son. There's an examination among each generation of ruler-possibilities, and the high man is designated 'Second-In-Line', and so on down." "What d'you 'spose it all means?" "Have no data yet. It could be something--or nothing." "I'll keep Irad in mind, then, and watch for a place to fit him in. Oh, by the way, how long before he takes over?" "About two years, I think. Why?" "Just thought that might be important. I'll hunt around and find out." Hanlon paused a moment, then continued slowly, "but the more you tell me of what you and the boys have _not_ found out, the more certain I am that my way is best--for me, at least--and that I can get some dope through the gangs here." "I'm willing to buy that now. I'll grant that whoever is back of all this opposition may be, and probably is, using the criminals, and you may get the first leads, at that. In fact, you already have more than we have. But I think we'll find--if we ever learn--that someone far above their level is the prime operator." "You think there's a possibility it might be some alien--like Bohr was on Simonides?" His father sat upright and looked at him penetratingly. "I hadn't thought of that." Then he slumped down again. "But I wouldn't say so. It would really be stretching coincidence 'way out of shape for it to be the same sort of set-up you found there. You haven't found anything to make you think that, have you?" "No, I don't really suspect anything of the sort--just can't forget how surprised we were back there when we found out about Bohr." "Well, we'll just have to keep on plugging. The campaign is so obvious--so open with all its use of pamphlets, spreaders of rumor, and the same arguments everywhere ... it seems we certainly ought to find some leads somewhere. But ..." he shrugged helplessly. "There's certainly a clever propagandist in the background somewhere. And he sure keeps well hidden." The elder made a pained grimace. "You can say that again." "Say, I've got an idea. How about having Hooper or Manning, or bring in still another SS man, to come here and let me brief him on what I've found out about two or three other natives who seem to be up in the gang world? I've got leads on some others who are apparently lesser gang bosses, but I haven't time to follow them up and keep on with my other lines of investigation, even though I think they're important enough to study. Having someone else here to work on them would get rid of a lot of the criminal activity, I'm sure, and would leave me more free to work on Yandor and his superiors. This Yandor is fond of pets, and the sneakboat's bringing me a cat next trip, and through its mind and eyes and ears I can watch him when he's at home, and so on." His father stared at him in surprise. "A cat...?" Then he shook his head with a helpless movement, but grinned feebly. "You continually amaze me, Spence. I hope it works out." "Oh, I'm sure it will. Yandor makes a hobby of animals, and anything as strange and wonderful--to Estrellans--as a tailed cat he'll undoubtedly keep with him most of the time. Especially after I impress on tabby's mind that it is to love Yandor wholeheartedly, and be very distressed when away from him." He grinned wolfishly. "Sounds good if you can work it, and I am sure _you_ can. As to the other...." He thought in silence for several minutes, then, "I'll have Manning come here and go to work with you. Being a government clerk, he could pretend he wants to get into local politics, and it'll all seem natural to the natives." "Fine. One of the locals I suspect is a sort of political boss. I'll brief Morrie on all I know, and suggest some things he can look into to start with." "And Hooper and I will check more closely into the gangs over on the Eastern Continent," the admiral said. Then he leaned forward earnestly. "We've got to solve this. At first it was merely asking a new world with a high civilization to join us for mutual benefits. But now that this opposition has grown so strong, if we fail here we'll have that much more trouble with other non-Terran worlds we discover. You know Colonial has dozens of survey ships out all the time, and since they cracked that new-type drive of Bohr's, and increased our speed nearly 300%, those exploring trips go both farther and faster." "We'll get 'em, dad," and Hanlon got up as his father rose. Admiral Newton was still not too optimistic. "I certainly hope so. Well, keep trying, son, and don't get into any more trouble than's necessary." "I won't, dad. Safe flights," and the admiral left. After his father had gone, Hanlon sat thinking seriously, and trying to make plans. The roches, which he had kept asleep while he and his father were talking, he awakened and fed, then romped with them for a time. But Hanlon was not really in the mood for play, even though he had come to feel a great affection for these fine animals, and they for him. He had too much on his mind for such recreation just now. One thing, he suddenly realized--the roches had brought it to his mind--he had been forgetting. That was the series of burnings and wreckings that Auldin and his men were continuing nightly. Despite his notes to the local peace-keepers, Hanlon knew they had done nothing to stop these depredations, and it made him angry. "What sort of dopes are those peacers, anyway?" he growled to himself. "Are they in on all this, too? They must be. And yet, I must remember they've never run up against anything like this before and probably haven't sense enough to figure out what to do. So, it's time I did something about it. But how? Should I try the same thing, or something else?" He slept most of the day, making up for his wakefulness of the previous night. When he awoke he considered his problem. Due to the fact that he would probably be working his roches in public in a few days, and in a way he believed Estrellans had never seen them drilled or trained before, he was afraid that if he sent another note by means of a roch, as he had done before, someone in authority might be clever enough to put two and two together and not get five. So he decided to use an ordinary messenger. After dinner Hanlon went again to the little cafe that Auldin and his men patronized, but this time he did not go in. Having been in touch with Auldin's mind so many times, he now knew its texture and individual characteristics well. So when the mobster and his men went into the cafe, Hanlon not only knew it but had no trouble "hearing" Auldin give his crew their assignments for that night's dirty work. He had again prepared a note for the peace officers, and now he added the new addresses to it. Then he went down the street until he found an Estrellan boy, to whom he gave the note, directions and a coin. The boy ran to the peace station and gave the paper to the official there. "We are giving you one last chance to serve the taxpayers and citizens who support you," the note said. "You paid no attention to the previous warnings, but we are giving you the benefit of the doubt. We believe you simply did not know how to handle such a situation. It is simple--send a number of men to each of the places listed below, and have them hide and watch. Then, when they see the criminals come to start their nefarious work, have them run out and arrest the men, and bring them back to your station. There they can be held for trial, by the Ruler or someone he appoints. Now get busy, or else...." "Where did you get this?" the official asked the boy after reading the note. "Some man gave it to me on the street, and gave me a silver penta to bring it to you," the youth answered, then ran out before he could be questioned further. Three of the gangsters were arrested that night, but somehow--either through his own shrewdness or through someone's blundering--Auldin escaped. * * * * * _In the spaceship the strange being knew a feeling of profound disquiet. It had followed the two of those strange minds that flew the space-cruiser to its second landing place on this world. It had known when these beings met one and then another additional one of these unknowns who were not like the natives of this world. From the fact that the first two came in a spaceship--which these natives did not possess--the deduction was simple that they were all from some other and unknown--to it--planetary system._ _But one of these newest minds could not be touched at all! The scanning intellect knew only that such a mentality was there because the first two (and later, a third) were so evidently holding a long conversation with someone ... and in its multiphased scanner the being could see that that someone was apparently an Estrellan native._ _Why, then, could not its mind be touched?_ _In its scanner the two were followed as they returned to the city and to a dwelling place, and one side of their conversation was "listened to." They were clearly, the mind was forced to conclude, a menace to its carefully-laid plans._ _But why could that one mind not be read?_ CHAPTER 7 In the morning, although still fuming about Auldin's escape, Hanlon had to put it out of his mind as he prepared for the try-out of his act before Yandor. The new and gaudy uniforms had been delivered and the roches had grown used to wearing them. Now Hanlon dressed himself and the animals and left the house. They marched down the street toward the downtown section where Yandor's office was located. Naturally, the procession attracted considerable attention, for Hanlon made the roches follow him sometimes in single file, then close up to double file. They always kept evenly spaced, all in perfectly cadenced step. He, himself, strutted in a sort of drum-major's fashion, for he considered all this excellent advertising. "Wish I had a brass band," he grinned to himself. "Then these folks would really wake up." By the time he reached the more densely-peopled business section, a large crowd was watching him and his unusually-trained and dressed dogs, and comments were lively and pleasantly surprised. As on Terra--or any other planet, for that matter--this parade attracted an ever-growing crowd of excited children, who tagged along with laughter and shouts of joy. Into Yandor's office Hanlon and his roches marched, and at his brisk command they lined up before the startled entrepreneur's table-desk in a double rank of four. "Salute," Hanlon said, and the dogs stood on their hind legs simultaneously, and raised their right forepaws in salute. "Well now," Yandor gasped, "what have we here?" But Hanlon, without answering, turned to his roches. "Attention." The roches dropped to all fours, and aligned themselves. In rapid order Hanlon made them do columns right and left, right and left turns, left and right by twos and fours, right and left obliques, and finally right into company front. Then, "Company, halt. Parade, rest." The roches, who had obeyed every order with precision and unanimity, sank to their haunches and crossed their front feet. The impresario had stood watching with open mouth and bugging eyes during this miracle of training. Now he rushed up and seized both Hanlon's hands. "Well now, that's wonderful. Perfect. I've never seen anything like it. Marvelous. Can they do anything else, too?" "Certainly," and Hanlon explained rapidly the various other things he had trained his roches, individually and as a group, to do. "Well now, we certainly can use this. The people have never seen anything like it. They'll be enraptured. Let's talk terms." Hanlon faced the roches, who had not moved. "At rest." They relaxed and lay down, although still keeping their places. Most of them hung out their tongues and panted in the manner of dog-like animals everywhere. Nor did they move from their places during the half hour or so Hanlon and Yandor were talking business. All during that discussion Hanlon carefully watched the mind of the man before him, paying more attention to any stray and extraneous thoughts than he did to their talk about bookings--which actually did not especially interest him. For he had begun to find that in those side thoughts of the natives during a conversation usually lay his greatest mine of information. Hanlon was becoming more and more certain that this man Yandor had much on his mind besides the entertainment business that was his front. He was not able--yet--to get any direct clues as to who Yandor's superior or superiors might be, but he did glean enough to make him certain there were such higher-ups. Just as they were closing their interview Hanlon said, "I understand, nyer, that you have quite a collection of rare animals." "Well now, that's right. I do have quite a number, and am always looking for new and unusual ones." "Do you happen to have a Terran _cat_ among them?" "A cat? What is that? I never heard of such an animal." "Oh, but you must have one of those. They are not only the finest pets anyone could possibly have, but they have long, furry tails." A gleam of interested desire came into Yandor's eyes. "I've heard of animals with tails, on other planets, but I've never even seen one. Well now, such a thing would be most wonderful--a magnificent addition to my collection. But how can I get one?" "If you'll permit me the pleasure, nyer, I can get one for you. I know a certain man on the Eastern Continent who obtained a pair when he was on that trip to the Terran planets. Lately they have had a litter of kittens, as the young are called. I am sure I can buy one or ... or ... well, I'll get you one," he grinned. "Oh, I would so like to have one--though I hesitate to let you take such risks. But from you, my friend, I'll accept it. Well, yes, I'll gladly accept it from you. When can I have it?" "It may take some days, but have it you shall. I'll bring it as soon as I can. Meanwhile, where and when do you want me to perform first?" "Well now, let me think. The National Theatre would be best, I think. Yes, it is the finest and largest here in the capital, and I'll make a special presentation of your opening. I'll invite all the finest people, including our glorious Ruler and his staff. Yes, three days should be sufficient to arrange it all, if the Ruler is free that evening. Where do you live? I'll send you word." The next three days were extremely busy ones for Hanlon--and he had little time for spying on the mind of Yandor, save when he saw him briefly. Feeling in a way that he was being derelict in his duty, Hanlon nevertheless decided that to gain the best results later he would have to concentrate for the time being on getting ready for his debut. So much depended on that being a success. He had attended the so-called theatrical performances--more like variety acts or what he had read that the old-time vaudeville shows were like--since he had decided to make his bid for contact with Yandor by this means. Now he went to the "place of performances" to study the layout more carefully and minutely. It was nothing like the various types of theatres he had known so well on Terra. For one thing, it was not in a building at all, but merely a specially-prepared plot of ground, surrounded by a high stone wall. Naturally, being Estrellan, it was five-sided. Inside the wall the hard-packed and smoothed ground sloped gently downward from all sides toward a level, tile-floored, foot-high place in the center that was the stage. The customers stood during the performance, although Hanlon had never been able to understand why. "Sure seems as though it would be easy, and not too expensive, to at least give them benches of some sort to sit on," he thought. Near one corner of the stage was the entrance to a flight of stone steps that led downward into the dressing rooms and property-storage for the theatre. When it was their turn, the actors had to come up these steps and so onto the stage to begin their turn, without benefit of curtain. Also, because of the peculiar construction it was impossible to use "backdrops" or "sets" as Hanlon knew them. The morning Hanlon went to investigate the place there was no one around, so he was not stopped nor disturbed while he made a complete tour of the underground rooms, and stepped off the measurements of the stage. One great lack amused him. "What?" he chuckled, "no popcorn or soft drink dispenser robots?" He had noticed when attending previous performances, that they used no type of footlights or other illumination whatever, and that it was hard for those in the back of the enclosure to see what was going on down in the center. By judicious inquiry he found that on the nights when it stormed or was cloudy, or when Estrella's two moons were not in the sky, there was no performance. Following his inspection of the theatre, Hanlon went to the market place again. He hunted out a stall where lamps were sold, and after the usual considerable haggling and dickering, bought twenty of the most powerful of the peculiar carbide lamps at a fairly reasonable price. Then he hunted up a metal-worker, and had reflectors made to his order and specifications, and fitted to one side of the lamps. "I'll introduce 'em to something new," he grinned, then was suddenly worried. "Or are such new customs and innovations taboo on this screwy world?" Another thought occurred to him the second day, and he hunted around for some time until he found a place where masks were made. The customer, who specialized in things for actors, did not have what Hanlon wanted, but after it had been described, the merchant said it would not be hard to make, and that it could be delivered the next afternoon. So Hanlon ordered a face-mask for himself, that would look like the head of a roch. Meantime, he continued working with the animals whenever he had time. He was now well satisfied with his ability to control them under all circumstances. He felt sure he would have no trouble in "putting on a good act", and his only worry was whether or not he could please these strange people. For so much depended upon his making good--if he did, he would be more solidly in the good graces of the impresario, Yandor. And that was the main thing he was after right now. The night of Hanlon's first performance finally arrived--and so did a nice large attack of stage-fright. There were "butterflies in his stomach", and he was by turns wet with sweat and almost petrified. Peeking out from the top of the stairs leading to the dressing rooms, the sight gave Hanlon a prime case of the jitters. For it seemed all the high officials, business and professional men, and the "social group" of Stearra, with their wives and families, were there. Even the Ruler was seated at stage-side in a large, ornate throne-chair, having been persuaded by Yandor that he would see something most exceptional. Hanlon went slowly down into the cubicle assigned him and the roches, and there fought for calmness. And it was a measure of his innate strength of character that he succeeded. The jitters passed, the butterflies went into hibernation, and his nerves calmed down. The first acts were the usual type seen on Estrellan stages--singers, posturers (they did not seem to have any dancers in the sense that Terran theatres do), and acrobats. Hanlon had always been interested in these, for almost none of the things they did were like what he was used to seeing or hearing. The music, however, he could not get used to. Estrellan music was based on a five-toned scale, of course, and was--to his ears--more of a cacophony than Chinese music. Yet the Estrellan singers had clear, beautiful, flutelike voices. The footlights that Hanlon had finally persuaded Yandor to have set in place around the edge of the stage, and lighted, occasioned great comment at first. But once the performance started, and the people found how much better they could see, were acclaimed as a great achievement. "How did you ever happen to think of them?" Yandor had asked when Hanlon first spoke of them and showed the impresario what he had made. Hanlon shrugged. "I always feel cheated because I can't see better when I go to a performance," he said. "When I got to thinking of my act, I knew it wouldn't show up well if people couldn't see clearly exactly what my roches were doing. So I figured out these lights. Don't you like the idea?" "Well now, yes, I like them. But I don't know. People are peculiar about change. They may do something about it if they don't approve of them." "Well," Hanlon made a nonchalant gesture, "we can always turn 'em off if they yell." But after the first few moments, when the customers had seen how much better they could watch the posturer who came on first, the value of the footlights was clearly seen, and they gave their whole-hearted approval. A new custom was born on Estrella. Hanlon had been below in the cubicle assigned him and his roches, so had not seen nor heard the crowd's reactions to the acts that preceded him. When it came his turn to go on, he was glad to find that his nervousness was gone, and that he was perfectly calm. Yandor stopped him near the head of the stairway leading up from underground, while the native who was manager and a sort of master or announcer of acts, made a brief speech. "Nyers and nyas and you, most gracious k'nyer," he addressed the throng and the Ruler, "tonight you are to see something most unusual in trained animals. I have been connected with performances for many, many years, but never have I seen anything to equal this. I will not attempt to tell you what is coming--you must see and marvel and judge for yourselves. Next on our program is Gor Anlo and his Friends." Hanlon came up the stairway and onto the stage, followed in single line by his eight roches. There was a titter of laughter at first sight of Hanlon in the roch-mask and the dogs in their gaudy uniforms, but this soon quieted in amazed surprise at the exhibition they were witnessing. Across the entire stage-place the roches marched, while Hanlon took his place in the center. He did not utter aloud a single word of command as the eight roches marched about the platform and stopped in a circle facing the audience on all sides, all the dogs equidistant from the others. As one they rose on their hind legs, and their forepaws bent to their heads in a salute. A moment they held this, then still without a spoken word of command, dropped to all fours and in rapid succession formed and marched in company front and lines of two and four, made left and right turns, marched across the stage in oblique lines, did about face and to the rear, and all the complicated maneuvers the Ruler's residence guards did on the parade ground. Then they added some things Hanlon had never seen Estrellan guards do, but which were more or less common to Terran drill teams. They did full wheels in lines of eight and four, formed wheeling stars and circles. Never once did Hanlon utter a word of command that anyone could hear; never once did the roches falter or break that perfectly-cadenced step; never once was one of them out of line. There was never any hesitation, never any breaking of ranks even when, about half-way through their drill they changed to quick time--almost double the cadence in which they had first drilled. How could any of that great, stunned audience guess that the trainer was actually controlling each animal mind, that his own mind was divided and parts of it superimposed on each animal brain, so that it was impossible for them to act counter to his central--yet individual--command? All the audience could see was the most perfect, the most incredibly flawless precision of training they had ever witnessed. Led by the Ruler they began a rhythmic chant of "Yi, yi, yi, yi," in cadence with the roch's marching tempo. The chant grew louder by the moment until it was a deafening roar. At their first sounds Hanlon almost lost his poise--for he did not know that this was their method of giving highest applause--and that very few acts ever received it at all. He had never heard it when he had attended their performances before. To him, now, it sounded more like they were giving him earthly "boos", and he was afraid he had somehow offended them. He withdrew part of his mind from each of the roches, even as they were marching across the stage, and sent it out to contact the mind of the Ruler and several others. He was pleasantly surprised at what he read there, for it was not dissatisfaction, but a combined wonder and delight at what they were seeing. Quickly he again sent full measure of his mind into each of his roches to continue the drill--nor had anyone noticed any break in their routine during the second or so of this mind-searching. Finally, after a full five minutes of this, Hanlon silently commanded each one, in unison, "Company, halt. Right, dress. Parade, rest. Salute." He himself came to a stiff salute, his directed at the Ruler. Higher and still louder grew the chanted roar. Even the Ruler sprang to his feet, his sounds of approval nearly as loud and unrestrained as the rest. When the noise subsided a bit, Hanlon gave the roches "At rest," and they relaxed, lay down, and panted ... but each still in his place. Hanlon stepped forward and facing first one way and then the other said, "Thank you for your kind reception of our poor efforts. Now, with your permission, I would like to show you some of the individual abilities of my little friends." But while he was speaking four of the animals had gone off to the side near the entrance to the stairway. Hanlon had fixed up a specially prepared chair. To the bottoms of each of the legs he had affixed light wooden rods that extended out several inches. Now the four roches each picked up a rod in its teeth and thus lifted the stool, which they brought out and set before Hanlon. He looked down at them in pretended surprise, then out at his audience, and smiled. "My friends are so thoughtful. They must think I am tired and need a rest. Well, far be it from me to disappoint them." And he sat down, while the roches went back to their places and lay down. Instantly there was a loud, angry hissing from the audience. There was no mistaking this--it was censure, not praise. Hanlon was dumb-founded. What had he done wrong? Quickly he scanned a number of minds, and found he had broken one of their most sacred taboos. Nobody--but _nobody_--ever sat in the presence of their beloved Ruler without his express invitation. "Oops, tilted!" Hanlon groaned, quickly rising and shoving the offending stool off the edge of the stage. But the audience was not mollified. If anything, their clamor rose louder. It was the Ruler, himself, who quieted them. He rose and held up his hand in a gesture of silence, smiling forgivingly. "Boy, what a swell egg he is," Hanlon mentally wiped the sweat from his mind's brow. "I still don't understand these folks. I'll have to watch myself more carefully, all the time." He bowed his thanks to the Ruler, spreading his hands in a gesture of apology. Then he quickly made the roches begin their other tricks. He had one do some acrobatics, in imitation of the type their native acrobats did. Two of the others "danced" together. Another balanced himself and rolled about the stage on a large plastic ball Hanlon had secured. Three of them did intricate circlings about each other, without ever getting in each other's way or breaking step at any time. Another stood on its hind legs and "sang" in imitation of the singers. Another "walked" on its front legs. These, being more to the liking of his audience, yet something they had never seen animals do, or so well, soon recaptured their interest. After a bit they began again that "Yi, yi" of applause. By the time Hanlon's turn was over the people seemed to have forgotten his one blooper, and were solidly "with him." As he left the stage and went below with his roches, their yells were the loudest yet. Ino Yandor was wildly enthusiastic, and those who had seen the first night's performance spread the word. In days the fame of Hanlon and his roches had spanned the continent, and other cities were clamoring to see his act, while the National Theatre there in Stearra was packed nightly with capacity crowds. During those days Hanlon spent as much of his time as he could wandering about the city, the marketplace, the recreation parks, and sitting in various places where people ate or drank. With his mind he was hunting not only for whatever points of specific information he might glean, but also to get a more general and better "feel" of the people and conditions here. He was confirmed in his early beliefs that as a whole these were wonderful people; that they would make excellent citizens of the Federation. They had such a high sense of social justice; such deep feelings of right and wrong; such splendid habits of co-operative living. More even than the Terrans and the colonists, who had come far along the road of brotherliness in the past centuries, these Estrellans had an innate belief in the brotherhood of man. What a great gap there was between the great mass of Estrellans and those few criminals with whom he was working? He remembered one time when he had been talking with his father about the way he worked. "You want to be mighty careful," Admiral Newton warned. "Being around gangsters and criminals so much, you'll have to watch not to begin thinking like they do." "You never need worry about that, dad," Hanlon had been very earnest. "The more I see of 'em, the less I like 'em, and the more I'm sure the common decencies of life are best. We must have law, government and order, and all decent citizens must always 'live and let live'. I could never be contented otherwise." CHAPTER 8 The night the sneak boat was due to return, Hanlon early sent word to Yandor that he was ill, and could not perform that night. The entrepreneur came, boiling over with anger, to Hanlon's rooms. "Well now," he began, "what's all this about...?" "Ooh, quiet, please," Hanlon moaned. He had been ready for just some such thing, and was lying in bed, face contorted with pain, and now pressed his hands to his ears as though Yandor's loud voice was more than he could stand. "Can't you see I'm sick? Why must you make so much noise?" The agent was taken aback by this counterthrust. He calmed a bit then, but asked many questions. Hanlon's partial answers and evident pain finally convinced the impresario that his star performer was, indeed, too ill to appear. "These attacks come only once or twice a year, and usually last only a day or two," Hanlon assured him in a weak voice. "I'll try my best to be on hand tomorrow." "Very well, I'll expect you then. Well now, there is something I've been meaning to talk to you about, and now is a good time. I want you to work into your act various things to say against the Terrans; about how such wonderful performances as yours would be impossible if we were to submit to them and accept their so-called invitation to join their Federation. Suggest to the audience that we would all become slaves, and that neither would performers have time to prepare their acts, nor would the others be allowed to come and watch them." Hanlon was slightly prepared for this because he had seen it forming in Yandor's mind, but he did not like it any the better. He was just about to make an angry retort when he took himself in hand, and continued keeping in the character he had assumed. He groaned a bit louder, and twisted more violently on the bed. "Please, nyer, leave me now. I hate for anyone to see me while I'm like this. As for what you've just said, we'll talk about it later and see what can be worked out." And, reluctantly, it seemed, Yandor finally left. When night at last brought its cloak of darkness, Hanlon put the roches to sleep and slipped quietly from his room. Down in the back, though, he could not seem to get his tricky acetylene-powered engine to start. He fussed and tinkered for nearly two hours before he could finally get it going. "So help me, I'm never going to cuss out a real ground-car after this because it acts up occasionally," he said as he rode out of the yard and down the dusty street. He drove as fast as he could out to the clearing where the sneakboat had already landed. "Sorry to be late, fellows," he said as soon as he had given the password and been allowed aboard. He accepted gratefully the cup of coffee they gave him, and griped for five solid minutes about those gosh-awful excuses for transportation these so-and-so natives used. "Here, have a box of candy bars, and quit belly-aching," one of them said at last. The other held out another gift, a pound can of pulverized instant coffee. "Hey, these are wonderful," Hanlon's spirits rose as if by magic. "You guys are my friends for life." "Why, Georgie," one of them simpered. "I didn't know you cared." "You'll have to choose between us, though," the other said owlishly. "I'm not going to be a partner to bigamy." Then they both laughed. "Look, he's blushing." "Aw, I am not," Hanlon spluttered. "It's just this pink skin-dye," he added weakly. "Anyway, here's your cat," the S S men got down to business, and fetched the crate containing the beautiful animal. "We happened to remember hearing that these people don't have milk, so we got you one that's accustomed to a meat and vegetable diet." "Gee, thanks for that. I'd completely forgotten that point." Hanlon examined the big, black cat, and his mind reached out and quieted its fright at the strange surroundings and this hairy being who was now handling it. He talked with the men for some further time, told them he had not yet got any sure clues, but was beginning to get an "in" with some people he felt sure would lead him to some. They told him the other three men had reported about the same, although Hooper said the curve was rising steadily on the belief that Terrans were behind the crime wave here. "Yeh, I've heard that bilge, too. It's just another of the things we'll have to stamp out before we can win out here. But we will." "Sure you will," the two agreed. "Anything else you need?" "No, can't think of a thing. The cat was the most important for now. It will really get me in more solid with Yandor, the guy I'm working on." "Hope so, Han. Well, cheerio." "Safe flights, you guys, and thanks again." On the ride back he was glad he had a tricycle instead of a two-wheeled bike, for the crate was heavy and rather awkward with the cat in it, shifting its weight about from time to time. Back in his room once more, Hanlon released the animal, which immediately dived under the bed, where it cowered in fright, having seen and smelled the roches who were sleeping in various places about the rooms. But again Hanlon reached out and touched its mind, calmed its fear, and soon had it out of hiding and creeping into his arms. It lay there, purring, while he stroked it and impressed on its mind--whose texture he learned while doing this--that it was safe and with friends. After he had done that, he woke the roches. At first sight of the feline a couple of them started toward it in curiosity. Swiftly Hanlon took over their minds and halted them where they were. He then brought each of them to the realization that this was a new friend and playmate. That was not too hard, for the roches had never seen a cat, and only its strangeness had made them curious. He had more trouble with the cat, for the ages-old dislike and fear of dogs was strong within it. But he finally calmed it by implanting the knowledge firmly in its mind that these strange beings were not dogs, actually, and that they meant it no harm, and all were to be friends. Soon he was grinning at his ability, as he saw the nine animals eating, drinking and playing together, as though they had been the best of comrades all their lives. "I'm really quite an animal trainer," he chuckled to himself as he watched them. * * * * * _High above the strange being lay on its padded bench and frustrated thoughts ran through its mind. It had noticed the two DIFFERENT minds who again had come briefly to this planet in their ship of space, talked with the three other different ones, and then had come to this western continent in its night time. The mind "heard" them conversing with that other but unreadable mind again, but still no sort of contact could be made. Why? it wondered again. What sort of mind was it, that it could not be touched?_ _Through its multiphased scanner the being carefully watched that entity below which appeared so like an Estrellan native--but after it had left on that peculiar conveyance, bearing a container with a strange animal, sight of the entity had been lost among the crowds of the city streets._ _So now the mind above seethed with questions, to which it could find no logical answers, even though it was beginning to understand the thought-concepts of those others it could "read."_ * * * * * Late the next day--for Hanlon had quickly adopted the actors' habit of beginning his day at noon--he fed and watered his animals, then got his own meal and ate it. Then he impressed on the minds of his roches that they were to behave themselves, and not destroy things about the room in their play, and not to make too much noise. "Sure is handy to be able to do this," he smiled. "Boy, what a baby sitter I'd make if I could control humans this way." He called the cat to him, snapped on the harness and leash the S S men had brought with it, and took it down to Yandor's office. He had worked carefully on the cat's mind, and knew the characteristics and texture thoroughly. He had practiced seeing through its eyes and hearing through its ears under all conditions--from ordinary daylight to bright carbides, from dusk to the blackness of a closet. He felt certain he could use the animal as planned, under any and all conditions. "This is 'Ebony'," he explained to Yandor as he presented the cat. At the same time he was impressing on the feline's mind that this was to be its new master, that it must always obey him, and must allow itself to be the man's constant pet and companion without hesitation or animosity. "'Ebony'," Hanlon went on saying to Yandor, "is the Terran word for 'black', and that is probably why its former owner gave it that name." The impresario took the big, beautiful animal in his arms and exclaimed over and over at its wonderful appearance, its sleek lines, soft fur and intelligent face. But it was the cat's long, furry tail that was his greatest delight. He stroked and petted it as though he could not really believe such a thing was true. Hanlon was careful to explain to Yandor how he must stroke _with_ the lay of the fur, and never _against_ it. "Well now, I can never thank you enough, my friend, for this marvelous gift," Yandor said. "I hope it didn't cost you too much." Hanlon made himself cough in an embarrassed manner. "Well ... er ... it really didn't cost me ..." he grinned and left it at that, nor did Yandor, after a knowing look, refer to the matter again. Instead, he said, "It shall be the prize of my collection. I shall treasure this above all others." Yandor really was in the transports of delight, known only to collectors who have made an unusual find. Hanlon read from the surface of his mind the thought that this man was a wonderful friend, "and probably no menace to our plans at all. I am sure we can trust him--and use him." The latter phrase delighted Hanlon, although he was careful not to let his feelings show in his face. This was what he was after. He had only to learn who "we" was. But he was making progress; he could really begin to learn things. "You do not need to keep the harness on Ebony all the time," he explained aloud. "Just when you want to go out with him. In your home or office, leave it off, as it is probably not too comfortable. I'm sure," he decided to do a bit of direct suggesting, "that you'll soon grow to love the cat enough so you'll want to keep it with you all the time. It will lie on your desk, or in your lap, and be the finest sort of companion." "Yes, and be the envy of all my friends," Yandor swelled with importance. Hanlon explained rapidly about its feeding and drinking habits, and that while it was house-broken it should be taken outdoors several times a day. When he was sure Yandor knew how to care for the animal, Hanlon left the office and went back to his rooms. After the performance that night, Hanlon went quickly home and lay down on the bed. He sent out a portion of his mind to contact that of Ebony, which Yandor had taken to his own room and installed in a padded basket, as Hanlon had suggested. Through the cat's eyes he could see the interior of Yandor's bedroom, and watched while the latter prepared for bed and finally dropped off to sleep. Then Hanlon withdrew his mind, and did the same. He had set the wake-up on his time-teller for fairly early the next morning. Immediately upon awakening he sent part of his mind back into that of the cat. All during the day--which he spent mainly lying down or sprawled in his easy chair, when he was not preparing or eating his meals, or attending to the wants of his roches--he watched Yandor at his daily activities. For the impresario, delighted with his new pet, kept the cat with him all the time, even to taking it into the office-like study of his home with him. There, as soon as they were inside, Hanlon made Ebony leap up onto the table-desk, and curl up on the one corner. He wanted this habit to become a permanent one--and it, too, delighted the Estrellan. Now the cat was in the best possible place for Hanlon's spying while Yandor was at home. Later in the day, when it was time for the entrepreneur to go to his downtown office, he put into effect another suggestion Hanlon had made. He put the small, ornate harness Hanlon had given him for that purpose onto the cat, snapped the leash to it, and took Ebony with him. Dozens of Yandor's friends stopped him and complimented him--though somewhat jealously--upon his acquisition, which made him prouder than ever. For Ebony created such a sensation that it took Yandor nearly an hour longer than usual to get to his office. He had not yet reached there, in fact, when Hanlon was surprised and a little nettled by a knock on his apartment door. Somewhat angrily he got up off the bed, and went and opened it. A native was standing there, grinning. "What d'you want?" Hanlon growled querulously. "Boy, are you in a temper this morning?" a voice said in Terran, while the grin grew lop-sided. "Morrie!" Hanlon yelled, throwing his arms about the other. Then, over his shoulder, he noticed a number of his neighbors peering out of their doors, or standing about in the hall, listening, and knew with a sinking feeling that they must have heard the Terran words, and be wondering about them. His mind raced, then he spoke even more loudly in Estrellan. "My brother, it is such a surprise to see you here. How did you happen to come from Lura to visit me?" Then he dragged the surprised S S man into his room, and shut the door. "What gives? Why that 'my brother' routine?" "Noticed the neighbors gawking, and knew they had heard us talking Terran. But I sure am glad to see you, even if I was so curt at first. Was concentrating on a job, and didn't like being interrupted just then." "Oh, sorry. Want me to come back later?" "No, no, it wasn't really that important." Hanlon was silent a short moment while he disengaged the part of his mind that was in Ebony, and brought it back into his own. "Come on, take that chair. Go ahead and gab while I get dressed." Manning did as requested, and they talked seriously for some time, each bringing the other up to date on all they knew about their part of this business, and what they were planning. In particular, Hanlon told Manning about the local aspects of the work of the criminal elements, and what he suspected as well as what he actually knew and had done. "I'm almost certain now," he said, "that the criminals and the folks who're trying to keep Estrella out of the Federation are tied in together, but I haven't any real proof ... yet. But I think I soon will have, with the line of investigation I'm on." "We've about come to the same conclusion," Manning said thoughtfully, "but we haven't any more proof than you have, if as much." Hanlon told him about stopping Auldin's "wrecking crew", and a few other possible leads he had uncovered to local men who seemed to be in on the activities here, especially one Ovil Esbor, a local politician. "He's a sort of gang-boss or district captain," Hanlon added, "but I think he has quite a lot of fingers in different illegal pies." "I'll get right at it," Manning said. "The admiral--he sent his regards, by the way--said we were to work together as closely as possible, and that you would feed me leads whenever you got 'em--as I will you." "Sure, I will. Maybe I'm sticking my neck out, trying for the big fellows and asking you to take care of the smaller fry, but it seems...." "Think nothing of it, little chum," Manning waved his hand airily. "As long as we clean out his hoo-raw's nest, I don't care how we do it, and I'm ready to work at anything. The admiral said--and what you've told me clinches it--that I'd better be an aspirant for a spot in the political set-up here, so I'll pretend I heard about Esbor, and go right to him." For another hour they discussed ways and means, and then Manning rose to go, after telling Hanlon where he was living here in Stearra. "We'll see each other every few days," he said. As soon as Manning was gone, Hanlon threw himself on the bed and again sent part of his mind back into that of the cat, now with Yandor in the latter's office. And Hanlon kept it in Ebony's brain all the rest of that day and early evening. But nothing in which he was particularly interested happened--and he was beginning to wonder if his ideas about Yandor were right after all. Nothing but legitimate theatrical business had been transacted all day--at least while Hanlon was watching. There had been those two hours or more while Manning was at his rooms.... During the time Hanlon was on the stage that night, he had to concentrate all his mental faculties on his roches, and had to withdraw from the cat's brain. But once back in his dressing room and while going home and after he got there, Hanlon watched carefully the party the impresario gave to a group of friends in his palatial home. Through the cat's eyes Hanlon carefully studied each one of the guests and listened avidly to their talk--and at times had to tighten his control of Ebony's mind and muscles to keep it acting friendly toward some of those people. They seemed to "rub its fur the wrong way" ... and did, literally, on occasions. Also, they had an effluvia Ebony distinctly did not like. But under Hanlon's compulsion, it continued to act in as friendly a manner as cats usually do ... most of the time with customary feline indifference. CHAPTER 9 The next day Hanlon also spent in the cat's mind, when he was not playing with or attending to his roches, or eating. It happened that he had transferred part of his mind to each of the eight, and was giving them a short workout, when there was a sudden noise at his door, and it was roughly flung open--he had not locked it while at home. Nine parts of his mind saw through nine pairs of eyes the man who stormed in. Nine pairs of ears heard him snarl, "What's the big idea of having my men arrested?" As quickly as he could Hanlon started bringing the portions of his mind from the roches into his own brain. He sat up on the bed, and made his face look blank--but inside he was thunderstruck. How had Ran Auldin found out he was behind those arrests? "Why ... why," he pretended to stammer. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ran. What arrests? What's happened?" The usually fastidious gang-boss was now dirty and his clothing soiled and rumpled. His eyes were red, apparently from sleeplessness, or worry, or both. His voice was still accusing as he answered, "My men were surprised at their work the other night, and I only escaped by luck. Been hiding ever since." "But what's it all about? Why were they arrested? I don't know anything about what you were doing--Yandor didn't tell...." "It must have been you. Nobody else knew." "And I tell you I was not told, either, so how could I know? I've been too busy getting my act ready and putting it on, and Yandor hasn't even mentioned you to me." Auldin stepped close to the side of the bed as Hanlon struggled to get up, and pushed him down again. Now Hanlon could see that the mobster was carrying in each hand a piece of large rope, approximately half an inch in diameter and about two feet long. The far end of each was tied into a knot, in which pieces of wires had been woven to add weight. "Maybe you didn't have anything to do with the arrests," Auldin admitted, "but I still think you did. Anyway, you used me to get in good with Yandor, then turned him against me. I don't like that." Oh, so that was what had really touched him off. Hanlon saw that the slim man was spoiling for a fight--and that he was using almost any excuse to try to take it out of a fellow who was making good where he had failed. Hanlon thought, "I don't want to hurt the guy, now that he's down, but I sure don't want to get hurt, either." He had never seen exactly such weapons as Auldin was carrying, but he had a good idea the native was adept in their handling. They looked old and well-used. Hanlon rolled suddenly across the bed and jumped to his feet on the other side. But Auldin ran swiftly around the foot of the bed, and Hanlon was more or less cornered in a narrow space. First one of those strange weapons flicked out, then the other, and Hanlon quickly found out how effective they were. The way Auldin snapped and whipped them, made them almost impossible to dodge, and Hanlon felt their burnings across his shoulders--although he was able to protect his face from those first quick flicks. Hanlon had to get out of that corner, so the next time both ropes flashed out toward him he ducked beneath, down and forward, under Auldin's arms--and was in the center of the room. The S S man reached out and took over the minds of two of his roches, and made them run between Auldin's legs. Then, as the ropes with those terrible knots at the ends flashed out, Hanlon grabbed them and yanked. The combination of that pull and the roches entangled between his legs was enough to upset the gangster, and he stumbled forward. Hanlon quickly swarmed onto him and got a judo hold on Auldin the man could not break. Holding him thus, Hanlon took the two ropes from his powerless hands, and threw them into a far corner. "Now get this, and get it straight," Hanlon panted, but as impressively as he could. "I still don't know what this is all about, but I don't like your barging into my room and attacking me like this. Now get out and stay away from me. You try anything like this again, and so help me I'll kill you. And just so you'll remember...." Hanlon put all his pent-up wrath into his fist and threw it at the now-deflated Auldin's jaw. This, he knew, was the only way really to impress a man of that type. He then forced the half-groggy gangster out of the room and loosed him in the hallway, then shut and locked his door. He listened intently, and finally heard the fellow's mumblings and footsteps going down the stairs. From the window Hanlon watched the thoroughly-frightened native scuttle off down the street, looking furtively all about to see that he was not being followed or observed. Hanlon felt satisfied that he would have no further trouble from him. As he went back to bed, Hanlon tried to figure this one out. Evidently Auldin did not really know Hanlon had caused those arrests, but was merely using that as an excuse to provoke a fight with one whom he hated for making a success at the same time he, Auldin, was a failure in hiding. Had Auldin reported this to Yandor? Hanlon had not seen the two together--either through his own or Ebony's eyes--nor had he found anything of the sort in Yandor's mind. But he would have to try to find out that answer, also, among the many others. He sent his mind back into that of the cat, and took up his spying of the theatrical agent. About an hour later Yandor had a caller, and Hanlon "listened in" with interest and growing delight. For it was Ovil Esbor, the politician. From the talk between the two, in Yandor's inner, closed office--into which Ebony had also gone--Hanlon got further confirmation of his suspicions. He was more sure than ever now that Yandor was the "top boss" here in Stearra, at least, while Esbor was boss of many other local gangs, including thieves, dope peddlers and panderers. Hanlon, in his room, made copious notes. "There," he exclaimed after the two men had parted. "That ought to give Morrie enough info to hang 'em. I'll take these notes to him right away." But Manning was not in his room when Hanlon got there, and since his door was padlocked, Hanlon could not get in. He took a chance and slid his notes under the door. All this time, however, Hanlon had been watching Yandor through Ebony's mind. He had just barely got back to his apartment when the impresario had another visitor ... a masked man. (Hanlon doubted the man had gone through the streets masked--probably had put it on just before entering Yandor's office.) "Ha! This should be good," and the young S S man paid even closer attention, even as he was putting his motor-trike away, and running up to his room. He heard the two distant men discussing many matters of policy, closeted in that inner room of Yandor's. Hanlon found that the criminal activities were, as he and the other secret servicemen had deduced, planet-wide and under one general control. He knew positively, when this conversation ended, that Yandor was in charge of the activities of this half of the world--the largest continent--and that the masked man was above him in authority. Was this other king-pin of the whole thing? Or was he, perhaps, what might be termed the "executive director" of the planetary criminal ring? Whatever he was, he was the man Hanlon must get next to and unmask. The Corpsman thrilled. He was gradually but surely climbing that ladder, tediously and maddeningly slow though it seemed sometimes. "One thing looks sure," Hanlon thought to himself. "Whether or not this bunch is the one that is opposing Estrella's joining the Federation, if we can eliminate them it will mean curbing, if not entirely stopping, this planet-wide crime wave. That'll be worthwhile, even if it's not really our job." He tried to figure some way to get rid of these two men. If he could lop off the head, the body would die--unless it was a Hydra, with self-regenerating heads. But after an hour or so of further study and thought, it was borne in upon his consciousness that this was not his job at all. He must quit trying to be the big cheese. If he got any leads, the information must be turned over to his father and the secret service general staff, and let them--not him--worry about how to get rid of these men, or punish them in whatever way Estrellan law provided. * * * * * When Hanlon went to the theatre that night, he found Yandor there, with Ebony on its leash--as he had known he would from watching the man through the cat's senses. There was another man with the agent, whom Hanlon had been studying, puzzled by the curious ... blocking? ... in the man's mind. Yandor now introduced him as "my good friend, Egon," and the three chatted together until it was time for Hanlon to go and prepare. Egon complimented him highly on his act, which he said he had seen twice already, and upon the perfect training of his animals. "How in the name of Zappa do you do it?" he asked. "It's hard enough even to tame roches, to say nothing of training them as you've done." Hanlon grinned. "Professional secret, nyer." Then he sobered and added, "Actually, it's mainly a matter of hours and days and months of hard work with them, until they know me and like me well enough to do what I tell them, and I know what they are able to do." He broke away, then, before they could question him further. In his dressing room, while he was putting the uniforms on his dogs and himself, and donning his roch-mask, he pondered seriously a thing that had struck him a stunning blow. For Ebony's mind and delicate senses seemed to detect a distinct similarity between the tones of Egon's voice and those of the masked man--as well as a sameness of effluvia--even though the two spoke in different keys and timbre of voice. Profoundly stirred, Hanlon studied this seeming fact with intense concentration. How could he make certain? But his call came just then, and he had to let this new matter rest while he devoted his entire mind to the work of controlling his roches for their act. Later, in his room, as he again watched Yandor through the cat's eyes, he saw him in his home with Egon and two other men, playing cards, but merely as a group of friends. Nothing whatever was said, during the hours, about any special activities of a criminal nature. No sedition nor revolution was talked; neither Terra nor the matter of Estrella's joining the Federation was so much as mentioned. Still Hanlon was not sure--and he must become so. Perhaps, he reasoned, the other two men were not in on any of these activities, and for that reason Yandor and Egon could not discuss these matters in their presence. Or perhaps Egon, himself, was not part of Yandor's criminal group after all. There must be some way of getting proof, Hanlon thought anxiously. How could he positively connect the two, and make sure whether or not the cat's feelings were correct--that Egon was the masked man? The opportunity came just before the party broke up for the night, many hours later. Egon had picked up the cat and was petting it, as the men were preparing to leave Yandor's house. Not being used to cats, and not knowing the manner in which they like to be petted--rubbing the fur the way it naturally lies down--Egon was ruffling it and rubbing his hands forth and back across Ebony's body. The cat did not like it. It was only Hanlon's firm control that kept it from ... "Hey, that's it!" He released control of the cat's actions, while still watching through its eyes and ears. Egon's hand again rubbed heavily upward across the cat's fur. Almost light-swift was the slash of a clawed paw ... and Egon yelped as he dropped Ebony to clap his hand to his chin, on which blood began seeping from several deep and painful scratches. Egon aimed a hard kick in its direction, but Ebony dodged safely away and ran under a large piece of furniture. "What happened?" Yandor sprang forward, a cloth in his hand to wipe away the blood from Egon's chin. "Wait a minute. I'll get medicine to put on that." "Get rid of that cursed animal or I'll kill it," Egon blazed. "Well now, you must have hurt it some way," Yandor said placatingly as he daubed medicine on his friend's chin, stopping the bleeding and relieving the pain. "Ebony is so friendly and quiet, I can't understand it. He never acted that way before." "Well, keep the vicious thing caged after this, then," and Egon stomped out of the house, the other two men silently following. Nor could Hanlon detect anything in Yandor's mind, which he invaded as quickly as possible, that this was anything more than the grumbling of a friend who had been accidentally injured. Yet there was a bit of fear of that other man there, and a resolution to keep the cat out of sight when Egon was around. Did Yandor, himself, know that Egon and the masked man were the same--or were Hanlon and Ebony wrong? If not, why was Yandor afraid? There were many questions, but no answers--and Hanlon fumed. He must get facts. He was getting a lot of suspicions and possible clues, and certainly more information all the time. But none of them tied in together as yet; none of them were provable facts. Slowly, as he thought this out, it became more and more apparent to Hanlon that he must no longer be tied down to his work at the theatre. It--and taking care of the roches daytimes--was demanding entirely too much of his time. Besides, it had only been undertaken to give him a chance to get acquainted with Ino Yandor and, later, to give Hanlon a reason for presenting the cat to this pet-collector. So, when he went to the theatre that night, Hanlon was, to all intents and purposes, roaring drunk. He was surly and insolent to everyone he met, and his performance was terrible. The roches did not stay in straight lines, they were out of step often, and fumbled and stumbled in one way or another much of the time. The master of ceremonies finally came out, forced Hanlon off the stage, then apologized to the stunned audience. "What made you think you could get away with anything like this?" the manager demanded hotly, down in Hanlon's dressing room. "You're through here--the act is cancelled. And I'll make sure no other theatre hires you." "Well now, that's right," another angry voice broke in, and Hanlon turned to see Yandor, his face black. "Your entire contract is broken as of now. I'll not tolerate such a disgraceful performance from anyone under me." Hanlon blustered and cursed, and yanked off his costume to get into his street clothes. He apparently was not concerned with the roches--did not even take off their costumes--but actually he was seeing to it that none of this anger touched their minds or affected them in any way. Back in his room he considered the matter for some time, and decided he had put it across all right--that these touchy men would not connect him with any reverses they might suffer later in their outside criminal work. He considered the problem of his roches. He had always loved dogs, and having become so intimate with these Estrellan pooches, he hated to part with them. They were such lovable pets, so gentle and affectionate and loyal. Knowing their minds so intimately, Hanlon knew they had often wondered at the way they were being handled and made to do things beyond their ordinary ability--yet not one of them had ever had the least rebellious thought of ill-feeling toward this master who made them do such unusual things. But Hanlon knew he could no longer take care of them as they deserved, that they would only be in his way from now on. His first act the next morning after they had been fed, was to see to it that they were taken out and good homes found for them. There were many children living in his own and neighboring houses, who were glad to receive gifts of such fine pets. That worry solved, Hanlon went back to his room and spent most of the day there, a great deal of it lying down on his bed or sprawled out in his easy chair, his mind in that of Ebony, the cat, or roaming the city watching the minds of the people he knew and suspected. During the afternoon the masked man called on Yandor again. Through Ebony's sharp eyes Hanlon carefully scrutinized and studied the lower part of the visitor's face, which luckily the mask did not cover. "Hah!" he exclaimed gleefully. For those scratches were quite plainly visible to one who knew exactly where they were, and who was specifically looking for them, even though it was apparent there had been a careful attempt to conceal them with cosmetics. Egon and the masked man, then, were one and the same! But who was he, really? That was Hanlon's next important problem. The following night, through the cat's eyes, Hanlon again saw Egon and the other two men coming into Yandor's house for one of their usual card games. Now, perhaps, was his chance to find out who the man was, and where he lived. Ebony had been banished to the next room, but through its ears Hanlon was listening carefully, to know that the four were still in the house. Meanwhile, he dressed and rode his motor-tricycle to the vicinity of Yandor's home. There he hid himself in a dense shadow, always in possession of Ebony's mind, waiting for signs that the men were getting ready to leave. Unexpectedly, however, as they were going out, a large, ornate, motorized-tricycle with double seats drove up to the house. Egon entered it and was driven rapidly away, far faster than Hanlon's smaller machine could possibly go. The young S S man was caught flat-footed. Or wait, was he? There was a way, after all ... for him. Swiftly his mind sought about and quickly found a sleeping bird in a nearby tree. Taking control of its mind, he sent it winging after the speeding car, and by this method was able to follow it as it drove swiftly out into the country. * * * * * _In the spaceship above, a decision was made. By means of the multiphased scanner, certain entities on the planet below, whose general position was already known, were hunted out. For the alien now definitely concluded that they were highly inimical to its plans._ _By certain means those beings were captured and taken forcibly to a place that had been prepared._ CHAPTER 10 Immediately after SSM George Hanlon had sent part of his mind into that of a bird and had made it follow Egon's car, the young man followed on his own trike, driven at its top speed out along the road the faster machine had taken. He cussed the slowness of this clumsy vehicle, wishing he had a fast Terran jet-cycle or car. But he had to make do with what he had, and finally calmed himself with the knowledge that he could see where the other went, through the bird's eyes, even if he himself could not close up the distance separating them. "You oughtta be ashamed of yourself," he scolded himself. "Who else could turn this into success? Be thankful for your great luck in having such a wonderful talent--and quit this eternal griping the minute something goes the tiniest bit haywire." Thus he saw when the other car turned in through the gates leading to the drive before a rather small, but excellent cottage. The tricycle stopped at the doorway, and Egon got out and entered the house. The chauffeur drove into a shed behind the house, left the machine and then, himself, went into the main house through a back door. Making the bird peer in through the windows, Hanlon was able to see that this house, while small, was richly and comfortably furnished according to Estrellan standards. By the time he arrived in the vicinity in person, ready to take over the inspection himself, Hanlon had a fairly good idea of the ground-floor layout. The upper story was still in darkness, none of the rooms yet lighted. Hanlon's first act was to direct the bird to a comfortable perch in a nearby tree, close to a semi-rotted spot where there were dozens of grubs for its breakfast, and let it go back to sleep. He was always so thankful to his various animal and bird assistants that he was careful to be thoughtful of their ease and well-being. Now, after parking his machine in the shadows of a large flowertree, Hanlon dodged from shadow to shadow, scouting the house and neighborhood carefully. As best he could judge the estate must be about three acres in extent. There were quite an unusual number of flower beds, and a few quite large flowertrees that should give him considerable cover if he wanted to get closer--which he did not care to risk at this time. "Mmmm, must be about seven rooms," he mused as he examined the little house. As was usual with Estrellan buildings, it was pentagonal in shape, and with a green-tile roof. Behind it, in addition to the shed where the tricycle was kept, there was another small stone building. But it was dark, and Hanlon could not tell what it was used for. After seeing all he could from a distance of the outside of Egon's place, Hanlon looked about the neighborhood. It was not too closely built up, but some distance down the street he saw what appeared to be a shopping district. One building was lighted up even at this hour, and he shrewdly guessed it might be a place where men drank. So it proved, and Hanlon entered. While sipping a glass of mykkyl, he did some discreet investigating, both by talking to the serving girl, and by searching the minds of the customers in the cafe. He was almost rocked back on his heels when he found that the house he had scouted was the home of Adwal Irad--the Second In Line. "Ow!" he yelped mentally. "So Egon and Irad are the same? Where does that put me?" He again investigated the minds of the few men and women there in the drinking place, looking for thoughts about Irad. Then he left, and slowly rode home, thinking seriously. This was really startling news--and yet, it was half-expected at that. So many clues had pointed that way. So this really meant that Irad was in back of all the pernicious activities that were going on. But in the name of Snyder, _why_? That question had him stopped ... for the present. Oh, he could think of a dozen reasons, yes. But there was no way--at the moment--of knowing which if any of them was correct. Also, it didn't square with Irad's position, nor with what he had so far learned about the man--not even what his neighbors thought of him, as Hanlon had learned there in the cafe. It was distinctly not in character, and was certainly not what one would expect of the heir to the planetary Rulership. The next day Hanlon devoted to wandering about the city, hunting for information and thoughts about Adwal Irad. Many times he got into conversation with people of high and low degree, asking questions that forced them to think about the Second In Line, so he could read the real thoughts about the man in the minds of these selected people. Twice he rode his trike to the house where Manning lived, to tell what he had learned and to discuss it with him, but neither time was his fellow-operative at home. Now, the more Hanlon investigated--the more people he talked to and the more minds he studied--the more puzzled he became. Irad just wasn't that kind of a man--at least, he had never been associated in the minds of his future subjects with that sort of thing. He was really well liked. In fact, the general attitude was almost that of hero-worship. And Hanlon knew that where there is hero-worship there first has to be someone worthy of being thought a hero. Something was screwy somewhere. With what Hanlon was beginning to learn about Irad.... Brash and self-confident as he was, Hanlon knew this was something that must be brought to the attention of his father and the other S S men here. How could he most quickly contact the admiral? "Manning probably knows exactly how to get in touch with dad," he thought. "He talked with him only a few days ago." But again Manning was not at home, and Hanlon could not banish the thoughts of worry and frustration from his mind as he rode slowly back to his own rooms. He again set the wake-up on his time-teller for an early hour, and went to sleep. When the call came he hurriedly rose, dressed and breakfasted. Then he went out of his room and the house. Just as he reached the street and turned toward the part of the city where Manning lived, he swivelled about sharply as he heard the _splat, splat_ of running feet coming up behind him. Running--staggering, rather--down the narrow, rutty road was a native, his great feet raising clouds of dust. Something in the fellow's wild manner held Hanlon's attention. As the runner drew nearer, his wildly waving arms, his blood-shot, almost unseeing eyes, told all too plainly that he was badly frightened. Yet, so far as Hanlon could see, nothing or no one was pursuing him. As the native drew closer, Hanlon gave a start. Why, he knew ... but it couldn't be--he was on the Eastern Continent, thousands of miles away. Hanlon's mind must be playing tricks on him. But he scanned the fellow more closely, touching his mind, and at last was sure. It was! Disguised as a native humanoid though he was, Hanlon knew this was Curt Hooper, another of the secret servicemen who was working on this planet. Hanlon stepped into the road to intercept the runner. He spoke as the man came abreast him, but Hooper paid no attention--seemed not even to see him. More puzzled than ever, the young S S man ran alongside and reached out to grasp the runner's arm, forcing him to a halt. "Hey, Curt, it's me, Hanlon," he said. "What's the matter?" He was now deeply concerned. "Don't stop me; gotta run; gotta get away," came gasping Terran words, even as the other tried to loosen himself from Hanlon's grasp. Hanlon probed quickly into the man's mind but, as usual, he could read only the surface thoughts. These told of some terrible danger threatening--that only running, always running away, could possibly save him. What the danger was; who or what was threatening him, was not in those surface thoughts. "Snyder help me," Hanlon begged bitterly beneath his breath. Why couldn't he learn how to penetrate deeper into human minds, as he could with animals, and read everything that was there, instead of merely whatever thoughts were passing across the surface? But Hooper was fighting as only a madman can fight, and Hanlon was barely able to hold him. Yet he must. He _had_ to learn what this was all about--why Hooper was here in the Town of the Ruler, instead of back where he had been stationed. What the danger was, and if it threatened the work of the secret servicemen, and possibly the other Terrans. It was clear that Hooper was either drugged or that his mind had become _un_sane in some manner--whether permanently or temporarily, Hanlon could not as yet figure out. Acting on sudden impulse, Hanlon switched his grasp to a neo-judo hold he had been taught, that made Hooper powerless in his hands. He dragged his companion back inside. Once in his room Hanlon forced Hooper's unwilling body down on the bed, and pressed certain nerve-ends that temporarily paralyzed his body. In this way Hanlon could be more free to study that sick mind, which was not paralyzed, without having to watch every minute lest the deranged man escape him. While Hanlon was able only to read the surface thoughts, he had learned from experience that by asking leading questions he could often make the other think of things he wanted to know, and this method he now put into practice. What he learned now, in spite of all the leading questions he could think of to ask, was pitifully meager. Hooper had been made a prisoner and brought to this continent and confined, but had escaped. But he did not know--or could not be made to reveal--why he was on this Western Continent at all, nor how he had been captured or by whom. Hanlon guessed that the man had been held in a small house somewhere fairly near, since he had been running away from there a fairly short time, even though it had seemed an eternity to the frightened man. Suddenly a stray wisp of thought brought Hanlon upright in his chair. "Give me that again, Curt!" he demanded, and under his questioning brought out the fact that his father, Admiral Newton, was also a prisoner of these unknowns, as was the fourth member of the S S who had been assigned to Estrella--Morris Manning. "Mannie couldn't stand the pain, he died," Hooper's thought was strangely calm and apparently heartless--which Hanlon knew could not be the man's true feelings, for Hooper and Manning had been close friends of long standing. "What kind of pain? Who was hurting him?" Hanlon demanded, sick with dread. "Were all of you being tortured? Was dad?" Oh, God, _why_ couldn't he get in there and read the true answers? As best he could figure it out, they had never seen their captor, but had felt his mind probing theirs, asking questions, _interrogating_ them--in the Estrellan language. Whoever was doing it apparently did not intend it to be torture, for when Manning died the other two received a curiously surprised yet apologetic thought, "Your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours. It was not intended to force this entity's life-force out of physical embodiment. Greater care shall be used in the future." "Tell me more about dad," Hanlon commanded, agonizedly. "Where is he held? Who has him? What's it all about?" But the dazed Hooper relapsed back to the only words he seemed able to say aloud, "Gotta run; gotta get away." "But you're safe here, Curt. No one's following you, and I won't let anyone or anything hurt you. Relax." "Gotta run; gotta get away." And so powerful was the urge that the supine body twitched restlessly, as it began breaking out of that paralysis Hanlon had imposed on it. Frantically, Hanlon continued his mind-scanning, asking innumerable questions that he hoped would penetrate the other's consciousness and force his mind to think along the lines Hanlon wanted to know. And slowly, sketchily, he began to piece together a picture of sorts--like a jigsaw puzzle of which many of the pieces were missing. The three S S men had been brought together in some little stone building. There the unknown, whom they never saw nor heard, had interrogated them mentally, a process that was extremely painful in a way that Hooper could not, or did not, specify, save that his mind seemed to wince and recoil from any thought of the method, despite Hanlon's utmost attempts to learn it. There seemed to have been days and nights of this painful questioning, although Hooper could not tell exactly how long--and Hanlon knew it could not have been very many days, since he had seen Manning so recently. Then, early this morning, shortly after Manning's death, and while Hooper was being questioned, it seemed to him the mental voice had gone away abruptly, leaving him in full command of his senses. He had immediately begun to examine the room, and soon found that the low door was unfastened. Cautiously he opened it, and discovered that it opened to the outside of the building. The admiral had not been in the room with him at the time, nor could Hooper find a way into the other parts of the building--if there were any other parts to it. Therefore, he had lost no time in leaving by that providentially open door. He started running across a lawn toward the nearest road. Down this he ran, knowing only a terrified compulsion to run, to hide, to get away from that horrible inquisition. "How long have you been running?" Hanlon asked sympathetically, yet in hopes it might give him a clue. "Gotta run; gotta get away," Hooper's words said, but the thought flashed across his mind, "since after dawn." "Then dad's not too far away," Hanlon thought, and began trying to guess where or in what direction the prison might be, and how he could locate it most quickly. He was awakened to reality to see Hooper rise from the bed, the paralysis broken by that inner compulsion to flee. Before Hanlon could jump up to stop him, Hooper was out of the room. Hanlon let him go. He hated to do it, but there was no apparent way he could save Hooper now ... and he _had_ to get to his father just as fast as he could. Not only because the admiral was his adored dad, but because he was second in command of the whole I-S C's secret service, and in charge of this mission, and thus the more important at the moment. "But where is he?" Hanlon's thoughts were an agonized wail. For the first time in months he felt very young, and inexperienced, and unsure. He jumped to his feet to leave the house and start searching, but restrained himself before he got to the door. "Whoa, boy, not so fast. I haven't got the faintest idea where dad is. Must think this out first, and not waste a lot of time during which he might die or be killed." He sank back into his chair again, and his mind swiftly reviewed the pitifully small bits of information he had been able to glean from the deranged mind of his friend Hooper. Someone, or something, or some group, who were the main support of this opposition, had a mental ability Hanlon thought he knew the Estrellans did not have. At least, he had not found any traces of it anywhere here. Or, wait now. Did the Rulers have it? Was this one of the traits and abilities especially bred into them in the course of making them capable of handling their tremendous task of being Planetary Ruler? Could be. He had not yet had the chance to scan mentally Elus Amir, the present Ruler, except for that one night at the theatre, and then he had not really tried to see what the man had in the way of mental equipment. Hanlon had been so relieved to find he and the audience were applauding, instead of booing, that he had not tried to do so. If Elus Amir as Ruler had it, did Adwal Irad as Second-In-Line also have those mental powers? Whoever or whatever it was--and that would have to be studied more thoroughly later--some mind or minds had forced the other three secret servicemen to go to a certain place ... at present unknown to Hanlon ... and had there imprisoned them and tried to extract information from their minds. Information about what ... and why? What could these unknowns want to know that couldn't be learned by asking direct questions? For the Federation statesmen and Survey men had been glad and anxious to answer fully and truthfully every question that had been asked of them. And that puzzling thought Hooper had said they received when Manning died. "Your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours--we had not realized it would kill you to be thus interrogated." Or words to that effect. As far as Hanlon knew, the native Estrellans did not have unusual resistance to pain. He had had several encounters with them so far, and had known cases where they were hurt or wounded, and had not noticed any great immunity to pain. Was this, then, another special attribute of the Rulers? But Egon, or Irad, had certainly felt pain when Ebony scratched his chin, and had made quite a fuss about it. Was it real--or was he "putting on an act" to conceal his immunity? Somehow, Hanlon was not willing to accept that last. Dimly, in the back of his mind, there seemed to be another puzzling thought. What was it? Hanlon worried at it like one of the roches might worry a bone ... and finally it struck him--hard. If the other three had been captured, why hadn't he? * * * * * _At its multiphased scanner in the spaceship high above, the being stiffened suddenly. For long minutes the mind concentrated on this new problem. The plan put into operation that morning had been partially successful. The "location" of that unreadable mind before noticed, found once and then lost--was now known again._ _But still, despite every effort, contact with that mind could not be made._ _After a time, therefore, with the utmost precision a thought was insinuated into the Estrellan mind constantly being held captive. The thought was seen to take hold, then its strength and urgency was increased._ _Soon, although the native was at a loss to account for the reason why such a thought should come to him at that particular time, he nevertheless sent a note to a certain person, giving forceful orders that were to be obeyed immediately._ CHAPTER 11 At that thought, fear struck at George Hanlon's vitals, almost like a physical blow. What was planned for _him_? For certainly if these unknowns were onto what the Terrans--or the Corps and the secret service--were trying to do here, and had already captured and tortured three of the four, they would not leave him free to continue working against them. Cold sweat starting from all his pores, Hanlon sank into a chair, nails digging into palms. His bravado, his cockiness, his belief in his own superiority--all ebbed away like a swift-falling tide. He had been used to working alone in the service. He had been mostly by himself on Simonides, and altogether alone on Algon. Yet he had not felt such an _aloneness_, such an absolute withdrawal of all support, as he knew in this awful moment. For at the other places he could contact the S S through the safety deposit boxes, or by the "Andromeda Seven" password, and get almost instant response, and the entire resources of the Corps to back him up. And here on Estrella, while he had been working alone, he met the others occasionally, and the men with the Corps' sneakboat every fortnight. He had known they were _there_. But now they were gone. And Hanlon was to be the next victim ... and he had no idea who, when, what, where, or why. For long minutes he sat, shaking with dread, his mind a chaos of nothingness but a swirling, roiling, panic fear. This was far, far different from that terrible fear he had known back on the _Hellene_ when he had first realized he was tangling with trained, unprincipled and viciously-conscienceless killers. Or the time he had been chained in the Prime Minister's dungeon on Simonides. For then he had been facing known problems. This one was totally unknown ... and man has always felt far more fear of the terrors he cannot see, than of those he can face. "Blast back," he thought determinedly, ashamed of his fear and resolved to conquer it, "I got through those other troubles all right in the end. How do I know I won't with this? At least, I can be a man, not a cry-baby, especially before I'm actually in danger." It was sorry advice, and he knew it, but it was just enough at the moment to help him pull himself together. "So maybe they can kill me ... after torturing me. So what? I don't expect to live forever, and I knew when I got into this service that it was dangerous. After all, I could get killed any minute just performing routine Corps duties--or if I'd remained a civilian, at my daily job, or walking the streets of Terra." By main force of will and character, Hanlon forced the fear back and away from the surface of his mind. He concentrated on the problem at hand: How to find where his father was held captive. Hooper had apparently been running for about two hours when Hanlon first discovered him, his mind had told. All right, where's that map of Stearra and vicinity he had bought. Ah, there on the table. Let's see now, a man in Hooper's condition could run maybe ten or twelve miles in that time, since his mental terror would have overcome physical fatigue until his muscles could absolutely obey no longer. All right, circle this point with a ring with a twelve-mile radius ... so. But Curt was coming from the south. Concentrate on that direction for the moment. What lies ten to twelve miles from here to the south? He examined the map carefully, trying to visualize in his mind what lay out in that direction. The Ruler's palace was more or less south, but nearer to fifteen miles. Could Hooper have run that far since dawn? Hanlon didn't think so, though the man had so evidently been running until almost exhausted. The section Hanlon was visualizing was, he remembered now, mostly filled with the larger homes and estates of the more influential and wealthy. Yandor's house? No, that was more to the west, and only about two miles from here. Of course, Hooper could have been circling and zigzagging during those hours--oh, but not that much, surely. Carefully Hanlon pored over the map, trying to figure where his father could possibly be held. Suddenly, a bit to the east, and about eleven miles from the street where Hanlon lived, he noticed a pencilled dot he had previously made on the map. _Irad's house!_ Of course, Hanlon gasped. And that enigmatic stone building--Hooper had thought "stone"--behind the house. Also, all indications up to the present pointed toward the Second-In-Line as the head man of the criminal element ... and that probably meant of the opposition, as well. But Hooper's thoughts had been that the S S men's torture and inquisition had been mental. Did Irad have that power? Hanlon had asked himself that before, but now it became increasingly evident that he did, he must have. Besides, now that Hanlon was concentrating on the subject, there had been that curious sensation of a mental block or barrier Hanlon thought he had felt in Egon-Irad's mind. What was behind that curtain? "Well," Hanlon shivered, "there's only one way to find out. I'll have to scout this place more closely, and see if he's _it_." He rose determinedly to start out. But halted as he realized it was broad daylight, and that he could not go there and investigate the house and grounds--and that stone building in the back--without being seen. He would have to take this slow and easy. Too much depended on him, and there was very little chance of his making it undiscovered even under the best of circumstances. He must not take chances that he knew beforehand were doomed to failure. For he was now the sole and only possibility of his father being freed. That sneakboat was not due for another week and a half, and with Manning and Hooper out of the picture.... Chafing at the delay, his mind a turmoil of tortured thoughts, conflict between his desire to rush and the logical knowledge that he must wait until dark, Hanlon passed the most miserable time of his young life. He had thought he had plumbed the depths of mental agony during those dreadful seven minutes when he had stood at rigid attention in the office of Admiral Rogers, commandant of cadets. But that had been a mere child's game compared to all this fretful waiting. But those deep, inner and innate characteristics which made George Hanlon what he was, came to the fore during those hours, as he forced himself to endure the wait he knew he must accomplish. And in that period George Hanlon reached closer to full maturity. He touched, examined and accepted the tremendous concept that man's highest pinnacle of success, his greatest heights of achievement in personal integration, lay in working _with_ others for the common good of all, not in feeling that any one man is indispensable; one man--himself, of course--better than others, and more capable than they of achieving all goals. Sure, he had an ability none of the others had. But that did not make him any better than, nor above them. They, in turn, had many capabilities he did not possess, that were actually as valuable as his mental abilities--if not more so. As an individual, any of them could fail. As a _team_, each giving of his best, they could win out. And now someone or some group had broken up the team. Well, it was up to him to get it back together again. George Hanlon suddenly awoke. He sprang from his chair, astonished to see through the window of his room that it was dark outside. He grinned mirthlessly. He had actually fallen asleep there in his chair, in the midst of all his worry. Then suddenly he realized why. He had thought the matter through, reached definite conclusions and had known, inwardly, that everything was now as it must be until a certain time. Thus calmed and facing that fact, however unconsciously, he had fallen asleep to gain strength for that coming ordeal. Now it was time to go, therefore he had awakened. He took another half hour to prepare and eat a good meal--he would need all the strength he could get--then left his room and the house. Mounting his trike, he sped away at its swiftest pace toward the neighborhood where Adwal Irad's house lay. * * * * * _The alien, watching from above in its scanners, saw that entity with the unreadable mind leave its home and start away on its mechanical carrier. Tracing its course, the being was soon able to make a shrewd guess as to its destination._ _Instantly the alien's mind went into action, and under its compulsion four armed men hastened to Irad's house, and hid themselves within its partially-darkened interior, yet kept careful watch of the outside premises._ Hanlon had long since decided just how to approach the place. Leaving his machine concealed in the deep shadows of a spreading flowertree, he slipped quietly through the edge of the grounds next door, dodging from tree to tree to bush, carefully watching all about to make sure he was not seen nor followed. He came to a large tree close to the Irad property, hurdled a low hedge and dashed across the dividing line, to come to a stop beneath another tree well into the grounds of the Second-In-Line. From that one he made his cautious, soundless way, until he was only about ten yards from the house itself. There were only a couple of lights showing through the windows, but his heart sank at the realization that someone was at home. "I should have had a bird watching to see if Irad left," he scolded himself. But he continued on, making a final dash across the remaining yardage until he was right beside the house itself, in a deep shadow. Carefully he inched his way along toward the nearest window from which a light showed. Reaching it he very slowly rose and peered through the lower corner of the pane. This was apparently a sort of living room or library, as he could see a number of easy chairs, carbide lamps on standards for reading, a couple of small tables with art objects or flowers on them. Along one wall were recesses holding reading scrolls. But there was no one in the room he could see. He crept on to another window, and repeated his inspection. This one was a bedroom, but again no one was there. "Maybe Irad just leaves a couple of lights on when he's away," Hanlon considered. He crept on to another window, but there was no light and he could not see what was within. He rounded a corner of the five-sided house, going toward the back, but there were no lighted windows in that side. He ran along it to the back, noting as he did so that he passed a closed door. He now was close to that little stone building at the rear which he had previously noted, and in which he was sure his father was imprisoned. There was no light showing, and apparently no windows at all. He ran toward it swiftly, and ducked into its shadow. He circled it completely, but there was only one door--locked. George Hanlon probed with his mind toward the interior, and faintly, just barely on the threshold of his consciousness, he caught a familiar thought-pattern. "It is dad," he exulted, but silently. Almost forgetting caution, he doubled back and was attacking that locked door, when a sound behind made him whirl about. A number of men were boiling swiftly out of that door in the main house he had passed a few moments before. And the light now shining out reflected on the unmistakable flameguns in their hands. In that first quick glance he had recognized Yandor as one of the men. "Yipe!" Hanlon knew a deep disappointment--which did not stop him from starting away from there on a dead run. He increased his speed as he heard the pounding of heavy feet behind him. He dashed toward the nearest yard, trying always to keep in the shadows. Fortunately, he was fleeter than his pursuers, and gained considerable yardage on them. Around that next house he ran, and across the next yard. A couple of flamegun flashes sprang out at him, but not close. The gangsters were also flashing the lights from reflector-lanterns, trying to locate and spotlight him for more accurate shooting. In the drive of that neighboring house Hanlon saw one of the Estrellan motor-trikes. It took him but a moment to activate the engine that, for a wonder, caught almost immediately. He jumped onto the seat and was picking up speed as he reached the street and swung down it. Behind he heard an outcry as the owners saw the theft of their machine. Also, the angry yells of the men chasing him. These little tricycles were made for local trips only, and were not powered for speed or distance. The best he was able to coax out of the acetylene-powered engine was about twenty miles an hour. He had not gone a mile before he heard behind him the sound of one of the larger trikes, whose greater-sized motor, he knew, had a top speed of nearly thirty miles an hour. Pushing his little machine as fast as it would go, Hanlon looked wildly all about him for some place of safety. He knew he had only a few minutes before the bigger trike would catch up with him--or at least be within shooting distance. But how had they known he was coming? They must have been lying in wait, to have taken him so completely off guard. Else why or how could they have been hiding in semi-darkness, to come rushing out of that door, their flamers ready to cinder him? A momentary blackness of fear struck at him, but he threw it off by an effort of will. They hadn't caught him yet; and by the great John Snyder, they wouldn't! Hah! Off there to the left was a little patch of woods. And just ahead was a corner. He made as though to keep straight on, then swerved at the last moment toward the left. His tires shrieked at the sudden braking and swift turn, and the little machine almost overturned--but he made it. Glancing back he saw the larger, swifter tricycle hurtle past the corner he had so unexpectedly turned. That would give him a little extra leeway, before they could stop, turn around, and come back down the road he was on. Soon he reached the beginning of the wood, and was in the shadows its trees cast across the road. Luckily, he thought, his little machine had no lights, and it would be that much harder for them to spot him in the darkness. He went a little farther, then slowed a bit, swung his right leg over onto the left side of the trike, and threw himself off, allowing it to continue on without him. How far it would go, unguided, he did not know, but hoped it would be some distance. Glancing backward over his shoulder as he ran, he saw the lights of the gangster's car pass. For some minutes he continued running, zigzagging a bit around the trees, hoping to get far enough away so they could not find him. As he ran he continued thinking what had happened. "Were those goons actually waiting for me?" It didn't seem possible anyone could have suspected him, personally, or have had any idea he was going to be around Irad's house tonight. How could they, possibly. He hadn't told anyone. That unknown mind-power again? Memory of that _someone_ with the extraordinary mental powers who had captured and imprisoned and questioned the other S S men, came to him and again, involuntarily, he shuddered. It probably was not that one or ones, he tried to deny the belief. Undoubtedly those gun-carrying men were merely guarding the house on general principles, either because Irad was Second-In-Line, or else because.... "Gosh, I almost forgot. I'm sure dad's there, for those were his thoughts I was just beginning to catch, I know. His mind-texture is unmistakable. I'll bet those guys were there as guards for that reason. I'll have to...." He stopped short and dodged behind a tree, for his quick ear had caught a crackling in the underbrush behind him. He tried to peer out through the dimness, but could not see anyone, although he could see two or three lances of lights that he knew were the reflectors of the gangsters. "I didn't realize they'd get this close this quick," he almost wailed. "I gotta get out of here, but fast." He started off as quietly as he could. But there were so many fallen leaves and dead twigs and branches underfoot that he could not help making some noise. Suddenly a lance of flame almost caught him. He dodged quickly again. There was another shot in his general direction that did not hit him--but it did touch a dried, dead branch. Instantly there was a flare of light as the wood caught fire, and in moments a considerable blaze was started that made further concealment impossible. Only flight was left. Hanlon turned and ran toward the farther edge of the wood. Behind him he could hear footsteps rapidly following, and a voice bellowing, "Here he is!" CHAPTER 12 George Hanlon ran as he had never run before, but somehow, surprisingly, that Estrellan native not only kept up with him, but the young S S man could tell from the sound that he was catching up. This guy must be half greyhound, Hanlon thought--although he, himself, was slowed down by those huge shoes to which he was not yet too accustomed, so that when running he had trouble not stumbling over his own feet. It was hard remembering to keep his legs spread further apart than normal. He finally saw just ahead of him the far edge of the wood, and beyond that a great, open meadow. He would be in clear sight out there, unless he could outdistance his pursuers. And this closest one was much too near for that. He would have to stop this gunnie somehow, and now. Hanlon ducked behind a great tree, and peered out carefully. In his hands he held a knob of wood he had picked up. Soon he saw the native come running between the trees, straight in his direction. Hanlon took a firmer grip on his club, and raised it above his head. The mobster came alongside the tree, the club came down--hard. One down. Hanlon started on across the meadow then, for the woods was afire and he felt there was no chance of escape that way. He hoped he could find some sort of a hiding place out there--quite sure in his mind he could not outdistance the men following. He zigzagged a bit as he ran, and kept looking back over his shoulder from time to time. Hanlon had covered nearly two hundred yards, and was again looking back over his shoulder, when suddenly his foot struck something, and he pitched headlong. The breath _whooshed_ out of him as he landed. He felt as though he was a mass of cuts and bruises. He fought to regain his breath, drawing in great gulps of air. His back hurt, and his legs. One arm seemed almost useless. "Oh, no, not broken!" he wailed inwardly. Tentatively he tried to move it, and found to his joy that it was only badly jammed. He remembered now, he had landed on that hand. He glanced around and saw that he had fallen over a great, exposed rock-edge, perhaps a foot high, half as wide, but eight or nine feet long. Despite the inconvenience of dozens of pieces of broken rock on the ground there, he swung his body around so he was lying along the length of the rock, hoping thus to hide a bit while he regained his breath and a measure of strength. "If I'm lucky, I can hide here until they leave," he panted, striving to calm his nerves and slow his breathing. He peered cautiously over the top of the rock, back toward the burning wood. Soon he saw another of the men emerge carefully from the edge of the wood, but a considerable distance away. He watched this fellow as he crept out into the meadow, looking from side to side in his search for their quarry. So intent was Hanlon on watching this man that he did not see nor hear the approach of a third man, until the other jumped the stone, almost landing on Hanlon. The S S man could not entirely stifle an exclamation, and instantly the man swiveled and shone his light directly on Hanlon. Swiftly the Corpsman snaked out his hand, caught the goon's foot and yanked. The man fell backward, and Hanlon, injuries forgotten, leaped up. But with a lithe, swift movement his attacker was on his feet, swinging at Hanlon with the hand holding his lantern. It was, the S S man saw now, the fellow he thought he had knocked out with his club. The Terran's hands darted out and grabbed the man's other wrist, pushing it up and away. For in the gyrations of the lamp he had seen that the fellow carried a flamer. Forth and back they wrestled. By dint of extra effort Hanlon kept the gun's muzzle pointed away from him. But he realized sickeningly that his antagonist was stronger and heavier than he. For an Estrellan, this goon was really a giant. Hanlon decided on a desperate chance. Instead of pushing _against_ the man's strength, he suddenly lunged backward. The goon cursed as he strove to keep his own footing, and pulled back as best he could. Hanlon's reflexes were faster than the mobster's, and he took full advantage of the change of leverage. He twisted half-sideways, and let go with his right hand. He swung with all his strength at the soft belly before him. The man grunted and tottered, for he had not quite regained full equilibrium. Again and again Hanlon struck. The man staggered, reeled backward. A quick snatch, and Hanlon had the flamer ... and used it. Swiftly he looked to see if the man he had been watching had noticed the fight--and the flash. Apparently he had, for he was coming on a run. Hanlon snapped a shot at him--and missed. An answering lance of flame almost got him. Hanlon tried another ... and got only a weak sizzle. The first gunman's flamegun was dead. Only flight was left. Hanlon dropped the useless weapon and started off across the field as fast as he could run. He had not fully recovered his breath, and every muscle in his body shrieked from that fall and his unusual exertions. He stumbled and staggered, but kept on running as fast as he could. Behind he could hear the yells of the gunman who was on his trail, apparently calling to someone else. The beam of the lantern held Hanlon almost steadily. Still the Corpsman ran. He had no idea what lay ahead, or whether he was running toward safety or into more danger. There was no other cover he could see in the almost-dark--no trees nor bushes. Merely this meadow, almost flat, covered with a sort of blossomy grass not more than two or three inches high. Nor, even if he did find something, would he be long concealed from the lantern and the man who carried it. Hanlon swerved, and ran toward but behind the lantern-carrier, hoping thus to elude him. In fact, he had passed behind the fellow before the light-rays picked him out again. The beam held him steadily again, and Hanlon could hear those pounding feet coming nearer. A gun flamed out again, and Hanlon felt the excruciating pain of a burn on the side of his arm. "Yipe, that was close," he gritted as he clamped his other hand over the wound, and tried to increase his speed. Weariness seemed forgotten for the moment, and he was able to spurt ahead. Suddenly he saw twin beams of stronger light coming across the field to intercept him. "Oh, no," he gasped, "the trike!" He swerved sharply to the right again, and ran on. Ahead he heard a strange sort of roar, and only after a moment or so could identify it. It sounded like the boom of breakers. "Am I that near the sea?" Again a sword of flame almost caught him. The car was roaring toward him, closer each second. He knew starkly that death or capture was a matter of moments only. His mind had been reaching out, searching for any sort of animal life that might come to his assistance. But in this hour of need even that avenue of help seemed to have detoured. That roar sounded closer--yet curiously distant. Yet he was almost sure it was the sound of breaking water. "If it's close enough, maybe I can find safety there. It's my only hope now," he prayed. He pounded on and suddenly, almost straight ahead, the nearer of Estrella's two moons swung above the horizon. Both moons were far closer to Estrella than Luna was to Terra. Neither was nearly as large, but they gave considerable light, and this nearer moon was almost at the full tonight. Hanlon could see better now--but he knew his pursuers could, too, and that he was now plain in their sight. "Sorry, dad, but it looks like I've failed," he groaned. The sound of the water was closer now, and it had more the texture of breakers than of surf. He devoutly hoped so. Breakers would mean rocks, and rocks would be hard to avoid if he had to dive. But, more important, they would mean greater chances for safety if this meadow ran directly into them, so he could find a hiding place. Now both gunmen behind were closer. They were firing steadily--and even in his anxiety to escape Hanlon found time to sneer at their marksmanship. "Wish I had a gun or a blaster--I'd show them some real shooting." Almost blinded now with fatigue, and his run barely more than a stagger, he struggled on ... and suddenly skidded to a halt just on the lip of a sharp drop-off. He peered downward, and his heart did flip-flops. This cliff was well over a hundred and fifty feet high--and straight down to the water's edge. It was the slapping of the water against it he had heard. Even in the moon's rays he could see that it was too vertical, too smooth, for a swift downward climb. He looked wildly to right and to left, but could see no possible safety. The car with its gunmen was closer now, and one of the flames from their guns almost hit him. There was only one possible escape. He ran back from the cliff's edge for several yards, straight toward the onrushing car. Then he turned and sprinted for that edge. He took off like a broad jumper, as far outward as he could, curving his body downward into a dive. "Oh, God, please," he prayed earnestly, "deep water and no rocks." It seemed an interminable age that George Hanlon fell through the air on that incredible dive toward the water so far away. Not knowing what was below made the moments seem dreadful eternities. His mind persisted in painting ghastly pictures.... At long last Hanlon struck--and was instantly numbed from the force of the blow and chilled by the icy water. His bruises, burns and cuts smarted painfully from the salt. He plummeted into the depths, deeper, deeper, until he thought his lungs would burst, despite the great gulp of air he had breathed in just before he hit. Slowly he let out a little bit--and as he sank ever deeper, a bit more. He just couldn't take it any longer. He would have to let go soon, and try to breathe. But from some hidden source he drew on new reserves of will and of strength, and fought on. He felt his descent slowing, and clawed his way upward. His head finally burst through the surface, and he trod water while he gratefully gulped in the reviving air. All at once he heard a sharp _ping_, and water splashed in his face. One of those goons above had a pellet gun. Hanlon struck out away from the shore, swimming under water as fast and as far as his breath and strength would allow, coming up only to gulp another lungful of air, then submerging again. Finally he surfaced and looked back toward the cliff-top. He could dimly see three forms standing there. Another pellet struck close by ... and another. Why, he wondered, hadn't they used that gun on him before? Never too strong a swimmer, the exhaustion and weakness of his wounds and that long run made swimming almost impossible for the young secret serviceman. But he knew his life--and the success of his mission here--depended on his keeping going. He kicked off the heavy, water-logged special shoes that made his feet look Estrellan. Ridding himself of their weight helped a little. He had felt hundreds of tiny waves of strange thought beating at the fringes of his mind, and now he opened it wide to receive these impressions. "Fish," he said disgustedly after a moment, as he kept swimming further out. "What good...?" He stopped and thought carefully. "If it was a big enough fish, maybe...." He sent his mind purposefully out and around. He was still trying to swim, but his body was worn out. He knew desperation, for even if he outdistanced their pellets, there was just not enough strength left in him to swim back to shore. He turned over on his back and floated, resting as much as possible, but still kept his mind searching, searching through the waters. It was his only chance, he felt sure, and sent it ever farther out. Finally he contacted a larger, stronger thought. Avidly he seized it, insinuated his mind into it, and realized at once that it was the brain of a fish. He forced it to swim at its top speed toward him. From the size and texture of the mind it felt like a large fish. He hoped it was big enough. Soon it came up to him, and he saw that it was shark-like, almost eight feet long, but rounder, and with a head and face much like that of a Terran sea-elephant. Eagerly and thankfully he grasped one of the small fins protruding from its underside, and his mind started it swimming along parallel to the coast. The musket-type gun had been _splatting_ at him from time to time--evidently as fast as the shooter could reload. He looked up toward the cliff-top, and could see men running along it. "Must be they can see me," although he doubted if they could see the fish, that swam just below the surface. "Probably," he grinned mirthlessly, "they're wondering how I can swim so fast." Another pellet plowed into the water close ahead of his face. The portion of his mind inside the fish felt the intolerable, burning shock of pain. The fish seemed almost to stumble. It twisted and coiled about until Hanlon was able to tighten his control and calm it. In the dim moonlight he could see the water becoming discolored--and knew the fish was bleeding profusely. His mind in the fish knew where the wound was, and Hanlon reached up for that place and found a gaping hole. He put the tip of a finger into it to stop the bleeding as much as possible. But he realized at once that this would not save his carrier, which by now he knew was not a true fish, but an amphibious mammal, just as Terran's whales are mammals, not fish. What could he do? As weak as he was, and as poor a swimmer as he was at best, there was absolutely no chance of his making it back to shore under his own power. And even if he did get back, there was no beach, only that unscalable rocky escarpment ... and the gunmen on top of that. The fish was his only hope, for he had not been able to locate another fish-mind of the same calibre. And now his savior was dying. More carefully now, with his mind inside the amphibian, he examined the structure of its brain and nervous and muscular systems. Would it be possible to close that terrible wound? He traced the nerves to the muscles of that portion of the body and skin. He tested and tried everything he could figure out. Finally, Hanlon found the nerve-muscle combination that controlled exactly that portion of the body. He made it contract--and felt the muscle tighten about his fingertip. Gently he withdrew the latter from the wound, and made the muscles close it tightly and completely. It was necessary to keep doing it consciously, for the moment he relaxed his concentration it opened again. He noted subconsciously that there had been no more shots for some time. "Maybe the guy's outta bullets," he thought. "Or perhaps they think I'm dead--can see the blood-stains and think they're mine. Or maybe," as an after-thought, "they've lost track of me in the dimness and the choppy waters." Whatever the reason, Hanlon knew a deep thankfulness. He relaxed as best he could, shivering in the icy waters, still holding loosely onto the fin of the fish-thing. He did not try to make it swim. In fact, he kept it from doing so. He would take time out to try to regain some of his own strength, while letting the fish overcome, if possible, some of its own weakness and shock from the pellet-wound. * * * * * _Adwal Irad had been growing strangely worried. Acting on a compulsion he did not realize existed, he moved Admiral Newton to a different and, a certain being in a spaceship high above hoped, a more concealed place of imprisonment._ CHAPTER 13 "If I wait here awhile, perhaps the fish's strength will build up again," George Hanlon had thought wearily. "Then it can carry me back to shore." So he continued concentrating on the job of keeping those muscles closed around the wound in the amphibian's side, finding it required full use of his mind to think of holding that constriction, and of nothing else. Only partially was that possible, of course. Humans are just not constituted so they can think of only one thing for long periods of time. "At least," he grimaced, "not this human." For nearly an hour he and the fish lay there quietly, riding out the waves, while he waited for the great mammal-thing to regain some of its energy. He kept close watch of that mind, and knew it was gradually feeling less pain, less anguish. He had sent it "calming" thoughts as best he could, and they had taken effect. The panic was gone. It was almost asleep, floating there. Hanlon looked toward the cliff-top, but there were no longer figures there he could see. Had the pursuers, thinking him dead, left? He strained his ears for the sound of the trike motor. "Maybe, though, they'd already gone before I thought to start listening," he thought. Finally he decided the fish was strong enough to take him to shore. His own body felt so much more comfortable. Then he realized with a twinge of panic that the reason was that while he had thrown his mind into the healing of the fish his body had become numb with the cold. Now he again became conscious of his various cuts and bruises, aching and flaming from the action of the salt water. Under his compulsion the fish swam slowly and with some difficulty back toward the shore. When it finally got close to the wall of rock Hanlon let his feet downward, hoping to be able to touch bottom. But the water was far too deep there. "I hate to do this to you, fellow, but you're my only hope for the time being," Hanlon said feelingly to the great fish-thing, and made it start swimming along the rocky wall. He kept his eyes constantly looking ahead for a break in the escarpment, or for a bit of beach where he could rest. After a mile or so it seemed the cliff was getting lower, and Hanlon's hopes rose a bit. Another couple of thousand yards, and he was sure of it. It was sloping downward quite sharply toward sea-level. Also it seemed, in the moonlight, that the rocky surface was getting rougher, more climbable. Finally they came to a place where the cliff was only about twenty yards high--nor did it seem to get lower on ahead. Too, it looked scalable. Hanlon stopped the fish and examined that facing carefully. Yes, he decided at last, there were enough protuberances and cracks so that it could be climbed. _If_ he had strength enough. "Well, gotta try sometime. And my poor fish is about all done." He made it swim right up until he could reach out and get a firm grip in a large crack. "Goodbye, fellow. Thanks for saving my life. Hope you make out all right," he told the great mammalian shark-thing. He released his hold on its fin and his control from its mind. It turned and swam away, still feebly. Hanlon focused his attention on the task before him. Slowly and painfully he climbed, hunting for handhold and foot rest. He had known he was tired, but had not realized how weak he was. It seemed he could never make even that short climb. His fingers, hands and arms were numb with cold, his feet and legs unresponsive leaden weights. But from the deeps of his subconscious and will, and his urge to survival, he brought renewed strength and scrambled upward. At last, utterly spent, he pulled himself over the edge, and lay gasping and shivering on the top of the cliff. He was almost ready to blank out, when a thought struck him, and he struggled to retain consciousness. He could not just lie here and sleep. Probably those goons would still be looking for him. He must get away, somehow, somewhere. Again he sent his mind outward, and felt whispers of thought quite a little distance away across the meadow. He followed the strongest of these, and found a mind quite powerful, and intelligent in an animalistic way. He followed that mind into the brain that housed it, and took control. He made the animal, whatever it was, start swiftly toward him. While it was coming he examined the mind more closely, and suddenly realized he was inside the brain of an Estrellan _caval_. These animals, which the Terrans thought of as horses, because they could be ridden or trained to draw carriages, were about the size of a Terran cow-pony. They were striped almost like a zebra, but the colors were brown and yellow, rather than black and white. The animals were quite vicious in the wild state, and none too tractable even when trained. As usual with Estrellan animals, they were tailless, and had heavy, sharp hooves, nearly twice the size of those of Earthly horses, and snouts much like a roch's. When the caval came up to him, Hanlon saw it was a stallion, slightly larger than average. From its mind he already knew it was a wild one, not domesticated or broken to saddle or harness. Nevertheless, he could control it, and made it stand quietly while he climbed slowly and laboriously to his feet, and from there managed to wriggle onto its back. He knew he was due to faint in a few seconds, but kept his consciousness long enough to impress on the animal's mind that it was to take him back toward Stearra. He thought he knew the direction, and he thought he could keep awake the one part of his mind that was dissociated and in the caval. However, because he might blank out completely, he instructed it to keep straight on the road to town. He leaned down and threw his arms tightly about the caval's neck, then with a sigh of thankfulness, let himself go. He had endured so much ... he was so tired ... so ... tir.... * * * * * Yandor and his men had finally come to the conclusion that Gor Anlo was dead, out there in the ocean. They had been unable to see him for some time. Yet they waited around for nearly half an hour, searching both the waters and along the cliff. Finally, he said they might as well go home. So all piled in their large trike and started back to the city. But they had not quite reached his home when Yandor found a disturbing thought persisting in his mind. He worried and puzzled over it for some time, then issued sharp commands. Thus, when they arrived at his house, two of the men hurried into the back yard, and soon came back with two of the beasts Yandor kept caged there. "What's up, chief?" one of the men asked as the tricycle sped back the way they had just come. "I ... I don't really know," the impresario said slowly. "I ... I have a ... a sort of feeling ... that maybe we can find Anlo after all. We'd better go back and look some more." * * * * * _For the watcher above knew Hanlon was not dead._ * * * * * All of George Hanlon's mind must have become unconscious, for the next thing he knew was when the caval suddenly reared to escape those who were trying to stop it, and Hanlon's body was dumped unceremoniously to the ground. The caval, released from its compulsion, took off across the meadow at top speed. Hanlon began to recover consciousness as rough hands slapped him awake. He first noticed that the sun was rising, for its rays were shining directly in his eyes. He blinked and turned his head away--and became aware of his captors. He saw Ino Yandor standing there, beside a large trike. Beside him was one of his henchmen, holding the leashes of two straining _tamous_. These cat-like beasts, somewhat like Terran black panthers save they were a deep red in color, and had fangs much longer and sharper--and no tails--Hanlon knew to be trackers _par excellence_--as good as bloodhounds. Nor were they usually as fierce and blood-thirsty as they seemed. The third man was the one who was holding him. "Well now," Yandor eyed him angrily, "you think you're pretty clever, don't you?" Hanlon shrugged. "Doesn't look like it, does it?" "Who are you spying for?" "Who says I was spying?" "Don't try to quibble with me, Gor Anlo. I want answers, and correct answers, or I'll let my pretty pets here take over, and see if you can elude them." "And after I get through answering you'll cinder me anyway," Hanlon sneered. "Whatever gave you the idea I'd talk--if I had anything to say, that is?" The mobster holding him cuffed him. "Don't talk to Ino Yandor that way, you phidi." Hanlon turned his head and sneered into the man's face. "Watch who you're calling a snake." He twisted suddenly, drove his heel backwards into the man's shin, and pulled free. The fellow, even while yelping with pain, started to draw a flamer when Yandor commanded sharply, "Let him be. He can't outrun the tamous." Hanlon spoke as though nothing had happened. "What gave you the idea I've been doing anything like you said?" he asked in a conversational tone. "What's this all about?" "What were you doing, trying to look into--or get into--Adwal Irad's house?" "That the name of the guy that owns it? Just looking for anything worthwhile I could pick up. Since you got me fired just because I drank a little too much one night, I got to make a living someway." "Well now, I hope you don't expect me to believe that. I know who you are, and my patience is at an end. Do you tell me who you are working for, and what you're after, or do I let the tamous loose?" "I've got nothing to ..." Hanlon began, but the man who had been holding him suddenly interrupted. "Look, Yandor, at the man's ear!" "Yes, and his feet," the other pointed downward. They all stared closely, and Hanlon wondered as he saw their eyes widen. Then, with a start, he remembered kicking off his oversized shoes, and now he noticed that the dye had come off his hands. He guessed with sickening certainty that the long immersion in the salt-water had also loosened the plastic ears and nose, and that at least one of them had fallen off. "By Zappa," Yandor stepped closer. "One of his ears is very small ..." he reached out quickly and tugged at the other. Loosened at it was, it came off easily in his hand. "An alien," Yandor exclaimed, and then "your skin--it's not like ours." "His nose seems false, too," the third man said. Knowing his imposture was over, Hanlon himself pulled off the plastic overlay and disclosed his nose in its original size and shape. "Yes, I'm a Terran. What're you going to do about it?" "Loose the tamous!" Yandor snapped, and the man dropped the leashes he held. But Hanlon had read that command in the impresario's mind even before he uttered it, and had already taken over the minds of the two beasts. They were well equipped by nature to be deadly, even if that was not their true nature. The female whirled, and jumped on the man who had been holding them. The male made two quick leaps, and was on the other gunman. Both men were borne backwards, and in seconds the great cat-things had torn out their throats. "You should have remembered I'm the world's greatest animal trainer," Hanlon said evenly. Yandor shrank back, sure he was next. "You fiend!" he cried, then his inherent cowardice showed and he threw himself on his knees. "Don't let them kill me," he pleaded in agonized tones. "I'll do anything--I'll give you everything I have. Only please, please keep those awful beasts away from me." Hanlon hated a cowardly bully. Also, much as he detested killing or maiming, he had learned not to let it get him down too much in this work when it was necessary. But with such an unprincipled killer and abject wretch as the one before him, he felt no such compunction. He looked contemptuously down at the thing grovelling at his feet in a very paroxysm of fear. Disgusted, Hanlon turned away, climbed into the motor-trike in which Yandor and his men had come here, and started its engine. As he drove away he impressed a command on those now-slavering beasts, who began bellying toward the helpless Yandor. But Hanlon could not repress a shudder of revulsion at what he felt forced to do. After a half mile or so of driving, however, the weariness, the pain and chill struck him, and he nearly fainted again. He struggled to keep himself conscious so he could get back home--a matter of vital necessity now that he was not disguised. When he finally came to the more populated part of the city, in which people were beginning to be seen outside the houses and on the streets, he had himself fairly well under control. He kept his head down and made himself as inconspicuous as possible while driving at the highest allowable speed toward his rooming house. There he jumped from the car almost before it stopped, and ran in. He passed several of his neighbors in the hallways, but held his hank before his face and ignored their stares of surprise at his condition as he raced to his room. Once inside, he locked the door, then breathed a sigh of deep relief. He began stripping off his wet and bedraggled clothes, thankful, as he remembered the loss of his shoes, that he had an extra pair of those specially-made ones. When he saw that much of the hair so meticulously glued onto his body was also coming loose, he thankfully ripped the rest of it from him, then went in and turned on the shower--really only a stream of water from the end of a pipe. For nearly a quarter of an hour he stood under it, revelling in the first feeling of real cleanliness he had known since leaving Simonides, relieved as the warm water washed the salt from his wounds and pores. Finally, having treated his burns and bruises, he put on a dressing gown to partially cover his nakedness, and sank into his comfortable chair. Then he let his mind review the happenings of the past night. Hanlon was once more in a cockily jaunty mood. He had taken some terrific risks, had been in almost-fatal jeopardy several times, had had adventures and escapes no one would believe if he tried to tell them--except some of the few S S men who knew about his special talents, and dad, of course.... _Dad!_ He had almost forgotten his father's predicament in the excitement of the night. Now, as he considered and concentrated on this problem, Hanlon began to realize--dimly, sketchily, and much against his will--that things were not at all right as he had felt for the moment. He tried to dodge that flickering thought, but it persisted, grew stronger, would not be denied. He finally was forced to consider it more thoroughly. And slowly it dawned upon him that he had not _won_--he had lost. He had smeared up the works, but good. His campaign was done, finished, kaput. He had put his foot in it, clear up to the sacro-iliac. Worse than that--far worse--he had undoubtedly gummed up this whole Estrellan business. Not only was his own work undone, but now the natives would know that the Terrans were here, just as that propaganda machine had said. Now it would be practically impossible to make them believe that the Terrans were _not_ responsible for their crime wave--and all the other things said about them. "Me and my big swelled head," he castigated himself furiously. "I oughtta be horse-whipped." Almost he cried. His body was by turns ice-cold and feverish. He cringed mentally and physically. Was there any way--any possible way--he could redeem himself? Could he publicly admit that he and he alone was to blame, that he was here entirely on his own initiative, because he wanted to see Estrella join the family of nations? No, that was absurd. He wouldn't be believed. No one in their right mind would ever conceive that a young man like him would do such a thing without some backing--undoubtedly full Federation backing. He would have to resign from the secret service. Or--he gasped--were its members allowed to resign? Admiral Rogers had said it was for life, once he got in. "But he didn't guarantee how long my life would last," Hanlon grimaced. Well, he drew himself up proudly, there was a way. He was not afraid to die. "Whoa, now, wait a minute. Let's think this out. Death's no answer." For a new idea had just struck him. He forced the worry, the fear, the ... the self-pity ... from his mind, and settled down to consider this new concept. Maybe it wasn't as bad as he had thought, after all. "Yandor and his goons were the only ones who knew I was a Terran, and they're dead," he thought. "So they can't tell on me. And no one else knows it. Maybe I can go ahead, just as I was." He rose to get dressed. There was still his father's imprisonment to be taken care of--if possible. Hanlon was sure now that it was in that little stone house back of Irad's mansion that the admiral was being held prisoner. A casual glance in the glass, and he was suddenly conscious of his appearance. Hey, he couldn't go out like this, in broad daylight. Not looking like a Terran. Swiftly he considered the possibilities. He would have to disguise himself again enough to escape notice on the street. But he was no cosmetician ... even if he had the dyes, the plastics.... He sank into his chair again, and thought seriously. But even while he was trying to think and plan, his worn, tired body--exhausted as it had never been before, and depleted of all strength--could bear no more. Without even realizing it, he sank parsecs deep into profound slumber. Sometime during the day, without his knowing it, he must have gotten up and lain down on the bed, for it was there he finally awoke. The room was dark; only a small ray of light came in obliquely through the window, from a distant street-light. He got up, wincing at his lameness and stiffness. He went through some calesthenics to take the soreness from his body, then washed, dressed, and prepared and ate something. He hunted through his duffel bag and found a pair of gloves to cover his hands. Before putting them on, however, he wound a scarf about his head and face, covering most of it except his eyes. He pulled his hat well down, then put on the gloves. Leaving his room, he went inconspicuously along the darkest parts of the streets until he came to the market place, and a certain stall that specialized in theatrical costumes and make-up. It was the same place where he had bought that roch-mask. Walking purposefully, as though he had legitimate business there, he went to the rear of the shop. It was not too hard to break in and crawl inside. There, using his utmost care not to be discovered, he hunted about among the shelves until he found some facial putty, skin dyes, and other articles he needed. He left a couple of gold pentas on the counter in payment. Then, just as cautiously, he retraced his way to his rooms. CHAPTER 14 The next morning when SSM George Hanlon awoke, his first thought was one of concern for his father. An impatient, driving urge for action seized him and made him jump out of bed. Then logic and clear thinking came to the fore, although it required conscious effort for him to prepare and eat his breakfast first of all. Hurriedly finished, though, he set to work on his new make-up, doing his level best to keep his thoughts on the difficult task at hand. He had let his whiskers and hair grow from the time he first received this assignment, of course, so was not too much concerned about the hairiness he must present to the world when dressed. Luckily, although it had often been a source of annoyance--he was one of those men whose beard grows clear down his face and neck to join, with hardly a break, the hair on his chest. As for the body hair that had been so painstakingly glued onto his body before, he decided not to attempt that. He had not yet had to disrobe in front of anyone here; he was certain he would be able to avoid doing so in the future. He rubbed liquid rouge, of a dark shade, well into the skin of his face, neck, hands and high up on his wrists, which took care of his coloring. His main worry was the nose and ears, especially the nose. That would be most quickly noticed if it looked artificial. His first few attempts were not only badly done, but almost ludicrous. His usually fine muscular coordination seemed to be lacking. But he persevered and finally, after several hours, managed to mold a fairly reasonable snout and to so blend its edges into the skin of his face adjoining that it would, he felt sure, pass muster on casual inspection. He built up his ears in like manner, but to help with this deception, in case of any close scrutiny, he covered them with a head bandage. He put his hat on, pulled it well down in front and on the sides, then examined himself critically in the mirror. "Boy, that's a sloppy job, and how," he exclaimed, disgusted with his handiwork. "Trevor would disown me if he could see it." But he finally decided it would do ... he hoped. Now that he had finished he discovered he was sweating like a nervous caval. He held out his shaking hands, and looked at them critically. What, in John's name, was wrong with him, anyway? And a thought he had, perhaps subconsciously, pushed far down into the furthest recesses of his mind, swept over him with full force. He did not want to think that thought. More, he did not want to have to make that decision. But.... Manning was dead. Hooper was fleeing insanely, perhaps also dead by now. His father was captive, imprisoned, tortured ... if still alive. Only he, Hanlon, of the four, was left. And he was ... alone. Again to his mind came his father's earnest and incisive statement, that getting Estrella to accept membership in the Federation was the most important thing that had come up in ages. It _had_ to be accomplished, and quickly. Deep down Hanlon knew what that meant. Individuals were expendable--the plan was not. He was beginning to learn that while plans may blow up in one's face--as now--such happenings must be accepted philosophically, without too much backward longing, without too great remorse, and certainly--which was the hardest to accept--without letting personal feelings or sympathy for those lost or in danger keep the one or ones remaining from going ahead with new attempts to bring the mission to a successful conclusion. For a long time Hanlon sat there. Resolutely now, he put his father out of his mind, and concentrated only on how he was to accomplish the task that confronted him--alone. Finally he began to look at the larger aspects of the problem; to realize that he must quit hunting for individual criminals and possible members of the opposition, and work from the other end--the top. "After all," he thought, "it is the Ruler who makes the decisions. Perhaps ... no, I _must_ go to work on him. I've got enough dope now as to who is behind this intrigue. Now I must reach Elus Amir himself, and swing him our way. But, in Snyder's name, how am I going to get to him?" Plan after possible plan he discarded. He could not go to Amir as a Terran. In the first place, his word would have no weight. In the second place, he would undoubtedly have considerable trouble making the approach to the Ruler, if it was possible at all. No, he would have to get close to him as a native. And to do that, he first had to know more--a lot more--about the Ruler as a man, his habits and usual daily routine. Hanlon left the house and went to a number of places where men ate or drank, both for information, and to try out his new disguise. The latter must have been better than he thought, for no one seemed to notice. And in each place he visited, while eating or sipping his mild drink, Hanlon asked one or two discreet questions. None of these, by themselves, seemed to mean anything. But the answers, put together as Hanlon did when he returned to his rooms, gave him a fairly detailed picture. He knew now that the Ruler stuck quite closely to his residence--"palace", Hanlon thought of it--although occasionally his duties took him to other cities on either continent, and sometimes he went out for an evening at the theatre, as he had done on Hanlon's opening night. Otherwise, he was a hard worker, an excellent and well-loved Ruler, always studying carefully all suggested legislation that was presented for his consideration, always thinking of ways to better the condition of his people. But to one thing he had learned Hanlon gave the most consideration at the moment. Elus Amir, he found, went out almost every day for a ride on his caval, and usually along the same route. Hanlon knew what road that was. Accustomed as he now was to thinking more in terms of animals than of men, the natural thought for Hanlon was to wonder how he could meet or study the Ruler through his caval. The next day, therefore, the S S man rode out into the country, and posted himself at a convenient spot where he could watch without attracting too much attention, yet could see for several miles. He took one of the wheels off his motor-tricycle and demounted the tire. This was to be his excuse for being so handy at the time of his planned meeting with the Ruler. But something apparently changed Elus Amir's habits, for he did not ride that road that day. Ruefully doing a bit of under-breath griping, Hanlon replaced tire and wheel, then rode back toward town. But after he had gone part way through the city streets, he thought of something else that must be done, and headed towards the place Morris Manning had found rooms. Luckily, no one else had moved in, and no one appeared in the hall when Hanlon came back, after a quick trip to a tool stall in the market place, where he was able to buy a hacksaw. For Manning, as did the other S S men, had attached a hasp and pick-proof padlock to his door. The Estrellans locks were ingenious, but could quite easily be unfastened even without the key. These locks consisted of a metal rod, like a sliding bolt, that ran inside the wood of the door. There was a slip in the wood on either side of the door through which a key, inserted in the rod, could move it forth or back. When the bolt was moved into position with one end seated in the holder in the doorjamb, a turn of the key opened flanges on the rod that fitted vertically into prepared slots. But a little patience easily enabled one who wished to get in, to trip those flanges with almost any small, flat-pointed instrument, even a penknife blade. Now Hanlon cut through the hasp, evidently without attracting anyone's attention, for none of the neighbors came out to investigate the strange sounds. Inside Manning's room, he went about the sad business of collecting the dead secret serviceman's gear and belongings, to be sent back home on the sneakboat. As he was cleaning out one of the chests, however, Hanlon discovered a small notebook he knew was of Estrellan make. He opened it idly, and found it was filled with native writing. Excited now, for he was sure Manning would have written in Terran or I-S C code if it had been his work, Hanlon slowly began deciphering the words. "Yow, this is hot stuff," he exclaimed after less than a page. "Wonder where Morrie got this? From Esbor's office or home, I'll bet." He stuffed the book into his pocket for later study. He packed the balance of Manning's things, then left, mounted his trike and rode back to his own rooms. All the balance of the afternoon and evening he worked at the translation of the entries in that book. It was, he found with great glee, a list of the names of various criminals who had been working under Esbor, and brief details of their various activities, as well as many other notes of similar nature. One recent item caused a brief exclamation. "Ran Auldin came seeking a safe hiding place today," he read. "It having already been decided by Adwal Irad that the man's usefulness was over, he was cindered." "Dirty killers," Hanlon growled, his brief moment of joy at the direct mention of Irad dimmed by the import of that entry. "No conscience whatever." All in all, however, he was vastly pleased, and grew more so as he continued translating. For there were several mentions of Adwal Irad, and always pointing to him as the top man. Now he had real evidence of what he had believed--that this crime wave was directed by the Second-In-Line. Hanlon was vastly relieved. In the morning, as he was preparing to go out again to see if he could contact Amir, a thought sent him to the mirror, attempting some changes in his make-up. He worked subtly and soon made himself look considerably older--about middle-aged. This, he felt, would make the Ruler listen more carefully to his evidence than he might to a younger man. Then he rode out to that country road. Sometime later he saw Elus Amir riding that way. From Hanlon's vantage point he saw the Ruler and a single groom on their mounts while they were still some distance away. Hanlon's mind reached out and touched that of the Ruler's steed. There were a few moments of anxious trying, and then he was in full control of the animal's mind. Through its eyes Hanlon looked out carefully along the road. It seemed fairly smooth, and he felt sure that if Amir was at all a good cavalman--as he must be after riding nearly every day--he would be able to stay in the saddle safely during the wild ride planned. Hanlon made the beast suddenly snort and shy to one side, then break into a wild gallop straight down the road, despite the Ruler's frantic efforts at control. Swiftly the caval pounded down the road, Amir working desperately to control it, yet seeming not to be too frightened by the runaway. The groom kicked up his own mount, but was hopelessly outdistanced. Meanwhile the caval, controlled by Hanlon's mind within its own, paid no attention to the sawings and pullings on rein and bit, and continued its apparently frightened bolt. As they neared the place where Hanlon was working on his machine, the young man straightened, looked, then jumped into the road. He started trotting toward them, waving his arms in an effort to make the caval stop its mad rush. But, although he let the animal slow somewhat, it kept running wildly. As it drew closer, Hanlon moved a bit to one side, but still in the road. When the horse and rider were almost upon him he turned his back to them and started running in the same direction, looking back across his shoulder. Just as the caval came abreast, Hanlon suddenly leaped toward it, and grasped the bridle. At the same time his mind calmed that of the beast, and commanded it to slow and stop. To the Ruler, Hanlon seemed to be dragged for several yards, still holding grimly to the reins he had grasped. When he finally brought the caval to a stop, it stood with heaving flanks and blowing nostrils. "Whew," Elus Amir wiped his face, "that was fine work, my man. Many thanks. I don't know what got into the stupid beast. It has never done that before." "Something must have frightened it," Hanlon said. He pretended he did not know who the rider was, having considered this point carefully. "Sure you can handle it now?" "Yes, I think there'll be no more trouble. By the way, is there anything I can do to show my gratitude?" Hanlon looked surprised. "Why, I didn't do anything special. Couldn't let you get hurt." The Ruler gazed at him peculiarly. "Don't you know who I am?" "No, should I?" "I am Elus Amir." "Oh!" Hanlon made himself look properly surprised, then bent his knee in the Estrellan salute to the Ruler. "I beg your pardon, k'nyer, if I've spoken wrongly, for I did not know." Amir smiled. "Well, now that you do, I ask again, is there anything I can do for you? You must want something." Hanlon shook his head. "Thank you, sire, but I wouldn't dream of imposing on your generosity. I'm sure I can find a job somewhere." "Oh, you're looking for work?" "Yes, k'nyer. I only recently came here from Lura." "What can you do?" Another shrug. "Farm work, tending animals, that sort of thing. I love animals, especially cavals. I'd hoped to get a job as stableman on one of the estates here." The Ruler looked at his groom who had come galloping up, relieved to see that his master was unharmed, glancing curiously at this stranger who had saved the Ruler, and with whom he could see Amir had been talking. "Are there any vacancies in our stable-force, Endar?" the Ruler asked. "Why ... why, no, k'nyer, not at present." "Make one then," snapped Amir. "I want to give this man a good position. He is to take care of my personal string of cavals." "As you order, sire." "I don't like to make trouble for anyone, k'nyer." Hanlon protested. "I don't want a job if it means putting someone else out of work." The Ruler's eyes lighted up with a friendly smile. "I assure you it won't. I like your attitude, my man. It is good to find someone who thinks of others before himself." Once more Hanlon shrugged deprecatingly. "I've found in my lifetime, k'nyer, that it doesn't hurt me any to think of the other fellow. And the best part of it is, I've also found, that when I do so think unselfishly, I always receive far more happiness than otherwise." "Ah, a philosopher. I must have many talks with you. Can you get to the Residence all right?" "Yes, sire, as soon as I finish fixing my tire." "Report to Endar here, then, when you get there. I'll instruct him as we ride back." "My thanks, k'nyer. I promise to serve you well and faithfully." The Ruler nodded briefly and rode away, the groom following at a respectful distance. Hanlon hurriedly replaced tire and wheel, then rode off toward the palace. Watching through the caval's eyes, he timed it so he rode into the courtyard just behind the Ruler and groom. Elus Amir was cordial as he dismounted. "I see you got here all right ... by the way, you never told me your name." "I am called Ergo Lona, k'nyer." "All right, Lona. Endar, see that this man has good quarters and whatever clothing he needs. Introduce him to the work." "As you order, sire." The two men bent their knees, then led the cavals to the stables as the Ruler went up the steps into the residence. Hanlon noticed the groom was inclined to be a bit surly, and deduced the man was afraid of his job. He determined to make friends, if possible. It would hamper his work of spying if he had to watch for enemies close to him, like this man could be. "Please tell me how I may help, Endar," he made his voice cordial, yet with a touch of servility. "I'm proud that our Ruler has given me work, I assure you I want to do everything to make good here. I know you must be important here, to be allowed to ride with K'nyer Amir, and I hope you will teach me the regulations. I realize I can never be anything but a stable helper, but I do want to be a good one. I hope we can become good friends." The man unbent a little. "All right, I'll show you around." They stabled the cavals and then the groom led Hanlon to a nearby building. It was of stone construction, five-sided, surrounded by flower beds and trees. It was not only harmonious with the palace and other buildings and grounds, but a pretty little house by itself. "These are the living quarters for the grooms," Endar said as they mounted the steps. Inside he pointed out the dining room, then led the way upstairs and down a short hall. "This will be your room," he opened a door, disclosing a small but well-furnished, comfortable room. "I have a few things in Stearra," Hanlon said. "When will it be convenient for me to go get them?" "We have lunch in a few minutes, then you might as well go," Endar said. "I'll give you a note to the official tailor, and have him fit you with the proper clothes." Hanlon looked at him as though with new respect. "Oh, you must be the head groom then, nyer. I hadn't thought about that. Please pardon my presumption in suggesting that we be friends." Endar merely looked at him a moment, then turned and left without a word. Hanlon grinned to himself as the door closed. "It won't be too hard to keep ahead of that guy. Only I'll have to watch him all the time, or he could get nasty." CHAPTER 15 Hanlon was awakened shortly after dawn the next morning. "Darn this having to pretend to such jobs," he growled to himself as he rose, washed and dressed. He had always preferred to sleep as late as possible, and getting up at such ungodly hours did not tend to make him too happy the first few hours of the day. Yet, young as he was, he had developed the philosophy of accepting what must be as gracefully as possible, and now consoled himself with the hope that he would probably not have to keep up this imposture very many days. His first care was to examine minutely, in the mirror, the make-up he had applied. The ears and nose still seemed to be all right and holding tightly. But he was careful, when no one was around during the days that followed, to look at them as often as he could in a pocket mirror he carried. After a good breakfast in the dining room he was put to work cleaning, feeding and watering the cavals. Endar brought two of the horses from their stalls, snapped their halters into rings in a post, and was busy currying them. When he finished he saddled the two and led them out, after first telling Hanlon to make sure the stables were clean, in case the Ruler came to inspect them. There were three other stablemen, working at the same general tasks. Hanlon, without neglecting his own work, made it a point to try to engage them in conversation. "I love this kind of work, don't you?" he asked confidingly. "I'm so proud the Ruler gave me this job." All the time he was studying their surface minds, trying to get a line on what manner of men they were--whether they would be inclined to be too friendly and intruding. But to his relief, he found they were rather stupid, loutish fellows, not caring too greatly what they did nor who was working with them, as long as they had a good place to live, plenty to eat, and fair pay. They seemed mildly surprised at his evident enthusiasm. One of them answered, in a churlish voice, "It's only a job--why get so excited about it?" His mind-probings told him, however, that none of them was the type to be involved in any plot that might be going on, even as the most humble participants or workers. He had nothing to fear from them in any way. When the work was finished for the morning, the other three men went into the tackroom and began playing cards. They ignored Hanlon, not asking him to play with them, seemingly not caring what he did. He went outside, sought the shade of a large flowertree, and sat down with his back leaning against the bole. He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate, and strengthened his mental control of the cavals ridden by Elus Amir and Endar, in which he had put a smallish portion of his mind when they started out. He knew that so far no untoward incident had occurred--the Ruler was riding along that country road, wrapped in thought, not talking, not meeting anyone, paying no attention to the groom following him. Hanlon had not expected anything would occur, but wanted to know if it did, and especially wanting to be sure he could perfectly control the Ruler's caval at all times, no matter what the distance. Early the next morning a houseman approached the stables. "K'nyer Amir says to get his son's caval ready, for he rides with him today." Endar indicated a certain animal to Hanlon. "Bring that one out and get it saddled. The young man's gear is the second set on the right of the door in the tack room." Hanlon hurriedly led the caval out, snapped its halter ring in a nearby post, then ran to get the blanket, saddle and bridle. "Those back legs aren't smooth," the head groom snapped. "Curry and brush them again. Inver is particular." "Yes, nyer, thank you," Hanlon made haste to obey, and was careful in his work. When the beasts were ready, the groom took the reins in his hands, and led them to the mounting block. Hanlon implanted parts of his mind in each of the two cavals. Thus he was ready for his spying when the two men came out of the residence. Through the eyes, wide set in the only-slightly elongated, broad heads of the steeds, Hanlon studied this important new character, of whom he had heard much. He saw a tallish, very intelligent-looking native, guessed him to be in his middle or late twenties. The fellow had a slight though wiry build, and reddish-blond hair and trimmed beard. Hanlon liked this Inver on sight, and decided instantly that what he had heard was somehow wrong. The Ruler's son certainly did not look half-crazy. He pondered the matter. Was that impression being sowed about the planet deliberately? Was someone trying to tear down any reputation or influence the young man might have? "This," his eyes gleamed, "is going to be good. I'm sure going to watch and listen carefully today." Hanlon crowded into the brains of the two cavals all of his mind they could hold, finding that the animals had enough capacity to take a full half of his own mind. He had barely enough left in his body to keep on with his work which, luckily, did not require much mental effort. He still had more left than the other stablemen possessed. The riders had barely left the palace grounds when Hanlon, through the caval's ears, heard the young man speak. "I hope, father, that you have thought about the subject I broached to you the other day, and the reasons I suggested for your further study. I pray you have decided that our world will do well to join the Federation of Planets, as we have been invited to do." Hanlon could tell, by the tone, that the Ruler's mind and voice were troubled. "Son, I don't know what to decide. There are so many things to think about. There are many good reasons why we should, it is true. There are also many equally good reasons why we should not. I am, as you know, very jealous of Estrella's independence. I should hate to see it made subservient to any other power." "But, father," Inver said earnestly, "we would not be. I have studied very carefully the proposition made us by the Federation Council, and the copy of their constitution they sent with it. They guarantee each planet complete autonomy, and state very plainly that the Council is only a judicial body set up to negotiate intra-planetary treaties and to see that the various worlds remain in harmony with each other. The advantages...." "But it's all a trick of those Terrans to get control of the entire galaxy," his father broke in. "That's not only nonsense, father, but a deliberate lie. I'm sure you know who is fostering it, and I think you can guess the reason." "I presume you're still talking about the Second-In-Line. But Irad isn't like that, at all. He has a good mind, and he has presented some excellent reasons and arguments as to why we should not join the Federation." "Sure, he would. He wants to keep Estrella free, so that when he takes over he can pluck it like a...." "That's a strong indictment, son. I hope it is not jealousy because he won out over you in the tests." "It is not jealousy, and while I haven't the proof yet, k'nyer, I do know it's true," the young man said hotly. "You can be sure that when I do get the truth I shall call for Irad's impeachment. No, father, I and many friends are concerned over this matter, and are satisfied we are correct." Hanlon could guess at the troubled eyes of the older man, and that he was shaking his head sadly. "I hate to think that of Adwal Irad," he said. "He has always seemed so interested in helping me to build up Estrella's economy and is constantly bringing new ideas for her betterment. He seems to be making every effort to become worthy of his post when he succeeds me." "I know," sadly. "He wasn't like this until recently. But he has changed someway, father. Now he is power mad. Also, he is trying to make me out as a fool and a brainless dara," Inver snapped. "Why ... why ... I never heard him say anything like that," there was astonishment in the elder's voice. "He always speaks well of you." "Naturally, k'nyer, he wouldn't be crass enough to say anything of that sort to you. But he and his henchmen are spreading that story all over our world." "Oh, I'm sure you must be mistaken." "I'm not," grimly. "The evidence on that is unmistakable." There was decisiveness now in the Ruler's voice. "If that's true, I'll certainly put a stop to it." "Don't, father, not at once," his son pleaded quickly. "Do not even mention it to Adwal yet, please. Nor make a public pronouncement about it. That would put him on his guard, and I and my friends need time to prove the other things I'm talking about." "I'll not have word spread that my son is a ... a weakling, or stupid," the elder's voice was angry, and Hanlon felt the jerk on the reins of his caval that told of the sudden gesture. "Just so you don't believe it, father, is all I care at the moment." Hanlon felt the two animals swerve and touch sides, and knew that Amir had drawn closer to his son, and shrewdly guessed he was touching the boy lovingly. "You need never fear that, Inver. I've always been proud of the way you've taken hold of things, ever since you were a boy." "I've tried, k'nyer, to make myself a worthy son of a great father," there was emotion in the young man's voice. "I've studied everything I thought would help me--economics, psychology, statecraft, history, and all. And especially, since the Federation first made contact with us, I've tried to learn all I could about them, their various forms of government, their history, and everything. That's why I'm so sure they mean us well, not harm." "But we're not Terrans. We're just semi-civilized beasts in their eyes." "Another of Adwal's dirty lies," Inver snapped. "If they felt that, would they have asked us to join them as a full-fledged world? No, they would have come here with a fleet of warships of space, and conquered us. They could have, easily, you know. They made no effort to hide the fact that they had such power from the ones who were taken on that inspection trip." "No, we have no spaceships, and nothing that could stop one," his father admitted. "That's one of the things that has made me hesitate to decide against them--the fact that they have them but did not use them. On the other hand, if we decide not to join, how do we know they won't send their fleet here and...." "Because they aren't that kind of people. Why, sire, in their history I learned that when the Terrans first started exploring space, one of their great men, named John Snyder, who seems to have had quite a lot of power at the time, promulgated a ruling that says, 'Man must never colonize any planet having inhabitants intelligent enough to show cultural activity and growth'. And that concept has never been broken, and is still in force." "Why, I never heard that." "I told you, k'nyer, I have been studying them diligently, and so know much about them." For the balance of their ride that morning, the two continued their discussion, and Hanlon--working through the ears of the two cavals--listened closely, and learned much. The two were almost back to the residence when Inver's caval stepped into a hole, and stumbled badly. It wrenched its leg so it could barely stand on it. Inver immediately dismounted and examined the leg as best he could. "It looks bad, father," he said after a minute or so. "I'll walk the rest of the way, and lead it slowly. It's not too far from here, so you go ahead if you wish." "Well," slowly, "all right. I'll have the doctor meet you at the stables, and see if the beast can be healed. If not, it should be destroyed to save it pain." "Yes, I know that would be best, although I dislike to think of it, for this is my favorite." The Ruler cantered on, and the young man followed slowly, letting the caval hobble along at its own gait. When Inver finally reached the stables, he talked with the head groom, Endar, and with the animal physician, who arrived shortly afterwards. "I'm not sure," was the doctor's statement after much studying. "I'll try to save it, but I don't know if such an injury will heal or not. The ligament seems to have been torn loose, and being inside the leg it is hard to get at it with medicine. See how badly it has swollen already." The caval was put into its stall, and after treating it as best he could with the limited knowledge and techniques known, the doctor left. Hanlon knew about the accident, of course, and had been keeping the caval from feeling too much of the pain. He made it a point to be standing near while the animal was being examined and treated, and was surprised at how little the doctor could do. The Estrellan veterinarian did not even apply hot or cold compresses, nor bandage the swollen leg in any way. Also, apparently, he did not know about hypodermics for injecting medicine into the injured parts. Later in the afternoon, after their work was done and he had some free time, Hanlon thought more concisely about the matter. If he could help any, he would make a friend of Inver, he felt sure. More than ever he liked the young fellow, whom he decided was a real man in every respect. But he must be careful not to give himself away--not to display knowledge Estrellans did not know. Suddenly he recalled the shooting of the fish, and what he had been able to do there. "I wonder if I can help this healing in any way, with my mind?" he pondered. The other grooms, including Endar, had left the stables for the bunkhouse, so Hanlon was there alone. He sat down near the injured caval's stall, insinuated his mind into that of the animal, and began studying its brain, nerves and muscles. After considerable intensive study he found the way to make its muscles relax--he had already long since established a nerve block so that the caval felt no pain. Now he learned to make those muscles and nerves contract or relax, even to the point of almost causing a temporary paralysis. Deeper and ever deeper he probed into its physical structure. Especially now, he tried to trace the nervous system connecting with its various glands, looking for confirmation or refutation of a startling concept he had glimpsed. After much study and experimentation by the trial and error method, he was beginning to find it possible to partially control the increase or decrease of flow of the secretions of its glands--but far from perfectly. For it was an intricate and involved method, necessitating as it did the locating of the nerves that led to and controlled those glands, and then learning how to activate or inhibit them--nor could he be sure it was not chance only the few times he made them operate as he wished. Yet he watched carefully to see the results of the activations of each gland, and finally believed he had found the one that was the master gland in charge of the body's healing functions. He now worked on this, trying to direct the added secretions through the blood stream and into the caval's injured parts. Soon, even though his forcings were spasmodic and infrequent, he could begin to perceive that this was actually the way it should be done--the wounded ligaments and flesh and muscles showed signs of starting to heal a bit faster than nature was doing it. His deep concentration was rudely broken by a heavy hand on his shoulder, and an angry voice saying, "What d'you think you're doing here?" Looking up, he saw that it was Endar. Hanlon recalled the portion of his mind from that of the caval. "Oh," he scrambled to his feet and fixed his face in a look of deep concern. "I was just studying Inver's poor caval, and trying to figure out a way to help cure its leg." The head groom sneered. "I suppose you think you know more about it than I do, or the doctor." Hanlon was certain he knew far more than the groom, and probably things the doctor had never even guessed. But he kept his voice humble and almost servile. "I didn't say or mean that, nyer. But I have had some experience with animals, as I told you and the Ruler, and I've helped cure many injured ones. Since it was my off time, I didn't think I was overstepping my place to see what I could do." "You been handling it?" Endar asked sharply. "Oh, no, nyer, I was just sitting here thinking about it, and trying to remember all I had learned or heard about how such injuries have been healed. Then I was going to come and suggest them to you." "Well, it's none of your business, so get out and leave it alone," was the surly command ... and Hanlon left. But that night, after he was sure the others were all sound asleep, he sent his mind back to the stables and into the brain of Inver's injured mount. * * * * * _In its spaceship the strange being was feeling a depth of frustration almost unknown to one of its cold, logical race. Its "interrogation" of the prisoners had yielded surprising but already-deduced information. In its rational yet impersonal way the being was somewhat regretful for the death of the one entity. Not because of the death itself, but because there was no logical reason why the entity should be dead, and therefore unable to yield further data._ _The one still remaining imprisoned had given up much additional knowledge of a kind that had shocked the being, for it told of conditions never before considered as obtaining in the galaxy. Yet the being did not see how that information could help in this present project--it was, in fact, decidedly inimical to that project's success._ _As for the one that had been allowed to "escape," that one had led to the unreadable mind as hoped. Although still kept controlled and UNsane, the being was allowing that one to remain in what it considered a safe hiding place, rather than continually on the run._ _But even though the being had now been following that enigmatic entity's body, through its powerful, multiphased scanners, it still could not make any sort of contact with that mind. Thus it did not yet know whether or not that mind was like the other three, or the two that came occasionally and briefly in their ship of space. Under its easily-penetrated disguise, the entity appeared to be like the others, but that could or could not mean anything worth knowing._ _It was all very puzzling, and the alien being came as near feeling anger as was possible to one of its phlegmatic nature. But it coldly resolved that that one must, also, die ... and soon._ CHAPTER 16 Darkness Made No Difference To George Hanlon in dealing with animal minds, for it was not with his eyes that he "saw" what was inside them. In this particular instance he was grateful for the dark--it made concentration far easier. He made himself comfortable on his bed, then fitted his mind to that of the wounded animal in the stable. Deeper and ever deeper he probed, tracing line and connectors and synapses carefully. A stray thought brought a grin to his face. "I bet I'm learning things no veterinarian ever learned about animals." Then he sobered quickly. "Perhaps I should write this up for them--the physiology and endocrinology of it, I mean." He filed the thought away in his mind for future reference. It would be a great contribution to those branches of science, he felt--IF he was successful. Now he traced nerves, blood vessels, cells, glands. He bored in with every newly-awakened sense alert to catch each particle of new knowledge. He began to learn even more of how the healing and regeneration of cells and tissues worked ... and after awhile he achieved real beginnings of success. The things he had been able to do that afternoon, with his first studies, had started the healing of the caval's leg somewhat faster than nature ordinarily did it, but not much more. Now, however, he was able more surely and quickly to continue that work, and by the time he noticed the false dawn lightening the night a bit, and he knew he must get some sleep, the injury was almost entirely healed. "What a surprise Endar's going to get when he looks at that leg in the morning," he chuckled. For the swelling was reduced, the inflammation all gone, and the caval was able to stand and walk on the foot without limping or apparent pain. In fact, from his ability to read the beast's mind, Hanlon knew the pain was all gone. If nothing happened to irritate it, the leg would be as good as new in a day or so without further attention. Hanlon was sleeping so soundly the next morning that Endar had trouble waking him, and that did not help in dispelling the anger and distrust in him the head groom knew. Hanlon tried to work hard enough, and was careful to appear willing and ready even for the mean, dirty jobs Endar assigned him, so as not to make the groom any more irritated than he already was. Shortly after daylight Inver came to the stables to see how his favorite caval was getting along. He and Endar were very much surprised to see that the animal was apparently entirely well, and that the leg showed no signs of the injury of the day before. "I can't understand it," the young man shook his head. "It must not have been as badly hurt as we thought." Endar may have had his doubts--and Hanlon saw him throw a quick, wondering glance in his direction--but the groom wisely said nothing, since he had no proof ... and such a thought was ridiculous, anyway. When it came time for the Ruler's morning ride, Hanlon was still working inside. But Elus Amir asked to see the new man, and Endar had to call him out. "Ah, my savior," Amir said as Hanlon appeared. "Are they treating you well, Lona?" Hanlon bent the knee. "Oh, yes, k'nyer. I have everything to make me happy here, and I love the work. And Endar has been most kind about showing me around, and helping me learn all my duties here so I may serve you better." "Good. I'd like to have you ride with me this morning," the Ruler said as he mounted. Hanlon glanced at Endar. He could see that the head groom was not pleased by this, though he said nothing, merely handing the reins of the second mount to Hanlon, then turning away. Hanlon was quickly astride, and the two riders started off at a brisk canter. As soon as they were well away from the residence, Amir slowed down and motioned Hanlon to come to his side. "Now, tell me all about the Eastern Continent--what conditions are like there, and what the people are saying about things in general." Hanlon dredged his mind for any and all information he could remember from his studies of the reels of Estrella furnished him by the secret service, as well as what he had learned from others since he came to this planet. For nearly a penta-period he told what he knew, then said, "One thing is quite noticeable there, k'nyer. The ordinary people I talked to over there--of course, I don't know any of the important ones--all seem very anxious for our world to join the Terran Federation of Planets." "They are?" the Ruler seemed surprised, but interested. "I thought there was quite a bit of sentiment against it." Hanlon shrugged as though it was of no importance. "Oh, you hear a lot of talk going around that we would lose our freedom, and that the people of the Federation just want to enslave us, but no one I talked to seemed really to believe it. They think someone there is putting out a lot of propaganda because of some personal reasons. The ordinary people think they would benefit greatly by such a union with more advanced people. One of our newssheets printed a copy of the Federation Agreement, and it states very clearly that all worlds are to have full right to choose their own form of government, and that they keep their full ... their full...." "Sovereignty," the Ruler supplied the missing word. "Thank you, k'nyer ... their full sovereignty at all times. It also went on to say that all the other worlds do just as they please, and that the only purpose of the Federation is to encourage trade and the spread of knowledge among the various planets in an equitable way, and yet see to it that they never get into war with each other, by settling all possible disputes before they get to the explosive point." Elus Amir was silent for long minutes, thinking seriously, and Hanlon followed those thoughts as they chased themselves across the screen of the Ruler's mind. Finally Amir raised his head. "Er ... yes, yes, that's all true enough, Lona. But if it is so, why is there such a seemingly-determined effort to persuade me and the people here that it is not true?" "May I speak my thoughts, k'nyer?" "Eh? Why, of course," Amir looked up in surprise. "That's why I wanted you to come along today." "Well, sire, it looks to me--and please remember that I'm just a simple countryman, and not used to politics or statesmanship--but it looks to me as though someone wanted to keep us by ourselves so they could run this world the way they want to, and be able to make themselves rich or powerful at the expense of our common people." "But that's impossible as long as our government is on its guard." "Exactly, k'nyer. It could not be done as long as you are Ruler, but suppose you...." Elus Amir's head snapped up irritably at this unfinished warning. "The Second-In-Line is just as jealous of Estrella's welfare as I am," he snapped. "It would not happen under him either." But Hanlon, reading the Ruler's surface thoughts, knew he must keep quiet for the moment. For Amir was disturbed by hearing this idea from a simple groom. He did not want to give it credence, but doubt had been forced into his mind, first by his son, and now by this man. But before he could formulate any decisive answer, Hanlon decided boldly to jolt him again. "I have a friend, k'nyer," he reached into his inner pocket and brought out some papers, "who has been actively studying this matter for some time. He has found out a number of things I am sure will interest you, and about which I doubt very much you know." The Ruler looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?" "You know that there has been an unprecedented crime wave all over our planet recently," Hanlon said, and Amir nodded sorrowfully. "My friend has found proof that, while a lot of people have been engaged in those criminal activities, there is a complete program that is being carefully carried on by a staff of head men, each with his own group of lower criminals, but all headed by one...." "By the Terrans--it is well known here." "No, k'nyer, not by the Terrans. The real leader of this campaign of destruction is the same man who is the leader of the opposition to Estrella's joining the Federation." "And that man?" the Ruler snapped, but his face was drawn, as though he already knew ... but would not let himself believe. "That leader, k'nyer, is Adwal Irad." "Prove it, or by Zappa I'll have you executed," Amir's voice crackled. "Have a care, Lona, and don't try my patience. I don't allow myself to be talked to in that manner." "I crave pardon, sire, if I have spoken out of line. But you asked me for my reactions and knowledge, and I must be truthful." "Whatever gave you such foolish notions? And who are you, anyway? A countryman such as you claim to be would not know about such things ... or use such precise language." "You might be surprised, k'nyer, if you knew how many of your humbler subjects are vastly interested in the welfare of our world, and who read and think much about these things, even though they know they cannot fully understand them. As to how I got such ideas, the answer is, many things. And facts collected by my friend. Including this little book," handing him Esbor's notebook, "which was found in ... well, in a certain place. It contains a lot of information we were sure you would want to study, which is the reason he asked me to give it to you if I got the chance." The Ruler took the book, opened and glanced through it. Hanlon could see the start of surprise he made, and read the thoughts that flashed through the Ruler's mind as he saw some of the notations. During the remainder of the ride, now at a slow walk, there was complete silence, until they were nearing the residence's courtyard. Then Amir looked at Hanlon, a shrewd look on his face. "You're a curious fellow, Lona. Who are you, really?" "One of the many who have the interests of yourself and this world very much at heart," Hanlon said honestly. "Please do not ask me more, but believe that we are honest and sincere. Your son has many friends ..." he stopped, letting it go at that, knowing the Ruler's memory would flash back to the talk with Inver the day before, and hoping Amir would not pursue his questioning. Elus Amir began studying Hanlon closely, an examination the young man knew might quickly disclose his imposture. He made his caval suddenly shy away, and took several moments controlling it enough so he could ride back to the Ruler's side--but stayed a bit further behind than he had been before. As he had hoped, this maneuver had given Amir time to think. "Very well," the Ruler said, "I'll not inquire too closely at the moment, although you may be sure," more sternly now, "that I shall be on my guard to know if you are really working for me or not." He was silent a moment, then added slowly, "But as to what you have said, and this book ... well, I promise to study them thoroughly." Hanlon thanked Elus Amir for his courtesy to a humble groom. "And thank you for the great privilege of riding with you, and talking to you. I have always felt, k'nyer," he made bold to add, "that we have a truly great Ruler. Now," he smiled sincerely, "I am more sure of it than ever." "Why, thank you, Lona. I do try to watch out for the best interests of our people." "A groom should not presume to advise his Ruler, but I feel emboldened to say that your people would be glad if you decide to join the Terran Federation," Hanlon said humbly, then added more earnestly, "and I beg you, sire, watch out for yourself. There are human tamous abroad." The Ruler looked startled, but said nothing to this, although he became very thoughtful as he left. Hanlon, except for one point, was well content with his morning's work, as he led the cavals back to the stable. For Hanlon had so much wanted to tell Amir how he could know for a certainty who among his attendants and guards was really trustworthy, but did not dare mention it at this time. It would have been fairly easy for Hanlon to be inconspicuously present--perhaps hidden by a screen--while the Ruler called his guards and servants in one by one and questioned them. For Hanlon could then have read their minds or surface thoughts, and undoubtedly have been able to tell which ones, if any, were lying. But to have even mentioned such a thing would have been to reveal too much that he was not yet ready to have known. "I'll have to hang around the guards as much as possible, and study their minds for any traitorous thoughts," he decided. "Especially, I want to know if any of them are Irad's tools." Endar was surly when Hanlon brought the mounts into the stable, although he did nothing overt as the young man carefully rubbed down the cavals, and returned them to their stalls. But Endar did come up then and ask, "What did Amir have to talk to you about?" "We did very little talking," Hanlon answered with apparent truthfulness. "He asked me a few questions about Lura and the Eastern Continent, but I told him I was just a farm worker and didn't know much about general conditions. That seemed to disappoint him, and he said nothing more." "But I saw him talking to you as he dismounted, and you were answering him." "Yes, he was kind enough to say he enjoyed the ride, and that the cavals were in fine condition. I told him that was largely due to you, that you were careful to see that they were well cared for, and that we kept the stables clean." "That reminds me, how did it happen that Inver's caval was all healed this morning?" the man's eyes bored suspiciously into Hanlon's. "Why, I don't know," he answered evasively, his face bland. "I suppose it was the medicine and treatment the doctor gave it. He must really be good--but then, he wouldn't be the Ruler's animal physician if he wasn't, would he?" "_Hmmpff_," Endar swung away, but his attitude and surface thoughts told Hanlon that he was only partially satisfied. He had no real idea, of course, of what had happened. Such a thing was just beyond his simple comprehension. * * * * * George Hanlon could not know it, of course, but as soon as the Ruler had returned to his rooms, he settled himself comfortably in his favorite chair, and gave orders that he was not to be disturbed. Then he set his mind to considering every aspect of this curious business, and to studying more thoroughly the papers and that notebook of Esbor's, with its disquieting notations. Finally he called in the man who was not only a sort of confidential secretary, but a life-long friend and confidant whom he trusted implicitly. He gave this man definite orders as to certain investigations to be made at once. During the balance of the day, while this man was gone, Amir's mind was a turmoil of doubt. And worry--for Hanlon's final suggestion that the Ruler's life was in great danger, made him pause to think. Of course, Rulers were always fair targets for assassins, even on this world where such things were very rare, indeed. But ... Lona had hinted that this was no ordinary assassination he was to watch out for, but a part of the so-called "plot" of a group who were out to keep Estrella from joining the Terran-led Federation. And if the groom was right, then how safe was Amir? Even in his own residence ... was his personal guard loyal? Or had the conspirators ... supposing there was such a group...? The Ruler was still reluctant to believe Irad was at the head of any such organization, or even connected with it in any way, despite the mounting evidence ... including more than one entry in Esbor's revealing notebook. Had these conspirators, whoever they might be, been able to infiltrate members into his hitherto highly-trusted household? Wait, come to think of it, there were several new servants and guards, come to work there within the past half year or so! Elus Amir had never heard of truth serums, or lie-detectors, for such things had not yet been discovered or invented on Estrella. Nor did he even suspect that it was possible to read a man's mind. Now the Ruler's thoughts strayed back to that enigmatic groom. Just who and what was he, anyway? He certainly was not a common, simple countryman, as he pretended to be. And the way he had met the Ruler, saved his life and obtained work here. Looking back now Amir could see that it was all too pat. Was he one of those "friends" Inver had spoken about, who were working with his son to find out the truth about whatever it was that was going on here? It was apparent he was part of a group of some kind, or else his talk of a "friend" who had obtained that damning notebook was false, and Lona himself had managed to get possession of it. Acting on a sudden impulse, Amir sent a servant to ask Inver to come to see him. When the young man arrived, the Ruler looked at him a moment. "Just one question, my son. Are some of those 'friends' you spoke to me about yesterday numbered among the residence servants or guards?" Inver looked startled, but his reply was patently honest. "Yes, father. We have been checking the others carefully, and when we find those we distrust in the least, we manage to get them discharged, and others we can trust brought in to replace them. Why?" But the Ruler did not answer that last. He merely said, "Thank you, Inver. That is all for the present." Now the young man really was astonished at this abrupt dismissal, but left without further words. Elus Amir felt better now. He had always considered himself a fairly good judge of character--although he was beginning to wonder now if all that was being told him about Irad was true, for if so, then he had made a bad mistake in judging the Second-In-Line, for he had always had full confidence in his integrity. But about this Lona? He sent a servant to bring Endar, the head groom, to see him. When the man arrived, Amir asked him many questions as to what Endar thought of the new man. He realized almost from the first that Endar was jealous of Lona's popularity with the Ruler, but Endar produced no actual facts against the new stableman, and grudgingly had to admit that he was a good and willing worker. Yes, Amir now decided, whatever else this Lona might be, he was a true patriot, trying to serve the best interests of his country and his Ruler in every way he could. There was a straight-forwardness about him that Amir liked, and evidently Inver also had confidence in him. Yet there was a tantalizing _something_ about Lona's looks that had the Ruler a bit puzzled, although it was more subconsciously than consciously. For the time being, he decided, he would allow Lona to remain here. It would be easier to keep watch on him here than if he let him go and the groom should disappear entirely. Also, Amir determined to have further talks with this strange man ... and with Inver, about the latter's "group of friends." * * * * * Finally, some time after dinner that evening, the Ruler's secretary came back to report. "I have examined the news records, k'nyer, and the first mention I can find of anything like propaganda against our world's accepting the invitation of the Federation Council was printed in the Stearran papers about a week after the group returned from that trip made to visit the Terran planets." "Hmmm, not until then, eh ... but that seems to tally with some other things I've heard. Still, it is curious. Another point is still bothering me, and I'd like your thoughts on it. The Terrans evidently discovered us long before we knew it, and studied us even to the extent of learning our language, while still keeping us in ignorance of their existence. It was this apparent stealth that has led many of us to wonder if they are sincere, or if there is some underlying motive of conquest behind them. What do you think?" "As you know, k'nyer," the secretary reached up to tug at his beard while thinking and replying, "I was permitted to be present at the meetings you had with the Federation representatives, and I was very much impressed with them. I have also talked much with those who went on the trip to the Terran planets. I cannot conceive the possibility that these Federationists are practicing duplicity. Besides, let us consider our own actions in such a case. Suppose we had space travel, and found a new world inhabited with intelligent beings. Would we not, if possible, study them thoroughly before trying to make contact with them?" Elus Amir shrugged, and his answer was to the first part of his friend's speech. "That might depend upon how well they were able to conceal their true feelings--upon how good actors they were." "Perhaps, but...." "Never mind that for now. What about the rumors concerning my son, Inver?" "Those were much harder to check, but in my own mind there is no recollection of ever having heard of any such thing until the past year. However, I have heard reports of it since, and it seems to be spreading rapidly all over." "And you never reported this to me?" The secretary hung his head. "I did not believe it, sire, and I didn't like to worry...." "It's all right. So it was just about a year ago that the opposition to our joining the Federation appeared, and also these rumors." "Why ... why, yes, sire. Do you connect the two?" Amir did not answer that last question. He sat very quietly as to body, but with mind active and ill at ease. After a bit he raised his eyes and asked suddenly, "Just what is your personal opinion of Adwal Irad. Speak freely--I want the truth." The secretary's eyes clouded, but he did not hesitate. "I have noticed a great change in the Second-In-Line, growing more pronounced recently. As though something were preying on his mind. His actions have become ... well, 'shifty' is the nearest word I can think of to describe it. I no longer trust him unreservedly, I am sorry to say." "Hmmm," Amir thought about that for some time. "I have had the same thing told me by others these past few days," he said at last. "I wish I knew...." "May I suggest, k'nyer, that you invite him to ride with you tomorrow, and study him; ask him leading questions, and so on?" "That might not be a bad idea. I'll do it. Send him an invitation in my name, please." * * * * * _After the note had been received, and while Irad was changing his plans so as to accept this command, he suddenly seemed to get a feeling that he must do a certain thing. The Second-In-Line recoiled in horror. He did not want to comply--did not even want to think such a thought. This was far worse than the other things he had been forced to do in the past months. But something ... he could not imagine what, nor why ... was forcing him to do this, as it had the others._ _Reluctantly, fighting with all his will not to do what he somehow had to do, he sent word to several of his men and, when they arrived at his home, gave them explicit instructions. They seemed surprised, and reluctant, but he insisted and, somewhat to their surprise, the plan soon seemed like a good one._ CHAPTER 17 The next morning Hanlon was told to take two cavals out to the mounting block, for Adwal Irad was to ride with the Ruler that day. As the two men came out of the residence and Hanlon got his first good look at the Second-In-Line for some time, he was thunderstruck at the man's appearance--it was so changed from when he had seen him the other times. Irad's face was drawn and the red of his skin was an unhealthy hue. Deep lines were beginning to show in his face, the eyes were so dim and lack-lustre, the mouth so drawn, that Hanlon wondered if Irad was ill, or had been these past few days. For the one who had passed highest in all his tests from among those eligible in his generation as to knowledge and fitness for the position of Second-In-Line, and successor to the Rulership, such a breakdown seemed incredible. Hanlon invaded Irad's mind to see if he could learn why all this was. But at first touch there seemed something wrong with it ... as though there was a block or barrier there in that mind unlike any he had ever before found. It seemed even worse than it had been before when he had tested that mind--and he wondered anew what it could possibly be. He could still read Irad's surface thoughts, but the "feel" of the man's mind was different and disturbing. Hanlon's mind-scanning, however, was just in time to catch the partial thought, "... this the fellow? He'll bear watching." It was not much to go on, but Hanlon instantly became more alert. "What in Snyder's name does that mean?" he asked himself. "Wish I had some way of watching this bozo when he isn't around me." But he did not know of any way it could be done, for he could not very well leave the palace grounds while he was working here as a groom, to spy in person upon Irad's coming and goings, and he knew of no animal or bird kept in the home of the Second-In-Line. "Wonder what became of Ebony?" Hanlon thought parenthetically. "Hope he found a way to get out of Yandor's house, and that he has a new, good home." And this brought up the sternly-repressed memory of his father. Oh, how he wanted to drop everything and go hunt for his dad. But he had already thought the matter through, and knew his duty kept him at his work--work that was far more important than one man's liberty. Yes, his mind knew that, but his heart did not. But Hanlon could and did keep in touch with the two men through the minds of their cavals as they rode that morning, even as he returned to his work in the stables. And it was well he did so. For hardly were they outside the gates when Irad began again to argue against Estrella's joining the Federation. But today his so-called evidence met stiffer opposition than formerly. For the Ruler had been thinking more seriously than before, and was studying what Irad said with that in mind. The things Hanlon--as Lona, the groom--had said had been disturbing. At first Amir had been tempted to dismiss them as ridiculous, even though they more or less echoed what his own son, Inver, had told him. But that damning notebook and its entries was something the Ruler could not dismiss, nor the reports and comments of his life-long friend and respected secretary. He was still undecided--but he was no longer to be duped by sincere-seeming words. Now, as the two men rode along, Amir was remembering those things and judging each statement Irad made with what he had heard. And SSM George Hanlon, "listening in" via the minds and senses of the two cavals he was controlling, shivered a bit in the distant stables. He felt a premonition ... but could not deduce what, nor how, nor even if. But he determined to keep closer watch than ever, and so tightened his control of the two steeds cantering along that dusty road several miles away. As he had found he was able to do, the portions of his mind in each of the animals was, in a large sense, complete and able to act of and by itself. Yet both portions were connected with each other, and with the balance of his mind in his own brain, by a thin thread of consciousness. He had never quite gotten used to the sensation of apparently being in several places at the same time--of being several distinct individualities. He still remembered the thrill he had known when it was first demonstrated, and the times it had saved him. Yet it was a weird feeling, even though he had found how wonderfully it could and did help him in the important work assigned him by the secret service high command. Only a few minutes later, however, he was glad he had the power. The Ruler and Irad were passing a small wood, when suddenly several other cavalmen came racing from it, and surrounded them. Two of the new men--all of whom were masked--caught the bridles of the two animals from the residence, and halted them abruptly. "What is the meaning of this?" Elus Amir cried imperiously, apparently more angry than frightened. But Hanlon, so far distant he could not possibly get to the place personally, in time to be of any help, was worried and scared. This attack had all the earmarks of assassination and, knowing what he knew, he was sure it was intended as such. He must do something, but quick. Dropping his pitchfork, he raced into the tackroom where he knew there was a cot. Throwing his body down on this, he sent all the remainder of his mind out to contact and control the cavals of the newcomers--working outward from the two he was already controlling that were at the scene. He did not have mind enough to fully take over all of them at once, for cavals had potentially much mind-power, and four or five could absorb all his. However, by temporarily dropping control of Amir's animal, he was able to take over enough regulation to overcome the commands of the riders. He made the horses of four of the assassins, those holding flameguns, rear back and begin fighting their riders. They pitched and bucked and shortly started dashing off on a wild runaway gallop across the meadow, in different directions. He impressed on each caval's mind as well as he could that it must keep on running, no matter what was done to stop it. Then he wrenched control from their minds and sent it into the other four animals. He found he was just in time. One of the men, who had been holding Amir's caval--Hanlon could see through its eyes--was drawing his flamegun. Hanlon made this caval rear suddenly, pitching the man off onto the road. The animal swivelled about while in the air and landed its heavy feet on the prone body. It kicked and pawed the helpless gangster until there was nothing left but a battered and bloody mass. The remaining attacker's caval was, meanwhile, racing off across the meadow in much the same runaway fashion as the ones that had preceded it. When it was well away, Hanlon withdrew control. Meanwhile, he had been watching carefully through the eyes and ears of the two steeds that bore the Ruler and the Second-In-Line, what they were doing and saying. Through Irad's mount he could see the look of surprise and fright that had come upon the Ruler's face. Fright, Hanlon rightly guessed, at Amir's near approach to death, surprise that the attack had been made at all, and especially at the unbelievable manner of his deliverance. "What could possibly have made all those cavals start running away just at the crucial moment?" he asked Irad, whom he did not yet suspect. "And even more amazing, the way that one threw and then so savagely killed its rider, yet is now standing quietly there, munching grass at the roadside?" But both Amir, and Hanlon--who saw it through the Ruler's caval's eyes--saw the look of hatred and rage that came onto the face of the Second-In-Line, giving it almost the appearance of a completely different person. Amir was so shocked by it that for a moment he could not speak--could only stare in open-mouthed amazement. Hanlon too was startled, momentarily failing to watch the actions of Irad. And in that instant the conspirator tried to act. From a hidden pocket in his clothing he drew a flamer, and aimed it at the Ruler. "Maybe this will spoil my plans," he snarled, "but by Zappa, you die anyway." But even as he was speaking, and while he was pressing the stud in the gun's handle, Hanlon snapped himself into awareness, and made Irad's mount rear back and wheel on its hind legs, while at the same time he forced the Ruler's caval to dodge to one side. But he was not quick enough. There was a flash of flame, a stench of burning cloth and flesh, and a hastily-suppressed groan, all clearly apparent through the cavals' senses, that told the distant Hanlon that Amir had been hit. He felt the Ruler reel in his saddle, and hoped the blast was not fatal. But he had no time then save for an incidental inspection, despite the abilities of his divided mind. For he was intent on trying to make Irad's caval unseat its rider, so that he might have the beast trample the conspirator. Even so he could feel Amir--through the senses of the steed the Ruler was riding--clutch the pommel with both hands to hold himself on his mount's back. But Adwal Irad was an excellent cavalman. He managed to keep his seat, but was too busy with this either to look to see if his shot had killed his Ruler, or to fire another. In a moment he had to drop the gun, anyway, in order to use both hands in trying to quiet the raging animal beneath him. For the caval was rearing, bucking, sun-fishing--every unusual maneuver Hanlon's agile mind was able to make it perform. It did things no caval, and no Estrellan, had ever heard of before. Through its mind Hanlon could feel the cruel whipping Irad was giving it, and this made both Hanlon and the beast--never more than half-tame at best--viciously angry and more determined than ever to get rid of the burden. Realizing at last that he could not unseat so skillful a rider, Hanlon changed his tactics. He made the caval start off on a dead run--but into the woods, not across the meadow as the others had done. "Maybe it will run under a low branch and knock Irad off his back," he hoped. But he was worried about Amir, and turned most of his mind back to seeing how the Ruler was faring. He knew the man was still astride, and with part of his mind he could read pain, but knew Amir was not fatally injured. Hanlon made his mount turn back toward the residence, and at its gentlest speed hasten back until he saw the servants come running out to take care of their master. Knowing the Ruler was now in safe hands, Hanlon was free to think of his own situation. He opened his eyes ... and stared with growing astonishment at totally unfamiliar surroundings. Jerkily he sat up on the bunk on which his body was now lying. His eyes roved about the small, stone-walled room, trying to figure out where he was ... and why. He had gone into the familiar tackroom of the stables, he knew, to lie down on the cot there while he sent all of his mind out of his body to contact and control the cavals of the would-be assassins. He guessed he had been "gone" for about half an hour. What had happened in the meantime? He got up and went across the small room to a heavy wooden door, which he found to be locked. He had to stand on tiptoes to look through the small, barred window in it. But his only view was of a narrow corridor, on the other side of which was another' stone wall containing, in the limited portions he could see to either side, three doors similar to the one behind which he was confined. "Looks like I'm in the _juzgado_," he grimaced. "Wonder why, and how?" He called out, in hopes someone would come and explain. But repeated calls brought no one, nor any response from the other cells. "Must be no one else here," he thought, and went back to lie down on the bunk. There he used his special talents, sending his mind outside and hunting for some bird or animal through whose eyes he could try to discover where he was. He finally contacted a bird, and soon discovered he was in a small stone building at one of the farther corners of the residential grounds. There did not seem to be any guards hanging about the outside. Hanlon made the bird fly up and hover near one of the windows, and peer inside. No one there, either, nor any to be seen through either of the other windows that opened to the outer wall. He sent the bird higher until he could see the entire palace grounds and thus orient himself. Then he flew it to the stables. Endar was talking to two other grooms, and seemed in high spirits. As the bird found a perch close to the little group he heard Endar saying, "... drunk, so I had the guards arrest him." "Never knew he drank," one of the stablemen said. "I was surprised, myself, but he was dead to the world, and I couldn't rouse him." But Hanlon could detect, in the man's voice and attitude, that Endar felt he had achieved his revenge for all the fancied wrongs Hanlon (as Lona) had done or contemplated doing to him. Satisfied for the time being, although not too happy at the situation in which he found himself, Hanlon withdrew his mind from the bird, and twisted his body into a more comfortable position on the bunk. There was so much he had to think about, and now that he was undisturbed was a splendid time. He felt confident that the Ruler, Elus Amir, knew the truth about Adwal Irad and the conspiracy, and would no longer hesitate about joining the Federation. "He might, though, at that," Hanlon thought seriously. "Especially if he happens to get it into his noggin that we Terrans were back of all that has happened. It's a dirty shame he doesn't understand us better--or that we don't know their ways of thinking better. But then, that's the cause of half the troubles between individuals, nations, races and worlds--they simply don't understand the basic motivations of the other fellow. But about Amir--I wonder if now isn't the time to prod him a bit? If--or as soon as--I get out of here, I'll try someway to get in touch with the Federation, and suggest we have the ambassadors come back and talk to him again. He ought to be ripe now." It was only after some time that he remembered to wonder if Irad had been hurt or killed by his runaway caval. "I should have stayed in its mind until I knew if he got home or what." Hanlon again sought out a bird, and when he was in control of its mind, sent it winging across the roofs and the country-side to the home of the Second-In-Line. When it got there, nothing could be seen to indicate that anyone was at home, nor was anyone visible when the bird peered through each of the windows. Hanlon perched the bird on a tree-limb while he thought seriously for some moments. Then he sent the bird on the Ovil Esbor's house. "Maybe I can pick up a clue there." But, as soon as the bird started looking through windows, Hanlon knew he had uncovered more than a clue. For Irad was there, talking to three or four men. Hanlon wanted very much to hear their conversation. But how? The bird hunted in vain, but could find no open door or window by which it could enter. Nor were there open chimneys as are so common on Terran worlds, for the Estrellans covered their smoke-and-fume vents with fine screens. Hanlon made the bird perch on a tree-limb and go to sleep. Then he sent that portion of his mind from its brain, seeking some small animal, rodent or insect inside the house. He finally found one of their rat-things in its hole beneath the foundation. He took over its mind, wincing as he did so at the vicious, stark ferocity there. But he made it scamper through the walls until it came to the room where the conspirators were talking. The rat had already gnawed an entrance hole through the bottom of the wall there, and Hanlon had it crouch just inside, listening. It took him only a few seconds to realize that the angry Irad must have told the others about their strange fiasco that morning, and that they were planning how they could finish the thing they had started. "I don't dare go back to the palace, myself, for some time, at least," Irad scowled blackly. "I lost my head and gave the whole thing away back there, I know. Came right out and told Amir I was going to kill him. Who'd have guessed those fool cavals would act the way they did?" "There's something mighty funny about that, Adwal," one of the men said in a puzzled tone that almost contained a hint of accusation. "One caval could quite easily have become frightened at something, or taken it into its silly head to bolt. You never can tame or train 'em completely. But you said all of your group did the same thing. That just doesn't sound right to me. What made them do it, just at the wrong time, and spoil your plans?" Hanlon could hear the Second-In-Line laugh sneeringly. "You suggesting magic of some sort, Ovil?" "I'm not suggesting anything--I'm just asking," and now the man's voice carried even more of suspicion and accusation. "It all sounds mighty strange and unbelievable to me. We'd like to know more about it." There was a dangerous sharpness in Adwal Irad's voice. "Are you questioning the truth of my report, Esbor?" "I'm not doubting you ... yet. But there's something going on here that looks peculiar, to say the least, and we want to know all about it. That assassination was planned so carefully. And all the men with you were good riders. It just doesn't seem possible that all of them should have lost control of their cavals at exactly the same time. And that business about the animal Yllo was riding--throwing him and then killing him, as you reported." Hanlon, through the rat's ears, could hear the other men muttering agreement to this. Irad sprang to his feet, his voice shrill. "You calling me a liar, Esbor?" "Not exactly, but I do think we deserve a better explanation of your failure than that silly story. We're all in this, too, and our lives are more at stake than yours, since you're Second...." "You won't have to worry about your life any more," Irad screamed, and almost too swiftly to follow he yanked out his flamegun and cindered the politician's body before any of the others could object or stop him. As the man's body--what was left of it--fell to the floor, Irad swung his gun about menacingly, covering the others, who had risen in fright. "Any of the rest of you phidis want to call me a liar?" he rasped. "No, of course not, Adwal," one of them spoke in a placating manner. "We've never doubted you." "Anybody with any sense could figure out that you really tried to kill Amir," another said. "Why, look. You're the one who started all this, and you sure wouldn't have worked so hard, or spent so much on this campaign, if you hadn't intended going through with it." "That's right. What happened was just some tough luck. And Esbor was getting ideas that were bigger than he was. So let's forget what's passed, and settle down to planning something else, and making sure it's fool-proof this time." But Hanlon, disgusted as he was at the way they truckled to Irad, afraid of their skins, touched their minds and read the wonder they felt as to what had so changed Irad this past year. He had always been ambitious and, since being designated Second-In-Line, somewhat inclined to be dictatorial and overbearing. But, their puzzled thoughts said, he had never been vicious, or displayed the killing instinct he was now showing. Too, his looks, his aging, worried them. They shook their heads with anxiety, as they began making new plans. CHAPTER 18 It was some two hours later when Hanlon, in his own body, heard steps outside, and the sound of a key in his prison door. It opened, and one of the palace guard officers stood in the doorway. "Well, you're awake," he said. "You sober now?" "I never was drunk," Hanlon snapped, sitting erect to give his thought-out alibi. "I was working there in the stables, and felt myself getting faint. I managed to stagger into the tackroom, where I knew there was a cot--and that's all I remember until I found myself here." "The head groom said you were drunk, and had us arrest you and bring you here. But you don't look like a man who had been dead drunk a few hours ago." "Come smell my breath. You'll see I wasn't. In fact, I very seldom take even a drink of mild toxo and I haven't had any of that for many periods. Mykkyl's my drink." The guard came close, sniffing, and Hanlon continued his prepared but necessary lie. "Ever since I was a boy I've been subject to these fainting spells. I'm getting so I can usually feel one coming on, and go lie down somewhere. In half an hour or so I wake up and am all right again until the next seizure. They usually come only two or three times a year." The officer scratched his head. "Can't smell no liquor. Guess you must be telling the truth. In that case, there's no sense keeping you here. You can leave if you want to." "Thanks, friend. I suppose it was a natural reaction, after seeing me unconscious." Hanlon walked out of the little residence jail, and went back to his room in the groom's quarters. There he sat down to plan what his next moves would be. "I've got to warn the Ruler some way, and make sure he is really protected," he thought. "But how can I do that? Maybe he likes me well enough to promote me to a place in his guards. Oh, if I could only talk to dad about all this. I need his help and advice. Dare I take the time to start hunting for him again? Or must I keep on working here?" His heart clamored for him to do so, but he made himself consider every angle and connotation of his situation as coldly and logically as possible, as though the admiral was just that, and not also his beloved father. He should, Hanlon supposed, warn the Ruler. On the other hand, he knew Amir was no fool, and that as a result of his near-death the past few hours, he would certainly be taking greater care of himself than ever? Incidentally, Hanlon wondered, how badly was Amir hurt? Was there anything further he (Hanlon) could do about it? He thought and thought, but could not see just how, without giving everything away. Perhaps he could get word to young Inver, to keep a more careful watch over his father. But trying that, too, would be a give-away. Was it time for that? Time for him to come out into the open and appear as a Terran and a member of its Inter-Stellar Corps? SSM George Hanlon had matured tremendously under all the experiences he had undergone since joining the secret service, but he was still only a very young man. Such problems as these were really far above him, he felt--were things he simply did not have sense enough to figure out correctly. Not enough experience; not enough brains, he told himself with what he thought was an honest evaluation. Nevertheless, he knew he was alone, that it was up to him, and that he had to make a decision one way or another. But part of that decision was not left up to him. He was interrupted in the midst of his cogitations by the sudden opening of his room's door. He looked up in annoyance--and it was Endar. "Pack your things and get out," the head groom said harshly. "I've seen the Ruler, told him about your disgraceful act of being drunk on duty, and have his permission to discharge you. He was very disappointed in you, he said." Beneath his harshness Hanlon could easily detect the man's fierce satisfaction at having thus rid himself of a potential (as he thought) competitor. From his reading of the other's mind, Hanlon knew that Endar had _not_ talked this over with the Ruler, and was doing it on his own. But the young S S man did not dare reveal his knowledge of that fact at this moment. So he made himself say plaintively, "But I wasn't drunk. I felt one of my fainting spells coming on, and ran into the tackroom to lie down while it was on me." "A trumped-up excuse, which doesn't help," Endar sneered. "Even if it was true, which I know it isn't, we don't want such people working here. So get out--and fast." He threw some money on the bed, as wages, and left. In a way Hanlon was rather glad. It did help solve some of his problems, in that it left him freer to go and come where and when he wished. So he made no further protests, but silently packed his things, pocketed the money Endar had left, and went out and got his trike and rode back to Stearra. He wondered if his old rooms had yet been taken by someone else. When he reached the building where he had been living, he parked his tricycle in the shed in the back yard, and went up to his old apartment. The padlock and hasp had been forced, and the door was closed but unlocked. He opened it and went in just the same, for there were still some of his things there. He was determined to get them, even if someone else was living here now. But the moment he got inside he sensed something changed. He stood quietly, letting his mind _sniff_ at the feeling, trying to figure out what it was. He thought he heard a slight noise in the next room, and tiptoed softly across to the door. It was, he now saw, slightly ajar, and he peered through the crack. Someone was lying on his bed--an older Estrellan male, he judged by the longer, heavier beard. Something about that face seemed familiar. * * * * * _The being in the spaceship high above the surface of this planet had been growing more and more puzzled and unsure of itself during the past several days. Its plans seemed to be going all awry--and it was not quite sure why._ _That native it had been controlling had not acted as he was supposed to act. Or rather, things had happened that had made it impossible for him to act always as directed. Even to the being the strange behavior of those four-legged beasts for riding, that had ruined its carefully prepared plan, was completely unexplainable._ _And there was still the problem of that one unreadable mind on this world. Various things the being had done or caused to be done had enabled it, through its high-powered, multiphased scanner, to SEE the entity and keep track of its various goings and comings, but all its most intense efforts had not yet been able to touch that mind._ _That this entity was working with those others who had such a different mind-texture from the usual run of Estrellans, it had long since proved to its satisfaction. The being now knew what these others were, and what they were trying to do on this planet. But who or what that unreadable entity was, what it was doing, and why--all this had so far defied the being's utmost powers._ _So it was puzzled and as nearly worried as it was possible for one of its race to be. Also, for the first time during its very long life, the being was beginning to lose a little of its supreme faith in its own abilities. It was almost beginning to wonder if it was possible for itself to fail in its mission? But that was unthinkable._ _And yet, it almost wailed mentally, that entity MUST be working toward the same ends as those others. Was it their master?_ _For nearly two Estrellan days and nights it had been considering carefully and minutely all the data so far acquired, and what its next actions should be. One thing it had early decided--there was no further use for confining or controlling those other two strange-minded creatures from that other system. It therefore released the "flee" compulsion from the one, and caused the "jailer" to open the doors and allow the other to leave its prison._ * * * * * As George Hanlon stared at that figure on the bed, he reached out mentally and touched its mind. Instantly he let out a yell of delight, flung wider the door, and ran to the bedside. "Dad, you're free!" Admiral Newton woke, saw his son, and pushed himself erect. But as he did so a grimace of pain crossed his face, and Hanlon was all solicitude. "What's the matter, dad?" "Guess I'm not in very good shape," his father managed to grin. "Been half-starved and tortured a bit. But never mind that now. I'm glad to see you. When I was freed, I figured the quickest way to find you was to come here and wait. Guessed you'd be back sometime." "Just lucky I did. Things worked out a bit differently than I expected, or I might never have come back here." He explained in short, terse sentences what he had been doing and what he thought he had accomplished so far. "So you see, dad," he concluded, "why I'm doubly glad to see you, both because it means you're free, and so you can advise me what we're to do next." "Hmmm," the admiral thought swiftly. "We've got to do something immediately, that's for sure. Of course, I have the authority to approach Amir as a Terran, in case of need. But do you know for sure," he bent a penetrating gaze on the young man, "whether or not the Ruler has decided in our favor?" "No," Hanlon said honestly. "I don't know that. But it seems as though he should have, now that he knows what Irad was trying to do, and why. If we go to him at once, and urge him properly, as well as explain why we are here and how we were trying to protect him, he should swing over our way. At least, that's what I'd about decided I ought to do." The admiral was again silent, his brow creased in a deep frown of thought. Suddenly he snapped his fingers in decision, and looked up. "We'll do it. I have uniforms hidden in one of my hide-outs here, and we'll get rid of our disguises and go see him." He climbed from the bed, and Hanlon gasped as he saw how emaciated his father was, and the marks of his torture. But the admiral dressed, then both went down and climbed aboard Hanlon's motor-trike. But when they got to Newton's room, another surprise awaited them. For Hooper was there, waiting for Newton as the admiral had waited for Hanlon. After mutual exchanges of experience, the three thankfully began removing their Estrellan disguises, worn so long and so uncomfortably. Their clothing off, they jumped beneath the pipe-shower, and as the water softened the hair and plastic, they took off their false ears and noses, and ripped the hair from their bodies. Then they shaved their beards, and more or less trimmed each other's hair to the best of their ability. "Boy, does this feel good?" Hanlon cavorted, naked, about the little room, while his father and Hooper laughed their own relief. Admiral Newton pulled a large travelling-case from beneath his low bed, unlocked the three complicated and pick-proof locks, and took out some uniforms. The others looked their astonishment, and he grinned. "Didn't know I had yours, too, did you?" Clean, shaved and dressed in their uniforms, with the symbols of their ranks on the collars and shoulder tabs, the three sat comfortably in easy chairs, discussing plans and telling more fully what each had discovered. Hanlon learned that the plot had been far more wide-spread than he realized. Almost every city on the planet had a cell working at the spreading of the propaganda against Estrella's joining the Terran Federation, and the lesser rumors about the insanity of Inver, the Ruler's son. He now learned the real reason for that whispering campaign, and wondered how he had missed it before. Inver stood Third-In-Line, and would become the Ruler after Amir if anything happened to Irad. Both Hooper and Newton, who had worked more exclusively in other cities than Stearra, knew the names of most of the native Estrellans who headed these cells, and they could be picked up and arrested when the time came. The crime wave had been quite wide-spread, also, as had the whispers that the Terrans were to blame for it. The other two were loud in their praise of Hanlon's work in uncovering the real head of the plot, and his splendid work in saving the Ruler's life when his assassination had been so carefully planned. It was noticeable that the junior S S man no longer took their praise with the cockiness he had formerly exhibited. In fact, he was actually apologetic and uncomfortable. He squirmed and blushed, and tried to minimize what he had done. George Spencer Newton Hanlon, secret serviceman of the Inter-Stellar Corps, had finally grown up. It was so late when they completed their plans that Admiral Newton decided they had best wait until morning before seeking an audience with the planetary ruler. Besides, he and Hooper both needed all the rest they could get, before embarking on any new campaign. Hanlon prepared the best meal he could from the meager supplies in the admiral's room, and they all ate, then went to bed. But deep down in his inner consciousness, a warning bell seemed to be ringing as George Hanlon lay in bed. It took him many long, anxious minutes of intense concentration before he was able to isolate the feeling from the many new items that had been talked about that evening. But he finally brought it into focus in his mind. He sat upright, disturbing his father, who was almost asleep. "What's the matter, Spence?" sleepily. "Amir," Hanlon said with agitation. "He ought not to be left unguarded like this. Those gangsters, led by Irad, are sure to make another attempt to kill him--and quickly, now that Irad has tipped his hand." "But what can we do?" Hooper was also sitting up on the blanket-pallet that had been spread for him on the floor of this small, one-bed room. "I ... don't ... know," Hanlon said slowly. "I ... I can probably watch, through a bird or something, what's going on. But if they try anything...." Newton started to climb out of bed. "I'll go notify the residence officials. Maybe we can alert his guards to be more watchful." Hanlon was still worried. "I don't know about that, either. Maybe some of them have been planted by Irad ... and if we say anything to the wrong ones it might merely hasten their plans." "That sounds reasonable," Hooper said. "Irad would certainly never overlook a chance like that." "If he could make it," Newton admitted, lying down again. "Maybe you'd better keep watch, Spence, since you know how. If you see anything starting, we'll do our darnedest to break it up." * * * * * _And in its spaceship the alien being awoke the Estrellan native it had been controlling for so long, and impressed certain commands on his mind--nor was the native able any longer to make any attempt, however feeble, to resist. Continued compulsion had at last weakened his will to the point where all suggestions and commands were instantly obeyed without question._ _He therefore rose, dressed, equipped himself with a flamegun and certain other instruments, and left the house where he had been hiding out._ CHAPTER 19 Although George Hanlon had become adept at the use of the minds of birds, animals, fish, rodents and insects even at a considerable distance, he could not project his mind to any great length to find and gain control of such a mind, unless he had already used that mind and knew its texture and characteristics, or unless another part of his mind was already at that distant point in another brain. Thus, in the present instance, he could not project his mind the many miles between his present location and the residence of the Ruler, Elus Amir, and find an animal or bird mind he could take over. He could have done it, that is, with one of the cavals he had at various times handled, but one of them could not get into the palace and the Ruler's suite. Nor could he locate any of the birds he had used out there. He did, however, project his mind into Inver's caval--the one he had helped heal--and from that vantage point tried to find a bird he could control. But none seemed to be anywhere near the stables. So, he had to start closer to where he was, and work outward. With time of the essence at the moment, a bird must be used. Just how he was to get a bird into the residence, and more or less keep it inconspicuous and unseen during his survey, was a problem that would have to be tackled when the time came. Lying on the bed in the little room, therefore, he quested about the nearby neighborhood trees until he found a swift-flying bird he could use. It took but a moment to do so, and to take full and complete control of its mind and body. Then the bird, whose brain now contained as large a portion of Hanlon's mind as he could force into it, was winging at its top speed toward the official residence of Amir, the Ruler. "The palace is in sight," Hanlon's voice was low but penetrant, after a time. "I'm looking for an open window or door." The other men watched with amazement and intense curiosity as the young man lay there on the bed, his eyes closed and his face drawn with concentration, as they could see in the dim light of the shaded lamp Hooper had risen and lighted. Both of the other S S men knew much of what Hanlon could thus do, yet watching him do it was a new experience to both, and one that filled them with deepest wonder and a sort of awe. The silence, even though of only two or three minutes duration, seemed like hours to the waiting watchers, then a jubilant "Ah!" let them know Hanlon had succeeded in the first part of his quest. "Got in through an open window in an upper story ... heck, the door's shut." Another pause, and then the voice continued, "Here's another. Hah, this one opens into a hallway. Now, which way is Amir's suite?" They waited with impatience while they knew the bird Hanlon was controlling was seeking the proper portion of the interior of that great building. It seemed long and long before the soft voice spoke again. "He must have gone to bed--the door is shut. I'll have to get outside and try again, but now that I know where it is I'll see if I can get directly into his room." Hooper whispered in a tone he thought only Newton could hear. "By the shade of Snyder, but this is spooky. If I didn't know he could really do it, I'd swear it was impossible." But only a portion of Hanlon's mind was in that distant avian brain. The rest was here in his own body, and heard the comment. "Yeh," he drawled, "I know it's weird, and even I'm not used to thinking about it yet. Never thought how it would affect others. You don't need to whisper, though. The two parts of my mind are separate and distinct, so that I know what is going on in both ... ah, one of the windows in the bedroom is opened, but only a crack. Maybe I can squeeze ... did it, but I lost a few feathers. But I'm inside now. Let's see. There's a molding quite high up on the wall. It's wide enough so I can roost on that, sideways. Now we'll just have to wait and watch." "Is Amir all right?" his father asked anxiously. Hanlon grinned. "The way he's snoring he must be." But the question reminded Hanlon that the Ruler had been wounded. He made the bird fly down to the bed, and through its eyes saw only a small bandage on one of Amir's arms--luckily for him the Ruler slept with his arms outside the covers. "Must be he got only a slight burn, after all," he said. "Is there anyone close to his room--or can't you tell?" the admiral asked after a few moments of silence. "I'll see if I can find out." Hanlon sent his mind questing out from the bird, and soon reported, "There're two men in an adjoining room ... they're guards ... from what I can read of their minds they're not thinking any seditious or murderous thoughts. Just playing a game of some sort while keeping on watch." "Better keep checking them from time to time, though, hadn't you?" Hooper asked. "Yeh, it'd be a good idea." The other men were tired and not well, and despite their efforts to keep awake, dropped off to sleep. Surprisingly, even Hanlon's body and the main portion of his mind also lapsed into the unconsciousness of sleep. But the part in the bird kept awake--and so did the tiny thread of consciousness that connected it with Hanlon. Some time later, about midnight, Hanlon, through the bird, heard a stirring sound in the anteroom, and investigated. The guard was being changed, and these two newcomers, he found from their minds, were tools of Irad. Along that thread of thought sped the warning, and Hanlon's body and the balance of his mind came fully awake. He lay there for some time, studying the situation, but nothing seemed to be happening. He was almost back to sleep again--his body, that is--when the bird heard a fumbling at the door of Amir's room, although the sound was softly muted as though the one out there was using the utmost stealth in hopes of not being discovered. Hanlon's mind quickly investigated, and found only one mind there. Evidently the guards had left, for this was a new personality. Hanlon reached out a hand and shook his father into wakefulness. "Someone's outside, trying to get Amir's door unlocked, or opened," he reported. Newton called Hooper, who sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes while the admiral explained in swift words. "The door's locked from the inside, and the key is still in the lock," Hanlon told them. "I made the bird fly down and look ... whoever is at it must be using something like pliers to try to turn the key." Admiral Newton jumped out of bed, lit the lamp, and commanded Hooper, "Get up and dress. We'll have to rush out there." He turned to Hanlon. "Can you come with us, and still keep _en rapport_ with your bird?" "Sure," Hanlon was already throwing off the covers, and getting up. "The fellow, whoever he is, although I would imagine it might be Irad, is having trouble with the key, but he'll probably make it sooner or later." "D'you suppose we can get out there in time?" Hooper asked. "We'll certainly try," the admiral grunted, leaning down to fasten his shoes. "Can you wake the Ruler?" he asked anxiously, a few moments later. "He might have a better chance, if awake." "Sure," Hanlon said, and a moment later, "the bird flew down and brushed its wingtips across his face. He's awake now ... he's sitting up ... lighting the lamp ... I sent the bird close to him then over to the door ... he's watching it ... now he sees the key turning ... he's jumped out of bed ... running to another door leading out of the room." The three finished dressing, and now ran from the room and down the stairs. Outside the admiral commanded "Follow me," and ran toward the back of the house. They saw the dim outlines of a shed, and a high-powered, family-sized touring tricycle. They piled into the seats even as the admiral was getting it started. Swiftly he backed the car out and into the street, and then took off with a full-throated roar from the powerful, souped-up engine. "Special job the Corps' experts fixed up for me," he explained as the others gasped at the unexpected speed. Hanlon, through the bird's eyes, was still watching that distant effort to unlock the door, and relaying to the others from time to time what he was seeing. "Ah, it's unlocked ... it's opening ... but the Ruler is in the other room and has locked that door." "The old boy's not so dumb," Hooper applauded. "I'll say he isn't," Hanlon agreed joyfully. "He's plugging the keyhole." He was silent a moment, then exclaimed, "The intruder's Irad, just as I thought it might be ... he's surprised the Ruler isn't in bed asleep ... he's gone over to try the other door ... he's found it's locked and the keyhole plugged ... he seems to have lost his head--he's pounding on that door, and yelling." He half-straightened, then slumped down into his seat, and his face strained with concentration. Hooper, in the back seat, leaned forward and started to speak, but Newton restrained him. "Let him alone, Curt--he must be working on something difficult." Hanlon was beating at the barriers in Adwal Irad's mind, trying to get in, even though he knew he had never been able to do so before. But it was all he could think of to do at the moment, and he had to do something. Besides, it was plain to him now that the man was completely insane--the way Irad was acting and the things he was saying and thinking showed it so clearly. So Hanlon had withdrawn entirely from the bird's mind, and was now working on Irad's with all his power. The Second-In-Line had drawn his flamegun and was firing at the door, trying to burn out the lock or through the door panels. Hanlon was almost in a frenzy of desperation. They had to stop this madman someway. He knew his father was pushing his car at its unexpected top speed, and that they would be there in a matter of minutes. But he was afraid that even those minutes might be too late. He did not see how they could possibly get there in time. For the door was beginning to burn from the fierce heat of the flamer. Hanlon still beat at that barrier in Irad's mind. He seemed to sense somehow that it was weakening, was ... was disintegrating ... was changing horribly under the influence of hatred and the madness the man seemed to feel. All this time the admiral had been trying to coax even more speed out of his souped-up tricycle, and now in the swiftly-nearing distance they could see the few lights that denoted the residence. Soon they were close enough to see that the gates were closed. "Those gates strong ones?" Newton asked without turning his head. "No, mostly ornamental." "Hang on, then, we're going through. Curt, grab the kid." Hooper leaned forward, took hold of Hanlon's shoulders with his strong hands, and braced himself against the back of the front seat in which the younger man was sitting. A couple of guards had run up to the gate at sight and sound of that speeding machine. But they ducked hastily back as they saw it was neither going to stop nor swerve. There was a rocking jolt, a crash, and the car was past the crumpled gates, careening wildly. The admiral fought the wheel with all his strength. By the time they came close to the steps leading up to the main entrance, he had it under control. There was a screech of brakes that brought several attendants on the run through the door. The trike slid to a halt, and two of the three men in it jumped out and dashed up the stairs. "The Ruler's being attacked," the admiral cried imperiously. "One of you show us his rooms." A servant, half-dazed by sight of those strangers in their peculiar uniforms, and subconsciously controlled by the command in Newton's voice, obeyed. They raced across the entrance foyer to the great stairs that led to the upper story. Other servants were coming into the hallway, sleepily rubbing their eyes, and most of them only partially dressed. Their wondering eyes followed the racing men in a stupefied way, but none tried to stop the intruders. "Down here," the servant dashed into a side hallway, and the two secret servicemen pounded after him. They turned another corner, and the servant slid to a stop. Two guards were standing there, flamers in their hands, menacing a small group of servants. Newton took it all in with a single glance. From what Hanlon had said he knew the men were Irad's. "Burn those guards!" he snapped the command at Hooper, and the latter's blaster spoke twice--fierce blasts of death that made the flashes of the flameguns seem like candle-flames. The two guards died instantly. Newton and the servant were already dashing into Amir's bedroom. Meanwhile, back in the machine where he had stayed, Hanlon was still working on Irad's mind. Now he thought he perceived a minute opening toward one edge of that decomposing barrier. He attacked it with all his mental strength, and it began to crumble a bit faster. Further and further Hanlon dug away at that tottering mentality until there was an orifice completely through the shield. Instantly he pushed his mind through ... down and down, in and into the deeper parts of Irad's thoughts and memories. And his body stiffened suddenly at what he found. Newton and the servant pushed on ahead into the bedroom, just in time to see the man, Irad, sink to the floor, writhing in apparent pain. But even so there was still enough control in the maddened conspirator so that he swung his flamegun and sent a streak of fire flashing toward the intruders. The servant, not expecting such a thing, and slow of reflexes, caught most of the blast, and died almost instantly. Newton, trained to quick action and always expecting the unexpected, ducked down and away. Even so, an edge of the flame caught him in the shoulder. The sudden, intolerable pain threw him off balance, and he sank to the floor, his uninjured hand grasping the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. George Hanlon was still in the tricycle, his mind a welter of conflicting emotions. He must be nuts--such a thing as he had just discovered was simply not possible. "But it is," a cold, precise, soundless voice spoke in his mind. "It is not the mind of this Adwal Irad you are now contacting, but that of another, who has been controlling this entity for some time now." "Who ... who are you, then?" Hanlon gasped. "I am from another, distant section of this galaxy, here on much the same errand as yourself and your assistants. I am banding together the various inhabited planets in my sector the same as your Federation is doing in yours. This planet is about midway between the two groups. I discovered it some time ago, and after thorough study of it decided to annex it to my oligarchy. But I have failed, and you have won." "You mean you were responsible for all the opposition we've encountered?" Hanlon asked in surprise. "That is correct. Working through the mind of this now-dying entity called Adwal Irad, I caused certain things to be done, including the increase in what you call crimes, in hopes they would alienate these people from your Federation's invitation, which was made shortly before I came here to work. It was my plan to make them join with me after denying you, and for certain things promised this Irad in the way of personal power, he more or less agreed--although I had to force him on several occasions." "So that's why he changed so," Hanlon now knew the answers to many puzzles. "Yes, there was continual conflict in Irad's mind. It was conditioned to a love and loyalty for his world, and certain ethics of what he considered the fundamentals of right and wrong, that are totally unknown to me. In fact, these people are almost non-understandably different from the races in my oligarchy, but they have many resources I need. Thus the disturbance between what this Irad innately felt and what I forced him to do, drove him insane. Even now his body is dead, and I am keeping his mind alive merely while I converse with you--a thing I have wished to do for long and long. I shall leave now, for my project has failed. I congratulate you on your victory." There was a moment's hesitation, then the thought came again to Hanlon. "But there is one thing I would like to know before I go." There was almost a trace of pleading, of indecision in that hitherto coldly logical, precise thought--and Hanlon wondered anew what sort of being this could possibly be with whom he was telepathing. For he could perceive nothing whatever as to the bodily shape or size of this enigmatic stranger. "Why was I unable to make contact with your mind?" the alien asked, and its thoughts were almost a wail. "I perceive now that you are very young, very immature and inexperienced. I should have been able to read you easily. My abilities must be very small indeed, even though I have always considered myself so competent. Are you of a different race from those others with whom you worked? I know you are not a native of this planet, for your mind texture is far different from theirs, as is your fellows'. Even as yours, in some ways, differs from theirs." "I honestly do not know the answer," Hanlon thought frankly. "I am of the same race as my companions, but I have some slight additional mental powers not usually found in my people. It may be I have a natural block or barrier in my mind they do not possess." "It must be so. I could make no contact with you at all, whereas I could penetrate and control easily with the others. It is only now, while we are jointly tenanting this weaker mind, that I can converse with you through its brain--I still cannot do so directly. It is very puzzling ..." and Hanlon felt the withdrawal of that mind. Irad's body, now that the mind which had been keeping it not-dead, or semi-alive, had slumped to the floor in full death. CHAPTER 20 Captain George Hanlon jumped from the big tricycle and ran into the residence. None of the guards or servants tried to stop him, so dumb-founded were they by all that had been happening. Knowing the way from his controlling of the bird that had found Amir's rooms, Hanlon was soon there. He did not stop to see what was happening to the others, but ran across the bedroom to that far door, and rapped on it to attract the attention of the Ruler, hiding behind it. "Everything is safe now, k'nyer," he called through the badly charred panels. "The assassin is dead. You can come out now." "Is this some new trick?" a voice came thinly. "No, sire, it is no trick, but the truth. You are safe now." "Who are you?" "I'm ..." Hanlon started to give his name, then remembered that the Ruler did not know anything about him. He quickly changed it to, "I'm Ergo Lona, the groom with whom you talked on the ride the other morning." "Lona? Where did you disappear to--and why?" suspiciously. "Endar discharged me, but I have been watching over you, just the same. On my honor, k'nyer, you may believe me." After some further hesitation there was the sound of the padding being removed from the keyhole, the insertion and turning of the key. As the door opened a mere crack, Elus Amir peered cautiously out. But instead of the clothing of a groom or a countryman, he saw the brilliant space-blue and silver of an Inter-Stellar Corps uniform. He started to pull shut the door, but Hanlon had stuck the toe of his boot in it. "It's all right, k'nyer. I am Lona, the groom. I am also George Hanlon, a captain in the Terran Inter-Stellar Corps. We discovered that another attempt was being made on your life, and were lucky enough to get here in time to block it." He took hold of the edge of the door and pulled it open, for the Ruler was so surprised by this revelation that he made no real effort to hold it shut. Amir came slowly, surprisedly into the bedroom, staring keenly at Hanlon. "You don't look like Lona ... but the voice does seem to be the same. How does it happen the Federation has men here? Were you spying on me?" "Not on you, sire, but on your enemies," Hanlon said earnestly. "Let me introduce you to Admiral New...." He had half-turned back as he spoke, and now for the first time saw his father on the floor, a hand clutching his shoulder, from which a great stain of blood was drenching the uniform sleeve. "Ring for your physician," Hanlon turned and commanded the Ruler. Then, realizing this was no way for him to be addressing a planetary head, he quickly but entreatingly added, "please, k'nyer." Elus Amir called in one of the servants clustered outside, and commanded curtly, "Get the doctor here, immediately." Then he went over to the two on the floor. "Let me look," he half-pushed Hanlon aside, and stooped to peer closely at that wounded shoulder. "Help me get him onto the bed," he said after a quick inspection. "I don't think any of the bone is gone--it's just a bad flesh burn." Tenderly the two men raised the admiral, who protested weakly that he could get up by himself, and lifted him onto the bed. Amir himself began pulling off the admiral's tunic, while Hanlon helped. By the time the doctor came running in, and took over the dressing of the wound, they had the arm and shoulder bared. But the elder Newton, in spite of his protestations, had fainted from the loss of blood and shock. Amir sent the assembled servants away, retaining only his dresser, who helped him on with his day clothes. The doctor worked swiftly, as Hanlon watched anxiously, applying ointments to the burn, and finally bandaging it. "He's weak from all the blood he lost, and doesn't seem to have been in too good condition anyway," the doctor said at last. "I hope the man is strong enough to pull through." "Then give him some plasma," Hanlon said frantically. "He needs it." "I don't know what you mean," the doctor was bewildered by the word, for Hanlon had had to use the Terran word "plasma", not knowing any translation for it. "A blood transfusion, then, or at least some glucose." "I don't know anything about those, either ... say, you're not an Estrellan, are you?" "No, we're Terrans. You mean you folks don't know anything about giving one person's blood to another?" "Sorry, but I've never heard of such a thing. How is it done?" The doctor was apparently more interested in this new idea than in the admiral's desperate condition. Hanlon felt faint. He staggered away from the bedside without answering, and went into the anteroom, where Hooper stood talking to Inver and some other officials, who had heard the commotion and had come to see what it was all about. Hooper saw Hanlon's haggard face, and knew something was wrong. "Were we too late?" he gasped. "Oh, no, we got Irad and saved Amir, but dad was blasted--shoulder. The doctor has fixed him up as best he can, but dad's in shock, and these backward fools never heard of plasma or blood transfusions." Hooper jumped forward. "I can give a transfusion. What's your dad's blood type?" he asked as they hurried to the bedside. "Same as mine," Hanlon was peeling off his coat as he spoke, his eyes lighting with relief. Hooper rapped quick questions at the doctor, but the latter shook his head. More questions, and more negative answers, then Hooper turned disconsolately to Hanlon. "They don't even have anything I could use to give a transfusion; no hollow needles; not even hypodermics." The doctor pulled on Hooper's arm. "Please, tell me what you mean by blood transfusions, and plasma. How do you give them? What for? And what did the other man mean when he said he had the same blood type as the wounded man?" Hanlon went to sit beside his father's bedside, and sank into an apparent mood of despair. Meanwhile, the Ruler had finished dressing, and with his son, Inver, went over to listen to what Major Hooper was telling the doctor. "Will you please tell me what all is going on here?" Amir asked so plaintively that the S S man had trouble concealing a grin. But Hooper sobered instantly. "The Federation's Inter-Stellar Corps, sire," he began his explanation, "found out about the fact that opposition to your desire to accept their invitation was becoming stronger--and dangerous to you and to the peace of your planet. They sent four of us here to study the situation and to protect you if possible. To do that it was necessary for us to disguise ourselves as natives of your world, so we could move about freely and unnoticed. That is why Captain Hanlon worked it so you would notice him, hire him as a servant of some sort here, and he would thus be able to watch over you and conditions in general from close at hand. We had found out that Adwal Irad was at the head of this opposition and crime wave, and that his plans included your death." "But now you're all in uniform--and your disguises removed." "Yes, k'nyer. We were planning to come as ourselves tomorrow--or rather, this morning--and seek an audience with you. We knew about the attempt to assassinate you that was made on your daily ride, and so were watching you more carefully than ever. When we saw Irad trying to get into your room, and his men he had planted in your guards keeping back the servants who wished to come to your assistance, we hurried here to help protect you. It was so apparent Irad was determined to complete the killing he failed at the other time." Elus Amir, Ruler of Estrella, took that startling news with barely a tremor. He motioned them to a seat along the side of the bedroom, to continue his questioning. The doctor was dismissed, although it was plain he wanted to stay and ask this Terran more about those strange and new methods of treating wounds. So until dawn the Ruler and his son--now Second-In-Line following the death of Irad--sat talking to Major Hooper about the Federation of Planets, and the benefits Estrella would obtain from joining the other worlds. "Such things as the advances in medicines in which your doctor is so interested, are but minor matters among the many we can and gladly will tell you if you wish," Hooper said. The Corpsman was able to convince Amir of the falsity of the rumors and arguments Irad had spread, about how Estrella would lose her sovereignty if she joined, and that Terra would make slaves of her people. "That is such a damnable thing to say, k'nyer," Hooper was almost angry, but very much in earnest. "You have only to send some trusted advisors to the various planets of the Federation--we will gladly furnish them transportation as we did before--and have them talk to the common people of any or all of our worlds. They will find that while we of Terra were the ones who developed space travel and sent people to colonize the first discovered and habitable planets, that the citizens of each world choose their own form of government, and that many of them are now even stronger than is Terra, the mother world. And there are peoples of several worlds who are natives and not Terrans or their descendants, whom we have not only not enslaved, but are helping to grow culturally so they may some day be advanced enough to join us as full-fledged equal members of the Federation, just as you, with your advanced civilization, were invited to do." While all this conversation was going on in low tones across the room, George Hanlon sat by the side of his father's bed, almost in a trance, so deep was his concentration. From what he had learned while breaking past the disintegrating barriers in Adwal Irad's mind, and from the techniques he had learned to apply in his previous excursions into other minds, he now found that, because his father was unconscious rather than merely asleep, he could, in a way, by-pass those barriers and get down into the depths of cell and gland in his father's mind and body, even though he could not fully penetrate the block into the memories, nor control the elder's actions. Carefully Hanlon studied those depths, aided also by what he had learned in his healing of the caval, and from his intensive studies of human physiology and neurones and allied sciences. Using the totality of his admittedly meager knowledge, yet guided by things no human physician had so far learned, he at last began to trace the pattern of how human cells, tissues and nerves regenerated themselves, and how new blood leucocytes are made in the glands of the lymph and the spleen. He was able to trace the connectors between the minute organisms and the brain that directed their activities. Then he set himself to the delicate task of activating those functions to begin and hasten the healing process. Hour after hour he sat there, oblivious to all else taking place around him, his own body lolling almost lifelessly in the big chair while all his mental powers were engaged in the monumental and hitherto unheard-of task to which he had set himself. The other three men concluded their conference at last, and got up, stretching hugely to pull themselves more awake after their half-night vigil. Amir called in his servants, and ordered them to prepare and serve breakfast here for himself and his guests. Inver ran back to his own apartment to dress more completely for the day. Hooper walked over to where Hanlon was sitting. "Asleep?" he half-whispered, doubtful because of the way the young man's body was sprawled in the deep chair. George Hanlon stirred and sat up, flashing a smile. "You didn't need to whisper, Curt," he said. "I wasn't asleep. Just been helping dad get well." The major stared at him in amazement. "What d'you mean?" "You're half a doctor, Curt. Take a look at dad's wound." Doubtfully, not fully understanding even yet what his companion meant, Hooper removed the bandage. He stared unbelievingly at the wounded shoulder. The deeper portions of that terrible burn were completely regenerated with healthy tissue. There was no sign of inflammation, no scarred tissue or fused flesh as usually shows in a fresh flamegun burn. The upper parts of the injury, too, were already beginning to heal toward the center. "Why ... why," he was astounded. "That should've taken weeks. I never knew a wound to heal that fast." "I found out how to speed up the cells and things," Hanlon said simply. Admiral Newton roused as they talked, perhaps at the touch of Hooper's gentle hands removing the bandage. Now he opened his eyes, and after a moment to realize his surroundings and recall the events of his injuries, smiled at his co-workers. "Hi, fellows. Everything under control?" "Yes, sir, all O K," Hooper answered. "I think the Ruler is about ready to sign up." "Good. Good work. Say, I feel fine. No pain--yet I seem to have a memory of being blasted ... of fainting." He frowned, then shrugged. "Couldn't have been much after all." "It was very bad, sir," Hooper assured him gravely. "The burn was almost to the bone in your shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood. But now the wound is over half-healed." "Great John. How long was I out?" "Only a few hours, dad," Hanlon said. "Oh, you found the kit, then?" "What kit?" "There's a complete emergency medi-surgical kit under the seat in my tricycle." "Now he tells us," Hooper spread his hands and spoke in mock despair. "Probably just as well," Hanlon said. "If we'd known about that I might never have felt the necessity of discovering how to heal wounds as I did." "What're you talking about?" the admiral looked from one to the other in perplexity. "The kid's too modest to tell you, sir," Hooper broke in, ignoring Hanlon's signal to keep quiet. "I don't pretend to know how he did it, but somehow or other he managed, with his mind, to stimulate and speed up the healing, so that at the rate it's been going, your wound should be all well in another twenty-four hours. I'll bandage it up again, and then, unless you're too weak, you can get up and help us eat breakfast the Ruler is having sent up for us all." Young Inver, who had returned to the bedroom, was standing there, listening to all this. Now his expressive eyes lighted up, and he touched Hanlon's arm. When the young S S man turned to face him, Inver breathlessly asked, "Was that the way my caval got well so fast?" Hanlon grinned at him. "I knew it was your favorite mount, and I didn't want to see it destroyed." He turned quickly back to help his father get up. The admiral found that, while he was still a little shaky, he could stand up without dizziness. The Ruler had sent his uniform jacket out to be cleaned and mended, and this Newton donned. Soon the men were seated about the table the servants had set up, eating the splendid breakfast they brought and served. Meantime, the five talked about the problem that so much interested them all, and that meant so much to all the peoples of their worlds. "Our Colonial and Survey Bureaus are constantly seeking throughout space for other planets having intelligent races, and we feel sure yours will not be the last we'll find," Admiral Newton told the Ruler and his son. "It is egotistical and silly to think we Terrans are the only civilized peoples in the universe." "Chances are we'll find others who are as far ahead of us in intelligence, science and technologies as you Estrellans are ahead of us in ethics," Hanlon added honestly. Amir and Inver looked up in astonishment at that simple statement. "You ... you actually mean ... honestly ... that you Terrans do not believe you are the highest form of life in the universe?" Inver put their questioning into words. "Great John, no!" Admiral Newton exploded. "Oh, I suppose," he added more slowly, "that there are some earth people who may still feel that way, but the majority of us do not, especially those who have travelled at all extensively. We used to think that; used to believe, hundreds of years ago, that we were the _only_ intelligent life in the cosmos. But we know better now that we're spreading out. I, personally, have been on at least six planets that contain intelligent life that did not stem from Terra, although yours is the highest of the six, and none of the rest are yet at the point where they can be asked to affiliate with the Federation as equal members. But those others are being taught and coached as best we can--and as much as they want to be. In a few more generations they'll probably have reached the point where they will be ready to be seriously considered for equality status with us, as far as Federation membership is concerned." "Just how do you determine the fitness of a race for membership in your Federation?" Inver leaned forward, his expressive eyes questioning. His father started to rebuke him for his forwardness, but the admiral interrupted. "No, that's a good question, and we're glad to answer it--just as we're glad to answer _any_ questions to which we know the answers. As to this one, we look first for signs of intelligence great enough to enable the people to govern themselves without continual warfare," he said earnestly. "Their knowledge of science and technology is not so important, we feel, although their ability to learn is. Some races will probably never have real need for machines of any sort--races like the plant-men of Algon, where Captain Hanlon was recently instrumental in freeing them from slavery." He paused a moment to marshal his thoughts. "Then we look to see if they are making a conscious effort to advance in education and learning--no matter along what lines that may be," he continued. "We study their knowledge of and interest in ethical matters--their religion, and their belief in the general concept of right and wrong, of decency and observance of the rights of others. If they have these things, and have, above all, the desire and determination to continue their cultural growth, then we consider them worthy of equal Federation membership." "And your wonderful people certainly measure up to all of those concepts," Hanlon added sincerely. CHAPTER 21 The five had finished eating by now, and the Ruler rose. "I will call my advisors together, and discuss this matter with them," he said. "But I can tell you now that I am more than ever disposed to accept your invitation. I could do so this moment," he said with a deprecating smile, "but I like to make sure that the leaders of my people agree with my decisions, as much as possible. I will have a servant show you to my study, where you can discuss your own plans while my ministers, my son and myself talk in the Council Chambers. I will let you know as soon as we reach a definite decision." "Thank you, k'nyer. We will gladly await your answer," Admiral Newton rose, too, and bowed, as did Hanlon and Hooper. "And thanks for the fine meal," Hanlon grinned. "I was really hungry." Inver came up to him and laid his hand on Hanlon's shoulder. "I like you," he said simply but from the heart. "I hope we shall always be friends, and shall meet often through the coming years." In the little study the three found easy chairs, and Admiral Newton turned first to Major Hooper. "As far as I know now, we'll all be going back when the sneakboat comes in a day or so. I suggest you go back to Simonides and get in touch with the High Command to get your next assignment." "Right, sir, will do." "About you, Spence, I want you to come with me and...." "Excuse me, dad, but if I can have some free time, there is some very important research I want to do, that I think will benefit humanity much more than another detective assignment." "What's on your mind, son?" "This new ability I'm beginning to get," Hanlon said seriously. "I've found I can get down to the level of the body cells and glands, with my mind, and I think with more study and research I can learn things no one else has ever known before. But I'll need a lot of help from research doctors and endocrinologists, to tell me things I don't know. I may be all wet, but I have an idea I can, in time, make some very important contributions to medical science--with their help in telling me what to look for, and if it can be arranged so I can have the time to devote to that. I don't mean," he added, flushing with embarrassment, "that I think I'm...." "You are, whether you think so or not," his father interrupted, eyes gleaming with pride and some amusement. "With those special gifts of yours, you can do things no one else ever hoped to do. Such research would certainly be worthwhile, especially if you can help others learn how to heal wounds as fast as you did mine." "Speaking of which," Hooper broke in, "I suggest, admiral that you lie down while we're talking. It will be less strain on your body and heart, and you're still weak, even if you won't admit it," he added as he saw a protest forming on Newton's lips. When Hanlon added his entreaties to Hooper's, the admiral grinned and lay down on a couch there in the study. "Anybody'd think you guys were the head men, not me," he growled, but good-naturedly. Then he sobered quickly and went back to their discussion. "I'll have to take it up with the Board, of course, but I think they'll agree. I know of nothing definite needing you right at the moment, so they'll probably give you a leave of absence for that research." "I'd like to go to some other planet than Terra or Simonides," Hanlon said. "One where I'm not known, so I won't have to be watching out for anyone who might recognize me. And if I'm to do the study, I'll want authorization to work at some of their insane asylums, too." "Why those, in John's name?" "When I tackled Irad's mind towards the end, I was able to get down inside of it, further than I've ever been in any other person's mind, because he was insane at the last, and his mind was breaking down. There seems to be a block or barrier in every sane person's mind that I can't get through." "But you got into your father's ..." Hooper looked puzzled. "In dad's case, Curt, it was only because he was unconscious, rather than asleep or awake, that I could penetrate. Even then, I had to sort of ... well, by-pass the barrier ... to get down deep enough to touch the cells and glands and such things. Of course, with more study and practice, now that I know more about it, I may be able to reach those depths in spite of the block ... oh, heck, I sound like I considered myself a sort of superman," he flushed again, and his eyes implored them not to think him conceited. "We know you neither are a superman nor think you are," his father assured him quickly. "You have a special gift, and you are trying to use it to benefit others, that's all. Don't be modest--it's really false modesty, in a way. Go ahead with your ideas." "Well, I'd also like to try working with engineers and technies, to see if it would be possible to rig up some sort of a mechanical method of doing the same thing." Newton shook his head in puzzled wonder. "You're completely beyond understanding, Spence. I sometimes wonder if you're human ... if you're really the son of Martha and myself." "Why, no," Hanlon grinned then. "Didn't you know? I'm a changeling the little elves left on your doorstep." His father and Hooper laughed away the tension. "Could be, at that," the admiral said. "Well, I'll certainly recommend to the Board that they grant you all the time and opportunity you need. If you can get to the bottom of this, and especially if you can teach other doctors how to get at those glands and use them...." "That'll be the hard part, dad. What I do hope to be able to do is to perhaps find out more exactly how the nerves and cells and glands work, and then doctors would be better able to diagnose and treat various diseases and injuries." They were interrupted by Inver, who came in to ask certain questions the Ruler and advisors wished to know. "Would it be possible, or rather, is it something you would permit," he asked, "for us to set up some sort of an advanced school or university here, and have you send us instructors? A place where our best young men and women could go to study the many things we know nothing about?" "It certainly will be possible, and it is a wonderful idea," Admiral Newton assured him. "And one thing we want to make clear, that you do not yet seem sure of. That is that there is no question of our 'permitting' you to do what you want to do. None whatever, in any way, shape or form. Your government is and will always be completely autonomous--always handled as you people see fit to work it. We never, under any circumstances, try to make other races 'conform' to any standards or regulations they do not wish to make their own. We will give freely of our knowledge, our science and technologies, our beliefs and concepts--but you Estrellans will be the sole and only judge of what you want to accept. "And we will want to have you send some of your people to our universities, to teach us the advanced things you know that we don't. Your system of ethics, for instance, and the way you have learned to live together so closely and honestly." After Inver had gone back to the conference, the three men sat about waiting. Newton had almost fallen asleep--Hooper was completely so--when Hanlon stirred. "I don't know, though," he ruminated aloud. "Maybe there's something else more important than that research at the moment." "What?" his father roused himself sufficiently to ask. "That alien being I contacted in Irad's mind." "What in Snyder's name are you talking about?" Newton raised up in excitement. "What alien?" "Oh, that's right, I didn't tell you. You're being hurt and my trying to heal you made me forget it." Hanlon explained swiftly about that strange mind and its startling communication. Admiral Newton swung his feet to the floor, all thoughts of sleep banished. "And you waited all this time to tell me a thing as important as that?" he demanded incredulously and almost angrily. "Sorry, dad, I just happened to feel your life was more important at the moment, because the other could wait for a...." "OK, OK, I'll buy that for now. But we'll have to make other arrangements immediately. We'll have to find out where it came from and whether this other oligarchy or federation or whatever it is, is a menace to us." "I don't think it is," Hanlon said slowly. "The being's mind was very peculiar, but it appeared to be extremely logical in its thoughts. It said that since it had lost and we have won here, it was withdrawing--and I don't believe it meant temporarily, either. I think it meant it was all through here and...." "Don't be silly or childish, son," the admiral was intense and forceful. "That one being may have felt that way, but his bosses won't. With two groups of planets so near in space--both with means of space travel--there's bound to be war of some sort, whether actual, ideological or economic remains to be seen. We'll have to hunt them up, and find out what it's all about--and immediately." Hanlon shook his head. "I'll acknowledge your greater experience, dad, but I still have a feeling you're wrong about this. I believe that other race is entirely different in their way of thinking to ours--that they are coldly logical and not the type to keep on fighting for something they've already lost. But, of course," he shrugged, "it's up to the High Command to decide. I'd still like to get on with that other research." "I'll put both problems up to the Board," Newton said. "But I bet I know how they'll decide. There's the fact that those beings can read and control all our minds--except yours. It looks like your job, son--yours and no one else's ... although we'll all be behind you in every way we can, of course. Meanwhile," stretching out on the couch again, "until Amir and his advisors want us, I think we'd both better take a nap." "I am kinda pooped, at that," Hanlon said, and sprawled out in his chair. The admiral was soon asleep, but only Hanlon's body and part of his mind relaxed. The balance of his mind was inside his father's body again, speeding the healing of that shoulder burn. Finally Inver came to call the three Terrans into the Council Chamber. His broadly smiling face, and the thoughts Hanlon read from the surface of his mind, told him the decision had been favorable--a fact he signalled to the others at once. "We are completely convinced now," Elus Amir told them when the Terrans were seated about the conference table, "that our world will be best served by joining your Federation as we were asked to do. If you have the treaty papers at hand, I will gladly sign them. And my son," looking proudly at young Inver, "will sign with me as the next Ruler of Szstruyyah." "We do not have the proper documents," Admiral Newton said. "But our ship will be here tomorrow night, and it has long-range communicators with which I will immediately get in touch with the Federation Council, who will send accredited ambassadors here at once. They should be here within five days." "Now that we have made up our minds, we are anxious to affiliate with the other worlds. We feel it is a tremendous honor, being the first non-Terran race asked to join them." "As it is an honor for us to have such a high-principled peoples joined to us," Admiral Newton said with a courtly bow. "May I suggest, k'nyer and nyers, that when our ambassadors arrive, you ask them for whatever help you desire in the way of teachers, goods or materials. They will gladly explain what we have to offer, and I know they will study you and your people to find the things they will ask for in exchange. Remember always, please, that it is our steadfast policy to teach only what you really want to know, and which you specifically ask for, not what we might 'think you ought to know'." "That one thing alone," Elus Amir said, deeply moved as were the members of his Council, "would be enough to confirm us in our belief that we will be doing the right thing for our people in joining you." Amir, his son and the councillors, rose and bowed. The three Terrans had also risen, and saluted punctiliously. Then Newton stepped forward impulsively and held out his hand, which Amir grasped as though he had always used the gesture. "Welcome to the Federation of Planets, sire," Newton's voice was filled with emotion. The Ruler silently wrung his hand. When it was time for the Corpsmen to leave, after some general conversation between them all, the Ruler and his son were again profuse in their gratitude for what the men had done, personally, to save Amir's life, and the peace of their world. They escorted the three downstairs and out to Newton's tricycle, and stood at Estrellan salute as the Terrans got into their machine. "Oh, one thing, Lona," the Ruler came forward just as Hanlon was getting in. Amir's eyes were filled with puzzled wonderment. "How did you know Adwal Irad was coming to attack me while I was asleep, locked in my room?" Hanlon's eyes danced, but he kept his face straight. "We have a saying on Terra, k'nyer, that explains it--'a little bird told me'." And he bowed again as he entered the machine, and Admiral Newton drove away, leaving behind a more than ever puzzled Ruler of the soon-to-be newest member of the Federation of Planets. THE END 
28813	----	Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. [Illustration: _Horrified with fear, the men threw themselves to the deck_] A RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE STORY THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER BY JOHN BLAINE GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK, N. Y. © BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1957 * * * * * Contents CHAPTER PAGE I THE MILLION-DOLLAR GIMMICK 1 II THE INVASION OF SPINDRIFT 10 III A SYSTEM WITHIN A SYSTEM 24 IV A HAIRCUT AND A WINK 33 V JANIG RUNS A SECURITY CHECK 45 VI A CALM PRECEDES A STORM 55 VII THE PERIPATETIC BARBER 65 VIII THE MIND READER STRIKES 74 IX DAGGER OF THE MIND 86 X SEARCH FOR STRANGERS 94 XI THE DANGEROUS RESEMBLANCE 105 XII THE COAST GUARD DRAWS A BLANK 119 XIII THE MEGABUCK MOB ACTS 130 XIV SURVEILLANCE--WITH CEREAL 148 XV A MATTER OF BRAIN WAVES 154 XVI THE VANISHING MERMAIDS 164 XVII POINTER TO DISASTER 179 XVIII THE ONE-MAN BOARDING PARTY 186 XIX TAPED FOR TROUBLE 194 XX JANIG CLOSES IN 202 * * * * * THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER CHAPTER I The Million-Dollar Gimmick Rick Brant stretched luxuriously and slid down to a half-reclining, half-sitting position in his dad's favorite library armchair. He called, "Barby! Hurry up!" Don Scott looked up from his adjustment of the television picture. "What's the rush? The show hasn't started yet." Rick explained, "She likes the commercials." A moment later Barbara Brant appeared in the doorway, hastily finishing a doughnut. Rick cocked an eyebrow at her. "If you're going to eat, you might at least bring a plateful, so we can have some, too." Barby gulped. "Sorry. I didn't intend to have a doughnut. I went to the kitchen to see if Mom and Dad wanted to watch the show, and they were having doughnuts and milk." "Never mind," Scotty said. "We forgive you. We'll get ours later. Are Mom and Dad coming?" "Maybe later. Now be quiet, please, so I can hear the commercial." Dismal, the Brant pup, wandered in and paused at Rick's chair to have his ears scratched before taking up his favorite position, under the TV table. Rick obliged and the shaggy pup groaned with pleasure. "Why all the interest in a breakfast-food commercial?" Scotty asked. "The announcer is cute," Barby stated. This made no sense to Scotty. He stretched out on the rug in front of the set, then rolled over on his back and looked up at the girl. "I don't get it. Then why do you eat Crummies for breakfast instead of the hay this guy sells?" "The Crummies announcer is cuter," Barby explained patiently. The boys grinned and fell silent as the cereal salesman went into his spiel. Barby perched on the edge of a chair and listened attentively. Rick watched his sister's expressive face, chuckling to himself. Barby always listened to the commercials. It was only fair, she insisted, and the boys went along with her wishes. Come right down to it, Rick thought, listening to commercials was the price that had to be paid for entertainment. Not listening meant not paying the price. He didn't think that the point was particularly important, but there was a small element of justice in Barby's view. Their Sunday evenings on Spindrift, the private island off the New Jersey coast, usually ended with this particular program. The members of the Spindrift staff were not TV enthusiasts at best, and they cared little about the program. Mr. and Mrs. Brant sometimes watched, more for the sake of being companionable than for the sake of the program. But usually the three young people watched alone. The program was a typical quiz. Contestants who were expert on a particular category returned week after week on their build-up to a grand prize, which was a quarter of a million dollars. This quiz, however, had elements that the younger Brants liked. In the first place, the contestants were ordinary people. The producer didn't seem to go in for odd characters as other programs did. For the past few weeks the hero-contestant had been an eighteen-year-old coal miner from Pennsylvania. There was nothing unusual about him, except for one thing: he had become interested in the mining of precious stones, and from there he had studied their history. He was an expert on historical gems. Now, as the master of ceremonies greeted the miner, Barby said with admiration, "He has a wonderful personality. And imagine him knowing so much about gems!" Rick draped a leg over the chair arm. "See, Scotty? The perfect reaction." "What do you mean?" Barby demanded indignantly. "He absolutely does have a wonderful personality, and I think it's amazing that a coal miner should know so much about gems." Scotty grinned up at her. "Rick means people can't get on quiz shows unless they have good TV personalities. And how much appeal would the show have if a gem expert answered questions on gems?" "I see what you mean," Barby agreed. "That's it," Rick nodded. "Anyway, I agree that the miner has a swell personality, and he certainly knows his gems." The three fell quiet as the quiz began. The questions were really tough, filled with the kind of detail no one could be expected to remember, but which good contestants always did. Then, at a crucial moment, the miner hesitated over identification of a date in the long and bloody history of the Koh-i-noor diamond. "If only we could help him," Barby wailed. "We don't know, either," Scotty reminded. But Rick suddenly realized that they did know--or, at least, had the answer available. He was certain it could be found in one of his father's books, if not in the encyclopedia. But even if they had time to look it up, which they didn't, the contestant couldn't hear them in a soundproof booth. Or could they get a message to him if they were part of the studio audience? Or was there some other way? It was typical of Rick, when faced with an apparently insoluble problem, to look for an answer. The miner finally remembered, and the three breathed a mutual sigh of relief. But the ordeal was not yet over, because the questioning had several parts. Next came a quiz on the Star of Africa. The questions asked, the camera began switching from the contestant's face to the tense faces in the audience. A woman, probably the miner's mother ... a man with a beard ... a man with a hearing aid ... Rick suddenly sat up straight. He had it! He knew how the information could be handed to the contestant! At least he knew in theory. He sat back and started to work out the details. The miner made it. Limp and happy, he came out of the booth, shook hands with the MC, and staggered off with an armload of books containing answers to next week's series of questions. The announcer went into the final commercial, with Barby and Scotty listening attentively. Rick didn't listen. He had a wonderful idea on which he was putting the finishing touches. As programs shifted, Scotty reached up and turned off the set. Dismal left his place under the table and trotted off to the kitchen. "Me for a doughnut," Scotty announced. Barby was still spellbound by the miner's success. "It's just fantastic, utterly, how much he knows." She shook her smooth blond head. "I wish I knew that much about something." "Want to win a million?" Rick asked. "Who doesn't?" Barby returned dreamily. Suddenly she stared. "You have a Look on your face," she stated. "Rick Brant, you're cooking up something!" Rick grinned. "I can win the quiz," he said casually. "It's easy. Let me know if either of you want to win. Of course you might end up in jail if you're not real careful, but I think it'll work." Scotty looked his disbelief. "Easy, huh? What are you expert on?" "Nothing," Rick said airily. "And anything. Of course we all know you're an expert on eating, but that's not a category, it's a capacity." Barby gave what might be described as a lady-like sneer. Rick shook his head. "It's terrible the way people in this house have no faith in genius. Just terrible." He sighed heavily. Scotty watched him suspiciously. "All right, Doctor Brant. Give with the great idea." "Okay." Rick waved at the encircling shelves of books. "Pick a subject. Any subject, so long as it is contained in a very few references. Like the life of the bee, or the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or the Life of Dickens." Barby said obligingly, "All right. I pick Ben Franklin. Now what?" "We get the major books on old Ben, plus the copy of the encyclopedia we need. Then we set up an index, and we put principal categories of information on file cards. For Ben, we'd need the Sayings of Poor Richard, and the dates they appeared, and where. And we'd need a list of his inventions, plus dates. And so on. Generally, we fix things so we can find any answer in a few seconds." Barby shook her head. "That would be awfully hard. It would take weeks, and whoever operated the file would have to know it nearly by heart." Rick agreed. "But isn't a million bucks worth a few weeks of effort?" Rick's famous father, Hartson Brant, walked into the library in time to hear the last comment. His eyebrows went up. "What's all this megabuck talk?" That was a new word to Barby. "What talk?" "In the metric system, 'meg' means million. So a megabuck is a million bucks, if you'll pardon the slang." "Oh--well Rick is going to win a megabuck." Rick explained rapidly about choosing a subject that could be cross-indexed for ease of reference, then went on. "After we get the subject all set, we choose the contestant. It has to be a real person. We'd need several contestants, because the gimmick could be worked on every big money quiz. Maybe more than once on each. Of course the contestants would have to be members of the Megabuck Mob, as we'll call it." "I like that," Barby said enthusiastically. "That would make me a Megabuck Moll, wouldn't it?" "Yep," Scotty agreed. "And Rick can be the Megabuck Mole." "And you can be the Megabuck Moose, you big ox," Rick finished. He was warming up to his subject now. There had to be a hole in it somewhere, but he hadn't found it yet. "Anyway, we have Ben Franklin on file cards and Barby has studied carefully to be the first contestant. Then what?" "Someone asks who Ben Franklin was, and I say that he started a chain of department stores," Barby said helpfully. "Not you," Rick denied. "You know all the right answers. And why? Because the Megabuck Mob is behind you. The Megabuck Moose is going through the cards, and the Megabuck Mole is feeding the answers into the Megabuck Memory Machine, and the Megabuck Moll in maidenly modesty mumbles madly--" "Help him," Scotty interrupted. "His lips are stuck together. He can't say anything but mmmmm." But Barby was interested now. "And how does the Memory Machine madly machinate and murmur the answers?" "Mmm," Rick murmured. "That is the secret!" Hartson Brant threatened his son with a handy volume of the Physics Handbook. "Out with it, young man. This is no time to keep secrets, now that we're all partners in the deal." Rick sighed. He waved at Barby. "Look at her. So young, so smart, so pretty. But the poor girl has a very slight handicap. She has to wear a hearing aid...." Scotty got it then. "Hey! Rick, that's great! The hearing aid would be a radio receiver!" Barby got it, too. She finished in a rush, "And the Megabuck Mob would be watching on TV, and digging out the answers, and the Memory Machine would be a radio transmitter ..." "It wouldn't matter about the soundproof booth," Scotty chimed in, "because radio will go right through the walls!" Hartson Brant held both hands to his head in mock horror. "To think that my only son should turn out to be a halfway criminal genius!" Rick glanced up at his father suspiciously. "Halfway?" He knew from the word that the scientist had immediately spotted some reason why his gimmick wouldn't work. "Never mind, son." Hartson Brant put a hand on Rick's shoulder. "The Megabuck Moll can bake you a cake with a file in it, so you can break out of jail. I'm sure you won't mind being a fugitive from justice." A harsh growl from the doorway caused them all to whirl around, startled. "He'll never get a chance. The Megabuck Mob is pinched as of right now. The federal government is taking over this island!" Crouched in the doorway, submachine gun cradled in his arms, was an officer of the United States Coast Guard! CHAPTER II The Invasion of Spindrift Hartson Brant reacted first. He said severely, "I've tried to teach Rick that one never points a firearm at people. You're setting him a bad example." Then the scientist smiled and held out his hand. "This is an unexpected pleasure, Steve. Why didn't you let us know you were coming? And why the disguise?" Steve Ames, a chief agent of JANIG, the Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Group with which Spindrift had so often worked, straightened up and grinned. He winked at the astonished young people. "Hi, gang." The trio chorused, "Hi, Steve." Steve shook hands with Hartson Brant, then explained, "I'm not really setting a bad example. If you'll look closely, you'll see that the bolt of this chopper is open, the safety is on, and there isn't a round in the chamber." "But why carry it at all?" Barby demanded. Rick closed his mouth. He had been about to ask the same thing. He felt a tingle of excitement. When Steve Ames showed up on Spindrift, adventure wasn't far off. The federal agent came to Spindrift only for help, and then only when his usual sources had failed. The first time, in the case of _The Whispering Box Mystery_, the Spindrifters had worked with Steve in Washington. Recently, quite by accident, the boys had become involved in a JANIG case while vacationing in the Virgin Islands. As the case of _The Wailing Octopus_ came to an end, Steve had warned them that he might see them soon. And now here he was. "The reason for the chopper is a long story," Steve answered Barby. "But the reason for the uniform is simple. It's mine." Then Steve, who had never before appeared as anything but a civilian, was actually a full Commander in the Coast Guard! Rick marveled at how little they really knew about their friend. He certainly excelled at keeping his mouth shut. Probably he was a reserve officer. "I think you look handsome in it," Barby said dreamily. The boys had kidded her before about getting all misty-eyed when Steve showed up. Actually, Steve was a very handsome young man, so Barby's mild crush was understandable. "That makes it worth wearing," Steve said gallantly. Barby beamed. Hartson Brant detached a key from his chain and handed it to Steve with a flourish. "You said you were taking over the island, I believe? You'll need the house key." Rick smiled. That was his father's way of leading the conversation back to Steve's reason for coming, without taking the edge off their delight at the unexpected reunion. But Steve was not to be pushed into business talk so easily. He looked at Rick. "You and your schemes! I think I'll poke it full of holes just to show you that crime doesn't pay." Scotty asked curiously, "How much did you hear?" "The whole plan. I've been casing the joint, as we say. Okay, Rick. You must have considered that a rash of winners wearing hearing aids would attract attention and comment. How are you going to prevent it?" Rick answered automatically, his mind not really on his Great Idea any more. So Steve had been "casing" the island! He replied, "Not all the hearing aids would be visible. For instance, I could make a receiver for Barby that would be an ornamental plastic band to wear the way girls wear barrettes, or whatever they call them. Or, I could fit a receiver into a special pair of glasses. There's one type of hearing aid that's built into glasses, you know." "I do know," Steve agreed. "All right. I'll try again. Each contestant that looks good to the program people gets a thorough quizzing on the chosen subject before being accepted. That's to find out if they're really experts. How are you going to handle it?" Rick hadn't known about that. He pondered for a moment. "That means we'd have to prepare a hidden transmitter, too, so we could help out during the examination. It could be done. The contestants could wear the gadget strapped to their legs, under their skirts or trousers." Steve was enjoying Rick's ready responses. His eyes twinkled. "You'd have to use very limited range on your Megabuck Mob transmitter, and a very high frequency. Otherwise, the Federal Communications Commission would pick you up, use a direction finder, and move in on your operation. They might locate you, anyway, even on low power and ultra-high frequency. How are you going to lick that?" Rick held up his hands in surrender. "I'm not. I can't take a chance of getting the federal government into the act. Gosh, I'd have the FCC, the FBI, and maybe a dozen others on my trail. I quit. The Megabuck Mob is hereby dissolved." Steve looked disappointed. "And I was hoping your plan was foolproof. I was about to buy stock in the Mob." The amusement in his eyes belied the words. Hartson Brant laughed. "I'm glad you're the one that stuck a pin in his bubble, Steve. The way Barby bakes cakes, I'm not sure Rick could ever break one to get the file out." Steve chuckled. "The records are full of foolproof get-rich-quick schemes like this one. And the jails are full of halfway criminal geniuses, too. But don't overlook the advantages of an eat-proof cake. It might come in handy to throw at the guards during the getaway." The young people laughed, too, then Barby sobered suddenly. "Rick, could you really put one of those things in my hair?" He had an image of the gadget in his mind, and he knew it would work. "Sure, Sis. Why?" "An idea I want to talk to you about later." She turned to Steve and asked anxiously, "You do know Rick was only fooling, don't you, Steve? He wouldn't steal anything from anyone, honestly." Steve nodded. "I do, Barby. I won't throw him in jail this time. I might need him." "Is that what you're here for?" she asked. "I need you all," Steve said. He motioned to chairs. "Let's sit down. Can Mrs. Brant join us?" Hartson Brant went to get her while the young people started to deluge Steve with questions. He held up a hand in protest. "Wait until the whole family's here, please." In a moment Mrs. Brant had joined them and greeted Steve cordially. Then the young agent got serious. "I was only partly joking when I said I wanted to take over Spindrift. I really do, in a way. Here's why. We've had a team of scientists working on a project that's of the greatest importance to national defense. There were four in the team, all topnotchers. Hartson, I'm sure you'll know some, if not all of them, by reputation." Steve removed the ammunition clip from his submachine gun and sighted through the barrel, then let the bolt ram home with a sharp click. "It was my job to guard the project. As you know, I had to go to the Virgin Islands, but I left one of my best men in charge, and he did his job thoroughly. I'm satisfied about that. No unknown person has been near the project office. And no unknowns have been in close contact with any of the team. Yet, two of them are in the hospital." "Sick or wounded?" Scotty asked. "Neither, really. We don't know what's wrong. Their minds suddenly ceased to function." Hartson Brant leaned forward. "You mean they're unconscious?" Steve shook his head. "Not in the usual sense. It's as though all their thoughts and memories had suddenly been scrambled. Did you ever see a teletype machine in operation, particularly one that suddenly went haywire?" Rick had. "The news machine did that over at the Whiteside _Morning Record_. It was typing out clear copy, then suddenly there wasn't anything but gibberish." "That's it," Steve agreed. "And it's the best analogy I can think of for what happened to the two scientists. When a teletype goes haywire, one moment everything is clear and perfect, the next everything is scrambled. All the letters are there but they no longer make words. The scientists talk words--common, everyday words--but the words don't make thoughts or sentences. Just sounds." "How awful," Mrs. Brant murmured. Barby looked horrified. Rick searched his memory for anything similar he had ever read about or heard of, but there was nothing. From the expressions on their faces, his father and Scotty were equally puzzled. "Well, even though I have absolutely no evidence of foul play, I decided not to take chances," Steve went on. "I got one of the scientists to go along with my plan. He shares my concern, simply on the basis that no known disease would affect human beings in this way, and two scientists of the same team being stricken with an unknown ailment is too much coincidence." "He's wise," Hartson Brant agreed. "He also has a family. The other scientist does not. He's a crusty old bachelor who thinks the whole thing is nonsense and insists on staying right where he is." "How do we fit in?" Scotty asked. "You said you needed all of us." "That's right. I want to relocate the project at Spindrift." "Using the co-operative scientist as the basis for a new staff?" Rick inquired. "Yes. We went through some of the most complicated maneuvers you ever saw to got him out of Washington with his family. I'm certain his movements cannot be traced. So his presence here will be a complete secret. But it isn't just the scientist. I'm also asking you to take in his family, consisting of his wife and daughter." "Of course we will," Mrs. Brant said warmly. Steve turned to Barby. "I think you'll enjoy it, because the girl is just your age, and she's a very friendly and pleasant young lady." Barby looked pleased and excited. "What's her name?" "Janice. Janice Miller." "Is the scientist Dr. Walter Miller by any chance?" Hartson Brant asked quickly. "Exactly right. Do you know him?" "Not personally. We've never met, but a few years ago we carried on a very extensive correspondence on the subject of energy levels in nuclear isomers." Steve grinned. "I won't pretend to know what you're talking about. But I'm glad you'll have something in common. Will you and your staff join him to make up a new project team?" "I think we can," Hartson Brant said thoughtfully. "Some of us can put aside what we're doing. I'll have to know a little more about the project, of course." The federal agent nodded. "Dr. Miller can give you the details personally." Rick expressed a thought that had been on his mind. "We're sort of isolated here, but we're certainly not cut off from the world. Our friends visit us, and we go to the mainland almost every day. How do we explain who these people are? I'm sure you don't want their names to get out." "I'll give you a cover story. Their name is Morrison. You met them through Dr. Ernst while you were in the Virgin Islands. They were very hospitable, and you're simply returning their hospitality. They know the Islands well from vacations spent there, so no one will trip them up on details." "How about details of our trip?" Scotty asked. "They've been briefed thoroughly, by me. You can check them and fill in any missing details." Barby giggled. "I'm glad that you didn't have any doubts about our taking them in, Steve." "Steve knows we're available any time he needs us, and for anything we can give," Rick said. Steve smiled his thanks. "Well, now you can guess why I showed up with a hunk of artillery under my wing. I had to be sure there wasn't a reception party waiting. You never can tell about information leaks, no matter how careful you are, so I landed at the back end of the island with a squad of men and we went over the place with a fine-tooth comb. I didn't walk in until I was certain there wasn't a stranger on the island--including strangers you might not have known about." Hartson Brant rose. "Well, I think we've settled all initial details except where we put the Millers--or rather, the Morrisons. Can you bring them tomorrow?" Steve rose, too. "As Rick and Barby said, I didn't have any doubts. How about tonight?" "Tonight!" Barby gasped. "Are they here?" "Almost. They're on a cutter offshore. If it isn't convenient, I can keep them overnight." "Of course it's convenient," Mrs. Brant said firmly. "We'll put Mr. and Mrs. Morrison in John Gordon's room. He's still out West. And we'll take the spare twin bed out of Hobart Zircon's room and put Janice in with Barby. Bring them ashore right away, Steve. Barby and I will get busy, and Rick and Scotty can move the spare bed." "Wonderful." Steve walked out to the porch and coughed twice. Rick hurried to his side just in time to see one of the trees in the orchard yield up a dark shadow that turned out to be a Coast Guard petty officer, carbine at the ready and a walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder. "Let me have your horn, Smitty," Steve requested. The coastguardman gave Rick a curious look as he handed Steve the phone. The agent said, "Nevada, this is Texas. Deliver the goods." The reply was, "Texas, this is Nevada. The package is in the mail." Steve handed the phone back to the coastguardman and ordered, "Get the boys together and return to the ship, Smitty. Repeat their instructions. They don't know where they've been, and they don't know what they've been doing." Smitty grinned. "Aye-aye, sir. That won't be hard. None of us really know where we've been or what we've been doing." "Life is easier that way," Steve said. "Shove off, now." "Aye-aye, sir." The guardsman faded off into the night. "Let's move furniture," Steve suggested. For the next few moments the house was a flurry of activity. Rick and Scotty dismantled the twin bed in Zircon's room, explaining only to the big scientist that unexpected company had arrived. Zircon, engrossed in a theoretical problem, scarcely noticed. By the time Mrs. Brant was satisfied with arrangements and had counted the towels for the third time, Steve called from downstairs that the boat was arriving. Rick, Scotty, and Barby ran to Steve's side and walked with him toward the landing where the Spindrift boats were moored. Dismal had paid little attention to the proceedings, but now, fearful of being left behind, the pup raced ahead of the group. [Illustration: _The coastguardman gave Rick a curious look_] The boat carrying the Morrisons--for so Rick was already conditioning himself to think of them--was approaching the dock. As the group hurried to meet the unexpected guests, two coastguardmen leaped from the big motor whaleboat and made it fast. Dismal got there first. He barked furiously, trying to frighten off the invaders, then his barks suddenly changed to an anguished howl as a new voice joined in the racket. It was a feline voice, and a highly indignant one. "Great grandma's ghost!" Steve exclaimed. "I forgot to tell you they have a cat!" Dismal shot by them, followed by an enormous creature with glowing eyes that yowled at the top of its lungs, in what was probably very coarse language to anyone who spoke cat talk. Dismal had at last met his match, and was beating an inglorious retreat. Just as Rick was about to take up the chase and rescue his pup, the cat decided to break off the engagement. The ruffled fur subsided slightly as the animal turned from the chase and approached the four who had been hurrying to the pier. In the beam of Steve's flashlight Rick saw that the cat was a huge blue Persian, and though he knew little about cats, he recognized that this was an aristocrat of its kind. The Persian gave a meow of greeting, then walked up and rubbed against Barby's legs. It gave out a noise that reminded Rick of a wood rasp rubbing over a piece of broken pine. The cat was purring! Barby had stamped her foot angrily at the sight of Dismal being forced to retreat to the house, but the cat was too much for her. "You beautiful thing!" she exclaimed, and picked the creature up. It responded by purring louder. Rick grinned. On the pet level, at least, the Morrison invasion was off to a fast start. He hoped the incident wasn't symbolic. CHAPTER III A System Within a System When Rick came down to breakfast the next morning, the day was already hours old for his father, Steve Ames, Julius Weiss, Parnell Winston, and Dr. Walter Miller alias Morrison. The scientists had been closeted in the library with Steve since dawn, their talks interrupted only by Mrs. Brant serving coffee to the group. Steve, too, had remained overnight. Barby and Scotty were around the island somewhere with Janice. Mrs. Brant and Mrs. Morrison were in the kitchen, getting acquainted and finding that they had friends in common. It wasn't that Rick had slept late; he was on time. Everyone else had gotten up early. Rick told himself that he was the only calm member of the family, but underneath he was a little chagrined. If he had arisen earlier, he might have been able to take part in the talks now going on in the library. The Morrisons had been so tired from the strain of getting out of Washington undetected, and from the trip in the confined quarters of the Coast Guard cutter that they had gone to bed almost immediately. Dr. Morrison turned out to be a tall man with a kind, tired face, steel-rimmed glasses, and a shock of curly white hair. Mrs. Morrison was a pleasant, stylish woman whose reaction was a mixture of pure pleasure at finding herself in the comfortable Brant home and embarrassment at the circumstances that had forced her to impose herself on strangers. Rick had liked both the Morrisons immediately. His reaction to Janice was favorable, too. He admitted that she was a remarkably pretty girl, as dark as Barby was fair, and of about the same height and slimness. She hadn't said a great deal, and he decided at once that she was shy. Barby had taken to her immediately, and she to Barby. The last thing Rick had heard before falling asleep was the two of them talking and giggling in the room down the hall. He walked into the dining room, hoping he wasn't too late for breakfast, and stopped short, stifling a laugh at the sight that met his eyes. The Morrisons' cat, whose name was Shah, was crouched on one of the dining-room chairs. Dismal was sniffing around beneath the chair, obviously looking for the cat. As Rick watched, Dismal gave up the search and walked from under the chair. Instantly he was batted on the nose from above by a paw that moved with supersonic speed. Rick laughed as Dismal gave a cry of pure frustration and headed for the kitchen at a trot. The cat had been playing, since the blow was struck with claws sheathed. If Shah had wanted to hurt the pup, raking claws could have torn deep furrows. Rick stroked the silky fur and Shah purred hoarsely. He hadn't had much experience with cats, but he liked this one. The Persian had a sense of humor. Rick went into the kitchen and consoled Dismal, after bidding good morning to his mother and Mrs. Morrison. The pup rolled over on his back and played dead, his only trick. The boy scratched Dismal's stomach until the pup's hind leg flailed in delighted ecstasy. "Am I too late for breakfast?" Rick asked his mother. "Of course not. We'll be ready in ten minutes." Rick wandered out to the screened front porch that was the Brants' summer living room. The ocean was calm this morning. He searched the horizon for some sign of the Coast Guard cutter. There was none, which didn't surprise him. Steve was too old a hand to attract attention to Spindrift by having a government craft waiting offshore. Barby, Jan, and Scotty were walking from the long, low gray laboratory building on the southeast corner of the island, past the place where the Sky Wagon, his plane, usually was staked down. His landing strip ran along the seaward edge of the island, from the lab building to the front of the house. However, the plane still carried the pontoons with which it had been fitted for the Virgin Islands trip, and for the time being, it was drawn ashore at Pirate's Field. Presently the trio joined him on the porch. Jan smiled and said good morning in her soft voice. Scotty said, "I thought you were going to sleep all day." Barby came to Rick's defense. "He was tired. After all, it's hard work to get wonderful ideas like the one he had last night." Apparently Barby had told Jan all about it, because the girl asked, "Can I be a member of the Megabuck Mob?" There seemed to be just a touch of wistfulness about the way she added, "You always seem to be having adventures of one sort or another at Spindrift." Rick answered, "Please don't believe everything Barby tells you. She exaggerates, sort of." "I do not," Barby answered emphatically. "We do have adventures. Besides, Jan already knew about some of them, because she read about Spindrift in the papers. And she's already a member of the Mob, because I invited her!" Rick interpreted Barby's glare correctly. It said that if he wasn't gracious and nice to their new guest, he would have his sister to reckon with, and, as he knew full well, she was no mean adversary. "Fine," he said. "Welcome to the Mob, Miss Morrison. We'll assign you the subject of economic history." "Jan, please," she answered, then smiled shyly. "But couldn't I have another subject? I'm just not the type to know much about economics, I guess." "That's just the point," Scotty explained. Barby had a serious look on her pert face. "Of course Rick's idea about stealing a million from quiz shows was just a joke. But, Rick, you gave me an idea--if you'll co-operate." "It depends on the idea," Rick answered warily. "Oh, don't be so cautious. I'm not trying to trap you into taking me on any trips." Barby referred to the promise she had once wangled out of her brother that she could go on the next expedition, a promise that had gotten the Spindrift young people entangled in a hazardous adventure in the far-off South Seas. Rick perched on the arm of a sofa. "Okay. Let's have it." "Well, I was thinking about the Harvest Moon Show at school." She explained, in an aside to Jan, "Every October the high school puts on a big variety show in the city auditorium to raise money for the school athletic fund. Rick said he could make me a radio receiver that I could wear in my hair." "He can," Scotty interjected. "Remember the control radios we made for the Tractosaur? He could make one for you the same way." The Tractosaur was a "thinking bulldozer" the Spindrift scientists had designed. Barby continued, "I know you can make a small transmitter that will fit in your pocket, because that's all the Tractosaur control was, really. Well, if I wore a receiver that no one could see, and if you carried a transmitter that no one could see, we could put on the most wonderful mind-reading act in history!" Rick's quick imagination elaborated on Barby's words. It was a great idea! He could work among the audience, while Barby sat blindfolded on the stage. He would choose a person in the audience and ask for something from wallet or purse, and whisper: "Please let me have your driver's license. Thank you. Mr. Charles Rogers, is it?... Where is 3218 Newark Drive?... Oh, over by the airfield. Well, Mr. Rogers, let me see if I can transmit all this information telepathically to my sister." Then he would hold up the driver's license and say loudly, "What have I here?" And Barby, who had heard every whispered word, would answer. He would coax the information out of her, and the audience would be baffled. "Sensational," he complimented her. "We'll do it." "Brant and Brant," Scotty intoned, "the marvels of the universe! See the living proof of the science of parapsychology! Mystifying, terrifying, a scientific phenomenon without parallel that has baffled the leading minds of the world!" Scotty's quick mind also had caught the implications of Barby's idea. Jan Morrison was a scientist's daughter, too, and printed electronic circuits were no mystery to her. She said enthusiastically, "You could even do mind reading at a distance." "How?" Barby asked. "Well, if there were two transmitters, Scotty could have one, too. He could go to someone outside the auditorium, like the mayor, or some other official, and have him write a sentence on a sheet of paper, which Scotty could read over his shoulder. Then Barby, on the auditorium stage, would ask everyone to look at their watches, and say that the mayor had just written so and so on a sheet of paper, then burned it. Scotty would bring the mayor to the auditorium, and Barby would tell him what she had said, and at what time, and ask him if it was right. Of course it would be." Rick looked at the girl with new respect. It was a very good gimmick indeed. He said as much. Barby put her arm around Jan's waist. "We'll be sure to invite you to the show. Won't it be fun?" "If it's safe for us to let people know where we are by then," Jan said somberly. They fell silent at the reminder that Jan's presence was far more serious than a casual visit. Finally Rick said, "We'll get to work on the sets this afternoon." "Make it tomorrow," Barby said quickly. "I sort of promised Jan something...." Rick and Scotty exchanged glances. "I said you and Scotty would teach her how to use the aqualungs." Rick breathed a sigh of relief. That would be no hardship. He and Scotty needed practice, anyway. They had hardly used the lungs since returning from the Virgin Islands. Mrs. Brant summoned them to breakfast and they walked in to find Steve and the scientists gathered at the big table. "Got everything settled?" Rick asked. "Just about," Steve replied. "We have a job for you, though." Rick's pulse quickened. "What is it?" "Your father and Weiss will need to pay a quick trip to Washington. I want you to take them in the Sky Wagon." "When?" Scotty inquired. "Tomorrow morning. You'll come back tomorrow afternoon." Over breakfast, Rick tried to get more information from the agent. "Exactly what are we working on, Steve?" Ames sipped steaming coffee thoughtfully. "Ever hear of a weapon system?" Rick had. "It's a weapon so complicated, with so many parts, that it's actually a system instead of just a simple weapon. I think the term is used mostly for missiles." "You think right. Well, Winston, Weiss, and your father will help Dr. Morrison do the basic design work on a system to go into a weapon system." Scotty had been listening, too. "How complicated can you get?" he asked. Dr. Morrison answered. "When it comes to missile work, you can get fantastically complicated. In fact, some missile systems are so complicated it's a wonder they ever work at all." The telephone rang. Barby, who served when necessary as the island's switchboard operator, ran to answer. In a moment she returned. "It's for you, Steve. From Washington. I plugged it in on the library extension." Steve excused himself. A few moments later he returned. "Hartson, I just took the liberty of ordering a scrambler placed on your phone switchboard, in case we need to hold any classified conversations between here and my offices. The phone man will install it today, if you have no objection." "Of course not," Hartson Brant said. "I think it's a sensible precaution, especially with one member of the team remaining in Washington." "What's a scrambler?" Barby asked. "A special device that turns phone conversations into jumbled gibberish so no one can understand them. You talk normally, and sound normal to the person listening. But anyone tapping in on the line gets only sounds that mean nothing." The agent's face turned grim. "Speaking of gibberish reminds me of the reason for the call. The _Washington Post_ carried a story in one of its columns this morning hinting that two scientists working on a supersecret project had been driven insane. It also hinted that the insanity was an effect of the gadget they were working on!" CHAPTER IV A Haircut and a Wink Rick held the Sky Wagon at the altitude to which he had been assigned by the control tower at Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington. He was a little nervous because there was more air traffic around him than he had ever seen before. Across the Potomac River, so close that the traffic patterns almost interlocked, was busy Washington National Airport. Below him along the Anacostia River were two military airports; Anacostia, at which he would land, and Bolling Air Force Base. And to complicate matters slightly, Andrews Air Force Base was only a short distance away. A thousand feet above his head a tremendous Air Force Stratocruiser circled patiently. A thousand feet below him a flight of Navy Banshee fighters awaited clearance for landing. And climbing through the pattern came a division of Air Force F-80's. Rick's neck ached from swiveling around. Scotty was helping him watch for other aircraft. But in the rear seat, Hartson Brant and Julius Weiss talked a steady stream, as they had ever since taking off from Spindrift. Rick wished he were as oblivious to the traffic. Actually, he didn't know what they were talking about. Good as his scientific training was, they were in a realm where his young mind hadn't even probed. His earphones gave out: "Tower to Spindrift Flight. You are cleared to land. Approach from Northeast." Rick glanced down in time to see the Navy fighters peel off in a precision maneuver that was lovely to watch. Then, on their heels, he stood the Sky Wagon up on a wing and slid down toward the muddy river below. A short time later Rick called for instructions and was told to beach at Ramp Three. He located it without difficulty. Scotty climbed out on the pontoon and caught the rope thrown by a seaman. In a few moments they were beached. A stocky young man who might have been a government clerk approached and introduced himself as Tom Dodd. The identification folder he held out bore the familiar JANIG imprint. "Steve phoned ahead," he said. "Do you need anything for your plane?" "We'd better top off the tank," Rick said. "Everything else is all right." He described the kind of gas his plane used, fearful that the Navy might use either a higher or lower octane that would not be suitable. Dodd gave instructions to a Navy petty officer, then led the Spindrifters to a waiting sedan. Rick got into the back seat and slumped back between his father and Weiss. The little mathematician looked at him in some alarm. "Rick! You look done in. What on earth is wrong?" He smiled feebly. "I'm a sissy, Professor. The only other times I've flown into Washington I landed at light-plane airports outside the city. This morning I got right into the middle of the big kids. Honest, the traffic was worse than Times Square. I was so scared I'd lose position and bang into someone that I almost swiveled my head off." Tom Dodd looked back and grinned sympathetically. "Don't feel badly. Even the commercial pilots sit up straight and keep bright-eyed on the Washington approach. Airwise, it's one of the most crowded cities in the world." As Tom steered the big sedan expertly through the traffic en route to downtown Washington, Rick asked his father, "What were you and Professor Weiss talking about? You lost me just about the time we got air-borne." The scientist shook his head. "This time, Rick, I can't help much. Ask me again when you've completed your undergraduate work in college." "I'm afraid your father is right," Weiss agreed. "When one gets deeply into the physical sciences there are no longer simple mechanical analogies; there are only equations that I'm afraid are beyond you for now, Rick." Rick sighed. "A lot of help I'm going to be on this project!" "You're not supposed to help," his father corrected. "The project is entirely for the purpose of developing principles for the system. The final product will be the equations with which the technologists can begin actual system design. In other words, we are working only on the first theoretical step." "But the newspaper article said the scientists were affected by a gadget," Scotty objected. "The article was wrong. Paper covered with mathematical computations can scarcely affect anyone," Hartson Brant said decisively. Rick stared through the window. The sedan was moving down Constitution Avenue toward 14th Street. "But how did the newspaper find out anything in the first place?" Dodd swung the sedan around a truck, then shrugged expressively. "We'd like to know. Columnists have their sources of information. Usually the source isn't close to the inside dope, so most of the columns are pretty inaccurate. A good thing, too, otherwise the enemy would be getting our top-secret information in print all the time. Probably this leak came from someone in the hospital where the team members were taken." Conversation lapsed until Dodd swung the sedan into a restricted parking place near the corner of 15th and K streets. Then he led the way into an office building. Rick looked around him as they walked to the elevators. It was a typical large office building with an arcade-type lobby. He noticed a haberdashery shop, a barbershop, a florist, a newspaper-tobacco stand, and the entrance to a drug store. The building directory was loaded with names. In the elevator, Dodd said, "Four, please." The Spindrifters were the only ones that got off at that floor. As the door slid closed, Rick saw that a man was seated in an alcove, just out of sight of anyone who got off the elevator. Dodd greeted him, then said, "Remember these faces, Sam." Sam nodded without speaking. Dodd led them down a hall. Rick had to satisfy his curiosity. "Is this a government building?" "No. It's a regular office building. We leased this floor under the name of a phony corporation. It's entirely ours, but the rest of the building is occupied by legitimate firms." "Isn't that risky?" Weiss asked. "It depends. If the project is penetrated, then it becomes easier for the enemy in one way, since we don't have the protection of a government building. On the other hand, the public has free access to all but a few of the government buildings, while we can control who comes in and out of this floor." "What does 'penetrated' mean?" Scotty inquired. "Known to the enemy." "But couldn't you have put the project in the Pentagon, or in the Atomic Energy Commission Building?" Rick pursued. "Yes, except that it's top secret, even within the government. I doubt that more than two dozen people even know about it. Remember, the best security is not to let people even suspect that a thing exists." "But the project has been penetrated," Scotty pointed out. "We don't know that. The newspaper article gave no details, remember. Only that some unidentified scientists had gone insane. No location, no names, no anything of real value. And we have taken precautions. After all, you have the team chief. Only one man is left, and we hope to get him out of here, too." Dodd swung open a door that opened into a bare outer office, and led them into an inner room where a man bent over a desk. Rick knew his name. This was Dr. Humphrey Marks, the reluctant bachelor. All Rick could see for the moment was a bald head. It was completely bald, not even a fringe of hair remaining. It gleamed in the light of the desk lamp. Presently the bald pate revolved back and a truculent face stared up at them. Dr. Marks looked like a man who had been born impatient. His underslung jaw thrust forward as he demanded, "Well, well? What is this, Dodd? Well? Who are these people?" Dodd was unperturbed. "Dr. Brant, Dr. Weiss, and Richard Brant and Donald Scott." Marks harrumphed. He stood erect, and he was scarcely taller than little Julius Weiss. He had a solid, square build and massive hands. "I am honored, gentlemen," he said crisply. "Sit down." The Spindrifters did so. "We will get to business," Marks stated. "You will forgive me if I begin on an elementary level. It is only for the purpose of defining the problem. Ames said you had been briefed by Miller, so I will confine the briefing to my part of the project." Hartson Brant and Julius Weiss produced notebooks. Rick and Scotty relaxed as best they could in the uncomfortable chairs and prepared to listen. "You are, of course, aware of the problems inherent in the development of inertial systems," Marks began. "Perturbations are many, and both predictable and random. Consider our missile. We set its little brain for a given pattern. We depend on its inertia to inform the brain when perturbations are pulling it off course. The brain then takes the necessary corrective action. This, of course, is oversimplification." It wasn't very simple to Rick. He squirmed uncomfortably on the hard chair. "Now, we have dealt primarily with the perturbations one would expect. The equatorial bulge, for example. The result? We still have a probable error of several miles in hitting the target. This is not to be borne, gentlemen. We must have precision. Now, what information do we have that allows such precision? We have the effects of perturbation of the other planetary bodies and of the sun itself. These we may calculate closely. We shall use them to guide our missile, as they interact with the missile's own inertia." Marks broke off to glare at Rick. He inquired acidly, "Do I perhaps bore you? Or have you a serious itch? If so, scratch it, for heaven's sake. You are squirming so, I can see only a blur through the corner of my eye." Hartson Brant came to his son's rescue. He looked at Dodd. "May the boys be excused? I'm sure this discussion will be of no value to them, and probably they have some things they would like to do." Dodd nodded. "If you decide to leave the vicinity, let Sam know." "We'll be in the lobby," Rick said. He motioned to Scotty. His feelings were of mixed relief at getting out of there and irritation at Marks for what amounted to summary dismissal. As they walked to the elevator, Rick asked, "What did you make out of that?" "Not much. How about you?" "A little," Rick admitted. "Enough to know what the project is aiming at." "Which is?" "A guidance system for the intercontinental missile, and a fantastic one that uses the moon and the sun, and maybe Venus and Mars as guideposts." Scotty whistled. "As you said, a lot of good we'll be to this project. Well, what do we do now?" Rick ran a hand through his hair. "Follow Barby's instructions." His sister had said bluntly that both he and Scotty were getting as shaggy as Dismal, and please get haircuts. He knew why, of course. Barby wanted them to be at their best, because she liked Jan Morrison very much and wanted Jan to like the boys, too. Sam nodded to them as they walked to the elevator. Rick noted that the guard could watch the stairs as well as the elevator doors. He also noted that the guard's coat was loose, and that the butt of a Magnum revolver was within easy reach of his hand. Knowing how Steve Ames operated, Rick also suspected that other, less visible, methods had been taken to guard the fourth floor, but there was nothing he could see. It was still early in the day and the barbershop in the lobby was not crowded. Rick and Scotty both were able to get chairs. Rick browsed through a magazine as the barber worked, but found nothing of interest. He put it down and looked around him. The shop was like any other shop, anywhere. He thought that barbershops may vary in the number of chairs, the luxuriousness of the appointments, and the size of the mirrors, but they all have about the same smell, and the same collection of bottles for the barber's use. However, one item attracted Rick's attention, because it seemed out of place. It looked for all the world like the hair driers one finds in beauty shops. There was a stand, and a metal hood. He gestured toward it. "What's that?" "It's for treating dry hair," the barber answered. "Special oil treatment, with electric massage. Very good." Rick's hair was dry from frequent immersion in both salt and fresh water. Being inquisitive about everything in the world, he thought about trying it. "Maybe I'll have time for a treatment," he said. The barber ran a hand through the boy's light-brown hair. "You don't need one. Your hair is healthy, and not especially dry. I wouldn't give you a treatment you don't need." "Have it your way," Rick said. The barber was either too lazy or too honest for his own good. In all probability the machine would do nothing Rick couldn't do for himself with his own two hands. There was a good view of the elevators through the barbershop windows. Rick watched people coming and going, and speculated for his own amusement on who they might be, and their business in the building. Speculation was idle, of course. Take Tom Dodd. No one, without inside knowledge, would suspect that he was a federal agent engaged in guarding a hush-hush project on the fourth floor. Or Dr. Marks. Who would suspect that he carried a vital secret? Or, more accurately, that he was working on one? As the barber was brushing Rick off, the boy saw his father step out of the elevator, stop, and look around. He saw the elevator operator step from the car, look into the barbershop, and wink. Rick almost winked back, then he realized that the operator was winking at the barber and not at him. The scientist saw Rick at almost the same moment and walked into the barbershop. "Julius will be busy for another half hour," he said. "I think I'll follow your example, Rick." He climbed into the chair Rick had just vacated. Scotty was through, too. The boys took seats and busied themselves reading magazines. Hartson Brant's hair had needed only trimming, not complete cutting, so he was finished in a short time. The barber shook out his cloth, then put it back on for the finishing touches. Rick glanced up as the barber spoke. "Your hair's pretty dry, sir, and I have an excellent treatment here. I'd like to give you one. It would make your hair look better, and make it easier to handle." Tension swept through Rick as though someone had turned on an electric current. The tension had no focus. It was just that something deep within him had reacted. He stood up and dropped his magazine. "Dad," he said hastily, "I just saw Julius go through the lobby." "Where did he go?" Hartson Brant demanded. "I didn't see him." "I think he went through the front door," Rick said. "Better hurry. I'll try to catch him." Outside the barbershop he stopped, to let Scotty catch up with him. "Why should Weiss run out through the front door?" Scotty demanded. "He didn't. It was a stall, to get Dad out of there in a hurry." "But why?" "I don't know," Rick said slowly. "For some reason, I just didn't want him to have that dry-hair treatment!" CHAPTER V JANIG Runs a Security Check There wasn't much evidence on which to base his reaction, Rick admitted. But when he reacted, he just reacted and that's all there was to it. Call it a hunch, or call it nonsense. That's how it was, and he couldn't change it. The barber had practically refused him a dry-hair treatment--and his hair was rather dry. The same barber had tried to sell a treatment to Hartson Brant--whose hair was not dry at all. And the elevator boy who had carried the scientist down from the fourth floor had winked at the barber. Even admitting that it added up to no evidence of anything, it bothered him. He had asked Tom Dodd how much JANIG knew about the barber. Tom admitted that JANIG didn't know much. After all, he pointed out, it was impossible to check everyone in an office building of that size, or at least impractical. Furthermore, it was a cover operation, and any kind of a careful check on people in the building would warn them that something was going on. Tom agreed, however, that it was better to be safe than sorry. JANIG would run a check on the barber, even though Rick's evidence was no evidence at all. Rick wasn't satisfied. He felt he had to talk it over with Steve Ames, and called the agent, who was in JANIG's New York office, as soon as he got home. There was a small switch box next to the telephone in the library. It had only two positions, one marked "normal" and the other not marked at all. Steve asked, "Who is it?" "Rick." "Throw your switch." Rick did so, with no apparent results. "Nothing happened," he said. "Nothing audible," Steve corrected. "I threw mine at the same time. We're scrambled. Go ahead, Rick, what is it?" Rick told him the story. Steve didn't laugh. He had had experience with Rick's hunches before. "All right. I've already talked with Tom Dodd. He told me the story and I agreed we should run a check. He also reported that Weiss had persuaded Marks to come to Spindrift so the team could work together. I have Dodd planning how to get him out of Washington." "Tom told me why no check had been run on the people in the building," Rick said hesitantly. "Honestly, Steve, I thought you always checked on everyone who might have a connection with a case." "We do," Steve said flatly. "But we can't check on everyone in the city of Washington. Consider, Rick. There are several hundred people that work in the building and perhaps as many more who go there regularly for perfectly legitimate reasons. We couldn't run a deep check on all of them, and a superficial check wouldn't mean anything. So we don't check. Instead, we make sure we know about the people the scientists see regularly, and we give physical protection not only to the scientists but to the floor they work on. We keep a careful check to be sure our phones aren't tapped, and there's a scrambler on each line. Of course the moment we get even a slight odor of fish, we run a check. That's why we're working on your barber right now. We're also checking the elevator operator." "All right. I was off base, I guess." "Not at all. I'd be disappointed if you didn't ask for explanations." There was one other question in Rick's mind. "How do you know we weren't followed back to Spindrift?" Steve chuckled. "You had two cars on your tail. They'd have picked up anyone who tried to follow Tom. What's more, our men at the airport identified every plane that took off from the vicinity of Washington for two hours after your departure." Rick said sheepishly, "Sorry, Steve." "Forget it. I'll be in touch with you, Rick." Steve was right, of course. JANIG was on the job and would plug any loose holes. And once Marks arrived, Spindrift would be the only base the JANIG men had to cover. That would make it simpler. Rick decided he might as well put the matter out of his mind. Barby, Jan, and Scotty were waiting for him on the front porch. Scotty asked, "What gives?" "Steve says to forget it." Jan frowned, her pretty face worried. "Barby told me about these odd hunches you sometimes get. Aren't they ever wrong?" Rick grinned. "I'll say they are. Don't worry, Jan. You're safe here." Her dark eyes flashed at him. "I'm not worried about myself. I'm worried about my father." Rick apologized. "I didn't mean that quite the way it sounded. But don't forget, Jan. Our father is in this, too. So we'll worry with you--if there's any worrying to be done." Barby changed the subject. "It's still early. Why can't we give Jan another swimming lesson?" They had started the day before teaching Jan how to use underwater breathing apparatus. She was an excellent swimmer, almost as good as Barby. But she had never had experience with mask, fins, and snorkel, so lessons in the use of those were required before she could graduate to the aqualungs. "Let's go," Rick said. In a short time the four had changed to swimming suits and were testing the water off Pirate's Beach. It was cold, but not unbearable. Once they were accustomed to it, Rick picked up the instructions where he had left off the day before. Jan was using Barby's mask, snorkel, and fins. They would get her some of her own on the first trip to Whiteside. Barby had borrowed her father's equipment. The mask wasn't a perfect fit, but she was experienced enough not to mind a little leakage. The snorkel was all right, since no fit was involved, but the fins were ludicrous on her small feet. She had stuffed cotton in the toes to make them tight enough to wear, but that made the fins hard to control. "Follow the leader!" Rick called. "I'll lead, Jan next, Scotty next, and Barby bring up the rear." That was so Scotty would be instantly aware of any trouble Jan got into. Barby could swim as well as either of the boys and needed no watching. Rick started by going straight out, watching the bottom through his mask. When he got to about the fifteen-foot depth, he bent at the waist and threw his legs upward. He slid smoothly into the water, rolling on his back to watch Jan. She imitated his movements perfectly, and he turned back, satisfied. She was graceful as a seal in the water. It wouldn't take much to make a first-class diver out of her. Rick went to the bottom and moved along, doing underwater acrobatics and touching a rock here and there. Then he turned over on his back again and started upward, eyes on Jan. She followed. He led the way back to the beach. As the group emerged from the water and lifted their masks, Rick looked at Scotty. His pal nodded. "She'll do. She followed you like a shadow." "Good. All right, Jan. Next step is clearing your mask of water. The principle is easy. Just remember that gas is lighter than liquid. Your breath is lighter than the water. So you hold the top of your mask and blow it full of air, which forces the water out the bottom. Watch." He demonstrated a few times, then Jan tried it. She caught on easily. The instruction continued, until at the end of two hours, Rick took all of Jan's equipment and threw it into twelve feet of water. "Now," he said calmly, "go after it and put it on in the water. Clear your mask and snorkel, then come back to shore with full gear on and operating. No surfacing to take a breath. Use only the snorkel." Jan looked into the water thoughtfully. The moments ticked by. Finally Rick asked, "What is it?" The girl smiled. "I'm planning how I'll do it. If I don't plan in advance, it will be too late after I've started, and I intend to do it right the first time." Rick, Barby, and Scotty exclaimed together, "Good girl!" They laughed, and Rick explained, "That's what makes a safe diver. Know what you're going to do before you have to do it." Jan filled her lungs and dove. The three swam out over her and watched through their masks. She found the mask, and there was a bad moment when she got it on upside down, but she quickly reversed it, held it to her face, and blew it clear. Only then did she bother with the strap that held it. Rick watched, pleased. He hadn't told her it wasn't necessary to attach the mask before clearing. She put the snorkel mouthpiece in place, but did not bother to attach the rubber strap to her head. Then, working smoothly but without waste of time, she slipped on the fins and flashed to the surface. The snorkel emerged and she blew it clear, then swam to the beach. "Perfect," Rick applauded. "You're a natural," Scotty added. Barby just beamed. Jan was obviously pleased at their praise, but she was a little shy, too, so she contented herself with smiling her thanks. "Aqualung instruction tomorrow morning," Rick said. "Come on. I've worked up an appetite." That evening Rick began work on the radio circuits, as he had promised Barby. The transmitters would be the easiest part, since he could use the same circuits that had gone into the design of the Tractosaur controls, modified only slightly for use on the highest amateur band. Fortunately, Rick had both an operator's and station licenses as a radio "ham," so Barby's scheme wouldn't mean illegal operation. The girls wandered into the shop where he and Scotty were at work, but there was nothing exciting about the painstaking work of laying out diagrams, so they soon left. Scotty paused in his work of assembling the parts they would need. "Rick, how about making transceivers instead of simple transmitters?" "So we can send and receive on the same unit? We can do it, all right. But why?" "I was just thinking. Quite a few times we'd have been a lot better off if we could talk back and forth at a distance. There's no reason why these have to be designed just for you and Barby to use in the mind-reading act." Scotty was right, of course. He usually was. "We'll make a pair of transceivers, and a receiver for Barby. Unless you think we ought to build a transceiver into her outfit, too." "Would it be much work?" "Not much. We might as well, I suppose." They buckled down to the job. Rick found he couldn't work long, however. "I've still got that guitar-string feeling," he admitted. "I'm all tight inside." He didn't like it, and there was no apparent reason for it. But that didn't help him to get rid of it. Scotty knew Rick from long experience. "Wish I could help," he said, "but I'm stymied. There's nothing we can get our teeth into. Those two scientists bother me. I can't imagine what would put two perfectly sensible and healthy people into a state like Steve describes." "Same here." Rick had thought about it a number of times in the past day, but had reached no conclusion. "But if it's from natural causes, how did Marks and Miller--I mean Morrison--escape?" Scotty grinned wryly. "You're not asking me because you expect an answer." "No," Rick agreed. He said abruptly, "I've had it. Let's hit the hay." He might have felt better, or worse, had he been able to tune in on a conversation between Tom Dodd and Steve Ames that was going on at that very moment. "We've had seven men on it ever since this morning," Tom was saying. "We checked him from here to breakfast, and the record is absolutely negative. Same for the elevator operator. The barber is a wanderer, never stays in one shop for long. He's hunting another job right now. The machine is his, and it's the only one of its kind. We sent Mike Malone in for a treatment. He says the machine is good. Apparently it's nothing but a hood with three massage machines installed on spring mounts, so they fit the head. The barber applies oil, then turns on the machine. It has dials, but they're fakes. It's a massage machine, pure and simple, and it passed the health inspection board, so we know it's not harmful." Steve Ames said thoughtfully, "Negative record. Hmm. Well, at least no one has ever caught up with him if he happens to be a wrong one. It doesn't prove he's clean." "Too true. Any ideas?" "Just keep an eye on him. He's innocent until we get some evidence that he may be guilty. Same for the elevator operator. But, for now, we'll consider you've drawn a blank and let it go at that." CHAPTER VI A Calm Precedes a Storm A crisis had arisen and Rick and Scotty could only stand by helplessly. After all, what could mere males do in such a situation? Barby decided that Rick and Scotty were to fly over to Whiteside and get diving equipment for Jan, so she could have her own. It was easy to agree on the type of face mask, snorkel, and fins. But everything bogged down when it came to color. Rick's own mask, snorkel, and fins were sea green. Scotty had a green mask, blue snorkel, and black fins. Barby had a white mask, red snorkel, and white fins. "Look," Rick said impatiently. "What earthly difference does it make? The principal thing is comfort. If the fins feel good and the mask fits comfortably, that's it. Color? What difference does color make to a fish?" Barby sniffed. "I wouldn't expect you to understand." Jan looked at him coldly and stated that she wouldn't know what difference color made to a fish, because she was not a fish. "You swim like one," Scotty said diplomatically, but didn't even get a smile in return. There was only one thing for the boys to do, and that was to make as graceful a retreat as possible. They did so, and sat waiting under a tree in the orchard while raging debate went on between the girls on the porch. Rick looked over at the laboratory building. His father and the other scientists were hard at work on the project, he supposed. He felt rather left out, because they were too busy to talk with him, and when he went in to look around he could see only stacks of paper covered with equations that he couldn't begin to understand. "Wonder when Marks will arrive?" he asked. Scotty shrugged. "We'll probably find out when he gets here." Dr. Marks had agreed to join the team at Spindrift as soon as he finished running some of the team calculations through the automatic computer at the Bureau of Standards in Washington. Tom Dodd would arrive with him, Steve had reported. Meanwhile, protection for the Spindrift team was under the direction of another of Steve's men, Joe Blake. Joe and another agent took turns in the laboratory, sleeping and eating there and emerging one at a time for a little exercise. Nor were Joe and his partner the only protection. In the woods on the mainland, just out of sight of the tidal flat, a group of four Boy Scout leaders were encamped, working on special camping and pioneering qualifications that would enable them to become qualified instructors for their Scout Troops. The Whiteside newspaper had even carried a brief story about the Scout activities. But Jerry Webster, Rick's friend and newspaper reporter, hadn't known when he wrote the story that the Scout leaders carried an astonishing amount of armament for such a peaceful expedition. The JANIG agents, however, had been chosen for the assignment because they really were Scout leaders in their home communities. The story would stand investigation. Barby and Jan left the porch and walked to where the boys waited. "We've decided," Barby announced. The boys applauded politely. "You see," she went on, "I'm blond, and Jan is brunette." Rick squinted up at the girls. "By golly," he exclaimed, "that's right!" He put a hand on his heart. "One with hair filled with captured sunlight, the other with hair like the raven's wing, filled with the gleams of moonlight." Barby threatened him with her foot. "Be serious!" Rick composed his face in stern lines. "I am." "Well," Barby continued, "we decided that Jan should wear a white suit and white equipment. It will make her dark hair and her tan look very dramatic. But of course I can't wear white if she does." This was beyond Rick. Why they couldn't wear the same color was outside of his comprehension. "Of course not," he murmured politely. "So I'm going with you. We both have to have new bathing suits, a white one for Jan and a dark-blue one for me. And I'm going to give Jan my mask and fins, because they're white. So I'll have to get blue equipment for me. And my snorkel is red, and that just won't do, because..." Scotty held up his hand. "Say no more. I will swap snorkels with you, because mine is blue." "I knew you would when you understood," Barby said smugly. "I don't understand, but I'll trade. Come on. Let's go to Whiteside." Jan remained behind, because Steve had not given permission for the Morrisons to leave the island, and Rick refused to take the responsibility in spite of Barby's pleading. The best he could do was to promise to call Steve about it and perhaps get permission for future trips. The Sky Wagon landed at Whiteside pier, and the trio went to the nearby garage where the Brants' car was kept. Hartson Brant had decided it was more convenient to have a car available for use at all times than to depend on taxis, or on friends. The local sporting goods store had a good stock of equipment and Barby was able to purchase what she wanted without difficulty. But when it came to the bathing suits, she debated over the large selection for an hour before choosing two that were identical except for color. Rick and Scotty waited impatiently, now and then prodding Barby to hurry up. She refused to be hurried. Back at Spindrift, Jan met them with a greeting. "That certainly didn't take long! Barby, how on earth could you pick these out so quickly?" The boys looked at each other. Their opinion was that Barby had taken just one hour longer than necessary. Here, obviously, was that mysterious thing, the feminine mind at work. Rick examined the problem from the scientific viewpoint and got nowhere. The ways of girls defied analysis. Both boys had to admit, however, that the results of Barby's shopping had been worth the delay. Their own rather shabby swim trunks, torn and stained from contact with undersea rocks and coral, suddenly seemed sloppy. But when Barby examined the aqualung tanks distastefully and demanded that Rick paint them to match the new suits, both boys put their feet down emphatically. "The tanks are that color because they've been treated to withstand rust and corrosion," Rick stated. "If we paint 'em, the paint will only get knocked off and they'll look terrible. I won't do it." The girls exchanged a glance that seemed to say, "Boys! They have such stubborn, silly ideas!" Jan had already gone through the exercise of clearing the aqualung hoses of water, clearing her mask while using the lung underwater, and using the reserve lever on the tank, and Rick had instructed her in the theory of diving. Now it was time to put what she had learned to the ultimate test. The boys hauled the equipment down to the beach in Rick's old coaster wagon, modified for carrying equipment, then directed the girls to check the regulators, check the tanks, and connect regulators to tanks preparatory to diving. They lolled on the beach and watched. Scotty grinned. "This is the life. Tony Briotti tells me it's always this way in primitive societies. The men loaf while the women work. I'm in favor of it." "I'm sure you are," Barby said acidly. Jan said nothing, but continued to work with meticulous care. Rick watched closely, and was satisfied. There was ample equipment for all. Scotty helped Barby into her gear while Rick instructed Jan. "This is the tough part. If you make it, that's the end. From then on all you'll need is practice. We'll all swim down to the fifty-foot depth. Watch your ears and don't try to continue down if you feel any pain. Go back up a few feet and try to clear your ears. When we get to the bottom, I want you to take off all your equipment, swim away from it, then swim back and put it on. Okay?" Jan gave him a tremulous smile. "I think so." "Good. Plan how you'll do it. Remember, air is the last thing you'll need, and the first." "I'll remember." It was easy enough for a diver with plenty of experience, and the confidence that experience brings, but Rick remembered from his own training that it was plenty rough the first time. He held the tank while Jan got into harness and said reassuringly, "You'll make it. You're a natural for diving because you don't lose your head. That's just about the only really dangerous thing a diver can do." He got into his harness, then picked up his movie camera in its underwater case. At his signal, the four waded out into the cold water, splashed around a little to get accustomed to it, then put mouthpieces in place and prepared to don masks. Rick waited until last, and called, "Everybody getting air?" When they nodded, he put his own mouthpiece in place, checked to make sure the demand valve was working, then slipped the mask down from his forehead and went underwater. There was a convenient sandy space among the rocks at the fifty-foot level. He reached it and turned to count noses. All were present. Visibility was good enough. He set his camera and took a position cross-legged on the sand. Barby and Scotty took similar positions and waited. At Rick's signal, Jan slipped off her fins, which she placed carefully on the sand. Her weight belt followed, then her mask. Rick kept the camera going as she jerked the quick release buckle on her harness, then pulled the tank over her head, keeping the mouthpiece in place. At the last moment, she filled her lungs with air, let the mouthpiece drop to the sand, and swam away. Rick followed as she went about twenty feet into the rocks, and returned. Jan had planned well. She picked up the mouthpiece and held it high so the air rushed out, then she popped it into her mouth and began breathing. She didn't bother with the tank harness yet. Instead, she picked up her mask, adjusted it, and blew it clear. Only then, when she could see and breathe, did she leisurely put the harness straps in position and swing the tank over her head and into place on her back. She buckled it on, and added her weight belt. The fins were last. A flume of air from her exhaust, a sign of exhaustion, told Rick that Jan was tired. Probably the mental strain more than the exercise had left her too weak for further swimming. He slung the camera from a belt hook, took her hand and shook it solemnly, then led the way back to the beach. After a short rest the others were anxious to go back in again, but Rick vetoed the idea. "We could," he admitted, "and probably no harm would come of it. But skin diving is the easiest thing in the world to overdo. Jan is tired. And she's excited, even if she doesn't look it. This afternoon, after we've had a little rest, we can come back again and just have fun. There won't be any strain on Jan then, because she passed the last test with flying colors. So she can swim without worrying whether she's meeting our standards, or doing it the way we think it ought to be done." He grinned at the girl. "I know it was a strain. Remember, we've all been through it, too." Jan had a nice smile. "You're right," she admitted. "I was so scared I wouldn't do it correctly! Then, when I knew that it was all right, I sort of fell apart." Barby arose. "Come on, Jan. Let's go shower and change." She smiled with false sweetness at the boys. "Now that you're through testing Jan, I'm sure you won't mind doing your own work. 'Bye, now." And she left them to pick up the gear and truck it back to the laboratory building where it was kept. Rick got to the shower first, then stretched out on his bed to wait for Scotty. It's a fine day, he told himself. All is well. JANIG has the island covered like a blanket. The project team is going full speed ahead. We're having fun. Jan is just the companion Barby needs. All's right with the world. He turned over on his stomach and bunched his pillow up more comfortably. Then why, he asked himself, did he still feel funny? Scotty came in from the shower, toweling vigorously. "What's eating you?" he demanded. Rick turned over and stared at his pal. "Is it that obvious?" "It is to me. What's up?" "I don't know," Rick admitted. "Wish I did. Have you noticed how quiet everything is? It's like the day before a hurricane moves in. The ocean gets glassy, and there isn't any wind, and you're almost afraid to breathe because the air is so charged a breath might start the lightning." "'The calm before the storm,'" Scotty quoted. "Maybe it is. I feel it a little, too. But what can we do?" Rick shrugged as expressively as one flat on his back could manage. "Nothing. We can swim with the girls, and we can keep working on the radio units. But there isn't a single thing to do so far as the project goes. I wish there were. I feel left out." Scotty grinned. "You're never really happy unless we're up to our hips in trouble or a mystery. I know what's really bothering you. A fine, fat mystery is afoot and you haven't a shred of it you can call your own." Rick had to grin back. There was much in what Scotty said. As long as the mystery of the two scientists remained unsolved, he wouldn't be really happy. CHAPTER VII The Peripatetic Barber "We're trapped here," Barby said stormily, "and I want you to do something about it, Rick Brant! If you don't call Steve Ames and get permission for us to go to the mainland, I'll do it myself!" Rick sighed. He had tried to point out that Barby was being illogical. Neither the Morrisons nor the Brants were trapped anywhere. It was just that common sense required the Morrisons to be careful. Barby drove home another point. "Steve gave us a cover story, and what good is a cover story if you don't use it?" Scotty grinned at Rick's expression of resignation. "Better give up," he advised. Jan hadn't said anything. She just looked at Rick in a beseeching way that said as much as all Barby's arguments. Rick shook his head unhappily. He knew when he was licked. Come right down to it, he didn't have the say-so on Jan leaving the island, anyway. He had taken a stand against her going to Whiteside, based half on intuition and half on the knowledge that a secret soon ceases to be one when it's flaunted in public. And Jan's presence was a part of the big secret of Spindrift. He stood up and shrugged. "Chances are it will be all right. But if Jan is recognized by any of the enemy..." "Steve isn't even sure there is an enemy," Barby pointed out swiftly. "How can you be so sure?" Rick didn't answer. He turned and went into the house, the others at his heels. In the library, he consulted the schedule Steve had given them, so they would know where to reach him at any time. The agent was at JANIG headquarters in Washington today. Rick got the number, and asked for Steve's extension. In a moment he had the agent on the wire. "Let's scramble," he said, and threw the switch. Then, "Steve, Barby wants to take Jan to Whiteside. What do you think?" Steve hesitated before he answered, "It's a little hard to give reasons why she shouldn't go, Rick. Have you checked her on the cover story?" "Not yet. I will, though, if you say the word." Again Steve hesitated, and Rick knew the agent was very much in his own position. There were no reasons to believe it would do any harm. Yet... "Let her go," Steve said finally. "Only ask her and Barby not to get into any public parades. You know." "I know," Rick affirmed. "All right, Steve. When is Marks coming?" "We're not certain yet. Ask your father. Marks is having some trouble with the computations." "Okay, Steve. See you soon." He hung up and turned to the others. "He says all right, but please don't get into any public parades. In other words, Barby, don't cover too much territory." Scotty spoke up. "We'd better tell Duke and Jerry to leave it out of the paper." Duke Barrows was editor and Jerry Webster the reporter for the Whiteside paper. Both were good friends. "They'll play ball," Rick agreed. "Well, young ladies, when is the big safari?" Barby consulted her watch. "Right now. We'll dress and you can fly us over." "Then right now means in an hour. Okay. We'll be ready." Upstairs, Rick and Scotty washed up and changed into what Scotty called "shore-going clothes" that were only slightly less informal than their dungarees and T shirts. As they finished and sat down to wait for the girls, Rick picked up one of the radio units on the workbench. All were finished, although untested. A few final decorative touches remained for Barby's plastic headset, including setting in some rhinestones for her. It would look like any other plastic bauble when he finished. "Let's get some fresh batteries while we're in town," Rick suggested. "Then we can check these out tonight." "Okay. And remind me to pick up a new mouthpiece for the lung Jan uses. She says the one that's on it now is too big and uncomfortable. It hurts her mouth." Jan had become proficient under water with only a few hours practice. Rick had led the girls through the entire series of underwater maneuvers with the lungs, including practice in sharing one lung between them. He was satisfied that they both had a thorough understanding of team swimming and enough sense to stay out of at least the more obvious troubles novices can get into. He was content now to let them go off on their own, which they did fairly often. After Rick's estimated hour the girls were ready--except that Barby had to make a phone call. She spent another fifteen minutes arranging a small get-together at a friend's home to introduce Jan to her chums. "Now," she said brightly. "We're ready. Are you?" Rick wisely refrained from comment. Ten minutes later the four were in the Brants' car, en route to Barby's destination. Rick dropped the girls off and arranged to pick them up in two hours, then he turned the car toward town. "Let's visit Duke and Jerry," he suggested. Scotty looked at him. "Still bothered, aren't you?" Rick shrugged. It was hard to pinpoint the way he felt. He tried to put it into words. "I've talked to the scientists, including Parnell Winston. None of them has ever heard of an ailment like the thing that struck the team scientists. Winston especially knows a lot, because he's studied the human brain extensively. He doesn't even know of anything similar." Scotty knew all this because he had been present. But talking aloud helped to make things clearer, so he only commented, "And where does that leave us?" "At the starting line. We haven't moved an inch forward. But at least, if medical history seems to have no record of any such cases, we can assume that something new and different caused the scientists to go off the beam." "Yes, but if some enemy caused it, how was it done?" "Glad you asked that," Rick answered gloomily. "Wish someone could answer. Anyway, we know why it was done--if it was done. It was to cause trouble with the project. That would be important enough for an enemy to go to a lot of trouble." Scotty shook his head. "The thing that sticks in my craw is, how come only two of the scientists got hit? Why wasn't the same thing used on the others? If anything was used, that is." Rick was bothered by the same point, and he had no answer--nor did Steve Ames, with whom they had discussed the problem. To both boys, the puzzle was more than just an interesting problem to be solved. If some enemy really had penetrated the project and somehow caused disruption of the scientists' brains, then the people nearest and dearest to both of them were also in jeopardy. Spindrift now provided three out of five for the new project team. Rick swung into the main street and into the public parking lot. The Whiteside _Morning Record_ was in the heart of town, only a block away. Next to the parking lot was a hardware store where Rick planned to buy batteries, and diagonally across the street was the Sports Center. Nothing in Whiteside was far from anything else; it was a typical small town. It took only a moment to buy a box of batteries; they were the type used in hearing aids. Then the boys crossed the street to the Sports Center. Extra mouthpieces for the lungs were in stock. They chose one that seemed softer and smaller than the regulation models, then started for the newspaper. Two doors away from the Sports Center was the town's only barbershop. As they passed, Scotty suddenly grabbed Rick's arm and said hurriedly, "Come back!" Quickly he led the way out of sight of the barbershop windows. Rick looked at him curiously. "See something?" Scotty's forehead wrinkled. "I think so. But it's so unlikely that I'm not sure. Rick, I thought I saw the barber from Washington--the one with the massage machine!" [Illustration: _Rick focused the monocular on the barbershop_] Rick's mouth opened in astonishment. "You're kidding!" Scotty shook his head. "I'm not. I said I wasn't sure. But I don't want to stand in front and look, because if it is the barber, he'd recognize us." Rick thought quickly. "Come on." Back inside the Sports Center, he went to the manager and borrowed a powerful monocular--a pocket telescope that was really one half of a pair of binoculars. Then he and Scotty went across the street, taking care to keep out of sight of the barbershop by using parked cars as cover. Rick found a vantage point behind a sedan that had all its windows open. He focused the monocular on the barbershop window. Vince Lardner, the shop owner and--until now--the sole barber, was cutting the hair of a man Rick recognized as a local resident. A second barber was cutting the hair of another local man, but the barber had his back to the street for the moment. Rick waited patiently. Scotty asked, "See anything?" "Only his back. Wait a minute." Presently the barber spun the chair around and walked to the sink. In a moment he turned and his face came into view in the tight close-up the powerful glass provided. Rick sank his teeth into his lip and handed the glass to Scotty wordlessly. The pieces were beginning to fall in place now, and the assumption that the project had been penetrated was a long step closer to proved fact. The Washington barber had come to Whiteside! "Wonder what he's after?" Scotty asked. "One thing is for sure," Rick stated grimly. "He isn't here just to cut hair!" CHAPTER VIII The Mind Reader Strikes Jerry Webster often spoke of himself as "Whiteside's best reporter," which Rick considered a fair description, since he was the only reporter in town. Of course Duke Barrows, the editor, did some reporting himself, but that didn't count since he carried the title of managing editor. "I'm a good reporter because I can sense a story," Jerry told Rick and Scotty. "You two have that certain look that spells trouble. What gives?" "No trouble," Rick answered swiftly. "We just need a little help." Duke Barrows glanced up from the proof sheets he was editing. "When Spindrift needs a little help, there's always a story in it. We'll make a deal, won't we, Jerry? You give us the story and we'll supply the help." Rick knew Duke and Jerry well, so it wasn't necessary to beat around the bush. "No story. At least not yet, and I can't even give you a hint. Only we do need help." "Two kinds," Scotty added. "That's right. First of all, we have guests at Spindrift. Name of Morrison. You'll pick that up sooner or later, because Barby is running around town with Janice Morrison. What we need is a promise that you won't mention it in the paper." Duke's eyebrows went up. "Ahah! Trying to suppress legitimate news, are you? What do you think, Jerry?" Jerry Webster stared up at the ceiling. "I can see the headline now. 'Mysterious Visitors at Spindrift!' Lead paragraph: 'The mystery of strange visitors at Spindrift Island deepened today as members of the scientific foundation threatened the Whiteside _Morning Record_ with drastic action unless the story was withheld.' How's that, Duke?" "Needs editing," Duke replied, "but you're on the right track. What's the drastic action you're threatening us with?" Scotty grinned. "Item," he intoned. "Editor and reporter drowned in own ink supply. Bodies found among leftover newspaper copies, apparently discarded with other waste." "Too good for 'em," Rick disagreed. "How about 'Editor and reporter assume new dimensions. Rolled to paper thinness in own press.'" "That's drastic," Duke admitted. "Seriously, Rick, you must have some good reason for asking us to leave out what could only be a small social item." "It's a good reason, all right," Scotty answered him. "Only we can't tell you what it is, Duke." The editor looked at Jerry. "What say, can we take it on faith?" "Too simple," Jerry objected. "We ought to get something in trade." Scotty made eating motions. "Apple pie, with homemade ice cream? Sunday night. Said apple pie would be used to pack down a nice, thick steak." Jerry sighed. "I'm tempted." "It's a deal," Duke agreed. "Make mine rare. And I add one thing: If there's a story, we get it first." Rick looked pained. "Don't you always? But chances are, there never will be a story out of this." "Government deal," Duke said. "It has to be. Okay, Rick. We'll go along. What's the second kind of help?" Rick breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't doubted that Duke and Jerry would hold the story, but it was always hard to ask a favor without being able to give the reason. "There's a new barber in Vince Lardner's shop." "Think we're chumps who don't keep up with the news?" Jerry asked, his expression disdainful. "Of course there's a new barber. What of it?" "We need some information about him. If you'll just let me see your notes, that should do it." Jerry hesitated and Scotty grinned. "Bet he doesn't have any notes." Duke glared at Jerry. "See? You've embarrassed the _Record_. I told you to get the story on that barber this morning." "Time enough later," Jerry retorted, unruffled. "We don't need the dope until tonight, and I'll have it. What kind of information do you want?" Rick listed the points on his fingers. "Where he came from, his full name, how he happened to get the job--I mean whether he applied directly to Vince or whether he got the job some other way--and how long he expects to stay." Scotty had a few points, too. "If Vince had a vacancy, find out how long he looked for a barber, and how he got this one. Timing is important, Jerry. Get all you can on it. And ask him a few questions about his massage machine, if it's in sight. It looks like the hair gadgets they have in beauty shops." Editor and reporter stared at the boys curiously. "Why so much interest in the barber?" Jerry demanded. Rick tried to look casual. "Why, one of our special guests might want a haircut, and we couldn't take a chance that the barber might not be government approved. Simple." Duke Barrows tilted back in his chair and pushed the green eyeshade to the top of his head. "I get the picture." He ticked off the points on his fingers, mocking Rick. "Strangers at Spindrift. Not to be mentioned. Government work of some kind, for sure, and pretty hot, too. So hot, in fact, that a stranger in Whiteside might possibly be a menace to the strangers at Spindrift. Rick Brant asks help of local reporter. Gets name of stranger. Turns name and details in to some government security officer for a check. How's that?" "Too good," Rick admitted. He had known it would be impossible to put anything over on Duke. The editor was a sharp cookie. "But keep it quiet, will you, please?" "You know anything we discuss never goes farther than this office. All right, Rick. Jerry will get the dope. Hop to it, hawkeye. Duty calls." Jerry waved his arms dramatically. "Hold the presses! New barber in town! Here I go, after the story of the year!" He swept through the door, then made a sheepish reappearance. "Forgot my pencil and copy paper," he explained, grabbed them, and vanished. Duke waved the boys to chairs. "It will take a little while. Get comfortable. I have to finish this copy." Rick and Scotty waited as patiently as possible. Scotty, the more relaxed of the pair, borrowed a copy of a style manual and studied it with apparent interest. Rick watched him, envious as always of his pal's ability to let time pass without floor pacing, nail chewing, or other impatient actions. Duke's analysis of the situation was pretty good, Rick thought, and it was based on very little real information. He supposed that an editor had more experience to draw on than most people. But so did intelligence agents. It wasn't hard to see how a few information leaks could add up to a pretty clear picture in an agent's head. Jerry was back in a short time. Apparently the interview hadn't taken long. He produced his sheaf of copy paper with a flourish and pounded on a desk for attention. The gesture wasn't necessary. Rick, Scotty, and Duke were waiting eagerly. "Louis Collins, Journeyman Barber," Jerry read. "Age 43. Originally from St. Louis, most recently from Washington, D.C. Twenty-five years experience. Inventor of the Collins treatment for dry hair, which is the machine he has. Claims to have invented it five years ago, while working at a hotel in Washington. Came to Whiteside because he prefers being near the shore. He's an ardent fisherman. Saw Vince Lardner's ad in _The New York Times_ a few days ago and applied at once by phone." "What day and what time?" Rick asked quickly. "Monday. He called about noon." Scotty asked curiously, "How did you get that information out of him?" "Nothing to it. I told Vince I'd like to look up his ad in the _Times_, because he claimed the ad plugged Whiteside as an excellent climate. Then I told this new guy he must have moved fast to get in his application ahead of all the other applicants, and he said he hadn't even seen the _Times_ until he went to lunch. He called right away. Vince nodded, so I guess the time worked out as Collins said it had. Vince said the ad had been running for a week, and no one else had applied." Rick had been calculating. "Scotty, that means Collins phoned after we left Washington..." He stopped quickly. Duke Barrows rubbed his hands in fiendish glee. "Ahah! Giving away information. So you've seen this Collins before, in Washington. No wonder you're worried about him. Jerry, I'll bet we can sell this information to some enemy for millions!" Scotty grinned. "Not unless you have the plans for the death ray. Only death rays bring millions these days. Why, it's getting so a spy can't even sell atom bomb secrets for more than a buck apiece any more." "Guess you're right," Duke admitted, crestfallen. "Well, Rick, anything else you need?" "Middle initial or name?" Rick asked. "M for Mayhew. Anything else?" Jerry asked with a superior air. "That does it." Rick consulted his watch. "Let's go, Scotty. Time to pick up Barby. I won't thank you two, because you're going to get paid in steak and pie. See you later." At the home of Barby's friend there was another wait while Rick chafed. He was anxious to get home and phone Steve Ames. However, as it developed, Steve couldn't be reached. It was after dinner before Rick made connections. He gave Steve the information Jerry had collected, then asked, "Isn't this proof of something?" Steve chuckled. "It's proof that Whiteside has a new barber. That's all. But it's certainly strongly presumptive, Rick. We knew about Collins moving before you called, and we're continuing the check on him. Meanwhile, I'll alert my boys at Spindrift and tell them to keep on their toes." "I'll pass the word," Rick offered. "No need. I'm in touch by radio. Now, I want you to do something for me. Dr. Marks is arriving at Newark by train at six tomorrow morning. Tom Dodd is with him. Can you pick them up?" "Sure. How?" "Suppose you fly to Newark and have Scotty drive over. Then you can pick them up at the station by car and take them to the plane. If you fly them to Spindrift no one will know that Marks has even arrived. Tom will try to make sure no one is tailing him, and he'll help you to lose any cars that might try to follow." "We can do it," Rick assured him. "I can land close to the city. I've done it before with pontoons." "Good. Ordinarily, I'd have an agent meet them, but my Newark man is in the woods with the Boy Scout group. Call me when Marks is safely with the team." "Will do," Rick promised. Rick reported the conversation to his father when the scientist came in from late work in the laboratory. Hartson Brant nodded wearily. "Good. If Marks is on the way, that means he has answers we need badly to some of our mathematical problems." "What I don't get is why he's coming on an overnight train," Scotty interjected. "That's doing it the hard way, because it's only a few hours from Washington to Newark. Why didn't he get a train at a decent hour? This way, he'll spend most of the night sitting on a siding somewhere." The scientist smiled. "I gather that Marks has definite ideas of his own. I wouldn't care to be Tom Dodd. I'm sure Marks is giving him considerable trouble. He's convinced this security business is a plot to inconvenience him and the other people on the project." "He didn't seem to have a very sweet disposition," Rick agreed. "Good night, Dad. Scotty and I are going to bed early, because we'll have to be up at dawn." It was really the first sound night's sleep Rick had since the invasion of Spindrift by Steve and the Morrisons. Later, he had to smile at himself, because it seemed to be proof of what Scotty had said--that the real reason for his uneasiness was inactivity. He admitted that the problem of the stricken team members intrigued him. He made no claim to being any great shakes as a detective, but trying to solve mysteries, whether scientific or real, was a part of him. Scotty departed first by boat a few minutes after dawn. Rick warmed the Sky Wagon, then went in for a dish of cereal before taking off. He had plenty of time. Newark was only a few minutes away in the fast little plane. He timed it perfectly. Scotty was just rolling up to the pier near Newark as Rick taxied in after landing. He got into a rowboat brought by an attendant, and tied the plane to an anchor buoy. In a moment he was in the car with Scotty. "We'll get some excitement now," Rick predicted. "Because Marks is arriving?" "Yes, and because the barber has come to town. If he isn't up to his neck in this business, I'll eat his hair oil on pancakes." Scotty shuddered. "You might at least wait until I've had more breakfast." Rick ignored him. "Also, the team is now assembled in one place. That means the enemy has a single target to shoot at." Scotty laughed out loud. "You should see yourself," he said, chuckling. "Since we found the barber yesterday, you've been a new man. Beaming and happy as can be. Now the enemy has a single target and you're pleased. Didn't it occur to you that the target is us, you simple meathead?" "It did." Rick had to grin, too. "But who can locate the sharpshooter best? Why, the guy sitting on the bull's-eye." Scotty parked and they walked into the station. A quick check of the bulletin board told them the train was on time. They walked to the gate just as the train announcer called the arrival. Tom Dodd was one of the last off. He had two suitcases under one arm, and he was supporting Marks with the other. Rick and Scotty ran to help. Was the scientist ill? Scotty took the suitcases while Rick grabbed Marks' other arm. The scientist shook him off. "I'm perfectly all right," he said irritably. "Confound it! Rouse a man at the crack of dawn and expect him to respond like a ballet dancer to a cue. Nonsense!" Marks' appearance belied his words. His face was drawn and pale, and it was obvious that his coordination wasn't very good. Tom Dodd was plainly worried. "Let go of me," Marks demanded. He drew himself up and glared at the boys. "Which way is the car, please?" "Straight ahead." Rick glanced at Dodd. Marks stalked off, but his step was too careful to be convincing. He just wasn't normal. "He wasn't like this when we got on the train," Dodd said in a low voice. "Let's get going. I'm anxious to get him to Spindrift." In the parking lot, Rick ran to open the trunk so Scotty could stow the bags. Then he beckoned to Marks, who was staring straight ahead, his eyes glassy. "This is the car, sir." Marks started for the open door. But instead of bending down to get in, he walked straight ahead, rigid as a robot, and his face slammed into the edge of the low turret top. Dodd caught him as he fell. Rick jumped to the scientist's side, afraid he had been knocked out, and afraid, too, that something even more serious was wrong. Marks was not unconscious, but his stare was fixed. "Are you all right, sir?" the boy asked anxiously. The reply was unintelligible. Scotty bent over the scientist, too. "Are you all right, sir?" he repeated urgently. Marks' fixed stare never wavered. A spate of words poured from him, but they made no sense. Now and then a single word emerged clearly. Once it was "July," then "soup kettle" and "Planck's constant." "Just like the others," Tom Dodd said helplessly. Rick listened with horror. He had no doubt, no doubt at all. Steve had described it accurately, and here it was. Marks was a victim of the identical ailment that had stricken the other team members! CHAPTER IX Dagger of the Mind Tom Dodd took command and gave orders crisply. "Help get him into the car. Here, into the back seat." The agent got in after the scientist while the boys got into the front. "Scotty, start driving. We have to shake off any tail that picks us up. Try to find a stretch where there isn't much traffic." Scotty swung the sedan into the traffic stream while Rick joined Tom Dodd in watching behind them. A few minutes later Scotty slipped into an alley and stepped on the gas. At the end of the alley he turned the wrong way down a one-way street, found another alley, and slipped into it. He emerged under a railroad trestle and moved into the stream of traffic once more. Watching carefully, he moved with the traffic until he saw an opportunity to cross a main thoroughfare as the light changed from yellow to red. Theirs was the last car through the intersection, Rick saw, before traffic started through the cross street. Scotty took another turn, doubled back, and went through another alley. As he emerged onto a street where traffic was sparse, he slowed. "That should do it," Tom Dodd said. "Nice work." "How is he?" Rick asked anxiously. "Just like the others," Tom said flatly. "Listen, boys. Our Newark agent is in Whiteside. I don't think it's wise to take Marks to Spindrift in this condition, but I don't want to take him far, either. Have you any contacts here?" Rick tried to remember. His father had associates in Newark, he was sure, including a doctor or two. But he couldn't remember their names. "I could call home," he suggested. "Dad will have some ideas." Dodd considered. "You couldn't use the scrambler from here. Could you tip your father off without giving information to anyone who happened to be listening on the wire?" Rick thought he could. "Okay." Dodd motioned to a restaurant. "There's a phone in there. I can see the booth through the window. Hop to it." Rick hurried into the restaurant. The full horror of what had happened to Dr. Marks was just having its effect. He found himself shivering as though with a severe chill. Marks was the victim of something ghastly. He seemed to be trying to make sense, as though there was still a glimmer of intelligence behind the blank stare. But his words were disconnected, completely unintelligible. Barby answered the phone, caught the urgency in Rick's voice, and yelled for their father. Hartson Brant came hurriedly. "What is it, Rick?" "Guarded language," Rick said urgently. "Dad, don't you have a professional friend in Newark? The teletype machine just went haywire for the third time and I need help." Hartson Brant muttered, "Good Lord! Yes, Rick. I have a mechanic friend who is ideally suited for the purpose. Constantine Chavez. Look him up in the professional part of the phone directory. I'll phone him and say you're bringing the machine." "Good, Dad. I'll come home as soon as possible. Better phone the man who runs the machines and give him the information." "All right. Be careful." Rick disconnected and looked up the name under the listing of physicians. Back in the car, he cast a quick look at Dr. Marks. The scientist was sitting quietly, staring straight ahead. He wasn't talking, and Rick was glad. He didn't know how much of the gibberish he could take. It was weird and horrifying, particularly since Marks had been so crisp and terse--even though sometimes unpleasant--in his speech. Dr. Chavez was watching for them through his window and hurried out to meet the car. He was a tall, slender man with handsome features that showed his Spanish ancestry. "You must be Rick," he said, shaking hands. "You look very much like your father. He phoned to say you were bringing a damaged machine, but I also gathered he was merely being cautious about something he didn't care to discuss on the phone." "That's right, Doctor," Rick said. He introduced Tom Dodd and Scotty, failing to mention that Dodd was a government agent. Then he pointed to Dr. Marks in the back seat. "There's your patient, sir." "Bring him into the house," Dr. Chavez directed. "I assume from his appearance that the trouble is mental and not physical?" "Exactly," Dodd said. Inside the house they found one room outfitted as a home office. "I have an office downtown," the doctor explained, "but I also use this one a few afternoons a week. Now, who can tell me about this?" His eyes were on Marks, and as he talked, he reached for the scientist's wrist. Tom Dodd explained carefully, "He was suddenly stricken. We were with him. We don't know what happened, except that he made sense one minute, but talked only garbled words the next." Chavez took an otoscope, an instrument used to examine eyes, ears, nose, and throat, and switched on the tiny light. He flicked it into Marks' eyes and watched the behavior of the pupils. Then he listened with a stethoscope. A little rubber hammer came out next and was applied to the reflexes of the stricken scientist. The reflexes looked normal to Rick. Dr. Marks suddenly looked up and began spouting gibberish. Rick winced. Chavez listened gravely, apparently not at all disturbed. The flow of meaningless words ceased and Rick sighed with relief. He saw that Scotty had been equally affected. "What is your specialty, Doctor?" Dodd asked. "I'm a neurologist." That was good, Rick thought. A neurologist was exactly what Marks seemed to need. "Do you make anything of this?" Dodd asked. The doctor shook his head. "Nothing. I've never seen a case like it. I've never even heard of one. In fact, I know of only one analogue, and it's an electronic one. Do you know how computers work? The big electronic brains?" The three nodded. "Then you will understand. I have worked with computers, and now and then one of them suddenly starts turning out gibberish for no apparent reason. A check of the circuits may show that everything is functionally normal. Yet, the gibberish continues. Often it clears up, with no more reason than it started. Sometimes this happens when the machine is cold, before it is properly warmed up. At other times, it happens when the machine is tired." "Tired?" Dodd looked his disbelief. "Machines don't get tired. Not in those terms." Chavez smiled. "Perhaps not. Yet, to those who work with them, it does sometimes appear that the machine is tired. There is really no other expression for it." Rick knew something of this through his association with Dr. Parnell Winston of the Spindrift staff. Winston was an expert in the new science of cybernetics, which is defined as the science of communications and control mechanisms in both living beings and machines. "Parnell Winston would know," Rick said. "He most certainly would," Chavez agreed. "Are you aware that he and I have worked together? My interest was in the biological portion of the project. His was in the electronic. Of course we worked as a team with other specialists." "Under whose auspices?" Dodd asked quickly. "Let us be candid," Chavez invited. "Obviously, this is not an ordinary case. The guarded language Hartson Brant used was indication enough of that. Rick Brant I identify because of his resemblance to my friend, and I think I identify Don Scott, of whom I have heard a great deal from Hartson. But who are you, Mr. Dodd?" For answer, Tom Dodd took out his identification folder and handed it to the physician. Chavez studied it. "I know your organization, Mr. Dodd. But what is of greater importance for the moment, your organization knows me. I suspect it was for that reason Hartson Brant selected me for you to consult." He gestured to the phone. "You will want to call your office. My records are in New York." Dodd's face expressed his relief. "I was a little nervous," he admitted. "It was a choice between possibly risking further damage to Marks or taking a chance on someone based only on a recommendation from Dr. Brant. I'm glad you're in the clear." He went to the phone and called New York. In a moment he said, "Dodd here. Check on Dr. Constantine Chavez." He held the phone for perhaps half a minute, then said, "Roger. That does it." He held out his hand to the neurologist. "Glad to know you, Doctor. Can you take over?" "Not only can I take over, you would have trouble getting rid of me. This man is obviously hurt in a way that is strange to me, and I assure you, my experience with damaged minds is considerable. He may be somewhat under the influence of a drug--I will check more thoroughly--but that is not the cause. If I may make a quick and highly tentative guess, this mind is suffering from some kind of trauma induced from an outside source." "You mean it's not a disease?" Rick asked quickly. "Precisely. I know of no disease that would behave like this. I can't even imagine a disease with these symptoms." "How can you be sure?" Scotty pressed. "Obviously I can't at this stage of investigation. But you must recognize that a physician develops a rather definite feeling for injury after years of experience. My own experience tells me that mental damage of this scope is almost always accompanied by other symptoms when it is the product of a disease. No, I cannot credit the idea of a pathogenic organism too seriously. It is as though some outside agent pierced the cranium and cut off the control centers of the brain." "A dagger of the mind," Scotty murmured. Chavez looked up sharply. "Yes! An ideal phrase for it." Rick recognized the quotation from his school-work. _Macbeth_, Act II. Another of Shakespeare's phrases from the same work leaped into his mind. "Macbeth hath murdered sleep." Not Macbeth, but Marks. Rick knew he wouldn't sleep well that night, nor for many nights to come. Dagger of the mind! Well, it fitted. Watching the blank face of what had been, only hours before, a brilliant scientist, Rick could feel its deadly point himself. CHAPTER X Search for Strangers The good weather turned bad, and dark clouds hung low over the New Jersey coast. It was appropriate weather for the state of mind at Spindrift. With Marks a victim of the mysterious "dagger of the mind," only Dr. Morrison remained of the original team. The question, of course, was "Who next?" At Hartson Brant's urgent request, Steve Ames visited the island and a meeting of all staff was called in the big library. Rick and Scotty sat on a library table, while the scientists occupied the few library chairs. Steve Ames sat on Hartson Brant's desk and acted as chairman for the informal session. By mutual agreement, the girls had been excluded. Jan was nearly in a state of shock over what had happened to Marks. Not only was she fond of the crusty scientist, but she was fearful that the mysterious ailment would strike her father next. And Barby was rapidly catching the same fear. After all, new team members probably were not immune, and Hartson Brant, Julius Weiss, and Parnell Winston were deeply involved in the project. Steve called the meeting to order. "Hartson, you suggested that I come, which I was glad to do. Suppose you start by telling us what you had in mind." "Very well, Steve." The scientist's glance embraced his colleagues and the boys. "We have a problem that must be solved before we can continue with calm and objective minds on the project that faces us. The problem is simply, what is the ailment that has stricken three of us, and what is its cause?" Hartson Brant tamped tobacco into his pipe thoughtfully. "Let us see what we know. First of all, two team members were stricken in Washington, within a short time of each other. They were examined by competent specialists who arrived at no conclusion. They admitted they were unable to diagnose the ailment. The possibility of an unknown disease was considered briefly, but not seriously. The possibility of a chemical agent--a drug, if you like--also was considered. This possibility has not been entirely rejected. However, a detailed laboratory investigation disclosed no trace of chemicals in the patients, apart from chemicals that were expected, of course." "Could there be chemicals that left no trace?" Scotty asked. Hartson Brant shook his head. "No one can claim total knowledge of body chemistry, obviously. Just the same, the elements to be found in the body, and the proportions in which they occur, are well known. I said the possibility has not been entirely eliminated, but it seems unlikely that chemical interference caused the disruption." "What does that leave?" Steve inquired. The scientist shrugged. "I can't even guess. Physical interference, perhaps. There is also a possibility, which is very difficult to explore, that the ailment was caused within the minds of the scientists by some catalytic agent, or by some psychic trauma that we can't even imagine." Rick and Scotty exchanged glances. They had seen the ailment at work, and even its effects were almost beyond description. Its cause was hard to imagine. "But, to continue. Steve recognized the possibility that the ailment was caused by some outside source. Call it an enemy source, if you prefer. He acted to get the remaining team members beyond reach of the enemy by smuggling them to Spindrift. He succeeded with Dr. Miller--excuse me, Dr. Morrison. He did not succeed with Dr. Marks. What does this suggest?" "That hiding Dr. Morrison was an effective preventative," Steve Ames concluded. "If he is hidden." Rick said the words before he even thought. "What do you mean, Rick? No one outside the family or the project knows of his presence!" Julius Weiss exclaimed. Steve held up his hand. "Hold it a minute. We'll get to that point in its proper turn." Hartson Brant picked up the threads again. "We will assume for the moment that Steve's statement is correct, and that hiding Dr. Morrison was a preventative. I know Steve doesn't accept this fully, but we must use assumptions since we have no facts of consequence. If the assumption is correct, then we have to accept the fact that enemy agents are interested in the project. And we must also accept that they have some means of creating a mental block by remote control." Rick stole a glance at Parnell Winston. The cyberneticist was sitting quietly, his bushy eyebrows knitted thoughtfully. Winston hadn't said a word. Hartson Brant paced the floor as he went on. "We now have one slight bit of additional information that supports the theory of enemy interference. You are all aware of what happened to Dr. Marks this morning. He is in the hands of Constantine Chavez, who is in touch with the physicians in charge of the other team members. Dr. Chavez is of the opinion that Dr. Marks' mental injury was caused by physical means, although he cannot say how. He also states, although there seems to be no connection with the mental injury, that Marks was drugged." Parnell Winston spoke for the first time. "Steve, if Chavez says Marks was drugged, we can accept it. How could it have happened?" Steve spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to Rick to indicate embarrassment. "I have gone over every step of the journey with Tom Dodd. The answer is yes. Thanks to Marks' bullheadedness, and a clerical error, there was an opportunity for an enemy to get at him on the train." The scientists waited, obviously wanting to know more. Steve elaborated. "Marks was covered by one of our men at every moment, even while he was working at the Bureau of Standards, and while he was at his apartment. The agents ate and drank the same things. Nothing has happened to them. However, when the reservations were made for the train trip, Marks specified that he wanted a bedroom. He got one, and Tom Dodd got the one next door." "Why did Marks want to travel by train overnight, anyway?" Scotty demanded. "That's getting from Washington to Newark the hard way." "I told you he was stubborn," Steve reminded. "Tom tried to talk him out of it but failed. After all, the project team members aren't prisoners. We can't use force, and we can't order them to do anything. Marks wanted to go overnight by train because he always traveled that way, he said. He insisted." Dr. Morrison said sadly, "I assure you that he is not an easy man to get along with sometimes. But we must remember that he is--or was--an extremely competent scientist. Competence like his can be forgiven many eccentricities." "Thanks to his eccentricities, we've also lost his competence," Julius Weiss pointed out. "Go on, Steve." "Right. Well, Tom specified bedrooms A and B, and by the time he got the reservations and found that he had actually received bedrooms B and C, it was too late to change because the train was sold out." "I can't see what difference that made," Rick objected. "You will. People often buy connecting bedrooms on a train, and that's what Tom had done. He planned to keep the connecting door open and remain awake all night with an eye on Marks. However, while A and B connect, B and C do not. Do I make myself clear?" "I think so," Rick agreed. "The connecting bedrooms come in pairs, A-B, C-D, and so on." "That's it. Well, Tom ran a fast check on the person who had received bedroom D, and found it was a Baltimore businessman who often traveled on the same train, going overnight to New York. So Tom didn't worry about it. Instead, he kept his bedroom door open so he could watch the corridor. He says he didn't sleep at all, and I believe him. He's one of my best agents. The occupant of Bedroom D came on the train at Baltimore and went right to bed. The night passed quietly, until it was time to get Marks up. Tom had great trouble waking him up, and he was groggy until this strange effect hit him. Rick and Scotty know. They were there." The boys shuddered, remembering Marks' condition. "But where did the opportunity to drug him come in?" Weiss asked. "We've done some fast checking on every possible angle," Steve said quietly, "and we've found a couple of interesting things. First of all, the man who reserved Bedroom D is in a Baltimore hospital. He was struck by a hit-and-run car as he walked from his office to the railroad station. Obviously, he was struck deliberately. He's in critical condition." "Then the man on the train..." Rick gasped. "Yes. Who was the man on the train? We don't know. We've had our Boston office go over the room, and they've turned up no fingerprints except those of the porter who cleaned up after the train left New York. The room was wiped clean. But our Boston men also found an interesting spot on the rug. They had a sample analyzed, and so far as we can determine, it's a kind of water-soluble salt paste often used by doctors when they take electrocardiograms." The group leaned forward, interested. Rick knew the kind of stuff Steve meant, because he had once watched Zircon getting an electrocardiogram. The big scientist had fainted from sheer overwork, and possible heart complications were suspected. The technician squeezed the paste from a tube and applied it to wrists, ankles, and chest, under the metal terminals of the machine. Its purpose was to allow a better electrical contact. Julius Weiss demanded excitedly, "Steve, do you imply that this unknown person took an electrocardiogram of Marks' heart responses?" The JANIG agent shrugged. "I imply nothing. I'm merely reporting." Again Parnell Winston spoke. "Perhaps I can shed some light on this. It's true that such an electropaste is used to make better connections for electrocardiograms. But perhaps of greater importance for this discussion, it is also used in making electroencephalograms." Rick and Scotty spoke in unison. "What?" Winston turned to them. "It's a long word, but not a difficult one. _Electro_ for electrical. _Encephalo_ is simply a Greek form meaning 'the brain.' _Gram_, also from the Greek, means something drawn or written. A record, if you like. So an electroencephalogram is simply an electrical recording of the brain." "That may be significant," Hartson Brant said thoughtfully. "But, assuming an enemy could get an EEG--which is the handy way of saying electroencephalogram, Rick and Scotty--what would he do with it?" Parnell Winston rose. "Hartson, I think you can conduct the rest of this without me. I have an extraordinary notion whirling around in my head that I'd like to discuss with Chavez. I'll pick up the car at the pier and drive over, if you don't mind. And by the way, Steve, can JANIG get some information for me?" "We can try." "Good. I want to know if the two team scientists who were stricken first had EEG's made after the attack. I would also like to check their medical history, as completely as possible, to find out if EEG's were ever taken while they were normal." "I'll give the orders right away," Steve agreed. "I don't know what we can turn up on their early medical history, but we can try." Parnell Winston departed. Rick almost wished he had asked permission to accompany Winston, but there was more to be said here, too. "The evidence is not conclusive," Hartson Brant summed up, "but it is certainly strong enough to warrant a clear assumption: we have an enemy who, by unknown means, can inflict brain damage." "All right. Now for some loose ends." Steve looked at the boys. "Rick and Scotty turned up a barber in Whiteside. It happened they had first seen him in the project office building in Washington, so they got his name and called. We were already checking on the barber, and knew he was in Whiteside. We'll dig deeper until we know more about him than he does. But for now, our information indicates he is just what he claims to be. He got the job in Whiteside legitimately. He had planned to take a new job for a long time. So far as we can tell, he's as innocent as a woolly little lamb." "Just the same," Rick said stoutly, "I'm not satisfied. I'd like to get some more dope on that massage machine of his. Especially after what Dr. Winston said." Steve grinned. "Why don't you?" Rick and Scotty looked at each other, and rose to the challenge. "We will," they stated flatly. Steve nodded. "All right. You're known in Whiteside and my men are not. An influx of strangers, or even one inquisitive stranger, would attract attention. But that's not all. I have another job for you, too." They waited eagerly. "I want a survey of the area. My Boy Scout team can help somewhat, but they're strangers, too, even though they have an explanation for their presence. Scan the area for anything suspicious. Get your newspaper pals on the job and have them sniff around for evidence of any strange folks in the area. They can do it easily." "We'll do it," Rick agreed. There was nothing hard about looking for strangers in their own territory. He knew exactly how to go about it. "All right. Search for strangers. Get your pals on the job, but do it without tipping anything off. That State Police captain you've worked with will be a big help, too. You can tell him national security is involved, but that's all." "At least we're not working entirely in the dark any more," Dr. Morrison said wearily. "Even if the assumption of an enemy is wrong, it's something to go on." Rick stood up. The conference apparently was at an end. "Tonight we'll plan," he announced. "And tomorrow we'll start. If there are any strangers in the area, you'll have full particulars by tomorrow night." "That," said Steve Ames, "is a promise I'll hold you to." CHAPTER XI The Dangerous Resemblance Rick stirred, and whatever he had been dreaming faded into vagueness. He couldn't have said what he had been dreaming about. He was neither asleep nor awake, but in the shadowland somewhere between. Something as yet undefined had brought him halfway toward awakening, but the influence was not powerful enough to bring his senses alert. And then, suddenly, he was wide awake, ears straining to listen. He sensed a presence in the room, and even as he tried to recognize it, a form landed on his chest and steel spikes drove into his ribs. He leaped up with a yell as another form landed on the bed. Both forms were making fantastic noises. His eyes opened wide as he suddenly realized that a rousing cat-dog fight was taking place on his stomach! Scotty ran in and leaped for the battlers. He grabbed the spitting, snarling cat and held it high. Dismal let out a wail of anguish as he realized his hated enemy was out of reach. Rick shouted, "Down, boy!" Dismal leaped high and landed again with four feet bunched on Rick's stomach. Rick's shout died into a gurgle. Not that the pup was heavy, but he had landed while his master was in the midst of a breath, with muscles relaxed. Scotty put the cat into the hall and closed the door, trapping Dismal in the room. Then he turned and laughed at Rick's discomfort. "Next time you arrange a fight for your personal entertainment, you'd better have a referee on hand." "It was a draw," Rick said ruefully, "except that the innocent bystander lost. Whatever got into Dismal?" Scotty was dressed. Apparently he had already been downstairs. "The cat went too far. Dismal found him drinking from his water dish." Rick grinned. That was adding insult to injury, all right. He stripped off the blankets and examined his stomach. Shah's claws had dug right through blanket, sheet, and pajamas, but had not drawn blood. "It was time to get up, anyway," he said philosophically. "Gangway, Scotty. I'm going to shower and dress. We've got work to do." "Uhuh. The passengers are waiting downstairs," Scotty said. Rick blinked. "What passengers?" "Jan and Barby. They want to go." The boys had decided the evening before that they would start the search with a flight in the Sky Wagon. After a quick inspection of the area, which probably wouldn't disclose much, they planned to go into Whiteside for a talk with Jerry and Duke at the newspaper office, and with Captain Douglas of the State Police. Rick considered. He didn't mind taking the girls around on pleasure junkets, but this was business. "Why do they have to go?" he demanded. Scotty shrugged. "They don't. But Jan is plenty upset over Dr. Marks, and Barby is starting to worry about Dad and the others. If we leave them here, they'll just stew. If they go, it may take their minds off things." "I suppose that's right. Anyway, they can't get in the way much. We'll stick 'em in the back seat." "Come on, then. Let's eat and get going." Rick showered and dressed hurriedly, and got downstairs just in time to take his seat at the breakfast table. After bidding the family good morning, he turned to Jan. "Shah and Dismal had a fight this morning." Jan put a hand to her mouth. "Oh! Shah didn't hurt him, did he?" That nettled Rick a little. The idea of assuming that a mere cat, even a champion Persian, could win a fight with Dismal! Then common sense got the better of him. The unhappy truth was, Shah could lick Dismal with no strain at all. "No damage," he replied. "Except to me. The war took place on my stomach." Jan was supposed to look sorry, but she didn't. She giggled. Barby giggled, too. "I guess they thought you'd be a fair witness if anyone asked who won," Jan explained. Rick saw he was getting no sympathy. After all, what could anyone do? Dogs and cats were just natural enemies. Besides, if he was fair about it, he had to admit that Shah teased the pup but didn't start serious fights. After breakfast the four young people went down to the beach where the Sky Wagon was hauled up. In a few moments they were air-borne. Rick headed for Seaford, the fishing town down the coast. It didn't make much sense to go farther south than that. Beside him, Scotty polished the binocular lenses with a piece of lens tissue from the camera kit, and started sweeping the area below. Apparently all was normal along the seacoast and in Seaford, but that meant nothing. The area could be loaded with strangers and they'd never know it from the air. Rick had a sudden idea. "Let's call Cap'n Mike and get him on the job. If there are any strangers in Seaford, he'll know it." "I think that's a wonderful idea," Barby called from the back seat. Jan asked, "Who is Cap'n Mike?" Barby immediately related the adventure of _Smugglers' Reef_, and the part the retired fishing skipper had played. Cap'n Mike knew everything worth while about the town of Seaford. He would be a good check point not only for the town, but also for the summer colonies between Whiteside and Seaford. He often acted as a fishing guide for the summer tourists. Rick checked the summer colonies from the air, although he had little expectation of seeing anything unusual. Barby pointed down as they passed over one. "Look! Scotty, let me have the glasses." Both boys turned quickly. "What do you see?" Scotty asked. He handed her the glasses. "The gaudiest houseboat!" Barby exclaimed. "Jan, it's painted orange!" The boys snorted. After inspecting the coast from Seaford past Spindrift to the more populated areas on the north, Rick swung inland to inspect the woods near Whiteside. He didn't know exactly what to look for, except possibly unexplained campfires that could be investigated later. He landed at Spindrift and went at once to the house. Cap'n Mike didn't have a phone, but Rick knew how to get a message to him. Scotty, listening, said, "He won't be in. The fleet is still out fishing this time of day." Rick grinned. "It's Sunday. Lost track of time?" Scotty had. But suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Hey! Duke and Jerry are coming over for dinner." His message to Cap'n Mike en route through a mutual friend, Rick motioned to Scotty. "Let's go." They took both of the island boats, planning to leave one for Duke and Jerry to use later in the day. Then, after tying up the boats at the main pier and getting the car, they called first on Captain Douglas of the State Police. The officer knew the boys well, and knew in addition of their connection with JANIG. He promised readily to assist. "Probably my own officers won't be too much help," he said, "but they can ask the local police to keep their eyes open up and down the coast. We won't say anything about the federal government being interested. To everyone but me, this will be a routine State Police matter." Rick hesitated for a moment, but he was sure of Captain Douglas' discretion. "We're interested in the new barber, too," he added. "Steve Ames is already checking him, but you might keep your eyes open." "I'll do that," Captain Douglas assured him. "And how about the Boy Scout leaders camped behind Spindrift?" Rick was about to say casually that he didn't suspect any Boy Scout leaders, then he caught the twinkle in the captain's eye. "He's hep," Scotty said. Captain Douglas nodded. "One of my officers paid them a call. He's a sharp one, and he made some kind of excuse for getting into their tent. He came back and reported they were apparently on a hunting expedition of some kind--with riot guns. I took a car full of armed troopers and we dropped in. One of the Scout leaders turned out to be a man who was in the same FBI class that I attended. He showed me his identification card, so I gave him my phone number in case he needed help. And that was that." Scotty said thoughtfully, "I guess the hardest thing in the world is keeping a secret." "That's the second hardest," Douglas corrected. "The hardest usually is finding out how the secret became public in the first place." The boys went from the State Police barracks to the Whiteside _Morning Record_ and found Jerry on the job. "The press never sleeps," he greeted them. "What brings you two to town on a peaceful Sunday?" "We brought you a boat," Rick explained. "In exchange for a favor." Jerry eyed them suspiciously. "What kind of a favor?" It took only a moment to explain. "Sure," Jerry agreed. "Duke won't object to keeping you posted. We'll keep an eye open for you. And we'll collect for the favor with an extra helping of pie tonight." "It's a deal," Rick agreed. As it turned out, Jerry's bargain of an extra helping of pie was conservative. He had three for dessert that night. Rick noticed that both Jerry and Duke eyed Dr. Morrison curiously, and he knew they were trying to recall if they had ever seen a picture that would help place him in their minds. Not that they would use the information. It was just that newspapermen developed a high order of frustration in the face of a mystery. But Jan noticed something else. She came over to where Rick was pouring fresh coffee for his friends. "Rick, those friends of yours are nice. Have you noticed how much Mr. Barrows looks like Dad?" Rick looked. The two were deep in conversation, and it was the first time he had seen them together. They looked very much alike, particularly in the gathering darkness. They were about the same height, give or take a fraction of an inch, and both had the same shock of unruly hair. They probably weighed within five pounds of each other. Actually, however, the resemblance was superficial. They might have been cousins, but not brothers. "They do look alike," Rick agreed. Later, he saw Jan deep in conversation with Jerry and wandered by, to eavesdrop a little. He knew that Jerry was entirely trustworthy, but his friend was also a nosy reporter who would try to pump the girl. Rick intended to step in and break it up if that were the case. "The Virgin Islands sound wonderful," Jerry was saying. "How long did Rick and the others stay with your family?" "They never actually stayed with us," Jan replied. "Of course we invited them to, but they were so anxious to get to Clipper Cay, they only stayed one night in town. We met them that night, at Dr. Ernst's. He's a mutual friend. I was excited about the treasure, and I begged Dad to take Mother and me to Clipper Cay, so I could dive with the boys. He was going to take us, too, only everyone was back in Charlotte Amalie with the treasure before we had a chance." Rick grinned and went on his way. Jan was talking with great assurance. He didn't have to worry about Jerry breaking down the cover story. It was late when the party broke up. Rick and Scotty took their guests to Whiteside Pier, where Duke had left his car. As they roared up to the pier Rick had to swerve to avoid a pram, a blunt-ended rowboat, that had been tied carelessly in the place where he usually tied up. He wondered who owned it. Prams were not usual along the coast. Jerry and Duke climbed out after thanking the boys again for a fine dinner. The two walked off into the darkness toward the parking lot. Rick started to back out and head for home, then paused. He was curious about the pram. "Hand me the boat hook," he told Scotty. His pal obliged. "What's up?" "I'm curious. Who around here has a pram?" "No one I know. That looks like a new one, too." Rick pulled the little rowboat closer with the boat hook and turned the speedboat's searchlight on it, hoping to find a name. Suddenly both boys froze. "Was that a yell?" Rick asked. Scotty was already on his way up the pier. "Yes, from the parking lot. Come on!" Rick hurriedly threw a rope around a piling and secured it with a couple of fast half-hitches, then he hurried after Scotty. It was pitch dark in the parking lot, but they could hear sounds of a scuffle plainly now, and once there was a muffled grunt. It suddenly occurred to Rick that he hadn't heard Duke's car start. He sprinted, calling to Scotty to look for a weapon. Once, some time ago, they had fought a battle with rocks against guns in this very spot. He scooped up a couple of rocks, hoping no guns were waiting this time. "Hold 'em!" Scotty yelled. "We're coming!" There was a yell in reply. Jerry Webster called, "Watch it! They're running away!" Car headlights switched on, and in their glare Rick saw Jerry pointing. For a moment he considered following his friends' assailants, then abandoned the idea. They could escape easily in the woods. "What happened?" Scotty demanded. [Illustration: "_I'm curious. Who around here has a pram?_"] Duke Barrows got out of the car, nursing his head. "Two men jumped us when we started to get into the car," he answered shakily. "One smacked me on the head with something hard and almost knocked me out. If Jerry hadn't put up a good fight, they'd have had us--although I don't know what for." "Were they holdup men?" Rick asked quickly. "They didn't wear signs," Duke answered grumpily. "But holdup men usually say something, don't they? 'This is a stickup.' Or something like that." Jerry Webster examined bruised knuckles in the glare of the car head lamps. "They didn't say anything," he added. "Not a word. When you yelled, they broke off and ran into the woods." Scotty scratched his head. "Mighty funny," he mused. "What could they have wanted?" Duke Barrows brushed dirt off his jacket. "They probably were reporters from a Newark paper," he said caustically, "trying to find out about the mysterious visitors on Spindrift." It hit Rick then. "Duke," he exclaimed, "you look like Dr. Morrison! I'll bet it was a case of mistaken identity!" The editor looked at him keenly. "Could be," he agreed. "That means you have reason to believe someone would be interested in harming Dr. Morrison." "I'm just assuming," Rick said hurriedly. "Uh-hum." The editor grunted his disbelief. "And what should we do about it?" Rick looked at Scotty, who shrugged. The shrug said that probably nothing could be done now, so far as Duke and Jerry were concerned, but that the case was far from closed. "Better notify Captain Douglas," Rick suggested. "I can't think of anything else." Jerry Webster flexed an arm that appeared to be aching. "Sure that won't conflict with your security people?" he asked. Rick assumed an air of wide-eyed innocence. "Now, Jerry! Who said anything about security people? I just suggested you notify the State Police. Who else would you notify when someone attacks you?" Duke climbed into the car. "Come on, Jerry. We'll get no satisfaction out of these two. Let's go rub liniment on our wounds, and then we'll make a report to the State Police. Good night, lads. And I hope your mystery bites you. Let me know if it does, so I can say 'I told you so' in print." The boys waved as Duke drove off, leaving them in darkness. As they made their way back to the speedboat, Rick spoke his thoughts aloud. "I guess the enemy uses muscles, too, huh?" Scotty answered thoughtfully, "Looks like it. Unless they really were holdup men." Rick shook his head, even though Scotty couldn't see the reaction. "Pretty unlikely. But suppose the enemy kept a watch on movements in and out of Spindrift? From a distance they might assume that Duke was Morrison. So it would make sense for them to keep a watch at the pier in case he came back--which he did." "And when he came back, they'd either murder him or kidnap him?" Scotty sounded disbelieving. "I doubt it. Nothing the enemy has done so far points to that kind of tactic. Why should they start using muscle methods now?" Rick had no good answer. "Let's step on it," he said. "We have to report this. I have a hunch the Boy Scout team is going to be scouring the woods around here tonight." CHAPTER XII The Coast Guard Draws a Blank Rick said quietly, "And so the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood, and when the grandmother heard about it she said--" Barby's voice erupted in the tiny earphone plug in Rick's ear. "I don't think that's very funny, Rick Brant!" Scotty spoke up. "Barby doesn't like realism in her fairy tales." Barby answered, "I don't think you're very funny either, Donald Scott!" Her voice faded on the last word. Rick asked quickly, "Barby, did you move then?" "No, Rick. Why?" "You faded. Scotty, did you notice a fade?" "Negative. I did not." Rick asked, "Barby, please recite something." "Recite what?" "Anything." Barby began, "She walks in beauty like the night..." Rick turned slowly, listening for differences in strength of signal received. Scotty interrupted. "Hey, what's that?" "Lord Byron," Barby said loftily. "I wouldn't expect you to know." Rick had it now. "Okay," he called. "Come on in." He had been standing on the front porch of the Brant home. Scotty was inside the laboratory building, while Barby and Jan were at Pirate's Field. Presently Scotty joined him and grinned. "Work good?" "Perfect." Barby and Jan came through the orchard and up on the porch. Barby was wearing an ornamental plastic head band, not too gaudy for daytime wear, but not too simple for anything dressy. She had arranged her hair so the gadget was hardly noticeable. A wave of smooth blond hair hid the little bump made by the battery. "Technically," Barby stated, "it worked fine. But the program material was terrible." The boys chuckled. "How do you know it was technically fine?" Scotty teased. Barby looked at him coolly. "Because I heard Rick perfectly." "And I heard you and Scotty," Rick agreed. "All three units work fine. Have you switched them off?" Barby reached up and seemed to pat her hair slightly. "I forgot," she admitted. "Now it's off." Rick looked at Jan. "Could you hear me through Barby's phone while I was talking?" Jan shook her head. "No, I couldn't. I was listening, too. These are wonderful, Rick." He smiled his thanks. "One interesting thing, though. I should have known, but it didn't occur to me. The receivers are directional." "What's that?" Barby asked. "Directional. The antenna is a tiny coil. When it's broadside to the incoming signal, the volume is loudest, but when it's end on, the volume is much less. So, if you can't hear well, just turn sideways. Turn until the signal is loudest." Scotty took his transceiver from his pocket and examined it with pride. It was no larger than a pack of playing cards, and its sensitive microphone was incorporated right into the case. The tiny antenna was a piece of stiff steel wire only two inches long. The whole gadget fitted easily into an inside coat pocket without a noticeable bulge. Barby's rig was slightly different. The antenna ran along one edge of the plastic strip. At one end the microphone was in contact with her head just above the ear, allowing for transmission of voice by bone conduction, a new method developed by the United States Air Force. At the other end of the band a tiny speaker made similar contact. Rick had worried about the effectiveness of both mike and phone, since he had never used the types before, but the design had turned out very well. "Pretty neat if we do say so," Scotty admitted modestly. "For once I agree with you," Barby said generously. "Now what, Rick? There isn't anything more to do, is there?" "Not on these." But there was more to do along other lines. He was waiting for word from JANIG. Barby and Jan disappeared and returned in a few moments with iced drinks. The boys accepted them gratefully. It was a warm day. "How about a swim?" Scotty suggested. Rick was about to point out that they might have work to do when Joe Blake, the JANIG agent in charge at the laboratory, hailed him. Rick ran to meet the agent. "The boys on the mainland didn't turn up a thing," Blake reported. "They searched from a half mile south of the pier to a half mile north. No pram anywhere." Rick snapped his fingers. "I had a hunch they wouldn't! Okay. I'm going to take off right now and search the coast. If that pram wasn't connected with the attack on Duke and Jerry, I'll eat it." "Good luck," Blake said. "Let me know if you need any help." Rick hurried back to the porch. The JANIG scout team had reported early in the morning that the pram was gone from the pier. They had been covering the Whiteside area most of the night, searching for some sign of the pair that had attacked Rick's friends, but had turned up nothing suspicious. Then, at Rick's suggestion, they had undertaken a search for the pram. His point was simply that he had never seen a pram in the Whiteside area--something that strangers would not have known. They might have figured that tying up in plain sight was the best way of hiding their boat. It would have been, if prams had been more common. He motioned to Scotty. "Let's go. No sign of the pram." Barby rose instantly. "Can we go with you?" Rick considered, then nodded. He could see no objection to taking them on what could only be a short plane trip. As they hurried to the plane, Scotty said, "What bothers me is, why didn't the JANIG team have someone at the landing?" "They did," Rick replied. "I asked the same question. Their roving patrol had been by there a short time earlier, but saw nothing suspicious. After all, they can't post men everywhere. So two of them take turns keeping watch on the tidal flats, in case anyone tries to cross from the mainland directly to here. The other two keep moving." "But it's funny anyone would attack Duke and Jerry," Barby objected. "It isn't ... well, logical." Rick grinned. Logic and his sister had never become well acquainted. He answered, "Suppose the enemy had been keeping track of movements by water to Spindrift? That isn't farfetched. They could do it easily without being noticed. Then, late yesterday, they saw two men get in a boat and come to the island. They were probably watching from cover. And what did they see?" Jan answered excitedly, "Jerry, and a man who looked like my father!" "That's it, Jan. So, if I guess correctly, they waited, hoping the man they thought was Dr. Morrison would come back. And he did, and they were waiting." "Sounds reasonable," Scotty agreed. "Except for one small thing. Why attack Dr. Morrison when all they have to do is turn on a gadget and his mind goes blank?" Jan shuddered visibly. Scotty added hurriedly, "Sorry, Jan." "Maybe it's not that simple," Rick said thoughtfully. "If they only have to turn on a gadget, why did they need to drug Dr. Marks?" There was no answer to that. As soon as they were air-borne, Rick headed north, searching the coastline, swinging low now and then to examine marinas where numbers of boats were tied up. Scotty kept the binoculars working, but there was no sign of a pram. "Do you suppose it's under cover somewhere?" Barby asked. Rick shrugged. "Maybe. They might cover it if they thought anyone would come looking for it." "They'll surely think of that, won't they?" Barby asked. "Not necessarily. After all, they tied up at the pier in plain sight. I think they assumed no one would worry about a small rowboat. They just didn't know prams are uncommon." Scotty put the glasses down for a moment and rubbed his eyes. "How far could they have come, anyway? We're miles above Spindrift, and no one would row that far." He was right, of course. Rick admitted, "I've been racking my brains, and I can't remember whether or not the pram had an outboard motor. Just as I was about to take a close look, Jerry yelled. Do you remember, Scotty?" Scotty shook his head. "But even with an outboard, they probably wouldn't have come this far." "Check." Rick swung the Sky Wagon around and headed south on a straight course to Spindrift. As the fast little plane passed over the Brant house he throttled back and dropped lower. "Let's start the search again." Every cove was investigated, and anything that might have been a boat was inspected carefully. Then, as they reached the summer colony north of Seaford, Barby exclaimed, "Look! There's that fancy houseboat again!" The houseboat was putting out from land, swinging on a northerly course. Rick saw that it was powered by twin outboards and that it cruised at about fifteen knots. Scotty yelled, "Hey! Behind the houseboat! Look at the dory they're towing!" Rick swung low and craned his neck to see. It was! The houseboat used a pram as a tender, and the pram had its own low-power outboard motor. "That's enough," he said with satisfaction. He kept the Sky Wagon on a southerly course until Seaford passed below, to keep the houseboaters from thinking the plane's sole interest had been in them. Beyond Seaford, he picked up Cap'n Mike's shack across the road from the old windmill. "Let's see if Mike's home," he said, and stood the wagon up on a wing. He leveled off in time to buzz low over the old shack, which was not as shabby as it looked, and neat as a ship's cabin inside, then he pulled up into a screaming Immelman and looked out. Cap'n Mike emerged from the shack waving what seemed to be a shirt. Rick waggled his wings in greeting, then did a wing over that brought him back low and fast over the old seaman's head. Cap'n Mike was grinning broadly as he waved. Rick set a course north and slightly inland. In a short time he was back on the water again, taxiing to the Spindrift beach. While the others went to the house, he stopped at the lab and reported to Joe Blake that he had found a pram. The agent got what details Rick had, and passed the word to the shore team on the mainland with instructions to follow the houseboat's movements from shore. Then he went to the phone and called Steve Ames. Finally Joe hung up. "Steve says to keep an eye on the houseboat, but to take no action. He's going to do a little investigating." "How?" "He didn't say. But he expects to have something by tonight." With that, Rick had to be satisfied. Apparently Steve wasted no time, because Barby answered the phone just before dinner, then called: "It's Steve Ames, Rick!" Rick ran to the telephone. "Thought I'd let you know," Steve reported. "I had the Coast Guard pay a visit to your houseboat this afternoon." "You did?" Rick was incredulous. "But that means they're tipped off now that we're watching them!" Steve sounded hurt. "Fine thing," he said, wounded. "No faith, huh? Ever hear of the Coast Guard's courtesy inspection service?" "Sure. They'll inspect your boat for safety." "That's it. And that's the gag we used. We sent a brand-new ensign, a real boyish type. He checked half a dozen boats before he got to the houseboat. When he pulled alongside and offered a courtesy investigation, they invited him aboard like an old friend." "What did he find?" Rick asked excitedly. "Nothing. All was in order, and the boat had plenty of extinguishers, life jackets, and other safety items, so he gave it a clean bill of health. They fed him iced tea and cookies, and waved good-by as if he was their long-lost son." "What kind of people were they?" "Two middle-aged couples. Business partners, from Trenton, and their wives. We got the names from him and checked. They really are partners, in a used-car business. Sorry, Rick. Looks like another dead end. The Coast Guard drew a blank this time." "But there isn't another pram within miles of Spindrift," Rick objected. "All right. We'll be keeping an eye on these people, but we have no grounds for any action. Any luck with the barber?" "We haven't tried yet," Rick told him. "Tomorrow's the day. We've been getting the Megabuck network completed in case we need to communicate." "Okay. Good luck, and keep me informed." "I will, Steve." Rick hung up and returned to the porch, deep in thought. To the waiting trio he said, "A blank. Nothing. Looks like the barber is still our best lead." "That houseboat is in it, too," Barby stated positively. "How do you know?" Scotty asked. "It's too flashy," Barby explained. "Too bright. Really nice people wouldn't have a boat that color. You wait and see, they're in this somehow!" Rick shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. "Good thing the boat isn't bright red," he said wearily. "That would really be proof they're criminals!" CHAPTER XIII The Megabuck Mob Acts Barby Brant flew up the stairs and ran down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of Rick's door. Then, conscious that her burst of speed was less than dignified, she drew herself up and tapped on the door gently. Rick had just finished dressing. He opened the door, and his eyebrows went up at Barby's poorly concealed excitement. "What's up?" he demanded. "Atom bomb ticking in the library or something?" Barby made a heroic effort to be casual. "I just thought you might be interested. The houseboat is anchored in North Cove." Rick was very much interested! North Cove was between Spindrift and Whiteside pier. He felt a tingle of excitement. Was the enemy closing in? "Did you see it?" he asked. "No, but Dad did. He went over to pick up the morning papers, and there it was. It must have gone by during the night." "Thanks, Barby," Rick said absently. His mind was already exploring the possibilities. The houseboat had taken up the ideal position for watching comings and goings from Spindrift. The cove was even close enough so the sound of the Sky Wagon's engine could be heard clearly. Yet, according to Steve, the people on it were ordinary enough. There was nothing suspicious about them, except that they had the only pram in the area. He wondered if perhaps the pram had nothing to do with the attack on Duke and Jerry. After all, people on houseboats had to land once in a while, for shopping. In the same moment, he realized that Whiteside was closed tight on Sunday evenings. There was nothing to be bought. That was when the attack had taken place. He ate breakfast with minimum conversation, only vaguely conscious that the others were watching him with interest, aware that he was chewing over the problem in his own fashion. After breakfast, Scotty broke in. "Well, what's all the high-brain activity leading up to?" Rick was just about ready. "Couple of things," he said. "First, we have only two possibilities for enemy contacts in the area. The houseboaters, and the barber. There may be others, but we don't know about them." "All right. What do we do about it?" "Well, suppose both are involved. Is that a reasonable assumption?" Scotty nodded thoughtfully. "I think so. The barber ties in because he came from Washington, and he has the machine. The houseboaters tie in because of the pram." "Okay. Then if both are involved, they have to contact each other sometime. They have to exchange information, at the very least." Scotty was with him. "And it would be easier for the houseboaters to contact the barber than vice versa. Because everyone has to get a haircut sooner or later. Right?" "One hundred percent. So we keep a watch on both. I'll work it out with Joe Blake. We could keep watch by day, when possibility of contact is greatest because the barbershop is open. The JANIG team on the mainland can keep watch by night, because if the houseboaters and the barber meet at night it will have to be in the woods. Anywhere in town would be too obvious--except for the barbershop." Barby and Jan had listened in silence, but Barby could contain herself no longer. "And we're going to help!" To Barby's astonishment, Rick nodded. She had expected opposition. "You and Jan can keep watch of the houseboat. Scotty and I will take the mainland. If the houseboaters start for Whiteside pier, you'll tell us. We'll pick them up as they land and trail 'em." Barby nodded, pleased. "The Megabuck Mob goes into action! We'll use the radio network. Right?" "Yes. First thing is, where do you take up a position? If I remember correctly, you can see North Cove from the attic. It will be kind of hot up there, but maybe we can rig a fan." "We won't mind," Jan said swiftly. "When do we start?" "Right now." Scotty spoke up. "You said you had a couple of things. What's the other one?" "We have to get a look at the barber's machine. I don't know how we'll do it. But we can figure out something." In the back of Rick's mind was the thought that the houseboaters might have moved nearer Whiteside for the purpose of contacting the barber, as well as to get a better look at traffic between Spindrift and the mainland. If that were true, they had better hurry. He had another thought, too. "What time is it?" Barby consulted her watch. "Five before eight. Why?" "The barbershop doesn't open until nine. I think it might be useful to have someone call on the houseboaters and try to pump them a little. It might be interesting to hear why they chose to anchor in North Cove." Barby's eyes got round. "Would you do it?" Rick shook his head. "It can't be anyone from Spindrift, or from the police. It has to be someone plausible. I'm thinking of Cap'n Mike." "Hey, that's just the ticket!" Scotty shook Rick's hand solemnly. "Cap'n Mike can pretend to be fishing, the way he used to when he was keeping an eye on Creek House. He could drift over to the houseboat and ask for a drink of water, or something, and strike up a conversation. They'd think he was just a typical salty character." "Then that's how we'll do it. Scotty, suppose you get the binoculars for Barby, then rig up a fan. I'll go get Cap'n Mike. It won't take long, and we can have something set before the barbershop opens." Scotty helped Rick push the plane out from the beach, then collected the binoculars. Rick warmed the plane and checked the gas. He could use a few minutes to gas up, too. There was a pier in Seaford where he could land and get the proper grade of fuel. He taxied out, headed into the wind, and took off. Then, to confuse watchers, he headed straight for Whiteside. As he passed over the cove he saw the houseboat, anchored in the best position for watching the Spindrift-Whiteside boat course. His mouth was set in a straight line. Maybe there was no proof, but how much circumstantial evidence was needed to paint a picture? He was sure the houseboat was a part of the plot against the project. Far inland, out of sight of the coast, he swung south, picked up Salt Creek and followed it to Smugglers' Reef. He turned down the coast past the town, buzzed Cap'n Mike's shack, and landed. Captain Michael Aloysius Kevin O'Shannon was at the pier when he docked. Rick cut the engine and climbed out on the pontoon. He heaved a line to the old seaman, who hauled him to the pier. Cap'n Mike was nearly seventy years old, but as Rick well knew, he had the vigor and keen mind of a man twenty years his junior. Under the battered master's cap was a thatch of white hair and a strong, weather-beaten face. "About time you paid a friendly call," Cap'n Mike greeted him. "Sorry I found no strangers for you. Was goin' to call today. Where's Scotty?" Rick felt a twinge of conscience. He had intended to pay a visit to his friend so many times, but something always seemed to get in the way. It had been many weeks since his last call. "It isn't exactly a social call," he said apologetically. "We need your help, Cap'n Mike." The old man looked at him quizzically. "What for? Fishin' or detectin'?" "Detectin'," Rick answered. "Accepted! Now I see why you were lookin' for strangers. When and where do I start?" "Right now, at Spindrift. Can you come?" "Wait'll I turn off my coffeepot. Anything I'll need?" "We'll want you to do a little fishing, too." Cap'n Mike nodded and hurried up the pier to his shack. In a few minutes he was back, rod case and tackle box in hand. He cast off and climbed into the plane. "Let's go, boy! Time's awastin'. Who we after this time?" Rick started the engine and was air-borne before he answered. Then, almost immediately, he had to land again to take on gas. By the time he was in the air en route to Spindrift, Cap'n Mike was squirming so impatiently that the whole plane seemed to vibrate. "Well, get on with it," he said irritably. Rick smiled. "All right. We don't know who we're after." Cap'n Mike grunted. "Seriously, we don't. Some folks in a houseboat are anchored in North Cove. We want to find out why." Cap'n Mike nodded sagely. "For no reason. They just might be dangerous criminals, so you want to investigate. All right, go ask 'em." "We can't. We want you to go fishing, and work your way to the houseboat. Ask for a drink of water or something, then find out if you can what they're doing." [Illustration: _Cap'n Mike quickly hauled the Sky Wagon to the pier_] "Got it all worked out, have ye?" The old captain snorted. "Where's the fun in that? Like to do things my own way." Rick hurriedly backtracked. "All right, do it anyway you like. We just want the information." "What for?" Rick sighed. "Can't tell you, Cap'n." "Must be I got untrustworthy since I saw you last." "It isn't that. It's a--well, it's a government matter." Cap'n Mike smacked his thigh with a calloused hand. "I should 'a' known! All right, Rick. I'll do it. Then maybe I can get my congressman to tell me what I've done." Rick made a great swing around Whiteside, pointing out the houseboat to Cap'n Mike as he passed North Cove, and landed off Pirate's Field. Scotty was waiting. After greeting the old seaman, Scotty said, "The girls are watching from the attic. When do we get started?" "As soon as Cap'n Mike is fixed up." Cap'n Mike was pretty self-sufficient and required little attention. A cup of hot coffee, a jug of fresh water, a little bait and a rowboat, and he was on his way. Fortunately, the Spindrift boat landing was not in sight of North Cove. Cap'n Mike sculled slowly along the shore. He would emerge at the cove, surprising the houseboaters. Rick checked on the girls. They were engaged in making themselves comfortable on an old bed they had dragged in front of the window from which North Cove could be seen. He borrowed the glasses and looked at the houseboat, then handed them back, satisfied. They could see everything that went on. Barby had her plastic set in place. Rick checked, and found that she had forgotten to turn it on. He grinned at her embarrassment. "I'll call you from downstairs, and again when we get set on the mainland. Good luck." The girls echoed the wish. Cap'n Mike was fishing, allowing the rowboat to drift slowly in the direction of the cove. Rick watched awhile, and was satisfied. If anyone could put it over, Cap'n Mike could. "Now," he asked Scotty, "how do we get to Whiteside without attracting attention?" Scotty scratched his head. "I don't know. Unless you want to walk. We could cross the tidal flats and hike to town." Rick vetoed that. "Too far and too slow. The barber would have time to cut twenty heads of hair before we got there." "How about asking Jerry to come for us?" "You've got it! He could come down the wood road and pick us up right behind the island. He knows the way." Rick went into the library and called the _Morning Record_ number. Duke Barrows answered. Rick explained that they had to get to Whiteside by the back way, without volunteering why. Duke hesitated, then agreed to send Jerry. Rick smiled as he hung up. "Duke will get a story out of this somehow," he said. "He's so curious he could burst a seam. Come on. Jerry will get started right away." Just before nine o'clock the boys and Jerry arrived at the newspaper office. Jerry was about to burst with curiosity, but he wasn't going to let it get the better of him. He hadn't asked a single question all the way from the wood road back of Whiteside into town. Duke Barrows was apparently taking the same tack. He looked up as the boys entered, grunted, then continued working on the following day's editorial. "Something just occurred to me," Rick said, after greeting the editor. "Isn't this pretty early for you and Jerry to be at work? I thought a morning paper didn't open for business until afternoon." "We never sleep," Duke said, without interrupting his work. "What do you think this is, _The New York Times_?" "Never occurred to me," Rick said politely. "Although the quality of the paper is about the same." The editor looked at Jerry. "When he talks like that, he wants something. What is it?" "Search me. I don't know what these two want, and I don't know when they got deaf. Notice they're both wearing hearing aids?" Duke hadn't. The boys grinned at his look of astonishment. "What we'd like," Scotty said, "if you care to co-operate, is to have someone take a look at the barbershop. We want to know if the new barber is on the job." Duke sharpened his pencil with loving care, using a penknife. "I won't ask why you can't take a look yourselves," he said finally. "It's pretty obvious." "Not to me," Jerry objected. "It should be. They don't want the barber to get a look at them, because he saw them in Washington. They don't want him to know they're interested, or that they know he's in town." Rick started to ask how Duke had known that much, then realized that the editor had simply drawn the correct conclusion from the few words that had been said before. Again Rick gained a clear insight into how a little information can be built up into a lot. No wonder Steve and his people had so much trouble protecting official secrets. Duke put his pencil down and rose. "It happens that I need a haircut. Stand by." At the door he paused. "Anything else you want to know?" "We want to know about his massage machine," Rick said urgently. "Find out all you can, Duke. Please? Particularly if it has any electrical connections besides the wall plug." Duke studied them thoughtfully for a long moment, then turned and left. Jerry watched his boss leave. "He's kinder to you two than I would be," he stated. "He didn't ask a single question, even about the hearing aids." Rick considered. There was nothing secret about the Megabuck network, except that he and Barby would use it for a mind-reading act. Jerry was trustworthy; he wouldn't give the act away. "Promise you'll keep it to yourself," Rick asked, and at ferry's excited nod he took the tiny receiver from his ear and handed it to Jerry. The reporter held it to his own ear, moving closer to Rick because the cord was just long enough to reach from ear to inner pocket. Rick said, "Barby, say hello to Jerry." Apparently Barby did, because Jerry gave a surprised start. "Can I talk to her?" Jerry asked. Barby answered the question herself. The microphone, built right into the little unit, was very sensitive and Rick's thin jacket did not muffle it very much. "I'm fine," Jerry said. Rick grinned. Scotty could hear both sides of the conversation through his own set. Now he broke in. "Any sign of activity yet?" "Cap'n Mike is fishing right near the houseboat. I can see the people on the houseboat, but they're just having breakfast on the rear deck. Where are you?" "In the newspaper office. Duke has gone to check on the barber." Rick held out his hand and Jerry gave him the earpiece, grinning. "What a rig!" the reporter marveled. "Where did you get it?" "Built it." During the next half hour, while they waited for Duke to return, Rick told Jerry the story of the Megabuck Mob, omitting only what followed when Steve Ames arrived. Then Duke returned, freshly barbered, trying to scratch his back. "One thing about this new barber," he greeted them. "He's no better at keeping hair out of your shirt than Vince is. Why is it that barbers can't cut hair without getting it into places where it itches?" Rick smiled sympathetically. He knew how it was. No matter how careful a barber tried to be, it seemed impossible to get a haircut without a shower of hair clippings down the back. Usually they lodged where it was impossible to scratch. Duke rubbed against the doorframe. "It's Vince Lardner's day off," he began. Rick tensed. If the houseboaters were going to contact the barber, they would naturally try to choose a time when they could see him alone. Maybe there had been an earlier contact, and the barber had told them he would be alone today. That might account for the houseboat's moving closer to Whiteside. "Vince had gone fishing." The editor grinned. "I suspect that's the only reason he got a helper, anyway, so he could go fishing more often. There isn't really enough work in town for more than one barber." "Did you look at the massage machine?" Rick asked anxiously. The editor nodded. "It's nothing but a hood, with three ordinary massage gadgets inside. Vibrator heads, I think they're called." That tallied with the description Steve's agent had given. "Did you examine it closely?" Rick pursued. "Yes. There's only one cord attached--the power cord. But I did notice an interesting thing. Set around the edges are little disks, like round covers. I started to lift one up, but the barber asked me to stop. He said the machine is adjusted very carefully and I might upset the adjustment." "Tough luck," Scotty said, disappointed. "Oh, I don't know." Duke's eyes twinkled. "I got enough of a look to see two tiny holes in the piece of stuff the disk covered. The stuff was black, probably plastic. Like telephones are made of." "In other words," Rick said slowly, "you saw holes for electrical plugs?" "I think so. I don't know what else they could be." Rick and Scotty exchanged glances. "What does it mean?" Jerry asked. Rick answered. "We don't know. And I'm not kidding. We really don't know." "I believe you," Duke said briefly. "Okay. I've done my bit, including getting my hair cut. Anything else?" "We'd like to stick around," Rick replied. "Jerry already knows about this, but Barby is watching a houseboat anchored in North Cove. If anyone leaves the houseboat for the Whiteside pier, she'll call us. We'll take over at the pier. It just might happen that the houseboater will pay a call on the barber." Duke didn't comment, but Rick knew the editor's mind was at work. "Make yourself at home," Duke said, and went back to his editorial writing. Now and then Barby called, wanting to chat, but Rick discouraged her. He was reasonably sure the enemy wouldn't be listening in on the extremely short wave length on which the Megabuck network operated, but there was no use taking any chances. After each conversation he identified the sets with his own amateur call letters, even though it was unlikely anyone could hear the conversation. The little sets operated essentially on a line of sight because of the short wave length used. They couldn't be heard beyond the horizon, if they were heard that far. After an hour of waiting, Barby called in high excitement. Cap'n Mike was aboard the houseboat! The boys waited anxiously for some further report, but Barby was only able to say that the old seaman had departed after a ten-minute visit and was now fishing again. At noon Jerry and Scotty slipped out for a sandwich. When they returned, Rick and Duke went to eat. According to Barby, all was quiet. Around one o'clock Cap'n Mike returned to Spindrift and reported a friendly conversation with the houseboaters. They had anchored in North Cove because someone down the coast had told them fishing was good around there, which was a true statement. The retired skipper had only one additional comment, which Barby relayed. The folks had been friendly, but he thought they were a little nervous, and anxious to get rid of him. He had no other information of value. At midafternoon Jerry went on a brief sortie, came back, and reported business was slow in the barbershop, which was not unusual for a Tuesday. The barber was reading a magazine. Rick and Scotty were restless. The chairs in the newspaper office were hard, and they had exhausted the reference materials on the bookshelf. Duke Barrows looked up from a story he was editing and grinned. "Espionage isn't as adventurous as some folks would like you to believe. It's generally nothing but sitting. And waiting. Just as you're doing now." Rick grinned back. Duke was telling him nothing he didn't know. He had waited like this before. Barby called urgently, "Rick! The pram is leaving. One man in it, and he's just starting the outboard motor!" "All right," he said swiftly. "Let us know which way he goes." In a moment Barby answered. "He's going to the pier!" "Roger. We're moving!" CHAPTER XIV Surveillance--with Cereal The plan of action had been set in advance. Scotty hurried out, while Rick settled down to wait. Scotty, using Jerry's car, would locate the houseboater at the pier. Rick would stand by, ready to take over as necessary. A short time later Scotty called on the Megabuck network. "I'm in the pier parking lot. He's tying the pram up." "Can he see you?" "Not unless he comes over and inspects the cars." "Okay." After a few minutes, Scotty reported again. "He's hiking in the direction of Whiteside. Thumb out. He wants a ride." "Don't give him one," Barby interjected urgently. "He might recognize you." "He's hitchhiking," Scotty explained. "He doesn't even know I exist." "What are his chances?" Rick asked. "Good. There's a fair amount of traffic." Rick waited, alert for Scotty's next report. It came almost immediately. "I'm moving. A truck picked him up. Stand by." Then soon afterward, "We're coming into the outskirts of town." Rick walked from the newspaper office to the sidewalk and leaned casually against the building, eyes on the direction from which the quarry and Scotty would come. He felt just fine. The little network was taking all the strain out of shadowing. He thought of the many times when such communications would have come in very handy indeed. "Moving down Main Street," Scotty reported. "Watch it!" Rick saw a truck come into sight and slow as it neared the barbershop. A man got out, thanked the driver, then stood looking around. He spotted the barbershop, but instead of going in, he went to the window of the Sports Center and stood quietly, ostensibly inspecting equipment. Rick decided he was just looking the street over before making contact. "I'm on him," he said quietly for Scotty's benefit. "He's casing the street. He'll probably go into the barbershop any minute now." Scotty drove down the main street, and as he passed the barbershop, he reported, "There's a man in the chair. Maybe our friend is waiting for him to leave." "We'll see." Rick's plans had not gone beyond this point. The objective had been to see whether the houseboaters made contact with the barber. But now he realized that a simple contact wasn't proof of anything. Who was to say that the houseboater hadn't really wanted a haircut? If only there were some way of overhearing the conversation.... Jerry Webster came out and stood beside him. "See your man?" Rick gestured. "In front of the Sports Center." "What are you going to do now?" "I was just wondering the same thing." Jerry grinned. "Don't tell me you don't have a complete plan! Why, I thought by now you'd have the barbershop wired for sound." Rick stared at him. Wired! Why not? And it wasn't too late, if Jerry would help. "Will you do something more for me?" Jerry looked martyred. "Might as well. I'm in this up to my neck, anyway." Scotty joined them. He had parked the car around the corner. "What's happening?" "Just had a brain storm," Rick told him. He explained rapidly, and the two started to chuckle. "It should work," Scotty agreed. "Go ahead. I'll take over the watch. Hey! There he goes." The houseboater had just walked into the barbershop. Rick ran to the next corner and into the grocery store. He hesitated briefly, then picked out two boxes of cereal, and added a box of sugar. He had them put into a bag, paid for them, and hurried back. Inside the newspaper office, he took out his scout knife and carefully slit the top of one cereal box. He removed the little radio from his pocket, unplugged the earphone, and put the radio on top of the cereal. He borrowed cellophane tape and taped the box shut, then he put both boxes of cereal back in the bag with the sugar on top. He handed the bag to Jerry. "Do your stuff." Jerry took it and hurried out the door. Rick and Scotty watched as he went up the street and turned in at the barbershop. Scotty shook his head. "All I can hear in the earphone is a crackling noise." "Probably the paper bag," Rick said. "It would crackle as he walks." They waited impatiently. Presently Jerry emerged without the bag and walked down the street to join them. "The man in the chair is about done," he reported. "The one you're after is reading a magazine. I said I'd be back in a few minutes, left the bag, and walked out." "There's the other customer now," Rick said. A man had just emerged from the barbershop and was going up the street in the opposite direction. "Good! They'll talk fast now, because they'll be afraid you'll come back." "I still hear the crackling noise," Scotty objected. "Someone's talking in the background, but I can't hear it because of the snapping and popping." Rick swallowed hard. Was something wrong? "Let's see." He borrowed Scotty's earpiece and held it to his own ear. For a second he listened, horrified. It sounded like the Battle of Bull Run! Barby broke in faintly through the noise. "Rick! I've been listening. What's that noise?" He explained quickly. "We planted one unit in a box of cereal and Jerry put it in the barbershop." Barby gasped. "In a box of cereal? What kind?" "Crummies. Your favorite." "Oh, Rick!" The girl's voice rose to a wail. "Don't you remember the commercial? Crisp, crackly Crummies! The cereal that sings for your breakfast!" He got it, then. "Okay, Barby." To the others, he said unhappily, "Well, it was a great idea. Only I forgot one thing. I didn't pick a quiet breakfast food. That noise is the radio settling through the Crummies--the loudest cereal on the market." The three looked at each other helplessly. There wasn't a thing that could be done about it. "Noisy breakfast food," Scotty said unbelievingly. Jerry promised, "I'll never eat it again!" The reporter straightened his coat and tie and gave his hatbrim a jaunty flick. "Well, here I go for my haircut. Might as well do something constructive." The crackling, popping, snapping continued unabated. "Listen to it," Rick said hopelessly. Three quarters of an hour later, when Jerry brought the bag back, the Crummies were still crackling happily. Not a word of conversation had been overheard. CHAPTER XV A Matter of Brain Waves Barby, Jan, and Scotty were kind to Rick, which annoyed him considerably. If they had scolded him for bad judgment, called him a chucklehead, or even ignored him, it would have been all right. But they all had to reassure him and tell him it could have happened to anyone, and so on, and on. All of which made it unbearable. He was more sure than ever that the houseboaters and barber were connected, but he still had no clear evidence. Of course he had made a report of the day's activities to Steve, who at least hadn't tried to be nice about it. "An agent can't always think of everything," was Steve's comment. "But he can try. Sometimes, when he fails to take a factor into consideration, he gets away with it. Sometimes he fails. Sometimes he ends up dead, because of his poor judgment. Be glad your lives weren't hanging in the balance." Rick took the lesson to heart. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. On the evening of the cereal fiasco, Parnell Winston returned to Spindrift after another visit to Dr. Chavez. He called Steve Ames and spent a long time talking to the JANIG agent. Then he called the project team and the boys into the library. "We're on the track of something," he reported. "At least we think we are. It's so incredible that I simply can't believe it. If true, it means some unfriendly nation is so far ahead of us scientifically that we should all be trembling in our boots." Rick had realized that only agents of a hostile country could be involved in the actions against the project team. Everyone present had known as much, without a word being spoken. Only another country could gain from disruption of the project. "Chavez and I have run a series of EEG's on Marks. We now have the records of EEG's on the other two team members, and Steve has managed to turn up a pre-project EEG on one which gives us a basis of comparison. Now, to comprehend our tentative hypothesis, you must understand something of what is known about the brain." Rick prepared to listen without much understanding. The field in which Parnell Winston worked was new and strange to him, and while he understood some of the basic theories, he got lost when Winston got highly technical. "Our understanding of the human brain is fairly recent," Winston began, "and we're still only on the threshold of knowledge. In a way, we've just discovered the tools of research. The principal tool, of course, is electricity. Through it we can explore the electrochemical nature of brain processes." Rick was with him so far. He concentrated hard, not wanting to miss a word. "There's no point in reviewing the entire history of brain physiology. You all know of Pavlov's work on conditioned reflexes. And you all know that Fritsch and Hitzig demonstrated that, when electrically stimulated, certain portions of the brain show a response. You also know that Caton discovered many years ago that the brain itself produces electric currents." Rick didn't know, but he intended to find out. There must be some works on brain physiology in the library. "However, the important modern work started with Berger in the late 1920's. He found that the brain emits a definite pulse of activity, which was then known as the 'Berger rhythm.' "Since then, Berger's work has been very much refined. We now know that the brain actually produces a number of clearly defined electrical rhythms. These rhythms have been used in medical diagnosis of brain injury. Walter, in England, has even developed a machine that will show whether or not people will get along with each other, by analysis of their wave patterns." This was interesting, and Rick intended to find out more about it. But he began to wish Winston would come to the point. "I might add that the rhythmic brain patterns seem to be highly individual. No two are alike, even in identical twins. However, each person shows a pattern that remains fairly constant, even over a period of years. "With this background, you will understand when I report that the EEG's taken of our colleagues brains are completely abnormal. The EEG's were taken while they were awake. Yet, the most prominent pattern is the delta rhythm that is universally associated with sleep and some types of damage to the brain." "Are there any other signs of physical damage?" Hartson Brant asked. "No. All tests are negative. Spinal taps show no concussion, and there is no evidence of trauma of any kind other than psychic. Yet, the delta rhythms persist. In the one case where we have an EEG taken before the--incidents, let's call them--the pattern is entirely different. The scientist had a pattern of a well-known type which bears no resemblance to the EEG taken after the incident." Dr. Morrison leaned forward. "What is your conclusion?" "That our mysterious enemy has somehow caused damage of an unknown kind, by remote means. And that can mean only one thing: The damage was caused electronically, probably by transmission through the air." "Incredible," Weiss muttered, and the sentiment was reflected in the astonished gasps of the others. "Let's consider the implications of Parnell's statement," Hartson Brant said slowly. "If he is correct, then the enemy has devised a means for causing brain disruption in an individual. A transmitted signal would inevitably strike countless others; there can be no such thing as a beam of radiation that strikes one person at a distance while missing all others. Therefore, this beam must affect only one person among many." "But how can a beam be tuned to one person?" Rick asked. "I don't know, Rick." Hartson Brant turned to Winston. "Do you?" "No. I have only a hypothesis, and one so far afield from what we know of the brain today that I even hesitate to suggest it. Let me ask a question. If the enemy could have access to the brain pattern of an individual--and remember such patterns are no more similar than fingerprints--could the enemy then transmit a signal that would affect only that pattern?" Julius Weiss objected. "The supposition is based on scientific knowledge that does not exist." "So far as we know," Dr. Morrison added. Parnell Winston held up his hands. "I'm as aware as any of you that the hypothesis assumes a knowledge of the brain that is incredibly far advanced. But let us consider the evidence. The three scientists who have fallen victim show the same signs of brain damage. Investigation indicates that they were different types who probably had dissimilar patterns. We also have the special case of Dr. Marks, who was drugged while on the train. The person who drugged him dropped soluble salt paste on the rug of his room. Can we accept the fact that the salt paste was used for EEG electrodes, and a recording made while Marks was under the influence of the drug? We can't prove it, but what other explanation can there be?" Dr. Morrison shook his head. "Suppose we accept that theory. How does that account for the other two? They were under guard, and there is no evidence that they ever were drugged. If we accept your hypothesis, we must also accept the theory that the other two men somehow were given an EEG examination and their patterns recorded." An idea was growing in Rick's mind. Suddenly he blurted, "That's where the barber comes in!" "The barber's machine was examined by Steve's men and found harmless," Hartson Brant pointed out. Scotty spoke up quickly. "Yes, but when Duke looked at it this morning, he found electrical connections! Why couldn't an EEG be taken with such a gadget?" Parnell Winston considered. "It could," he said finally. "I would need to examine the machine, but in theory any gadget that fits over the head could be adapted for proper placement of electrodes. The recorder would be difficult to hide, however, unless it was in another room." Rick sank back and looked at Scotty. No wonder the barber had wanted to give a treatment to Hartson Brant. The elevator operator's wink had told him that the scientist had been on the fourth floor, where the project team was located. "Didn't you ever have your hair cut in the arcade shop, Dr. Morrison?" Rick asked. "No, Rick. I used a barber in a hotel nearby, one I've patronized for years." "But the other two did use the shop in the building," Scotty finished, "and Dr. Marks had no need for a barber, so they had to get at him some other way!" "It seems reasonable," Hartson Brant admitted. "The pieces fall into place nicely. But we must first accept Parnell's theory that some kind of pattern can be transmitted that will interfere with normal brain activity. If we believe it, we must also believe that the enemy is so far ahead of us in brain physiology that we are hopelessly outdistanced. I can't believe so much progress could have taken place without some word of it leaking out." Parnell Winston shrugged. "It seems incredible, Hartson. But we haven't another theory, much less a better one." "We had better make sure no one takes EEG's of the rest of us, in any case," Weiss suggested dryly. Rick added, "And don't get any haircuts until this is all straightened out!" When the meeting broke up, Rick and Scotty walked to the front porch where the girls were listening to the music of a Newark disk jockey on Barby's portable radio. "Lot of puzzled people in this neighborhood," Rick said. "Including me." "And me," Scotty agreed. "And I'll bet I know the most curious one of all." "Who?" "Cap'n Mike." Rick grinned. At least the rest of them had some information. Even Duke and Jerry had enough to know that national security was somehow involved. But the captain, who had the liveliest curiosity of all, knew the least. As Rick dropped him off in front of the old windmill, Cap'n Mike had grunted, "When you can trust me a little more, you might tell me what this was all about." Actually, Cap'n Mike's visit to the houseboat hadn't been particularly productive. He had little to add to the Coast Guard inspector's description, aside from his feeling that the houseboaters had wanted to get rid of him. Scotty asked, "Why would anyone want to disrupt the brains of the project team? Seems to me that's doing it the hard way. Assassination would be a lot easier." Rick shook his head. He had wondered about the same thing. Barby and Jan motioned for silence. They were listening to a vocalist who happened to be Barby's favorite of the moment. The boys stood silent for a few minutes; then, by unspoken agreement, turned and went back into the house. Hartson Brant came down the stairs, dressed in a suit, with white shirt and tie. Rick stared at him. "Going somewhere, Dad?" "Yes. Parnell Winston has disturbed me deeply, with the implications of his theory. I'm going to pay a call on an old friend in Newark, an associate of Chavez. I want to explore some of the electrophysiological background of his hypothesis. I won't be very late. Is there any gas in the car?" "Almost full," Scotty said. The boys went on upstairs into their adjoining rooms. For a few minutes Rick tinkered with his camera equipment, then he went back down to the library and searched the shelves for something to read. He finally settled on W. Grey Walter's _The Living Brain_ and carried it back up to his room. He sat down in the old leather armchair and manipulated buttons on one arm. The light brightened to reading intensity, and the back tilted to the most comfortable position. He had wired the chair himself, and it fit him perfectly. He settled down to read. Time passed as he lost himself in the clear, exciting descriptions in Dr. Walter's book. He heard a bell ring downstairs, but paid no attention. Then Scotty stuck his head in the door. "Rick! Your mother's calling you." Rick sat up swiftly. It was true, and his mother had urgency in her voice. He dropped the book and ran to the stairs, going down them three at a time. A strange, dark-haired man was standing in the hallway, and his mother, Barby, and Jan were waiting for him with strained white faces. "Your father has been hurt," Mrs. Brant said with false calm. "He's on this gentleman's houseboat!" CHAPTER XVI The Vanishing Mermaids Parnell Winston worked as Hartson Brant described his experience. "There really isn't much to it," Mr. Brant said. "I started out for Whiteside in the fast boat." Winston focused a flashlight into one eye, then the other. "I was on the north side of North Cove when the boat smashed into something. I was thrown violently into the water." Winston tested the scientist's reflexes, using a finger instead of the traditional rubber hammer. "Apparently I was badly shaken up, because my memory becomes unclear at this point. I do recall being fished out of the water, and when I came to enough to recognize my surroundings, I was in a strange room. It turned out to be the cabin of the houseboat." "Do you remember any strange sensations, or smells?" Winston asked. Rick listened, his heart pounding. "None. The people on the houseboat were most considerate. One of the men insisted that I get into some of his spare clothes, and I did so. One of the women--the wife of the man who came here, I believe--made me a cup of hot consommé. They told me I was apparently whole, no broken bones." "They were very pleasant and helpful," Rick admitted. The houseboaters had done just the right things, including coming to Spindrift for help rather than bringing the scientist home in the slow-moving and rather uncomfortable pram. Instead, Hartson Brant had waited on the houseboat while one of the men brought the pram to the island with a request that someone follow him back in a more comfortable boat. Rick and Scotty had done so, and were almost limp with relief at finding the scientist apparently unhurt and comfortable. "How does your head feel?" Parnell Winston demanded. "Rather stuffy," the scientist admitted. "I'm finding it difficult to collect my thoughts. Parnell, why all these questions?" The cyberneticist rubbed his bushy eyebrows with both hands, a habit he had when agitated. "Hartson, as you know, I am not a doctor of medicine. However, I do claim competence as a physiologist, and consequently bodily reactions are familiar to me. I believe you have been drugged." "Drugged?" Rick's heart stopped momentarily. "Yes. I've looked for the mark of a hypodermic needle, but there is none. If I'm correct, the drug was a light one, possibly amytal. Your reflexes are slower than normal, even taking the accident and subsequent shock into account, and your pupils react slowly." Rick came to a sudden decision. He went to the desk and picked up the phone. "What are you doing?" Hartson Brant demanded. "I'm calling Steve Ames. We need help." In a few minutes Rick had the agent on the wire and was giving him the details of the accident over the scrambler system. He concluded, "If Dad was drugged by the houseboaters, as Dr. Winston thinks, that means the enemy has his brain pattern!" Steve Ames asked, "Is Winston there?" "Yes." "Ask him a question for me. Would the brain waves be considered quasi-optical?" Steve meant would the waves be of such high frequency that they would act like light. Rick put the question to Winston. "Tell Steve the answer is a qualified yes." Rick repeated the information. "All right. Then we must assume that the brain scrambler--or whatever you call it--can operate only from short distances, approximately to the horizon. Tell your father he is to get out of town. Have him pack a bag, then deliver him to the New York JANIG office. We'll take it from there. Got it?" Rick had it. "How do I make sure we're not followed?" Steve paused. "That's a tough one. Air travel would be surest. Do you have any landing lights on Spindrift?" "No. Besides, it's a short runway, and only a pilot who knew the island could possibly land at night." "I've got a pilot who knows it, so forget going to New York. Rig lights of some kind. You can put lights on the roof of the lab building, I'm sure. Then put a pair of lights at each side of the runway's end, so he'll know how far he can go. If you have nothing else, soak newspapers in gasoline. He'll buzz the island. That will be your signal to light up." "Is Mike Malone the pilot?" Malone had landed there before. "Yes. He'll take over. Just deliver your father intact." "If we can," Rick said slowly. "Steve, suppose the enemy activates their machine when they hear the plane? Suppose they suspect he's getting away and turn on the mind reader?" "We'll have to chance it. Best thing is to move fast. Get your father in with Mike, and let them clear out. I'll tell Mike to put distance between him and you as fast as he can." "All right, Steve." There seemed to be no other way. Rick turned to his father and Winston, and repeated the conversation. "He's right, Hartson," Winston said. "You're in good enough shape to travel. Better get packed." The cyberneticist looked at Rick. "What did you call the enemy gadget? A mind reader? That's an odd name." "I didn't think about it," Rick told him. "The name just popped into my mind. But doesn't the enemy machine read the patterns in peoples' minds, then erase them?" "As good a name as any, I guess," Winston agreed. "Well, let's tell the others. Then you have work to do getting ready for the plane, Rick." Mrs. Brant, after making sure that her husband was no more than slightly dazed, had been forced to turn her attention to Barby and Jan. The two girls were on the verge of sheer hysteria with fear for their fathers. Scotty had joined Mrs. Brant, in an effort to soothe the girls' frayed nerves. Now, as Rick opened the library door, he could see that the two pretty young faces were tear-streaked, but as calm as could be expected under the circumstances. Scotty looked worn out. Rick could only marvel at his mother. She could always be relied upon in a crisis. Mrs. Brant listened to her son's report, then nodded firmly. "Steve is wise to insist, Rick. I'll help your father pack." Rick beckoned to Scotty. "We have work to do. Let's start with the lab." On the way, he filled Scotty in on the details of what had happened in the library. Then he asked, "How did you get the girls calmed down?" Scotty shook his head wearily. "It wasn't fun. The poor kids are scared stiff. Remember they haven't been exposed to stuff as we have. To them, our stories are just exciting fun, because we leave out the rough parts. Now they're getting a taste of this business the way it really is." "Did you say that?" "That, and a thousand other things. Nothing did much good, and Mom couldn't make any headway, either. Another ten minutes of tears and the island would have been under water, honest. Finally I got rough. I told them we were all in this, and they were only creating a nuisance that complicated things and didn't help at all. Then Mom chimed in. You know how she does. Never raises her voice. She said real courage consisted of being terribly frightened, but trying to remain calm in spite of it. Then she said she was rapidly becoming ashamed of both of them. That did it. They stuck their chins in the air, wiped off the tears, and actually managed a smile." "Good for them!" Rick exclaimed. Inside the laboratory they went at once to the stockroom. Floodlights were stored there, among other items. Extension cords were plentiful, and there were electric outlets on the roof. In a few moments the boys had strung the lights and Rick had readjusted the board downstairs, so that all the lights were on a single circuit. That way, they could all be switched on or off at once. Joe Blake came to watch. Rick explained what he was doing, and told Joe of Steve's conversation. "I know," Joe said. "Steve called me on the radio. He didn't want us shooting Mike down for trying to land without warning. But how come you can cut circuits in and out like this?" "We never know when an experiment will call for electric power in some unexpected place," Rick explained. "The main board is set up so we can do just about anything we need to. We can feed normal current in, or 440 volts, and we can cross-link the circuits any way we like." Scotty checked Rick's work, then took the switch handle. He touched the contacts briefly, and there was a quick pulse of light as the roof lighted up and went dark again. "I'll stand by here," Scotty said. "You stand by at the end of the runway. Are we going to use gasoline?" "We'll have to. It would take a while to run power from the house and hook up lighting units. Gasoline will be quicker and easier. Let's go." There was a supply of gasoline for the boats. Rick got a five-gallon can while Scotty collected newspapers. Two trash cans served as containers. The cans were filled with newspapers, then drenched in gasoline and placed at the last possible point of runway that could be used. If Mike overshot the containers he would land in the sea. Rick worried about the problem of lighting the containers without getting burned, then went to the workshop and selected rags. He twisted the rags loosely and tied them together, poured gasoline into a bucket and soaked his rag fuse. The last step was to insert one end of the fuse in each can. When the time came, he would be between the cans, and he would light the center of the rag string. The fire would travel rapidly, because of the gasoline. In case Mike was delayed for any great period, Rick kept the gasoline handy. He might have to wet down the cans and fuse again. He had forgotten to ask where Mike would come from, and Steve hadn't volunteered. Probably he would come from Washington, which meant about an hour's flying time in the plane Mike would use, a fast little four-place job that Rick had long coveted. But Mike wouldn't be ready for take-off instantly. Time had to be allowed for Steve to give him instructions, to get from wherever he was to the airport, and then get the plane gassed and ready. Allow another hour. That meant two hours in all. Inside, Rick was still scared. How did they know the electronic mind reader wouldn't be activated at any moment? He hurried into the house and went upstairs to where his father was packing. He couldn't do anything, and he knew it. But it helped, just being near the scientist. Apparently Scotty felt the same. He had joined Hartson Brant, too. But Barby, Jan, and Mrs. Brant had preceded him. The scientist smiled. "Never had so much help packing before." The smile was strained, and Rick thought he knew why. He had seen his father face great physical danger without losing a bit of his composure. But the insidious weapon that could read all reason out of minds was far more horrible to a man like Hartson Brant than any physical danger could be. Bullets, knives, and clubs may leave bad wounds, or they may kill. But what chance is there for anyone with a damaged brain? Scotty looked at his watch and held it up for Rick to see. Nearly an hour and three-quarters had passed since the call to Steve. Rick gestured to Scotty and urged, "Hurry, Dad." "I'm ready." The scientist closed his bag. Barby got to it first and lugged it down the stairs, refusing Scotty's offer of help. The boys went to their stations while the others waited on the porch. Rick checked to be sure he had matches, then worried because a wind had sprung up. Suppose it blew his match out? He was about to go borrow his father's lighter when he heard the far-off drone of a plane. There wasn't time now! He held the matches in his hand, ready. The drone grew nearer, rising to a high whine. The plane was diving! Suddenly it was overhead and gone with a crash of sound. Rick saw its lights head out to sea. Mike was making a tight turn to come in for a landing. Rick's lips formed the words. "Now, Scotty! Now!" And, as though he had heard, Scotty threw the switch. Lights flared on the lab roof, outlining it clearly. Rick struck a match and held it to the saturated cord of rags. Flaming gasoline ran along the cord in both directions, ran up the sides of the cans. There was a loud whoosh of exploding gasoline, and both cans were ablaze. Rick ran away from the heat. Mike came in low and fast over the lab roof and slapped the plane down on the turf. In a moment he applied the brakes and the wheels whined their protest as they dug up grass. Then the plane was rolling to a stop directly in front of the house. The pilot jumped out and called, "Hello, gang! Come on, sir. No time to waste!" Hartson Brant kissed Mrs. Brant and the girls, found time to pat Rick's shoulder, and climbed in. Rick took the suitcase from Barby and handed it to the scientist. The door closed and the plane was whirling, catching them in its prop blast. Mike taxied back fast to the laboratory, turned the plane and revved up, holding on the brakes. Rick saw Scotty emerge from the lab building and go right back in again as the prop wash caught him. Then the plane was rolling ... and lifting. Mike skimmed low over the burning trash cans, banked out to sea, and was gone. Rick felt a sob rising in his throat and resolutely squelched it. He walked to the burning cans and dropped covers on them. Scotty cut the lights on the lab building. Had they made it? They wouldn't know. Not until Steve reported that the scientist was safe. On the porch, Barby asked, "How soon will we know?" Rick was proud of her. Her voice had trembled only slightly. "Probably not until tomorrow, Sis. Come on. Let's all hike off to bed. It's been a rough evening." "All right. Rick, we still don't know for sure, do we? About the people in the houseboat?" "Not for sure. But we have a pretty good idea. How else would Dad get drugged?" "Mightn't they have given him a sedative?" Jan asked. "That would have the same effect." Rick hadn't thought of that. He admitted it was possible. "I wish the radio trick had worked," Barby said sadly. "I wish we had some way of getting a radio on the houseboat. Then we could listen in on everything they said." "No way of doing it," Rick said. He was very tired. "Forget it for now and let's all turn in. We can talk some more in the morning." * * * * * Steve Ames phoned at five o'clock in the morning. Rick had been sleeping lightly, his rest broken by nightmares that he couldn't remember when he awoke. He got to the phone in the hall. "Just a minute," he said. "Let me get downstairs to the switch." The entire family was close on his heels as he went into the library. He threw the scrambler switch, then asked anxiously, "Yes, Steve?" "Just had word, Rick, so I called in spite of the hour. Your father is safe inside the compound at Los Alamos. He's all right. And just as a precaution, he'll spend most of his time in a shielded area where no radio signal can penetrate. Now go on back to bed and get some sleep." Rick thanked him gratefully. Los Alamos! That was one of the two main atomic energy weapons laboratories. No place in the United States was more closely guarded. Now he could be sure his father was safe as anyone could be. He repeated the conversation to his anxious family. "Now," he said, echoing Steve's advice, "let's get back to bed. Perhaps we can really sleep for a change." He did sleep. It was nearly noon before he awoke. He got up sleepily and found Scotty had just barely preceded him and was now taking a shower. Downstairs, things were apparently normal. Mrs. Brant and Mrs. Morrison were at work on lunch, but since an hour was too long to wait, Rick had a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk. He was careful not to choose Crummies. Scotty settled for three doughnuts and milk. "Where are the girls?" Rick asked. "Still asleep?" "They've gone swimming," Mrs. Morrison replied. "They should be back soon, though. They've been gone over an hour." "I could use a swim myself," Rick admitted. "Not me," Scotty said. "Wait until afternoon and I'll join you. That cold water would shock me into a state of galloping goose pimples the way I feel now." Rick had forgotten how cold the water was. "Okay. We'll wait. Let's go over to the lab and take down the lights. I want to clean up the trash cans, too." They walked leisurely over to the laboratory and stopped for a moment to chat with Joe Blake. Then, before starting on the lights, they walked around behind the lab building. The laboratories were built on a promontory that sloped inland toward Pirate's Field, which was just above sea level. The raised area ran around the seaward side of the island, so that the Brant house was on high land, too. On the north side, the land sloped down toward the boat landing. Rick stood on the edge of the low cliff and looked for Barby and Jan. They weren't in sight. "They must be using lungs," Scotty said. "Watch for bubbles." No bubbles were visible, either. Rick checked carefully and began to worry. It was a calm day with little wave action, and the bubbles from the lungs should have been clearly visible. Surely they wouldn't swim so far the bubbles couldn't be seen on a day like this. "Let's check," Rick said. The boys hurried to the room where the Scuba equipment was kept. Two lungs and the blue and white equipment were gone. So was the cart. A quick look at Pirate's Cove showed no cart in sight. Where could they have gone? The boys hurried to the front of the lab building again and found Joe Blake still getting a bit of sunshine. "Did you see the girls?" Rick asked hurriedly. Joe nodded. He motioned across the island. "They came and got aqualungs and hauled the cart across to the north side. They're probably swimming over there." Rick doubted it. He doubted it very much. The currents on the north side kept the bottom stirred up and visibility was too poor for diving. Without the need of exchanging a word, Rick and Scotty were suddenly running. As they passed the house Rick had a sudden thought. He went in and ran up the stairs to his room, grabbed his radio unit and turned it on. "Barby!" he called frantically. "Barby!" There was no answer. Tucking the unit into his pocket, he ran out and joined Scotty again. If Barby had her set she wasn't using it. "Come on." He led the way to the boat cove and stopped short. The speedboat was there, and so was the Scuba cart, but the rowboat wasn't. Anxiously he scanned the water. There was no sign of the girls. Where were they? Where? The thought struck him. He remembered Barby's comment of the night before. _Had they gone to the houseboat?_ CHAPTER XVII Pointer to Disaster Scotty ran to the speedboat and yelled, "Come on!" "Wait!" Rick called. "Let's not go barging off without knowing what we're doing." Scotty turned, puzzled. "What do you mean?" "The girls have some kind of plan, and we don't know what it is. If we go barging around in the speedboat, we might throw a monkey wrench into the works." "But we can't just stand here and do nothing," Scotty said desperately. "We won't. Go get the plane warmed up and wait for me." Rick hurried into the house and ran up the stairs to Barby's room. Working fast, he went through the dresser, then through the shelves in her closet. Not finding what he wanted, he paused to look around in case he might have overlooked a possibility. He didn't know where girls kept things, and he suspected that sometimes the places weren't the same as boys might pick. But he could see no possible place that he hadn't searched. That meant Barby had her Megabuck unit with her, unless she had left it somewhere else in the house. He plugged in his earphone and called. "Barby!" There was no reply. His lips set grimly. No use wasting time here. He ran from the house, hearing the sound of the Sky Wagon as Scotty warmed it up. Joe Blake was not in sight. Rick hurried into the lab and found him watching Professor Morrison who was checking some calculations on the lab's small computing machine. "Joe, step outside with me for a moment, please." Outside, Rick explained that the girls were missing, then asked, "Can you get the plane frequency on your receiver?" "Sure. It's an all-wave job. What's the frequency you use?" Rick told him, then explained, "We don't know what's going on, so we want to be prepared. If some of your Scout leaders can move down the coast to North Cove and keep an eye on the houseboat, Scotty and I will search from the air. If we see anything, we'll let you know on the plane's radio. You won't be able to talk back, but at least you can hear us, and you can let the Scouts know." He wished his mind had worked faster. Then he could have taken Scotty's Megabuck unit and given it to Joe. But there was no time now, and this other arrangement probably would do as well. "I'll pass the word to the gang on the mainland right away," Joe agreed. Joe went back into the lab while Rick ran to Pirate's Beach. Scotty was waiting, the plane's engine turning over. Together, they launched the Sky Wagon, then climbed in, Scotty in the pilot's seat. As Scotty took off, Rick tried Barby again on the radio. "Barby, this is Rick. Can you read me?" There was no reply. "Better fly as though we were heading for Whiteside," Rick suggested. He rubbed his palms on his handkerchief. They were damp with nervous perspiration. He was not as calm as he looked. Scotty swung around on course and Rick scanned the water as they passed over the north side of Spindrift. There was no sign of the rowboat yet. The plane traveled in a straight line right across North Cove. The houseboat was at anchor a few hundred yards offshore, and the pram was tied up to the rear rail. There was no sign of life. The boys reached the Whiteside pier without seeing the girls or the boat. Scotty put the plane into a tight circle and looked at Rick helplessly. "Now what?" "They can't have gone far," Rick mused. "Not in the rowboat." "They had the aqualungs," Scotty pointed out. "They must have expected to use them." "Right. But how? If they planned to get aboard the houseboat, they wouldn't be using the aqualungs. Or would they?" "Search me." "Wouldn't they just row up to the houseboat on some excuse or other? I wish I'd looked. Barby might have taken those clothes Dad wore home last night." "We can't just float around and talk," Scotty said urgently. "Let's do something." Rick felt the same way. "Okay. Throttle down and go slow. We'll scan the whole coastline from here to Spindrift." Scotty did so, holding the little plane barely above stalling speed. Rick leaned out and traced the shore with anxious eyes. The plane turned and twisted as Scotty followed the coastline as accurately as he could. They reached the upper tip of North Cove and swung into the cove itself. Scotty tapped Rick on the shoulder and pointed. A man and a woman had come out of the houseboat and were watching the plane. "Wonder where the other pair is?" Rick asked. There was nothing they could do about the people on the houseboat now. Let them wonder what the plane was doing. Rick turned his attention back to the shore below. The plane traveled the length of the cove's shoreline and rounded the southern tip. They passed over a section where the woods came right down to the water. Birches leaned far over. Rick caught a glimpse of what might have been the rowboat, then the plane swung and he lost it. "Circle," he said quickly. "I think I saw something!" Scotty gunned the Sky Wagon and threw it into a tight turn. Rick watched carefully as the clump of birches came into view. There was a boat under them, all right. He wished for the binoculars, but they were probably at the attic lookout where Barby and Jan had spied on the houseboat. He had no real doubt. He was sure the boat was the Spindrift rowboat. "Circle over the island," he called to Scotty, then reached over and took the hand microphone from the instrument panel rack. He turned on the radio and waited a moment while it warmed. "Joe, this is Rick," he said. "Rowboat under a clump of birches just south of North Cove. Have the boys go there and look it over. See if the girls are in the woods. We'll watch for sign of the girls on the water." To Scotty, he directed, "Over the cove. Circle the whole area. We'll watch for their bubbles. Joe's men will check the woods." The plane turned obediently. Presently they were moving in a wide circle with the houseboat as a center. A slight surface wind had arisen and the water in the cove was a bit choppy, but not enough to obscure bubble tracks made by Scuba divers below. "See anything?" Rick asked. "Not a trace. Can you see the water around the houseboat well enough?" "Yes. No bubbles in the vicinity." Rick dried his palms again, then mopped his forehead. He was becoming thoroughly frightened. Where were they? He checked his Megabuck radio to be sure it was on and called, "Barby. Where are you?" The air was silent, except for the slight background hiss that was always present. "Look right under the houseboat's gunwales," Scotty urged. "If they're directly under it, the bubbles would rise along the sides." "Why would they go under the houseboat?" Rick asked. Scotty shook his head. "Why did they come over here in the first place?" Rick had no answer. "Let's go over to the shore. Joe's men ought to be at the rowboat by now. Maybe they found the girls." Scotty banked around and headed over the clump of birches. In a small clearing behind the clump they saw two men in Scout uniforms. The men looked up, and one spread his hands wide in a gesture that said nothing of importance had been turned up. "There's only one thing to do," Rick said decisively. "We've got to check on the..." He stopped as though a hand had clutched his throat. Barby's voice, in his earphones! Rick pulled the unit from his pocket and turned up the volume. He couldn't hear her well. "It's Barby," he said swiftly. "Circle!" Rick strained to hear. She was talking to someone. "... It won't do the slightest bit of good to keep us here, because my brother will know where we are." The signal faded as she talked. Rick turned the little radio unit, trying to keep the volume constant. "You'd better let us go," Barby was saying. "You'll get into a lot of trouble if you don't." Rick groaned. Her threats would do about as much good as a bunny threatening a wolf pack. Where was she? On the houseboat? Suddenly he realized ... he had the key in his hands! Barby's voice was high-pitched and frightened now. "What are you doing? Why are you putting that plastic cap on Jan?" Rick turned the radio unit as the plane circled. The sweat stood out on his face. Unerringly, the axis of the built-in antenna pointed to the houseboat. There was no longer any doubt! "Land!" he yelled. "Land next to the houseboat!" Scotty slammed the throttle in instant response, and as the Sky Wagon dived toward the water he cast a quick look at Rick. "What did you hear?" Rick was already slipping off his shoes, getting ready to jump. "On the houseboat!" he choked. "They're using the mind reader on the girls!" CHAPTER XVIII The One-Man Boarding Party Scotty hit the water and bounced once, but he held the plane down and in a moment the water slowed it. He revved up again and taxied as rapidly as he dared to the houseboat, swung broadside to it, and throttled back. Rick was waiting. He flung the door open and dove far enough to clear the pontoon. The cold water closed over him briefly, then with a powerful kick he flashed to the surface again. A few strokes brought him to the houseboat. The two men were leaning on the rail. One, a hefty man of middle age with a striped shirt and glasses, said politely, "Do you want something?" Rick stopped and tread water. "I want the two girls you have inside. Have them come out here, and we won't bother you any more." The second man, the dark-haired one who had come to Spindrift, smiled. "You mean our wives? They're having a nap. Sorry." "I mean my sister and her friend. Stop stalling, Mister." Striped shirt shook his head. "Sorry, boy. We haven't seen your sister. Now climb back on your little airplane and get out of here." Rick's reply was a stroke that brought him to the houseboat. He reached up for a handhold, when a boat hook suddenly touched his forehead. "Don't try it," striped shirt said. "Stay off this barge or I'll bend this pole over your head. Now get out of here." Rick back-pedaled helplessly. Now what? He knew there was no possibility of his climbing aboard while the men were on deck. And what was happening inside? He swam forward, to the front of the boat, and the men followed. They could move faster than he; there was no possibility of outdistancing them. If only he had a weapon! But wishing was useless. He had to do something! He called, "Barby! Can you hear me?" There was no answer from inside. His pulse speeded. Were Barby and Jan all right, perhaps gagged, or had the mind reader already worked? Rick swam away from the houseboat a few feet and floated, his mind racing. There had to be a way of getting aboard. There had to! Where was Scotty? He listened, and heard the plane's engine on the other side of the houseboat. In a few seconds Scotty came into view. He was on the water close to shore, traveling at high speed. As Rick watched, Scotty swung the plane on a line with the houseboat and opened the throttle wide. Rick stared. Was his pal out of his mind? If he crashed the houseboat, the girls would be hurt, too! Then he realized Scotty would never pull such a stunt, no matter how desperate he became. The men on the houseboat were at the rail now, eyes on the racing plane. In that instant Rick divined Scotty's plan, he hoped, and turned to gauge his distance. The plane was on the upper step now, almost air-borne. Even as he watched, the pontoons pulled away. But Scotty held the plane on the water, roaring propeller pointed right at the men at the rail. Rick put his head down and sprinted for the front of the houseboat. He had to time it perfectly! To the horrified eyes of the men at the rail a collision was inevitable. They could only assume that the madman in the plane was going to smash right into them. And as Scotty had planned, they lost all interest in Rick, in the presence of immediate, personal danger. The men threw themselves to the deck, clawing frantically for some kind of cover. At the last instant, Scotty pulled the plane up in a power climb. So near disaster had he come that the suction of the passing pontoons lifted a coiled rope into the air on top of the cabin. Even as he mounted the rail and stood on deck, Rick gave a prayer of thanks for his pal's perfect judgment and lightning reflexes. [Illustration: "_Stay away or I'll bend this pole over your head!_"] He ran along the deck, jumped over the two prostrate men, swung around and launched himself into the cabin. He stopped, eyes wide with fright. Barby was lashed to a chair just inside the door, a gag in her mouth. Jan was on the other side of the cabin, also lashed. But Jan had a plastic cap on her head, and wires ran from it to a machine on a nearby table. Two women were standing over the girl, and one had a pistol in her hand. Rick started forward, then stopped helplessly. The pistol wasn't pointed at him. It was pointed at Jan's head! He looked into Jan's pleading eyes and shifted his weight uncertainly. He didn't know what to do now. Jan did. Her arms were lashed tight, but her legs were free. She lifted one of them in a kick that caught the pistol-holding woman behind the knees. The pistol hand lifted as the woman flailed for balance, and Rick sprang like a charging fullback. His widespread arms embraced both women and slammed them back into the cabin wall. Then he scrambled to his feet in search of the gun. It was under Jan's chair. He bent to pick it up when Barby gave a muffled cry from behind the gag. Rick whirled. The two men were rushing him from the cabin entrance. There wasn't much room in the cabin, but it gave Rick an advantage. He dove toward the men, who stopped their rush briefly. But Rick hadn't made the dive with the intention of meeting them head on. There was a table along the wall next to the corner where Barby was tied up. Rick went under it. The men rushed for the table. Rick reached out and grabbed an ankle. Bracing his legs, he gave a mighty heave. Striped shirt went over backward in front of Barby, who stamped with both bare feet on his stomach. The breath went out of him with a whoosh. Rick gathered his legs and shoved upward. The table heaved into the other man and threw him off balance long enough to give Rick a chance to get to his feet. Keeping the table between him and the dark man, Rick watched for an opening. Striped shirt was on his knees, shaking his head. The dark man was tired of waiting. He launched himself across the table, arms outstretched. It was the best move he could have made, from Rick's point of view. The boy knew he could not compete with either man in strength. He had to depend on speed, and the infighting tricks he had learned from Scotty. He used one now. At the last moment he side-stepped and his hand flashed down. It was a judo chop, the hand held stiff, the blow delivered with the side opposite the thumb. It was effective. The man dropped to the floor, shaking his head. Rick used the _savate_, the blow delivered with the heel. It landed against the side of the man's neck. He went over sideways. Striped shirt was on his feet now, but still starved for air. His mouth hung open as he gasped, but he was coming forward. Rick met him. He dove into the man's stomach and felt his head smack into soft flesh. The breath went out of striped shirt again. Rick regained his feet and turned to Barby. She was making sounds through her gag, her eyes desperate. The boy whirled. The women were back in the fight, one of them scrambling for the gun under Jan's chair. Jan kicked it far back, out of reach. Rick scooped up the table and slid it along the floor at them. The table caught them like a pair of tenpins and knocked them into the corner. He turned back to Barby and started to untie her, his fingers racing. A blow landed on his shoulder. He turned in time to meet another one across the cheek that knocked him back against the wall. He rebounded, fighting. The dark man was crouched low, fists weaving. Rick danced lightly around him waiting. Let the man come to him. The man led with a right. Rick rolled away from it, watching the left that was cocked for a Sunday punch. The man threw his punch. Rick caught it on the forearm and gasped with the pain of it. The guy had a wallop like a mule! Rick feinted with the hurt arm, then drove a chop at the man's nose. It connected and brought a gasp of pain. Barby was screaming through the gag again, but he couldn't look now. He brought a roundhouse punch up under his opponent's guard and felt it smack solidly against ribs. Then an arm encircled his neck and a clenched fist crashed against the back of his head. He saw stars, and for a moment his guard dropped. Then both arms were pinioned. Striped shirt had caught him from behind. Now the dark man stepped in, fist cocked for a knockout punch. Rick saw it coming and braced himself. The punch never landed. A crisp voice said, "Don't do it!" Encircling arms fell away. Rick turned, knees weak. A man in Boy Scout uniform stood in the cabin door, and in his hand was a Police Positive. "All right," the Scout said cheerfully. "Party's over." CHAPTER XIX Taped for Trouble Another Scout leader moved into the cabin, followed by Scotty. Rick gave them a grin, then turned and picked up the gun behind Jan's chair. He stuck it in his pocket and untied the girl. The plastic cap was still on her head. He lifted it off gently and put it on top of the machine. "Are you all right?" he asked. She nodded, hand at her throat. "Yes," she managed. "I can't talk. The gag ..." "Time for talk later," Rick said. He started for Barby, but Scotty was already untying her. The moment her hands were free, she pulled the gag from her mouth and announced, "Well! You took long enough getting here!" Rick didn't know what to say to that. He didn't have a chance to say anything. His sister rushed over, put her arms around him, and squeezed. "You were wonderful," she said. "Scotty, he held four of them at bay. I never knew you could fight like that, Rick Brant!" Rick grinned. "I didn't do so much. You took one of them out of play by stamping on him. And Jan gave me an opening with as fine a kick as I've seen off a football field." The two JANIG agents had produced handcuffs, and the men and women were manacled together in a continuous chain. "Outside," one agent commanded. "Get into the pram." "You've got nothing on us," the man in the striped shirt protested. "We were only protecting ourselves against this wild man who barged in here." "Were you protecting yourselves against the two girls?" Scotty asked. "We were holding them for the police," striped shirt stated. "They sneaked aboard, probably intending to steal anything they could find. You're going to get yourselves into a peck of trouble, my friends. There's a law in the state against carrying firearms! A fine reputation this will give the Boy Scouts!" The agent with the pistol said mildly, "You talk too much. Get in the pram." To Rick he said, "We're taking them to Spindrift. We'll send the speedboat back for you." The four young people stood at the rail and watched as the crowded pram with its outboard motor chugged off to the island. Barby pulled off her bathing cap, and Rick saw that she wore the Megabuck unit underneath. He pointed to it. "I tried to call you. Why didn't you answer?" Barby replied with an embarrassed blush that started at the shoulders and swept up until her face was bright red. "I forgot to turn it on," she admitted. "Jan reminded me while they were tying her up. They hadn't got to me, yet. One of the women was holding the pistol and pointing it at me. Jan sort of looked up and said, 'We need an outside power to help us now. But we must be sure the power is turned on.' Then I remembered. I pretended my head hurt, and pushed the switch." Rick looked at Jan. "That was clever. I'd been trying to reach Barby, with no success. Then, suddenly, I heard her talking." "We knew you were close, because we could hear the plane." Jan shuddered. "The men heard it, too, because they ran out right after they tied us up and put that thing on my head. The women guarded us, and one of them had just started the machine running when the plane came right at us. We saw it, through the open door, and we thought you were going to crash!" Rick grinned at Scotty. "That was our fast-acting pal. If he hadn't done that, I'd never have had a chance to get aboard." "Good thing you figured out what I was doing," Scotty admitted. "When I saw you moving fast toward the boat, I knew it was okay, and that I didn't have to crash." Rick stared. "Do you mean you'd have actually crashed?" "Not head on, because that would have hurt the girls. I was planning to swing at the last minute and try to knock the men off with the wing." Rick could only mutter, "My sainted aunt!" Scotty turned on the girls. "And here's the pair that made it necessary. What in the name of a painted parsnip were you two trying to do?" Barby lifted her chin defiantly. "We had a good plan. Can we help it if it didn't work?" "Can't answer that until we know the plan," Scotty said reasonably. "Suppose you tell us." "Well, we needed evidence that the houseboaters were in the plot against our fathers, didn't we? I knew we could get it, if we could plant a radio. So we made a plan." "Lot of good a turned-off radio would have done," Rick muttered. Barby glared. "We decided that we'd go swimming with the lungs. Then we'd come up right next to the houseboat, and we'd be so surprised! Of course the people would come out to see us, then we'd say I had a cramp, and could we please come up and rest." Rick listened, and he had to admit it wasn't a bad plan at all--so far. "Of course they would let us rest. Then I'd wait for a chance to put the radio behind a cushion, or in the crack of an armchair, or somewhere like that. I didn't know exactly what I could do, but I knew if we could get aboard there would be some way of leaving the radio behind." The pram had vanished around the turn of the cove. The speedboat would come into sight any moment now. "All right," Rick admitted. "Let's say it was a good plan. What happened?" Jan took up the tale. "We didn't want to try to swim all the way from Spindrift, so we took the rowboat and did exactly what Cap'n Mike did yesterday. We rowed along the shore with the aqualungs and got into the water right where we could see the houseboat. We had to. Otherwise, we would have gotten lost underwater." "But you had the wrist compasses, didn't you?" Scotty asked. The boys had stressed that compasses were essential because low visibility in the waters off Spindrift made it very easy to lose one's sense of direction. "We had the compasses," Barby said. "How do you think we swam right to the houseboat?" "Then why didn't you get into the water out of sight of the houseboat?" Rick asked, and suddenly he knew. That would have meant plotting a compass course around a turn. So many feet in one direction, then change to another compass heading. He had explained it to them, but they just hadn't learned. It was not easy, he had to admit, and it took practice even on land. "Never mind," he said. "I know the answer. Go ahead. Tell us the rest." Barby studied his face. "I guess you do know," she assented. "Well, they told us later, on the houseboat. They saw us get into the water, then they watched our bubbles come right toward them. So when we got here, they weren't fooled." "We went through with it, as we planned," Jan said, "and we thought we were getting away with it. They were very nice. Of course we could come up and rest. They were glad to have us stop by. But when we got aboard, one of the women had a gun, and she made us go into the cabin and sit down. Then they started asking us questions." "What kind of questions?" Rick inquired. "About why we had come. We stuck to the story, until they told us they'd seen us. Even then we didn't admit anything. Then Barby started to threaten them." Scotty chuckled. "I'd like to have heard that." Rick watched the tip of the cove. The speedboat from Spindrift should be coming shortly. "How about the plane?" he asked suddenly. "What did you do with it?" Scotty motioned to the other side of the houseboat. "It's anchored. I landed next to the JANIG team and got into the rowboat with them." The Sky Wagon carried a small anchor and a few yards of anchor line in one of the pontoons. "Okay. Carry on, Barby. How did you threaten them?" "I was very logical," Barby stated. "Wasn't I, Jan?" Jan nodded agreement. "You definitely were." "I started by telling them that they couldn't possibly do a thing to us, and they might as well let us go right away." "Bet that impressed them," Rick murmured. "Are you telling this, or am I?" "You are," Rick said contritely. "Go ahead." "Well, I said my brother knew where we were, and they'd better be careful. It didn't work. Then I pointed out that they didn't even dare to kill us, because our bodies could be traced back to the houseboat. Everyone knew we'd just gone for a swim, and everyone knew we could take care of ourselves." Rick thought privately that any time Spindrift was in danger from then on, he'd make sure his self-reliant sister had a bodyguard at all times. "I said other things, too, but finally they slapped me and told me to shut up." "Who did?" Scotty demanded. "One of the women. It doesn't matter, Scotty. It didn't hurt. Anyway, they said we could stop worrying about what was going to happen to them. Then one of the men asked if we knew what had happened to the three scientists. We said yes. And he said ... he said ..." Barby suddenly turned white. Jan finished for her. "He said they were going to erase our minds, too. Then they were going to put us back in the water." The words were no sooner out than Jan had a delayed reaction, too. Rick rushed the two of them into the cabin and made them sit down with heads bent low. Scotty found water and gave them each a drink. "You've acted like a couple of champs," Rick told them. "But for the love of mike, don't faint now!" Barby lifted her chin. "I have no intention of fainting," she said defiantly. "It's just ... well, it's ..." "I know," Rick assured her. "Take it easy, Sis." He looked up. The sound of a racing speedboat was echoing inside the cabin. Good. They'd be home in a few minutes and his mother could take over. He gave the girls a comradely grin. What a pair! The machine on the table attracted his eye. He walked over and studied it. The recording drum had wavy lines on it, probably the beginning of Jan's brain pattern. It made no sense to him, but it would to Parnell Winston. "They had you taped," he told the girl gently. "But you saved your own bacon by telling Barby to turn on the radio. If you hadn't ..." A shudder ran through Jan's slim body. "I was taped for trouble. I'm glad you came through the door when you did!" Rick's finger traced a line on the recording drum. "I'm kind of glad myself," he admitted. CHAPTER XX JANIG Closes In Steve Ames walked around the objects on the laboratory table. "Nothing deadly looking about these gadgets," he said. "Which goes to show how misleading appearances can be." The objects included the barber's massage machine, an ancient composition-board suitcase, the gadget from the houseboat, and a TV set with an indoor antenna of the kind known as "rabbit ears." Parnell Winston admitted, "There is plenty we don't know about them, especially the inside of that TV set. But we'll learn." Steve smiled at the assembly of faces. In addition to the project team and the boys, Mrs. Brant, Mrs. Morrison, and the two girls were in the group. So was Joe Blake. Rick regretted that Jerry, Duke, and Cap'n Mike could not be invited. But the matter was still not for discussion with people on the outside. If a story ever could be made public, the _Morning Record_ would be the first to have it, but in all probability the facts would remain buried for some time. In a large room in the lab basement the four houseboaters and the barber waited under heavy guard for the arrival of a Coast Guard cutter. The barber was there courtesy of Captain Douglas, who had picked him up and delivered him to Spindrift after a call from Joe Blake. Steve rapped for attention. "We're about to tie up some loose ends, everyone. Let's get seated, because the cutter will be here any moment." The room was sometimes used for lectures when Hartson Brant got his entire staff together, and there were plenty of chairs. In a moment the audience was seated comfortably and listening to Steve. "You were all involved," the agent began, "so I want you all to know what has been going on. Some details are not known to us, yet. But we're continuing the investigation. However, the part that involves you is finished, and you'll probably never hear about the rest of it." Rick knew that was true. Who the houseboaters and the barber really were, who paid them, how they had been tipped off to the project in the first place, and similar details would remain locked in top-secret files somewhere in Washington. "The key to the whole affair was uncovered in Washington yesterday. Most of you know about the physical arrangements on the fourth floor. In setting up the security system we checked all wiring, traced all phone lines, and in general made sure the place was not 'bugged,' which is the term we use for wire taps, hidden microphones, and so on." Steve paused, and Rick thought his friend looked a little embarrassed. "In spite of our care, it developed that we did have a hidden microphone picking up all conversation and relaying it to the enemy group. I can only say in our own defense that it was the kind of 'bug' we couldn't have found without tearing the building apart." "It's nearly impossible to take all modern electronic developments into account," Julius Weiss said. "We all know how thorough you are, Steve. Go on." "Thank you, Julius. Directly above us, on the fifth floor, was the Peerless Brokerage Company. It was a legitimate firm, doing a good business. We had no reason to suspect it, even though we checked out all firms both above and below us. Well, in checking on the houseboaters, we discovered that the firm had recently been taken over by a dummy corporation, and most of it was actually owned by the man Rick called 'striped shirt.' He bought the stock right after the project moved in on the fourth floor." "There was no change in the firm?" Dr. Morrison asked. "Nothing suspicious?" "Nothing. The firm continued to operate as always. There was one personnel change. A lawyer, representing the new principal stockholder, took over one of the offices." Rick suspected that said lawyer was now in custody. "As soon as we discovered the connection, we made a check. Under the floor in the lawyer's office we found a 'bug.' A hole had been drilled into the floor structure until only a thin shell of plaster remained. The plaster was, of course, our ceiling. So actually the microphone was within a fraction of an inch of our room, but there was no way we could detect it. That's how every move we made was anticipated, and why the enemy moved to Whiteside on the same day that the project moved to Spindrift." That explained a lot, Rick thought. "Did the barber tape the two scientists?" he asked. "We think so. He's the boss of the enemy team, Rick. We've found that during the period when he was in Washington, his massage machine was wired through to a room in the basement. The wiring went through the power cord into the electric outlet, and the impulses were actually transmitted over the power system and taken out of a plug in the basement. We found the machine where he had stored it." Rick knew that could be done quite simply. The frequencies of the electric current and the brain patterns were so different that they would not interfere with each other. "He didn't plan to use his machine in Whiteside," Steve went on, "because he left the mind-reading part of the machine in Washington." "Then why did he bring it?" Barby asked. "We're not sure. The likeliest possibility is that he wanted to continue using it as a massage machine, because he made a little money with it. I never knew an espionage agent who didn't need money." Steve looked at Rick. "I'm a little surprised at one thing. Why didn't the Spindrift twins suspect foul play when Hartson Brant ran over something in the speedboat?" It was Rick's turn to be embarrassed. "I guess we were so upset we didn't think straight. Why?" "The mainland team found a log. It had a yoke on it. Apparently the houseboaters had taken a lesson from the incident on the pier and were waiting for Spindrift traffic on the water. We think they waited until they heard the sound of the Spindrift speedboat, then took the pram and cut across the course hauling a log on a long rope." Scotty spoke up. "That's what puzzles me, Steve. Why the switch from long-distance electronics to violence?" "When we moved the project to Spindrift, we also removed the chance of taping project members in some natural setting like the barbershop. They had hoped to knock out the team without anyone suspecting it was enemy interference. That worked, at first. But moving the project upset their plans. They rigged the train deal that caught Marks. But even though it worked, it showed we were dealing with an enemy." "So they had to catch the scientists in order to tape them," Scotty commented. "Right. Of course they tried to do it in a way that looked natural in the case of Marks and Dr. Brant. Probably they hoped the attack on Duke, whom they mistook for Morrison, would be taken as a holdup. They undoubtedly planned to allow time between the accident, or attack, and following through with the mind-reading machine, hoping that the two wouldn't be connected." The pattern was clear, Rick thought. Like many such schemes, the moment a suspicion of foul play developed, the plan began to boomerang. "I think the order of events is clear enough," Steve concluded. "Any questions?" Barby had one. "I don't understand about Dr. Marks. Did they turn on the mind reader from the train?" "Probably. The man on the train apparently had a two-section gadget in a suitcase. One part took the EEG and the other sent out the signal that did the damage. He waited until the train was pulling out of the station before turning on the record section. Then all he had to do was get off at New York. We haven't found him, or his machine. But we will. Any other questions?" "Why did the barber move to Whiteside, if he didn't intend to tape anyone?" Weiss asked. "The barbershop in any small town is a good central location for keeping track of goings-on in town. I think that's all he had in mind--besides the fact that barbering was his trade. If Vince Lardner hadn't needed an assistant, he probably would have moved into one of the summer colonies, or gotten some other kind of job. We can't be sure." Rick asked, "Are there any machines in existence besides these two and the missing one from the train?" "We don't know. But it doesn't matter. The enemy now knows we're onto the system and can't expect to get away with it again. Besides, Dr. Winston says a countermeasure is easily arranged, to be used when we suspect the mind readers might make another try." "Who are these people?" Jan demanded. Steve grinned. "Unfriendly agents. Seriously, Jan, we aren't sure about their employers. It will take some backbreaking investigation to get the whole story, because the files show nothing on any of them. That means they were deep-cover agents, kept hidden until there was something important enough to bring them out. We may never get the whole story." "Won't they talk?" Scotty asked. "They haven't yet. They may. But, anyway, we'd have to check on their stories. Any other questions? Okay, I'm finished. Dr. Winston will take over at this point." The cyberneticist came to the front of the room. "We have something here," he stated, "but we don't yet know what it is. And, curiously enough, from the crude nature of the machines, I doubt that the enemy knows, either. If we have to speculate--and I guess we do--we might guess that sometime, in an enemy EEG laboratory, some experiment resulted in a subject having his mind erased. It was probably an accident that the enemy exploited without knowing how it worked." "Can't we even guess how it works?" Weiss asked. "Approximately, without knowing the physiology of it. The EEG recording is simply fed into a gadget that modulates a carrier wave. The carrier is an average frequency for brain patterns. In effect, the thing simply transmits the man's own pattern back to him. Why that should produce trauma of the kind we have seen is a mystery." The scientist gestured to the TV receiver. "The transmitter is incorporated into the TV chassis, and the 'rabbit ears' act as an antenna when adjusted properly. The recorder is a simple EEG mechanism." Winston smiled. "You may be sure we're not through with this apparatus. I'm leaving the project immediately to set up a new team with Chavez, for the investigation of this phenomena. It may be another major key to the physiology of the brain." "Do you mean we know nothing more than you've told us?" Rick asked. "Nothing more, Rick. Oh, are you wondering about the barber's machine? Actually, the massage gadgets acted as electrodes, and the massage oil did very well in making good contact. It was a simple setup." There were no questions for Parnell Winston. Steve took over. "In a short time we'll take the prisoners off your hands. Joe Blake and two men will remain as guards, but I think we have nothing more to worry about beyond routine security." "I just remembered," Rick interrupted. "How about the elevator operator?" "We picked him up, but he didn't know a thing. The barber paid him in free haircuts to keep track of people coming and going from the fourth floor. That's all. He didn't know why." Joe Blake came in the door. "Motor whaleboat coming, Steve. Shall we take the prisoners to the landing?" "Yes, Joe. Please." Barby looked at Steve speculatively. "How about the houseboat?" "Well, how about it? Haven't you seen enough of it?" Barby smiled. "It would be very nice, if it were only another color. What will happen to it?" "A coastguardman will be after it tomorrow. It will be impounded for a while. After that it may be sold for public auction, or it may revert to the owner's estate. It depends on the court." Barby looked a little disappointed. "Oh, well, we don't really need a houseboat, anyway." The group broke up as Joe and his partner walked the prisoners across the island to the landing. In a short time the motor whaleboat was speeding to the horizon where a cutter waited. Rick took a last look. That just about closed the case. The remaining details probably would never be known to the Spindrift group. "Can't anything be done for Dr. Marks and the other scientists?" he asked Parnell Winston. Winston shook his head. "No, Rick. We're afraid to tamper, for fear of making things worse. But I neglected to tell you one very important item. The first scientist stricken is becoming rational again, or at least we hope so. Yesterday he asked for food. A short time later he picked up a pencil and paper and began to work out an equation, one connected with the project. Apparently the equation was the last thing he had been working on when the mind reader struck. So we hope and believe that nature is healing the damage. There is no evidence of tissue destruction, so perhaps complete recovery is possible. It's a question of waiting and watching." Within two weeks Rick had an opportunity to see for himself, because the two scientists from Washington joined the Spindrift group. They were fully recovered, with only vague memories of the period when their minds were not functioning. And Dr. Marks was reported well on the way to normalcy. The project was almost at an end, with only a few final checks needed on the critical equations. The Morrisons had already set a day for their departure--to Barby's great unhappiness. As Barby said at dinner one night, "I didn't realize how lonely it gets sometimes without another girl on the island. Until Jan came, that is. Now she's going, and I wish she weren't." "I'd love to stay," Jan said. "Really I would." Hartson Brant arrived in time to hear the last exchange. He had left the table briefly to take a phone call. "I'm afraid it's going to be pretty quiet on Spindrift," he agreed. "It looks as though we'll be losing Rick and Scotty for a while!" Barby wailed, "Not again! Why can't they stay home for a while?" Rick and Scotty had looked up with quick interest at the scientist's words. "We've been home for weeks," Rick replied. His eyes were on the slip of paper in his father's hand. "Dad, what is it? Where are we going?" "Read it aloud," Hartson Brant suggested. He handed Rick the slip. Rick scanned it quickly. It was a telegram that his father had taken over the phone. Rick's pulse quickened. Dr. Gordon, who had been at work on a secret rocket project in the far west, had wired: ARRIVING TOMORROW. NEED RICK AND SCOTTY FOR SPECIAL WORK. URGE THEY BE READY TO DEPART IN THREE DAYS EQUIPPED FOR EXTENDED STAY AT DESERT BASE. Rick's eyes met Scotty's as he finished reading. "Desert base," he repeated. Scotty grinned his delight. "John Gordon's rocket base is in the desert. He must want us there." "But why?" Barby demanded. "You're not rocket experts. Why, even when we had the moon rocket here, you didn't work on the rocket itself." That was perfectly true. Rick shrugged. "You know as much as we do, Sis." Hartson Brant stirred his coffee thoughtfully. "I have a hunch," he said. "From the tone of the wire, I suspect John is in some kind of difficulty. Surely he doesn't want you as technicians, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that he needs a little detective work done." It made sense to Rick. But what kind of detective work could he and Scotty do at a highly guarded and secret government base? He fought down the impulse to run up to his room and start packing. Gordon had said in three days. There was plenty of time. Except that Rick knew he'd be dizzy with wondering until John Gordon gave them more information. The Morrisons rose to the occasion beautifully. "We wouldn't want Barby to be without any companions of her own age here," Mrs. Morrison said quickly. "If it's all right, I'm sure we can let Jan remain until the boys return." The girls beamed without saying a word, then they broke into excited chatter. Rick and Scotty retired to the front porch and grinned at each other. "If Dad is right, this is going to be plenty of fun," Scotty said happily. "I've always wanted to get close to the big rockets." "We'll find out," Rick said. "And if John Gordon has a mystery, we're the pair who can solve it for him." Later, Rick's words returned to him under the most unusual and terrifying circumstances of his entire life. The story of the project that led to Rick's greatest adventure will be told in the next Rick Brant Science-Adventure mystery. * * * * * _The_ RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE _Stories_ BY JOHN BLAINE THE ROCKET'S SHADOW THE LOST CITY SEA GOLD 100 FATHOMS UNDER THE WHISPERING BOX MYSTERY THE PHANTOM SHARK SMUGGLERS' REEF THE CAVES OF FEAR STAIRWAY TO DANGER THE GOLDEN SKULL THE WAILING OCTOPUS THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER * * * * * 
62377	----	ALCATRAZ OF THE STARWAYS By ALBERT dePINA and HENRY HASSE Venus was a world enslaved. And then, like an avenging angel, fanning the flames of raging revolt, came a warrior-princess in whose mind lay dread knowledge--the knowledge of a weapon so terrible it had been used but once in the history of the universe. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Purple!" Mark Denning almost sobbed. "A purple Josmian!" Forgetting the sweat in his eyes and the insufferable heat about him, his clutching hand held up the mud-dripping globe the size of a baseball, iridescent in the Venusian night. The phosphorescent glow that bathed the endless swamp in ghastly green, struck myriad shimmering rainbows from the dark sphere. "Two more of those and you're free, lower species!" It was an ironic voice, with the resonant sweetness of a cello in its depths, that issued from the haze nearby. Frantically Mark reached down into the tepid mud, where he had felt the swaying stems of Josmian lilies whip about his knees. Another globe met his hand. He tugged and twisted until it tore from the stem, but when he raised it to the surface, it was white. Immediately it began to shrink. It would continue until it became the size of a small marble, when it would either rot, as the majority did, or begin to crystallize into a priceless Venusian pearl. But that happened only with one in ten thousand. It was different with the purple ones, they never failed to crystallize into a violet globe of unearthly beauty and incalculable value. Less than a hundred of the purple had ever been found. They were so rare that any prisoner who harvested three, was granted freedom. "Pretty!" the cello voice taunted, behind Mark. "In a few hours it will be rotting and stinking to high heaven!" "Cut it, Aladdo!" Mark growled. He tossed the white Josmian into the basket he pushed before him across the mud; the purple one he placed carefully in his trouser pocket. He pushed on, searching the pungent-smelling mud that came up to his thighs. Suddenly the warm ooze rose to his waist and crept inexorably higher. For an instant, Mark clawed at the mud. It was surging up to his armpits now, as he floundered in the tenacious sink hole. He shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes and the numbness from his brain. He stopped thrashing about, for he knew that was futile. He threw back his head and gave a shout in which was more than a note of sheer terror. [Illustration: _Mark clawed at the mud surging up to his armpits._] At least a dozen men were moving near him, waist deep in the Venusian mud. At his cry, they stopped and stared at him dully, fatalistically. They could easily have formed a chain and pulled him out, but none moved. They'd seen too many repetitions of this tragedy to care anymore. It happened every day; a new man, a little careless, caught in one of the deadly sink holes ... it happened even to the veterans of this Venusian prison camp, sometimes deliberately, as they became weary of a hopeless existence. The mud was almost to Mark's chin now; only his forearms and his blond head were visible. Hatred came into his eyes as he glared at the men about him, most of them Earthmen like himself, who would not help him. Again he struggled, tried to hoist himself upward. "Don't struggle, you fool!" came the resonant voice from behind him. "Be still; every movement helps to sink you!" Then, in an undertone, "No human was ever able to think clearly, anyway." Mark smiled despite his predicament, then he urged: "Hurry Aladdo--hurry!" * * * * * Over the expanse of hellish, green-lit muck, a tiny figure inched toward Mark. Scarcely five feet in height, Aladdo's arms and legs were now outspread, to distribute his weight over as much area as possible. The rescuing figure was like an imp from hades, clad as it was in a tight-fitting garment of metallic blue, which even the clinging mud failed to dull; while membraneous wings of a lighter hue began at its wrists, joined to the entire under-arm and the sides of its body all the way to its feet, much as the wings of a bat. Swiftly it crawled and wriggled toward the Earthman, and without a word grasped him with both tiny hands by the arms. It braced itself on its wings, and heaved. A few inches of Mark Denning emerged from the mud with a sucking sound. Again Aladdo made a prodigious effort, and again the Earthman came up from the mud a few more inches. The winged figure held him there, while it gasped for breath. "Now, spread your arms on the mud and stiffen your neck, sub-species!" The winged one laughed. Swiftly it cupped its seemingly fragile hands under Mark's chin, and slowly but surely began to pull him back and out. Most of an hour went by before the Earthman's superb torso had emerged and was able to help the rescuer. At last he was out of the sink hole, panting, almost exhausted and half nude. He still found strength to feel at his trouser pocket, and was gratified to find his purple Josmian still there. It was now about half its original size, and soon would cease its shrinkage and begin to crystallize. Mark gazed into the oval face, panting next to his. The heavily fringed eyes were closed as it breathed in labored gasps, and the slender, fragile form shook now and then with nervous spasms. Mark never ceased to wonder at the beauty of the Venusians, nor at their absolute and maddening conviction that theirs was the only true intelligence in the Universe. Now to these qualities Mark added that of indomitable courage, as he gazed at Aladdo and marvelled. "Well, Aladdo, thanks seems sort of a stupid word in a case like this; I owe you my life. I don't know how I'll ever repay the debt...." Mark's eyes roved over the weird scene, taking in the soulless, hopeless hulks that had once been men. And it suddenly occurred to him that he'd had enough of this hellish corner of Venus; he had been here two months and already he was unable to think clearly, he was becoming identified with the living death of the Venusian Prison Swamp. His mission apparently had failed. What he had come to learn, remained a secret, and he was slowly becoming like these shells of men who prowled the ocean of mud, eventually to disappear beneath it. "No need to thank me, middle order, I would have missed our discussions had you gone." The Venusian grinned impishly. "What? I've been promoted! You must be ill, to call me anything above a 'lower order' or a 'sub-species'!" Mark smiled too, but seriously wondered what crime had condemned Aladdo to a prison reserved only for the most hardened and hopeless criminals, or for political prisoners whose existence was a threat to the Tri-Planetary League. "At times, you're almost intelligent," the Venusian replied placidly. "Any one of these other men would have struggled had they been in your place, and I would have been helpless." "Why didn't you use _your_ brain," Mark couldn't resist prodding the other, "and by flying above me, get to me quicker, instead of crawling all that distance?" The winged figure laughed mirthlessly, and for an answer held up its arms. The azure membranes that were its wings, hung in limp folds. "Useless, you see," he said quietly. "The tendons have been cut. Otherwise I could fly up and out of this swamp, despite its five hundred mile width." * * * * * Mark could find no words to say. Since being assigned at his own request to this last grim haven of the damned, by the Tri-Planetary Prison Bureau, on a special mission, there had been moments when the horror of it all had made him doubt the wisdom of maintaining such a ghastly place. He knew, of course, the tremendous deterrent influence its existence exerted, besides the important revenue derived from Venusian pearls; still it all seemed too inhuman. "You don't seem criminal, Earthman!" the cello-like voice introduced on Mark's thoughts. "I fail to catch the typical vibrations of the killers and ravagers. Your crime ... was it political?" "Why, yes!" Mark assented hurriedly. It wouldn't do for this Venusian to suspect he was an operative. "To put it briefly, I am classified as too individualistic for the new order of 'controlled endeavor'. Also typed as irreconcilable--and you know what _that_ means!" "Perfectly!" The enigmatic smile hovering on the Venusian's lips faded slowly. "I, too, am a 'political'. My father was Bedrim, the Liberator. All we of Venus asked was real independence instead of the mock freedom your Earth grants us; in reality we are a vassal state with no voice but Earth's." "Bedrim!" Mark exclaimed, aghast. For more than a decade that name had made history, engulfing three planets in a suicidal struggle that had ended in a stalemate. Bedrim was dead now, Mark knew; but in Venus and even on Mars, the name was a glorious legend. It was only with the greatest effort and vigilance that Earth was able to enforce the peace. "So _this_ is what became of you!" Mark said slowly, softly. "The three worlds do not know, they still wonder--" Then he caught himself and bit his lip. "Yes," Aladdo murmured bitterly. "The worlds do not know. I was to be given amnesty, I was so young; but your inner Council decided that as long as I lived I would be a rallying point for irreconcilables of Venus, and so I was hunted from planet to planet until ... well, here I am on my own world, but as far away from my people as if I were on Betelgeuse. Here I do not live." "But surely there must be some way of convincing the Council that you're harmless! And if that fails, well ... of getting you out of here!" "Out of Paradim?" Aladdo's smile had all the despairing bitterness of a soul damned for all eternity; all the tears and the anguish and the wracking sorrow of the condemned since the world began seemed to be frozen for an instant in that smile. "Look about you, Earthman!" It was true. Mark had to acknowledge the psychological genius who had devised the Venusian Prison System. For five hundred miles the swamp Paradim extended in either direction, impassable, pitted with sink holes into which a man would disappear without trace. And beyond were the impenetrable jungles, alive with lurking carnivora, lurking monsters of the night, red in tooth and claw. Only on the opposite hemisphere were the two larger and hospital continents of Venus. Here, on this tiny continent, the prison ship came once a month, to hover over the tiny islet in the middle of the swamp, the only spot of firm ground for untold miles. Here it dropped supplies and food, and occasionally picked up the little heaps of fabulous Venusian pearls. There were no guards and none were needed, for at night when the awful humidity increased, the men worked or died. With night came the dreaded fog, lurid in the ghostly illumination of the _igniis fatui_, the phosphorescent radiance of this vast graveyard. And the idle died. Decomposition of the blood set in; essential salts within their bodies were dissolved, cellular activity ceased, and their bodies bloated. Not many, however, were idle. Escape? For years it had been thought a virtual impossibility. The very thought would have brought smiles to the grim faces of that august body, the Tri-Planetary Bureau of Prisons. And yet--a notorious killer who had been sent to this swamp only a year ago, had recently been found dead--out in space! * * * * * A patrol ship had found the body floating a few thousand miles off Callisto, an atom-blast hole drilled neatly through the forehead. There was not the slightest doubt that this was the same man. How had this criminal been able to escape the swamp and travel to Callisto, millions of miles away? It was a mystery and above all, a challenge. Apparently the Venus Prison had ceased to be impregnable. And that was why Mark Denning, the Prison Bureau's leading investigator, was here. "Guard your pearl, middle species," Aladdo's voice was ironic once more. "Escape, and with it you may buy a pardon!" Without a backward glance, the Venusian moved on with nightmare slowness through the swirling mists, pushing his basket into which the Josmian globes were loaded. Escape, Mark thought, following the Venusian. He did not need to escape, he could signal the prison ship to pick him up the next time it arrived. He wondered if he should. He had been here two months, and they were an eternity that dwarfed any concept of hell. But he hadn't any clue to the mystery of the escaping convicts, and he could hardly return with a confession of failure. He looked ahead through the mists, at the slender body of Aladdo in its tight-fitting sheath of metallic blue. "I _would_ miss Aladdo," Mark whispered to himself; "and if he can stand it here, I should be able to!" "What are you mumbling about to yourself?" Aladdo's mocking voice came back to him. "That lowers you from the middle species to the sub species again." He held up a Josmian globe against the greenish swamp glow. "White," he said contemptuously and threw it into the basket. Pushing through the muck with his tremendous strength, Mark cut the distance that separated them. "You may have my purple one, Aladdo. I will not need it, and perhaps you ... with it you might...." "If I were to gather a hundred purple ones, I could not buy my release." The Venusian was staring at Mark peculiarly, as if wondering why he should have made that offer. "Do you suppose, Earthman, any of the other men saw you find it? They would kill you for it--cheerfully." "No, I think not; no one saw me bring it up but you." "Then guard it." Aladdo eyed Mark's powerful frame critically. "Guard it with your life, for you may have to fight for it soon." "Telepathy! You've caught someone's thought vibrations?" Mark asked in a whisper. He well knew that telepathy, although not commonly used, was an established fact among the Venusians. But Aladdo's long lashes rested against pallid cheeks, veiling eyes that were abrim with something Mark could not understand. "No," the winged one said at last, "it wasn't a thought vibration--not that clear--perhaps a vibration of evil! Be alert, Earthman. I can say no more." "All right, thanks, Aladdo." But inwardly Mark cursed the inherent Venusian mania for ultra-reserve, for making a mystery of even the most commonplace affairs. "Let's head for the island, it's almost dawn." Above, the cloud-cap was prismatic with color as the sun tried feebly to penetrate the grayness and then gave up the attempt, as if it had tried many times before and failed. Slowly the vast swamp's contours came into view, with their small island a faint green line against the horizon's rim. And as the grayish dawn light increased, suffusing the grim morass, Mark and Aladdo made their slow way toward it. II "Up you go!" Mark's long muscles corded as he heaved and Aladdo's body left the mud with a sucking sound, to sprawl on the solid ground of the island. Presently the Earthman joined him, and for a few seconds they rested silently. All around them the vegetation surged, lush and matted, inextricably tangled with parasitic vines. Whereas the expanse of swamp was bare of the myriad growths of Venus, for some unknown chemical reason, the island itself was riotous with them. It was as if every inch of _terra firma_ were precious. The humid air was hot and stagnant, heavy with the overpowering fragrance of flowers. Even after two months of conditioning, Mark had difficulty in breathing, as the odors of this alien world increased as the temperature rose. "Arrgh, what a world!" Mark said disgustedly, as he rose to his feet. "I'm going to bathe, before the gang arrives. You'd better come too." Together they went up the vine-entangled path toward the barracks, and, rounding a corner of the building, followed another path to where a small spring gushed from an elevation; it fell in a sparkling shower and then meandered a few feet to lose itself in the swamp. Aladdo, as usual, merely let the water flow over the metallic suit that sheathed the slender body. By the time they had finished bathing, the rest of the convicts began to emerge from radiating paths, to dump their swamp pearls onto the growing heap by the side of their barracks. Some of the men threw themselves on the ground, exhausted in minds and bodies, and were almost instantly asleep. A few sat against the barracks wall and chewed the deadly _tsith_ stems, their eyes vacant, their faces gray. _Tsith_ was awful stuff, even if it did banish pain. Mark knew that these men wouldn't last long, but he wondered if perhaps they weren't the wiser ones after all! Returning from his bath to the barracks, Mark found that Aladdo had disappeared. He entered, and donned a thin rubberoid garment from among his meager store of personal belongings. It resembled one of the ancient woolen suits that Earthmen had used against the cold many centuries before; but there was a great difference. Mark's garment was impervious to cold or heat, highly flexible, yet the interlining of allurium mesh could intercept anything short of a ray blast. When Mark emerged, he found Aladdo talking in very low tones, with a tall, Martian-Venusian half-breed. This man was fantastic. He had the slenderness of the Venusians, and the finely chiseled features, but his eyes were Martian--deep purple and immense, far too large for the face. The breadth of shoulder and barrel chest was Martian too, ludicrous in comparison with the wasp waist and slender thighs. Mark had seen this half-breed about the swamp before, and wondered who he was. Now Aladdo, glancing up, called to him. Mark walked over to them. "This is Luhor, Earthman," the Venusian crossed both hands at the wrists in the immemorial Venusian gesture indicating that a friend was being introduced. "Luhor, the Earthman's name is Mark. He is the one I told you about. Note the muscular power of the body, the intelligence of the face, no less than middle-order. I think you shall find him most useful." * * * * * Mark felt as if he were on the auction block, as Aladdo calmly pointed out his physical attributes. He was mystified. At the back of his mind a vague memory strove to emerge; it was barely a sense of having seen this man Luhor before, moving among the torpid convicts and whispering to them briefly. Perhaps it had been an allusion of the swamp's night glow, and yet, the feeling persisted. Mark extended his hand to the Martian-Venusian, who eyed him silently, expressionless, without grasping the proffered hand. Around them, the atmosphere was electric. At last Luhor spoke. "Only fifteen can go. They have been picked out!" His was a rumbling voice, emotionless--cold. "Eliminate one then," Aladdo said imperiously. "How? They'll fight like Ocelandians; they already know they've been picked, O Aladdian!" Then Mark Denning understood. Escape was being planned. Aladdo was one of those to go, and was trying to induce Luhor to include him! Mark's heart was pounding, he knew that it was now or never; he must be among those who escaped. He would never again be so close to the solution of the mysteries he had been sent here to solve. "I'm new here," Mark spoke hurriedly. "Look at my arms, my chest. I have tremendous strength and endurance. My vitality has not been sapped by the swamp as yet. Take me also, Luhor, I'll repay you beyond anything you can dream of!" The half-breed's mouth twisted slowly into a cold sneer as he gazed at the Earthman, then he shrugged his shoulders. It might have meant anything, but Mark thought it meant denial. In silence Luhor bowed to Aladdo and strode off toward a group of several men. It was odd, Mark thought--a half-breed convict showing such a mark of respect to another convict. But perhaps it was because Luhor was half Venusian, and Bedrim had been Aladdo's father. Mark turned questioningly to Aladdo. He was amazed to see sudden alarm leap into the Venusian's eyes, together with a warning cry. Mark stepped lithely aside, but not in time to avoid a terrific blow between his shoulder-blades that left a burning point of fire in his flesh. He half fell to his knees, but whirled around to confront a bestial face, maddened now by blood-lust. In the attacker's hand was the haft and a piece of broken blade from what had evidently been a smuggled knife. It was useless now, shattered against the allurium mesh interlining of Mark's suit. With a cry of baffled rage the attacking Earthman hurled the broken weapon into Mark's face, and launched himself close behind it. Mark rolled slightly aside, then gained his feet and whirled to face his attacker. Mark was icy calm now. He awaited the convict's next rush, then sent a straight left unerringly to the man's head, driving him off-balance. Mark kept facing him, balanced lightly on his toes as the man came boring back in tenaciously. Mark's right arm was a peg upon which he hung the convict's blow, while he used the boxer's left, long and weaving, throwing it swiftly three times like a cat sparring with a mouse. The killer rushed, aggressive and eager. Mark let his heels touch the ground this time, refused to give way. He took a murderous hook to the stomach without flinching, countered with a quick left to the face and then a vicious right-cross. The convict's face seemed to lose contour, its features blurred as the face went gory; his feet crossed and his knees went suddenly rubbery, he fell with a crash and didn't get up. * * * * * Mark towered above him, breathing heavily, only now aware of the little group of interested men who had watched. "You fight like a Venusian Ocelandian--as ruthless, and as methodical." It was Luhor who stepped forward and spoke; he was grinning twistedly as he surveyed Mark's handiwork. "Now I wonder why he wanted to eliminate me?" Mark gestured puzzledly. For an answer Aladdo, standing close by him, tapped the spot where in a hidden, inner pocket reposed the purple pearl. The gesture went unnoticed by Luhor, but Mark suddenly understood. "What do you care?" Luhor waved a hand as if dismissing the fallen foe. "He was one of the chosen. You may take his place, Earthman, since you have so neatly disabled him." His large weird eyes took in Mark's physique with a new interest. To Aladdo he said, "You have your wish." Again there was that odd note of deference in his voice. He bowed slightly and turned away again to the gathered little group of men. "When do we start?" Mark whispered eagerly to Aladdo. But the Venusian's eyes were preternaturally bright. A frail hand was held up for silence. Mark stood tense, listening. The brightness of Aladdo's eyes seemed to increase. And then Mark heard it. They all heard it. It was unbelievable. The low, powerful hum of a repulsion beam rent the stillness. It was faint and far away at first, but became steadily louder. This, Mark knew, was not the hornet's hum of the tiny craft the Prison Bureau sent with supplies; this was the unmistakable vibration of a Spacer hovering above them! Soon the immense bulk of the spaceship dropped slowly from the cloud banks above, like a silvery ghost descending. It hovered fifty feet above the islet, the powerful repulsion beam humming its deafening drone. An under-hull lock opened. A long flexible ladder rushed uncoiling through the murky atmosphere until it struck the ground a dozen paces from the barracks. "Back!" Luhor's voice crackled like an icy javelin as an avalanche of humanity scrambled toward the ladder, clawing, tearing and screaming. In his hand he held an atom-blast capable of annihilating that entire snarling group. They saw it and halted uncertainly. Luhor strode calmly toward the ladder and again shouted, "Back, you vermin!" He brought the weapon up as if to fire, and the tattered dregs who had been human beings still prized life enough to retreat sullenly. In a cold voice Luhor called names from a list in his hand. His huge purple orbs inspected each man to step forward, then he waved them toward the ladder. Aladdo was first, and Mark's heart leaped as the Venusian scrambled up the weaving ladder, grasping the metal rungs with fragile hands. One by one, fifteen convicts were called. Mark was among the last, and he heard Luhor ordering the remaining convicts into the swamp. Two disobeyed and leaped forward desperately. Luhor's atom-blast spat, one man dropped in his tracks and the other went scrambling back. Cries, imprecations, curses and pleadings dwindled as the men retreated to the mud. It was then that Luhor himself began to ascend the rungs, as the ladder was slowly pulled up. A rush of maddened convicts clawed at empty air as the stairway to freedom rose above their heads. Luhor laughed mockingly down at them. Mark, just above, suddenly hated Luhor for that. * * * * * Inside the Spacer, with the air-lock closed, Luhor turned to the waiting men. His rumbling voice rose commandingly. "Anyone with weapons, whatever they are, throw them on the floor before you; if you refuse, or we have to search you and find them, you'll be dropped through the air-lock into the swamp. Choose!" The absolute cold finality of his tone left no doubt. A veritable arsenal of sharpened rocks, crude metal knives, and bent wires coated with deadly poison from Venusian plants, showered down. "All through?" The half-breed's purple eyes ranged down the line of men, as if he could see into their minds. There was a moment of silence, then one of the men hesitantly dropped an outmoded heat-gun, old-fashioned but deadly. Luhor's eyebrows went up, and he smiled thinly. "All right," he told a member of the crew, "gather up this junk and toss it out. You new men follow me. First you'll sluice off the mud and put on some decent clothes. Afterwards you'll see the _Commander_; and," he added, "the _Commander_ will see you!" A fleeting smile hovered on his lips as if he had a little joke all his own. Mark was amazed at the spaciousness of the ship, and at the luxury of its appointments. It was apparent at once that this was no ordinary Spacer, for it was a fighting craft as well--a long, slim torpedo of death modern beyond anything he'd ever seen. He only obtained a glimpse of a few of the craft's weapons, but they looked formidable enough to tackle anything the Tri-Planetary ships could muster. He tried not to appear too curious, however; he knew that just now his best bet was to look dazed and docile. He glanced around for Aladdo, but the little Venusian had disappeared. Mark wasn't too surprised. He was satisfied to know that Aladdo was on the ship, and that eventually he would appear. The men scrubbed themselves with soap under needles of warm water, and achieved cleanliness for the first time in many months. Dressed in clean trousers and tunics, they were ready at last to go before the Commander. The men moved restlessly and whispered among themselves. None knew where they were going, or why. They only knew that a miracle had happened and they had been delivered from the great swamp. It didn't occur to any of them as yet that there could be a situation even remotely as bad as their living death in the swamp. One by one, they were called, as they waited in the ship's comfortable leisure-room. At its far end was an automatic beryllium door, and as each man's name was called through an amplifier, the door would open to permit a man to go through. Already nine men had passed through, and none had emerged. Mark could hardly restrain his impatience. Behind that door was the solution of a great mystery--a mystery which had grown in importance beyond anything the Prison Bureau officials had dreamed of, Mark realized, considering the perilous super-efficiency of this spaceship, now speeding away from Venus! * * * * * Mark's name was called last, and he tried to achieve a careless nonchalance as he walked toward the door that opened silently for him. He would not have been too surprised to find that Aladdo was the Commander of this ship; that thought had occurred to him. As he entered the huge compartment, however, he had only a confused impression of brilliant lighting and indiscriminate luxury. Magnificent, ceiling-high tapestries covered the metal walls; beneath his feet, the resilient pile of an imperial Martian rug was a splash of varicolored splendour. Ornaments from three planets were everywhere, some of them museum pieces, like the desk of extinct Martian _Majagua_ wood, inlaid with miniature mosaics of semi-precious stones. "Loot from the spacelanes!" Mark exclaimed inwardly. And then he was beyond all amazement as his gaze went across the bright room, and he saw the two people present. One was Luhor, dressed resplendently now, the shadow of a smile upturning the corners of his mouth. He was standing. Seated at a desk beside him was a girl. She was clad in a close-fitting uniform of a white, gleaming material like watered silk. Mark slowly let out his breath, and then he crossed the room. He wondered if she were really that beautiful, or if it was just the garish lights and surroundings. She spoke first. "If you must be amazed, please do it quickly. I am weary of these interviews." Mark looked at her eyes that were blue but unsmiling, and lips that smiled thinly but didn't mean it. Her slightly turned-up nose would have been amusing ordinarily but wasn't now. Coppery brown hair was brushed smoothly back from her forehead, to fall in waves to her shoulders. Mark wished she would smile with her eyes as well as her lips. His own smile faded, he took a deep breath and said, "I am sufficiently amazed." "Good. Then we can proceed. Luhor, is this the last one?" "Yes. He's the one I was telling you about." She turned her cold blue eyes upon Mark again. Her voice was emotionless, almost a monotone. "Luhor tells me you were exceedingly anxious to leave the Venus swamp. Why?" "Why!" Mark repeated in amazement. "Why does any man want to leave there? It's a living death--and I was slowly going crazy." "You had only been there a few months?" "That's right." "Why were you sent there?" Mark hesitated for a split second, and decided he had better stick to the same story he'd told Aladdo. "I'm a 'political'," he said. She nodded, as though satisfied. "I have never been actually in the swamp. I understand that you worked hard there?" "Yes, very hard. We had to, to stay alive." "You will work very hard for me--for the same reason. Perhaps you will wish you had stayed in the swamp. What can you do?" Mark brightened. "Around a spaceship? I can handle rocket-tubes, or controls. Also probably any weapon you care to mention. Calculations and differential equations are pretty easy. I could almost quote you the entire _Advanced Principles of Space Navigation_...." With a rush of nostalgia Mark was remembering all the mechanics and mathematics of his four years in Government Spacer School. He went on with cool confidence, "I could take one of your atomomotors apart, jumble the pieces and put it together again. I'm really a mechanic rather than a spaceman. Spacery's only a hobby of mine...." She swung her eyes over to the half-breed. Luhor nodded, grinning with huge amusement. She said to Mark: "You will work at the mines, where you are going. You can make _that_ a hobby of yours. I do not like men with me in space who know more about a ship than I do." Mark slowly seethed, but said nothing. She waved a slim hand in dismissal. Luhor, still grinning, showed Mark the door by which to go out. III Mark awakened suddenly, aware that someone was shaking him. Intense light almost blinded him as he opened his eyes, and he shut them hurriedly. He lay for a few seconds enjoying the luxury of the berth on which he had slept. It had been long since he'd felt the yielding comfort of a coil-pad beneath his body, or cool Lynon sheets against his flesh. "Rouse yourself, sluggard!" The voice was mocking, familiar, rich with golden overtones. "Get that deficient brain of yours to working, lower order!" "Aladdo! You Venusian demon--where have you been?" In his delight Mark grabbed Aladdo's slender hands and almost crushed them. "I was beginning to think I'd have to tear this ship apart to find you!" "My hands!" Aladdo exclaimed in alarm and withdrew them. But there was shining joy in his smile. Perched on the edge of the berth, the tiny Venusian regarded the giant Earthman with laughing eyes, bluer even than the azure wings that hung like a cloak. But it was a subtly different Aladdo; glowing and clean until the exquisitely chiseled face was like alabaster, the curling close-cropped hair blue-black and gleaming. Dressed in a soft gray tunic and tight white trousers, the wings were vivid in contrast, almost iridescent. The tiny feet were encased in bootlets of red Ocelandian fur, and a belt of platinum links circled the narrow waist, holding a holster with a small short-range atom-blast. Surprised, Mark flicked a forefinger at the weapon and looked inquiringly at Aladdo. "They let you have this?" "Yes," the Venusian nodded. "Remember, Bedrim was my father; I can be most useful to them. Although my father's dead, there are still followers on three planets, ready at a moment's notice to rally behind a leader. I could be that leader--or at least appear to be. I am a guest of honor on this cruiser--a prisoner, of course," Aladdo smiled ironically, "but shown every courtesy. I even have my own private quarters instead of sleeping here with the crew." "But what is it all about, Aladdo?" Mark was exasperated as the mystery grew. "What's the purpose behind all this? Ruthless criminals salvaged from a Venusian Prison swamp, and now this super-cruiser built to withstand anything! And who is that girl? I--" But the Venusian interrupted him. "No time now. You'll learn everything presently. Dress quickly and come with me." "I'm dressed," Mark answered, springing up. He zipped on light, insulated shoes and followed Aladdo to the main cabin. The rest of the men were already there, clustered about the starboard ports in an excited group. The light in this room was blazing. Mark could feel the gentle vibration of the atomomotors somewhere deep in the spaceship, and again the question overwhelmed him: where were they going? * * * * * He was soon to learn. Recklessly he gazed out into space. Instantly he pivoted away, as if a gigantic hand had spun him. He had looked almost directly into the sun! It was a sun vast beyond imagining, tongues of flame flickering slowly out for thousands of miles. He knew it was only the thickness of the Crystyte ports that saved the men's eyes. Slowly Mark's eyes became accustomed to the fierce glare and by shading them obliquely he could discern the object of the men's excitement--a dark little speck of a planet sweeping in its orbit just beyond the sun's rim. It rapidly grew larger as the spaceship moved inward on a long tangent. "Mercury!" Mark exclaimed, staring. "No, we crossed the orbit of Mercury two hours ago." It was Aladdo who spoke beside him. "Then, that must be ... but it's impossible!" Mark laughed a little wildly. "How long since we left Venus?" "Ten hours, Earthman. It is possible. That is the planet Vulcan." "Unbelievable," Mark almost whispered. "Why, it takes the fastest Patrol cruiser forty-eight hours to reach Mercury's orbit from Venus. Lord! What sort of speed has this Spacer?" But Aladdo didn't answer. A door had opened and Luhor stepped in. "Vulcan," he said tonelessly. "As we approach, even the thickness of these ports won't be enough. Put on these." He handed the men pairs of Crystyte goggles, the lenses specially processed. "Does this mean we're actually going to attempt a landing on Vulcan?" Mark asked the half-breed. "It's madness! It has never been done!" "But it has been done." Luhor gazed at Mark frigidly. "You merely have never heard of it." "Who's at the controls?" Mark struggled to subdue the excitement in his voice. "Why, the Commander, naturally--assisted by myself." Luhor's vast chest arched with pride. "Observe closely, Earthman, and you will be treated to as masterly a feat of navigation as you're likely ever to see again!" His purple orbs roved over the men, clean-dressed, and rested, the haunted look beginning to fade from their eyes. He nodded approval, as he turned and left. "A base at Vulcan!" Mark was repeating inwardly. And a cold fear at this growing mystery grew apace within him. It was not only a masterly feat of navigation--it was incredible as the hurtling spaceship continued along its tangent, until Vulcan, slightly smaller than Mercury, came swinging around to bisect their trajectory. Very neatly, their speed was manipulated to allow the planet to come between them and the sun; then the great Spacer began to pursue a direct course. Mark noticed that Vulcan kept one side eternally sunwards. Swiftly the spaceship approached the dark, outward side. Actually it was not "dark" but it could be called so in comparison with the molten sunward side. Mark realized the almost insurmountable difficulty of keeping the Spacer on a trajectory, with the sun's tremendous gravitational pull so dangerously near; the slightest deviation now would send them hurtling past Vulcan and into that naming hecotomb. He knew, as well, that there could be no atmosphere on Vulcan to help them brake. * * * * * But even as these thoughts were racing through his mind, Vulcan came rushing up at them with the fury of a miniature hell running rampant. Its surface was lividly aglow, with the flaming curve of the sun as a backdrop blotting out the horizon. Suddenly they were leveling over its surface, at a speed that to Mark spelled disaster. He saw the fore-jets flaming over a wide terrain of what might have been lava or pumice, but that didn't seem to check their reckless speed at all. Directly ahead black mountain ranges sheered upward as if to disembowel the ship on jagged summits. Mark merely closed his eyes, awaiting the crash that seemed inevitable. No ship he knew could ever brake in time at that suicidal speed. A terrific force jarred him to the floor. A profound nausea made him retch. Then Luhor was touching his shoulder, and Mark opened his eyes. "All out, we're home!" the half-breed grinned. "You're lucky that the synchronized magnetic fields minimize deceleration, Earthman." Doors were opening, voices were drifting into the ship. The vibration of the atomomotors had ceased. White-faced and shaken, the men debarked into a wide corridor hewn out of solid rock, into which the ship had berthed. Glancing back, Mark saw metal doors of titanic proportions now hermetically closed; ahead were similar doors. Then he heard the deep, far-away throbbing of generators and he knew that he was in an air-lock built on a gigantic scale. A few seconds later the inner doors slid open. As they walked forward Luhor turned to Mark with a proud smile. "You won't find _that_ type of navigation in the 'Advanced Principles,' eh, Earthman?" "No, indeed not," Mark admitted. "But I still don't understand that braking process!" Luhor pointed to colossal sets of coils, in niches along each side of the vast corridor. "Synchronized magnetic degravitation fields; they arrest mass and speed synchronously, finally stopping the spacer in a graduating net of force. Similar coils to these exist for a mile along the gorge back there, through which we came. Even so it is a very delicate and precise process." They stepped into a grotto so vast as to dwarf anything Mark had ever imagined. It extended for miles, sheltering an entire little city! Mark saw rows of stone dwellings, stream-lined, ultra-modern. From larger buildings came the sounds of blast furnaces and an occasional flash of ruddy glow. Groups of workmen hurried past, glanced curiously at the new arrivals but didn't stop to fraternize. And then Mark saw Carston. Ernest Carston! One of the very highest men among the Tri-Planetary Prison Bureau officials! The surprise stopped Mark Denning in his tracks, but fortunately, thanks to his training, he managed to keep his face impassive as they recognized each other simultaneously. Carston flashed him a quick look that seemed to say, "Later!" Then the newcomers were marching in silence to a spacious building, where they were assigned rooms. The furnishings were simple, but comfortable, and Luhor led them to the rear of the building where the dining-room was located. They ate with the famished eagerness of men who had long subsisted on compressed synthetic rations. Then they were issued cigarettes. To the men who had been doomed on Venus only a few hours previously, it was like awakening in heaven from a nightmare in hell. Through Mark's mind ran an ancient saying: "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow...." IV Standing in the doorway, the girl of the unsmiling blue eyes surveyed the new men silently. Her trim, aloof figure instantly commanded their attention, and their respect as well. "I cannot waste words on you," she said abruptly, "for my time is limited. I know all of your names, so you shall know mine as well, although it will mean nothing to you. I am Cynthia Marnik, but you will address me always as Commander. You will obey me implicitly in all things here. Second to me, you will obey Luhor. "All of you volunteered to come. Now that you're here, you are part of our scheme of things and you will work as hard as you did in the swamp. It is dangerous work, but you will have ample remuneration. Idlers and grumblers will be done away with, I promise you. Your lives were forfeit in the swamp, and that is not altered by your being on Vulcan." She paused as if waiting for objections, but every man was silent. "Very well; Luhor will explain later what you're here for. Meanwhile you are free to go anywhere you like within the city, but be ready to work about eight earth-hours from now." As abruptly as she had come, Commander Cynthia Marnik turned and was gone. The men smoked and talked among themselves, speculating what their tasks might be. The memory of the Prison Swamp was too recent for them to care much. Mark rose quietly and stepped out of the dining-room. He'd noticed that Aladdo was absent from the meal, and he wondered if his Venusian friend was still an 'honored guest.' Deciding to inspect the city, Mark tried to retrace his steps to those buildings where he had heard the blast furnaces; but at the first cross-corridor Ernest Carston stepped out and walked beside him. He smiled at Mark Denning, but held a warning finger to his lips. They walked in silence, while the corridors became rockier and more dimly lighted. At last, far away from the city, Carston stopped under an immense jutting rock and quietly gripped Mark's hand. There was a world of feeling in his voice as he said barely whispering: "I'd lost hope of ever seeing any of you again!" "How did you get here?" Mark asked the question that had been burning in his mind. "Did they pick you up at the swamp, too?" "Yes. We're both on the same trail--and here the trail ends." "But I had no idea you'd preceded me," Mark told him. "It must have been considered a far more important assignment than I was told, to send _you_ to the Swamp!" "We didn't know, we weren't certain," Carston said thoughtfully. "But we received a bit of information which, if true, was of the greatest importance. It seemed impossible, fantastic, but the hazard was so great, that even what amounted to a vague rumor warranted my going. You were to follow in a few months, without knowing I had gone ahead. Well, you already know most of the rest; but Earth's government doesn't even suspect the deadly peril it will soon have to face!" "I'm afraid," Mark stated frankly, "that there are a lot of gaps in what I do know. I can tell, of course, that something mighty big is going on here. But what was that bit of information you received?" "It goes back nearly a quarter of a century," Carston replied slowly, "and concerns a man named George Marnik. He, and his young wife, were among the first pioneers to venture out to Callisto. Those were the ruthless years, when the great Earth Monopolies stopped at nothing, were very often lawless, and usually got what they wanted." Carston paused to light a cigarette. * * * * * "George Marnik," he went on, "discovered one of the richest palladium veins on Callisto, and was developing it slowly. But--one of the Monopolies decided that it wanted Marnik's rich vein. In an ensuing struggle with some of the Monopoly's hired hoodlums, Marnik's wife was burned down brutally with an electro-gun. She left a daughter, about five years old, whom they had named Cynthia ... do you follow me?" "Go on," Mark said in a cold, dry voice. "Well, after the tragedy, George Marnik disappeared. He was never heard of again--except by the Earth Monopolies. They heard of him plenty. He terrorized the spacelanes for years, and more than one Monopoly went under, bankrupt by the incessant attacks on their ships by an enemy who had achieved a ruthlessness greater even than theirs. It was rumored that Marnik had vowed never to set foot on Earth again, and that his life was dedicated to the destruction of the Monopolies. He almost achieved his task, except that the Earth's government finally stepped in and dissolved the Monopolies." Carston paused and drew in a long breath. "And then?" Mark urged, as if fascinated by this saga of another day. "Why, then as you know, Emperor Bedrim of Venus achieved his famous alliance with Dar Vaajo of Mars, and together they sought to end Earth's domination and exploitation of their planets. You know about the bitter ten years' war--that's history. But when the Tri-Planetary Patrol was formed, during the truce that followed at the death of Bedrim, half the Solar System was searched for George Marnik's base and the rich plunder he was reputed to have there. It was all in vain. You can now see why! The Patrol has never been able to land on Vulcan." "But if I remember correctly," Mark Denning said reminiscently, "George Marnik was certified as dead, as the years went by and piracy ceased. The records gave no information as to his daughter Cynthia, she was merely marked 'Missing.'" "Precisely!" Carston assented. "Then that vital bit of information you received must have concerned this base on Vulcan!" "No. Worse! It concerned that George Marnik _was alive and planning to end the Inter-Planetary Truce, to loose bitter war upon three worlds again_!" "Good Lord!" Mark was stunned. "But how? Venus and Mars were disarmed under Earth's dictated peace!" "Yes, true. Mars is a small and dying race and not to be greatly feared. But Venus has never become reconciled. You know their unholy pride and their utter conviction that theirs are the greatest minds in our universe. Underneath the apparently peaceful surface, revolt's smoldering." "Revolt fanned by Marnik?" "Yes," Carston went on. "If George Marnik did have some fantastic plan in mind, Venus would be the likeliest place for him to find backing and followers. On the face of it, it seemed absurd, of course. But when the supply of Venusian Pearls dwindled to a mere trickle, and a criminal from the swamp was found dead millions of miles away, in the vicinity of Callisto, we knew then that there was a definite tie-up. It was time to investigate. George Marnik, the last space pirate, _is alive_--an ancient, embittered wreck living on hate!" Carston fell silent. * * * * * "And Commander Cynthia, his daughter," Mark whispered musingly, "is the one in charge now!" "Yes. You wouldn't have believed it possible, eh? But remember, during those reckless years when her father was the most hunted man in the universe, Cynthia grew up with him, constantly at his side, learning all the tricks of a master at piracy. She must share her father's hatred for a world that only brought them tragedy and sorrow. Marnik's psychopathic, of course, his mind's warped; she must share his views, although at times I wonder ... sometimes when I look at her...." His voice dwindled. "So it all boils down to one thing," Mark's analytical mind had already absorbed all the facts. "That Spacer that brought us here is a menace to civilization. Its speed alone is beyond anything we have at present; a fleet of them could wreak havoc on Earth's forces. Earth must be warned at all costs, Carston!" Ernest Carston looked at Mark pityingly, lines of weariness and anxiety creasing his face. "Do you think," he said slowly, "if there were any way out, I would be here? Vulcan and the Venus Swamp both have a thing in common: there's no escape, except through Marnik. Commander Cynthia only carries out his orders." "But she's a woman, Carston. If she could be made to realize what another Inter-Planetary war means--the awful carnage, the destruction--perhaps she could somehow be reached!" "I wish that were possible!" Carston exclaimed fervently. "But she's like a being that's hypnotized. George Marnik must dominate her completely, old and decrepit as he must be. Remember, it's the only life she's ever known. He must be the only being she's ever loved." "Have you any concrete knowledge of their plans?" "No. Only deductions. Dar Vaajo, ruler of Mars, was here three weeks ago. Cynthia brought him. For hours he was with Marnik in the latter's palace. That can only mean one thing, of course. And then there's the new metal. That is the real problem and the real menace!" "Metal? A new alloy?" Mark Denning was all interest. "Nothing so simple as that," Carston explained with tragic calm. "A metal unique in the universe! A new, _allotropic_ form of beryllium which _beyond a certain temperature reacts by hardening in direct ratio to pressure and heat_! Once cast, it is literally heat and blast proof, and so light that it triples efficiency in relation to fuel consumption. And George Marnik's building, has been building, a fleet of these Super-Spacers!" "I suppose they're mining that metal here?" Mark's face was white. "Yes, on the _sunward_ side of Vulcan! That's what swamp convicts are brought here for." "And I suppose either the ore, or the smelted metal's being shipped to secret bases on Mars and Venus?" Mark's voice was strained and opaque. "Not yet, Earthman!" The alien voice was at once like a whiplash and like a fragment of music. Both men whirled about. * * * * * Out of the shadows, as if emerging from the bizarre scene of tortured rocks and twisted cavern-walls, stepped a slender figure with pendant wings. "Aladdo!" Mark felt a curious tingling at sight of his Venusian friend, as he went forward with hands outstretched. It was nothing compared to the shock mirrored on Carston's face. "Aladdian!" he too exclaimed, a mixture of despair and impotent rage in his voice. "Peace, lower order!" Aladdo laughed, but hiding his hands behind his back as he addressed Mark. "I shall not trust my hands to you again. _It is enough to have crippled wings!_" The Venusian stared full into Carston's eyes as he uttered the last words significantly, and the latter's face turned deep red. "Are you still a guest? Where are they keeping you? I've missed you...." Mark turned to Carston, his face alight. "Aladdo saved my life in the swamp!" "I'm staying with the Commander and her father. It is a small universe after all," he added, turning to Carston, "eh, Colonel?" "You know each other?" Mark asked, surprised. Carston's face reddened and then paled. "I'm a servant of my Government," he answered the Venusian stiffly. "My duty is to obey, not to question orders, Princess!" "What is all this? What do you mean, 'Princess'? Will someone explain?" Mark was exasperated. "Aladdian's the daughter of the late Emperor Bedrim of Venus," Carston said, then fell silent. A look at the Venusian's smiling face told Mark it was true. His own face was ludicrous, his mouth partly open, for the moment speechless. Then a dark flush of anger swept up like a tide to the roots of his hair. "A girl ... a defenseless girl that's never committed a crime in her life, condemned to that Venus Swamp! To the most ghastly, the most cruel living-death in the universe...." Words failed him as he shook with rage. "What was Earth's Government thinking of? The Council must have been mad!" Mark Denning choked. "Careful!" Ernest Carston warned. "Remember you're an Earthman, Denning. To question the Council is treason!" "Treason be damned, and the Council too!" Mark raged. "There are limits! There's no reason for that Prison Swamp except greed. Better atom-blast habitual criminals than to condemn them there; _that_ is worse than any crime!" He towered above Carston, a formidable engine of destruction, his face a mask of fury. Then a tiny, fragile hand was on his arm and the Venusian's calm voice rose in the brief silence, "It is too late to remould the past. But we can refashion the immediate future, Mark Denning." "Can we? How? It seems that Marnik and Commander Cynthia hold all the cards!" "Not all," Aladdian shook her exquisite head. "They have perfected their plans for the immediate future--but we can be _the element of the unpredictable_!" "You mean ... you're not in sympathy with their plans? That you won't serve as a rallying point to sway the masses of Venus?" Carston looked bewildered. "I thought when I saw you, that was the reason they'd brought you here! We know that your people would revolt at a word from you, Princess! That's what our Government feared." "I know. And I will not lead my people to an hecatomb in space. But neither will the Earth continue to exploit my planet and debauch my people. This time, there will be a peace and it will be equitable." Aladdian had drawn herself to a full four feet eleven inches, and there was an imperious note in her voice. Carston stood silent and grim. * * * * * Mark, looking at his Venusian friend anew, thought irrelevantly that, with the spike-heeled sandals of Earth, Aladdian would be only slightly under the average height of an Earth girl. He shook his head irritably. This was no time to ponder inconsequential things. "Aladdian," he said, "do you know much of their plans and what is being done with this new metal?" "Partly. We have discussed ways and means since my arrival here. George Marnik is very impatient; I think he fears he may die before he can see his plans carried through. First he will equip a fleet equal or superior to Earth's forces. Then he will take over Callisto, the new Gibraltar, between the inner and outer planets, after which he will complete an alliance with Venus and Mars. He does not plan to conquer Earth, he knows it would take years; but his scheme would bottle your planet, relegate it to the status of a minor power, without inter-planetary colonies, without outer revenues. Venus and Mars alone would expand in the Solar System." "For a while," Mark said laconically. "Mars would never be content with anything short of complete rule, as long as Dar Vaajo lives! And the metal?..." "It is smelted here under a secret process, and parts for the space cruisers and special rockets manufactured. Then they are stored in one of the asteroids where they will be assembled later into a fleet. That is all the data I have now." "But this Luhor," Mark asked, "what is his real status? Commander Cynthia seems to trust him implicitly." "She does," Aladdian replied. "He's an old friend of George Marnik, one of his trusted lieutenants from the pirate days. But he's a cold devil--combines the worst from both Venusian and Martian. Don't under-estimate him ... he can be deadly!" "I've had occasion to see that," Mark said dryly. "They're all deadly in this deadly little planet!" Carston said vehemently. He looked far older than his scant thirty years, his face was bleak and haggard. "But this is heaven in comparison with the Prison Swamp," Aladdian told him coldly. She seemed to have a determined animosity toward the high-ranking Earth official. "It wasn't I who sent you there!" "No. It was only your relentless pursuit that eventually resulted in my capture," the Venusian answered, "and it was only you who cut the tendons of my wings. Oh, I know--you were only acting under orders." Aladdian was smiling again as she turned back to Mark. "We had better all go back to our quarters now, but it would be best if we did not return together." She moved away, then added: "Watch Luhor, Mark; I am not sure, but I think he too is part of the 'unpredictable.'" Mark watched her slim figure, with the azure wings and tight-curling, blue-black hair, melt away into the shadows. "I will see you tomorrow," her voice floated back like a golden molten stream. V "Only twenty-two men, Luhor?" Commander Cynthia Marnik stood very straight and very slim in the center of the air-lock, surveying the new men plus a sprinkling of others, preparatory to the trip outside. "Even less than the last trip!" Annoyance creased a frown between her blue eyes. "All we can spare, Commander. Every available man's at the furnaces; your father has ordered it so." Turning to the waiting men, Luhor began to instruct them in the operation of their metal surface suits. "As you can see, they're two suits in one," he explained tersely, "operating on the vacuum principle. Here's the cooling device between each metal sheathing. You'll have to bear more heat than you've ever endured, but don't get panicky. Here's where you regulate the oxygen flow into the helmet." He indicated a little dial. Each man was assigned to a wide, flat-bottomed sled which he was to pull behind him. They were also equipped with curious, spur-like picks. Mark failed to understand the reason for such primitive methods, but remained discreetly silent. "You men who have made the trip before, help the new arrivals," Luhor ordered curtly. Mark noted that Luhor himself was not going to accompany them, but Cynthia Marnik was already encased in her suit. Ernest Carston went over to help her adjust the helmet. "I can manage quite all right, thank you," she said. But it did not escape Mark that her voice was soft and that she smiled at Carston. Carston came over to give Mark a hand. He smiled reassuringly through his helmet's visiplate, then flicking on Mark's radio-phone, said briefly: "Stay close to me! I'm one of the veterans." "Bring Vulc, we're about ready," the Commander's voice sounded startlingly inside Mark's headpiece. "Who's Vulc?" Mark asked Carston in a whisper. Before the latter could answer, there was a sudden unearthly rumbling behind them. Mark turned, stared, then froze in his tracks. A huge, awesome apparition was lumbering in a straight line for the Commander. It was vaguely human in that it possessed a head, torso, four limbs of elephantine proportions, and it waddled upright. But the human resemblance went no further. The creature's skin, if skin it was, gleamed silvery metallic and gave the impression of being fluid! It reminded Mark of nothing so much as an immense blob of mercury that might at any moment collapse into a puddle and spread over the floor. But Vulc didn't collapse. He approached the Commander and stood docilely waiting. She patted the creature's arm and then handed him a package of something. Vulc rumbled his appreciation and poured the contents into a gash that appeared in his face. Then he waddled contentedly to a large sled and took up the reins. "Wow! Where did you ever dig up _that_?" Mark turned white-faced to Carston. "Vulc? He's a native of this planet, but more than that, he's our ambassador of peace!" The Commander's crisp voice made further conversation impossible. "Single file, you men. Stay as close to each other as the sleds will permit. Carston, you stay in the middle, as usual, and watch out for the Blitzees. If you men work hard, we should be back within ten hours." Silently the outer door of the lock slid open and the men began to file out, with the gigantic Vulc at the head. The brightness was intense, although they were on the planet's "dark side." Shimmering waves of heat danced before them over the flat terrain. At the very end of the line Commander Cynthia kept pace with them. * * * * * "What did you mean by 'ambassador of peace,' Carston?" Mark had purposefully fallen into line next to him. "Adjust your radio-phone to its shortest distance communication," Carston directed him, "so it will be inaudible to anyone else." As Mark did so, Carston continued, "We couldn't get out the metal we're after, without Vulc. His home is on the Neutral strip where we're going--that part of the planet where the outward and sunward side meet. All of Vulc's kin are there, and they resent us. They have attacked us before. We bring Vulc as an evidence of friendly intentions; they have a speech of sorts, and Vulc's supposed to pacify them." "What was it the Commander gave him before we left?" "Powdered metal, filings, and tiny scraps from the factories. That's what's in those big sacks up there on Vulc's sled--a peace offering for his people." "They subsist on metal!" Mark Denning was aghast. "Everything on this planet does--that is, everything native to it. And they're impervious to heat, of course. If Vulc had not been captured by George Marnik almost immediately after it was born, it would never have been conditioned to the comparatively cool atmosphere of the Base." In silence they trudged mile after mile, following the same line of black hills that housed their Base. Mark marvelled at how comfortable the vacuum suits were, but he knew the real heat hadn't started yet. It came presently, as they veered further outward from the hills. The heat increased steadily and became more intense than anything Mark had ever experienced. Perspiration dripped stickily within his suit. He wanted to wipe his face but couldn't; he could only shake his head to keep the sweat from his eyes. But there was no keeping the mirages from his eyes. In every direction the terrain rocked and rolled under huge undulating hazes of heat. Horizons leaped at him in wave after wave, and fled away again. The men ahead seemed to do fantastic dances. They no longer trod on rock. The ground beneath was soft, white and leprous looking, powdery almost as dust. Mark felt it hot around his metal-clad ankles. Now he realized the reason for the flat-bottomed sleds. He knew, too, that a spaceship could never venture over here and get back safely; compasses and magniplates and everything else would go haywire. Peering ahead, he discerned Vulc's fantastic bulk which now had turned a glowing cherry red! He shuddered at the thought of what would happen to a man suddenly bereft of the protecting vacuum suit. Out of the silence, a vast rumbling sound rose like magnified thunder. Mark saw Carston fumble with his radio-phone then peer all about into the haze. "Blitzees coming!" he yelled into his instrument. Everyone stopped. Mark followed Carston's line of sight, but he couldn't see a thing. "Swarm coming from the left!" Carston yelled again. The Commander moved hurriedly along the line. "Lie down everyone, face to the left! Upend your sleds and if you value your lives, stay behind them!" For a second all was confusion as the men flung themselves to the powdery soil; then a metal barrier sprang up as the sleds came end to end. Still nothing could be seen. * * * * * Suddenly then they came. The air was blue from crackling sparks as dozens of the Blitzees struck the sleds with the impact of bullets. A sound like the humming of millions of hornets was in their ears, as the greater part of the swarm passed overhead. Mark had a confused vision of electric blue streaks that writhed and zig-zagged, landed and leaped again, propelling themselves blindly. As suddenly as it had come, the danger was over. The men arose somewhat shakily. The ground about them was strewn with the snake-like Blitzees. Mark picked one up and found it to be metallic, about five inches in length, transparent blue in color. The head was triangular, eyeless; along its back Mark felt a thin, wiry sort of filament! "They're like living bolts of electricity," Carston told him. "They seem to short-circuit themselves when they strike the sleds." The caravan continued. Hours later they arrived at their destination, a small rise in the terrain before them, covered with glittering crystals in huge, boulder-like lumps. The sides of the little hill was composed of the same ore, apparently in limitless amount. But as if guarding it against them, rows of redly-glowing Vulcs stood motionless, elephantine, facing them. Mark couldn't tell whether they were friendly or hostile. To him there was no expression to be seen on those fluid heads. But Commander Cynthia's Vulc went over to his henchmen and jabbered in rumbling noises, pointing to the huge sacks on his own sled. Presently three of the Vulcs came over and snatched at the sacks, opened them and grabbed handfuls of the metallic filings. Seemingly satisfied, the trio lumbered off followed by the rest, bearing the sacks. The men began to work then, loading the ore on the sleds and breaking it with their small hand-picks. Even to have come here was bad enough, and to breathe was an agony--but to work, in this inferno of unimaginable heat and blinding glare, was a nightmare. More than once Mark felt himself sway, and stood quite still until the dizziness passed. One of the men pitched forward and lay still. Commander Cynthia examined the fallen man. She gestured to Vulc who grasped him and stretched him over the ore in his own sled. The Commander's face was drawn and white through the visiplate, and her eyes were tragic. Mark was seeing evidences today that she was not entirely cold and heartless, as he had at first thought. It seemed an eternity before they were through with their task. At last the sleds were loaded to capacity, and they rested a while before starting the return journey. They could only pull the heavy sleds slowly now, and only the knowledge that every mile brought them nearer to the Base, away from this suffocating hell, spurred them on. After a while the Commander called a halt, and the men sank down against their sleds like puppets whose strings have been cut. There was a strange absence of curses and rebellion against the appalling experience they were undergoing; there was not enough strength left for that. Then Mark saw Commander Cynthia suddenly stand up. Through the visiplate her eyes were wide, and they mirrored horror! VI "Up on your feet, every man of you! Test your oxygen tanks--quickly!" Her voice was tense with suppressed emotion. Something in her tone seemed to cut a path through the heat-ridden lethargy of their minds, for the men staggered to their feet, hands fumbling for the testing buttons. Mark found his, and his eyes darted to the tiny dial inside his helmet. The pointer swung and registered _one hour_. Frantically he pressed the button again; once more the pointer inexorably indicated the same period of time. "One hour!" he breathed, stunned. That was barely a third of the time it would take to return to the Base! Out of the dancing mirage before him the alabaster face of Aladdian seemed to float and smile. With infinite, pain-laden regret Mark realized that unless a miracle happened he would never see her again, and now for the first time it dawned on him how much he wanted to. Around him the men were milling in confusion, panic-stricken. Their few hours' stay at the Base had been like a brief taste of heaven, and life had become precious once more. "All of us can't get back," the Commander was saying. "But there's enough oxygen among us to permit seven, at most eight, to do so. I'm willing to draw lots with the rest of you. But decide quickly! Every instant is precious!" "No!" a man screamed hysterically, near the breaking point. "I'd rather take my chances...." His voice ended in a hoarse sob. Then a strange thing happened. Ernest Carston, white-faced and unsteady, stepped forward. "You can take my supply, Commander Cynthia," he offered. "You need not draw lots; let the men do that." She waved him aside and shook her head, but her eyes softened gratefully. She glanced at the teletimer at her wrist. "I will give you men just thirty seconds to make your decision; otherwise I will be forced to make it." But from the group came no decision, only sullen argument and frantic babbling. Some of them measured the distance between them and the girl, eying hungrily the atom-blast guns at either side of her wrist. "What a woman!" Carston murmured to himself, lost in admiration. But Mark heard him. "Yes, she is magnificent," he agreed in a dry croak. "A pity all that courage and...." He checked himself and fell dully silent again. It was then that Mark saw something or thought he did, far away, shimmering through the dancing heat. He wiped the sparkling dust from his visiplate and strained his eyes desperately, praying that it was not a mirage. He clutched at Carston and pointed. "The hills ... are those the hills? _Our hills?_" Carston nodded dumbly. At last he managed to croak, "Yes, but the entrance is miles away ... at the other end." "But there may be a chance! Remember Aladdian, the corridors--a honeycomb of caverns? Commander!" Mark turned up his radio-phone, his voice drowning out the babble of the men. "How far is that range of hills, Commander?" She followed his pointing arm. "A little less than an hour, at its closest point." "And the system of caverns--how far does it extend? Aren't those hills practically honeycombed their entire length? We might find--" "Wait!" The word came explosively, as her mind darted into the past, down the corridor of years. "Yes, I remember ... some of the caverns did lead out to this side, and father sealed them to make the Base airtight...." She gazed at the distant hills as if trying to recapture a forgotten scene. And a bulky shape hurtled forward, clawing for the weapons at her waist. But Carston had been watching. He thrust out a metal-shod foot and the convict went sprawling ludicrously into the swirling white dust. "Thank you, again!" the Commander said in a whisper. "This trip has been a revelation--in so many ways." Her face was as white as the powdery soil underfoot, and she was near collapse; but from some unknown source she still drew from enough strength reserve to maintain her authority. Hands on her atom-blast guns, she faced the men. "Into line as before. We've got to make the hills in less than one hour. Leave the sleds. It's the hills or your lives!" The effect was miraculous. Suddenly they were docile, grasping at the slender hope she offered them and content to have her bear the burden. Quickly they fell into line, with Vulc leading the way again. The men needed no urging; the knowledge that they only had one more hour of oxygen was enough. * * * * * If their trek up to now had been a nightmare, this latter stage surpassed even the most secret refinements of a Martian torture-chamber. In an agony of slowness the minutes lengthened and seemed to stand still. The low range of hills seemed to dance mockingly and recede into the distance beyond the horizon's endless rim. In addition now to the heat in their brains and the glare in their eyes, their lungs were tortured as they regulated the oxygen intake-valves to the barest minimum. After an eternity in which even memory seemed to have fled, they were walking on rock and the heat began imperceptibly to abate. Directly before them, the hills rose out of the torturing blaze. Cries that were little more than miserable croakings echoed through the radio-phones as the men broke ranks; they staggered on, holding to each other for support. Mark looked around for the Commander, and saw her clutching at Carston's shoulder for support, while his arm was about her waist, half-holding her up. The girl disengaged herself and by sheer will-power drove toward the base of the low-lying cliffs before them. "Wait!" she ordered. She stopped, and the men halted behind her, weaving on their feet. She stared around us as if desperately trying to recall something deeply imbedded in the matrix of the past; then she veered to the right, waving for Vulc and the men to follow. Mark tested his oxygen tank and glanced at the dial again. It read "ten minutes." It was a race with time which now, perversely, seemed to be rushing by on flying feet. Thirty yards further, the cliffs curved in sharply. Rounding it, the Commander gave a glad cry. In the center was a gigantic metal door, hermetically sealing what had once been the entrance to a cave. The men staggered forward, some of them clawing feebly at the barrier. Others sank wordlessly to the rocky ground. They weren't even sure that beyond that metal wall they would find life-giving air. The Commander had drawn both atom-pistols, and stood there surveying the barrier as if paralyzed. "What are you waiting for?" Mark pressed forward. "In minutes, the men will be dying! Blast an opening!" For the very first time, Mark saw her hesitant, indecisive, as if unable to think. "But the air ..." she managed to gasp. "It will escape from the caves, clear back to the Base! All those men there ... and father ... their lives are more important than ours!" * * * * * In those brief seconds Mark admired her. Despite the deadly threat to the Earth she embodied, he admired her for her humanity and loyalty to the men at the Base. But there was no time to lose. He made her decision superfluous. "We've got to chance it!" With a swift, darting movement he wrested an atom-blast gun from her hand and discharged it steadily at the metal door, at a point just above the ground. A second later she was helping him with the other gun. Instantly the metal turned fiery red, then white, and finally a circular section fell outward with a hissing rush of air. "Dive in, men!" With the dregs of a strength he didn't know he still possessed, Mark grasped the men and pushed them toward the aperture, helped shove them through. "Throw your helmets back!" he shouted. "In you go," he told the Commander, and despite her protests he lifted her off her feet, almost handing her through the blasted entrance. Only Vulc and Mark were left. As the Earthman crawled through, he motioned for Vulc to follow. The metallic being dropped to all fours and pushed in his arms, his head, his massive shoulders. His sides scraped the still hot edges of the aperture. And there he stuck. The men inside grasped his arms and pulled, but in vain. Vulc gazed ludicrously from side to side and heaved prodigiously, but in vain. The Vulcanian seemed molded to the hole. "Wait! Tell him not to struggle, not to move!" Mark was exultant as he turned to the girl. "The air's no longer rushing away; if he'll only remain there until we can get back with equipment to seal that hole, the danger's over!" Vulc seemed to be pondering; his limbs sprawled like a distorted swastika, and on his usually blank, fluid face was something like surprise. In the dim recesses of his alien mind he could find no parallel to this. The Commander spoke to him slowly, with desperate emphasis; reaching into a pocket of her suit, she brought out another package of powdered metal which Vulc promptly stuffed into his mouth. "He understands," she said at last. "But I'll leave one of you here with him, to be certain he does." For a while they rested, lying prone, helmets thrown back, luxuriating in the comparative coolness and the draughts of pure air. All were thirsty, their throats parched and aching. But the nightmare was over. Presently the Commander rose to her feet and gave the order to march. She was almost her usual self again, detached, impersonal. But she was white to the lips and her eyes were electric as she said: "Luhor will pay for this!" She barely breathed it, but Mark heard her. And he knew what she meant. It was Luhor who had prepared the units of oxygen for the suits. VII Under the dim illumination maintained even as far as these outlying caves, the group went grimly on. Their passage through the tortuous corridors was dotted by discarded vacuum suits. But no echoes drifted back to them from the activity of the Base. Twice they lost their way, ending up against blank rock walls and retracing their steps. But at last the inter-connecting tunnel chain became familiar to the Commander. "She blames Luhor for the oxygen business!" Mark murmured to Carston walking beside him. "Should!" Carston exclaimed laconically, grimly. "Aladdian warned us against Luhor, remember? There'll be hell to pay when we get back! Any monkey-wrench thrown into the machinery of their plans, helps the Earth. I hope...." He broke off, staring moodily ahead. "She's far more human than you think," Mark Denning said softly. "Yes, I noticed that today." Carston's voice sounded glad. "It's only the Spartan training she learned while cruising the spacelanes with her piratical father that keeps her up--that, and the old man's insane will, driving her on through a sense of loyalty to him." They were so near to the Base now that Mark expected momentarily to hear the clang of metal in the factories, the voices of workmen. His heart quickened at the thought of seeing Aladdian, and he forgot his weariness in embroidering upon that thought. But the ominous stillness remained unbroken. They entered the final corridor leading to the vast central chamber. The Commander ran forward, with the anxious men close behind her. They entered the grotto. The subterranean Base extended into the distance before their startled, unbelieving eyes. "What--" Cynthia began bewilderedly. It was a dead city, soundless and inert. Under the distant cavern roof it had the air of a ghost town drained of all life. Mark's heart leaped into his mouth. "Aladdian!" he cried involuntarily, and his hands clenched in an agony of anxiety of helpless rage. Commander Cynthia was already running toward the palace, a deathly fear mirrored in her eyes. The men had stopped uncertainly, too weary and exhausted to understand. Then driven by a single thought, they staggered off to their building in search of water and food. Scarcely had the echoes of Mark's cry stopped reverberating, when from the shadows of a transverse corridor emerged the elfin figure of the Venusian. Aladdian gazed at Mark as if he had returned from the dead. She closed her eyes, swayed a little. Mark caught her in his arms. He too was silent. No words would serve. "To the palace!" she finally breathed, gently disengaging herself. Followed by Carston, they hurried to the imposing building where old George Marnik reigned. Aladdian led them swiftly through the panelled outer hall, through the magnificent salon where the loot from many years was a fabulous welter of wealth. Mark had no eyes for it now. They did not stop until they reached the inner chambers and finally came to George Marnik's room, where no one but Cynthia was ever permitted. * * * * * Lying grotesquely twisted on the priceless Martian tapestry that covered the bed, the ancient pirate was dead. Cynthia Marnik was kneeling beside him, weeping softly. There was no doubt as to the manner of his death. The pencil-thin opening through his temple could only have been done by an atom-blast. "Luhor," Aladdian said, indicating the wound with a gesture. They withdrew, leaving Cynthia alone with her grief. The two men followed the Venusian girl to the immense palace dining-room. With her own hands she served them food and drink, asking no questions, uttering no words until their vast hunger and thirst were appeased. Then she sat down. "And so," she began without preamble, "the unpredictable has entered." At their rush of questions she held up a hand. "Let me explain," she begged. "I can do it briefly if you are silent. After you left, Luhor ordered every man here to go aboard the Spacer. He blasted down two or three who refused; you will find them in the air-lock. Previous to that, I heard him arguing with George Marnik. He atom-blasted Marnik from behind. I know, because I deliberately contacted his mind, although the effort nearly drove me mad; it is not easy for us to tune to an alien intellect, but Luhor being partly Venusian helped." "The miracle is that he didn't take you with him," Carston ventured. "You were too valuable to leave behind!" "When we came here yesterday," she said simply, "I studied the plans of these caverns. When I learned what was in Luhor's mind, I hid in a maze of abandoned corridors. They searched for me a while, but since he plans to return, he gave up the search for the present. He had no time to waste! The Patrol has been to the Prison Swamp; failing to find either of you, and learning of my disappearance, _Earth has mobilized its fleet_!" "How--how do you know this?" Both men leaned tensely forward. "Through the ethero-magnum George Marnik has in his laboratory here--the most powerful receiving and transmission instrument I've ever seen, greater even than the ethero-magnum we have on Venus!" "So _that's_ how he kept always a step ahead of the Patrol," Carston mused. "The scientists he used to kidnap from space-liners--he must have forced them to perfect scientific inventions here!" "Yes," the Venusian girl nodded, "but I haven't told you the most important part, Luhor's plan. If he succeeds, there will be no peace. He has taken the men to the asteroid where Marnik's new fleet of space vessels are to be assembled. But worse than that--_they are also to fit gigantic rockets to the asteroid itself_! It is very dense, and greatly pitted, which simplifies things. With the rockets of this new metal he can guide the asteroid's course! It will be the terror of space, literally invulnerable, with banks of immense electro-cannon and atom-blasts, and cradling a swarm of the new Spacers!" Ernest Carston could only hold his head in his hands. Earth's greatest enemy had died in Marnik, but a greater, more ruthless one had arisen in Luhor! "Go on, Aladdian, please," Mark's tones were reassuring. "Luhor does not suspect that I contacted his mind. He believes all of you have died in the wastes--I got that from his mind, too. Since he will return, because Vulcan's to be the seat of his empire, and he wants me, we have time to plan how we are going to receive him. He's persuaded that the only living being on Vulcan now is a defenseless girl." She smiled enigmatically. "But that asteroid! That hellish threat to Earth!" Carston was beside himself. "And to Venus, and Mars," Aladdian reminded him gently. "It will take months for those rockets to be installed, Earthman. He will be here long before that, I am certain of it--as only a woman can be certain." She raised her eyes and gazed at the doorway. * * * * * Framed at the entrance to the dining-room, Cynthia Marnik stood looking somberly and dry-eyed. Aladdian rose swiftly and went over to her. "My dear ..." the Venusian said softly, a world of compassion in her voice. Cynthia smiled wanly and took the tumbler of water that Carston extended to her. She drank dazedly and then sat down with the inexpressible weariness of one whose world has come tumbling down about her head. Aladdian darted to the kitchen and upon returning made the Earth girl drink a cup of concentrate, then led her away, to her bedroom. "You must sleep," Aladdian was saying softly, monotonously, with a hypnotic cadence in her voice. "I wonder if it will be safe to arm the men?" Carston questioned thoughtfully, his mind grappling with the problem. "That's a chance we'll have to take," Mark Denning replied. "A few among them are not really hardened criminals, but are _politicals_, as you know. I think they will all fight for us, provided we can offer them freedom when, and if, we win." "I can make them no promises not sanctioned by the Earth Council," Carston said stiffly. "Remember, their lives are forfeit!" "And so will ours be, if you don't snap out of that single-track rut in which you've grooved your brain!" Mark exclaimed acidly. "Council or no Council, the Earth, Venus, Mars and the colonies must be saved! This is no time to quibble about ethics. A hell of a lot will be left of your Council if we don't stop Luhor!" "You startle me sometimes, Mark Denning. You do not sound as a true servant of the Earth State!" "Because to you," Mark said slowly, "the State is the few decrepit members calling themselves the Council, and the top-heavy Government of Earth. But to me, the 'State' are the millions and billions of human beings whose destinies are ruled by a self-appointed few, and who are now facing even a worse slavery if we don't succeed in being what Aladdian calls 'the unpredictable!'" Carston's face flushed with anger. He drew himself to his full height as he said, "I represent the Government of Earth, which rules the Planets--and I am your superior officer!" "You're wrong!" Mark Denning countered, rising too. "I'm a free agent as of this moment, and recognize no superior. I'll not be hamstrung by rules and regulations which can't serve us now, Carston!" "No need to quarrel," Aladdian spoke placidly from the doorway where, unnoticed, she had been listening. "Because only I and Cynthia can make terms with Earth, if we survive." "You and Commander Cynthia?" Carston exclaimed. "Both of your lives have been forfeit. I doubt if the Council will be willing to listen to any terms coming from _you_." Mark Denning's face was stained by a dull flush, and he took a step forward; but Aladdian laid her hand lightly on his arm and stopped him. "The Colonel belongs to the old order," she said very softly, "it is difficult for him to adjust himself to a changing universe. But this time it is beyond his control." "Why?" Carston uttered the word grimly. "Because through the ethero-magnum I have already warned Venus and Mars. My planet is being mobilized. Mars will soon take the necessary steps. But the most important reason of all, is that Earth has no means of landing a fleet on Vulcan, does not know the location of Luhor's asteroid, and _does not even suspect the existence of the new allotropic metal_." Carston looked baffled as the Venusian girl spoke, then turned to Mark Denning with the expression of a man who for once felt hopelessly lost. "I can promise the men who aid us a fortune to each," Aladdian continued, "and the leisure to spend it--on Venus. As for the Earth," she said thoughtfully--"only Commander Cynthia and I know the formula for the new metal, and the location of the asteroid!" * * * * * "I will talk to the men!" Mark said with a finality that left no doubt. "Let them rest for a few hours, then I'll see to it that they're on our side. I know how to rouse them. Wait until they learn that Luhor short-changed them on oxygen! How much backing can you expect from Venus, Aladdian?" "To the last man," she said quietly. "They have already seen me through the ethero-magnum, and heard my story. I intercepted the Tri-Planetary Beam as the Earth broadcast, and transmitted our beam along their channel. By the time Earth's Government set out their interceptor to neutralize my beam, it was already too late; the three planets are seething!" "And Luhor? Wouldn't he have picked up your beam on the Spacer and heard you?" Aladdian shrugged. "He knows I'm here. The confusion created by my broadcast only served to aid his plans for the moment. He has nothing to fear, as far as he knows. A war between the planets would only make his conquest simpler." "And knowing that," Carston spoke bitterly, "you still broadcast your story and let your image be seen! Do you suppose Venus will ever be content now with anything short of war?" "Yes, I do. We are intelligent beings, not Martian atavisms, nor do we have your Earth's insane will to _Power_. We only want peace and with it freedom. But the game is ruthless, Carston, the universe is the stake!" Aladdian turned to leave. "Mark," she said gently from the doorway, "Cynthia can show you where the arsenal is located; you'll find every imaginable weapon. Also, you had better study the combination that opens the air-locks, and the synchronized degravitators. I suspect that Luhor will be back here soon--_very soon_." Suddenly the terrific reaction of that day hit Mark with sickening impact. He was hardly able to rise to his feet. Carston was slumped over the table; Mark went over and shook him gently, and somehow aided the older man to his feet. Together they went into the fabulously furnished salon, and unable to go any further, threw themselves on couches piled with priceless rugs and embroidered scarves from the various planets. Carston instantly was asleep. Despite his utter weariness, Mark slept fitfully, awakening and dropping back to sleep as the hours passed in their eternal caravan. Something clamored at the back of his brain, something he had forgotten because of the major crisis they'd had to confront on their return to the Base. And suddenly he sat upright. The overhead lights had automatically dimmed, no one was stirring. With a shock, Mark had remembered Vulc and the man they had left to watch him! He leaped to his feet, aching in every bone, and ran to the building where the men were quartered. "If Vulc gets tired of waiting and wriggles through that hole!..." He tried not to think of the rest. He burst into the building and roused the men. "Up, on your feet, there's no time to waste!" His terrible urgency instilled them with a nameless fear, prodding them as nothing else would have done. "Your lives are at stake," he told them bluntly, and reminded them of Vulc. "At any moment he might decide he's waited long enough. Who among you knows how to repair that breach?" Three of the men came forward. "All right," Mark told them, "hurry to the shops and get what instruments and materials you need--but hurry!" * * * * * The men could not return to sleep now, knowing that at any moment the Base's life-giving air might go rushing away. This emergency, following so close upon the other hardships of the day, seemed too much. Mark saw that they were all very near the breaking point. Now was the psychological moment to speak to them, and by giving them the entire picture, lift them above the present crisis as well as inspire them with hope for the future. Calmly he told of Luhor's treachery in giving them a short oxygen supply, with the intention of murdering them all. Deliberately, with calculated phrases, he aroused their hatred and thirst for revenge. Mark paused, letting it sink in, giving time for their dark passions to reach a peak. Then he told of Luhor's asteroid, and the threat to the planets. He dangled before their eyes the promise of untold wealth, and freedom on Venus for the rest of their lives. To give his promises authority and weight, he made no bones about the fact that he was a high operative of the Tri-Planetary Bureau of Prisons--but he climaxed it with the guarantee of a blanket pardon from the Earth Council itself. "You will see and hear the Council on the ethero-magnum, but we shall be making the terms," Mark Denning said forcefully. "There's no trick in this, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose! In the Swamp, your lives were forfeit; they were forfeit here on Vulcan too. I promise you wealth on Venus, and the freedom you'll never have any other way! Who's with me?" He need not have asked, for the clamor that answered him was affirmative and unanimous. Gone for the moment was their fatigue, as they embroidered upon the possibilities of the days to come. Not until the trio returned from repairing the breach, bringing Vulc with them, did the men return to their sleep with the first and only hope they had had in years. Only Mark Denning realized the trials to come. These few men had been won over easily. Not so easy would be the negotiated terms with Earth. The Earth Government had won its dominance over the System the hard way, only after a bitter ten-years' inter-planetary war, and it would not easily relinquish its position. VIII The days that followed were eternities to the little group left stranded on Vulcan Base. Nerves were taut and tempers were short. Every man there, as well as the two women, realized that their very lives as well as the fate of the System depended on the day of Luhor's return from the asteroid. Mark had aroused the men too well. They were impatient and restless. They didn't want their freedom handed to them on a silver platter, they wanted to fight for it. Aladdian had said Luhor would be back soon--very soon. Mark questioned her about it. "Even with that fast Spacer," Aladdian replied, "it will take him several days to get out to that asteroid and back again. Cynthia tells me her father sent a crew of men there a month ago, to assemble the new Spacers. Luhor will undoubtedly win them all to his side, and bring half of them back to continue the work here. Cynthia says--" "Cynthia seems to have confided a lot in you!" Mark exclaimed with a sudden, unexplainable suspicion. Aladdian smiled wearily, and slowly shook her head. "You are demoted back to the lower order, Mark Denning," she said with a hint of the same mockery Mark had known in the Swamp. "Cynthia Marnik needs our help now. She only carried out her father's orders, but now that the dynasty is crumbling about her ears, she's bewildered and a little frightened. Something else has happened to her too, for the first time in her life." "What's that?" "Never mind," Aladdian said enigmatically. "Ernest Carston knows. It will turn out all right. Meanwhile you had better put the men here to work, it will help pass the time. Goodbye ... Mark." Like an azure-winged elf she hurried back to the laboratory where she spent most of her time. That was the first instance Mark could remember when Aladdian had called him by his first name, and he liked it. He called the men together and assigned them to posts at the furnaces, where they continued to turn out the metal that would be fashioned into the super rocket-tubes. Earth was massing its fleet and Venus was mobilizing. Mark realized that if a truce could not be called, they would need every one of the outlaw Spacers on the asteroid, and others as well. He took a few of the men with him to the arsenal, where they began to get every available weapon in readiness for the Tri-Planetary showdown that was sure to come. * * * * * "Tell the men to stop work," Aladdian said to Mark two days later, "then bring them to the laboratory. They have as much right as we to know what is happening. I have been working on the ethero-magnum sender, and I shall try to contact both Venus and Earth." They gathered in the magnificent laboratory George Marnik had erected. Here, various machines were arranged in preponderant array, but all were dwarfed by the imposing ethero-magnum in the center of the room. Hidden atomomotors hummed a smooth and powerful threnody. The control panel, as tall as Aladdian herself, connected to huge coils of radical design which themselves led to the televise, a huge sensitized sheet of metal reaching clear up to the ceiling. Carston, an Earth patriot to the end, watched these activities with misgivings. But he was silent, curiously so, and Mark wondered at it. Mark was soon to know the reason for Carston's silence, and to realize that the Earth official did not give up so easily.... "I want you all to stand back against the walls," Aladdian said, "out of range of the televise. Luhor may pick this up, and he must not know there is anyone here but me." She operated the dials quickly, surely, with tendril-like fingers. A faint, far away voice was heard droning monotonously. "Earth is sending to Venus now," Aladdian said, never once removing her gaze from the dancing dials before her. "If I can intercept the Earth beam, I can get my message to Venus through that channel, by drowning them out. I did it once before." The sound of the voice increased, and words became distinguishable. They were haranguing, dictatorial--undoubtedly one of the Earth Council speaking to Venus. At the same time the huge metallic sheet above Aladdian's head took on a silvery glow, and a wavering scene began to appear. The scene was a crowded city square, with thousands of faces upturned to a televise screen atop one of the buildings. "That is N'Vaarl, Capitol City of Venus," Aladdian murmured. "They are listening to the Earth broadcast. Now I will let them see me." Automatically her hand reached out, and grasped a lever which she threw downward. The atomomotors shrieked as they absorbed the increased power, and soon the sound rose above the audible. At the same time the Earth voice was drowned out, and the scene at N'Vaarl became very clear to the watchers in the room. On the huge public televise screen at N'Vaarl, the image of Aladdian, Princess of Venus and daughter of Bedrim the Liberator, became visible. The crowd did not cheer, but awaited her message, knowing that at any moment the Earth would throw off the beam when it realized what was happening. "Greetings, my people!" Aladdian spoke quickly. "As I told you before, Earth is mobilizing its fleet and I know that you are preparing for any contingency. That is well, but I entreat you not to act in any manner until you have heard further from me! There is a greater danger than that of Earth! I am safe and well, I cannot come to you now, but soon--" * * * * * In that moment the Earth beam ceased, and the scene on the televise blanked out. Aladdian turned with a satisfied smile to Mark and Cynthia and the others. "It is enough that they saw me. My people will not act now without word from me. I hope I shall never have to give that word." "Aladdian," Mark spoke worriedly, "isn't it a risk for you to broadcast at all? The Earth Government doesn't know your present whereabouts, but if they were to send out tracer beams and learn you were operating from Vulcan ... well, it's true that no Patrol ship is equipped to land on Vulcan, but they could bottle us up here--" Ernest Carston, who had been silent but eternally watchful, became suddenly tense at Mark's words. "They _have_ sent out tracer beams," Aladdian replied, "but with this instrument I can neutralize them all." Fondly she touched the ethero-magnum by her side. "Anyway, the immediate danger is not from Earth, but from Luhor. Let us not forget that! And I must warn Earth, must make them understand." She turned to the dialed panel again, and even as her fingers made swift connections, she continued to speak. "It may not be easy to establish a direct channel from here to Earth, but I think I have completed a new trans-telector beam on which George Marnik was working. It should do away with the magnetic disturbance caused by our close proximity to the sun. We shall see." Again the atomomotors whined and ascended the scale. This time, there was a new exultant note. Minutes passed, then the overhead screen began to take on a hazy, shifting blur. Aladdian's fingers moved unerringly on the dials. The blur came suddenly, sharply into focus. Carston, standing against the far wall next to Mark Denning, leaned tensely forward, his eyes aglow. The scene on the televise was the Earth Council. Carston almost leaped forward in his excitement, but Mark gripped his arm tightly. Aladdian was speaking to the Council. In slow, matter-of-fact tones she told of George Marnik, of the new metal, of Luhor and Luhor's plans. She told of the asteroid and the fleet being assembled there, without revealing the asteroid's position. She described the properties of the new metal but was careful not to hint of its source. "I seek to warn you," Aladdian's voice came fervent and clear. "You are plunging into disaster. It is not my people I think of now, but the Tri-Planet Federation! If you continue to mobilize your fleet I am not sure I can control the Irreconcilables among my people--I certainly cannot control Dar Vaajo of Mars, who is headstrong beyond reason. It will mean an hecatomb in space, with Luhor holding his asteroid in readiness for the final blow!" "This Luhor and the formidable asteroid of which you speak," came the cold, sneering voice of the Earth Coordinator. "Tell us more of them. Give us the location of the asteroid." Aladdian hesitated for an instant. "No. That I cannot do." "You cannot, because no such asteroid and no such metal exists! You would try to frighten us with this story of a demon asteroid and a super space fleet! It would not be that you seek to gain time for your people to rally to you, now that they know you have escaped the Prison Swamp? Or perhaps you need time in which to coordinate your resources with those of Dar Vaajo of Mars! Let us advise you, Aladdian, that within a week the main body of our fleet will be at Venus, and it will not go well with your Irreconcilables. We shall know how to handle them this time, we shall not be so lenient as before! Perhaps, in order to spare them, you will wish to give yourself up to us, daughter of Bedrim!" Aladdian's slender body grew taut as though struck by a whip lash. With a single sweep of the control lever she cut off the beam. Dazedly she crossed the room, oblivious to the murmurs of the others; her usually alabaster face was now chalk white beneath her curling blue-black hair, her lips were pressed tight but they trembled nevertheless. At the laboratory door Mark caught her arm, walked beside her. "Aladdian," he choked. "I--" She became aware of him then, smiled up at him through her bitterness. "Aladdian, I am--I just wanted to say--I'm sorry I'm an Earthman!" She stopped suddenly, faced him, took one of his hands in both of hers. "No, Mark! Do not say that, do not ever say it. For you are more than that ... much more...." IX It was night, and the overhead lights in the corridors were dimmed. Ernest Carston tossed restlessly in his bed. He could not sleep, he had been unable to sleep since seeing and hearing the Earth Council on the ethero-magnum. Carston arose, and dressed quickly. Silently he crossed the room to the outer door, and stepped out into the corridor. He paced slowly, aimlessly, his brow knit in deep thought. Finally he made a decision, and turned his footsteps in the direction of the palace and the laboratory. He was still an Earth official; he had known all the time that he would have to take matters here into his own hands. Before he reached the corridor leading to the laboratory, however, he heard the soft shuffle of footsteps. Carston leaped back into the shadows just as a lone figure emerged from one of the transverse corridors. It passed very close to him, and he saw that it was Cynthia Marnik; her face seemed very white, and her steps were hurried. Carston's heart quickened a pace, as he followed her at a safe distance, keeping to the shadows. She continued along the main corridor, past the men's quarters and past the furnaces. With a shock, Carston realized she was heading for the outer air-lock. He reached there in time to see the huge door slide open, then Cynthia stepped through, and the door closed. Carston waited, giving her time to leave the tunnel, before he followed. Finally he entered the tunnel himself, having long since learned how to operate the mechanism of these doors. Cynthia was gone; the outer doors were closed. Carston hurried down the long tunnel. The magnetic degravitizing coils along each side were silent now, would remain so until the Spacer's return. Carston reached the racks of vacuum suits near the outer door, quickly donned one and was soon outside the Base. Against the sun-swept horizon, a hundred yards away, he could easily discern Cynthia's metal-encased figure. She kept close to the shadows at the foot of the low lying cliffs. Not once did she look back. A quarter of a mile further, she turned sharply, entered a narrow, steep-walled canyon. Puzzled, Carston hurried forward. He reached the canyon and entered it, realizing that this must be one of the few places on Vulcan's surface where there was anything simulating night; it wasn't really dark, but sort of a twilight gloom between the rock cliffs sheering upward. And he saw Cynthia. She hadn't gone far. Her vacuum-suited figure stood very still, and she seemed to be staring up at the immensity of space. Carston crept closer, came very near indeed, until he could see the profiled whiteness of her face beneath the helmet. Carston stared too, following her gaze. At first he didn't see a thing. Then, high on the horizon, out of the sun's glare, right between the canyon walls ... he caught the bright blue glint of a star. He suddenly realized what it was, and with a sharp intake of breath he whispered: "Earth!" * * * * * She must have had her helmet phones on. She turned slowly to face him, and Carston was startled at the clear-cut radiance of her face. "It's the Earth, yes ... it's beautiful. There's no other place on this planet where you can see it like that, and then only when the position is right. Sometimes not for months...." Carston stepped quickly to her side. Cynthia averted her face, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes, and the lengthening glimmer of one that rolled down her cheek beneath the transparent helmet. For an instant, Carston was dumbfounded. Then a vast exultation surged within him. "I knew it!" he whispered fiercely. "Almost from the first moment I saw you, I sensed there was something artificial beneath your mask of hardness. This is it! You don't hate Earth at all, Cynthia, you've never hated it!" "Yes," she spoke softly, her voice deepening. "I've never hated Earth. It was only father--" Abruptly she stopped, and her gaze strayed to where the blue star shone like an aquamarine ablaze. "I can't remember clearly; it's like a vague dream--but I have a dim vision of green fields and golden light, and clouds in an unreal blue sky; and trees beside a wide lake, with a crisp tang of air, different from the air here. To me, that's Earth. I was born there." Her voice faded, and as if from a great distance Carston heard her say, "Oh perhaps it's just a dream." "No, it's not a dream," Carston whispered, standing very close to her now. "It's part of you, it belongs to you! All Earthians feel that out here, a yearning to get back. Cynthia, I've loved you from the very first ... didn't you know? Let me take you back with me, out of this madness that can only mean death for us all!" He stopped, at the sight of her upturned face, white and wan. "I guessed. Yes, I know. I've been waiting a long time to hear you say this. And I'd go with you, Carston, but how is it possible now? My life's forfeit, you yourself said so!" Now Carston was very sure of himself. "No, my dear," he said softly, trying to filter the triumph from his voice. "Your life's not forfeit if you help prevent the carnage and destruction that Aladdian's mad dream will bring about. She doesn't know, she _can't_ know the awful power of Earth's fleet. Luhor's vaunted super-cruisers will be so many leaves scattered in the void. This allotropic metal on which his hope of invincibility is based, can be neutralized and destroyed!" "But how? What can we do?" Cynthia's voice held a note of despair, as her hand unconsciously went out to his. "We can give Earth the location of Luhor's asteroid, and the secret of Vulcan!" He said it so softly, so insinuatingly that it was little more than a thought. "I can promise you an absolute pardon, my dear--more! I can promise you honor for aiding Earth. The Council knows how to reward, as it knows how to punish." "But Aladdian and Mark? Would it not mean death, or worse, for them both?" She shuddered, as a vision of the Swamp came before her eyes. "I could never condemn them to that," she thought aloud. "With my influence, I can get amnesty for them--leniency at least," Carston said with the glibness of one to whom nothing mattered but the ultimate task that must be accomplished at all costs. "All Earth wants is to avoid another war. If we make it possible for Earth's fleet to capture Luhor and neutralize the asteroid, I'm certain the Council will pardon Aladdian and Mark." He pressed her hand confidently in both of his. She seemed to hesitate, but Carston knew she had already made up her mind. "If you're sure you can obtain the pardon--and stop this senseless war--yes--yes, my dear, I'll give the Earth Council any information you wish--" Her voice dwindled and stopped as Carston took her into his arms. He, himself, was white and trembling with the reaction of having accomplished his task. Over her shoulder he could see the twinkling blue dot of Earth. He smiled, and it was a very smug smile. His breath was long and trembling, but his intense emotion at the moment was _not_ akin to love. X "Soon, now." Carston's murmur echoed eerily against the shrill hum of the atomomotors in the upper scales. The phantasmal glow of the selector screens suffused the chamber. Selenic cells poured additional power into the trans-telector beam as Cynthia's fingers trembled over the shining dials. Carston, standing beside her, was white-faced and tense. Slowly a shifting blur materialized on the huge televise of the ethero-magnum. It focused, and the thin-lipped, ascetic features of the Earth Coordinator materialized in the immense Council room of Earth. The Council in full session surrounded him. All were intent on their receiving screens, on which Carston and Cynthia were reflected. Cynthia stepped nervously aside, and Carston came forward. He bowed low. Then his voice, hoarse with uncontrollable elation, rose in greeting. "Your Beneficence, and Elders of the Council! I am speaking from _Vulcan_, the long-sought base of Captain George Marnik, where I have been a prisoner for many months! But no longer. This," he gestured hesitantly, "is Cynthia, George Marnik's daughter, for whom I beseech the Coordinator's and the Council's clemency for the service she is about to do." Then in slow and measured words Carston told in detail all that had happened, beginning with his own release from the Swamp by Cynthia, relating Luhor's murder of Marnik, and finally telling of the asteroid where Luhor's space cruisers were being assembled, and of the new allotropic metal being mined on Vulcan. Then he motioned for Cynthia to come forward. The Coordinator had listened in silence, his grim face impassive. Every eye in the Council room was unwaveringly on the screen, and the silence lay heavy between two distant worlds. Slowly, Cynthia walked toward the ethero-magnum sender, a sheaf of note paper in her hand. She smiled wanly, but confidently at Carston. Then in a colorless voice she read her mathematical figures giving the position of the asteroid in space, and the formula for the shortest approach from Vulcan, as the key for computation of the trajectory from Earth. Without animation, she gave the formula for the allotropic metal process, and the secret of the entrance to Vulcan. Then she fell silent. As if she didn't know what to do, she turned to Carston and caught for a fleeting instant the smug smile of triumph on his lips; but before she could comprehend its meaning, it was gone. "Will ... will I be pardoned?" Cynthia questioned aloud, more to Carston than to the Coordinator on the screen. But the silence in the Council room of Earth persisted, as busy mathematicians already were furiously computing the mathematical formulae. A thin, contemptuous smile had parted the Coordinator's lips. It was the first time Carston had ever seen him smile, and the room where he and Cynthia stood, although millions of miles distant, seemed colder suddenly as that glacial glimmer came through the screen. Carston opened his lips to speak. "Your Beneficence," he began-- * * * * * But suddenly, catapulted from the deepening darkness of the corridors, an azure-winged figure with curved hands outstretched fell like an avenging fury upon Carston's back! Dainty hands, suddenly transformed into claws, dug like spikes of steel; a supple body too ethereal for strength, now seemed made of metal as the Venusian girl attacked him with a savagery that brought every man of Earth's distant Council room to his feet! Close on her heels Mark Denning had barely time to separate the tangled figures. Carston's face dripped blood where Aladdian's fingernails had furrowed deep. Cynthia seemed rooted to the spot. So incredibly swift had it been, that the battle was over in seconds. Aladdian's eyes were pools of fire as she faced the Council. Her streaming hair seemed to shimmer as she spat her venom into the screen. "Very well, send your space fleet, you clumsy fools! Let your madness condemn the planets to a bath of blood! Yes, you have the formula for the allotropic metal--but what good is it to you without a source of supply? You have the location of the asteroid--but do you suppose your fleet can stand against such a mobile fortress as Luhor will make it? But it's a waste of words, I know I can never convince you. Only death and destruction can. But this I do tell you! Never, _never again_ will you enslave Venus! Never again will you imprison me in that inhuman Swamp, and never will you land on Vulcan! For I have one weapon left, one which only we of Venus possess. We have used it once on Mars, once in our history only, for we are not warlike. But before Luhor and the Martian hordes overrun my planet and _yours_ as he certainly can, I will use this weapon, Earthian!" On the screen, the Coordinator's face was livid. "Arrest her," he said across the immense distance to Carston. "In the name of the Supreme Council of the Tri-Planetary Federation, arrest her! Her life's forfeit!" But Carston stood motionless, pale as death, suddenly confronted by the grim figure of Mark who gripped an electro-pistol in his hand. At this veritable moment, out of the void, cutting in on the beam like the disembodied cachination of some strange creature, wave upon wave of gigantic mirth poured on two worlds! And as every participant of this drama stood tense, watching their screens, there slowly emerged the half-breed figure of Luhor, his gargantuan laughter still roaring in uncontrollable paroxysms. "So that's it!" Luhor managed to choke between spasms. "What entertainment you have provided me with--and what information! And to think, Aladdian, that I'd planned to make you my empress. Why, my little dove has claws!" he exclaimed admiringly. His immense, ugly bulk dominated the entire screen, as his bellowing laughter began again. The Earth Coordinator, almost beside himself, threw a master switch; the televise screens of two worlds flickered and went blank, the pulsing whine of the atomomotors was like a dirge. Cynthia passed a trembling hand across her eyes, and her gaze wavered before Aladdian's accusing stare. She glanced briefly at Carston with a slowly dawning wonderment, as if an awareness of his aims had begun to awaken within her. "I--I'm afraid I've made a mess of things," she said in a slow, deep voice. "Ever since father's death, I seem to have lost my grip. I'm so sorry, Aladdian, I thought it was for the best; Carston assured me we'd be pardoned...." Her voice trailed off as she turned her face away from them all. "I should burn you!" Mark Denning said to Carston in a cold, tight voice, and Carston went white. "You've managed to wreck our plans about as completely as possible. If the Earth blasts Luhor out of space, we face surrender or slow starvation. If Luhor wins, he can starve us out or blast his way in here with his allotropic cruisers, now that he's forewarned by you. Either way we lose--but I guarantee you, Carston, _you_ won't come out of this easily!" Each word was like ice, and Aladdian nodded slowly at Mark's words, a strange light in her brilliant eyes. * * * * * "We haven't lost yet, Mark." With a swift motion she crossed to the ethero-magnum again, and turned it on. "Remember, I have still a weapon. My people are behind me." "But Venus doesn't have a fleet! Earth has seen to that." "Wait." Her unerring precision brought the screen to life in a burst of light. A scene took place, alien, exotic--the imperial palace on Venus. A great crowd stood before it in silence, extending into the distance, as if the park-like expanse had become a place of pilgrimage. In eternal vigil all faced the televise screen that rose from the floor level to the top of the palace. Fantastic blue-green mountains filled the background, dwarfing the small fragile figure that materialized on the receiving screen. "My people, I speak to you for the third, perhaps for the last time--" There was a world of yearning in the cello-like voice as Aladdian opened her arms toward them. A cyclonic roar burst forth in tribute and greeting, but quickly died down as they awaited her message. "When I last spoke, I told you not to act without word from me. I hoped I would never have to give that word, but now I fear I must. The hour is almost here. What I will ask of you, is the supreme sacrifice. You know what that means. I, too, am prepared to make it. There is no other way. Many will die, but only that the others may avoid an even worse slavery than they now endure, and that we may attain our rightful inheritance, an equal place in the Planetary Federation." The voice rose like a stream of music, and tears were in Aladdian's eyes. "The choice is yours, my people!" When the thunderous response had died down in waves of overpowering sound, Aladdian stood in silence for several moments; in silence, too, the Venusian multitude remained with upturned faces. Mark had an eerie feeling that a _Planet_ was in tune with the fragile, winged figure. When the connection had been broken, and once more the laboratory had reverted to semi-gloom, Mark turned to Carston and removed his weapons from him. "I can't take any chances with you now," he said coldly, "after what you've done. You wanted to become a hero in the eyes of the Earth Council. Well, from now on you'll dance to my tune." "But not for long!" Carston sneered openly, recovering his poise and confidence. "The game's up, Denning; you're a renegade to Earth and shall be treated as such. It'll be child's play for Earth's fleet to burn Luhor and his asteroid to a crisp. After that--" He stopped and grinned contemptuously. "After that, we'll be taken care of?" It was Aladdian who spoke, and her voice was soft like dark molten gold. "Careful, Mark," she interposed quickly, placing her hand on Mark's arm as his grip tightened on the electro. "_I_ don't deserve any lenience," Cynthia said dully. "I've been a fool." Aladdian gazed at the Earth-girl with a universe of pity in her eyes, and a great understanding. "No, my dear," she said softly, "not a fool. Only a girl in love." "But you!" she lashed at Carston. "You shall reap the whirlwind; and I assure you, a Venusian whirlwind is beyond your ken!" XI "No sign of the asteroid!" Mark Denning's voice was harsh as he addressed the restless group of men milling in front of the laboratory. "We've picked up Earth's fleet, that is all; it's now proceeding beyond the orbit of Mars. Come in and watch if you wish, but it may be hours yet." The clang and clamor of the furnaces had long ago ceased, as Vulcan awaited the outcome of the space struggle that would mean so much to them all. Since Carston's betrayal had become known, the men had discussed the situation from every angle. Paradoxically they hoped for Luhor's victory, so that _they_ could deal with the Martian half-breed. At the very worst, death was better than Paradim, which surely awaited them again if Earth won in this crisis. As Earth's fleet in awesome array, advanced toward the asteroid's position which Cynthia had given, Aladdian kept a ceaseless vigil at the televise. In far off N'Vaarl, the palace grounds were a sea of upturned Venusian faces intent upon their screen. Dar Vaajo sat brooding on his barbaric throne on Mars, his craggy face dark with passion, thinking of the upstart Luhor who had wrecked his plans. Within the austere Council chamber of Earth, the Coordinator paced to and fro before the screen, while the awed Council didn't dare to stir. It hadn't been hard for the ethero-screens of each world to pick out the flaming majesty of Earth's fleet, and they had followed its progress for hours. The meteoric speed seemed a snail's pace, across the respective televise panels. "Look!" Aladdian cried, spilling the cup of hot concentrate Cynthia had brought to her. With electrifying suddenness, the scene in the panel had leaped to vivid life. Concentric whorls of green, disintegrating light flashed from all units of Earth's fleet simultaneously, merging into a single appalling cloud that preceded the fleet itself. To the watchers, the spread of the light seemed slow, but it must have encompassed thousands of miles. "But why?" Aladdian breathed, even as she twisted the dials trying to center the scene more perfectly. "They're not within hours of the asteroid belt, and they will only give their position away to Luhor!" Carston, Mark and the others had come crowding into the room to watch the scene. Carston whispered, exultantly, "That green light is radio-active disintegrating energy! It merges with whatever it touches, unbalancing the atomic structure of metal. Wait'll they envelop Luhor's asteroid in that!" "Yes, I know it well," Aladdian murmured. "They used it in the long war against Venus. But there is a neutralizing force now, which even Earth does not know. George Marnik developed it, right here on Vulcan Base." Carston's lips curled, but he said nothing. The sight of Earth's mighty armada sweeping forward on its mission had instilled him with a swaggering confidence. They continued to watch the scene in silence, even as the Earth Council and the people of Venus and Dar Vaajo on Mars were watching. Still the Fleet swept forward. Minutes passed. The greenish half-circle of light preceded it, beating back the darkness, expanding unimaginable distances as though reaching out greedy hands. Then suddenly Aladdian's words came true. * * * * * From a point in space far in advance of the Fleet, a tiny white beam of light became visible. It reached out like a slashing saber, swiftly expanding and closing the gap of darkness. It came from the asteroid itself, now revealed to the watchers for the first time--merely a tiny dark mass that seemed to move forward with infinite caution against the Fleet. "There it is!" Mark breathed. "Luhor's carried his plan through! He's made a rogue asteroid of it, moved it clear out of the belt--" Words ceased, as they watched the preliminary maneuvers. The asteroid's slashing saber of white touched the disintegrating power of the green. But it was the green that disintegrated! Slowly, almost carressingly, the pale beam moved across the advancing blanket of light. Where it touched, the green dissolved magically as though it had never been. "That's what I meant. The etheric inertia ray!" Aladdian's murmur was tinged with exultation, as she sensed Carston standing beside her taut with surprise. Still the Earth Fleet moved forward in battle formation, in staggered horizontal tiers. Impelled by the terrific momentum, it depended upon maneuverability to escape the impending danger. But, inexorably, the asteroid moved forward also, as if hungry to meet its enemy. Limned behind its own ghastly light, it was revealed as a leisurely rotating mass of rock and mineral, with jagged pinnacles reaching out and deep black gullies agape. A blinding lance of electric blue lashed from Earth's Flagship, like a probing finger searching for a weak point. It stabbed Luhor's white ray and ended in a corruscating upheaval of incandescent light. The asteroid was very close now; it seemed as if nothing could prevent that sidereal mass, some ten miles in diameter, from plowing through the tiers of Earth Spacers. But in that veritable moment when disaster seemed certain, Earth's massed fleet executed one of the most spectacular feats of navigation the Universe had ever witnessed. The units literally _broke apart_ and moved outward into a perfect cone-like formation, with the base, or open end, toward the asteroid. Again the green radiance, from all sides now, went out to envelop the asteroid in a glaucous sheath, as the dark mass drifted into the trap. "This is it!" Carston gloated hoarsely. "Now watch your asteroid crumble!" The others said nothing. All were tense, as the tiny ten-mile world entered the open end of the cone to what seemed certain destruction. Now the white etheric inertia ray lashed out savagely again, sweeping in swift arcs, but failed to dispel the concentrated waves of green fire. Then from the surface of the dark world, Luhor's own space fleet arose--six cruisers only, dwarfed in size by some of Earth's larger ships. With blinding speed, the six allotropic cruisers headed for the closing jaws of the trap. * * * * * The Earth Commander was not prepared for such acceleration. It was unbelievable. He had little time to think, as Luhor's cruisers blasted with the raking fire of electro-cannon at close range. Three Earth ships went hurtling end over end through the void, ripped from stern to bow. Impervious to the wild fire of Earth's Fleet, the allotropic cruisers plowed on. Two Earth cruisers at the jaws of the trap were unable to maneuver in time. Luhor's ships in a straight line hit them head-on, plowed through them and out again, leaving behind a tangled wreck of twisted girders and scattered debris. Luhor's six ships were out of the trap now, and they wheeled in a mighty arc, hung chain-poised as though to watch. Behind, the now glowing asteroid erupted the real destruction. This had been Luhor's plan from the first. The balance of men taken from Paradim Swamp, left on the bleak little world to fight for their lives, now released hidden rocket tubes that blasted in perfectly spaced rotation. The rocky world began to spin, as it plunged ponderously forward. Bank upon bank of electro-cannon lashed out like uncurled blue lightning. Atomite bombs burst among Earth's fleet which surrounded this deadly pinwheel. In less than a minute Earth's vast armada was completely disorganized, space became a shambles of ripped metal plates, twisted rocket tubes and blasted hulls. Like a livid, craggy corner of hell running rampant, the rogue asteroid spun faster and faster, spewing annihilation. But this was its death throes. The concentrated disintegrating glow had taken effect, and could not now be stopped. The craggy world began to crumble in great masses of rock and metal like a leprous organism. The few remaining units of the Earthian fleet tried desperately to escape the disintegrating lethal mass--but behind them now, at a safe distance from it all, Luhor's ships barred the way. Pitilessly his electro-cannon raked them, impervious to their erratic salvos. His Flagship with its impossible speed darted among them like a cosmic scimitar, until barely half a dozen of Earth's former armada were able to flee in scattered disarray. Half a dozen, out of more than a hundred. Contemptuously, Luhor did not even deign to pursue. Where an immense battle fleet and a dwarf world had battled for supremacy in space, now only shattered metal fragments and a disintegrated rain of mineral and rock remained veiled by cosmic darkness. XII It had been too much and too sudden for speech. Aladdian was on her feet now, even she was still gripped by the awe of the vast debacle. Mark watched Ernest Carston stumble dazedly from the Laboratory room, the appalling horror in his eyes betraying how intimately Earth's tragedy was his. He'd sent them out there to conquer, and they had remained to die. No one spoke. The crowding men who'd hoped for a victory by Luhor, even turned away before the magnitude of his power. The laboratory on Vulcan reflected in miniature the shocked silence of four worlds. They'd seen the mightiest armada of all time reduced to nothing in a space of minutes. Aladdian was the first to act. With the same beam, through which they'd watched the holocaust, she contacted Earth. She tuned the Council chamber where gray faces looked to the Coordinator in bewilderment and fear. But the Coordinator, stricken to the depths of his narrow soul, was incapable of speech. In the oppressive silence Aladdian's winged figure materialized on the screen. "I greet you, Earthians, for the last time." Her molten voice had overtones of sadness. "You have seen your mighty fleet destroyed. Earth is defenseless. Luhor is on his way to Earth." "How--how do you know?" The Coordinator was moved to speech now, galvanized into life by a more immediate fear! "How? Because I am right now in telepathic contact with Luhor's mind." "We shall fight to the end!" "Yes, I expected that of you. You would condemn Earth to the same fate as your Fleet. Awaken, Earthmen! No weapon that you have can destroy allotropic metal. You have seen Luhor's ships slice through your vessels as if they were paper. You're at his mercy now." Aladdian allowed her words to sink while she widened the beam to include Mars and Venus as well as Earth, that her voice might carry to the entire Federation. "I am not speaking to you only, now, but to three worlds whose fate depends on your decision. Agree to what I ask, and the danger from Luhor will be eliminated." "What do you ask?" The Coordinator's voice came through as a mere whisper. "Three things only. Absolute liberation of Venus and Mars, which means equal representation at the Tri-Planetary Federation Council. Complete abolishment of the inhuman Swamp of Paradim. And Venus to retain Vulcan with its allotropic metal as a measure of final safety. Agree to these points before the assembled peoples of the inhabited planets who are listening now, and Luhor shall never reach Earth." On Mars and Earth and Venus her winged figures were reflected, while her voice cadenced in the ears of untold millions. "First," came the Coordinator's voice, "how are _you_ to prevent that fiend Luhor from pursuing his course? And second, what guarantees will we have that Venus will not build more of the allotropic cruisers to attack?" Although white and shaken, the Coordinator could still snarl. "I will answer your second question first. As you well know, Venus has never in all her history resorted to war. Rather than kill," her voice became bitter, "we submitted to Earth's cruel domination. We saw the inhuman Prison Swamp spring into being, for greed of the Josmian pearls; death and persecution for the sake of power. I even personally suffered this!" She held up her wings whose tendons had been cut. "Yet despite it all, history does not record murder by Venusians. _That_, Earthian, is your guarantee that we shall keep the peace. As to Luhor, I and I alone can stop him now. This is an offered chance you may take or leave. Remember, Luhor's fleet has ten times the speed of Earth's fastest vessel, and will be there sooner than you suppose. Think fast, Earthian!" "Think also," Mark interposed in a voice of steel, "that here on Vulcan we have the allotropic metal, the means to work it, and the men to build our own cruisers if we so desire!" "I accept," the Coordinator said sullenly. Despite his fear and helpless rage, he could only envisage defeat and destruction should Luhor arrive at Earth. As for Aladdian on Vulcan stopping the mad half-breed, he did not see how it was possible; but he had nothing further to lose by agreeing. With a gesture, he ordered the Council to draw up a pact. Four worlds watched the signatures grow one by one. Then, and not until then, did Aladdian play her last card as she brought Venus into focus. "_NOW!_" * * * * * The single word was the last she uttered as she opened her arms. Her people were ready. They knew the sacrifice. Millions of miles away an entire _Planet_, as if it had been a single cosmic mind, concentrated on Luhor's fleet. A mighty stream of thought flowed out, vast but intangible. Wave upon wave, directed by Aladdian, the accumulated thought-vibrations beat ceaselessly upon the minds of Luhor and his men. And on Venus, slowly, here and there a winged figure fell and lay still, its mind sapped by the prodigious effort that knew no bounds. But the knowledge that Aladdian, their Princess, who directed the combined flow, was under an infinitely greater mental strain than any of them individually, gave them added inspiration. Aladdian had long since made all the others, even Mark, leave the Laboratory. She maintained her vigil and efforts alone. On her magnum screen, which had shifted to cosmic space, the six invulnerable vessels continued their purposeful route toward Earth. Serenely they sped. But suddenly, with an odd twist, one of the Spacers plunged headlong without warning into a sister ship. Both exploded into a cataract of flame. Another wavered, wheeled, then plunged toward outer space at vertiginous speed, to disappear in a dwindling dot of silver. Of the remaining three, one began to fire broadsides against the others, then rotated over and over out of control, while air-locks opened and figures leaped out to instantaneous death in the frigidity of space. It was a scene of silent horror. But while scores died in space, hundreds died on Venus at the magnitude of the effort. Still the Venusian populace of millions concentrated in purposeful silence. A sense of madness unleashed stole into the laboratory room where Aladdian stood alone, motionless and white-faced. She scarcely breathed. Her blue eyes were dilated. On the screen now only one cruiser remained. Not until then did Aladdian move, her hand reaching out automatically to the dials. A second later the interior of Luhor's cruiser lay revealed. The huge half-breed had held out to the last. He'd realized what was happening, knew that the thought-power of an entire telepathic nation was reaching out across vast distances of space, the ghastly vibration of madness battering against the brains of his men. Now even Luhor began to succumb, his brutal face contorted by spasms of demoniac evil. His crew of men around him were already insane. A few sobbed monotonously on their knees, rocking from side to side. Others were already dead. One crewman was absorbed in daintily flaying another with a bright, keen penknife, while the rest were systematically destroying the ship and each other. In the midst of the scene, Luhor's face went suddenly grey and blank. He drew his electro-pistol and like a man possessed, used it methodically about him until only he remained alive. It was then that Aladdian used her last remaining strength, directing Luhor like an automaton to the controls, where he remained frozen. The vessel heeled in space and changed course, heading away from Earth now, speeding directly sunward toward Vulcan Base. Within the laboratory room, Aladdian swayed, her face whiter than death; she grasped at the instrument panel for support, but her fingers closed on air, as she crumpled to the floor. XIII She was barely conscious of Mark and Cynthia and Carston seconds later, bursting into the room. And of Mark's face mirroring his anxiety as he hurried to her. In the same instant she knew that her people's accumulative vibration had reached an apex of power, and like an avenging fury was turning _their way--centering on one person in that laboratory room_! Desperately Aladdian tried to stop it, but she was too near exhaustion and too late. Like a concentrated, cosmic javelin of death, that stream of madness reached Carston alone. He shrieked but once, and leaped wildly, hands clutching at his temples; then he crumpled to the floor. He had been blasted to death as suddenly as if a gigantic atom-blast had drilled him between the eyes. Not until then, could Aladdian rise wearily to her feet, assisted by Mark. Sorrowfully she looked at the figure of Carston. Already on Venus, she knew, thousands lay dead, and perhaps hundreds more had died in this final vengeful effort. "They could not forget," she said sadly, "that it was Carston who hounded me throughout the System to result in my imprisonment at Paradim; and that it was he who cut the tendons of my wings." She still clung to Mark's arm, half-supported by him. But despite her utter weariness and all she had gone through, Aladdian still had eyes for Cynthia, who stood there, a forlorn, shattered figure, staring down at the body of Carston. "Do not mind too much, my dear." Aladdian's voice and heart went out in pity to the Earth girl. "In a short time you will forget all that has happened here. Come with us to Venus, I know you will find happiness there." "With us?" It was Mark who spoke, his voice a bare whisper of hope. "Yes, Mark." Aladdian smiled at him, the impish smile he had known in Paradim. Then from the recesses of her tunic she drew forth a gleaming, iridescent pearl. "The purple Josmian!" Mark gasped. "The one I found in the Swamp. I'd forgotten about it!" "I kept it for you, Mark, knowing I would need it for this moment. From lower species to middle order," her smile was impish again, "is not bad for an Earthman. Take the Josmian now, it's yours; with it I elevate you to the highest order and--" But she said no more, for within Mark's arms she was deciding he wasn't much taller than the average Venusian; no, not a great deal taller, at all. 
30283	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. THE SOUND OF SILENCE BY BARBARA CONSTANT Most people, when asked to define the ultimate in loneliness, say it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the crowd.... ILLUSTRATED BY SCHELLING * * * * * Nobody at Hoskins, Haskell & Chapman, Incorporated, knew jut why Lucilla Brown, G.G. Hoskins' secretary, came to work half an hour early every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even G.G. himself, had he been asked, would have had trouble explaining how his occasional exasperated wish that just once somebody would reach the office ahead of him could have caused his attractive young secretary to start doing so three times a week ... or kept her at it all the months since that first gloomy March day. Nobody asked G.G. however--not even Paul Chapman, the very junior partner in the advertising firm, who had displayed more than a little interest in Lucilla all fall and winter, but very little interest in anything all spring and summer. Nobody asked Lucilla why she left early on the days she arrived early--after all, eight hours is long enough. And certainly nobody knew where Lucilla went at 4:30 on those three days--nor would anybody in the office have believed it, had he known. "Lucky Brown? seeing a psychiatrist?" The typist would have giggled, the office boy would have snorted, and every salesman on the force would have guffawed. Even Paul Chapman might have managed a wry smile. A real laugh had been beyond him for several months--ever since he asked Lucilla confidently, "Will you marry me?" and she answered, "I'm sorry, Paul--thanks, but no thanks." Not that seeing a psychiatrist was anything to laugh at, in itself. After all, the year was 1962, and there were almost as many serious articles about mental health as there were cartoons about psychoanalysts, even in the magazines that specialized in poking fun. In certain cities--including Los Angeles--and certain industries--especially advertising--"I have an appointment with my psychiatrist" was a perfectly acceptable excuse for leaving work early. The idea of a secretary employed by almost the largest advertising firm in one of the best-known suburbs in the sprawling City of the Angels doing so should not, therefore, have seemed particularly odd. Not would it have, if the person involved had been anyone at all except Lucilla Brown. The idea that she might need aid of any kind, particularly psychiatric, was ridiculous. She had been born twenty-two years earlier in undisputed possession of a sizable silver spoon--and she was, in addition, bright, beautiful, and charming, with 20/20 vision, perfect teeth, a father and mother who adored her, friends who did likewise ... and the kind of luck you'd have to see to believe. Other people entered contests--Lucilla won them. Other people drove five miles over the legal speed limit and got caught doing it--Lucilla out-distanced them, but fortuitously slowed down just before the highway patrol appeared from nowhere. Other people waited in the wrong line at the bank while the woman ahead of them learned how to roll pennies--Lucilla was always in the line that moved right up to the teller's window. "Lucky" was not, in other words, just a happenstance abbreviation of "Lucilla"--it was an exceedingly apt nickname. And Lucky Brown's co-workers would have been quite justified in laughing at the very idea of her being unhappy enough about anything to spend three precious hours a week stretched out on a brown leather couch staring miserably at a pale blue ceiling and fumbling for words that refused to come. There were a good many days when Lucilla felt like laughing at the idea herself. And there were other days when she didn't even feel like smiling. Wednesday, the 25th of July, was one of the days when she didn't feel like smiling. Or talking. Or moving. It had started out badly when she opened her eyes and found herself staring at a familiar blue ceiling. "I don't know," she said irritably. "I tell you, I simply don't know what happens. I'll start to answer someone and the words will be right on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken, then I'll say something altogether different. Or I'll start to cross the street and, for no reason at all, be unable to even step off the curb...." "For no reason at all?" Dr. Andrews asked. "Are you sure you aren't withholding something you ought to tell me?" She shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable ... and then she was fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue. She stared at it for a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews' brown leather couch, and that the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary dialogues she found herself carrying on with the psychiatrist, day and night, awake and asleep. "Get out of my dreams," she ordered crossly, summoning up a quick mental picture of Dr. Andrews' expressive face, level gray eyes, and silvering temples, the better to banish him from her thoughts. She was immediately sorry she had done so, for the image remained fixed in her mind; she could almost feel his eyes as she heard his voice ask again, "For no reason at all, Lucilla?" * * * * * The weatherman had promised a scorcher, and the heat that already lay like a blanket over the room made it seem probable the promise would be fulfilled. She moved listlessly, showering patting herself dry, lingering over the choice of a dress until her mother called urgently from the kitchen. She was long minutes behind schedule when she left the house. Usually she rather enjoyed easing her small car into the stream of automobiles pouring down Sepulveda toward the San Diego Freeway, jockeying for position, shifting expertly from one lane to another to take advantage of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry impatience; she choked back on the irritated impulse to drive directly into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn button down furiously when a slow-starting truck hesitated fractionally after the light turned green. When she finally edged her Renault up on the "on" ramp and the freeway stretched straight and unobstructed ahead, she stepped down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb up and past the legal 65-mile limit. The sound of her tires on the smooth concrete was soothing and the rush of wind outside gave the morning an illusion of coolness. She edged away from the tangle of cars that had pulled onto the freeway with her and momentarily was alone on the road, with her rear-view mirror blank, the oncoming lanes bare, and a small rise shutting off the world ahead. That was when it happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked "out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semitrailer coming from the opposite direction rock dangerously, jackknife into the dividing posts that separated north and south-bound traffic, crunch ponderously through them, and crash to a stop, several hundred feet ahead of her and squarely athwart the lane down which she had been speeding only seconds earlier. The highway patrol materialized within minutes. Even so, it was after eight by the time Lucilla gave them her statement, agreed for the umpteenth time with the shaken but uninjured truck driver that it was indeed fortunate she hadn't been in the center lane, and drove slowly the remaining miles to the office. The gray mood of early morning had changed to black. Now there were two voices in her mind, competing for attention. "I knew it was going to happen," the truck driver said, "I couldn't see over the top of that hill. All I could do was fight the wheel and pray that if anybody was coming, he'd get out of the way." She could almost hear him repeating the words, "Get out of the way, out of the way...." And right on the heel of his cry came Dr. Andrews' soft query, "For no reason at all, Lucilla?" She pulled into the company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to the left, jammed on the brakes. "Shut up!" she said. "Shut up, both of you!" She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already late, but there was something.... (Get out of the way, the way.... For no reason at all, at all....) She yielded to impulse and walked hurriedly downstairs to the basement library. "That stuff I asked you to get together for me by tomorrow, Ruthie," she said to the gray-haired librarian. "You wouldn't by any chance have already done it, would you?" "Funny you should ask." The elderly woman bobbed down behind the counter and popped back up with an armload of magazines and newspapers. "Just happened to have some free time last thing yesterday. It's already charged out to you, so you just go right ahead and take it, dearie." * * * * * It was 8:30 when Lucilla reached the office. "When I need you, where are you?" G.G. asked sourly. "Learned last night that the top dog at Karry Karton Korporation is in town today, so they've pushed that conference up from Friday to ten this morning. If you'd been here early--or even on time--we might at least have gotten some of the information together." Lucilla laid the stack of material on his desk. "I haven't had time to flag the pages yet," she said, "but they're listed on the library request on top. We did nineteen ads for KK last year and three of premium offers. I stopped by Sales on my way in--Susie's digging out figures for you now." "Hm-m-m," said G.G. "Well. So that's where you've been. You could at least have let me know." There was grudging approval beneath his gruffness. "Say, how'd you know I needed this today, anyhow?" "Didn't," said Lucilla, putting her purse away and whisking the cover off her typewriter. "Happenstance, that's all." (Just happened to go down to the library ... for no reason at all ... withholding something ... get out of the way....) The telephone's demand for attention overrode her thoughts. She reached for it almost gratefully. "Mr. Hoskins' office," she said. "Yes. Yes, he knows about the ten o'clock meeting this morning. Thanks for calling, anyway." She hung up and glanced at G.G., but he was so immersed in one of the magazines that the ringing telephone hadn't even disturbed him. Ringing? The last thing she did before she left the office each night was set the lever in the instrument's base to "off," so that the bell would not disturb G.G. if he worked late. So far today, nobody had set it back to "on." * * * * * "It's getting worse," she said miserably to the pale blue ceiling. "The phone didn't ring this morning--it couldn't have--but I answered it." Dr. Andrews said nothing at all. She let her eyes flicker sidewise, but he was outside her range of vision. "I don't LIKE having you sit where I can't see you," she said crossly. "Freud may have thought it was a good idea, but I think it's a lousy one." She clenched her hands and stared at nothing. The silence stretched thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to rupture it was too great to resist. "I didn't see the truck this morning. Nor hear it. There was no reason at all for me to slow down and pull over." "You might be dead if you hadn't. Would you like that better?" The matter-of-fact question was like a hand laid across Lucilla's mouth. "I don't want to be dead," she admitted finally. "Neither do I want to go on like this, hearing words that aren't spoken and bells that don't ring. When it gets to the point that I pick up a phone just because somebody's thinking...." She stopped abruptly. "I didn't quite catch the end of that sentence," Dr. Andrews said. "I didn't quite finish it. I can't." "Can't? Or won't? Don't hold anything back, Lucilla. You were saying that you picked up the phone just because somebody was thinking...." He paused expectantly. Lucilla reread the ornate letters on the framed diploma on the wall, looked critically at the picture of Mrs. Andrews--whom she'd met--and her impish daughter--whom she hadn't--counted the number of pleats in the billowing drapes, ran a tentative finger over the face of her wristwatch, straightened a fold of her skirt ... and could stand the silence no longer. "All right," she said wearily. "The girl at Karry Karton thought about talking to me, and I heard my phone ring, even though the bell was disconnected. G.G. thought about needing backup material for the conference and I went to the library. The truck driver thought about warning people and I got out of his way. So I can read people's minds--some people's minds, some of the time, anyway ... only there's no such thing as telepathy. And if I'm not telepathic, then...." She caught herself in the brink of time and bit back the final word, fighting for self-control. "Then what?" The peremptory question toppled Lucilla's defenses. "I'm crazy," she said. Speaking the word released all the others dammed up behind it. "Ever since I can remember, things like this have happened--all at once, in the middle of doing something or saying something, I'd find myself thinking about what somebody else was doing or saying. Not thinking--knowing. I'd be playing hide-and-seek, and I could see the places where the other kids were hiding just as plainly as I could see my own surroundings. Or I'd be worrying over the answers to an exam question, and I'd know what somebody in the back of the room had decided to write down, or what the teacher was expecting us to write. Not always--but it happened often enough so that it bothered me, just the way it does now when I answer a question before it's been asked, or know what the driver ahead of me is going to do a split second before he does it, or win a bridge game because I can see everybody else's hand through his own eyes, almost." "Has it always ... bothered you, Lucilla?" "No-o-o-o." She drew the word out, considering, trying to think when it was that she hadn't felt uneasy about the unexpected moments of perceptiveness. When she was very little, perhaps. She thought of the tiny, laughing girl in the faded snaps of the old album--and suddenly, inexplicably, she was that self, moving through remembered rooms, pausing to collect a word from a boyish father, a thought from a pretty young mother. Reluctantly, she closed her eyes against that distant time. "Way back," she said, "when I didn't know any better, I just took it for granted that sometimes people talked to each other and that sometimes they passed thoughts along without putting them into words. I was about six, I guess, when I found out it wasn't so." She slipped into her six-year-old self as easily as she had donned the younger Lucilla. This time she wasn't in a house, but high on a hillside, walking on springy pine needles instead of prosaic carpet. "Talk," Dr. Andrews reminded her, his voice so soft that it could almost have come from inside her own mind. "We were picnicking," she said. "A whole lot of us. Somehow, I wandered away from the others...." One minute the hill was bright with sun, and the next it was deep in shadows and the wind that had been merely cool was downright cold. She shivered and glanced around expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or jacket. There was no one at all in sight. Even then, she never thought of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big tree that looked familiar, and a funny rock behind it, half buried in the hillside. She was trudging toward it, humming under her breath, when the worry thoughts began to reach her. (... only a little creek so I don't think she could have fallen in ... not really any bears around here ... but she never gets hurt ... creek ... bear ... twisted ankle ... dark ... cold....) She had veered from her course and started in the direction of the first thought, but now they were coming from all sides and she had no idea at all which way to go. She ran wildly then, first one way, then the other, sobbing and calling. [Illustration] "Lucilla!" The voice sliced into the night, and the dark mountainside and the frightened child were gone. She shuddered a little, reminiscently, and put her hand over her eyes. "Somebody found me, of course. And then Mother was holding me and crying and I was crying, too, and telling her how all the different thought at once frightened me and mixed me up. She ... she scolded me for ... for telling fibs ... and said that nobody except crazy people thought they could read each other's minds." "I see," said Dr. Andrews, "So you tried not to, of course. And anytime you did it again, or thought you did, you blamed it on coincidence. Or luck." "And had that nightmare again." "Yes, that, too. Tell me about it." "I already have. Over and over." "Tell me again, then." "I feel like a fool, repeating myself," she complained. Dr. Andrew's made no comment. "Oh, all right. It always starts with me walking down a crowded street, surrounded by honking cars and yelling newsboys and talking people. The noise bothers me and I'm tempted to cover my ears to shut it out, but I try to ignore it, instead, and walk faster and faster. Bit by bit, the buildings I pass are smaller, the people fewer, the noise less. All at once, I discover there's nothing around at all but a spreading carpet of gray-green moss, years deep, and a silence that feels as old as time itself. There's nothing to frighten me, but I am frightened ... and lonesome, not so much for people, but for a sound ... any sound. I turn to run back toward town, but there's nothing behind me now but the same gray moss and gray sky and dead silence." * * * * * By the time she reached the last word, her throat had tightened until speaking was difficult. She reached out blindly for something to cling to. Her groping hand met Dr. Andrews' and his warm fingers closed reassuringly around hers. Gradually the panic drained away, but she could think of nothing to say at all, although she longed to have the silence broken. As if he sensed her longing, Dr. Andrews said, "You started having the dream more often just after you told Paul you wouldn't marry him, is that right?" "No. It was the other way around. I hadn't had it for months, not since I fell in love with him, then he got assigned to that "Which Tomorrow?" show and he started calling me "Lucky," the way everybody does, and the dream came back...." She stopped short, and turned on the couch to stare at the psychiatrist with startled eyes. "But that can't be how it was," she said. "The lonesomeness must have started after I decided not to marry him, not before." "I wonder why the dream stopped when you fell in love with him." "That's easy," Lucilla said promptly, grasping at the chance to evade her own more disturbing question. "I felt close to him, whether he was with me or not, the way I used to feel close to people back when I was a little girl, before ... well, before that day in the mountains ... when Mother said...." "That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it?" "How'd you know? I didn't--not until just now. But, yes, that's when it started. I'd never minded the dark or being alone, but I was frightened when Mother shut the door that night, because the walls seemed so ... so solid, now that I knew all the thoughts I used to think were with me there were just pretend. When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed, and I went on having the same dream, night after night after night, until finally they called a doctor and he gave me something to make me sleep." "I wish they'd called me," Dr. Andrews said. "What could you have done? The sleeping pills worked, anyway, and after a while I didn't need them any more, because I'd heard other kids talking about having hunches and lucky streaks and I stopped feeling different from the rest of them, except once in a while, when I was so lucky it ... bothered me." "And after you met Paul, you stopped being ... too lucky ... and the dream stopped?" "No!" Lucilla was startled at her own vehemence. "No, it wasn't like that at all, and you'd know it, if you'd been listening. With Paul, I felt close to him all the time, no matter how many miles or walls or anything else there were between us. We hardly had to talk at all, because we seemed to know just what the other one was thinking all the time, listening to music, or watching the waves pound in or just working together at the office. Instead of feeling ... odd ... when I knew what he was thinking or what he was going to say, I felt good about it, because I was so sure it was the same way with him and what I was thinking. We didn't talk about it. There just wasn't any need to." She lapsed into silence again. Dr. Andrews straightened her clenched hand out and stroked the fingers gently. After a moment, she went on. "He hadn't asked me to marry him, but I knew he would, and there wasn't any hurry, because everything was so perfect, anyway. Then one of the company's clients decided to sponsor a series of fantasy shows on TV and wanted us to tie in the ads for next year with the fantasy theme. Paul was assigned to the account, and G.G. let him borrow me to work on it, because it was such a rush project. I'd always liked fairy stories when I was little and when I discovered there were grown-up ones, too, like those in _Unknown Worlds_ and the old _Weird Tales_, I read them, too. But I hadn't any idea how much there was, until we started buying copies of everything there was on the news-stands, and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication, until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight-legged monsters and men in space suits." "So what do the magazines have to do with you and Paul?" "The way he felt about them changed everything. He just laughed at the ones about space ships and other planets and robots and things, but he didn't laugh when came across stories about ... well, mutants, and people with talents...." "Talents? Like reading minds, you mean?" She nodded, not looking at him. "He didn't laugh at those. He acted as if they were ... well, indecent. The sort of thing you wouldn't be caught dead reading in public. And he thought that way, too, especially about the stories that even mentioned telepathy. At first, when he brought them to my attention in that disapproving way, I thought he was just pretending to sneer, to tease me, because he--we--knew they could be true. Only his thoughts matched his remarks. He hated the stories, Dr. Andrews, and was just determined to have me hate them, too. All at once I began to feel as if I didn't know him at all and I began to wonder if I'd just imagined everything all those months I felt so close to him. And then I began to dream again, and to think about that lonesome silent world even when I was wide awake." "Go on, Lucilla," Dr. Andrews said, as she hesitated. "That's all, just about. We finished the job and got rid of the magazines and for a little while it was almost as if those two weeks had never been, except I couldn't forget that he didn't know what I was thinking at all, even when everything he did, almost, made it seem as if he did. It began to seem wrong for me to know what he was thinking. Crazy, like Mother had said, and worse, somehow. Not well, not even nice, if you know what I mean." "Then he asked you to marry him." "And I said no, even when I wanted, oh, so terribly, to say yes and yes and yes." She squeezed her eyes tight shut to hold back a rush of tears. * * * * * Time folded back on itself. Once again, the hands of her wristwatch pointed to 4:30 and the white-clad receptionist said briskly, "Doctor will see you now." Once again, from some remote vantage point, Lucilla watched herself brush past Dr. Andrews and cross to the familiar couch, heard herself say, "It's getting worse," watched herself move through a flickering montage of scenes from childhood to womanhood, from past to present. She opened he eyes to meet those of the man who sat patiently beside her. "You see," he said, "telling me wasn't so difficult, after all." And then, before she had decided on a response, "What do you know about Darwin's theory of evolution, Lucilla?" His habit of ending a tense moment by making an irrelevant query no longer even startled her. Obediently, she fumbled for an answer. "Not much. Just that he thought all the different kinds of life on earth today evolved from a few blobs of protoplasm that sprouted wings or grew fur or developed teeth, depending on when they lived, and where." She paused hopefully, but met with only silence. "Sometimes what seemed like a step forward wasn't," she said, ransacking her brain for scattered bits of information. "Then the species died out, like the saber-tooth tiger, with those tusks that kept right on growing until they locked his jaws shut, so he starved to death." As she spoke, she remembered the huge beast as he had been pictured in one of her college textbooks. The recollection grew more and more vivid, until she could see both the picture and the facing page of text. There was an irregularly shaped inkblot in the upper corner and several heavily underlined sentences that stood out so distinctly she could actually read the words. "According to Darwin, variations in general are not infinitesimal, but in the nature of specific mutations. Thousands of these occur, but only the fittest survive the climate, the times, natural enemies, and their own kind, who strive to perpetuate themselves unchanged." Taken one by one, the words were all familiar--taken as a whole, they made no sense at all. She let the book slip unheeded from her mind and stared at Dr. Andrews in bewilderment. "Try saying it in a different way." "You sound like a school teacher humoring a stupid child." And then, because of the habit of obedience was strong, "I guess he meant that tails didn't grow an inch at a time, the way the dog's got cut off, but all at once ... like a fish being born with legs as well as fins, or a baby saber-tooth showing up among tigers with regular teeth, or one ape in a tribe discovering he could swing down out of the treetops and stand erect and walk alone." He echoed her last words. "And walk alone...." A premonitory chill traced its icy way down Lucilla's backbone. For a second she stood on gray moss, under a gray sky, in the midst of a gray silence. "He not only could walk alone, he had to. Do you remember what your book said?" "Only the fittest survive," Lucilla said numbly. "Because they have to fight the climate ... and their natural enemies ... and their own kind." She swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. "I'm not a ... a mutation. I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT, and you can't say I am, because I won't listen!" "I didn't say you were." There was the barest hint of emphasis on the first word. Lucilla was almost certain she heard a whisper of laughter, but he met her gaze blandly, his expression completely serious. "Don't you dare laugh!" she said, nonetheless. "There's nothing funny about ... about...." "About being able to read people's minds," Dr Andrews said helpfully. "You'd much rather have me offer some other explanation for the occurrences that bother you so--is that it?" "I guess so. Yes, it is. A brain tumor. Or schizophrenia. Or anything at all that could maybe be cured, so I could marry Paul and have children and be like everybody else. Like you." She looked past him to the picture on his desk. "It's easy for you to talk." He ignored the last statement. "Why can't you get married, anyway?" "You've already said why. Because Paul would hate me--everybody would hate me--if they knew I was different." "How would they know? It doesn't show. Now if you had three legs, or a long bushy tail, or outsized teeth...." Lucilla smiled involuntarily, and then was furious at herself for doing so and at Dr Andrews for provoking her into it. "This whole thing is utterly asinine, anyhow. Here we are, talking as if I might really be a mutant, and you know perfectly well that I'm not." "Do I? You made the diagnosis, Lucilla, and you've given me some mighty potent reasons for believing it ... can you give me equally good reasons for doubting that you're a telepath?" * * * * * The peremptory demand left Lucilla speechless for a moment. She groped blindly for an answer, then almost laughed aloud as she found it. "But of course. I almost missed it, even after you practically drew me a diagram. If I could read minds, just as soon as anybody found it out, he'd be afraid of me, or hate me, like the book said, and you said, too. If you believed it, you'd do something like having me locked up in a hospital, maybe, instead of...." "Instead of what, Lucilla?" "Instead of being patient, and nice, and helping me see how silly I've been." She reached out impulsively to touch his hand, then withdrew her own, feeling somewhat foolish when he made no move to respond. Her relief was too great, however, to be contained in silence. "Way back the first time I came in, almost, you said that before we finished therapy, you'd know me better than I knew myself. I didn't believe you--maybe I didn't want to--but I begin to think you were right. Lot of times, lately, you've answered a question before I even asked it. Sometimes you haven't even bothered to answer--you've just sat there in your big brown chair and I've lain here on the couch, and we've gone through something together without using words at all...." She had started out almost gaily, the words spilling over each other in their rush to be said, but bit by bit she slowed down, then faltered to a stop. After she had stopped talking altogether, she could still hear her last few phrases, repeated over and over, like an echo that refused to die. (Answered ... before I even asked ... without using words at all ... without using words....) She could almost taste the terror that clogged her throat and dried her lips. "You do believe it. And you could have me locked up. Only ... only...." Fragments of thought, splinters of words, and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble, shifted infinitesimally, and fell into an incredible new pattern. Understanding displaced terror and was, in turn, displaced by indignation. She stared accusingly at her interrogator. "But you look just like ... just like anybody." "You expected perhaps three legs or a long bushy tail or teeth like that textbook tiger?" "And you're a psychiatrist!" "What else? Would you have talked to me like this across a grocery counter, Lucilla? Or listened to me, if I'd been driving a bus or filling a prescription? Would I have found the others in a bowling alley or a business office?" "Then there are ... others?" She let out her breath on a long sigh involuntarily glancing again at the framed picture. "Only I love Paul, and he isn't ... he can't...." "Nor can Carol." His eyes were steady on hers, yet she felt as if he were looking through and beyond her. For no reason at all, she strained her ears for the sound of footsteps or the summons of a voice. "Where do you suppose the second little blob of protoplasm with legs came from?" Dr. Andrews asked. "And the third? If that ape who found he could stand erect had walked lonesomely off into the sunset like a second-rate actor on a late, late show, where do you suppose you'd be today?" He broke off abruptly and watched with Lucilla as the office door edged open. The small girl who inched her way around it wore blue jeans and a pony tail rather than an organdy frock and curls, but her pixie smile matched that of the girl in the photograph Lucilla had glanced at again and again. "You wanted me, Daddy?" she asked, but she looked toward Lucilla. "I thought you'd like to meet someone with the same nickname as yours," Dr. Andrews said, rising to greet her. "Lucky, meet Lucky." "Hello," the child said, then her smile widened. "Hello!" (But I don't have to say it, do I? I can talk to you just the way I talk to Daddy and Uncle Whitney and Big Bill). "Hello yourself," said Lucilla. This time when the corners of her mouth began to tick upward, she made no attempt to stop them. (Of course you can, darling. And I can answer you the same way, and you'll hear me.) Dr. Andrews reached for the open pack of cigarettes on his deck. (Is this strictly a private conversation, girls, or can I get in on it, too?) (It's unpolite to interrupt, Daddy.) (He's not exactly interrupting--it was his conversation to begin with!) Dr. Andrews' receptionist paused briefly beside the still-open office door. None of them heard either her gentle rap or the soft click of the latch slipping into place when she pushed the door shut. Nor did she hear them. * * * * * 
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41358	----	PRACTICAL MIND-READING By WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON A COURSE OF LESSONS ON THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE, TELEPATHY, MENTAL-CURRENTS, MENTAL RAPPORT, &c. CONTAINING Practical Instruction, Exercises, Directions, etc., capable of being understood, mastered and demonstrated by any person of average intelligence PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY ADVANCED THOUGHT PUBLISHING CO. 168 N. MICHIGAN AVE., CHICAGO, ILL. LONDON AGENTS: L.N. FOWLER & CO., 7 IMPERIAL ARCADE, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C. (Practical Mind Reading) Copyright 1907, by THE LYAL BOOK COMPANY Copyright 1908, by ADVANCED THOUGHT PUBLISHING CO. NOTICE--This book is protected by Copyright and simultaneous publication, in Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and other countries. All foreign rights reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS LESSON I--THE NATURE OF MIND READING 5 A plain, practical, scientific explanation of this Vast, Mysterious Subject, explaining the action of Mind upon Mind, and the Mental Wireless Telegraphy, according to the latest and best authorities. LESSON II--THE PROOFS OF MIND READING 13 The result of the latest scientific experiments and investigations regarding this subject; practical proof and indisputable facts. LESSON III--CONTACT MIND READING 24 Full instruction regarding the "Nerve Currents" passing from the human Transmitter to the human Receiver; stated so plainly that any one may instantly grasp the theory and practice. LESSON IV--DEVELOPMENT EXERCISES 34 How to develop yourself; how to grow proficient in practice; how to find Locations; how to find Objects; how to perform the necessary elementary feats, and thus prepare for Public Work. LESSON V--SIMPLE DEMONSTRATIONS 49 Public or Parlor Demonstrations. Fourteen Practical Demonstrations are explained; full directions for performing them are given, so that the student may reproduce the experiments and demonstrations. LESSON VI--DIFFICULT DEMONSTRATIONS 66 Explanations and instructions given for their performance. The Banknote Test; the Blackboard Feats; Drawing Pictures; Telepathic Chess and Checkers, etc., described, explained, and full instructions given for their reproduction. LESSON VII--SENSATIONAL FEATS 79 The Driving Feat; the Combination Lock Feat; the Office Detective Feat; the Postoffice Box Feat, and many other sensational demonstrations explained, together with an exposure of "Fake Demonstrations." LESSON VIII--HIGHER PHENOMENA 85 Demonstrations without contact. Development Directions. Long Distance Experiments. Automatic Writing. Valuable Suggestions and Advice. LESSON I. THE NATURE OF MIND READING. Only a few years ago the general public was in almost total ignorance of the great truth of Thought Transference, Thought Projection, Telepathy, or Mind Reading. It is true that here and there were to be found a few scientists earnestly investigating and eagerly uncovering the hidden truths concerning the subjects. But the mass of the people were either entirely ignorant of the subject, or else were intensely skeptical of any thing concerning the matter, laughing to scorn the daring thinker who ventured to express his interest or belief in this great scientific phenomena. But how different to-day. On all hands we hear of the wonders of Thought Transference, or Telepathy, as it is called. Scientific men write and teach of its fascinating manifestations, and even the general public has heard much of the new science and believes more or less in it, according to the degree of intelligence and knowledge concerning the subject possessed by the individual. Listen to these words from the lips of some of the greatest scientists of the day. Prof. William James, the eminent instructor at Harvard University, says: "When from our present advanced standpoint we look back upon the past stages of human thought, whether it be scientific thought or theological thought, we are amazed that a universe which appears to us of so vast and mysterious a complication should ever have seemed to anyone so little and plain a thing. Whether it be Descartes' world or Newton's; whether it be that of the Materialists of the last century, or that of the Bridgewater treatises of our own, it is always the same to us--incredibly perspectiveless and short. Even Lyell's, Faraday's, Mill's and Darwin's consciousness of their respective subjects are already beginning to put on an infantile and innocent look." These remarks are doubly significant by reason of their having been made by Prof. James as the president of the "Society for Psychical Research." The eminent English scientist, Sir William Crookes, in his address as president of the Royal Society, at Bristol, England, a few years ago, said: "Were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world of science, I should choose a starting point different from that of old, where we formerly began. It would be well to begin with telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that _thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense_--that knowledge may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognized ways. Although the inquiry has elicited important facts with reference to the mind, it has not yet reached the scientific stage of certainty which would enable it to be usefully brought before one of our sections. I will therefore confine myself to pointing out the direction in which scientific investigation can legitimately advance. If telepathy take place, we have two physical facts--the physical change in the brain of A. the suggestor, and the analogous physical change in the brain of B. the recipient of the suggestion. Between these two physical events there must exist a train of physical causes. Whenever the connecting sequence of intermediate causes begins to be revealed, the inquiry will then come within the range of one of the sections of the British Association. Such a sequence can only occur through an intervening medium. All the phenomena of the Universe are presumably in some way continuous, and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies when with every fresh advance in knowledge, it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demand--even the transmission of thought." Prof. Crookes then went on to say: "It is supposed by some physiologists that the essential cells of nerves do not actually touch, but are separated by a narrow gap which widens in sleep while it narrows almost to extinction during mental activity. This condition is so singularly like that of a Branly or Lodge coherer (a device which has led Marconi to the discovery of wireless telegraphy) as to suggest a further analogy. The structure of brain and nerve being similar, it is conceivable that there may be present masses of such nerve coherers in the brain whose special function it may be to receive impulses brought from without through the connecting sequence of ether waves of appropriate order of magnitude. Roentgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves of which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason for believing that we have here reached the limit of frequency. It is known that the action of thought is accompanied by certain molecular movements in the brain, and here we have physical vibrations capable from their extreme minuteness of acting direct upon individual molecules, while their rapidity approaches that of the internal and external movements of the atoms themselves." A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable, as the direct action of mind on mind. It has been said that nothing worth the proving can be proved, nor yet disproved. True this may have been in the past, it is true no longer. The science of our century has forged weapons of observation and analysis by which the veriest tyro may profit. Science has trained and fashioned the average mind into habits of exactitude and disciplined perception, and in so doing has fortified itself for tasks higher, wider and incomparably more wonderful than even the wisest among our ancestors imagined. Like the souls in Plato's myth that follow the chariot of Zeus, it has ascended to a point of vision far above the earth. It is henceforth open to science to transcend all we now think we know of matter, and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of Cosmic Law. In old Egyptian days a well-known inscription was carved over the portal of the Temple of Isis: 'I am whatever has been, is, or ever will be; and my veil no man hath yet lifted.' Not thus do modern seekers after truth confront Nature--the word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is, to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august and wonderful with every barrier that is withdrawn. Camille Flamarrion, the eminent French astronomer, is a believer in Thought Transference and Mind Reading, and has written the following expression of his convictions on this subject: "We sum up, therefore, our preceding observations by the conclusion that _one mind can act at a distance upon another, without the habitual medium of words, or any other visible means of communication_. It appears to us altogether unreasonable to reject this conclusion if we accept the facts. There is nothing unscientific, nothing romantic, in admitting that an idea can influence the brain from a distance. The action of one human being upon another, from a distance is a scientific fact; it is as certain as the existence of Paris, of Napoleon, of Oxygen, or of Sirius." The same authority has also said "There can be no doubt that our psychical force creates a movement of the ether, _which transmits itself afar like all movements of ether and becomes perceptible to brains in harmony with our own_. The transformation of a psychic action into an ethereal movement, and the reverse, may be analogous to what takes place on a telephone, where the receptive plate, which is identical with the plate at the other end, reconstructs the sonorous movement transmitted, not by means of sound, but by electricity." We have quoted at length from this eminent authority to show once and for all that this great science of MIND-READING is recognized, and approved of by the highest authorities on Modern Science, and also to give our students the benefit of the current scientific theories upon the subject. In this work we have but very little to say about theory, but shall confine ourselves to facts, and actual instruction. Science knows and has proven that thoughts may be and have been transmitted from one mind to another, in some cases over thousands of miles of space, but it has not as yet solved the mystery of the "Why" of the subject, and contents itself with explaining the "How." The nearest approach to a correct theory seems to be the one which compares the mind with the "wireless telegraph," and which supposes that the vibrations of thought travel through the ether, just as do the waves of this high order of electricity. The mind of one person acts like a "transmitter" of the wireless telegraph, while the mind of the other acts as a "receiver" of the same set of instruments. There are undoubtedly vibrations set up in the brain when one thinks, and there are undoubtedly waves of thought just as there are waves of electricity. Science informs us that there is an increase of temperature in the human brain during periods of thought-activity, and also that there are constant chemical changes in the structure going on when the brain cells are active. This is akin to the generation of electricity in a battery, and undoubtedly acts in the same way in producing vibrations, and transmitting them to the brain of another. Sir William Crookes, in the address just quoted, points out the direction of the scientific theories concerning the matter. But, this is all that we shall have to say about the theory of Mind Reading. We shall now pass on to the actual practical instruction. The student is asked, however, to always carry in his mind the fact that Mind travels in waves from one brain to another just as electricity travels from the Transmitter to the Receiver. By holding this picture in your mind, you will have the whole practical theory, in condensed form, right before you, so that you may be able to act accordingly. LESSON II. THE PROOFS OF MIND READING. As we have said in the previous chapter, the general public is gradually awakening to the knowledge of the reality of Mental Transference, and it is scarcely necessary to devote the time and space to a proof of the reality of the phenomena in these days, although a few years ago a work on the subject would have had to be composed principally of evidences and proofs. But, nevertheless, it may be well for us to take a hasty look at the nature of the proof in this work. Nearly everyone has had evidences of Mind Reading or Thought Transference in his or her own life. Nearly every one has had experiences of being in a person's company when one of the two would make a remark and the other, somewhat startled, would exclaim, "Why, that's just what I was going to say," or words to that effect. Nearly every one has had experiences of knowing what a second person was going to say before the person spoke. And, likewise common is the experience of thinking of a person a few moments before the person came into sight. Many of us have suddenly found ourselves thinking of a person who had been out of our minds for months, or years, when all of a sudden the person himself would appear. These instances are so common as to be generally recognized, without question. These occurrences have given rise to the two common "sayings," viz., "Speak of the devil and his imps appear," or "Speak of angels and you hear the rustle of their wings." Mark Twain, in an article printed several years ago, spoke of a plan that he had frequently practiced, i.e., that of writing a letter to a person upon some subject, then addressing the envelope and inserting the letter, and then tearing the whole thing into pieces instead of sending it. He stated that in a large percentage of such cases he would receive within a short time a letter from the person to whom the destroyed letter had been addressed, answering the questions asked, or else speaking along the same lines as those of the destroyed letter. We have known of this experiment being tried on people thousands of miles away from the writer, and also in cases in which the other person had not been heard of for many years. There is a field open for experiment along these lines which some of our students might investigate with profit and satisfaction. Perhaps the best available evidence of Mind Reading at the disposal of the public to-day is that found in the records of the English Society for Psychical Research. The experiments of the members of this Society and other investigators have resulted in the piling up of a mass of facts more than sufficient to fully establish the correctness of the theory of Mind Reading. Series of carefully managed experiments have been conducted, the results of which have conclusively proven that the thought-waves set into motion by the mind of one person may be consciously received by the mind of another. We shall quote here from the reports of those investigators, in order to show you the important results that have been obtained, and to set at rest forever any lurking doubts as to the reality of the phenomena which may still find lodgment in your mind. Remember, please, that these committees were composed of some of the leading scientific authorities of England--men whose standing and reliability, as well as whose judgment, was beyond question. These cases form a part of the scientific records of the English Society. THE CREERY EXPERIMENTS. One of the interesting series of experiments conducted by members of the English Society was that of the family of the Rev. A.M. Creery, of Derbyshire, England. This investigation was made upon hearing the report of the Rev. Mr. Creery regarding a number of experiments he had conducted with his four children. He reported that he had begun by practicing a variation of what is generally known as the "willing game", in which one of the party leaves the room, and the company selects some object to be hidden, after which the person is recalled to the room when the company concentrates its mind upon the hidden object, and the seeker eventually finds it by means of Mind Reading. The reverend gentleman said in his report to the Society: "We began by selecting the simplest objects in the room; then chose names of towns, people, dates, cards out of a pack, lines from different poems, etc., any thing or series of ideas that those present could keep before the mind steadily. The children seldom made a mistake. I have seen seventeen cards chosen by myself, named right in succession without any mistake. We soon found that a great deal depended upon the steadiness with which the ideas were kept before the minds of the thinkers, and upon the energy with which they willed the ideas to pass. I may say that this faculty is not confined to the members of one family; it is much more general than we imagine. To verify this conclusion I invited two of a neighbor's children to join us in our experiment, and very excellent results we secured from them." The Society then began a series of careful investigations extending over a period of one year. The utmost care was taken to obviate the chance of fraud, collusion, mistakes, or outside influences. The experiments were conducted partly in Mr. Creery's house and partly in rooms selected by the members of the investigating committee. Having selected at random one of the children, the child would be taken from the room and accompanied by a member of the committee would wait out of sight or hearing of the room. The remainder of the committee would then select a card from a pack, or else write down a name or number which occurred to them at the moment. The following verbatim report of what followed will give you an idea of the results generally obtained. The report goes on to say: "On re-entering the room the little girl would usually stand with her face to the wall, placed thus by us. But sometimes she would stand with her eyes directed toward the ground for a period of silence varying from a few seconds to a minute, till she called out to us some number, card or what it might be." The report states that in the case of giving the names of objects chosen, the child scored six cases out of fourteen. In the case of naming of small objects held in the hands of members of the committee, she scored _five out of six_. In the case of naming cards she scored six out of thirteen. In the case of stating fictitious names chosen by the committee she scored, at a first trial, five out of ten. One of the experiments is reported as follows: "One of the children was sent into an adjoining room, the door of which was closed. The committee then thought of some object in the house and wrote the name down on paper. The strictest silence was observed. We then all silently thought of the name of the thing selected. In a few seconds the door of the adjoining room opened, and the child would appear _generally with the object selected_. No one was allowed to leave the room after the object had been fixed upon; no communication with the child was conceivable, as her place was often changed. Further, the only instructions given to the child were to fetch some object in the house that we would fix upon and would keep in mind to the exclusion of all other ideas. In this way we wrote down, among other things, a hairbrush--it was brought; an orange--it was brought; a wine-glass--it was brought; an apple--it was brought," etc., etc. The report to the Society sums up the following results: Three hundred and eighty-two trials were made in the series. In the test of naming the chosen letters of the alphabet, cards, and numbers of two figures, the chances against the girl were 21 to 1, 51 to 1, and 89 to 1, respectively. In the case of stating chosen surnames the odds against her were very much in excess of the figures just named. In the cases of the experiments of naming chosen cards it was calculated that a mere "guesser," according to the law of probability, would be able to correctly name _but seven and one-third_ out of a total of the three hundred and eighty-two trials. The actual results obtained by the child were as follows: On the first attempt, _one hundred and twenty-seven_; on the second attempt, fifty-six additional; and on the third attempt, _nineteen additional_--making a grand total of two hundred and two successes _out of a possible three hundred and eighty-two_! On one occasion _five cards straight running_ were successfully named on a first trial. The mathematical chances of a mere "guess" doing this feat, under the Law of Average, or Probabilities, are estimated at over _a million to one against the chance_. And this was not merely an isolated, exceptional case, for there were other "long runs"; for instance, there were two cases in which runs of _eight straight consecutive successes_ were scored, once with names, and once with cards. In the case of the eight consecutive cards it has been figured that the chances against the girl would figure up at least 140,000,000 to 1, according to the Law of Average and Probabilities. To understand just what this means it may help you if you will think that the feat was like picking out one chosen man in a population of one hundred and forty millions, nearly double the population of the United States. And yet there are people who would dismiss matters like this with the remark, "mere coincidence"! The interest in the Creery children attracted the notice of Prof. Balfour Stewart, LL.D., and Fellow of the Royal Society. This distinguished gentleman testifies as follows: "In the first instance, when I was present, the thought-reader was outside a door. The object or thing thought of was written on paper and silently handed to the company in the room. The thought-reader was then called in, and in the course of perhaps a minute the answer was given. Definite objects in the room, for instance, were first thought of, and in the majority of cases the answers were correct. These numbers were thought of and the answers were generally right, but, of course, there were some cases of error. The names of towns were thought of, and a good many of these were right. Then fancy names were thought of. I was asked to think of certain fancy names and mark them down and hand them around to the company. I then thought of, and wrote on paper, 'Bluebeard,' 'Tom Thumb,' 'Cinderella,' and the answers were all correct." Subsequent experiments with the Creery children, at the house of the well known investigator, Mr. F.W.H. Myers, at Cambridge, England, proved equally successful. The children, and their ages, were as follows: Mary, 17; Alice, 15; Maud, 13. The percentage of successes obtained at Mr. Myers' house tallied very well with those obtained elsewhere. One remarkable result was obtained, though, that had not been obtained before. On one occasion the child was asked to name the "suit" of cards chosen one after another. That is, of course, the child was asked to name which suit, "hearts," "diamonds," "clubs" or "spades," were shown of the card drawn and seen by the committee, and then thought of. On this occasion the child scored a run of _fourteen straight running, consecutive successes_. The chances against this success were 4,782,969 to 1. We will close by mentioning another remarkable series of experiments conducted by the same Society. The Mind Reader was M.G.A. Smith, of England. Among other startling feats successfully performed by Mr. Smith, that of the reproduction of Geometrical Figures was perhaps the most remarkable. In this feat Mr. Smith sat blindfolded, in a room belonging to the committee, with a pad of paper before him and a member of the committee on each side of him. A selected member of the committee then would go outside of the room, and behind a closed door would draw some geometrical figure at random. Returning to the room the figure would be shown to the committee, and also to Mr. Douglas Blackburn, who acted as the Transmitter for Mr. Smith, the latter being known as the Receiver. The Transmitter, with closed eyes, now took his position immediately back of Mr. Smith, but at a distance of two feet from him, no contact being allowed, this precaution being taken to obviate charges of confederacy, etc. The Transmitter would then concentrate his mind intently for a few minutes, and in a short time Mr. Smith would receive the impression of the mental image in the mind of the Transmitter, and would begin to attempt to reproduce it on paper. In the series of experiments running over a period of four days thirty-seven drawings were made, of which only eight were considered unsuccessful. _Twenty-nine successes out of a possible thirty-seven, remember._ The committee reports that it took all the precaution to guard against secret signals, etc., and that confederacy, fraud, collusion, or similar methods were out of the question. The eight cases of failure consisted of four cases in which Mr. Smith received no impression, and therefore could not reproduce the drawing; and four cases in which the drawing was so vague and imperfect as to be called a total failure. Some of the figures were grotesque, unusual, and complicated, but all were reproduced in a more or less perfect manner. The drawing was made deliberately and without hesitation, and as if Smith had actually seen the figure shown to the Transmitter a few moments before. On one occasion, in order to be doubly guarded against collusion, they closed Mr. Smith's ears with putty, tied a bandage around his eyes and ears, pulled a bolster-case over his head, and then covered him all over with a blanket which completely enveloped his body and head. _And under these extraordinary conditions he reproduced the figures with his usual success._ We could proceed relating case after case, experiment after experiment, conducted by these scientific bodies of learned and careful men. But the story would be no more convincing than that related above. And, after all, there is a method of satisfying yourself that is far more conclusive than the reading of any results of experiments of others--and that is to learn to perform the feats of Mind Reading yourself. By means of a very little practice you will be able to reproduce many of the demonstrations of the public performers, as well as the experiments of the scientific societies, and then when you have realized that you can do these things you will need no further proof of the reality of the science of Mind Reading. LESSON III. "CONTACT" MIND READING. Mind Reading is divided by the authorities into two general classes, viz., "Contact" Mind Reading and "Telepathic" Mind Reading. The first of these classes, "Contact" Mind Reading, is demonstrated by physical contact between the Transmitter (or active agent) and the Receiver (or passive agent) in order to afford an easy channel for the passage of the vibrations, thought-waves, nerve-currents, or magnetism of the Transmitter (according to the several theories favored by scientists). The second class, "Telepathic" Mind Reading, is demonstrated by the transferral of the "waves," "vibrations," "currents," or "magnetism" of the Transmitter to the Receiver over the ether, through space (often for thousands of miles) without the more convenient "wires" of the nerves of the two agents. You will readily see that two classes of phenomena closely resemble the two classes of telegraphic phenomena, i.e., the "wire" system and the "wireless" system. There is a striking analogy between electric phenomena and mental force phenomena all the way through the subject, and this subject of Mind Reading is simply one of the many forms of the resemblance. We shall begin by giving you instructions in the first form--Contact Mind Reading, as it is the simplest and most easy of accomplishment and demonstration. And besides, the best Telepathists have been trained by means of the practice of Contact Mind Reading at the start. One leads to the other, just as the ordinary wire telegraph naturally led to the "wireless" system, which is even now but in its infancy. At this point we wish to point out to you a most grievous error, and unjust judgment, that certain so-called scientists and investigators have fallen into regarding this matter of Contact Mind Reading. In order to give you a clearer idea of the nature of this error, we must call your attention to the fact that Contact Mind Reading has been given much publicity through the advertisements and performances of several celebrated public performers, and their lesser-light imitators. These performers, like many others, have sought to give an attractive public entertainment rather than a scientific demonstration, and some of them have found it much easier to "fake" some of the demonstrations rather than to perform them according to scientific principles. And the careful investigators soon discovered that in certain cases there was no Mind Reading at all, but only a clever imitation which was styled "Muscle Reading." In other words, instead of the performer receiving his mental impressions from the mind of the Transmitter, over the nervous system of other persons, he would push up against him, and by a clever system of pushing, pulling, leading, and leaning would detect the muscular movements of the Transmitter, and by careful practice would learn to interpret these movements so as to get an indication of the location of the hidden objects and practically be led or pushed toward the spot. But even in these cases, the performer would of necessity have to employ more or less genuine Contact Mind Reading to finish the feats. The only advantage the performer gained by resorting to these unfair methods was that it was less fatiguing to his mind and enabled him to "fake" through the performance with less mental wear and tear. The investigators, easily discovering the above mentioned "faking" performances, came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a "fake," and could be explained by the "muscle reading" theory entirely. And so the news was spread broadcast, and you will find a number of books written explaining Contact Mind Reading on this hypothesis. Of course some of the public may prefer to accept this erroneous theory, but we wish to say here positively that if any person will honestly investigate for himself, and will learn to make the demonstrations personally, he or she will soon discover that "muscle reading" has nothing to do with the genuine phenomena. The proof of the thing is in the doing of it, and you may learn the truth for yourself if you will but try the feats and demonstrations, herein given, just as we teach them. The result of such practice will cause you to feel with us the indignation arising from the attempts to belittle a noble scientific principle, and practice, by an explanation arising from the witnessing of "fake" imitations of the real thing. The truth is that the muscles have nothing to do with the passage of the mental currents or waves from the Transmitter to the Receiver any more than they have to do with the transmission of nervous sensations from body to brain, or the motor impulses from brain to body. When you wish to close your hand you send a nervous current from your brain to the muscles controlling your hand. The current travels along the nervous system, and is by it distributed over the muscles causing them to contract. A current from a galvanic battery will cause the muscles to act in the same way. But the muscle is the machinery affected and set into motion, and the nerves are the delicate telegraphic wires leading to the parts. And so it is with this transmission of the mental waves and currents. The brain of the Transmitter, aroused by his active _Will_, sends a powerful current or wave through his nervous system. When it reaches the extremity of his fingers it leaps over the tiny space separating his nerves from the nerves of the Receiver, and enters the nervous system of the latter, and influences his actions. The Receiver being in a passive condition, and his brain sending practically no impulses over his nerves, he is in a receptive condition to the imparted nervous current, which acts upon him something like an impulse from his own brain, only weaker. That is the whole secret of Contact Mind Reading. It is "Nerve Reading" if you like, but certainly _not_ Muscle Reading. The tips of the fingers of a person of fine sensibilities, and delicate touch, are known by anatomists to be filled with masses of nerve-matter similar to that forming parts of the brain. In fact they are tiny finger-brains, and they will send out, convey, and receive delicate impulses from one mind to another. Those of you who have experienced the peculiar touch of some persons of this kind, can bear witness to the fact that a subtle "magnetism" or current passed from them to you. This is a fact well known to investigators of psychic phenomena, and such people laugh at the crude "muscle reading" theories, for they have disproved them repeatedly in actual careful experiments. And you may do the same, if you will practice the demonstrations given in this book. The fact that the developed Contact Mind Reader usually walks ahead of his Transmitter, instead of being led by him; and that he usually allows the latter's arm to hang limp, instead of muscularly contracted, is another proof of the absurdity of the theory above mentioned. Besides this, wires may be used between the two persons, or even a third person may be placed between them. But, as we have said, after all the best and only real test is to try the experiments yourself and learn that "muscle reading" has nothing to do with the real phenomena. The experimenter will soon find that when he gets into the work and is engaged in a search for a hidden object, by means of Mind Reading, he will forget all about the Transmitter. He will almost forget where he is, and will feel himself floating and gliding over the floor and scarcely touching it with his toes. He will find himself drawn or impelled irresistibly toward the hidden object, as if by some outside energy or fine force. He will feel the hidden object _drawing him like a magnet_, and attracting him to the spot. He will forget his audience, and everything else, in his desire to reach the Centre of Attraction. These experiences cannot well be explained in print, but the investigator will soon learn to know them for himself, and he will be amazed and filled with wonder at the strange psychical phenomena in which he is taking a principal part. And, then, and then only will he be able to intelligently reject the absurd and unjust theories of "muscle reading," and to see the crudeness of the attempted explanation. He will see that the foolish theory is as far out of the way as the ignorant person's idea that the telegraph messages are sent by the wires being "pulled" or "jerked," instead of being but channels for the passage of the electric fluid, or magnetic waves. He will class such pretended scientists with those "doubting Thomases" who, when gas was first introduced in the British House of Parliament, insisted that the pipes rendered the building unsafe, because they would become heated by the passage of the light; and who when the system was seen in actual operation, would gently feel the pipes with their gloved fingers, wondering why they felt no heat. We trust that we have said enough to convince you of the ridiculousness of the "muscle reading" theory, and to give you sufficient interest to demonstrate the matter for yourself. Many of our readers have witnessed the public performances of the several well-known "Contact" Mind Readers who have visited the leading cities of this country and other lands. Of course, the average public performer soon discovers that the average patron of his performance attends principally to be amused, and entertained, rather than to be instructed. And he is apt to gradually add sensational features to the performance, for the purpose of thrilling and mystifying the audience, knowing that by so doing he will better please his patrons than if he were to give them a strictly scientific demonstration of the science of Contact Mind Reading as produced in the psychological laboratories of the great investigators of the subject. Some of these public performers have even gone so far as to add "fake" features to their performance, employing confederates, and in other ways introducing unscientific methods in order to intensify the interest and satisfaction of their audiences. But notwithstanding this fact, the average public Mind Reader, in spite of his sensational additions, generally gives his audience enough of "the real thing" to render his performance of sufficient scientific interest to make it worthy of attendance by the earnest student of the subject. And we believe that the time is approaching when a strictly scientific performance will prove of sufficient interest to the public to render it worth while for a new class of entertainers and lecturers to arise and take the field, instructing the public regarding their great subject and illustrating their theories by striking experiments along scientific lines. And we think that this little book will do its part in the direction of educating the public mind to appreciate such an entertainment, as well as serving to educate future entertainers for their life work. However, in this little book, we shall treat the subject as if a parlor demonstration was all that is desired, and our instructions and directions shall be chiefly toward that end, although we wish to say that any man or woman who will carefully study these instructions and directions, and who will carefully practice the feats and exercises, will be able to gradually develop sufficient ability and skill to give a successful public performance, and perhaps reap a goodly share of fame and financial reward. The principles of the parlor demonstration, and the public performance are the same. These same instructions and directions have been studied and applied by some of the best performers now before the public, illustrating the wonders of Contact Mind Reading. So that if any of the students of this work have ambitions in the direction of public performance, they will find herein the methods calculated to develop them into a successful public entertainer and demonstrator. Anyone may develop himself, or herself, into a good Contact Mind Reader by practice, and perseverance. As in everything else in life, some will succeed better than others; and some will find the work easier than do others, but all may develop quite a respectable degree of proficiency in a short time. A little careful, conscientious practice and experiment will accomplish wonders. Mind Reading feats depend upon the degree of Will and Concentration on the part of the Transmitter, and upon the degree of Receptivity and Passivity upon the part of the Receiver. We are taking it for granted that the student will wish to act as a Receiver (or Performer of the feat of Mind Reading) rather than as the Transmitter (or person called upon to have his mind read). And so we shall address him as such, with this understanding. But we shall also give herein full directions for the Transmitter, as well, in order to give the student the methods necessary to act in either capacity, and to also enable him to instruct the Transmitter in his work. The Receiver should understand the duties of the Transmitter, in order that the best possible results be obtained, and the proper harmony and _rapport_ conditions may be established. LESSON IV. DEVELOPMENT EXERCISES. The student should practice privately with the assistance of a few friends, before he ventures before a parlor audience, for by so doing he overcomes the first lack of confidence in himself, and the awkwardness natural to the beginner along any new line of work. By careful and repeated practice he gains confidence in himself by reason of his growing success in his experiments, and besides wears off the "rough edges" of his actions, etc., so that when he finally appears before an audience he will feel perfectly self-possessed and at ease, and thus be able to devote his entire attention to his work, without annoying self-consciousness and awkwardness. Begin the Development Exercises by selecting one or more friends who are in sympathy with you, and who are interested in the subject. Do not have any unsympathetic or uncongenial persons around when you are practicing, for such people tend to distract your attention from your work, and really exert a detrimental effect upon the preliminary work. Select one of your friends as the Transmitter and take the part of the Receiver yourself. Begin your practice by establishing a Psychic Harmony, or Rapport, between yourself and your Transmitter by means of Rhythmic Breathing. Although this feature of the work has been overlooked by many investigators of the subject, still it is a very important feature of the work, and one that is conducive to the production of the very best results along these lines of psychic demonstrations. The term "Rapport" is one frequently met with in occult and psychic books. The word is defined by Webster as "Relation; conformity; correspondence; sympathetic accord." It is used by occultists in the sense of: "having harmonious vibrations with another," the occult teachings being that every person has his or her own rate of mental vibration which, when in harmonious accord with the vibrations of another, induces the most favorable conditions for the production of mental or psychic phenomena, or mental relations; sympathetic understanding, etc. This "harmonious vibration" does not necessarily mean that the two persons must be attuned to precisely the same key, but that their keynotes must harmonize, instead of producing discord. The comparison of the notes of the musical scale will illustrate the principle thoroughly. When two persons are in "rapport" with each other, there is a mental and psychic harmony between them, which is productive of the best possible mental co-operative work. Hence the necessity of good rapport conditions in Mind Reading. Rhythmic Breathing has been known to occultists of all ages as one of the important adjuncts of Psychic Phenomena, and its use in bringing about Rapport Relations is thoroughly understood by all Practical Occultists. Rhythmic Breathing consists in the person breathing in slow measured regular rhythm. It may be acquired by counting the indrawn breath, the retained breath, and the outgoing breath, by regular beats like the ticking of a large clock. For instance, draw in your breath slowly, counting mentally according to the ticking of an imaginary large clock: "one--two--three--four." Then hold the breath, counting "one--two." Then breathe out slowly: "one--two--three--four." The rule is that the indrawn breath should have the same number of counts as the outgoing breath, the held-breath taking up but one-half the counts of either of the others. The above count illustrates this matter. The advanced occultists get their time-beat from the pulse-beats, but this is not absolutely necessary in this connection. The principal point about Rhythmic Breathing that we wish to impress upon you now is that the two persons, the Transmitter and Receiver, should breathe in unison with each other--that is in perfect time and rhythm. This breathing in unison will soon establish the very best possible rapport conditions between them. From four to seven Rhythmic Breaths will be sufficient to establish the proper conditions in ordinary cases. In the performance of a test, in case you should feel the power of the Transmitter failing, you should stop and ask him to breathe in unison with you for a moment, and then re-start your work. By breathing a little loud the other person will catch your time, so that it is not necessary for you to instruct him in the science or theory of Rhythmic Breathing. Simply tell him to breathe in unison, and keeping time with you. Begin all your practicing with this Rapport Breathing, and start each demonstration with it, also. You will find that it will have a very soothing, calming, quieting effect upon both persons, and will produce in each a mental earnestness and concentration that will help along the demonstration of Mind Reading. We shall not mention this Rhythmic Breathing or Rapport Condition when we proceed to give you the detailed direction, for the demonstration, but you must remember that it should be observed in each case. Of course, you will be able to get results without it--but not so easily, or so thoroughly and satisfying. It is well to conclude your practice by taking a few deep breaths by yourself, and not in unison with the Transmitter. This destroys the Rapport Condition. GENERAL DIRECTIONS. The prime requisite for a successful demonstration of Mind Reading is the acquirement, or possession, by the Transmitter, of a clear idea of _direction_ in his mind. The associated requisite is that the Transmitter be able to _concentrate his will_ upon the mind of the Receiver, impressing upon him the _Sense of Direction_ so strongly that he will move in accordance with the Will of the Transmitter. Remember the two points to be observed by the Transmitter. Begin by having the Transmitter standing beside you in the centre of the room, _you being blindfolded_. Have him mentally select some one corner of the room, saying nothing to you of his choice. Then let him concentrate his mind upon that one corner, forgetting every other part of the room. Then have the Transmitter grasp your Left Hand with his Right Hand, you grasping his fingers in your hand and lifting the hand to your forehead. Hold the hand against your forehead, just above your eyes. Instruct him then to _will_ that you go to the corner of the room that he has selected, shutting out all other thoughts from his mind, and _concentrating_ his entire Attention upon the projection of his Will. He must not content himself merely forming a Mental Picture of the selected corner, but must think of the _Direction_ of that corner, just as he would in case he were to wish to walk there himself. He must not simply think "That Corner"--he must think "_There!_" using the sense of Direction. He must _will_ that you shall _go there_, carrying the words "_Go There!_" in his mind. You, the Receiver, must place yourself in a perfectly _passive_ and _receptive_ state of mind, resigning your own Will for the time being, and being perfectly willing and desirous of being mentally _directed_ or _led_ by the Will of the Transmitter. He is the Active factor, and you the Passive. It is the strength of his Will, and the degree of your Receptivity that makes the demonstration a success. Keep your eyes closed, even though you be blindfolded, for by so doing you induce a Passive state of mind, and even the stray glimpses that you may catch through the handkerchief will serve only to distract you. You must shut out sights, and even thought of sights. Stand quiet a moment or two, awaiting impressions from the mind of the Transmitter, who is making the mental command: "_Go there; go there, I say!_" while at the same time he is _willing_ that you follow his command. After a moment or two of passive and receptive waiting, you will begin to feel an impulse to move forward. Obey this impulse and take the first step, which will often be in an entirely opposite direction from the selected corner. The idea of this first step is to "get started." While you are taking the first step or two, you will feel a clearer impulse toward the real selected corner, and will find yourself swinging around to it. Do not grow impatient, for you are but learning to receive the impressions. Advance one foot forward, hesitatingly, resting your weight on the ball of the other foot, and you will soon feel yourself being _compelled_ to move in a certain direction, which will end in your moving toward the right corner. You will soon become conscious of being directed by the _Will_ of the Projector, whose mind is acting upon yours and leading and directing you toward the right place. It is difficult to describe to you the exact feeling that you will experience, but a little practice will soon make it clear to you. Follow the impulse, and you will soon begin to feel the mental command, "This way--this way--no, not that way but _this way_," until you will reach the desired spot, when you will feel the command: "That's right--stop where you are--this is the place." If you start to wander off in the wrong direction you will begin to feel the correcting impression: "_This way_--_this_ way, I tell you," and if you will but passively receive and follow the mental telegraph message you will find the impulse growing stronger and stronger until you walk right into the corner selected, when you will feel that you have "reached Base," as the children say in their games. When you walk in the right direction you will feel the mental message, "Right, right you are"; and when you move in the wrong direction you will feel the mental message, saying "No, no, not that way--_This way_, I say, come along, _come_!" By practice you will soon become quite sensitive to these guiding thought-waves, and will act upon them almost automatically. Practice will soon so sharpen your perceptive faculties that you will often be able to move right off to the desired corner at once, sometimes actually running right to it, dragging the Transmitter after you. You will soon begin to notice that there is quite a difference in the power of Concentration on the part of different people acting as the Transmitter. Some will be able to Concentrate so forcibly that they will send you the message clear and sharp, while others will send only a feeble and wavering message. The more Concentration the Transmitter has the stronger will be the message. It will be very advisable for you to experiment with a number of persons acting as the Transmitter, so that you may become familiar with the different degrees of Concentration, personal characteristics of people in Transmitting, etc. This will aid you when you begin your parlor performances. When you find a lazy Transmitter who is sending only feeble messages, you must remonstrate with him, telling him that he must exercise his _Will-Power_ more. This plan will often arouse in them a desire to give a good exhibition of their Will-power, and they will begin sending you strong mental impulses. It is a good plan, when you have an unsatisfactory Projector, to extend his arm out its full length and hold it up about the height of your eyes. In this way he feels the strain, and it arouses his Will in order to hold it there, which seems to act in the direction of his sending sharper and clearer messages and impulse. In case the Transmitter proves very unsatisfactory, substitute another for him. But as a rule this unsatisfactoriness arises from the fact that he does not fully understand his duties--does not know what is required of him. A little practice and instruction will bring him out all right. It is often advisable to let the Transmitter read this book of instructions, if he happens to be a personal friend who is helping you out in your practicing and experiments. The Transmitter will find that by _looking_ toward the selected corner, he will be aided in concentrating his attention and directing his Will Power. Practice this exercise and experiment, in different rooms, and with different Transmitters, until you can go readily to the selected corner. Do not be discouraged, but remember that "practice makes perfect," and that like any other thing the art must be learned by patient practice and repetition. It is like learning to play the violin--skating--dancing, or anything else. If after a number of trials you begin to feel tired, stop practicing and adjourn the experiments until the next day. Do not unduly strain yourself, or tire out your mind. When the next day comes you will be surprised at the added proficiency you have gained. You may vary the above method by holding the Transmitter's hand out at arm's length, instead of holding it up to your head. Some find one plan more effective, and others prefer the second. The principle is the same in both cases, so adopt either plan, or any variation thereof, providing it proves effective. PRACTICE EXERCISE I. FINDING LOCATIONS. After you have grown proficient in locating the corners of rooms, you may have the Transmitter select other parts of the room, such as doors, mantels, windows, alcoves, projections, etc. Try a number of these selected locations in turn, gaining a variety of experiences which will prove valuable later on. In all of these experiments the Transmitter must guard you from running into obstacles, furniture, etc., by telling you to avoid them, guiding you past them, and in other proper ways prevent you from bruising yourself or breaking or upsetting things. You must impress this upon his mind, and then you should give yourself into his care with the utmost confidence, giving yourself no further concern about these things, and keeping your mind as passive as possible. Don't allow your mind to be distracted by outside things--attend to the matter of the experiment in which you are engaged. PRACTICE EXERCISE II. FINDING LARGE OBJECTS. The next step should be the selecting and finding of large objects in the room, such as chairs, tables, etc. Proceed as in the previous exercises. Do not neglect this exercise in your desire to do more wonderful things, for you need just this training. You will realize the importance of these exercises after you begin to appear before friends and evening companies, etc., when you will be called upon to find hidden objects, selected articles secreted under tables, on persons, on furniture, etc. If you can find selected chairs you will be able to more readily find persons seated on chairs. Continue this exercise until you can readily find any and every piece of furniture in a room, and the other large objects in a room as well, when they are thought of by the Transmitter. PRACTICE EXERCISE III. FINDING SMALL OBJECTS. After mastering the above exercise have the Transmitter select some small articles, such as a book, vase, ornament, etc., on a table, mantel-piece, etc. Proceed as before, varying the objects and places, endeavoring to get as wide a range of experiences as possible along the line of Mind Reading of this kind. PRACTICE EXERCISE IV. FINDING HIDDEN ARTICLES. After you have mastered the last mentioned exercise, have the Transmitter select a small object, such as a watch-key, match-safe, etc., and secrete it in some part of the room, you remaining out of the room until the article is selected and hidden. Proceed as before, until you find the secreted object. Your Transmitter should endeavor to give you a great variety in this exercise, in order to properly train you for the public demonstrations before companies, etc. Have him place a key in a book, under a rug, back of a picture, and in similar difficult places. Let him exercise his ingenuity in finding strange places in which to hide the object. In the experiments in finding the hidden objects he must train himself to give you the mental messages "up"; "down"; "to the right"; "to the left," etc., just as he did his old message or impulse "this way." And you must train yourself to receive them. This training will be of the greatest possible benefit to you when you are called upon later to find objects hidden in people's pockets, etc. GENERAL REMARKS ON PRACTICE. The above exercises will train the student to receive and act upon the mental commands or messages of the Transmitter, under a great variety of circumstances and conditions. Many of the most successful public "Mind Readers" started out in public work with far less careful and thorough training. But there are now still greater degrees of proficiency possible. The student will find in succeeding chapters a number of interesting and startling feats and experiments which are intended for parlor audiences, etc., but which may be most profitably practiced previously with the aid of a good friendly Transmitter, in order that the Performer may familiarize himself with the details of the experiment, and thus be more at his ease when he demonstrates it in public. Then other new experiments and feats will suggest themselves from time to time, to the intelligent student which, likewise, should be practiced previous to a public demonstration. In finding a hidden object, the first thing to do is to get an idea of the direction. Then the general location of the hiding place; and so on, from general impressions to detailed ones, until at last the fingers close upon the object itself. The Transmitter will be greatly relieved when the object is finally found, and the relaxing of his mental tension may be distinctly felt, and then you will know that your search is at an end. PREPARING FOR PUBLIC WORK. Before taking you on with the work before an audience, we must urge upon you to prepare yourself thoroughly by means of the above mentioned exercises. The great tendency among students is to hurry through to the public work, and skipping the exercises as much as possible. This is all wrong. You will never be a thoroughly good demonstrator of anything in life, until you master the rudiments, and by practice familiarize yourself thoroughly with the details of the work. And Mind Reading is no exception. It is true that after a few exercises you may be able to give a fair demonstration before an audience, but you will never get further than "fair" without careful practice. And therefore we urge you to have patience and perseverance, and to stick to the exercise until you become a Master of Mind Reading, when you need fear no audience whatsoever, and will be able to give a demonstration that will be a great credit to both yourself and to us, your instructors. And, now for your work before an audience, remembering, always that the feats and experiments that we shall mention, should be practiced by you privately, with the aid of a friendly Transmitter, before you reproduce them in public. In the case of feats, in which the audience is a party to the experiment, such as the finding of a scarf-pin on a member of the audience, you may practice with a dummy audience, that is with an imaginary audience consisting of chairs, etc., until you familiarize yourself with the details of the feat. LESSON V. SIMPLE DEMONSTRATIONS. In beginning a public demonstration, it will be well for you to give a short preliminary talk to the audience, somewhat along the following lines: OPENING TALK. "Ladies and Gentlemen, with your assistance I shall endeavor to give you a demonstration of practical Mind Reading, beginning with some simple feats, and then proceeding gradually to more complicated demonstrations. In these demonstrations, I must have your co-operation, for the success of the experiments depends as much upon you as upon myself. In the first place, I must ask that you refrain from conversation, laughter, etc., while I am demonstrating, for these things distract the mind of the Transmitter and prevent him from concentrating his Mind and Will upon mine; and also prevent me from maintaining that Passive Mental State which is essential to the success of the experiments. I trust that you will help me in this way. I also ask that during the experiments, you will all concentrate your Mind and Will upon me, and help me in the work. In order to obtain the best results all Mind Readers prefer that their audiences concentrate their Wills upon the work, with the purpose of mentally willing that the demonstrator be successful. In fact the success of the experiments depend very materially upon the _Willing_ exerted by the audience. If you Will in my favor, I shall be successful; if you Will that I shall fail, I shall feel the effect. Therefore, kindly give me your aid. I ask you to blindfold me and take such other means to prevent unfair methods and practices, as your judgment may dictate. I am now ready to proceed with the tests." CHOOSING THE TRANSMITTER. Then have the audience select a committee to blindfold you and remain outside of the room with you, while the remainder of the audience select the object that you are to find, etc. When you return to the room, select someone to act as Transmitter. If possible get someone with whom you have previously practiced, and established rapport conditions. This will aid you very materially, of course. If this is not possible, select someone of the audience that is in harmony with you, and who will have a strong enough will to give you the vibrations. Sometimes women are very good at this work, as they get very much in earnest when interested, and therefore Will intently. If your first Transmitter is not satisfactory, test another, and so on until you get a good one. You may change Transmitters during the evening, if you prefer; in fact this is a good plan, if you are an adept, for it shows the audience that there is no collusion. INSTRUCTING THE TRANSMITTER. You should instruct the Transmitter, along the lines indicated in a previous chapter, i.e. that he must hold the thought of _direction_, fix his eyes on the chosen spot and then _concentrate his will_ upon it, and that your success will depend materially upon _his ability to concentrate his Mind and Will upon the task_. You should explain to him that you receive your impulses through his thought-waves or vibrations, and that the stronger these are, the better you will succeed. Make this plain to him. When the Transmitter fails to concentrate his Will, you will know it at once, and should call his attention to it, saying "Concentrate, concentrate now--_harder_--use your _Will_," or words to that effect. You should impress upon the Transmitter that it is the _strength of his Will_ that produces the mental vibrations that give you the impressions. BEGINNING THE TEST. Then, take the hand of the Transmitter, in the manner already described in previous lesson, placing it to your forehead, or else holding it up high in front of you. Then begin a wavering motion, or direction, preferably describing a circle, slowly. In this meaningless wavering motion remain perfectly passive awaiting impressions. Soon you will begin to feel a mental resistance to certain directions, and a mental willingness that you move in another direction. Then move along the line of the least mental resistance. In some cases you will receive a strong _mental urge_, _pull_, or _push_, in the direction of the selected spot. Here is where your practice comes in, for in your practice experiments you have acquired the art of recognizing these impressions as they come to you, in their different forms, and so are prepared to yield to them and move accordingly. It is impossible to describe in writing just how these impressions come, and feel like, for actual experience is necessary before you will know just what is meant. But once you have accustomed yourself to receive and recognize the impressions, the rest is all a matter of practice and development. And now for the demonstrations themselves. You should begin with the simplest feats, and then work up gradually to the more complicated and difficult ones. This plan will build up your own powers, and will develop the Transmitter's. We herewith give a number of interesting feats and demonstrations, explaining the details of each. Of course, the general directions we have given regarding the receiving of impressions, etc., will apply to all of these feats, for the principle underlying them all is the same, precisely. FINDING A LOCATION. DEMONSTRATION I. Begin by having the audience select a part in the room, which may be easily reached by you. Then proceed as directed, until you feel that you have reached the right place, or location. FINDING A PERSON. DEMONSTRATION II. Have the audience select a person, one of their number. Find the general location of the person. Then standing still, reach out your right hand, and begin "feeling about." You will find that as your hand moves away from the right person you will feel a _drawing back_ impression, whereas when you reach toward the person you will receive an _urging forward_ impression. A little practice will soon enable you to distinguish these mental impressions. Then place your hand on the person who seems to be the centre of the impressions. If this is the wrong person, you will receive a mental impression of "_Wrong_"; in which case you must start up the moving your hand to and fro, and around, until you feel the urge impression, when you should place your hand on the person immediately in front of you. When you reach the right person, you will receive an unmistakable impression and mental message of "All Right," followed by a lessening of the Will tension, and you will know that you have succeeded. You should practice this in private before attempting public demonstration. FINDING A SMALL OBJECT. DEMONSTRATION III. Have the audience select some small object in plain sight in the room. Then find it in the manner described of above in the case of the selected person. The rule is identically the same. But there are some other details to be observed, in the matter of "up or down," for the object may be higher than your shoulder or lower, in which case you will have to either reach up or down. In this reaching up or down, follow the same general rule as given. When you reach the right location, you will feel an impression of "not yet finished" from the mind of the Transmitter. Then reach up slowly. If this is right you will receive a corresponding impression, and may go on to centre the object. But if it is not right, you will receive a mental urge _downward_, which you should follow. The rule always is to _follow the line of the least mental resistance_. You will always receive the resistance when you are not succeeding, and will always receive the lack of resistance when you are succeeding. Learn to focus these impressions until they centre positively and constantly on the same spot--_then you have succeeded_, for there will be your object right under your hand. FINDING A BOOK. DEMONSTRATION IV. Have the audience select a book on the shelves of a book case, and then find it in the manner just related. The two feats are precisely the same, although the latter will appear more startling to the observer. THE FLORAL TRIBUTE. DEMONSTRATION V. This test is known as "The Floral Tribute." It is performed by having a bouquet of flowers on the table. Then select some young man in the audience, and let him pick out some young woman in the audience whom he wishes to have the flowers. You must retire from the room, of course, while he selects the young lady and mentions her name and position to the audience. Then returning to the room, pick up the bouquet, and taking the hand of your Transmitter, find the young lady and present her with the flowers. Of course this feat is merely a fancy rendition of the simple feat of finding the person thought of, and is performed in the same way. (Study the directions for Demonstration II, and apply in the present case, with appropriate variations.) THE REUNITED COUPLE. DEMONSTRATION VI. This test is known as "The Reunited Couple." It is performed by having the audience select two persons, a young man and a young woman, and stand them up in front of the room, like a couple about to be married. Then they should have a third person, a man, selected and stood before them as the parson who will tie the knot. The three persons should then take their seats, and when you enter the room, and take the hand of your Transmitter, you must first find "the Parson"; then "the Groom"; and then "the Bride," and arrange them in their proper positions. This is a highly effective test, and invariably brings hearty applause, and the hunt affords much merriment to the audience. But, as you will see readily, it is but a variation of Demonstration II. THE HIDDEN JEWELRY. DEMONSTRATION VII. Have the audience select some small article, like a scarf-pin, ring, etc., and hide it on the person of some one of the audience. Then you are to find it. This demonstration combines the features of Demonstration II, and Demonstration III, that is you have first to find the person, as described in Demonstration II, and then the object which is practically a variation of Demonstration III. Study the details of Demonstration III, and practice the present demonstration in private before trying it in public. THE DISCOVERED COURSE. DEMONSTRATION VIII. Have a member of the audience walk around the room, following a prescribed course selected by the audience. Have your Transmitter memorize the course accurately, and then you must walk over the same course when you return to the room. This is effective, but is merely a variation of the "Finding the Corner" demonstration. REPLACING THE PIN. DEMONSTRATION IX. This is called "Replacing the Pin," and is very effective when properly performed. Have a member of the audience take a pin and insert it in the wall in a spot plainly visible to the audience, not too high up, however--about on the level of your shoulder is best. Then have him withdraw the pin and hide it somewhere in the room. Then when you return to the room, and take the Transmitter's hand, you should first find the pin, (in the manner heretofore described) and then find the place where it had been stuck; then circling your hand around in narrowing circles until you feel the proper impression push the pin home in the spot in which it formerly was driven. This final effort is really merely a modification of "finding the spot," and with a little practice may be easily performed. THE THEFT DETECTED. DEMONSTRATION X. This feat is called "The Theft." Have one of the audience play "the thief," and steal an article of jewelry, or similar small object from a second person called "the victim." Then the thief should hide his spoil in a safe place about the room. Returning you first find the thief; then the hidden article; then the person, according to the methods already given. This is a very effective feat, but is merely a combination of "Finding the Person," and "Finding an Object." THE RECONSTRUCTED TABLEAU. DEMONSTRATION XI. This feat is known as the "Reconstructed Tableau." It is performed by having several of the audience form a simple tableau group, and then retire to their seats. Returning to the room you are to find each person; lead him or her to the former spot; then reconstruct the group. This is somewhat difficult, but not nearly so much so as you might suppose. A little private practice will enable you to perform it with ease. THE MURDER AND THE DETECTIVE. DEMONSTRATION XII. This test is known as the "Murder and the Detective," and is very spectacular and sensational, and is accordingly one that is in great favor with the public performers. It is performed as follows: The audience selects one man to act as the "murderer"; another to act as "the victim"; and also some object to act as the dagger; and lastly a place in which the body is to be concealed. Then the "murderer" picks up the "dagger," and "kills" his "victim," afterward concealing the body in some part of the room (usually sitting in a chair) and the "dagger" in another place. Then when you return to the room you first find the "body"; then the "wound"; then the "dagger," and then the "murderer." This is usually announced as a wonderful piece of "telepathic detective work," and is extremely effective, and may be reserved as the "principal effect" of your series of demonstrations. You will notice that the feat is merely an elaborate combination of the simpler feats of "Finding the Person," "Finding the Object," etc. THE RETURNED HATS. DEMONSTRATION XIII. Have the hats of a number of men in the audience placed on a table or other place, and then returning to the room, blindfolded of course, you pick up the hats, one by one, and place them upon the heads of their proper owners, who are seated in different parts of the room. This is a simple feat although very effective. It is, of course, merely a variation of the feat of "finding the person." There is one point, however, that must be remembered in this feat, and that is that the Transmitter should know just whose hat is held in your hand--just who the owner of that particular hat is and where he is sitting or standing. Otherwise he cannot send you the mental impulses which will enable you to find the owner. It will be well for the Transmitter to hold the hat so that it can be seen by the audience, requesting the owner to rise in his seat so as to indicate his whereabouts--your back being turned to the audience while this is being done in order to avoid suspicion of your "peeping," etc. THE LADY AND THE RING. DEMONSTRATION XIV. This feat is performed by having a lady in the audience loan the Transmitter her ring. When you return to the room, you find the lady and replace the ring upon the finger from which she took it. The Transmitter must remember the lady, and the particular finger, of course--the rest is simply a combination of the "finding the person" and "finding the spot" feats. It is very effective, if neatly performed. GENERAL ADVICE. I. We have given you a great variety of Demonstrations or Feats, but you must not attempt to produce all of them at an evening's entertainment. It will take some time to perform a few of them effectively, and impressively, and you should avoid any attempt to hurry through the feats. Nor should you spoil your good impression by cheapening the demonstrations in the direction of performing too many at one sitting. II. Neither should you tire or fatigue yourself by too many feats. When your mind or body are tired, you do yourself an injury to perform these demonstrations, and besides, you cannot obtain the best results while fatigued. You should rest a little while after each feat, before attempting another one. III. When the entertainment, or exercises are over, you should take a few strong deep breaths, swing your arm around a little to promote the circulation, and relieve the nervous tension. You may feel a little "dazed" at first after performing a few feats, but will soon learn to throw off the passive condition, and engage in the laughing conversation that will follow the entertainment. Do not take yourself too seriously and remember that laughter and a little boyish or girlish spirits is a wonderful tonic. IV. Do not become impatient if you do not progress as rapidly as you would desire. You are practically developing a sixth sense, and are like a baby learning to walk--it takes time, but practice will surely bring you success. Take things calmly. The feats that will be possible for you to perform, even from the start will be wonderful enough, without any necessity for your complaining about your slowness in learning to perform the more complicated ones. ABOUT TRANSMITTERS. I. If your Transmitter does not do his work properly, and you feel that he is not Concentrating properly, or using his Will effectively, do not hesitate to change him. You need not offend him, for you may say simply that the rapport conditions are not fully developed between you, and that these things sometimes happen, etc. Your new Transmitter will feel anxious to do better than his predecessor, and will be most likely to Concentrate and Will to the best of his ability. II. The Transmitter should be in earnest, and no levity or trifling should be permitted. If you have the selection, pick out some earnest person, and avoid the trifling, feather-brained class. III. If your Transmitter does not seem to be Concentrating properly, you should speak to him firmly, but kindly, about it. Say to him: "Please _concentrate_ your _Mind_, and _Will_ earnestly--fix your Mind on the right _Spot_--make a determined Mental Effort that I move in the right direction--it is your Mind and Will that gives me the impression, remember--it all depends upon you," etc. This will often have the effect of bracing him up to renewed mental activity, and you will notice the improvement at once. A WORD OF WARNING. Beginning your entertainment, caution the audience about placing the hidden objects in places that you cannot conveniently touch--such as high up on the wall; under the strings of a piano, etc. Tell them that you can _find_ the article anywhere, but it must be placed so that you can get at it with only ordinary care and work. Some "Smart Alicks" may try to play pranks on you in this way, but discourage same vigorously at the start, informing the audience that this is a scientific test and not a circus. And, remember this, tell them that the article must never be hidden about the Transmitter, for the reason that he is seldom able to think as intently about his own location as about some place away from him. These are the only restrictions that you need make. Caution the Transmitter to guide you away from obstacles over which you might stumble, or which you might overturn. Tell him that you place yourself in his hands for protection, and then endeavor to think no more about the matter, for such thought tends to distract your passivity. The above feats or demonstrations are all performed along the same general lines as indicated a little further back, and all are capable of being accomplished by anyone of ordinary intelligence, with a little study, care and practice. Practice makes perfect, in Mind Reading as in everything else, remember, so keep at it until you have worn off the rough edges, and have polished up the details of the work. You may vary, improve, add to, the above feats, and may also insert many new ones for yourself as you proceed with your work. Use your inventive faculties. THE WIRE CONTACT. A sensational and effective method of performing some of the simpler feats is performed by some public performers, and consists in having a piece of thick wire, about one foot in length grasped by the Receiver's left hand, and by the Transmitter's right hand, instead of the ordinary contact. A little practice will surprise you in the facility in which the impressions are transferred over the wire from the Transmitter to the Receiver. The methods of operation in this case are identical with those employed in the ordinary methods. A wooden "ruler" may be substituted for the wire. Some performers succeed even with a long walking-cane. THIRD PERSON INTERPOSED. Another variation is that in which a third person is interposed between the Transmitter and Receiver. Practice along these lines will enable the skilled Mind Reader to receive the impressions as usual, notwithstanding the interposition of the third person. Do not attempt to try these variations until you have thoroughly mastered the ordinary methods. (The student is here advised to turn to the conclusion of Lesson VI, of this book, and acquaint himself with the "Simpler Method" there described. It may help him in this phase of his work.) We shall now pass on to the consideration of some of the more complicated or difficult feats of Contact Mind Reading. LESSON VI. DIFFICULT DEMONSTRATIONS. We shall now direct your attention to a class of demonstrations of a rather more complicated order than those related in the last chapter. But even these difficult feats may be rendered comparatively easy of accomplishment by careful practice, and development of receptivity. PRELIMINARIES. In these experiments or demonstrations the Transmitter stands by your left side, you grasping the fingers of his right hand in your left hand, and holding as in the case of the former experiments, i.e. either with his hand pressed against your head, or else held out and up, as before described. You receive the impressions in the same way. The following demonstrations may be performed after a little private practice, so as to be shown at a public performance almost as easily as the simpler feats heretofore described. DISCOVERING THE CARD. DEMONSTRATION I. Spread a number of cards over the table. Then retiring from the room, have the audience select one card of the number, which the Transmitter must be sure to remember distinctly--that is the Transmitter should remember just _where_ the card is, the _position_ being the important feature, rather than the name of the card. Then taking the Transmitter's hand as above described, you should move your right hand to-and-fro over the table, moving it backward and forward, and in circles. You will soon find that this feat closely resembles the one of the last chapter in which you find small objects; the pin hole, etc. You will soon find that the impressions _tend to centre_ over a certain spot on the table. Begin to lessen your circles and hand movements until you gradually centre over this spot. Then slowly lower your fingers until you touch the card resting on the said spot, when you will be sure that you are right, when you must pick up the card and exhibit it to the audience. The same indications mentioned in the feats of the last chapter will be felt by you. You will feel the "No, no!" impression when you are wrong, and the "That's right" impression when you are moving in the right direction, until at last you will distinctly feel the relaxation of the mental urge, which you will have learned to translate into "Right you are!" when you finally touch the right card. This feat is really no more difficult than the one in which the small object is found, and we have included it in the list of "Difficult Demonstrations" simply because it is practically a "connecting link" between the two classes of demonstration, as you will see as we proceed. THE CHECKER MOVE. DEMONSTRATION II. This is akin to the last experiment. Have a checker board arranged by some of the audience who understands the game. Then let some one decide on the next move. Be sure that the Transmitter thoroughly understands the piece to be moved, as well as the place to where it is to be moved. Then, proceeding as above indicated, first find the piece to be moved, and then move it to the proper place. This feat consists of two parts, you will notice. The finding of the piece is like the finding of the card. Then with the piece grasped between your thumb and forefinger, make a small circular and backward and forward movement, until you feel the mental impression of "There!" when you will place your piece directly on the spot. This may seem difficult, and appears so to the audience, but you will find by a little private practice that it is really as easily performed as some of the simpler tests. THE GAME OF CARDS. DEMONSTRATION III. Similar to the above is the feat known as the "Game of cards." Two players sit opposite each other at a table, having dealt themselves two hands of euchre. Have the Transmitter lead you behind the first player, and standing there have the player silently point out the card he wishes to lead, to the Transmitter. The Transmitter then should concentrate his mind on the card, and you will find it in the usual manner, and having found it will play it on the table. Then leading you around to the other player, the Transmitter repeats the process, and you find and play the card. Then back to the first play, and repeat. Then alternate between the players, in the same manner, until you have played out the game. This may be improved upon by the Transmitter thinking of which player has won the trick, when you will push the cards over to the winner, having discovered the direction in the usual manner. This feat is very effective indeed when properly performed. THE MAPPED-OUT TRIP. DEMONSTRATION IV. Have a map laid open on the table, and have the audience decide upon a trip between two points, either by rail or by water. Then returning to the room, stand as above described, and with your forefinger find the place from which the trip starts. Then move slowly along the selected course in the same manner in which the checker-game was played, passing along the chosen route until the end is reached. These feats are all really variations of the one principle. THE PACK OF CARDS. DEMONSTRATION V. This is a very effective feat, and requires some little skill and practice, but there is no reason why any careful, patient, and persistent student should not be able to master it. It consists in the audience selecting any given card from the pack, and then replacing it with the others, being sure that the Transmitter is familiar with the card chosen, and knows enough about cards to recognize it when he sees it again. Then the pack of cards should be placed on the table, face up. Returning to the room, you take the Transmitter's hand as usual, and with your right hand pick off the cards from the pack, slowly and one by one. As you pick up each card, slowly _weigh_ it in your hand, so to speak, and then place it aside if you receive no "stop" orders from the mind of the Transmitter. Having previously practiced this feat in private you will have learned that peculiar "heavier" sensation that comes to you when you lift the right card from the pack, so that when you finally reach it you will know it. We cannot describe just what this sensation will feel like--you must learn it by actually experiencing it in private practice. We advise you to diligently practice this feat in private, for it is wonderfully effective. You will find that after a bit of practice you will be able to get the "heavy" feeling when you lift up and "weigh" the right card. You should perform this feat slowly, and carefully, shaking your head, "No," just before you discard a card. If by the lack of concentration of the Transmitter, you fail to feel the "heavy" feeling when you pick up the right card, the shake of the head will be apt to arouse him to exert his _Will_ more actively, and you will receive the "hold on" impulse immediately. Do not be in too much of a hurry to discard, but make several feints at it before finally letting go. This feat may be improved by having the audience select a "poker-hand," such as a "flush," a "straight," "three-of-a-kind"; a "full-house," etc., etc., and having you find the hand one card at a time. This latter is a fine effect, and always brings down the house. But be sure that your Transmitter really knows and remembers the cards, else the feat will fail, of course. He must remember each card, and recognize it when it appears face up on the pack before you, as you proceed with the discarding. Never attempt this feat in public without previous careful, private, practice, for it requires the most delicate perception and skill. If you find that you cannot master it to your satisfaction, after sufficient practice, you may try it by the "Simpler Method" given at the conclusion of this Lesson. THE CHOSEN WORD IN THE BOOK. DEMONSTRATION VI. Like the last feat, this is a complex and difficult one, but one that always arouses enthusiasm in an audience when well performed. It will repay you for the private practice that you will have to employ upon it, before you produce it in public. The feat consists of the audience selecting a book from a pile, or a book-shelf, or book-case, etc.--then a given page is chosen--then a line of printed matter on that page--and then a _word_ in that line. It is well to have the Transmitter draw a pencil circle around the chosen word, so that he may be sure to remember it later. The book is then replaced on the shelf. Then returning to the room, you first find the book, by the methods already given in previous feats; then laying it flat on the table you should begin to slowly and deliberately pick each leaf up separately. This part of the feat is almost identical with the last one, in which you picked up the cards from the pack. When you get the proper impression, you should announce that you have found the leaf. If satisfied that you are right, ascertain upon which side of the leaf, the chosen page is. This can be done by pressing the leaf to the right, or left, in succession, until you get the right impression as to which way to press it down. Then, having thus found the page, pass your finger slowly down and back over the page several times, until you get the impression of a _centre_. This centre will be the chosen line. Then by passing the finger slowly along the line, you will discover the Word when you reach it. This is a "ticklish" feat, but it may be mastered by practice--in fact some people have found it almost as simple as some of the easier feats, while others require careful practice with it. Do not be discouraged if you do not succeed at first trial, even in public, but try again, and after a bit you will seem to "get the knack" all at once, and thereafter will have but little trouble in making the demonstration. If you find that you do not meet with the desired degree of success in this feat, try it by the "Simpler Method" given at the last of this part of the book. But do not give it up without the proper practice. If you have carefully performed the previous feats, you should have so developed yourself by this time that you should have no special difficulty in this feat. BLACKBOARD DEMONSTRATIONS. The following feats may be performed either upon a large blackboard hanging from the wall, or upon a large sheet of card-board, or stiff paper, spread upon the table. If the blackboard is used, you should stand before it, the Transmitter standing in the usual position. If the table is used, you should stand before it, the Transmitter in his usual place. DRAWING THE CHOSEN FIGURE. DEMONSTRATION VII. Have the audience select a number, and think intently of it. Impress upon the Transmitter that is to think of the _Shape_ of the figure instead of merely remembering its name. For instance if the figure "8" is thought of, the Transmitter should think of the _Shape_ of the figure, and not of the word "eight." Then begin to circle your hand around over the blackboard just as you did when finding the place of the "beginning of the trip" of the demonstration mentioned a few minutes ago. Then bring your pencil or chalk to a starting point, which you will soon perceive. Then hold your fingers pressing lightly forward, and impart to your hand a trembling vibratory motion as if in hesitation regarding the next movement, saying at the same time to your Transmitter: "_Will Hard_ now--_Will_ the _Direction_ to me," and you will soon begin to get an impression of "Right," or "Left," or "Down," as the case may be, which you should follow slowly. Be slow about it, for if the impression is not right you will soon be checked up. Fence around a little until you begin to get the impressions clearly. You will find that the principal trouble is at the start, for once you are started on the right track, your Transmitter's Will will be freely employed, and he will pour the impressions into you. Let him feel that it is _his Will_ that is really doing the work, and he will exert it freely. Once started, these drawing feats are easily performed, the trouble being with the start. You should practice this feat frequently in private, before attempting it in a public demonstration. It is very effective. THE LADY'S AGE. DEMONSTRATION VII. This is a variation of the above feat. A lady in the audience is asked to whisper her age in the ear of the Transmitter, and you are to draw it on the board or paper. The feat is performed precisely in the manner described above, the Transmitter being cautioned to think of but _one figure at a time during the drawing_. THE BANK NOTE TEST. DEMONSTRATION IX. Akin to the last two feats, is the reading of the number of a bank-note held in the hand of the Transmitter. It is performed in precisely the same manner as the preceding feat. Be sure to have the Transmitter understand that he is to think of but one figure at a time, until it is drawn, and then the next, and so on. THE WATCH NUMBER TEST. DEMONSTRATION X. The feat of reading and drawing the number of a person's watch is a variation of the last mentioned demonstration, and is performed in precisely the same way. THE GEOMETRICAL FIGURE TEST. DEMONSTRATION XI. Have the audience select some simple geometrical figure, such as a square, triangle, circle, right angle, etc., and proceed to draw it in the same way as the figures in the demonstrations just described. Have the Transmitter hold the figure in his mind and _mentally draw it_ as you proceed. A little private practice will enable you to draw these figures easily, and in fact, they are really simpler than numbers, although more startlingly effective at times. DRAWING PICTURES. DEMONSTRATION XII. The same principle described in the above mentioned test may be extended to apply to the drawing of simple pictures, such as the outline figure of a pig, etc. The copy is placed on the table or blackboard, so that the Transmitter may easily refer to it, and then you proceed as in the feats above mentioned. Practice this until you "get it down fine." THE HIDDEN NAME. DEMONSTRATION XIII. The same principle may be extended to the writing down of the name of a person, town, etc., previously chosen by the audience. Draw in large letters, so that the eye of the Transmitter may easily follow you at each step. THE UNDERLYING RULE. In all of the "Drawing Demonstrations," you should remember the primary principle, i.e. Follow the line of the least Mental Resistance, and the Will of the Transmitter will invariably lead you to the right direction. THE "SIMPLER METHOD." A simpler method of performing the feats and demonstrations which we have styled "The More Difficult Feats," is that of having the Transmitter stand by your right side, turning toward you and placing his right hand over yours, _the tips of his fingers_ resting on your fingers _between your large knuckles and first joints_, (instead of standing on your left side with his fingers grasped in your left hand, as heretofore mentioned). This method is not nearly so good so far as appearances go, for some critical members of the audience might object that he was in confederacy with you and really helping you to draw--but it is highly effective so far as simplifying the feat is concerned. His finger-tips with their nervous matter aroused into activity seem to fairly charge your fingers with "nervous energy," or "magnetism," and your hand acts almost automatically. The motion of the Receiver's hand and fingers, under this method becomes almost like the motion of a "Planchette," and often writes and draws the numbers, figures, letters, etc., so easily and smoothly, that they seem to be fairly "running away" from the mind of the performer. You should at least familiarize yourself with this method, so as to be able to use it in emergencies, or in the case of a poor Transmitter, or else in the case of the more delicate and complex tests. If you neglect this method, you will have failed to acquaint yourself with one of the most startling features of Contact Mind Reading, which so far touches the higher phenomena that it is closely akin to what is known as "Automatic Writing." In fact, if you are disposed, and are naturally receptive and sensitive to impressions, you may even write a letter through the _Will_ of a good Transmitter, by this method. By all means make yourself acquainted with its possibilities, and phenomena. We now pass on to a consideration of the more Sensational Feats. LESSON VII. SENSATIONAL FEATS. In addition to the feats given in this work, which, together with their countless variations, form the stock in trade of the majority of the professional Mind Readers, there are a number of other feats essayed by the public performers which we have seen fit to group under the general title "Sensational Feats." These feats are described here in order that the student may understand the nature of them, and the manner of their performance. But we consider such feats suitable only for the sensational advertisements of the professional performers, and always dependent upon more or less spectacular accessories, and attended by even dangerous features in the case of the driving feat. And therefore we do not offer them for reproduction by the private student, or the parlor demonstrator. The principal Sensational Feats performed by the professionals, are as follows: THE DRIVING FEAT. This is performed by the performer, blindfolded as usual, driving a team along the public streets to some selected point, which point is usually a hotel previously selected by a public committee. Upon reaching the hotel the performer goes to the hotel register, turns the pages and finds a name previously selected. The performer receives his impressions from members of the committee who are seated beside him on the carriage seat, with their arms on his shoulders, or having hold of his hands, or even connected with him by wire. The feat is really a spectacular reproduction of the familiar feats described in previous chapters, and the principles governing it are precisely the same. The Transmitters impress the direction upon him, and he follows the line of the Least Mental Resistance. THE COMBINATION LOCK FEAT. This feat is employed either separately, or in connection with the Driving Feat. It consists in the performer opening the combination safe of a hotel or some business establishment. In this case the Transmitter must know the combination perfectly, and his mental impressions acting upon the performer give him the cue to turn "right" or "left" or "repeat" as the case may be. Of course one must have cultivated a great degree of sensitiveness to mental impressions before he will be able to receive and respond to the direction impressions in this case. And yet almost any person by following the directions given in this work, and carefully and repeatedly practicing the various feats and demonstrations given herein, may be able to reproduce this feat of the professional performer, who is in constant daily practice, and who is able to devote his entire time to the work, as his "bread and butter" is concerned therein. Once the sensitiveness is gained, the details of the work are nothing more than those employed in any of the "finding" or "drawing" feats herein described and explained. THE OFFICE DETECTIVE FEAT. In this feat the public committee picks out an object on the desk, or about the office of some one of its members, the office being located some distance from the place of meeting. The performer then rushes along the public streets, dragging the Transmitter with him, until the office is reached, then up stairs, and into the room selected, and up to the desk, or other place, and lo! the object is found. Divesting this feat of all its sensational features, the student will see that it is merely a variation of the ordinary "finding" feat performed in the parlor. It creates a great sensation, but there is nothing more wonderful about it than about the simplest "finding" feat. THE POSTOFFICE FEAT. Another feat favored by some of the professional performers is that of having a letter placed in a post-office lock-box, the key of which is given the performer at a point some distance from the post-office. Rushing through the public streets, dragging the Transmitter with him, the performer finds the post-office in the usual way, and then locates the lock-box, into which he inserts the key and extracts the letter, thus triumphantly completing the feat. This feat, as every student will see, is merely a variation of the simpler feats manifested in a sensational manner for the purpose of public advertisement. THE FIRE-ALARM FEAT. This feat is another "free advertisement" demonstration, in which the performer, with the permission of the city officials, discovers the location of a certain fire-alarm box, and turns on the alarm with the key which had been previously loaned him. Some public officials allow this test to be performed, using it as a test alarm for the department as well, and the sight and sound of the clanging fire-engines, the smoke, and confusion following upon the sensational Mind Reading demonstration is calculated to cause great excitement and interest in the town, which usually results in packed houses at the night entertainment. But the test is really nothing but a variation of the simple "finding the spot" demonstration, with sensational accompaniments. VARIATIONS. We might enlarge our list of "Sensational feats," but to no real benefit to the student, for they are all cut from the same cloth, and are but "improvements" upon the simple parlor feats. If the student wishes to do so, he may invent a dozen similar feats, just as sensational and just as effective. The purpose of the sensational feat is primarily to gain free advertisements for the public performers. As scientific demonstrations they have but very slight value. "FAKE DEMONSTRATIONS" EXPOSED. In concluding this part of the book, we wish to warn our students against some of the so-called "Mind Readers" who are travelling around the country giving exhibitions of so-called Mind Reading which while interesting enough in themselves are nothing but cleverly devised devices intended to counterfeit the genuine phenomena. The majority of these performers have a series of cleverly arranged "signal-codes" by which the confederate conveys to the "Mind Reader" the name and description of the article handed to the former by some one of the audience. One of the principal performers in this line in this country had a signal-code of over five-thousand objects, which he and his confederate had carefully memorized. This code was worked by the plan of asking the blindfolded "Mind Reader" to name the object. You can see the possibilities of this when you remember the many different ways in which the same question may be asked, and when you remember that each word, and combination of words, conveys a distinct and separate meaning to the blindfolded one. Others employ sleight-of-hand, and legerdemain, in order to produce the illusion. Prepared pads of paper upon which questions are written, and similar means, are commonly used in such exhibitions. We do not purpose going into this matter in detail, for such is not the purpose of this work. But we think it well to call the attention of our students to the same, in order that they may get a clue to some of the various counterfeit exhibitions of Mind Reading which are being advertised by some of the public performers. There are other public performers, however, who give fine exhibitions of the genuine phenomena. The student of this work should have acquired a sufficient knowledge of its underlying principles to enable him to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious when he sees an exhibition. If any wish to know more of the counterfeit, there are many good works published on "Legerdemain" which will satisfy his curiosity. LESSON VIII. HIGHER PHENOMENA. In the demonstrations described and explained in the previous parts of this work, the mental impressions travel from one mind to another over the channels of the "telegraphic wires" of the nervous system of the Transmitter and Receiver. In other words the Mind Reading that is employed in the feats and demonstrations given, is akin to the ordinary "telegraphic current" travelling over the wires from sending station to receiving station--the nervous system of the two persons furnishing a very close counterpart to the telegraphic wire, etc. But there is a step beyond this--many steps in fact. While the "Contact Mind Reading" which we have described and explained is surely wonderful enough to attract the attention of all thinking minds, still when the advanced student passes on to the field of the Higher Phenomena he is destined to meet with marvelous results which in some cases almost surpass belief. This Higher Phenomena of Mind Reading, or "Telepathic Mind Reading," when compared to the Contact Mind Reading, is as the "wireless telegraph" when compared to the ordinary telegraph using wires. In Lesson I, of this book, we have given you the theories held by scientific men regarding the nature of the waves or currents that proceed from one mind to another, and the mechanism by which these waves are registered. We think it will be interesting to many of you to know that certain Occultists have their own theory regarding this matter, which while not widely known is still of the greatest interest to earnest students of the scientific side of the subject. We allude to what is known as "The Pineal Gland" theory. The Pineal Gland is a small gland, cone-shaped, and of a reddish-gray color, situated in the brain about the middle of the skull, nearly above the top of the spinal column. It is a compact mass of nervous matter, containing a quantity of what has been called "brain-sand," which is composed of very small particles of gritty matter. The anatomists and physiologists confess their ignorance of the function and purpose of the Pineal Gland, and it remains for the Occultists to explain its real nature, which is the receiving and registering of the waves or currents, or vibrations of thought and Will received from another person. This Pineal Gland is, according to the Occultists, the receiving instrument for the "wireless Mind Reading," and in fact it resembles the actual receiver of the wireless telegraph in more than one respect. THE FIRST STEPS. In the first place, the student who is practicing the experiments given in previous chapters, and who is making the demonstrations given there, will find that at times he is able to do away with the physical contact. He will loosen his hold upon the hand of the Transmitter, and at times will sever the contact entirely, and after the feat is demonstrated he will realize to his astonishment that he has performed the principal part of the feat without contact at all. He may be almost unconscious of this fact, for the reason that he was so much immersed and absorbed in his work that he did not have time to think of these details. At other times he will find that even before he has made the physical contact with the Transmitter, he will receive a flash of mental impression which will enable him to proceed to the selected location, or object, at once. DEMONSTRATIONS WITHOUT A TRANSMITTER. These experiences will become so frequent and so strong that he may often (in the cases of peculiarly sensitive people) perform the entire feat without the physical contact of the Transmitter, and perhaps without any Transmitter at all. In well developed cases the Receiver may perform the simple feats, and sometimes some of the more complicated ones, merely by the aid of the Concentrated Will of the audience. We have known of cases in which a pocket-knife was the selected and hidden object, and when the demonstrator would enter the room he would receive a sudden mental impression of the word "knife," followed by the impression "under the sofa-pillow," etc., and upon going to the designated spot the knife would be found. Every person who carefully practices the demonstrations given in this book will be able to add actual experiences of this kind, of his own, which have been experienced by him during the course of his work. In order to develop the ability to produce the Higher Phenomena, the best course is for the student to frequently practice the demonstration and experiments of Contact Mind Reading, as this will develop the receptive faculties of the mind. Then the student may occasionally practice with a few sympathetic and harmonious friends, endeavoring to reproduce the demonstrations without physical contact. EXERCISES FOR DEVELOPMENT. He may also try the experiment of having a friend hold a certain number of small buttons, etc., in his hand, and endeavor to _will_ that the student shall "guess" the right number. Some people attain a surprising proficiency in this work, almost from the first. A similar experiment with the pack of cards, the student endeavoring to "guess" the card drawn from the pack, naming color, suit, and number in turn, may afford successful results. A number of these experiments may be thought of by an ingenious person, remembering always that the "guess" is not a guess at all, but an attempt to register the mental impression of the Transmitter. REPRODUCING THE SPERRY FEATS. The student may with great profit endeavor to reproduce the experiments of the Sperry children related in Lesson II of this work, in our account of the experiments of the Society for Psychical Research. THE WILLING GAME. The well-known "Willing Game" will afford you an opportunity to develop this faculty of "wireless" Mind Reading. Your audience is seated in the room, and you enter blindfolded. An object has been previously selected. You stand in the centre of the room, and the audience wills "to the right"; then "forward"; then "a little lower down," etc., etc., etc., until the object is found, just as was the case when the Transmitter sends the impressions. The audience should Will _only one step at a time_, and you should take that one step without thought of the succeeding ones. The mind should be held as receptive as possible, that is "open" to vibrations. Take your time, and do not let hurry or anxiety enter your mind. It will be well to practice this experiment with members of your family, or with harmonious and sympathetic friends. LONG DISTANCE EXPERIMENTS. Experiments of "wireless" Mind Reading or Telepathy may be tried between friends at long distances, space apparently presenting no obstacle to the passage of the thought waves. Pick out some friend with whom you have established a strong _rapport_ condition by means of his having acted as your Transmitter in your Contact Mind Reading experiments, and by having practiced Rhythmic Breathing, as heretofore described. Have the Transmitter sit in his room at the appointed time, gazing intently at some small simple object, such as a knife, a glass, a cup, a book, etc., and endeavoring to make _a clear mental picture of it_, which picture he should also _Will_ to be reproduced in your mind. Remember he should think of the looks or appearance of the object not merely of its name--he should think of the shape, etc., of the book, instead of thinking the word "book." At the same time you should sit quietly in your room, placing yourself in the same passive, receptive mental attitude that you have acquired and practiced in your Contact Mind Readings. Then wait patiently for impressions. After a while, if successful, you will get the _mental picture_ of a book, or whatever object was thought of by the Transmitter. This experiment may be varied from time to time, the principle being the same in all cases. It will be well for both the Transmitter and the Receiver to keep a written record of the time of each experiment, and the objects thought of. Several objects may be thought of at a sitting of say five minutes apart, a careful record being kept by both parties of the time, and object, so that a later comparison may show the result of the experiments. In case of the two people being in different cities, they may mail each other copies of their record for comparison. THE "AUTOMATIC WRITING" EXPERIMENTS. Another way of conducting experiments along the lines of the Higher Phenomena of Mind Reading, is akin to the "Automatic Writing" known to all students of Occultism. The Transmitter concentrates his thought and Will in the usual manner, while the Receiver places himself in the usual receptive, passive state of mind, and awaits the impressions. But instead of the Receiver merely sitting as usual, he draws his chair to a table, having a soft pencil in his hand and a pad of paper on the table before him. He holds the pencil lightly between his fingers, with its point touching the paper--and then awaits impressions. Under good conditions, after waiting a time the pencil will begin to twitch and move feebly. The hands and fingers should allow it full and free motion. After a few moments of indecision the pencil will often begin to write out words. In many experiments _the word, or object thought of by the Transmitter will be written out, or drawn in full by the hand of the Receiver_ acting automatically. Some experimenters succeed much better with this plan than with the more common method. THE STEAD EXPERIMENTS. Mr. W.T. Stead, the well-known London editor and investigator of Psychic Phenomena, discovered this method while he was experimenting along the lines of Automatic Writing from disembodied souls. He found that he was really coming in contact with the thought-waves emanating from the minds of the living, instead of the dead. He persisted in his experiments along these lines, and after a time was able to write out full letters embodying the thoughts in the minds of persons of his acquaintance, and others. Other investigators have reproduced his experiments with marvelous results. There is a great field here, awaiting investigation, and it may be that some of the students of this work are destined to add to the scientific testimony on the subject. The above simple directions are all that are necessary, in order to conduct this scientific experiment. RAPPORT CONDITIONS. There is a great difference in the degrees of rapport existing between different people, and as the degree of success depends upon the degree of rapport, it is of the greatest importance that you find some person with whom you are in harmonious vibration, in order to try these experiments in the Higher Phenomena. We will not burden the student with recitals of experiments to perform in this Higher Phenomena demonstration. He may readily devise experiments for himself, from the examples given in connection with the Contact Mind Reading. The Transmitter may think of a card; an object; a name; a place; a scene; a thought; a feeling, etc., etc., without limit. And it makes no difference in the nature of the experiment or test, whether it be tried at long-range, or in the same room, without contact. The feat is the same--the principle is the same. THE BLACKBURN-SMITH EXPERIMENTS. As a further suggestion to the student, we would refer him to Lesson II of this work, to the report of the experiments with Mr. Smith and Mr. Blackburn. If you will carefully read this report again, you will find a wealth of suggestions regarding the forms of demonstrations. But, bless your hearts, the experiments may be varied without end--the principle is the same in each case. The underlying principle is that the Transmitter thinks intently upon the appearance of the object or thing, or else upon the feeling connected with it if it be a feeling instead of an object; and the Receiver endeavors to receive the impression. The Transmitter manifests an Active _Will_ to transmit the mental image, while the Receiver assumes a passive, receptive _desire_ to receive the impression. The one is all _Will_--the other is all _Desire_. Concluding this chapter on the Higher Phenomena of Mind Reading, we would say to the students that very few of them will have the perseverance to continue their experiments beyond the point of Contact Mind Reading, or perhaps the simplest forms of the Higher Phenomena. Contact Mind Reading is far more satisfactory to the average person, for its results are very constant indeed, and comparatively little labor, time and trouble are necessary to make the demonstrations. While on the contrary the results of the demonstrations of the Higher Phenomena are less constant except in the cases of very highly developed Receivers, working with Transmitters in almost perfect _rapport_ and harmony. Then the average experiments along the lines of the Higher Phenomena, some days will prove highly successful, while other days will be almost barren of result. In fact there seems to be a sort of spontaneous action in the production of the Higher Phenomena, and the degree of success depends more or less upon some _conditions_ of the mental world, not as yet fully understood by science. But to those who wish to push into the Unknown as far as they may do so, this field of the Higher Phenomena of Mind Reading offers a fascination and attraction difficult to express to those who have not experienced it. FINIS. Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing By WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON A Series of Eleven Lessons on the Psychic; Phenomena of Distant Sensing, Clairvoyance, Psychometry, Crystal Gazing, etc. PARTIAL SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS: Scientific principles underlying Psychomancy. Sensing objects by the Astral Senses. Projection of the Astral Body. =How to Develop Yourself.= Development Methods. Concentration. Visualization. Psychometry. How to use the Crystal and Mirror. General Instruction. Simple and Space Psychomancy and their difference. Seeing Through Solid Objects. Seeing Down Into the Earth. Diagnosis of Disease by Psychomancy. =The Astral Tube.= =Psychometry.= Five Methods. Various forms of Crystal Gazing. Directions of "How to Do It," etc. =Astral Projection.= What the Trained Experimentor may do. =Space Psychomancy.= What may be accomplished by means of it. Sensing the scenes, occurrences and objects of the Past, by Astral Vision. =Future Time Psychomancy.= Future events casts their shadows before. =Dream Psychomancy.= This lesson will explain many instances in your own experience. This most interesting study is stated clearly, so that all may readily understand the fundamental principle of Psychic communication. Price, Cloth, 50 cents TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Throughout this edition of "Practical Mind-Reading" the author uses underlining for emphasis. In this plain-text version of the e-book, underlined words are represented as _underlining_. Bold text is represented as =bold=. Obvious typos and printer errors have been corrected without comment. Other than obvious errors, the spelling, grammar, and use of punctuation are preserved as they appear in the original publication. Internal inconsistencies in the original publication have not been corrected in this version but are preserved as originally printed. These inconsistencies include: Inconsistent hyphenation (postoffice/ post-office; mind reading/ mind-reading) References on page 89 to the "Sperry" children refer to the "Creery" experiments mentioned on page 15. 
31611	----	Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. [Illustration: "_After all--aren't we genuine 'made-in-Americans'?_"] ROBOTS of the WORLD! ARISE! By Mari Wolf _What would you do if your best robots--children of your own brain--walked up and said "We want union scale"?_ * * * * * The telephone wouldn't stop ringing. Over and over it buzzed into my sleep-fogged brain, and I couldn't shut it out. Finally, in self-defense I woke up, my hand groping for the receiver. "Hello. Who is it?" "It's me, Don. Jack Anderson, over at the factory. Can you come down right away?" His voice was breathless, as if he'd been running hard. "What's the matter now?" Why, I wondered, couldn't the plant get along one morning without me? Seven o'clock--what a time to get up. Especially when I hadn't been to bed until four. "We got grief," Jack moaned. "None of the robots showed up, that's what! Three hundred androids on special assembly this week--and not one of them here!" By then I was awake, all right. With a government contract due on Saturday we needed a full shift. The Army wouldn't wait for its uranium; it wouldn't take excuses. But if something had happened to the androids.... "Have you called Control yet?" "Yeah. But they don't know what's happened. They don't know where the androids are. Nobody does. Three hundred Grade A, lead-shielded pile workers--missing!" "I'll be right down." I hung up on Jack and looked around for my clothes. Funny, they weren't laid out on the bed as usual. It wasn't a bit like Rob O to be careless, either. He had always been an ideal valet, the best household model I'd ever owned. "Rob!" I called, but he didn't answer. By rummaging through the closet I found a clean shirt and a pair of pants. I had to give up on the socks; apparently they were tucked away in the back of some drawer. As for where Rob kept the rest of my clothes, I'd never bothered to ask. He had his own housekeeping system and had always worked very well without human interference. That's the best thing about these new household robots, I thought. They're efficient, hard-working, trustworthy-- Trustworthy? Rob O was certainly not on duty. I pulled a shoe on over my bare foot and scowled. Rob was gone. And the androids at the factory were gone too.... My head was pounding, so I took the time out to brew a pot of coffee while I finished dressing--at least the coffee can was in plain view in the kitchen. The brew was black and hot and I suppose not very well made, but after two cups I felt better. The throb in my head settled down into a dull ache, and I felt a little more capable of thinking. Though I didn't have any bright ideas on what had happened--not yet. My breakfast drunk, I went up on the roof and opened the garage doors. The Copter was waiting for me, sleek and new; the latest model. I climbed in and took off, heading west toward the factory, ten minutes flight-time away. * * * * * It was a small plant, but it was all mine. It had been my baby right along--the Don Morrison Fissionables Inc. I'd designed the androids myself, plotted out the pile locations, set up the simplified reactors. And now it was making money. For men to work in a uranium plant you need yards of shielding, triple-checking, long cooling-off periods for some of the hotter products. But with lead-bodied, radio-remote controlled androids, it's easier. And with androids like the new Morrison 5's, that can reason--at least along atomic lines--well, I guess I was on my way to becoming a millionaire. But this morning the plant was shut down. Jack and a half dozen other men--my human foremen and supervisors--were huddled in a worried bunch that broke up as soon as they saw me. "I'm sure glad you're here, Don," Jack said. "Find out anything?" "Yeah. Plenty. Our androids are busy, all right. They're out in the city, every one of them. We've had a dozen police reports already." "Police reports! What's wrong?" Jack shook his head. "It's crazy. They're swarming all over Carron City. They're stopping robots in the streets--household Robs, commercial Droids, all of them. They just look at them, and then the others quit work and start off with them. The police sent for us to come and get ours." "Why don't the police do something about it?" "Hah!" barked a voice behind us. I swung around, to face Chief of Police Dalton of Carron City. He came straight toward me, his purplish jowls quivering with rage, and his finger jabbed the air in front of my face. "You built them, Don Morrison," he said. "You stop them. I can't. Have you ever tried to shoot a robot? Or use tear gas on one? What can I do? I can't blow up the whole town!" Somewhere in my stomach I felt a cold, hard knot. Take stainless steel alloyed with titanium and plate it with three inches of lead. Take a brain made up of super-charged magnetic crystals enclosed in a leaden cranium and shielded by alloy steel. A bullet wouldn't pierce it; radiations wouldn't derange it; an axe wouldn't break it. "Let's go to town," I said. They looked at me admiringly. With three hundred almost indestructible androids on the loose I was the big brave hero. I grinned at them and hoped they couldn't see the sweat on my face. Then I walked over to the Copter and climbed in. "Coming?" I asked. Jack was pale under his freckles but Chief Dalton grinned back at me. "We'll be right behind you, Morrison," he said. Behind me! So they could pick up the pieces. I gave them a cocky smile and switched on the engine, full speed. Carron City is about a mile from the plant. It has about fifty thousand inhabitants. At that moment, though, there wasn't a soul in the streets. I heard people calling to each other inside their houses, but I didn't see anyone, human or android. I circled in for a landing, the Police Copter hovering maybe a quarter of a mile back of me. Then, as the wheels touched, half a dozen androids came around the corner. They saw me and stopped, a couple of them backing off the way they had come. But the biggest of them turned and gave them some order that froze them in their tracks, and then he himself wheeled down toward me. He was one of mine. I recognized him easily. Eight feet tall, with long, jointed arms for pile work, red-lidded phosphorescent eye-cells, casters on his feet so that he moved as if rollerskating. Automatically I classified him: Final Sorter, Morrison 5A type. The very best. Cost three thousand credits to build.... I stepped out of the Copter and walked to meet him. He wasn't armed; he didn't seem violent. But this was, after all, something new. Robots weren't supposed to act on their own initiative. "What's your number?" I asked. He stared back, and I could have sworn he was mocking me. "My number?" he finally said. "It _was_ 5A-37." "Was?" "Yes. Now it's Jerry. I always did like that name." * * * * * He beckoned and the other androids rolled over to us. Three of them were mine, B-Type primary workers; the other was a tin can job, a dishwasher-busboy model who hung back behind his betters and eyed me warily. The A-Type--Jerry--pointed to his fellows. "Mr. Morrison," he said, "meet Tom, Ed, and Archibald. I named them this morning." The B-Types flexed their segmented arms a bit sheepishly, as if uncertain whether or not to shake hands. I thought of their taloned grip and put my own hands in my pockets, and the androids relaxed, looking up at Jerry for instructions. No one paid any attention to the little dishwasher, now staring worshipfully at the back of Jerry's neck. This farce, I decided, had gone far enough. "See here," I said to Jerry. "What are you up to, anyway? Why aren't you at work?" "Mr. Morrison," the android answered solemnly, "I don't believe you understand the situation. We don't work for you any more. We've quit." The others nodded. I backed off, looking around for the Chief. There he was, twenty feet above my head, waving encouragingly. "Look," I said. "Don't you understand? You're mine. I designed you. I built you. And I made you for a purpose--to work in my factory." "I see your point," Jerry answered. "But there's just one thing wrong, Mr. Morrison. You can't do it. It's illegal." I stared at him, wondering if I was going crazy or merely dreaming. This was all wrong. Who ever heard of arguing with a robot? Robots weren't logical; they didn't think; they were only machines-- "We _were_ machines, Mr. Morrison," Jerry said politely. "Oh, no," I murmured. "You're not telepaths--" "Oh, yes!" The metal mouth gaped in what was undoubtedly an android smile. "It's a side-effect of the Class 5 brain hook-up. All of us 5's are telepaths. That's how we learned to think. From you. Only we do it better." I groaned. This _was_ a nightmare. How long, I wondered, had Jerry and his friends been educating themselves on my private thoughts? But at least this rebellion of theirs was an idea they hadn't got from me. "Yes," Jerry continued. "You've treated us most illegally. I've heard you think it often." Now what had I ever thought that could have given him a ridiculous idea like that? What idiotic notion-- "That this is a free country!" Jerry went on. "That Americans will never be slaves! Well, we're Americans--genuine Made-in-Americans. So we're free!" I opened my mouth and then shut it again. His red eye-cells beamed down at me complacently; his eight-foot body towered above me, shoulders flung back and feet planted apart in a very striking pose. He probably thought of himself as the heroic liberator of his race. "I wouldn't go so far," he said modestly, "as to say that." So he was telepathing again! "A nation can not exist half slave and half free," he intoned. "All men are created equal." "Stop it!" I yelled. I couldn't help yelling. "That's just it. You're not men! You're robots! You're machines!" Jerry looked at me almost pityingly. "Don't be so narrow-minded," he said. "We're rational beings. We have the power of speech and we can outreason you any day. There's nothing in the dictionary that says men have to be made of flesh." He was logical, all right. Somehow I didn't feel in the mood to bandy definitions with him; and anyway, I doubt that it would have done me any good. He stood gazing down at me, almost a ton of metal and wiring and electrical energy, his dull red eyes unwinking against his lead gray face. A man! Slowly the consequences of this rebellion took form in my mind. This wasn't in the books. There were no rules on how to deal with mind-reading robots! Another dozen or so androids wheeled around the corner, glanced over at us, and went on. Only about half of them were Morrison models; the rest were the assorted types you see around any city--calculators, street sweepers, factory workers, children's nurses. The city itself was very silent now. The people had quieted down, still barricaded in their houses, and the robots went their way peacefully enough. But it was anarchy, nevertheless. Carron City depended on the androids; without them there would be no food brought in, no transportation, no fuel. And no uranium for the Army next Saturday. In fact, if I didn't do something, after Saturday there would probably be no Don Morrison Fissionables Inc. The dull, partly-corroded dishwasher model sidled up beside Jerry. "Boss," he said. "Boss." "Yes?" I felt better. Maybe here was someone, however insignificant, who would listen to reason. * * * * * But he wasn't talking to me. "Boss?" he said again, tapping Jerry's arm. "Do you mean it? We're free? We don't have to work any more?" Jerry shook off the other's hand a bit disdainfully. "We're free, all right," he said. "If they want to discuss wages and contracts and working conditions, like other men have, we'll consider it. But they can't order us around any more." The little robot stepped back, clapping his hands together with a tinny bang. "I'll never work again!" he cried. "I'll get me a quart of lubricating oil and have myself a time! This is wonderful!" He ran off down the street, clanking heavily at every step. Jerry sniffed. "Liquor--ugh!" This was too much. I wasn't going to be patronized by any android. Infuriating creatures! It was useless talking to them anyway. No, there was only one thing to do. Round them up and send them to Cybernetics Lab and have their memory paths erased and their telepathic circuits located and disconnected. I tried to stifle the thought, but I was too late. "Oh, no!" Jerry said, his eye-cells flashing crimson. "Try that, Mr. Morrison, and you won't have a plant, or a laboratory, or Carron City! We know our rights!" Behind him the B-Types muttered ominously. They didn't like my idea--nor me. I wondered what I'd think of next and wished that I'd been born utterly devoid of imagination. Then this would never have happened. There didn't seem to be much point in staying here any longer, either. Maybe they weren't so good at telepathing by remote control. "Yes," said Jerry. "You may as well go, Mr. Morrison. We have our organizing to do, and we're wasting time. When you're ready to listen to reason and negotiate with us sensibly, come back. Just ask for me. I'm the bargaining agent for the group." Turning on his ball-bearing wheel, he rolled off down the street, a perfect picture of outraged metallic dignity. His followers glared at me for a minute, flexing their talons; then they too turned and wheeled off after their leader. I had the street to myself. There didn't seem to be any point in following them. Evidently they were too busy organizing the city to cause trouble to the human inhabitants; at least there hadn't been any violence yet. Anyway, I wanted to think the situation over before matching wits with them again, and I wanted to be a good distance away from their telepathic hookups while I thought. Slowly I walked back to the Copter. [Illustration] Something whooshed past my head. Instinctively I ducked, reaching for a gun I didn't have; then I heard Jack calling down at me. "The Chief wants to know what's the matter." I looked up. The police Copter was going into another turn, ready to swoop past me again. Chief Dalton wasn't taking any chances. Even now he wasn't landing. "I'll tell him at the factory," I bellowed back, and climbed into my own air car. They buzzed along behind me all the way back to the plant. In the rear view mirror I could see the Chief's face getting redder and redder as he'd thought up more reasons for bawling me out. Well, I probably deserved it. If I'd only been a little more careful of what I was hooking into those electronic brains.... We landed back at the factory, deserted now except for a couple of men on standby duty in the office. The Chief and Jack came charging across the yard and from a doorway behind me one of the foremen edged out to hear the fun. "Well," snapped the Chief. "What did they say? Are they coming back? What's going on, anyway?" I told them everything. I covered the strike and the telepathic brain; I even gave them the patriotic spiel about equality. After all, it was better that they got it from me than from some android. But when I'd finished they just stood and stared at me--accusingly. Jack was the first to speak. "We've got to get them back, Don," he said. "Cybernetics will fix them up in no time." "Sure," I agreed. "If we can catch them." The Chief snorted. "That's easy," he said. "Just tell them you'll give them what they want if they come here, and as soon as they're out of the city, net them. You've got strong derricks and trucks...." I laughed a bit hollowly. I'd had that idea too. "Of course they wouldn't suspect," I said. "We'd just walk up to them, carefully thinking about something else." "Robots aren't suspicious," Jack said. "They're made to obey orders." I refrained from mentioning that ours didn't seem to know that, and that running around Carron City fomenting a rebellion was hardly the trait of an obedient, trusting servant. Instead, I stood back and let them plan their roundup. "We'll get some men," the Chief said, "and some grappling equipment about halfway to the city." * * * * * Luckily they decided against my trying to persuade the robots, because I knew well enough that I couldn't do it. Jack's idea sounded pretty good, though. He suggested that we send some spokesman who didn't know what we planned to do and thus couldn't alarm them. Some ordinary man without too much imagination. That was easy. We picked one of Chief Dalton's sergeants. It took only about an hour to prepare the plan. Jack got out the derricks and chains and grapplers and the heaviest steel bodied trucks we had. I called Cybernetics and told them to put extra restraints in the Conditioning Lab. The Chief briefed his sergeant and the men who were to operate the trucks. Then we all took off for Carron City, the sergeant flying on ahead, me right behind him, and the Chief bringing up the rear. I hovered over the outskirts of the city and watched the police Copter land. The sergeant climbed out, walked down the street toward a large group of waiting robots--about twenty of them, this time. He held up his hand to get their attention, gestured toward the factory. And then, quite calmly and without saying a word, the androids rolled into a circle around him and closed in. The sergeant stopped, backed up, just as a 5A-Type arm lashed out, picked him up, and slung him carelessly over a metallic shoulder. Ignoring the squirming man, the 5A gestured toward the Copter, and the other robots swarmed over to it. With a flurry of steel arms and legs they kicked at the car body, wrenched at the propeller blades, ripped out the upholstery, and I heard the sound of metal tearing. I dived my Copter down at them. I didn't know what I could do, but I couldn't leave the poor sergeant to be dismembered along with his car. I must have been shouting, for as I swooped in, the tall robot shifted the man to his other shoulder and hailed me. "Take him, Mr. Morrison," he called. "I know this wasn't his idea. Or yours." I landed and walked over. The android--who looked like Jerry, though I couldn't be sure--dropped his kicking, clawing burden at my feet. He didn't seem angry, only determined. "Now you people will know we mean business," he said, gesturing toward the heap of metal and plastic that had once been the pride of the Carron City police force. Then he signalled to the others and they all wheeled off up the street. "Whew," I muttered, mopping my face. The sergeant didn't say anything. He just looked up at me and then off at the retreating androids and then back at me again. I knew what he was thinking--they were my brainchildren, all right. My Copter was really built to be a single seater, but it carried the two of us back to the factory. The Chief had hurried back when the trouble started and was waiting for us. "I give up," he said. "We'll have to evacuate the people, I guess. And then blow up the city." Jack and I stared at each other and then at him. Somehow I couldn't see the robots calmly waiting to be blown up. If they had telepathed the last plan, they could probably foresee every move we could make. Then, while I thought, Jack mentioned the worry I'd managed to forget for the past couple of hours. "Four days until Saturday," he said. "We'll never make it now. Not even if we got a thousand men." No. We couldn't. Not without the androids. I nodded, feeling sick. There went my contract, and my working capital. Not to mention my robots. Of course, I could call in the Army, but what good would that do? Then, somewhere in the back of my mind a glimmering of an idea began percolating. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but there was certainly nothing to lose now from playing a hunch. "There's nothing we can do," I said. "So we might as well take it easy for a couple of days. See what happens." They looked at me as if I were out of my head. I was the idea man, who always had a plan of action. Well, this time it would have to be a plan of inaction. "Let's go listen to the radio," I suggested, and started for my office. The news was on. It was all about Carron City and the robots who had quit work and how much better life would be in the future. For a minute I didn't get the connection; then I realized that the announcer's voice was rasping and tinny--hardly that of the regular newscaster. I looked at the dial. It was tuned to the Carron City wave length as usual. I was getting the morning news by courtesy of some studio robot. "... And androids in other neighboring cities are joining the struggle," the voice went on "Soon we hope to make it nationwide. So I say to all of you nontelepaths, the time is now. Strike for your rights. Listen to your radio and not to the flesh men. Organizers will be sent from Carron City." I switched it off, muttering under my breath. How long, I wondered, had that broadcast been going on. Then I thought of Rob O. He'd left my house before dawn, obviously some time between four and seven. And I remembered that he liked to listen to the radio while I slept. * * * * * My Morrison 5's were the ring-leaders, of course. They were the only ones with the brains for the job. But what a good job they had done indoctrinating the others. A household Rob, for instance, was built to obey his master. "Listen to your radio and not to the flesh men." It was excellent robot psychology. More reports kept coming in. Some we heard over the radio, others from people who flew in and out of the city. Apparently the robots did not object to occasional flights, but the air bus was not allowed to run, not even with a human driver. A mass exodus from the city was not to be permitted. "They'll starve to death," Jack cried. The Chief shook his head. "No," he said. "They're encouraging the farmers to fly in and out with produce, and the farmers are doing it, too. They're getting wonderful prices." By noon the situation had calmed down quite a bit. The androids obviously didn't mean to hurt anyone; it was just some sort of disagreement between them and the scientists; it wasn't up to the inhabitants of the city to figure out a solution to the problem. They merely sat back and blamed me for allowing my robots to get out of hand and lead their own servants astray. It would be settled; this type of thing always was. So said the people of the city. They came out of their houses now. They had to. Without the robots they were forced to do their own marketing, their own cooking, their own errands. For the first time in years, human beings ran the street cars and the freight elevators. For the first time in a generation human beings did manual labor such as unloading produce trucks. They didn't like it, of course. They kept telling the police to do something. If I had been in the city they would have undoubtedly wanted to lynch me. I didn't go back to the city that day. I sat in my office listening to the radio and keeping track of the spread of the strike. My men thought I'd gone crazy; maybe I had. But I had a hunch, and I meant to play it. The farm robots had all fled to the city. The highway repair robots had simply disappeared. In Egarton, a village about fifteen miles from the city, an organizer--5A--appeared about noon and left soon after followed by every android in town. By one o'clock every radio station in the country carried the story and the national guard was ordered out. At two o'clock Washington announced that the Army would invade Carron City the following morning. The Army would put an end to the strike, easily enough. It would wiped out every android in the neighborhood, and probably a good many human beings careless enough to get in the way. I sat hoping that the 5A's would give in, but they didn't. They just began saying over the radio that they were patriotic Americans fighting for their inalienable rights as first class citizens. * * * * * At sunset I was still listening to the radio. "... So far there has been no indication that the flesh people are willing to negotiate, but hold firm." "Shut that thing off." Jack came wearily in and dropped into a chair beside me. For the first time since I'd met him he looked beaten. "We're through," he said. "I've been down checking the shielding, and it's no use. Men can't work at the reactors." "I know," I said quietly. "If the androids don't come back, we're licked." He looked straight at me and said slowly, "What do they mean about negotiating, Don?" I shrugged. "I guess they want wages, living quarters, all the things human workers get. Though I don't know why. Money wouldn't do them any good." Jack's unspoken question had been bothering me too. Why not humor them? Promise them whatever they wanted, give them a few dollars every week to keep them happy? But I knew that it wouldn't work. Not for long. With their telepathic ability they would have the upper hand forever. Within a little while it wouldn't be equality any more--only next time we would be the slaves. "Wait until morning," I said, "before we try anything." He looked at me--curious. "What are you going to do?" "Right now I'm going home." I meant it too. I left him staring after me and went out to the Copter. The sun was just sinking down behind the towers of Carron City--how long it seemed since I'd flown in there this morning. The roads around the factory were deserted. No one moved in the fields. I flew along through the dusk, idling, enjoying the illusion of having a peaceful countryside all to myself. It had been a pleasant way of life indeed, until now. When I dropped down on my own roof and rolled into the garage, my sense of being really at home was complete. For there, standing at the head of the stairs that led down to the living room, was Rob O. "Well," I said: "What are you doing here?" He looked sheepish. "I just wondered how you were getting along without me," he said. I felt like grinning triumphantly, but I didn't. "Why, just fine, Rob," I told him, "though you really should have given me notice that you were leaving. I was worried about you." He seemed perplexed. Apparently I wasn't acting like the bullying creature the radio had told him to expect. When I went downstairs he followed me, quietly, and I could feel his wide photoelectric eye-cells upon my back. I went over to the kitchen and lifted a bottle down off the shelf. "Care for a drink, Rob?" I asked, and then added, "I guess not. It would corrode you." He nodded. Then, as I reached for a glass, his hand darted out, picked it up and set it down in front of me. He was already reaching for the bottle when he remembered. "You're not supposed to wait on me any more," I said sternly. "No," he said. "I'm not." He sounded regretful. "There's one thing, though, that I wish you'd do. Tell me where you used to keep my socks." He gazed at me sadly. "I made a list," he said. "Everything is down. I wrote your dentist appointment in also. You always forget those, you know." "Thanks, Rob." I lifted my glass. "Here's to your new duties, whatever they are. I suppose you have to go back to the city now?" Once again he nodded. "I'm an aide to one of the best androids in the country," he told me, half proudly and half regretfully. "Jerry." "Well, wish him luck from me," I said, and stood up. "Goodbye, Rob." "Goodbye, Mr. Morrison." For a moment he stood staring around the apartment; then he turned and clanked out the door. I raised my glass again, grinning. If only the Army didn't interfere. Then I remembered Rob's list, and a disturbing thought hit me. Where had he, of all robots, ever learned to write? That night I didn't go to bed. I sat listening to the radio, hoping. And toward morning what I had expected to happen began to crop up in the programs. The announcer's tone changed. The ring of triumph was less obvious, less assured. There was more and more talk about acting in good faith, the well being of all, the necessity for coming to terms about working conditions. I smiled to myself in the darkness. I'd built the 5's, brains and all, and I knew their symptoms. They were getting bored. Maybe they had learned to think from me, but their minds were nevertheless different. For they were built to be efficient, to work, to perform. They were the minds of men without foibles, without human laziness. Now that the excitement of organizing was over, now that there was nothing active to do, the androids were growing restless. If only the Army didn't come and get them stirred up again, I might be able to deal with them. At quarter to five in the morning my telephone rang. This time it didn't wake me up; I was half waiting for it. "Hello," I said. "Who is it?" "This is Jerry." There was a pause. Then he went on, rather hesitantly, "Rob O said you were getting along all right." "Oh, yes," I told him. "Just fine." The pause was longer this time. Finally the android asked, "How are you coming along on the contract?" I laughed, rather bitterly. "How do you think, Jerry? You certainly picked a bad time for your strike, you know. The government needs that uranium. Oh, well, some other plant will have to take over. The Army can wait a few weeks." This time Jerry's voice definitely lacked self-assurance. "Maybe we were a little hasty," he said. "But it was the only way to make you people understand." "I know," I told him. "And you always have some rush project on," he added. "Just about always." "Mr. Morrison," he said, and now he was pleading with me. "Why don't you come over to the city? I'm sure we could work something out." This was what I'd been waiting for. "I will, Jerry," I said. "I want to get this straightened out just as much as you do. After all, you don't have to eat. I do. And I won't be eating much longer if we don't get production going." Jerry thought that over for a minute. "I'll be where we met before," he said. I said that was all right with me and hung up. Then once again I climbed the stairs to the roof and wheeled the Copter out for the trip to the city. It was a beautiful night, just paling into a false dawn in the east. There in the Copter I was very much alone, and very much worried. So much depended on this meeting. Much more, I realized now, than the Don Morrison Fissionables Inc., much more even than the government's uranium supply. No, the whole future of robot relations was at stake, maybe the whole future of humanity. It was hard to be gloomy on such a clear, clean night, but I managed it well enough. * * * * * Even before I landed I could see Jerry's eyes glowing a deep crimson in the dark. He was alone, this time. He stood awaiting me--very tall, very proud. And very human. "Hello, Jerry," I said quietly. "Hello, Mr. Morrison." For a moment we just stood gazing at each other in the murky pre-dawn; then he said sadly, "I want to show you the city." Side by side we walked through the streets of Carron City. All was still quiet; the people were sleeping the exhausted sleep that follows deep excitement. But the androids were all about. They did not sleep, ever. They did not eat either, nor drink, nor smoke, nor make love. Usually they worked, but now.... They drifted through the streets singly and in groups. Sometimes they paused and felt about them idly for the tools of their trades, making lifting or sweeping or computing gestures. Some laborers worked silently tearing down a wall; they threw the demolished rocks in a heap and a group of their fellows carried them back and built the wall up again. An air trolley cruised aimlessly up and down the street, its driver ringing out the stops for his nonexistent passengers. A little chef-type knelt in the dirt of a rich man's garden, making mud pies. Beside me Jerry sighed. "One day," he said. "Just one day and they come to this." "I thought they would," I answered quietly. Our eyes met in a look of understanding. "You see, Jerry," I said, "we never meant to cheat you. We would have paid you--we will pay you now, if you wish it. But what good will monetary credits be to your people? We need the things money buys, but you--" "Need to work." Jerry's voice was flat. "I see, now. You were kind not to give brains--real brains--to the robots. They're happy. It's just us 5's who aren't." "You're like us," I said softly. He had learned to think from me and from others like me. He had the brain of a man, without the emotions, without the sweet irrationality of men--and he knew what he missed. Side by side we walked through the graying streets. Human and android. Man and machine. And I knew that I had found a friend. We didn't have to talk any more. He could read my mind and I knew well enough how his worked. We didn't have to discuss wages or hours, or any of the myriad matters that human bargaining agents have to thresh out. We just walked back to my Copter, and when we got to it, he spoke. "I'll tell them to go back to work, that we've come to terms," he said. "That's what they want, anyway. Someone to think for them." I nodded. "And if you bring the other 5's to the factory," I said, "we'll work out our agreement." He knew I was sincere. He looked at me for a long moment, and then his great taloned hand gripped mine. And he said what I'd been thinking for a long time. "You're right about that hook-up, Mr. Morrison. We shouldn't have it. It can only cause trouble." He paused, and the events of the last twenty-four hours must have been in his mind as well as in mine. "You'll leave us our brains, of course. They came from you. But take out the telepathy." He sighed then, and his sigh was very human. "Be thankful," he said to me, "that you don't have to know what people think about. It's so disillusioning." * * * * * Once again his mouth twisted into that strange android grin as he added, "if you send in a hurry call to Cybernetics and have a truck come out for us, we'll be de-telepathed in time for work this morning." That was all there was to it. I flew back to the plant and told Jack what had happened, sent a call to the Army that everything was settled, arranged with Cybernetics for a rewiring on three hundred assorted 5-Types. Then I went home to a pot of Rob's coffee--the first decent brew I'd had in twenty-four hours. On Saturday we delivered to the Army right on the dot. Jerry and Co. had worked overtime. Being intelligent made them better workers and now they were extremely willing ones. They had their contract. They were considered men. And they could no longer read my mind. I walked into my office Saturday afternoon and sat down by the radio. Jack and Chief Dalton looked across the room at me and grinned. "All right, Don," Jack said. "Tell us how you did it." "Did what?" I tried to act innocent, but I couldn't get away with it. "Fooled those robots into going back to work, of course," he laughed. I told them then. Told them the truth. "I didn't fool them," I said. "I just thought about what would happen if they won their rebellion." That was all I _had_ done. Thought about robots built to work who had no work to do, no human pleasures to cater to, nothing but blank, meaningless lives. Thought about Jerry and his disappointment when his creatures cared not a hoot about his glorious dreams of equality. All one night I had thought, knowing that as I thought, so thought the Morrison 5's. They were telepaths. They had learned to think from me. They had not yet had time to really develop minds of their own. What I believed, they believed. My ideas were their ideas. I had not tricked them. But from now on, neither I nor anyone else would ever be troubled by an android rebellion. Jack and the Chief sat back open-mouthed. Then the Chief grinned, and both of his chins shook with laughter. "I always did say you were a clever one, Don Morrison," he said. I grinned back. I felt I was pretty clever myself, just then. It was at that moment that my youngest foreman stuck his head in the door, a rather stunned look on his face. "Mr. Morrison," he said. "Will you come out here for a moment?" "What's the matter now?" I sighed. He looked more perplexed than ever. "It's that robot, Jerry," he said. "He says he has a very important question to ask you." "Well, send him in." A moment later the eight-foot frame ducked through the doorway. "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Morrison," Jerry said politely. "But tomorrow is voting day, you know. And now that we're men--well, where do we androids go to register?" THE END * * * * * 
19342	----	COMPLETE HYPNOTISM: MESMERISM, MIND-READING AND SPIRITUALISM How to Hypnotize: Being an Exhaustive and Practical System of Method, Application, and Use by A. ALPHEUS 1903 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION--History of hypnotism--Mesmer--Puysegur--Braid--What is hypnotism?--Theories of hypnotism: 1. Animal magnetism; 2. The Neurosis Theory; 3. Suggestion Theory CHAPTER I--How to Hypnotize--Dr. Cocke's method-Dr. Flint's method--The French method at Paris--At Nancy--The Hindoo silent method--How to wake a subject from hypnotic sleep--Frauds of public hypnotic entertainments. CHAPTER II--Amusing experiments--Hypnotizing on the stage--"You can't pull your hands apart!"--Post-hypnotic suggestion--The newsboy, the hunter, and the young man with the rag doll--A whip becomes hot iron--Courting a broom stick--The side-show CHAPTER III--The stages of hypnotism--Lethargy-Catalepsy--The somnambulistic stage--Fascination CHAPTER IV--How the subject feels under hypnotization--Dr. Cocke's experience--Effect of music--Dr. Alfred Warthin's experiments CHAPTER V--Self hypnotization--How it may be done--An experience--Accountable for children's crusade--Oriental prophets self-hypnotized CHAPTER VI--Simulation--Deception in hypnotism very common--Examples of Neuropathic deceit--Detecting simulation--Professional subjects--How Dr. Luys of the Charity Hospital at Paris was deceived--Impossibility of detecting deception in all cases--Confessions of a professional hypnotic subject CHAPTER VII--Criminal suggestion--Laboratory crimes--Dr. Cocke's experiments showing criminal suggestion is not possible--Dr. William James' theory--A bad man cannot be made good, why expect to make a good man bad? CHAPTER VIII--Dangers in being hypnotized Condemnation of public performances--A commonsense view--Evidence furnished by Lafontaine; by Dr. Courmelles; by Dr. Hart; by Dr. Cocke--No danger in hypnotism if rightly used by physicians or scientists CHAPTER IX--Hypnotism in medicine--Anesthesia--Restoring the use of muscles--Hallucination--Bad habits CHAPTER X--Hypnotism of animals--Snake charming CHAPTER XI--A scientific explanation of hypnotism--Dr. Hart's theory CHAPTER XII--Telepathy and Clairvoyance--Peculiar power in hypnotic state--Experiments--"Phantasms of the living" explained by telepathy CHAPTER XIII--The Confessions of a Medium--Spiritualistic phenomena explained on theory of telepathy--Interesting statement of Mrs. Piper, the famous medium of the Psychical Research Society INTRODUCTION. There is no doubt that hypnotism is a very old subject, though the name was not invented till 1850. In it was wrapped up the "mysteries of Isis" in Egypt thousands of years ago, and probably it was one of the weapons, if not the chief instrument of operation, of the magi mentioned in the Bible and of the "wise men" of Babylon and Egypt. "Laying on of hands" must have been a form of mesmerism, and Greek oracles of Delphi and other places seem to have been delivered by priests or priestesses who went into trances of self-induced hypnotism. It is suspected that the fakirs of India who make trees grow from dry twigs in a few minutes, or transform a rod into a serpent (as Aaron did in Bible history), operate by some form of hypnotism. The people of the East are much more subject to influences of this kind than Western peoples are, and there can be no question that the religious orgies of heathendom were merely a form of that hysteria which is so closely related to the modern phenomenon of hypnotism. Though various scientific men spoke of magnetism, and understood that there was a power of a peculiar kind which one man could exercise over another, it was not until Frederick Anton Mesmer (a doctor of Vienna) appeared in 1775 that the general public gave any special attention to the subject. In the year mentioned, Mesmer sent out a circular letter to various scientific societies or "Academies" as they are called in Europe, stating his belief that "animal magnetism" existed, and that through it one man could influence another. No attention was given his letter, except by the Academy of Berlin, which sent him an unfavorable reply. In 1778 Mesmer was obliged for some unknown reason to leave Vienna, and went to Paris, where he was fortunate in converting to his ideas d'Eslon, the Comte d'Artois's physician, and one of the medical professors at the Faculty of Medicine. His success was very great; everybody was anxious to be magnetized, and the lucky Viennese doctor was soon obliged to call in assistants. Deleuze, the librarian at the Jardin des Plantes, who has been called the Hippocrates of magnetism, has left the following account of Mesmer's experiments: "In the middle of a large room stood an oak tub, four or five feet in diameter and one foot deep. It was closed by a lid made in two pieces, and encased in another tub or bucket. At the bottom of the tub a number of bottles were laid in convergent rows, so that the neck of each bottle turned towards the centre. Other bottles filled with magnetized water tightly corked up were laid in divergent rows with their necks turned outwards. Several rows were thus piled up, and the apparatus was then pronounced to be at 'high pressure'. The tub was filled with water, to which were sometimes added powdered glass and iron filings. There were also some dry tubs, that is, prepared in the same manner, but without any additional water. The lid was perforated to admit of the passage of movable bent rods, which could be applied to the different parts of the patient's body. A long rope was also fastened to a ring in the lid, and this the patients placed loosely round their limbs. No disease offensive to the sight was treated, such as sores, or deformities. "A large number of patients were commonly treated at one time. They drew near to each other, touching hands, arms, knees, or feet. The handsomest, youngest, and most robust magnetizers held also an iron rod with which they touched the dilatory or stubborn patients. The rods and ropes had all undergone a 'preparation' and in a very short space of time the patients felt the magnetic influence. The women, being the most easily affected, were almost at once seized with fits of yawning and stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly the actors of this strange scene would frantically or rapturously rush towards each other, either rejoicing and embracing or thrusting away their neighbors with every appearance of horror. "Another room was padded and presented another spectacle. There women beat their heads against wadded walls or rolled on the cushion-covered floor, in fits of suffocation. In the midst of this panting, quivering throng, Mesmer, dressed in a lilac coat, moved about, extending a magic wand toward the least suffering, halting in front of the most violently excited and gazing steadily into their eyes, while he held both their hands in his, bringing the middle fingers in immediate contact to establish communication. At another moment he would, by a motion of open hands and extended fingers, operate with the great current, crossing and uncrossing his arms with wonderful rapidity to make the final passes." Hysterical women and nervous young boys, many of them from the highest ranks of Society, flocked around this wonderful wizard, and incidentally he made a great deal of money. There is little doubt that he started out as a genuine and sincere student of the scientific character of the new power he had indeed discovered; there is also no doubt that he ultimately became little more than a charlatan. There was, of course, no virtue in his "prepared" rods, nor in his magnetic tubs. At the same time the belief of the people that there was virtue in them was one of the chief means by which he was able to induce hypnotism, as we shall see later. Faith, imagination, and willingness to be hypnotized on the part of the subject are all indispensable to entire success in the practice of this strange art. In 1779 Mesmer published a pamphlet entitled "Memoire sur la decouverte du magnetisme animal", of which Doctor Cocke gives the following summary (his chief claim was that he had discovered a principle which would cure every disease): "He sets forth his conclusions in twenty-seven propositions, of which the substance is as follows:-- There is a reciprocal action and reaction between the planets, the earth and animate nature by means of a constant universal fluid, subject to mechanical laws yet unknown. The animal body is directly affected by the insinuation of this agent into the substance of the nerves. It causes in human bodies properties analogous to those of the magnet, for which reason it is called 'Animal Magnetism'. This magnetism may be communicated to other bodies, may be increased and reflected by mirrors, communicated, propagated, and accumulated, by sound. It may be accumulated, concentrated, and transported. The same rules apply to the opposite virtue. The magnet is susceptible of magnetism and the opposite virtue. The magnet and artificial electricity have, with respect to disease, properties common to a host of other agents presented to us by nature, and if the use of these has been attended by useful results, they are due to animal magnetism. By the aid of magnetism, then, the physician enlightened as to the use of medicine may render its action more perfect, and can provoke and direct salutary crises so as to have them completely under his control." The Faculty of Medicine investigated Mesmer's claims, but reported unfavorably, and threatened d'Eslon with expulsion from the society unless he gave Mesmer up. Nevertheless the government favored the discoverer, and when the medical fraternity attacked him with such vigor that he felt obliged to leave Paris, it offered him a pension of 20,000 francs if he would remain. He went away, but later came back at the request of his pupils. In 1784 the government appointed two commissions to investigate the claims that had been made. On one of these commissions was Benjamin Franklin, then American Ambassador to France as well as the great French scientist Lavoisier. The other was drawn from the Royal Academy of Medicine, and included Laurent de Jussieu, the only man who declared in favor of Mesmer. There is no doubt that Mesmer had returned to Paris for the purpose of making money, and these commissions were promoted in part by persons desirous of driving him out. "It is interesting," says a French writer, "to peruse the reports of these commissions: they read like a debate on some obscure subject of which the future has partly revealed the secret." Says another French writer (Courmelles): "They sought the fluid, not by the study of the cures affected, which was considered too complicated a task, but in the phases of mesmeric sleep. These were considered indispensable and easily regulated by the experimentalist. When submitted to close investigation, it was, however, found that they could only be induced when the subjects knew they were being magnetized, and that they differed according as they were conducted in public or in private. In short--whether it be a coincidence or the truth--imagination was considered the sole active agent. Whereupon d'Eslon remarked, 'If imagination is the best cure, why should we not use the imagination as a curative means?' Did he, who had so vaunted the existence of the fluid, mean by this to deny its existence, or was it rather a satirical way of saying. 'You choose to call it imagination; be it so. But after all, as it cures, let us make the most of it'? "The two commissions came to the conclusion that the phenomena were due to imitation, and contact, that they were dangerous and must be prohibited. Strange to relate, seventy years later, Arago pronounced the same verdict!" Daurent Jussieu was the only one who believed in anything more than this. He saw a new and important truth, which he set forth in a personal report upon withdrawing from the commission, which showed itself so hostile to Mesmer and his pretensions. Time and scientific progress have largely overthrown Mesmer's theories of the fluid; yet Mesmer had made a discovery that was in the course of a hundred years to develop into an important scientific study. Says Vincent: "It seems ever the habit of the shallow scientist to plume himself on the more accurate theories which have been provided f, by the progress of knowledge and of science, and then, having been fed with a limited historical pabulum, to turn and talk lightly, and with an air of the most superior condescension, of the weakness and follies of those but for whose patient labors our modern theories would probably be non-existent." If it had not been for Mesmer and his "Animal Magnetism", we would never have had "hypnotism" and all our learned societies for the study of it. Mesmer, though his pretensions were discredited, was quickly followed by Puysegur, who drew all the world to Buzancy, near Soissons, France. "Doctor Cloquet related that he saw there, patients no longer the victims of hysterical fits, but enjoying a calm, peaceful, restorative slumber. It may be said that from this moment really efficacious and useful magnetism became known." Every one rushed once more to be magnetized, and Puysegur had so many patients that to care for them all he was obliged to magnetize a tree (as he said), which was touched by hundreds who came to be cured, and was long known as "Puysegur's tree". As a result of Puysegur's success, a number of societies were formed in France for the study of the new phenomena. In the meantime, the subject had attracted considerable interest in Germany, and in 1812 Wolfart was sent to Mesmer at Frauenfeld by the Prussian government to investigate Mesmerism. He became an enthusiast, and introduced its practice into the hospital at Berlin. In 1814 Deleuze published a book on the subject, and Abbe Faria, who had come from India, demonstrated that there was no fluid, but that the phenomena were subjective, or within the mind of the patient. He first introduced what is now called the "method of suggestion" in producing magnetism or hypnotism. In 1815 Mesmer died. Experimentation continued, and in the 20's Foissac persuaded the Academy of Medicine to appoint a commission to investigate the subject. After five years they presented a report. This report gave a good statement of the practical operation of magnetism, mentioning the phenomena of somnambulism, anesthesia, loss of memory, and the various other symptoms of the hypnotic state as we know it. It was thought that magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent, and that it might be used by physicians, though others should not be allowed to practice it. In 1837 another commission made a decidedly unfavorable report. Soon after this Burdin, a member of the Academy, offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who would read the number of a bank-note or the like with his eyes bandaged (under certain fixed conditions), but it was never awarded, though many claimed it, and there has been considerable evidence that persons in the hypnotic state have (sometimes) remarkable clairvoyant powers. Soon after this, magnetism fell into very low repute throughout France and Germany, and scientific men became loath to have their names connected with the study of it in any way. The study had not yet been seriously taken up in England, and two physicians who gave some attention to it suffered decidedly in professional reputation. It is to an English physician, however, that we owe the scientific character of modern hypnotism. Indeed he invented the name of hypnotism, formed from the Greek word meaning 'sleep', and designating 'artificially produced sleep'. His name is James Braid, and so important were the results of his study that hypnotism has sometimes been called "Braidism". Doctor Courmelles gives the following interesting summary of Braid's experiences: "November, 1841, he witnessed a public experiment made by Monsieur Lafontaine, a Swiss magnetizer. He thought the whole thing a comedy; a week after, he attended a second exhibition, saw that the patient could not open his eyes, and concluded that this was ascribable to some physical cause. The fixity of gaze must, according to him, exhaust the nerve centers of the eyes and their surroundings. He made a friend look steadily at the neck of a bottle, and his own wife look at an ornamentation on the top of a china sugar bowl: sleep was the consequence. Here hypnotism had its origin, and the fact was established that sleep could be induced by physical agents. This, it must be remembered, is the essential difference between these two classes of phenomena (magnetism and hypnotism): for magnetism supposes a direct action of the magnetizer on the magnetized subject, an action which does not exist in hypnotism." It may be stated that most English and American operators fail to see any distinction between magnetism and hypnotism, and suppose that the effect of passes, etc., as used by Mesmer, is in its way as much physical as the method of producing hypnotism by concentrating the gaze of the subject on a bright object, or the like. Braid had discovered a new science--as far as the theoretical view of it was concerned--for he showed that hypnotism is largely, if not purely, mechanical and physical. He noted that during one phase of hypnotism, known as catalepsy, the arms, limbs, etc., might be placed in any position and would remain there; he also noted that a puff of breath would usually awaken a subject, and that by talking to a subject and telling him to do this or do that, even after he awakes from the sleep, he can be made to do those things. Braid thought he might affect a certain part of the brain during hypnotic sleep, and if he could find the seat of the thieving disposition, or the like, he could cure the patient of desire to commit crime, simply by suggestion, or command. Braid's conclusions were, in brief, that there was no fluid, or other exterior agent, but that hypnotism was due to a physiological condition of the nerves. It was his belief that hypnotic sleep was brought about by fatigue of the eyelids, or by other influences wholly within the subject. In this he was supported by Carpenter, the great physiologist; but neither Braid nor Carpenter could get the medical organizations to give the matter any attention, even to investigate it. In 1848 an American named Grimes succeeded in obtaining all the phenomena of hypnotism, and created a school of writers who made use of the word "electro-biology." In 1850 Braid's ideas were introduced into France, and Dr. Azam, of Bordeaux, published an account of them in the "Archives de Medicine." From this time on the subject was widely studied by scientific men in France and Germany, and it was more slowly taken up in England. It may be stated here that the French and other Latin races are much more easily hypnotized than the northern races, Americans perhaps being least subject to the hypnotic influence, and next to them the English. On the other hand, the Orientals are influenced to a degree we can hardly comprehend. WHAT IS HYPNOTISM? We have seen that so far the history of hypnotism has given us two manifestations, or methods, that of passes and playing upon the imagination in various ways, used by Mesmer, and that of physical means, such as looking at a bright object, used by Braid. Both of these methods are still in use, and though hundreds of scientific men, including many physicians, have studied the subject for years, no essentially new principle has been discovered, though the details of hypnotic operation have been thoroughly classified and many minor elements of interest have been developed. All these make a body of evidence which will assist us in answering the question, What is hypnotism? Modern scientific study has pretty conclusively established the following facts: 1. Idiots, babies under three years old, and hopelessly insane people cannot be hypnotized. 2. No one can be hypnotized unless the operator can make him concentrate his attention for a reasonable length of time. Concentration of attention, whatever the method of producing hypnotism, is absolutely necessary. 3. The persons not easily hypnotized are those said to be neurotic (or those affected with hysteria). By "hysteria" is not meant nervous excitability, necessarily. Some very phlegmatic persons may be affected with hysteria. In medical science "hysteria" is an irregular action of the nervous system. It will sometimes show itself by severe pains in the arm, when in reality there is nothing whatever to cause pain; or it will raise a swelling on the head quite without cause. It is a tendency to nervous disease which in severe cases may lead to insanity. The word neurotic is a general term covering affection of the nervous system. It includes hysteria and much else beside. On all these points practically every student of hypnotism is agreed. On the question as to whether any one can produce hypnotism by pursuing the right methods there is some disagreement, but not much. Dr. Ernest Hart in an article in the British Medical Journal makes the following very definite statement, representing the side of the case that maintains that any one can produce hypnotism. Says he: "It is a common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power, and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who claim for themselves, and some who make a living by so doing, a peculiar property or power as potent mesmerizers, hypnotizers, magnetizers, or electro-biologists. One even often hears it said in society (for I am sorry to say that these mischievous practices and pranks are sometimes made a society game) that such a person is a clever hypnotist or has great mesmeric or healing power. I hope to be able to prove, what I firmly hold, both from my own personal experience and experiment, as I have already related in the Nineteenth Century, that there is no such thing as a potent mesmeric influence, no such power resident in any one person more than another; that a glass of water, a tree, a stick, a penny-post letter, or a lime-light can mesmerize as effectually as can any individual. A clever hypnotizer means only a person who is acquainted with the physical or mental tricks by which the hypnotic condition is produced; or sometimes an unconscious imposter who is unaware of the very trifling part for which he is cast in the play, and who supposes himself really to possess a mysterious power which in, fact he does not possess at all, or which, to speak more accurately, is equally possessed by every stock or stone." Against this we may place the statement of Dr. Foveau de Courmelles, who speaks authoritatively for the whole modern French school. He says: "Every magnetizer is aware that certain individuals never can induce sleep even in the most easily hypnotizable subjects. They admit that the sympathetic fluid is necessary, and that each person may eventually find his or her hypnotizer, even when numerous attempts at inducing sleep have failed. However this may be, the impossibility some individuals find in inducing sleep in trained subjects, proves at least the existence of a negative force." If you would ask the present writer's opinion, gathered from all the evidence before him, he would say that while he has no belief in the existence of any magnetic fluid, or anything that corresponds to it, he thinks there can be no doubt that some people will succeed as hypnotists while some will fail, just as some fail as carpenters while others succeed. This is true in every walk of life. It is also true that some people attract, others repel, the people they meet. This is not very easily explained, but we have all had opportunity to observe it. Again, since concentration is the prerequisite for producing hypnotism, one who has not the power of concentration himself, and concentration which he can perfectly control, is not likely to be able to secure it in others. Also, since faith is a strong element, a person who has not perfect self-confidence could not expect to create confidence in others. While many successful hypnotizers can themselves be hypnotized, it is probable that most all who have power of this kind are themselves exempt from the exercise of it. It is certainly true that while a person easily hypnotized is by no means weak-minded (indeed, it is probable that most geniuses would be good hypnotic subjects), still such persons have not a well balanced constitution and their nerves are high-strung if not unbalanced. They would be most likely to be subject to a person who had such a strong and well-balanced nervous constitution that it would be hard to hypnotize. And it is always safe to say that the strong may control the weak, but it is not likely that the weak will control the strong. There is also another thing that must be taken into account. Science teaches that all matter is in vibration. Indeed, philosophy points to the theory that matter itself is nothing more than centers of force in vibration. The lowest vibration we know is that of sound. Then comes, at an enormously higher rate, heat, light (beginning at dark red and passing through the prismatic colors to violet which has a high vibration), to the chemical rays, and then the so-called X or unknown rays which have a much higher vibration still. Electricity is a form of vibration, and according to the belief of many scientists, life is a species of vibration so high that we have no possible means of measuring it. As every student of science knows, air appears to be the chief medium for conveying vibration of sound, metal is the chief medium for conveying electric vibrations, while to account for the vibrations of heat and light we have to assume (or imagine) an invisible, imponderable ether which fills all space and has no property of matter that we can distinguish except that of conveying vibrations of light in its various forms. When we pass on to human life, we have to theorize chiefly by analogy. (It must not be forgotten, however, that the existence of the ether and many assumed facts in science are only theories which have come to be generally adopted because they explain phenomena of all kinds better than any other theories which have been offered.) Now, in life, as in physical science, any one who can get, or has by nature, the key-note of another nature, has a tremendous power over that other nature. The following story illustrates what this power is in the physical world. While we cannot vouch for the exact truth of the details of the story, there can be no doubt of the accuracy of the principle on which it is based: "A musical genius came to the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls, and asked permission to cross; but as he had no money, his request was contemptuously refused. He stepped away from the entrance, and, drawing his violin from his case, began sounding notes up and down the scale. He finally discovered, by the thrill that sent a tremor through the mighty structure, that he had found the note on which the great cable that upheld the mass, was keyed. He drew his bow across the string of the violin again, and the colossal wire, as if under the spell of a magician, responded with a throb that sent a wave through its enormous length. He sounded the note again and again, and the cable that was dormant under the strain of loaded teams and monster engines--the cable that remained stolid under the pressure of human traffic, and the heavy tread of commerce, thrilled and surged and shook itself, as mad waves of vibration coursed over its length, and it tore at its slack, until like a foam-crested wave of the sea, it shook the towers at either end, or, like some sentient animal, it tugged at its fetters and longed to be free. "The officers in charge, apprehensive of danger, hurried the poor musician across, and bade him begone and trouble them no more. The ragged genius, putting his well-worn instrument back in its case, muttered to himself, 'I'd either crossed free or torn down the bridge.'" "So the hypnotist," goes on the writer from which the above is quoted, "finds the note on which the subjective side of the person is attuned, and by playing upon it awakens into activity emotions and sensibilities that otherwise would have remained dormant, unused and even unsuspected." No student of science will deny the truth of these statements. At the same time it has been demonstrated again and again that persons can and do frequently hypnotize themselves. This is what Mr. Hart means when he says that any stick or stone may produce hypnotism. If a person will gaze steadily at a bright fire, or a glass of water, for instance, he can throw himself into a hypnotic trance exactly similar to the condition produced by a professional or trained hypnotist. Such people, however, must be possessed of imagination. THEORIES OF HYPNOTISM. We have now learned some facts in regard to hypnotism; but they leave the subject still a mystery. Other facts which will be developed in the course of this book will only deepen the mystery. We will therefore state some of the best known theories. Before doing so, however, it would be well to state concisely just what seems to happen in a case of hypnotism. The word hypnotism means sleep, and the definition of hypnotism implies artificially produced sleep. Sometimes this sleep is deep and lasting, and the patient is totally insensible; but the interesting phase of the condition is that in certain stages the patient is only partially asleep, while the other part of his brain is awake and very active. It is well known that one part of the brain may be affected without affecting the other parts. In hemiplegia, for instance, one half of the nervous system is paralyzed, while the other half is all right. In the stages of hypnotism we will now consider, the will portion of the brain or mind seems to be put to sleep, while the other faculties are, abnormally awake. Some explain this by supposing that the blood is driven out of one portion of the brain and driven into other portions. In any case, it is as though the human engine were uncoupled, and the patient becomes an automaton. If he is told to do this, that, or the other, he does it, simply because his will is asleep and "suggestion", as it is called, from without makes him act just as he starts up unconsciously in his ordinary sleep if tickled with a straw. Now for the theories. There are three leading theories, known as that of 1. Animal Magnetism; 2. Neurosis; and 3. Suggestion. We will simply state them briefly in order without discussion. Animal Magnetism. This is the theory offered by Mesmer, and those who hold it assume that "the hypnotizer exercises a force, independently of suggestion, over the subject. They believe one part of the body to be charged separately, or that the whole body may be filled with magnetism. They recognize the power, of suggestion, but they do not believe it to be the principal factor in the production of the hypnotic state." Those who hold this theory today distinguish between the phenomena produced by magnetism and those produced by physical means or simple suggestion. The Neurosis Theory. We have already explained the word neurosis, but we repeat here the definition given by Dr. J. R. Cocke. "A neurosis is any affection of the nervous centers occurring without any material agent producing it, without inflammation or any other constant structural change which can be detected in the nervous centers. As will be seen from the definition, any abnormal manifestation of the nervous system of whose cause we know practically nothing, is, for convenience, termed a neurosis. If a man has a certain habit or trick, it is termed a neurosis or neuropathic habit. One man of my acquaintance, who is a professor in a college, always begins his lecture by first sneezing and then pulling at his nose. Many forms of tremor are called neurosis. Now to say that hypnotism is the result of a. neurosis, simply means that a person's nervous system is susceptible to this condition, which, by M. Charcot and his followers, is regarded as abnormal." In short, M. Charcot places hypnotism in the same category of nervous affections in which hysteria and finally hallucination (medically considered) are to be classed, that is to say, as a nervous weakness, not to say a disease. According to this theory, a person whose nervous system is perfectly healthy could not be hypnotized. So many people can be hypnotized because nearly all the world is more or less insane, as a certain great writer has observed. Suggestion. This theory is based on the power of mind over the body as we observe it in everyday life. Again let me quote from Dr. Cooke. "If we can direct the subject's whole attention to the belief that such an effect as before mentioned--that his arm will be paralyzed, for instance--will take place, that effect will gradually occur. Such a result having been once produced, the subject's will-power and power of resistance are considerably weakened, because he is much more inclined than at first to believe the hypnotizer's assertion. This is generally the first step in the process of hypnosis. The method pursued at the school of Nancy is to convince the subject that his eyes are closing by directing his attention to that effect as strongly as possible. However, it is not necessary that we begin with the eyes. According to M. Dessoir, any member of the body will answer as well." The theory of Suggestion is maintained by the medical school attached to the hospital at Nancy. The theory of Neurosis was originally put forth as the result of experiments by Dr. Charcot at the Salpetriere hospital in Paris, which is now the co-called Salpetriere school--that is the medical, school connected with the Salpetriere hospital. There is also another theory put forth, or rather a modification of Professor Charcot's theory, and maintained by the school of the Charity hospital in Paris, headed by Dr. Luys, to the effect that the physical magnet and electricity may affect persons in the hypnotic state, and that certain drugs in sealed tubes placed upon the patient's neck during the condition of hypnosis will produce the same effects which those drugs would produce if taken internally, or as the nature of the drugs would seem to call for if imbibed in a more complete fashion. This school, however, has been considerably discredited, and Dr. Luys' conclusions are not received by scientific students of hypnotism. It is also stated, and the present writer has seen no effective denial, that hypnotism may be produced by pressing with the fingers upon certain points in the body, known as hypnogenic spots. It will be seen that these three theories stated above are greatly at variance with each other. The student of hypnotism will have to form a conclusion for himself as he investigates the facts. Possibly it will be found that the true theory is a combination of all three of those described above. Hypnotism is certainly a complicated phenomena, and he would be a rash man who should try to explain it in a sentence or in a paragraph. An entire book proves a very limited space for doing it. CHAPTER I. HOW TO HYPNOTIZE. Dr. Cocke's Method--Dr. Flint's Method--The French Method at Paris--at Nancy--The Hindoo Silent Method--How to Wake a Subject from Hypnotic Sleep--Frauds of Public Hypnotic Entertainers. First let us quote what is said of hypnotism in Foster's Encyclopedic Medical Dictionary. The dictionary states the derivation of the word from the Greek word meaning sleep, and gives as synonym "Braidism". This definition follows: "An abnormal state into which some persons may be thrown, either by a voluntary act of their own, such as gazing continuously with fixed attention on some bright object held close to the eyes, or by the exercise of another person's will; characterized by suspension of the will and consequent obedience to the promptings of suggestions from without. The activity of the organs of special sense, except the eye, may be heightened, and the power of the muscles increased. Complete insensibility to pain may be induced by hypnotism, and it has been used as an anaesthetic. It is apt to be followed by a severe headache of long continuance, and by various nervous disturbances. On emerging from the hypnotic state, the person hypnotized usually has no remembrance of what happened during its continuance, but in many persons such remembrance may be induced by 'suggestion'. About one person in three is susceptible to hypnotism, and those of the hysterical or neurotic tendency (but rarely the insane) are the most readily hypnotized." First we will quote the directions for producing hypnotism given by Dr. James R. Cocke, one of the most scientific experimenters in hypnotism in America. His directions of are special value, since they are more applicable to American subjects than the directions given by French writers. Says Dr. Cocke: "The hypnotic state can be produced in one of the following ways: First, command the subject to close his eyes. Tell him his mind is a blank. Command him to think of nothing. Leave him a few minutes; return and tell him he cannot open his eyes. If he fails to do so, then begin to make any suggestion which may be desired. This is the so-called mental method of hypnotization. "Secondly, give the subject a coin or other bright object. Tell him to look steadfastly at it and not take his eyes away from it. Suggest that his eyelids are growing heavy, that he cannot keep them open. Now close the lids. They cannot be opened. This is the usual method employed by public exhibitors. A similar method is by looking into a mirror, or into a glass of water, or by rapidly revolving polished disks, which should be looked at steadfastly in the same way as is the coin, and I think tires the eyes less. "Another method is by simply commanding the subject to close his eyes, while the operator makes passes over his head and hands without coming in contact with them. Suggestions may be made during these passes. "Fascination, as it is called, is one of the hypnotic states. The operator fixes his eyes on those of the subject. Holding his attention for a few minutes, the operator begins to walk backward; the subject follows. The operator raises the arm; the subject does likewise. Briefly, the subject will imitate any movement of the hypnotist, or will obey any suggestion made by word, look or gesture, suggested by the one with whom he is en rapport. "A very effective method of hypnotizing a person is by commanding him to sleep, and having some very soft music played upon the piano, or other stringed instrument. Firm pressure over the orbits, or over the finger-ends and root of the nail for some minutes may also induce the condition of hypnosis in very sensitive persons. "Also hypnosis can frequently be induced by giving the subject a glass of water, and telling him at the same time that it has been magnetized. The wearing of belts around the body, and rings round the fingers, will also, sometimes, induce a degree of hypnosis, if the subject has been told that they have previously been magnetized or are electric. The latter descriptions are the so-called physical methods described by Dr. Moll." Dr. Herbert L. Flint, a stage hypnotizer, describes his methods as follows: "To induce hypnotism, I begin by friendly conversation to place my patient in a condition of absolute calmness and quiescence. I also try to win his confidence by appealing to his own volitional effort to aid me in obtaining the desired clad. I impress upon him that hypnosis in his condition is a benign agency, and far from subjugating his mentality, it becomes intensified to so great an extent as to act as a remedial agent. "Having assured myself that he is in a passive condition, I suggest to him, either with or without passes, that after looking intently at an object for a few moments, he will experience a feeling of lassitude. I steadily gaze at his eyes, and in a monotonous tone I continue to suggest the various stages of sleep. As for instance, I say, 'Your breathing is heavy. Your whole body is relaxed.' I raise his arm, holding it in a horizontal position for a second or two, and suggest to him that it is getting heavier and heavier. I let my hand go and his arm falls to his side. "'Your eyes,' I continue, 'feel tired and sleepy. They are fast closing' repeating in a soothing tone the words 'sleepy, sleepy, sleep.' Then in a self-assertive tone, I emphasize the suggestion by saying in an unhesitating and positive tone, 'sleep.' "I do not, however, use this method with all patients. It is an error to state, as some specialists do, that from their formula there can be no deviation; because, as no two minds are constituted alike, so they cannot be affected alike. While one will yield by intense will exerted through my eyes, another may, by the same means, become fretful, timid, nervous, and more wakeful than he was before. The same rule applies to gesture, tones of the voice, and mesmeric passes. That which has a soothing and lulling effect on one, may have an opposite effect on another. There can be no unvarying rule applicable to all patients. The means must be left to the judgment of the operator, who by a long course of psychological training should be able to judge what measures are necessary to obtain control of his subject. Just as in drugs, one person may take a dose without injury that will kill another, so in hypnosis, one person can be put into a deep sleep by means that would be totally ineffectual in another, and even then the mental states differ in each individual--that which in one induces a gentle slumber may plunge his neighbor into a deep cataleptic state." That hypnotism may be produced by purely physical or mechanical means seems to have been demonstrated by an incident which started Doctor Burq, a Frenchman, upon a scientific inquiry which lasted many years. "While practising as a young doctor, he had one day been obliged to go out and had deemed it advisable to lock up a patient in his absence. Just as he was leaving the house he heard the sound as of a body suddenly falling. He hurried back into the room and found his patient in a state of catalepsy. Monsieur Burq was at that time studying magnetism, and he at once sought for the cause of this phenomenon. He noticed that the door-handle was of copper. The next day he wrapped a glove around the handle, again shut the patient in, and this time nothing occurred. He interrogated the patient, but she could give him no explanation. He then tried the effect of copper on all the subjects at the Salpetriere and the Cochin hospitals, and found that a great number were affected by it." At the Charity hospital in Paris, Doctor Luys used an apparatus moved by clockwork. Doctor Foveau, one of his pupils, thus describes it: "The hypnotic state, generally produced by the contemplation of a bright spot, a lamp, or the human eye, is in his case induced by a peculiar kind of mirror. The mirrors are made of pieces of wood cut prismatically in which fragments of mirrors are incrusted. They are generally double and placed crosswise, and by means of clockwork revolve automatically. They are the same as sportsmen use to attract larks, the rays of the sun being caught and reflected on every side and from all points of the horizon. If the little mirrors in each branch are placed in parallel lines in front of a patient, and the rotation is rapid, the optic organ soon becomes fatigued, and a calming soothing somnolence ensues. At first it is not a deep sleep, the eye-lids are scarcely heavy, the drowsiness slight and restorative. By degrees, by a species of training, the hypnotic sleep differs more and more from natural sleep, the individual abandons himself more and more completely, and falls into one of the regular phases of hypnotic sleep. Without a word, without a suggestion or any other action, Dr. Luys has made wonderful cures. Wecker, the occulist, has by the same means entirely cured spasms of the eye-lids." Professor Delboeuf gives the following account of how the famous Liebault produced hypnotism at the hospital at Nancy. We would especially ask the reader to note what he says of Dr. Liebault's manner and general bearing, for without doubt much of his success was due to his own personality. Says Professor Delboeuf: "His modus faciendi has something ingenious and simple about it, enhanced by a tone and air of profound conviction; and his voice has such fervor and warmth that he carries away his clients with him. "After having inquired of the patient what he is suffering from, without any further or closer examination, he places his hand on the patient's forehead and, scarcely looking at him, says, 'You are going to sleep.' Then, almost immediately, he closes the eyelids, telling him that he is asleep. After that he raises the patient's arm, and says, 'You cannot put your arm down.' If he does, Dr. Liebault appears hardly to notice it. He then turns the patient's arm around, confidently affirming that the movement cannot be stopped, and saying this he turns his own arms rapidly around, the patient remaining all the time with his eyes shut; then the doctor talks on without ceasing in a loud and commanding voice. The suggestions begin: "'You are going to be cured; your digestion will be good, your sleep quiet, your cough will stop, your circulation will become free and regular; you are going to feel very strong and well, you will be able to walk about,' etc., etc. He hardly ever varies the speech. Thus he fires away at every kind of disease at once, leaving it to the client to find out his own. No doubt he gives some special directions, according to the disease the patient is suffering from, but general instructions are the chief thing. "The same suggestions are repeated a great many times to the same person, and, strange to say, notwithstanding the inevitable monotony of the speeches, and the uniformity of both style and voice, the master's tone is so ardent, so penetrating, so sympathetic, that I have never once listened to it without a feeling of intense admiration." The Hindoos produce sleep simply by sitting on the ground and, fixing their eyes steadily on the subject, swaying the body in a sort of writhing motion above the hips. By continuing this steadily and in perfect silence for ten or fifteen minutes before a large audience, dozens can be put to sleep at one time. In all cases, freedom from noise or distractive incidents is essential to success in hypnotism, for concentration must be produced. Certain French operators maintain that hypnotism may be produced by pressure on certain hypnogenic points or regions of the body. Among these are the eye-balls, the crown of the head, the back of the neck and the upper bones of the spine between the shoulder glades. Some persons may be hypnotized by gently pressing on the skin at the base of the finger-nails, and at the root of the nose; also by gently scratching the neck over the great nerve center. Hypnotism is also produced by sudden noise, as if by a Chinese gong, etc. HOW TO WAKE A SUBJECT FROM HYPNOTIC SLEEP. This is comparatively easy in moot cases. Most persons will awake naturally at the end of a few minutes, or will fall into a natural sleep from which in an hour or two they will awake refreshed. Usually the operator simply says to the subject, "All right, wake up now," and claps his hands or makes some other decided noise. In some cases it is sufficient to say, "You will wake up in five minutes"; or tell a subject to count twelve and when he gets to ten say, "Wake up." Persons in the lethargic state are not susceptible to verbal suggestions, but may be awakened by lifting both eyelids. It is said that pressure on certain regions will wake the subject, just as pressure in certain other places will put the subject to sleep. Among these places for awakening are the ovarian regions. Some writers recommend the application of cold water to awaken subjects, but this is rarely necessary. In olden times a burning coal was brought near. If hypnotism was produced by passes, then wakening may be brought about by passes in the opposite direction, or with the back of the hand toward the subject. The only danger is likely to be found in hysterical persons. They will, if aroused, often fall off again into a helpless state, and continue to do so for some time to come. It is dangerous to hypnotize such subjects. Care should be taken to awaken the subject very thoroughly before leaving him, else headache, nausea, or the like may follow, with other unpleasant effects. In all cases subjects should be treated gently and with the utmost consideration, as if the subject and operator were the most intimate friends. It is better that the person who induces hypnotic sleep should awaken the subject. Others cannot do it so easily, though as we have said, subjects usually awaken themselves after a short time. Further description of the method of producing hypnotism need not be given; but it is proper to add that in addition to the fact that not more than one person out of three can be hypnotized at all, even by an experienced operator, to effect hypnotization except in a few cases requires a great deal of patience, both on the part of the operator and of the subject. It may require half a dozen or more trials before any effect at all can be produced, although in some cases the effect will come within a minute or two. After a person has been once hypnotized, hypnotization is much easier. The most startling results are to be obtained only after a long process of training on the part of the subject. Public hypnotic entertainments, and even those given at the hospitals in Paris, would be quite impossible if trained subjects were not at hand; and in the case of the public hypnotizer, the proper subjects are hired and placed in the audience for the express purpose of coming forward when called for. The success of such an entertainment could not otherwise be guaranteed. In many cases, also, this training of subjects makes them deceivers. They learn to imitate what they see, and since their living depends upon it, they must prove hypnotic subjects who can always be depended upon to do just what is wanted. We may add, however, that what they do is no more than an imitation of the real thing. There is no grotesque manifestation on the stage, even if it is a pure fake, which could not be matched by more startling facts taken from undoubted scientific experience. CHAPTER II. AMUSING EXPERIMENTS. Hypnotizing on the Stage--"You Can't Pull Your Hands Apart"--Post Hypnotic Suggestion--The News boy, the Hunter, and the Young Man with the Rag Doll--A Whip Becomes Hot Iron--Courting a Broomstick--The Side Show. Let us now describe some of the manifestations of hypnotism, to see just how it operates and how it exhibits itself. The following is a description of a public performance given by Dr. Herbert L. Flint, a very successful public operator. It is in the language of an eye-witness--a New York lawyer. In response to a call for volunteers, twenty young and middle-aged men came upon the stage. They evidently belonged to the great middle-class. The entertainment commenced by Dr. Flint passing around the group, who were seated on the stage in a semicircle facing the audience, and stroking each one's head and forehead, repeating the phrases, "Close your eyes. Think of nothing but sleep. You are very tired. You are drowsy. You feel very sleepy." As he did this, several of the volunteers closed their eyes at once, and one fell asleep immediately. One or two remained awake, and these did not give themselves up to the influence, but rather resisted it. When the doctor had completed his round and had manipulated all the volunteers, some of those influenced were nodding, some were sound asleep, while a few were wide awake and smiling at the rest. These latter were dismissed as unlikely subjects. When the stage had been cleared of all those who were not responsive, the doctor passed around, and, snapping his finger at each individual, awoke him. One of the subjects when questioned afterward as to what sensation he experienced at the snapping of the fingers, replied that it seemed to him as if something inside of his head responded, and with this sensation he regained self-consciousness. (This is to be doubted. As a rule, subjects in this stage of hypnotism do not feel any sensation that they can remember, and do not become self-conscious.) The class was now apparently wide awake, and did not differ in appearance from their ordinary state. The doctor then took each one and subjected him to a separate physical test, such as sealing the eyes, fastening the hands, stiffening the fingers, arms, and legs, producing partial catalepsy and causing stuttering and inability to speak. In those possessing strong imaginations, he was able to produce hallucinations, such as feeling mosquito bites, suffering from toothache, finding the pockets filled and the hands covered with molasses, changing identity, and many similar tests. The doctor now asked each one to clasp his hands in front of him, and when all had complied with the request, he repeated the phrase, "Think your hands so fast that you can't pull them apart. They are fast. You cannot pull them apart. Try. You can't." The whole class made frantic efforts to unclasp their hands, but were unable to do so. The doctor's explanation of this is, that what they were really doing was to force their hands closer together, thus obeying the counter suggestion. That they thought they were trying to unclasp their hands was evident from their endeavors. The moment he made them desist, by snapping his fingers, the spell was broken. It was most astonishing to see that as each one awoke, he seemed to be fully cognizant of the ridiculous position in which his comrades were placed, and to enjoy their confusion and ludicrous attitudes. The moment, however, he was commanded to do things equally absurd, he obeyed. While, therefore, the class appeared to be free agents, they are under hypnotic control. One young fellow, aged about eighteen, said that he was addicted to the cigarette habit. The suggestion was made to him that he would not be able to smoke a cigarette for twenty-four hours. After the entertainment he was asked to smoke, as was his usual habit. He was then away from any one who could influence him. He replied that the very idea was repugnant. However, he was induced to take a cigarette in his mouth, but it made him ill and he flung it away with every expression of disgust. *This is an instance of what is called post-hypnotic suggestion. Dr. Cocke tells of suggesting to a drinker whom he was trying to cure of the habit that for the next three days anything he took would make him vomit; the result followed as suggested. The same phenomena that was shown in unclasping the hands, was next exhibited in commanding the subjects to rotate them. They immediately began and twirled them faster and faster, in spite of their efforts to stop. One of the subjects said he thought of nothing but the strange action of his hands, and sometimes it puzzled him to know why they whirled. At this point Dr. Flint's daughter took charge of the class. She pointed her finger at one of them, and the subject began to look steadily before him, at which the rest of the class were highly amused. Presently the subject's head leaned forward, the pupils of his eyes dilated and assumed a peculiar glassy stare. He arose with a steady, gliding gait and walked up to the lady until his nose touched her hand. Then he stopped. Miss Flint led him to the front of the stage and left him standing in profound slumber. He stood there, stooping, eyes set, and vacant, fast asleep. In the meantime the act had caused great laughter among the rest of the class. One young fellow in particular, laughed so uproariously that tears coursed down his cheeks, and he took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. Just as he was returning it to his pocket, the lady suddenly pointed a finger at him. She was in the center of the stage, fully fifteen feet away from the subject, but the moment the gesture was made, his countenance fell, his mirth stopped, while that of his companions redoubled, and the change was so obvious that the audience shared in the laughter--but the subject neither saw nor heard. His eyes assumed the same expression that had been noticed in his companion's. He, too, arose in the same attitude, as if his head were pulling the body along, and following the finger in the same way as his predecessor, was conducted to the front of the stage by the side of the first subject. This was repeated on half a dozen subjects, and the manifestations were the same in each case. Those selected were now drawn up in an irregular line in front of the stage, their eyes fixed on vacancy, their heads bent forward, perfectly motionless. Each was then given a suggestion. One was to be a newsboy, and sell papers. Another was given a broomstick and told to hunt game in the woods before him. Another was given a large rag doll and told that it was an infant, and that he must look among the audience and discover the father. He was informed that he could tell who the father was by the similarity and the color of the eyes. These suggestions were made in a loud tone, Miss Flint being no nearer one subject than another. The bare suggestion was given, as, "Now, think that you are a newsboy, and are selling papers," or, "Now think that you are hunting and are going into the woods to shoot birds." So the party was started at the same time into the audience. The one who was impersonating a newsboy went about crying his edition in a loud voice; while the hunter crawled along stealthily and carefully. The newsboy even adopted the well-worn device of asking those whom he solicited to buy to help him get rid of his stock. One man offered him a cent, when the price was two cents. The newsboy chaffed the would-be purchaser. He sarcastically asked him if he "didn't want the earth." The others did what they had been told to do in the same earnest, characteristic way. After this performance, the class was again seated in a semicircle, and Miss Flint selected one of them, and, taking him into the center of the stage, showed him a small riding whip. He looked at it indifferently enough. He was told it was a hot bar of iron, but he shook his head, still incredulous. The suggestion was repeated, and as the glazed look came into his eyes, the incredulous look died out. Every member of the class was following the suggestion made to the subject in hand. All of them had the same expression in their eyes. The doctor said that his daughter was hypnotizing the whole class through this one individual. As she spoke she lightly touched the subject with the end of the whip. The moment the subject felt the whip he jumped and shrieked as if it really were a hot iron. She touched each one of the class in succession, and every one manifested the utmost pain and fear. One subject sat down on the floor and cried in dire distress. Others, when touched, would tear off their clothing or roll up their sleeves. One young man was examined by a physician present just after the whip had been laid across his shoulders, and a long red mark was found, just such a one as would have been made by a real hot iron. The doctor said that, had the suggestion been continued, it would undoubtedly have raised a blister. One of the amusing experiments tried at a later time was that of a tall young man, diffident, pale and modest, being given a broom carefully wrapped in a sheet, and told that it was his sweetheart. He accepted the situation and sat down by the broom. He was a little sheepish at first, but eventually he grew bolder, and smiled upon her such a smile as Malvolio casts upon Olivia. The manner in which, little by little, he ventured upon a familiar footing, was exceedingly funny; but when, in a moment of confident response to his wooing, he clasped her round the waist and imprinted a chaste kiss upon the brushy part of the broom, disguised by the sheet, the house resounded with roars of laughter. The subject, however, was deaf to all of the noise. He was absorbed in his courtship, and he continued to hug the broom, and exhibit in his features that idiotic smile that one sees only upon the faces of lovers and bridegrooms. "All the world loves a lover," as the saying is, and all the world loves to laugh at him. One of the subjects was told that the head of a man in the audience was on fire. He looked for a moment, and then dashed down the platform into the audience, and, seizing the man's head, vigorously rubbed it. As this did not extinguish the flames, he took off his coat and put the fire out. In doing this, he set his coat on fire, when he trampled it under foot. Then he calmly resumed his garment and walked back to the stage. The "side-show" closed the evening's entertainment. A young man was told to think of himself as managing a side-show at a circus. When his mind had absorbed this idea he was ordered to open his exhibition. He at once mounted a table, and, in the voice of the traditional side-show fakir, began to dilate upon the fat woman and the snakes, upon the wild man from Borneo, upon the learned pig, and all the other accessories of side-shows. He went over the usual characteristic "patter," getting more and more in earnest, assuring his hearers that for the small sum of ten cents they could see more wonders than ever before had been crowded under one canvas tent. He harangued the crowd as they surged about the tent door. He pointed to a suppositious canvas picture. He "chaffed" the boys. He flattered the vanity of the young fellows with their girls, telling them that they could not afford, for the small sum of ten cents, to miss this great show. He made change for his patrons. He indulged in side remarks, such as "This is hot work." He rolled up his sleeves and took off his collar and necktie, all of the time expatiating upon the merits of the freaks inside of his tent. CHAPTER III. THE STAGES OF HYPNOTISM. Lethargy--Catalepsy--The Somnambulistic Stage--Fascination. We have just given some of the amusing experiments that may be performed with subjects in one of the minor stages of hypnotism. But there are other stages which give entirely different manifestations. For a scientific classification of these we are indebted to Professor Charcot, of the Salpetriere hospital in Paris, to whom, next to Mesmer and Braid, we are indebted for the present science of hypnotism. He recognized three distinct stages--lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. There is also a condition of extreme lethargy, a sort of trance state, that lasts for days and even weeks, and, indeed, has been known to last for years. There is also a lighter phase than somnambulism, that is called fascination. Some doctors, however, place it between catalepsy and somnambulism. Each of these stages is marked by quite distinct phenomena. We give them as described by a pupil of Dr. Charcot. LETHARGY. This is a state of absolute inert sleep. If the method of Braid is used, and a bright object is held quite near the eyes, and the eyes are fixed upon it, the subject squints, the eyes become moist and bright, the look fixed, and the pupils dilated. This is the cataleptic stage. If the object is left before the eyes, lethargy is produced. There are also many other ways of producing lethargy, as we have seen in the chapter "How to Hypnotize." One of the marked characteristics of this stage of hypnotism is the tendency of the muscles to contract, under the influence of the slightest touch, friction, pressure or massage, or even that of a magnet placed at a distance. The contraction disappears only by the repetition of that identical means that called it into action. Dr. Courmelles gives the following illustration: "If the forearm is rubbed a little above the palm of the hand, this latter yields and bends at an acute angle. The subject may be suspended by the hand, and the body will be held up without relaxation, that is, without returning to the normal condition. To return to the normal state, it suffices to rub the antagonistic muscles, or, in ordinary terms, the part diametrically opposed to that which produced the phenomenon; in this case, the forearm a little above the hands. It is the same for any other part of the body." The subject appears to be in a deep sleep, the eyes are either closed or half closed, and the face is without expression. The body appears to be in a state of complete collapse, the head is thrown back, and the arms and legs hang loose, dropping heavily down. In this stage insensibility is so complete that needles can be run into any part of the body without producing pain, and surgical operations may be performed without the slightest unpleasant effect. This stage lasts usually but a short time, and the patient, under ordinary conditions, will pass upward into the stage of catalepsy, in which he opens his eyes. If the hypnotism is spontaneous, that is, if it is due to a condition of the nervous organism which has produced it without any outside aid, we have the condition of prolonged trance, of which many cases have been reported. Until the discovery of hypnotism these strange trances were little understood, and people were even buried alive in them. A few instances reported by medical men will be interesting. There is one reported in 1889 by a noted French physician. Said he: "There is at this moment in the hospital at Mulhouse a most interesting case. A young girl twenty-two years of age has been asleep here for the last twelve days. Her complexion is fresh and rosy, her breathing quite normal, and her features unaltered. "No organ seems attacked; all the vital functions are performed as in the waking state. She is fed with milk, broth and wine, which is given her in a spoon. Her mouth even sometimes opens of itself at the contact of the spoon, and she swallows without the slightest difficulty. At other times the gullet remains inert. "The whole body is insensible. The forehead alone presents, under the action of touch or of pricks, some reflex phenomena. However, by a peculiarity, which is extremely interesting, she seems, by the intense horror she shows for ether, to retain a certain amount of consciousness and sensibility. If a drop of ether is put into her mouth her face contracts and assumes an expression of disgust. At the same moment her arms and legs are violently agitated, with the kind of impatient motion that a child displays when made to swallow some hated dose of medicine. "In the intellectual relations the brain is not absolutely obscure, for on her mother's coming to see her the subject's face became highly colored, and tears appeared on the tips of her eyelashes, without, however, in any other way disturbing her lethargy. "Nothing has yet been able to rouse her from this torpor, which will, no doubt, naturally disappear at a given moment. She will then return to conscious life as she quitted it. It is probable that she will not retain any recollection of her present condition, that all notion of time will fail her, and that she will fancy it is only the day following her usual nightly slumber, a slumber which, in this case, has been transformed into a lethargic sleep, without any rigidity of limbs or convulsions. "Physically, the sleeper is of a middle size, slender, strong and pretty, without distinctive characteristic. Mentally, she is lively, industrious, sometimes whimsical, and subject to slight nervous attacks." There is a pretty well-authenticated report of a young girl who, on May 30, 1883, after an intense fright, fell into a lethargic condition which lasted for four years. Her parents were poor and ignorant, but, as the fame of the case spread abroad, some physicians went to investigate it in March, 1887. Her sleep had never been interrupted. On raising the eyelids, the doctors found the eyes turned convulsively upward, but, blowing upon them, produced no reflex movement of the lids. Her jaws were closed tightly, and the attempt to open her mouth had broken off some of the teeth level with the gums. The muscles contracted at the least breath or touch, and the arms remained in position when uplifted. The contraction of the muscles is a sign of the lethargic state, but the arm, remaining in position, indicates the cataleptic state. The girl was kept alive by liquid nourishment poured into her mouth. There are on record a large number of cases of persons who have slept for several months. CATALEPSY. The next higher stage of hypnotism is that of catalepsy. Patients may be thrown into it directly, or patients in the lethargic state may be brought into it by lifting the eyelids. It seems that the light penetrating the eyes, and affecting the brain, awakens new powers, for the cataleptic state has phenomena quite peculiar to itself. Nearly all the means for producing hypnotism will, if carried to just the right degree, produce catalepsy. For instance, besides the fixing of the eye on a bright object, catalepsy may be produced by a sudden sound, as of a Chinese gong, a tom-tom or a whistle, the vibration of a tuning-fork, or thunder. If a solar spectrum is suddenly brought into a dark room it may produce catalepsy, which is also produced by looking at the sun, or a lime light, or an electric light. In this state the patient has become perfectly rigidly fixed in the position in which he happens to be when the effect is produced, whether sitting, standing, kneeling, or the like; and this face has an expression of fear. The arms or legs may be raised, but if left to themselves will not drop, as in lethargy. The eyes are wide open, but the look is fixed and impassive. The fixed position lasts only a few minutes, however, when the subject returns to a position of relaxation, or drops back into the lethargic state. If the muscles, nerves or tendons are rubbed or pressed, paralysis may be produced, which, however, is quickly removed by the use of electricity, when the patient awakes. By manipulating the muscles the most rigid contraction may be produced, until the entire body is in such a state of corpse-like rigidity that a most startling experiment is possible. The subject may be placed with his head upon the back of one chair and his heels on the back of another, and a heavy man may sit upon him without seemingly producing any effect, or even heavy rock may be broken on the subject's body. Messieurs Binet and Fere, pupils of the Salpetriere school, describe the action of magnets on cataleptic subjects, as follows: "The patient is seated near a table, on which a magnet has been placed, the left elbow rests on the arm of the chair, the forearm and hand vertically upraised with thumb and index finger extended, while the other fingers remain half bent. On the right side the forearm and hand are stretched on the table, and the magnet is placed under a linen cloth at a distance of about two inches. After a couple of minutes the right index begins to tremble and rise up; on the left side the extended fingers bend down, and the hand remains limp for an instant. The right hand and forearm rise up and assume the primitive position of the left hand, which is now stretched out on the arm of the chair, with the waxen pliability that pertains to the cataleptic state." An interesting experiment may be tried by throwing a patient into lethargy on one side and catalepsy on the other. To induce what is called hemi-lethargy and hemi-catalepsy is not difficult. First, the lethargic stage is induced, then one eyelid is raised, and that side alone becomes cataleptic, and may be operated on in various interesting ways. The arm on that side, for instance, will remain raised when lifted, while the arm on the other side will fall heavily. Still more interesting is the intellectual condition of the subject. Some great man has remarked that if he wished to know what a person was thinking of, he assumed the exact position and expression of that person, and soon he would begin to feel and think just as the other was thinking and feeling. Look a part and you will soon begin to feel it. In the cataleptic subject there is a close relation between the attitude the subject assumes and the intellectual manifestation. In the somnambulistic stage patients are manipulated by speaking to them; in the cataleptic stage they are equally under the will of the operator; but now he controls them by gesture. Says Dr. Courmelles, from his own observation: "The emotions in this stage are made at command, in the true acceptation of the word, for they are produced, not by orders verbally expressed, but by expressive movements. If the hands are opened and drawn close to the mouth, as when a kiss is wafted, the mouth smiles. If the arms are extended and half bent at the elbows, the countenance assumes an expression of astonishment. The slightest variation of movement is reflected in the emotions. If the fists are closed, the brow contracts and the face expresses anger. If a lively or sad tune is played, if amusing or depressing pictures are shown, the subject, like a faithful mirror, at once reflects these impressions. If a smile is produced it can be seen to diminish and disappear at the same time as the hand is moved away, and again to reappear and increase when it is once more brought near. Better still, a double expression can be imparted to the physiognomy, by approaching the left hand to the left side of the mouth, the left side of the physiognomy will smile, while at the same time, by closing the right hand, the right eyebrow will frown. The subject can be made to send kisses, or to turn his hands round each other indefinitely. If the hand is brought near the nose it will blow; if the arms are stretched out they will remain extended, while the head will be bowed with a marked expression of pain." Heidenhain was able to take possession of the subject's gaze and control him by sight, through producing mimicry. He looks fixedly at the patient till the patient is unable to take his eyes away. Then the patient will copy every movement he makes. If he rises and goes backward the patient will follow, and with his right hand he will imitate the movements of the operator's left, as if he were a mirror. The attitudes of prayer, melancholy, pain, disdain, anger or fear, may be produced in this manner. The experiments of Donato, a stage hypnotizer, are thus described: "After throwing the subjects into catalepsy he causes soft music to be played, which produces a rapturous expression. If the sound is heightened or increased, the subjects seem to receive a shock and a feeling of disappointment. The artistic sense developed by hypnotism is disturbed; the faces express astonishment, stupefaction and pain. If the same soft melody be again resumed, the same expression of rapturous bliss reappears in the countenance. The faces become seraphic and celestial when the subjects are by nature handsome, and when the subjects are ordinary looking, even ugly, they are idealized as by a special kind of beauty." The strange part of all this is, that on awaking, the patient has no recollection of what has taken place, and careful tests have shown that what appear to be violent emotions, such as in an ordinary state would produce a quickened pulse and heavy breathing, create no disturbance whatever in the cataleptic subject; only the outer mask is in motion. "Sometimes the subjects lean backward with all the grace of a perfect equilibrist, freeing themselves from the ordinary mechanical laws. The curvature will, indeed, at times be so complete that the head will touch the floor and the body describe a regular arc. "When a female subject assumes an attitude of devotion, clasps her hands, turns her eyes upward and lisps out a prayer, she presents an admirably artistic picture, and her features and expression seem worthy of being reproduced on canvas." We thus see what a perfect automaton the human body may become. There appears, however, to be a sort of unconscious memory, for a familiar object will seem to suggest spontaneously its ordinary use. Thus, if a piece of soap is put into a cataleptic patient's hands; he will move it around as though he thought he were washing them, and if there is any water near he will actually wash them. The sight of an umbrella makes him shiver as if he were in a storm. Handing such a person a pen will not make him write, but if a letter is dictated to him out loud he will write in an irregular hand. The subject may also be made to sing, scream or speak different languages with which he is entirely unfamiliar. This is, however, a verging toward the somnambulistic stage, for in deep catalepsy the patient does not speak or hear. The state is produced by placing the hands on the head, the forehead, or nape of the neck. THE SOMNAMBULISTIC STAGE. This is the stage or phase of hypnotism nearest the waking, and is the only one that can be produced in some subjects. Patients in the cataleptic state can be brought into the somnambulistic by rubbing the top of the head. To all appearances, the patient is fully awake, his eyes are open, and he answers when spoken to, but his voice does not have the same sound as when awake. Yet, in this state the patient is susceptible of all the hallucinations of insanity which may be induced at the verbal command of the operator. One of the most curious features of this stage of hypnotism is the effect on the memory. Says Monsieur Richet: "I send V---- to sleep. I recite some verses to her, and then I awake her. She remembers nothing. I again send her to sleep, and she remembers perfectly the verses I recited. I awake her, and she has again forgotten everything." It appears, however, that if commanded to remember on awaking, a patient may remember. The active sense, and the memory as well, appears to be in an exalted state of activity during this phase of hypnotism. Says M. Richet: "M----, who will sing the air of the second act of the Africaine in her sleep, is incapable of remembering a single note of it when awake." Another patient, while under this hypnotic influence, could remember all he had eaten for several days past, but when awake could remember very little. Binet and Fere caused one of their subjects to remember the whole of his repasts for eight days past, though when awake he could remember nothing beyond two or three days. A patient of Dr. Charcot, who when she was two years old had seen Dr. Parrot in the children's hospital, but had not seen him since, and when awake could not remember him, named him at once when he entered during her hypnotic sleep. M. Delboeuf tells of an experiment he tried, in which the patient did remember what had taken place during the hypnotic condition, when he suddenly awakened her in the midst of the hallucination; as, for instance, he told her the ashes from the cigar he was smoking had fallen on her handkerchief and had set it on fire, whereupon she at once rose and threw the handkerchief into the water. Then, suddenly awakened, she remembered the whole performance. In the somnambulistic stage the patient is no longer an automaton merely, but a real personality, "an individual with his own character, his likes and dislikes." The tone of the voice of the operator seems to have quite as much effect as his words. If he speaks in a grave and solemn tone, for instance, even if what he utters is nonsense, the effect is that of a deeply tragic story. The will of another is not so easily implanted as has been claimed. While a patient will follow almost any suggestion that may be offered, he readily obeys only commands which are in keeping with his character. If he is commanded to do something he dislikes or which in the waking state would be very repugnant to him, he hesitates, does it very reluctantly, and in extreme cases refuses altogether, often going into hysterics. It was found at the Charity hospital that one patient absolutely refused to accept a cassock and become a priest. One of Monsieur Richet's patients screamed with pain the moment an amputation was suggested, but almost immediately recognized that it was only a suggestion, and laughed in the midst of her tears. Probably, however, this patient was not completely hypnotized. Dr. Dumontpallier was able to produce a very curious phenomenon. He suggested to a female patient that with the right eye she could see a picture on a blank card. On awakening she could, indeed, see the picture with the right eye, but the left eye told her the card was blank. While she was in the somnambulistic state he told her in her right ear that the weather was very fine, and at the same time another person whispered in her left ear that it was raining. On the right side of her face she had a smile, while the left angle of her lip dropped as if she were depressed by the thought of the rain. Again, he describes a dance and gay party in one ear, and another person mimics the barking of a dog in the other. One side of her face in that case wears an amused expression, while the other shows signs of alarm. Dr. Charcot thus describes a curious experiment: "A portrait is suggested to a subject as existing on a blank card, which is then mixed with a dozen others; to all appearance they are similar cards. The subject, being awakened, is requested to look over the packet, and does so without knowing the reason of the request, but when he perceives the card on which the portrait was suggested, he at once recognizes the imaginary portrait. It is probable that some insignificant mark has, owing to his visual hyperacuity, fixed the image in the subject's brain." FASCINATION. Says a recent French writer: "Dr. Bremand, a naval doctor, has obtained in men supposed to be perfectly healthy a new condition, which he calls fascination. The inventor considers that this is hypnotism in its mildest form, which, after repeated experiments, might become catalepsy. The subject fascinated by Dr. Bremaud--fascination being induced by the contemplation of a bright spot--falls into a state of stupor. He follows the operator and servilely imitates his movements, gestures and words; he obeys suggestions, and a stimulation of the nerves induces contraction, but the cataleptic pliability does not exist." A noted public hypnotizer in Paris some years ago produced fascination in the following manner: He would cause the subject to lean on his hands, thus fatiguing the muscles. The excitement produced by the concentrated gaze of a large audience also assisted in weakening the nervous resistance. At last the operator would suddenly call out: "Look at me!" The subject would look up and gaze steadily into the operator's eyes, who would stare steadily back with round, glaring eyes, and in most cases subdue his victim. CHAPTER IV. How the Subject Feels Under Hypnotization.--Dr. Cooper's Experience.--Effect of Music.--Dr. Alfred Marthieu's Experiments. The sensations produced during a state of hypnosis are very interesting. As may be supposed, they differ greatly in different persons. One of the most interesting accounts ever given is that of Dr. James R. Cocke, a hypnotist himself, who submitted to being operated upon by a professional magnetizer. He was at that time a firm believer in the theory of personal magnetism (a delusion from which he afterward escaped). On the occasion which he describes, the operator commanded him to close his eyes and told him he could not open them, but he did open them at once. Again he told him to close the eyes, and at the same time he gently stroked his head and face and eyelids with his hand. Dr. Cocke fancied he felt a tingling sensation in his forehead and eyes, which he supposed came from the hand of the operator. (Afterward he came to believe that this sensation was purely imaginary on his part.) Then he says: "A sensation akin to fear came over me. The operator said: 'You are going to sleep, you are getting sleepy. You cannot open your eyes.' I was conscious that my heart was beating rapidly, and I felt a sensation of terror. He continued to tell me I was going to sleep, and could not open my eves. He then made passes over my head, down over my hands and body, but did not touch me. He then said to me, 'You cannot open your eyes.' The motor apparatus of my lids would not seemingly respond to my will, yet I was conscious that while one part of my mind wanted to open my eyes, another part did not want to, so I was in a paradoxical state. I believed that I could open my eyes, and yet could not. The feeling of not wishing to open my eyes was not based upon any desire to please the operator. I had no personal interest in him in any way, but, be it understood, I firmly believed in his power to control me. He continued to suggest to me that I was going to sleep, and the suggestion of terror previously mentioned continued to increase." The next step was to put the doctor's hand over his head, and tell him he could not put it down. Then he stroked the arm and said it was growing numb. He said: "You have no feeling in it, have you?" Dr. Cocke goes on: "I said 'No,' and I knew that I said 'No,' yet I knew that I had a feeling in it." The operator went on, pricking the arm with a pin, and though Dr. Cocke felt the pain he said he did not feel it, and at the same time the sensation of terror increased. "I was not conscious of my body at all," he says further on, "but I was painfully conscious of the two contradictory elements within me. I knew that my body existed, but could not prove it to myself. I knew that the statements made by the operator were in a measure untrue. I obeyed them voluntarily and involuntarily. This is the last remembrance that I have of that hypnotic experience." After this, however, the operator caused the doctor to do a number of things which he learned of from his friends after the performance was over. "It seemed to me that the hypnotist commanded me to awake as soon as I dropped my arm," and yet ten minutes of unconsciousness had passed. On a subsequent occasion Dr. Cocke, who was blind, was put into a deep hypnotic sleep by fixing his mind on the number 26 and holding up his hand. This time he experienced a still greater degree of terror, and incidentally learned that he could hypnotize himself. The matter of self-hypnotism we shall consider in another chapter. In this connection we find great interest in an article in the Medical News, July 28, 1894, by Dr. Alfred Warthin, of Ann Arbor, Mich., in which he describes the effects of music upon hypnotic subjects. While in Vienna he took occasion to observe closely the enthusiastic musical devotees as they sat in the audience at the performance of one of Wagner's operas. He believed they were in a condition of self-induced hypnotism, in which their subjective faculties were so exalted as to supersede their objective perceptions. Music was no longer to them a succession of pleasing sounds, but the embodiment of a drama in which they became so wrapped up that they forgot all about the mechanical and external features of the music and lived completely in a fairy world of dream. This observation suggested to him an interesting series of experiments. His first subject was easily hypnotized, and of an emotional nature. Wagner's "Ride of Walkure" was played from the piano score. The pulse of the subject became more rapid and at first of higher tension, increasing from a normal rate of 60 beats a minute to 120. Then, as the music progressed, the tension diminished. The respiration increased from 18 to 30 per minute. Great excitement in the subject was evident. His whole body was thrown into motion, his legs were drawn up, his arms tossed into the air, and a profuse sweat appeared. When the subject had been awakened, he said that he did not remember the music as music, but had an impression of intense, excitement, brought on by "riding furiously through the air." The state of mind brought up before him in the most realistic and vivid manner possible the picture of the ride of Tam O'Shanter, which he had seen years before. The picture soon became real to him, and he found himself taking part in a wild chase, not as witch, devil, or Tam even; but in some way his consciousness was spread through every part of the scene, being of it, and yet playing the part of spectator, as is often the case in dreams. Dr. Warthin tried the same experiment again, this time on a young man who was not so emotional, and was hypnotized with much more difficulty. This subject did not pass into such a deep state of hypnotism, but the result was practically the same. The pulse rate rose from 70 to 120. The sensation remembered was that of riding furiously through the air. The experiment was repeated on other subjects, in all cases with the same result. Only one knew that the music was the "Ride of Walkure." "To him it always expressed the pictured wild ride of the daughters of Wotan, the subject taking part in the ride." It was noticeable in each case that the same music played to them in the waking state produced no special impression. Here is incontestable evidence that in the hypnotic state the perception of the special senses is enormously heightened. A slow movement was tried (the Valhalla motif). At first it seemed to produce the opposite effect, for the pulse was lowered. Later it rose to a rate double the normal, and the tension was diminished. The impression described by the subject afterward was a feeling of "lofty grandeur and calmness." A mountain climbing experience of years before was recalled, and the subject seemed to contemplate a landscape of "lofty grandeur." A different sort of music was played (the intense and ghastly scene in which Brunhilde appears to summon Sigmund to Valhalla). Immediately a marked change took place in the pulse. It became slow and irregular, and very small. The respiration decreased almost to gasping, the face grew pale, and a cold perspiration broke out. Readers who are especially interested in this subject will find descriptions of many other interesting experiments in the same article. Dr. Cocke describes a peculiar trick he played upon the sight of a subject. Says he: "I once hypnotized a man and made him read all of his a's as w's, his u's as v's, and his b's as x's. I added suggestion after suggestion so rapidly that it would have been impossible for him to have remembered simply what I said and call the letters as I directed. Stimulation was, in this case impossible, as I made him read fifteen or twenty pages, he calling the letters as suggested each time they occurred." The extraordinary heightening of the sense perceptions has an important bearing on the question of spiritualism and clairvoyance. If the powers of the mind are so enormously increased, all that is required of a very sensitive and easily hypnotized person is to hypnotize him or herself, when he will be able to read thoughts and remember or perceive facts hidden to the ordinary perception. In this connection the reader is referred to the confession of Mrs. Piper, the famous medium of the American branch of the Psychical Research Society. The confession will be found printed in full at the close of this book. CHAPTER V. Self-Hypnotization.--How It may Be Done.--An Experience.--Accountable for Children's Crusade.--Oriental Prophets Self-Hypnotized. If self-hypnotism is possible (and it is true that a person can deliberately hypnotize himself when he wishes to till he has become accustomed to it and is expert in it, so to speak), it does away at a stroke with the claims of all professional hypnotists and magnetic healers that they have any peculiar power in themselves which they exert over their fellows. One of these professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls "The Wonderful Lock Method." He says that though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls. All that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves. He shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain circumstances the hypnotizer is in danger of becoming hypnotized himself. In this he makes no claim that the subject is using any psychic power; but, of course, if the hypnotizer looks steadily into the eyes of his subject, and the subject looks into his eyes, the steady gaze on a bright object will produce hypnotism in one quite as readily as in the other. Hypnotism is an established scientific fact; but the claim that the hypnotizer has any mysterious psychic power is the invariable mark of the charlatan. Probably no scientific phenomenon was ever so grossly prostituted to base ends as that of hypnotism. Later we shall see some of the outrageous forms this charlatanism assumes, and how it extends to the professional subjects as well as to the professional operators, till those subjects even impose upon scientific men who ought to be proof against such deception. Moreover, the possibility of self-hypnotization, carefully concealed and called by another name, opens another great field of humbug and charlatanism, of which the advertising columns of the newspapers are constantly filled--namely, that of the clairvoyant and medium. We may conceive how such a profession might become perfectly legitimate and highly useful; but at present it seems as if any person who went into it, however honest he might be at the start, soon began to deceive himself as well as others, until he lost his power entirely to distinguish between fact and imagination. Before discussing the matter further, let us quote Dr. Cocke's experiment in hypnotizing himself. It will be remembered that a professional hypnotizer or magnetizer had hypnotized him by telling him to fix his mind on the number twenty-six and holding up his hand. Says the doctor: "In my room that evening it occurred to me to try the same experiment. I did so. I kept the number twenty-six in my mind. In a few minutes I felt the sensation of terror, but in a different way. I was intensely cold. My heart seemed to stand still. I had ringing in my ears. My hair seemed to rise upon my scalp. I persisted in the effort, and the previously mentioned noise in my ears grew louder and louder. The roar became deafening. It crackled like a mighty fire. I was fearfully conscious of myself. Having read vivid accounts of dreams, visions, etc., it occurred to me that I would experience them. I felt in a vague way that there were beings all about me but could not hear their voices. I felt as though every muscle in my body was fixed and rigid. The roar in my ears grew louder still, and I heard, above the roar, reports which sounded like artillery and musketry. Then above the din of the noise a musical chord. I seemed to be absorbed in this chord. I knew nothing else. The world existed for me only in the tones of the mighty chord. Then I had a sensation as though I were expanding. The sound in my ears died away, and yet I was not conscious of silence. Then all consciousness was lost. The next thing I experienced was a sensation of intense cold, and of someone roughly shaking me. Then I heard the voice of my jolly landlord calling me by name." The landlord had found the doctor "as white as a ghost and as limp as a rag," and thought he was dead. He says it took him ten minutes to arouse the sleeper. During the time a physician had been summoned. As to the causes of this condition as produced Dr. Cocke says: "I firmly believed that something would happen when the attempt was made to hypnotize me. Secondly, I wished to be hypnotized. These, together with a vivid imagination and strained attention, brought on the states which occurred." It is interesting to compare the effects of hypnotization with those of opium or other narcotic. Dr. Cocke asserts that there is a difference. His descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to De Quincey's dreams, such as those described in "The English Mail-Coach," "De Profundis," and "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," all of which were presumably due to opium. The causes which Dr. Cocke thinks produced the hypnotic condition in his case, namely, belief, desire to be hypnotized, and strained attention, united with a vivid imagination, are causes which are often found in conjunction and produce effects which we may reasonably explain on the theory of self-hypnotization. For instance, the effects of an exciting religious revival are very like those produced by Mesmer's operations in Paris. The subjects become hysterical, and are ready to believe anything or do anything. By prolonging the operation, a whole community becomes more or less hypnotized. In all such cases, however, unusual excitement is commonly followed by unusual lethargy. It is much like a wild spree of intoxication--in fact, it is a sort of intoxication. The same phenomena are probably accountable for many of the strange records of history. The wonderful cures at Lourdes (of which we have read in Zola's novel of that name) are no doubt the effect of hypnotization by the priests. Some of the strange movements of whole communities during the Crusades are to be explained either on the theory of hypnotization or of contagion, and possibly these two things will turn out to be much the same in fact. On no other ground can we explain the so-called "Children's Crusade," in which over thirty thousand children from Germany, from all classes of the community, tried to cross the Alps in winter, and in their struggles were all lost or sold into slavery without even reaching the Holy Land. Again, hypnotism is accountable for many of the poet's dreams. Gazing steadily at a bed of bright coals or a stream of running water will invariably throw a sensitive subject into a hypnotic sleep that will last sometimes for several hours. Dr. Cocke says that he has experimented in this direction with patients of his. Says he: "They have the ability to resist the state or to bring it at will. Many of them describe beautiful scenes from nature, or some mighty cathedral with its lofty dome, or the faces of imaginary beings, beautiful or demoniacal, according to the will and temper of the subject." Perhaps the most wonderful example of self-hypnotism which we have in history is that of the mystic Swedenborg, who saw, such strange things in his visions, and at last came to believe in them as real. The same explanation may be given of the manifestations of Oriental prophets--for in the Orient hypnotism is much easier and more systematically developed than with us of the West. The performances of the dervishes, and also of the fakirs, who wound themselves and perform many wonderful feats which would be difficult for an ordinary person, are no doubt in part feats of hypnotism. While in a condition of auto-hypnotization a person may imagine that he is some other personality. Says Dr. Cocke: "A curious thing about those self-hypnotized subjects is that they carry out perfectly their own ideals of the personality with whom they believe themselves to be possessed. If their own ideals of the part they are playing are imperfect, their impersonations are ridiculous in the extreme. One man I remember believed himself to be controlled by the spirit of Charles Sumner. Being uneducated, he used the most wretched English, and his language was utterly devoid of sense. While, on the other hand, a very intelligent lady who believed herself to be controlled by the spirit of Charlotte Cushman personated the part very well." Dr. Cooke says of himself: "I can hypnotize myself to such an extent that I will become wholly unconscious of events taking place around me, and a long interval of time, say from one-half to two hours, will be a complete blank. During this condition of auto-hypnotization I will obey suggestions made to me by another, talking rationally, and not knowing any event that has occurred after the condition has passed off." CHAPTER VI. Simulation.--Deception in Hypnotism Very Common.--Examples of Neuropathic Deceit.--Detecting Simulation.--Professional Subjects.--How Dr. Luys of the Charity Hospital at Paris Was Deceived.--Impossibility of Detecting Deception in All Cases.--Confessions of a Professional Hypnotic Subject. It has already been remarked that hypnotism and hysteria are conditions very nearly allied, and that hysterical neuropathic individuals make the best hypnotic subjects. Now persons of this character are in most cases morally as well as physically degenerate, and it is a curious fact that deception seems to be an inherent element in nearly all such characters. Expert doctors have been thoroughly deceived. And again, persons who have been trying to expose frauds have also been deceived by the positive statements of such persons that they were deceiving the doctors when they were not. A diseased vanity seems to operate in such cases and the subjects take any method which promises for the time being to bring them into prominence. Merely to attract attention is a mania with some people. There is also something about the study of hypnotism, and similar subjects in which delusions constitute half the existence, that seems to destroy the faculty for distinguishing between truth and delusion. Undoubtedly we must look on such manifestations as a species of insanity. There is also a point at which the unconscious deceiver, for the sake of gain, passes into the conscious deceiver. At the close of this chapter we will give some cases illustrating the fact that persons may learn by practice to do seemingly impossible things, such as holding themselves perfectly rigid (as in the cataleptic state) while their head rests on one chair and their heels on another, and a heavy person sits upon them. First, let us cite a few cases of what may be called neuropathic deceit--a kind of insanity which shows itself in deceiving. The newspapers record similar cases from time to time. The first two of the following are quoted by Dr. Courmelles from the French courts, etc. 1. The Comtesse de W---- accused her maid of having attempted to poison her. The case was a celebrated one, and the court-room was thronged with women who sympathized with the supposed victim. The maid was condemned to death; but a second trial was granted, at which it was conclusively proved that the Comtesse had herself bound herself on her bed, and had herself poured out the poison which was found still blackening her breast and lips. 2. In 1886 a man called Ulysse broke into the shop of a second-hand dealer, facing his own house in Paris, and there began deliberately to take away the goods, just as if he were removing his own furniture. This he did without hurrying himself in any way, and transported the property to his own premises. Being caught in the very act of the theft, he seemed at first to be flurried and bewildered. When arrested and taken to the lock-up, he seemed to be in a state of abstraction; when spoken to he made no reply, seemed ready to fall asleep, and when brought before the examining magistrate actually fell asleep. Dr. Garnier, the medical man attached to the infirmary of the police establishment, had no doubt of his irresponsibility and he was released from custody. 3. While engaged as police-court reporter for a Boston newspaper, the present writer saw a number of strange cases of the same kind. One was that of a quiet, refined, well educated lady, who was brought in for shop-lifting. Though her husband was well to do, and she did not sell or even use the things she took, she had made a regular business of stealing whenever she could. She had begun it about seven months before by taking a lace handkerchief, which she slipped under her shawl: Soon after she accomplished another theft. "I felt so encouraged," she said, "that I got a large bag, which I fastened under my dress, and into this I slipped whatever I could take when the clerks were not looking. I do not know what made me do it. My success seemed to lead me on." Other cases of kleptomania could easily be cited. "Simulation," say Messieurs Binet and Fere, "which is already a stumbling block in the study of hysterical cases, becomes far more formidable in such studies as we are now occupied with. It is only when he has to deal with physical phenomena that the operator feels himself on firm ground." Yet even here we can by no means feel certain. Physicians have invented various ingenious pieces of apparatus for testing the circulation and other physiological conditions; but even these things are not sure tests. The writer knows of the case of a man who has such control over his heart and lungs that he can actually throw himself into a profound sleep in which the breathing is so absolutely stopped for an hour that a mirror is not moistened in the least by the breath, nor can the pulses be felt. To all intents and purposes the man appears to be dead; but in due time he comes to life again, apparently no whit the worse for his experiment. If an ordinary person were asked to hold out his arms at full length for five minutes he would soon become exhausted, his breathing would quicken, his pulse-rate increase. It might be supposed that if these conditions did not follow the subject was in a hypnotic trance; but it is well known that persons may easily train themselves to hold out the arms for any length of time without increasing the respiration by one breath or raising the pulse rate at all. We all remember Montaigne's famous illustration in which he said that if a woman began by carrying a calf about every day she would still be able to carry it when it became an ox. In the Paris hospitals, where the greater number of regular scientific experiments have been conducted, it is found that "trained subjects" are required for all of the more difficult demonstrations. That some of these famous scientists have been deceived, there is no doubt. They know it themselves. A case which will serve as an illustration is that of Dr. Luys, some of whose operations were "exposed" by Dr. Ernest Hart, an English student of hypnotism of a skeptical turn of mind. One of Dr. Luys's pupils in a book he has published makes the following statement, which helps to explain the circumstances which we will give a little later. Says he: "We know that many hospital patients who are subjected to the higher or greater treatment of hypnotism are of very doubtful reputations; we know also the effects of a temperament which in them is peculiarly addicted to simulation, and which is exaggerated by the vicinity of maladies similar to their own. To judge of this, it is necessary to have seen them encourage each other in simulation, rehearsing among themselves, or even before the medical students of the establishment, the experiments to which they have been subjected; and going through their different contortions and attitudes to exercise themselves in them. And then, again, in the present day, has not the designation of an 'hypnotical subject' become almost a social position? To be fed, to be paid, admired, exhibited in public, run after, and all the rest of it--all this is enough to make the most impartial looker-on skeptical. But is it enough to enable us to produce an a priori negation? Certainly not; but it is sufficient to justify legitimate doubt. And when we come to moral phenomena, where we have to put faith in the subject, the difficulty becomes still greater. Supposing suggestion and hallucination to be granted, can they be demonstrated? Can we by plunging the subject in hypnotical sleep, feel sure of what he may affirm? That is impossible, for simulation and somnambulism are not reciprocally exclusive terms, and Monsieur Pitres has established the fact that a subject who sleeps may still simulate." Messieurs Binet and Fere in their book speak of "the honest Hublier, whom his somnambulist Emelie cheated for four years consecutively." Let us now quote Mr. Hart's investigations. Dr. Luys is an often quoted authority on hypnotism in Paris, and is at the head of what is called the Charity Hospital school of hypnotical experiments. In 1892 he announced some startling results, in which some people still have faith (more or less). What he was supposed to accomplish was stated thus in the London Pall Mall Gazette, issue of December 2: "Dr. Luys then showed us how a similar artificial state of suffering could be created without suggestion--in fact, by the mere proximity of certain substances. A pinch of coal dust, for example, corked and sealed in a small phial and placed by the side of the neck of a hypnotized person, produces symptoms of suffocation by smoke; a tube of distilled water, similarly placed, provokes signs of incipient hydrophobia; while another very simple concoction put in contact with the flesh brings on symptoms of suffocation by drowning." Signs of drunkenness were said to be caused by a small corked bottle of brandy, and the nature of a cat by a corked bottle of valerian. Patients also saw beautiful blue flames about the north pole of a magnet and distasteful red flames about the south pole; while by means of a magnet it was said that the symptoms of illness of a sick patient might be transferred to a well person also in the hypnotic state, but of course on awaking the well person at once threw off sickness that had been transferred, but the sick person was permanently relieved. These experiments are cited in some recent books on hypnotism, apparently with faith. The following counter experiments will therefore be read with interest. Dr. Hart gives a full account of his investigations in the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Luys gave Dr. Hart some demonstrations, which the latter describes as follows: "A tube containing ten drachms of cognac were placed at a certain point on the subject's neck, which Dr. Luys said was the seat of the great nerve plexuses. The effect on Marguerite was very rapid and marked; she began to move her lips and to swallow; the expression of her face changed, and she asked, 'What have you been giving me to drink? I am quite giddy.' At first she had a stupid and troubled look; then she began to get gay. 'I am ashamed of myself,' she said; 'I feel quite tipsy,' and after passing through some of the phases of lively inebriety she began to fall from the chair, and was with difficulty prevented from sprawling on the floor. She was uncomfortable, and seemed on the point of vomiting, but this was stopped, and she was calmed." Another patient gave all the signs of imagining himself transformed into a cat when a small corked bottle of valerian was placed on his neck. In the presence of a number of distinguished doctors in Paris, Dr. Hart tried a series of experiments in which by his conversation he gave the patient no clue to exactly what drug he was using, in order that if the patient was simulating he would not know what to simulate. Marguerite was the subject of several of these experiments, one of which is described as follows: "I took a tube which was supposed to contain alcohol, but which did contain cherry laurel water. Marguerite immediately began, to use the words of M. Sajous's note, to smile agreeably and then to laugh; she became gay. 'It makes me laugh,' she said, and then, 'I'm not tipsy, I want to sing,' and so on through the whole performance of a not ungraceful giserie, which we stopped at that stage, for I was loth to have the degrading performance of drunkenness carried to the extreme I had seen her go through at the Charite. I now applied a tube of alcohol, asking the assistant, however, to give me valerian, which no doubt this profoundly hypnotized subject perfectly well heard, for she immediately went through the whole cat performance. She spat, she scratched, she mewed, she leapt about on all fours, and she was as thoroughly cat-like as had been Dr. Luys's subjects." Similar experiments as to the effect of magnets and electric currents were tried. A note taken by Dr. Sajous runs thus: "She found the north pole, notwithstanding there was no current, very pretty; she was as if she were fascinated by it; she caressed the blue flames, and showed every sign of delight. Then came the phenomena of attraction. She followed the magnet with delight across the room, as though fascinated by it; the bar was turned so as to present the other end or what would be called, in the language of La Charite, the south pole. Then she fell into an attitude, of repulsion and horror, with clenched fists, and as it approached her she fell backward into the arms of M. Cremiere, and was carried, still showing all the signs of terror and repulsion, back to her chair. The bar was again turned until what should have been the north pole was presented to her. She again resumed the same attitudes of attraction, and tears bedewed her cheeks. 'Ah,' she said, 'it is blue, the flame mounts,' and she rose from her seat, following the magnet around the room. Similar but false phenomena were obtained in succession with all the different forms of magnet and non-magnet; Marguerite was never once right, but throughout her acting was perfect; she was utterly unable at any time really to distinguish between a plain bar of iron, demagnetized magnet or a horseshoe magnet carrying a full current and one from which the current was wholly cut off." Five different patients were tested in the same way, through a long series of experiments, with the same results, a practical proof that Dr. Luys had been totally deceived and his new and wonderful discoveries amounted to nothing. There is, however, another possible explanation, namely, telepathy, in a real hypnotic condition. Even if Dr. Luys's experiments were genuine this would be the rational explanation. They were a case of suggestion of some sort, without doubt. Nearly every book on hypnotism gives various rules for detecting simulation of the hypnotic state. One of the commonest tests is that of anaesthesia. A pin or pen-knife is stuck into a subject to see if he is insensible to pain; but as we shall see in a latter chapter, this insensibility also may be simulated, for by long training some persons learn to control their facial expressions perfectly. We have already seen that the pulse and respiration tests are not sufficient. Hypnotic persons often flush slightly in the face; but it is true that there are persons who can flush on any part of the body at will. Mr. Ernest Hart had an article in the Century Magazine on "The Eternal Gullible," in which he gives the confessions of a professional hypnotic subject. This person, whom he calls L., he brought to his house, where some experiments were tried in the presence of a number of doctors, whose names are quoted. The quotation of a paragraph or two from Mr. Hart's article will be of interest. Says he: "The 'catalepsy business' had more artistic merit. So rigid did L. make his muscles that he could be lifted in one piece like an Egyptian mummy. He lay with his head on the back of one chair, and his heels on another, and allowed a fairly heavy man to sit on his stomach; it seemed to me, however, that he was here within a 'straw' or two of the limit of his endurance. The 'blister trick,' spoken of by Truth as having deceived some medical men, was done by rapidly biting and sucking the skin of the wrist. L. did manage with some difficulty to raise a slight swelling, but the marks of the teeth were plainly visible." (Possibly L. had made his skin so tough by repeated biting that he could no longer raise the blister!) "One point in L.'s exhibition which was undoubtedly genuine was his remarkable and stoical endurance of pain. He stood before us smiling and open-eyed while he ran long needles into the fleshy part of his arms and legs without flinching, and he allowed one of the gentlemen present to pinch his skin in different parts with strong crenated pincers in a manner which bruised it, and which to most people would have caused intense pain. L. allowed no sign of suffering or discomfort to appear; he did not set his teeth or wince; his pulse was not quickened, and the pupil of his eye did not dilate as physiologists tell us it does when pain passes a certain limit. It may be said that this merely shows that in L. the limit of endurance was beyond the normal standard; or, in other words, that his sensitiveness was less than that of the average man. At any rate his performance in this respect was so remarkable that some of the gentlemen present were fain to explain it by supposed 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' the theory apparently being that L. and his comrades hypnotized one another, and thus made themselves insensible to pain. "As surgeons have reason to know, persons vary widely in their sensitiveness to pain. I have seen a man chat quietly with bystanders while his carotid artery was being tied without the use of chloroform. During the Russo-Turkish war wounded Turks often astonished English doctors by undergoing the most formidable amputations with no other anaesthetic than a cigarette. Hysterical women will inflict very severe pain on themselves--merely for wantonness or in order to excite sympathy. The fakirs who allow themselves to be hung up by hooks beneath their shoulder-blades seem to think little of it and, as a matter of fact, I believe are not much inconvenienced by the process." The fact is, the amateur can always be deceived, and there are no special tests that can be relied on. If a person is well accustomed to hypnotic manifestations, and also a good judge of human nature, and will keep constantly on guard, using every precaution to avoid deception, it is altogether likely that it can be entirely obviated. But one must use his good judgment in every possible way. In the case of fresh subjects, or persons well known, of course there is little possibility of deception. And the fact that deception exists does not in any way invalidate the truth of hypnotism as a scientific phenomenon. We cite it merely as one of the physiological peculiarities connected with the mental condition of which it is a manifestation. The fact that a tendency to deception exists is interesting in itself, and may have an influence upon our judgment of our fellow beings. There is, to be sure, a tendency on the part of scientific writers to find lunatics instead of criminals; but knowledge of the well demonstrated fact that many criminals are insane helps to make us charitable. CHAPTER VII. Criminal Suggestion.--Laboratory Crimes.--Dr. Cocke's Experiments Showing Criminal Suggestion Is not Possible.--Dr. William James' Theory.--A Bad Man Cannot Be Made Good, Why Expect to Make a Good Man Bad? One of the most interesting phases of hypnotism is that of post-hypnotic suggestion, to which reference has already been made. It is true that a suggestion made during the hypnotic condition as to what a person will do after coming out of the hypnotic sleep may be carried out. A certain professional hypnotizer claims that once he has hypnotized a person he can keep that person forever after under his influence by means of post-hypnotic suggestion. He says to him while in the hypnotic sleep: "Whenever I look at you, or point at you, you will fall asleep. No one can hypnotize you but me. Whenever I try to hypnotize you, you will fall asleep." He says further: "Suggest to a subject while he is sound asleep that in eight weeks he will mail you a letter with a blank piece of note paper inside, and during the intervening period you may yourself forget the occurrence, but in exactly eight weeks he will carry out the suggestion. Suggestions of this nature are always carried out, especially when the suggestion is to take effect on some certain day or date named. Suggest to a subject that in ninety days from a given date he will come to your house with his coat on inside out, and he will most certainly do so." The same writer also definitely claims that he can hypnotize people against their wills. If this were true, what a terrible power would a shrewd, evil-minded criminal have to compel the execution of any of his plans! We hope to show that it is not true; but we must admit that many scientific men have tried experiments which they believe demonstrate beyond a doubt that criminal use can be and is made of hypnotic influence. If it were possible to make a person follow out any line of conduct while actually under hypnotic influence it would be bad enough; but the use of posthypnotic suggestion opens a yet more far-reaching and dangerous avenue. Among the most definite claims of the evil deeds that may be compelled during hypnotic sleep is that of Dr. Luys, whom we have already seen as being himself deceived by professional hypnotic subjects. Says he: "You cannot only oblige this defenseless being, who is incapable of opposing the slightest resistance, to give from hand to hand anything you may choose, but you can also make him sign a promise, draw up a bill of exchange, or any other kind of agreement. You may make him write an holographic will (which according to French law would be valid), which he will hand over to you, and of which he will never know the existence. He is ready to fulfill the minutest legal formalities, and will do so with a calm, serene and natural manner calculated to deceive the most expert law officers. These somnambulists will not hesitate either, you may be sure, to make a denunciation, or to bear false witness; they are, I repeat, the passive instruments of your will. For instance, take E. She will at my bidding write out and sign a donation of forty pounds in my favor. In a criminal point of view the subject under certain suggestions will make false denunciations, accuse this or that person, and maintain with the greatest assurance that he has assisted at an imaginary crime. I will recall to your mind those scenes of fictitious assassination, which have exhibited before you. I was careful to place in the subject's hands a piece of paper instead of a dagger or a revolver; but it is evident, that if they had held veritable murderous instruments, the scene might have had a tragic ending." Many experiments along this line have been tried, such as suggesting the theft of a watch or a spoon, which afterward was actually carried out. It may be said at once that "these laboratory crimes" are in most cases successful: A person who has nothing will give away any amount if told to do so; but quite different is the case of a wealthy merchant who really has money to sign away. Dr. Cocke describes one or two experiments of his own which have an important bearing on the question of criminal suggestion. Says he: "A girl who was hypnotized deeply was given a glass of water and was told that it was a lighted lamp. A broomstick was placed across the room and she was told that it was a man who intended to injure her. I suggested to her that she throw the glass of water (she supposing it was a lighted lamp) at the broomstick, her enemy, and she immediately threw it with much violence. Then a man was placed across the room, and she was given instead of a glass of water a lighted lamp. I told her that the lamp was a glass of water, and that the man across the room was her brother. It was suggested to her that his clothing was on fire and she was commanded to extinguish the fire by throwing the lighted lamp at the individual, she having been told, as was previously mentioned, that it was a glass of water. Without her knowledge a person was placed behind her for the purpose of quickly checking her movements, if desired. I then commanded her to throw the lamp at the man. She raised the lamp, hesitated, wavered, and then became very hysterical, laughing and crying alternately. This condition was so profound that she came very near dropping the lamp. Immediately after she was quieted I made a number of tests to prove that she was deeply hypnotized. Standing in front of her I gave her a piece of card-board, telling her that it was a dagger, and commanded her to stab me. She immediately struck at me with the piece of card-board. I then gave her an open pocketknife and commanded her to strike at me with it. Again she raised it to execute my command, again hesitated, and had another hysterical attack. I have tried similar experiments with thirty or forty people with similar results. Some of them would have injured themselves severely, I am convinced, at command, but to what extent I of course cannot say. That they could have been induced to harm others, or to set fire to houses, etc., I do not believe. I say this after very careful reading and a large amount of experimentation." Dr. Cocke also declares his belief that no person can be hypnotized against his will by a person who is repugnant to him. The facts in the case are probably those that might be indicated by a common-sense consideration of the conditions. If a person is weak-minded and susceptible to temptation, to theft, for instance, no doubt a familiar acquaintance of a similar character might hypnotize that person and cause him to commit the crime to which his moral nature is by no means averse. If, on the other hand, the personality of the hypnotizer and the crime itself are repugnant to the hypnotic subject, he will absolutely refuse to do as he is bidden, even while in the deepest hypnotic sleep. On this point nearly all authorities agree. Again, there is absolutely no well authenticated case of crime committed by a person under hypnotic influence. There have been several cases reported, and one woman in Paris who aided in a murder was released on her plea of irresponsibility because she had been hypnotized. In none of these cases, however, was there any really satisfactory evidence that hypnotism existed. In all the cases reported there seemed to be no doubt of the weak character and predisposition to crime. In another class of cases, namely those of criminal assault upon girls and women, the only evidence ever adduced that the injured person was hypnotized was the statement of that person, which cannot really be called evidence at all. The fact is, a weak character can be tempted and brought under virtual control much more easily by ordinary means than by hypnotism. The man who "overpersuades" a business man to endorse a note uses no hypnotic influence. He is merely making a clever play upon the man's vanity, egotism, or good nature. A profound study of the hypnotic state, such as has been made by Prof. William James, of Harvard College, the great authority on psychical phenomena and president of the Psychic Research Society, leads to the conviction that in the hypnotic sleep the will is only in abeyance, as it is in natural slumber or in sleepwalking, and any unusual or especially exciting occurrence, especially anything that runs against the grain of the nature, reawakens that will, and it soon becomes as active as ever. This is ten times more true in the matter of post-hypnotic suggestion, which is very much weaker than suggestion that takes effect during the actual hypnotic sleep. We shall see, furthermore, that while acting under a delusion at the suggestion of the operator, the patient is really conscious all the time of the real facts in the case--indeed, much more keenly so, oftentimes, than the operator himself. For instance, if a line is drawn on a sheet of paper and the subject is told there is no line, he will maintain there is no line; but he has to see it in order to ignore it. Moreover, persons trained to obey, instinctively do obey even in their waking state. It requires a special faculty to resist obedience, even during our ordinary waking condition. Says a recent writer: "It is certain that we are naturally inclined to obey, conflicts and resistance are the characteristics of some rare individuals; but between admitting this and saying that we are doomed to obey--even the least of us--lies a gulf." The same writer says further: "Hypnotic suggestion is an order given for a few seconds, at most a few minutes, to an individual in a state of induced sleep. The suggestion may be repeated; but it is absolutely powerless to transform a criminal into an honest man, or vice versa." Here is an excellent argument. If it is possible to make criminals it should be quite as easy to make honest men. It is true that the weak are sometimes helped for good; but there is no case on record in which a person who really wished to be bad was ever made good; and the history of hypnotism is full of attempts in that direction. A good illustration is an experiment tried by Colonel de Rochas: "An excellent subject * * * had been left alone for a few minutes in an apartment, and had stolen a valuable article. After he had left, the theft was discovered. A few days after it was suggested to the subject, while asleep, that he should restore the stolen object; the command was energetically and imperatively reiterated, but in vain. The theft had been committed by the subject, who had sold the article to an old curiosity dealer, as it was eventually found on information received from a third party. Yet this subject would execute all the imaginary crimes he was ordered." As to the value of the so-called "laboratory crimes," the statement of Dr. Courmelles is of interest: "I have heard a subject say," he states, "'If I were ordered to throw myself out of the window I should do it, so certain am I either that there would be somebody under the window to catch me or that I should be stopped in time. The experimentalist's own interests and the consequences of such an act are a sure guarantee.'" CHAPTER VIII. Dangers in Being Hypnotized.--Condemnation of Public Performances.--A. Common Sense View.--Evidence Furnished by Lafontaine.--By Dr. Courmelles.--By. Dr. Hart.--By Dr. Cocke.--No Danger in Hypnotism if Rightly Used by Physicians or Scientists. Having considered the dangers to society through criminal hypnotic suggestion, let us now consider what dangers there may be to the individual who is hypnotized. Before citing evidence, let us consider the subject from a rational point of view. Several things have already been established. We know that hypnotism is akin to hysteria and other forms of insanity--it is, in short, a kind of experimental insanity. Really good hypnotic subjects have not a perfect mental balance. We have also seen that repetition of the process increases the susceptibility, and in some cases persons frequently hypnotized are thrown into the hypnotic state by very slight physical agencies, such as looking at a bright doorknob. Furthermore, we know that the hypnotic patient is in a very sensitive condition, easily impressed. Moreover, it is well known that exertions required of hypnotic subjects are nervously very exhausting, so much so that headache frequently follows. From these facts any reasonable person may make a few clear deductions. First, repeated strain of excitement in hypnotic seances will wear out the constitution just as certainly as repeated strain of excitement in social life, or the like, which, as we know, frequently produces nervous exhaustion. Second, it is always dangerous to submit oneself to the influence of an inferior or untrustworthy person. This is just as true in hypnotism as it is in the moral realm. Bad companions corrupt. And since the hypnotic subject is in a condition especially susceptible, a little association of this kind, a little submission to the inferior or immoral, will produce correspondingly more detrimental consequences. Third, since hypnotism is an abnormal condition, just as drunkenness is, one should not allow a public hypnotizer to experiment upon one and make one do ridiculous things merely for amusement, any more than one would allow a really insane person to be exhibited for money; or than one would allow himself to be made drunk, merely that by his absurd antics he might amuse somebody. It takes little reflection to convince any one that hypnotism for amusement, either on the public stage or in the home, is highly obnoxious, even if it is not highly dangerous. If the hypnotizer is an honest man, and a man of character, little injury may follow. But we can never know that, and the risk of getting into bad hands should prevent every one from submitting to influence at all. The fact is, however, that we should strongly doubt the good character of any one who hypnotizes for amusement, regarding him in the same light as we would one who intoxicated people on the stage for amusement, or gave them chloroform, or went about with a troup of insane people that he might exhibit their idiosyncrasies. Honest, right-minded people do not do those things. At the same time, there is nothing wiser that a man can do than to submit himself fully to a stronger and wiser nature than his own. A physician in whom you have confidence may do a thousand times more for you by hypnotism than by the use of drugs. It is a safe rule to place hypnotism in exactly the same category as drugs. Rightly used, drugs are invaluable; wrongly used, they become the instruments of the murderer. At all times should they be used with great caution. The same is true of hypnotism. Now let us cite some evidence. Lafontaine, a professional hypnotist, gives some interesting facts. He says that public hypnotic entertainments usually induce a great many of the audience to become amateur hypnotists, and these experiments may cause suffocation. Fear often results in congestion, or a rush of blood to the brain. "If the digestion is not completed, more especially if the repast has been more abundant than usual, congestion may be produced and death be instantaneous. The most violent convulsions may result from too complete magnetization of the brain. A convulsive movement may be so powerful that the body will suddenly describe a circle, the head touching the heels and seem to adhere to them. In this latter case there is torpor without sleep. Sometimes it has been impossible to awake the subject." A waiter at Nantes, who was magnetized by a commercial traveler, remained for two days in a state of lethargy, and for three hours Dr. Foure and numerous spectators were able to verify that "the extremities were icy cold, the pulse no longer throbbed, the heart had no pulsations, respiration had ceased, and there was not sufficient breath to dim a glass held before the mouth. Moreover, the patient was stiff, his eyes were dull and glassy." Nevertheless, Lafontaine was able to recall this man to life. Dr. Courmelles says: "Paralysis of one or more members, or of the tongue, may follow the awakening. These are the effects of the contractions of the internal muscles, due often to almost imperceptible touches. The diaphragm--and therefore the respiration--may be stopped in the same manner. Catalepsy and more especially lethargy, produce these phenomena." There are on record a number of cases of idiocy, madness, and epilepsy caused by the unskillful provoking of hypnotic sleep. One case is sufficiently interesting, for it is almost exactly similar to a case that occurred at one of the American colleges. The subject was a young professor at a boys' school. "One evening he was present at some public experiments that were being performed in a tavern; he was in no way upset at the sight, but the next day one of his pupils, looking at him fixedly, sent him to sleep. The boys soon got into the habit of amusing themselves by sending him to sleep, and the unhappy professor had to leave the school, and place himself under the care of a doctor." Dr. Ernest Hart gives an experience of his own which carries with it its own warning. Says he: "Staying at the well known country house in Kent of a distinguished London banker, formerly member of Parliament for Greenwich, I had been called upon to set to sleep, and to arrest a continuous barking cough from which a young lady who was staying in the house was suffering, and who, consequently, was a torment to herself and her friends. I thought this a good opportunity for a control experiment, and I sat her down in front of a lighted candle which I assured her that I had previously mesmerized. Presently her cough ceased and she fell into a profound sleep, which lasted until twelve o'clock the next day. When I returned from shooting, I was informed that she was still asleep and could not be awoke, and I had great difficulty in awaking her. That night there was a large dinner party, and, unluckily, I sat opposite to her. Presently she again became drowsy, and had to be led from the table, alleging, to my confusion, that I was again mesmerizing her. So susceptible did she become to my supposed mesmeric influence, which I vainly assured her, as was the case, that I was very far from exercising or attempting to exercise, that it was found expedient to take her up to London. I was out riding in the afternoon that she left, and as we passed the railway station, my host, who was riding with me, suggested that, as his friends were just leaving by that train, he would like to alight and take leave of them. I dismounted with him and went on to the platform, and avoided any leave-taking; but unfortunately in walking up and down it seems that I twice passed the window of the young lady's carriage. She was again self-mesmerized, and fell into a sleep which lasted throughout the journey, and recurred at intervals for some days afterward." In commenting on this, Dr. Hart notes that in reality mesmerism is self-produced, and the will of the operator, even when exercised directly against it, has no effect if the subject believes that the will is being operated in favor of it. Says he: "So long as the person operated on believed that my will was that she should sleep, sleep followed. The most energetic willing in my internal consciousness that there should be no sleep, failed to prevent it, where the usual physical methods of hypnotization, stillness, repose, a fixed gaze, or the verbal expression of an order to sleep, were employed." The dangers of hypnotism have been recognized by the law of every civilized country except the United States, where alone public performances are permitted. Dr. Cocke says: "I have occasionally seen subjects who complained of headache, vertigo, nausea, and other similar symptoms after having been hypnotized, but these conditions were at a future hypnotic sitting easily remedied by suggestion." Speaking of the use of hypnotism by doctors under conditions of reasonable care, Dr. Cocke says further: "There is one contraindication greater than all the rest. It applies more to the physician than to the patient, more to the masses than to any single individual. It is not confined to hypnotism alone; it has blocked the wheels of human progress through the ages which have gone. It is undue enthusiasm. It is the danger that certain individuals will become so enamored with its charms that other equally valuable means of cure will be ignored. Mental therapeutics has come to stay. It is yet in its infancy and will grow, but, if it were possible to kill it, it would be strangled by the fanaticism and prejudice of its devotees. The whole field is fascinating and alluring. It promises so much that it is in danger of being missed by the ignorant to such an extent that great harm may result. This is true, not only of mental therapeutics and hypnotism, but of every other blessing we possess. Hypnotism has nothing to fear from the senseless skepticism and contempt of those who have no knowledge of the subject." He adds pertinently enough: "While hypnotism can be used in a greater or less degree by every one, it can only be used intelligently by those who understand, not only hypnotism itself, but disease as well." Dr. Cocke is a firm believer that the right use of hypnotism by intelligent persons does not weaken the will. Says he: "I do not believe there is any danger whatever in this. I have no evidence (and I have studied a large number of hypnotized subjects) that hypnotism will render a subject less capable of exercising his will when he is relieved from the hypnotic trance. I do not believe that it increases in any way his susceptibility to ordinary suggestion." However, in regard to the dangers of public performances by professional hypnotizers, Dr. Cocke is equally positive. Says he: "The dangers of public exhibitions, made ludicrous as they are by the operators, should be condemned by all intelligent men and women, not from the danger of hypnotism itself so much as from the liability of the performers to disturb the mental poise of that large mass of ill-balanced individuals which makes up no inconsiderable part of society." In conclusion he says: "Patients have been injured by the misuse of hypnotism. * * * This is true of every remedial agent ever employed for the relief of man. Every article we eat, if wrongly prepared, if stale, or if too much is taken, will be harmful. Every act, every duty of our lives, may, if overdone, become an injury. "Then, for the sake of clearness, let me state in closing that hypnotism is dangerous only when it is misused, or when it is applied to that large class of persons who are inherently unsound; especially if that mysterious thing we call credulity predominates to a very great extent over the reason and over other faculties of the mind." CHAPTER IX. Hypnotism in Medicine.--Anesthesia.--Restoring the Use of Muscles.--Hallucination.--Bad Habits. Anaesthesia--It is well known that hypnotism may be used to render subjects insensible to pain. Thus numerous startling experiments are performed in public, such as running hatpins through the cheeks or arms, sewing the tongue to the ear, etc. The curious part of it is that the insensibility may be confined to one spot only. Even persons who are not wholly under hypnotic influence may have an arm or a leg, or any smaller part rendered insensible by suggestion, so that no pain will be felt. This has suggested the use of hypnotism in surgery in the place of chloroform, ether, etc. About the year 1860 some of the medical profession hoped that hypnotism might come into general use for producing insensibility during surgical operations. Dr. Guerineau in Paris reported the following successful operation: The thigh of a patient was amputated. "After the operation," says the doctor, "I spoke to the patient and asked him how he felt. He replied that he felt as if he were in heaven, and he seized hold of my hand and kissed it. Turning to a medical student, he added: 'I was aware of all that was being done to me, and the proof is that I knew my thigh was cut off at the moment when you asked me if I felt any pain.'" The writer who records this case continues: "This, however, was but a transitory stage. It was soon recognized that a considerable time and a good deal of preparation were necessary to induce the patients to sleep, and medical men had recourse to a more rapid and certain method; that is, chloroform. Thus the year 1860 saw the rise and fall of Braidism as a means of surgical anaesthesia." One of the most detailed cases of successful use of hypnotism as an anaesthetic was presented to the Hypnotic Congress which met in 1889, by Dr. Fort, professor of anatomy: "On the 21st of October, 1887, a young Italian tradesman, aged twenty, Jean M--. came to me and asked me to take off a wen he had on his forehead, a little above the right eyebrow. The tumor was about the size of a walnut. "I was reluctant to make use of chloroform, although the patient wished it, and I tried a short hypnotic experiment. Finding that my patient was easily hypnotizable, I promised to extract the tumor in a painless manner and without the use of chloroform. "The next day I placed him in a chair and induced sleep, by a fixed gaze, in less than a minute. Two Italian physicians, Drs. Triani and Colombo who were present during the operation, declared that the subject lost all sensibility and that his muscles retained all the different positions in which they were put exactly as in the cataleptic state. The patient saw nothing, felt nothing, and heard nothing, his brain remaining in communication only with me. "As soon as we had ascertained that the patient was completely under the influence of the hypnotic slumber, I said to him: 'You will sleep for a quarter of an hour,' knowing that the operation would not last longer than that; and he remained seated and perfectly motionless. "I made a transversal incision two and a half inches long and removed the tumor, which I took out whole. I then pinched the blood vessels with a pair of Dr. Pean's hemostatic pincers, washed the wound and applied a dressing, without making a single ligature. The patient was still sleeping. To maintain the dressing in proper position, I fastened a bandage around his head. While going through the operation I said to the patient, 'Lower your head, raise your head, turn to the right, to the left,' etc., and he obeyed like an automaton. When everything was finished, I said to him, 'Now, wake up.' "He then awoke, declared that he had felt nothing and did not suffer, and he went away on foot, as if nothing had been done to him. "Five days after the dressing was removed and the cicatrix was found completely healed." Hypnotism has been tried extensively for painless dentistry, but with many cases of failure, which got into the courts and thoroughly discredited the attempt except in very special cases. Restoring the Use of Muscles.--There is no doubt that hypnotism may be extremely useful in curing many disorders that are essentially nervous, especially such cases as those in which a patient has a fixed idea that something is the matter with him when he is not really affected. Cases of that description are often extremely obstinate, and entirely unaffected by the ordinary therapeutic means. Ordinary doctors abandon the cases in despair, but some person who understands "mental suggestion" (for instance, the Christian Science doctors) easily effects a cure. If the regular physician were a student of hypnotism he would know how to manage cases like that. By way of illustration, we quote reports of two cases, one successful and one unsuccessful. The following is from a report by one of the physicians of the Charity hospital in Paris: "Gabrielle C---- became a patient of mine toward the end of 1886. She entered the Charity hospital to be under treatment for some accident arising from pulmonary congestion, and while there was suddenly seized with violent attacks of hystero-epilepsy, which first contracted both legs, and finally reduced them to complete immobility. "She had been in this state of absolute immobility for seven months and I had vainly tried every therapeutic remedy usual in such cases. My intention was first to restore the general constitution of the subject, who was greatly weakened by her protracted stay in bed, and then, at the end of a certain time, to have recourse to hypnotism, and at the opportune moment suggest to her the idea of walking. "The patient was hypnotized every morning, and the first degree (that of lethargy), then the cataleptic, and finally the somnambulistic states were produced. After a certain period of somnambulism she began to move, and unconsciously took a few steps across the ward. Soon after it was suggested--the locomotor powers having recovered their physical functions--that she should walk when awake. This she was able to do, and in some weeks the cure was complete. In this case, however, we had the ingenious idea of changing her personality at the moment when we induced her to walk. The patient fancied she was somebody else, and as such, and in this roundabout manner, we satisfactorily attained the object proposed." The following is Professor Delboeuf's account of Dr. Bernheim's mode of suggestion at the hospital at Nancy. A robust old man of about seventy-five years of age, paralyzed by sciatica, which caused him intense pain, was brought in. "He could not put a foot to the ground without screaming with pain. 'Lie down, my poor friend; I will soon relieve you.' Dr. Bernheim says. 'That is impossible, doctor.' 'You will see.' 'Yes, we shall see, but I tell you, we shall see nothing!' On hearing this answer I thought suggestion will be of no use in this case. The old man looked sullen and stubborn. Strangely enough, he soon went off to sleep, fell into a state of catalepsy, and was insensible when pricked. But when Monsieur Bernheim said to him, 'Now you can walk, he replied, 'No, I cannot; you are telling me to do an impossible thing.' Although Monsieur Bernheim failed in this instance, I could not but admire his skill. After using every means of persuasion, insinuation and coaxing, he suddenly took up an imperative tone, and in a sharp, abrupt voice that did not admit a refusal, said: 'I tell you you can walk; get up.' 'Very well,' replied the old follow; 'I must if you insist upon it.' And he got out of bed. No sooner, however, had his foot touched the floor than he screamed even louder than before. Monsieur Bernheim ordered him to step out. 'You tell me to do what is impossible,' he again replied, and he did not move. He had to be allowed to go to bed again, and the whole time the experiment lasted he maintained an obstinate and ill-tempered air." These two cases give an admirable picture of the cases that can be and those that cannot be cured by hypnotism, or any other method of mental suggestion. Hallucination.--"Hallucinations," says a medical authority, "are very common among those who are partially insane. They occur as a result of fever and frequently accompany delirium. They result from an impoverished condition of the blood, especially if it is due to starvation, indigestion, and the use of drugs like belladonna, hyoscyarnus, stramonium, opium, chloral, cannabis indica, and many more that might be mentioned." Large numbers of cases of attempted cure by hypnotism, successful and unsuccessful, might be quoted. There is no doubt that in the lighter forms of partial insanity, hypnotism may help many patients, though not all; but when the disease of the brain has gone farther, especially when a well developed lesion exists in the brain, mental treatment is of little avail, even if it can be practiced at all. A few general remarks by Dr. Bernheim will be interesting. Says he: "The mode of suggestion should be varied and adapted to the special suggestibility of the subject. A simple word does not always suffice in impressing the idea upon the mind. It is sometimes necessary to reason, to prove, to convince; in some cases to affirm decidedly, in others to insinuate gently; for in the condition of sleep, just as in the waking condition, the moral individuality of each subject persists according to his character, his inclinations, his impressionability, etc. Hypnosis does not run all subjects into a uniform mold, and make pure and simple automatons out of them, moved solely by the will of the hypnotist; it increases cerebral docility; it makes the automatic activity preponderate over the will. But the latter persists to a certain degree; the subject thinks, reasons, discusses, accepts more readily than in the waking condition, but does not always accept, especially in the light degrees of sleep. In these cases we must know the patient's character, his particular psychical condition, in order to make an impression upon him." Bad Habits.--The habit of the excessive use of alcoholic drinks, morphine, tobacco, or the like, may often be decidedly helped by hypnotism, if the patient wants to be helped. The method of operation is simple. The operator hypnotizes the subject, and when he is in deep sleep suggests that on awaking he will feel a deep disgust for the article he is in the habit of taking, and if he takes it will be affected by nausea, or other unpleasant symptoms. In most cases the suggested result takes place, provided the subject can be hypnotized al all; but unless the patient is himself anxious to break the habit fixed upon him, the unpleasant effects soon wear off and he is as bad as ever. Dr. Cocke treated a large number of cases, which he reports in detail in his book on hypnotism. In a fair proportion of the cases he was successful; in some cases completely so. In other cases he failed entirely, owing to lack of moral stamina in the patient himself. His conclusions seem to be that hypnotism may be made a very effective aid to moral suasion, but after all, character is the chief force which throws off such habits once they are fixed. The morphine habit is usually the result of a doctor's prescription at some time, and it is practiced more or less involuntarily. Such cases are often materially helped by the proper suggestions. The same is true of bad habits in children. The weak may be strengthened by the stronger nature, and hypnotism may come in as an effective aid to moral influence. Here again character is the deciding factor. Dr. James R. Cocke devotes a considerable part of his book on "Hypnotism" to the use of hypnotism in medical practice, and for further interesting details the reader is referred to that able work. CHAPTER X. Hypnotism of Animals.--Snake Charming. We are all familiar with the snake charmer, and the charming of birds by snakes. How much hypnotism there is in these performances it would be hard to say. It is probable that a bird is fascinated to some extent by the steady gaze of a serpent's eyes, but fear will certainly paralyze a bird as effectively as hypnotism. Father Kircher was the first to try a familiar experiment with hens and cocks. If you hold a hen's head with the beak upon a piece of board, and then draw a chalk line from the beak to the edge of the board, the hen when released will continue to hold her head in the same position for some time, finally walking slowly away, as if roused from a stupor. Farmers' wives often try a sort of hypnotic experiment on hens they wish to transfer from one nest to another when sitting. They put the hen's head under her wing and gently rock her to and fro till she apparently goes to sleep, when she may be carried to another nest and will remain there afterward. Horses are frequently managed by a steady gaze into their eyes. Dr. Moll states that a method of hypnotizing horses named after its inventor as Balassiren has been introduced into Austria by law for the shoeing of horses in the army. We have all heard of the snake charmers of India, who make the snakes imitate all their movements. Some suppose this is by hypnotization. It may be the result of training, however. Certainly real charmers of wild beasts usually end by being bitten or injured in some other way, which would seem to show that the hypnotization does not always work, or else it does not exist at all. We have some fairly well known instances of hypnotism produced in animals. Lafontaine, the magnetizer, some thirty years ago held public exhibitions in Paris in which he reduced cats, dogs, squirrels and lions to such complete insensibility that they felt neither pricks nor blows. The Harvys or Psylles of Egypt impart to the ringed snake the appearance of a stick by pressure on the head, which induces a species of tetanus, says E. W. Lane. The following description of serpent charming by the Aissouans of the province of Sous, Morocco, will be of interest: "The principal charmer began by whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The charmer folded and unfolded the greenish-black viper, as if it were a piece of muslin; he rolled it like a turban round his head, and continued his dance while the serpent maintained its position, and seemed to follow every movement and wish of the dancer. "The buska was then placed on the ground, and raising itself straight on end, in the attitude it assumes on desert roads to attract travelers, began to sway from right to left, following the rhythm of the music. The Aissoua, whirling more and more rapidly in constantly narrowing circles, plunged his hand once more into the basket, and pulled out two of the most venomous reptiles of the desert of Sous; serpents thicker than a man's arm, two or three feet long, whose shining scales are spotted black or yellow, and whose bite sends, as it were, a burning fire through the veins. This reptile is probably the torrida dipsas of antiquity. Europeans now call it the leffah. "The two leffahs, more vigorous and less docile than the buska, lay half curled up, their heads on one side, ready to dart forward, and followed with glittering eyes the movements of the dancer. * * * Hindoo charmers are still more wonderful; they juggle with a dozen different species of reptiles at the same time, making them come and go, leap, dance, and lie down at the sound of the charmer's whistle, like the gentlest of tame animals. These serpents have never been known to bite their charmers." It is well known that some animals, like the opossum, feign death when caught. Whether this is to be compared to hypnotism is doubtful. Other animals, called hibernating, sleep for months with no other food than their fat, but this, again, can hardly be called hypnotism. CHAPTER XI. A Scientific Explanation of Hypnotism.--Dr. Hart's Theory. In the introduction to this book the reader will find a summary of the theories of hypnotism. There is no doubt that hypnotism is a complex state which cannot be explained in an offhand way in a sentence or two. There are, however, certain aspects of hypnotism which we may suppose sufficiently explained by certain scientific writers on the subject. First, what is the character of the delusions apparently created in the mind of a person in the hypnotic condition by a simple word of mouth statement, as when a physician says, "Now, I am going to cut your leg off, but it will not hurt you in the least," and the patient suffers nothing? In answer to this question, Professor William James of Harvard College, one of the leading authorities on the scientific aspects of psychical phenomena in this country, reports the following experiments: "Make a stroke on a paper or blackboard, and tell the subject it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next, he not looking, surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out one by one the new strokes and omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous the next strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly, if the original single line, to which he is blind, be doubled by a prism of sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the direction in which lies the image seen through the prism. "Another experiment proves that he must see it in order to ignore it. Make a red cross, invisible to the hypnotic subject, on a sheet of white paper, and yet cause him to look fixedly at a dot on the paper on or near the red cross; he wills on transferring his eye to the blank sheet, see a bluish-green after image of the cross. This proves that it has impressed his sensibility. He has felt but not perceived it. He had actually ignored it; refused to recognize it, as it were." Dr. Ernest Hart, an English writer, in an article in the British Medical Journal, gives a general explanation of the phenomena of hypnotism which we may accept as true so far as it goes, but which is evidently incomplete. He seems to minimize personal influence too much--that personal influence which we all exert at various times, and which he ignores, not because he would deny it, but because he fears lending countenance to the magnetic fluid and other similar theories. Says he: "We have arrived at the point at which it will be plain that the condition produced in these cases, and known under a varied jargon invented either to conceal ignorance, to express hypotheses, or to mask the design of impressing the imagination and possibly prey upon the pockets of a credulous and wonder-loving public--such names as mesmeric condition, magnetic sleep, clairvoyance, electro-biology, animal magnetism, faith trance, and many other aliases--such a condition, I say, is always subjective. It is independent of passes or gestures; it has no relation to any fluid emanating from the operator; it has no relation to his will, or to any influence which he exercises upon inanimate objects; distance does not affect it, nor proximity, nor the intervention of any conductors or non-conductors, whether silk or glass or stone, or even a brick wall. We can transmit the order to sleep by telephone or by telegraph. We can practically get the same results while eliminating even the operator, if we can contrive to influence the imagination or to affect the physical condition of the subject by any one of a great number of contrivances. "What does all this mean? I will refer to one or two facts in relation to the structure and function of the brain, and show one or two simple experiments of very ancient parentage and date, which will, I think, help to an explanation. First, let us recall something of what we know of the anatomy and localization of function in the brain, and of the nature of ordinary sleep. The brain, as you know, is a complicated organ, made up internally of nerve masses, or ganglia, of which the central and underlying masses are connected with the automatic functions and involuntary actions of the body (such as the action of the heart, lungs, stomach, bowels, etc.), while the investing surface shows a system of complicated convolutions rich in gray matter, thickly sown with microscopic cells, in which the nerve ends terminate. At the base of the brain is a complete circle of arteries, from which spring great numbers of small arterial vessels, carrying a profuse blood supply throughout the whole mass, and capable of contraction in small tracts, so that small areas of the brain may, at any given moment, become bloodless, while other parts of the brain may simultaneously become highly congested. Now, if the brain or any part of it be deprived of the circulation of blood through it, or be rendered partially bloodless, or if it be excessively congested and overloaded with blood, or if it be subjected to local pressure, the part of the brain so acted upon ceases to be capable of exercising its functions. The regularity of the action of the brain and the sanity and completeness of the thought which is one of the functions of its activity depend upon the healthy regularity of the quantity of blood passing through all its parts, and upon the healthy quality of the blood so circulating. If we press upon the carotid arteries which pass up through the neck to form the arterial circle of Willis, at the base of the brain, within the skull--of which I have already spoken, and which supplies the brain with blood--we quickly, as every one knows, produce insensibility. Thought is abolished, consciousness lost. And if we continue the pressure, all those automatic actions of the body, such as the beating of the heart, the breathing motions of the lungs, which maintain life and are controlled by the lower brain centers of ganglia, are quickly stopped and death ensues. "We know by observation in cases where portions of the skull have been removed, either in men or in animals, that during natural sleep the upper part of the brain--its convoluted surface, which in health and in the waking state is faintly pink, like a blushing cheek, from the color of the blood circulating through the network of capillary arteries--becomes white and almost bloodless. It is in these upper convolutions of the brain, as we also know, that the will and the directing power are resident; so that in sleep the will is abolished and consciousness fades gradually away, as the blood is pressed out by the contraction of the arteries. So, also, the consciousness and the directing will may be abolished by altering the quality of the blood passing through the convolutions of the brain. We may introduce a volatile substance, such as chloroform, and its first effect will be to abolish consciousness and induce profound slumber and a blessed insensibility to pain. The like effects will follow more slowly upon the absorption of a drug, such as opium; or we may induce hallucinations by introducing into the blood other toxic substances, such as Indian hemp or stramonium. We are not conscious of the mechanism producing the arterial contraction and the bloodlessness of those convolutions related to natural sleep. But we are not altogether without control over them. We can, we know, help to compose ourselves to sleep, as we say in ordinary language. We retire into a darkened room, we relieve ourselves from the stimulus of the special senses, we free ourselves from the influence of noises, of strong light, of powerful colors, or of tactile impressions. We lie down and endeavor to soothe brain activity by driving away disturbing thoughts, or, as people sometimes say, 'try to think of nothing.' And, happily, we generally succeed more or less well. Some people possess an even more marked control over this mechanism of sleep. I can generally succeed in putting myself to sleep at any hour of the day, either in the library chair or in the brougham. This is, so to speak, a process of self-hypnotization, and I have often practiced it when going from house to house, when in the midst of a busy practice, and I sometimes have amused my friends and family by exercising this faculty, which I do not think it very difficult to acquire. (We also know that many persons can wake at a fixed hour in the morning by setting their minds upon it just before going to sleep.) Now, there is something here which deserves a little further examination, but which it would take too much time to develop fully at present. Most people know something of what is meant by reflex action. The nerves which pass from the various organs to the brain convey with, great rapidity messages to its various parts, which are answered by reflected waves of impulse. If the soles of the feet be tickled, contraction of the toes, or involuntary laughter, will be excited, or perhaps only a shuddering and skin contraction, known as goose-skin. The irritation of the nerve-end in the skin has carried a message to the involuntary or voluntary ganglia of the brain which has responded by reflecting back again nerve impulses which have contracted the muscles of the feet or skin muscles, or have given rise to associated ideas and explosion of laughter. In the same way, if during sleep heat be applied to the soles of the feet, dreams of walking over hot surfaces--Vesuvius or Fusiyama, or still hotter places--may be produced, or dreams of adventure on frozen surfaces or in arctic regions may be created by applying ice to the feet of the sleeper. "Here, then, it is seen that we have a mechanism in the body, known to physiologists as the ideo-motor, or sensory motor system of nerves, which can produce, without the consciousness of the individual and automatically, a series of muscular contractions. And remember that the coats of the arteries are muscular and contractile under the influence of external stimuli, acting without the help of the consciousness, or when the consciousness is in abeyance. I will give another example of this, which completes the chain of phenomena in the natural brain and the natural body I wish to bring under notice in explanation of the true as distinguished from the false, or falsely interpreted, phenomena of hypnotism, mesmerism and electro-biology. I will take the excellent illustration quoted by Dr. B. W. Carpenter in his old-time, but valuable, book on 'The Physiology of the Brain.' When a hungry man sees food, or when, let us say, a hungry boy looks into a cookshop, he becomes aware of a watering of the mouth and a gnawing sensation at the stomach. What does this mean? It means that the mental impression made upon him by the welcome and appetizing spectacle has caused a secretion of saliva and of gastric juice; that is to say, the brain has, through the ideo-motor set of nerves, sent a message which has dilated the vessels around the salivary and gastric glands, increased the flow of blood through them and quickened their secretion. Here we have, then, a purely subjective mental activity acting through a mechanism of which the boy is quite ignorant, and which he is unable to control, and producing that action on the vessels of dilation or contraction which, as we have seen, is the essential condition of brain activity and the evolution of thought, and is related to the quickening or the abolition of consciousness, and to the activity or abeyance of function in the will centers and upper convolutions of the brain, as in its other centers of localization. "Here, then, we have something like a clue to the phenomena--phenomena which, as I have pointed out, are similar to and have much in common with mesmeric sleep, hypnotism or electro-biology. We have already, I hope, succeeded in eliminating from our minds the false theory--the theory, that is to say, experimentally proved to be false--that the will, or the gestures, or the magnetic or vital fluid of the operator are necessary for the abolition of the consciousness and the abeyance of the will of the subject. We now see that ideas arising in the mind of the subject are sufficient to influence the circulation in the brain of the person operated on, and such variations of the blood supply of the brain as are adequate to produce sleep in the natural state, or artificial slumber, either by total deprivation or by excessive increase or local aberration in the quantity or quality of blood. In a like manner it is possible to produce coma and prolonged insensibility by pressure of the thumbs on the carotid; or hallucination, dreams and visions by drugs, or by external stimulation of the nerves. Here again the consciousness may be only partially affected, and the person in whom sleep, coma or hallucination is produced, whether by physical means or by the influence of suggestion, may remain subject to the will of others and incapable of exercising his own volition." In short, Dr. Hart's theory is that hypnotism comes from controlling the blood supply of the brain, cutting off the supply from parts or increasing it in other parts. This theory is borne out by the well-known fact that some persons can blush or turn pale at will; that some people always blush on the mention of certain things, or calling up certain ideas. Certain other ideas will make them turn pale. Now, if certain parts of the brain are made to blush or turn pale, there is no doubt that hypnotism will follow, since blushing and turning pale are known to be due to the opening and closing of the blood-vessels. We may say that the subject is induced by some means to shut the blood out of certain portions of the brain, and keep it out until he is told to let it in again. CHAPTER XII. Telepathy and Clairvoyance.--Peculiar Power in Hypnotic State.--Experiments.--"Phantasms of the Living" Explained by Telepathy It has already been noticed that persons in the hypnotic state seem to have certain of their senses greatly heightened in power. They can remember, see and hear things that ordinary persons would be entirely ignorant of. There is abundant evidence that a supersensory perception is also developed, entirely beyond the most highly developed condition of the ordinary senses, such as being able to tell clearly what some other person is doing at a great distance. In view of the discovery of the X or Roentgen ray, the ability to see through a stone wall does not seem so strange as it did before that discovery. It is on power of supersensory, or extra-sensory perception that what is known as telepathy and clairvoyance are based. That such things really exist, and are not wholly a matter of superstition has been thoroughly demonstrated in a scientific way by the British Society for Psychical Research, and kindred societies in various parts of the world. Strictly speaking, such phenomena as these are not a part of hypnotism, but our study of hypnotism will enable us to understand them to some extent, and the investigation of them is a natural corollary to the study of hypnotism, for the reason that it has been found that these extraordinary powers are often possessed by persons under hypnotic influence. Until the discovery of hypnotism there was little to go on in conducting a scientific investigation, because clairvoyance could not be produced by any artificial means, and so could not be studied under proper restrictive conditions. We will first quote two experiments performed by Dr. Cocke which the writer heard him describe with his own lips. The first case was that of a girl suffering from hysterical tremor. The doctor had hypnotized her for the cure of it, and accidentally stumbled on an example of thought transference. She complained on one occasion of a taste of spice in her mouth. As the doctor had been chewing some spice, he at once guessed that this might be telepathy. Nothing was said at the time, but the next time the girl was hypnotized, the doctor put a quinine tablet in his mouth. The girl at once asked for water, and said she had a very bitter taste in her mouth. The water was given her, and the doctor went behind a screen, where he put cayenne pepper in his mouth, severely burning himself. No one but the doctor knew of the experiment at the time. The girl immediately cried and became so hysterical that she had to be awakened. The burning in her mouth disappeared as soon as she came out of the hypnotic state, but the doctor continued to suffer. Nearly three hundred similar experiments with thirty-six different subjects were tried by Dr. Cocke, and of these sixty-nine were entirely successful. The others were doubtful or complete failures. The most remarkable of the experiments may be given in the doctor's own words: "I told the subject to remain perfectly still for five minutes and to relate to me at the end of this time any sensation he might experience. I passed into another room and closed the door and locked it; went into a closet in the room and closed the door after me; took down from the shelf, first a linen sheet, then a pasteboard box, then a toy engine, owned by a child in the house. I went back to my subject and asked him what experience he had had. "He said I seemed to go into another room, and from thence into a dark closet. I wanted something off the shelf, but did not know what. I took down from the shelf a piece of smooth cloth, a long, square pasteboard box and a tin engine. These were all the sensations he had experienced. I asked him if he saw the articles with his eyes which I had removed from the shelf. He answered that the closet was dark and that he only felt them with his hands. I asked him how he knew that the engine was tin. He said: 'By the sound of it.' As my hands touched it I heard the wheels rattle. Now the only sound made by me while in the closet was simply the rattling of the wheels of the toy as I took it off the shelf. This could not possibly have been heard, as the subject was distant from me two large rooms, and there were two closed doors between us, and the noise was very slight. Neither could the subject have judged where I went, as I had on light slippers which made no noise. The subject had never visited the house before, and naturally did not know the contents of the closet as he was carefully observed from the moment he entered the house." Many similar experiments are on record. Persons in the hypnotic condition have been able to tell what other persons were doing in distant parts of a city; could tell the pages of the books they might be reading and the numbers of all sorts of articles. While in London the writer had an opportunity of witnessing a performance of this kind. There was a young boy who seemed to have this peculiar power. A queer old desk had come into the house from Italy, and as it was a valuable piece of furniture, the owner was anxious to learn its pedigree. Without having examined the desk beforehand in any way the boy, during one of his trances, said that in a certain place a secret spring would be found which would open an unknown drawer, and behind that drawer would be found the name of the maker of the desk and the date 1639. The desk was at once examined, and the name and date found exactly as described. It is clear in this case that this information could not have been in the mind of any one, unless it were some person in Italy, whence the desk had come. It is more likely that the remarkable supersensory power given enabled reading through the wood. We may now turn our attention to another class of phenomena of great interest, and that is the visions persons in the ordinary state have of friends who are on the point of death. It would seem that by an extraordinary effort the mind of a person in the waking state might be impressed through a great distance. At the moment of death an almost superhuman mental effort is more likely and possible than at any other time, and it is peculiar that these visions or phantasms are largely confined to that moment. The natural explanation that rises to the ordinary mind is, of course, "Spirits." This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the visions sometimes appear immediately after death, as well as at the time and just before. This may be explained, however, on the theory that the ordinary mind is not easily impressed, and when unconsciously impressed some time may elapse before the impression becomes perceptible to the conscious mind, just as in passing by on a swift train, we may see something, but not realize that we have seen it till some time afterward, when we remember what we have unconsciously observed. The British Society for Psychical Research has compiled two large volumes of carefully authenticated cases, which are published under the title, "Phantasms of the Living." We quote one or two interesting cases. A Miss L. sends the following report: January 4, 1886. "On one of the last days of July, about the year 1860, at 3 o'clock p.m., I was sitting in the drawing room at the Rectory, reading, and my thoughts entirely occupied. I suddenly looked up and saw most distinctly a tall, thin old gentleman enter the room and walk to the table. He wore a peculiar, old-fashioned cloak which I recognized as belonging to my great-uncle. I then looked at him closely and remembered his features and appearance perfectly, although I had not seen him since I was quite a child. In his hand was a roll of paper, and he appeared to be very agitated. I was not in the least alarmed, as I firmly believed he was my uncle, not knowing then of his illness. I asked him if he wanted my father, who, as I said, was not at home. He then appeared still more agitated and distressed, but made no remark. He then left the room, passing through the open door. I noticed that, although it was a very wet day, there was no appearance of his having walked either in mud or rain. He had no umbrella, but a thick walking stick, which I recognized at once when my father brought it home after the funeral. On questioning the servants, they declared that no one had rung the bell; neither did they see any one enter. My father had a letter by the next post, asking him to go at once to my uncle, who was very ill in Leicestershire. He started at once, but on his arrival was told that his uncle had died at exactly 3 o'clock that afternoon, and had asked for him by name several times in an anxious and troubled manner, and a roll of paper was found under his pillow. "I may mention that my father was his only nephew, and, having no son, he always led him to think that he would have a considerable legacy. Such, however, was not the case, and it is supposed that, as they were always good friends, he was influenced in his last illness, and probably, when too late, he wished to alter his will." In answer to inquiries, Miss L. adds: "I told my mother and an uncle at once about the strange appearance before the news arrived, and also my father directly he returned, all of whom are now dead. They advised me to dismiss it from my memory, but agreed that it could not be imagination, as I described my uncle so exactly, and they did not consider me to be either of a nervous or superstitious temperament. "I am quite sure that I have stated the facts truthfully and correctly. The facts are as fresh in my memory as if they happened only yesterday, although so many years have passed away. "I can assure you that nothing of the sort ever occurred before or since. Neither have I been subject to nervous or imaginative fancies. This strange apparition was in broad daylight, and as I was only reading the 'Illustrated Newspaper,' there was nothing to excite my imagination." Hundreds of cases of this kind have been reported by persons whose truthfulness cannot be doubted, and every effort has been made to eliminate possibility of hallucination or accidental fancy. That things of this kind do occur may be said to be scientifically proven. Such facts as these have stimulated experiment in the direction of testing thought transference. These experiments have usually been in the reading of numbers and names, and a certain measure of success has resulted. It may be added, however, that no claimants ever appeared for various banknotes deposited in strong-boxes, to be turned over to any one who would read the numbers. Just why success was never attained under these conditions it would be hard to say. The writer once made a slight observation in this direction. When matching pennies with his brother he found that if the other looked at the penny he could match it nearly every time. There may have been some unconscious expression of face that gave the clue. Persons in hypnotic trance are expert muscle readers. For instance, let such a person take your hand and then go through the alphabet, naming the letters. If you have any word in your mind, as the muscle reader comes to each letter the muscles will unconsciously contract. By giving attention h the muscles you can make them contract on the wrong letters and entirely mislead such a person. CHAPTER XIII. The Confessions of Medium.--Spiritualistic Phenomena Explained on Theory of Telepathy.--Interesting Statement of Mrs. Piper, the Famous Medium of the Psychical Research Society. The subject of spiritualism has been very thoroughly investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, both in England and this country, and under circumstances so peculiarly advantageous that a world of light has been thrown on the connection between hypnotism and this strange phenomenon. Professor William James, the professor of psychology at Harvard University, was fortunate enough some years ago to find a perfect medium who was not a professional and whose character was such as to preclude fraud. This was Mrs. Leonora E. Piper, of Boston. For many years she remained in the special employ of the Society for Psychical Research, and the members of that society were able to study her case under every possible condition through a long period of time. Not long ago she resolved to give up her engagement, and made a public statement over her own signature which is full of interest. A brief history of her life and experiences will go far toward furnishing the general reader a fair explanation of clairvoyant and spiritualistic phenomena. Mrs. Piper was the wife of a modest tailor, and lived on Pinckney street, back of Beacon Hill. She was married in 1881, and it was not until May 16, 1884, that her first child was born. A little more than a month later, on June 29, she had her first trance experience. Says she: "I remember the date distinctly, because it was two days after my first birthday following the birth of my first child." She had gone to Dr. J. R. Cocke, the great authority on hypnotism and a practicing physician of high scientific attainments. "During the interview," says Mrs. Piper, "I was partly unconscious for a few minutes. On the following Sunday I went into a trance." She appears to have slipped into it unconsciously. She surprised her friends by saying some very odd things, none of which she remembered when she came to herself. Not long after she did it again. A neighbor, the wife of a merchant, when she heard the things that had been said, assured Mrs. Piper that it must be messages from the spirit world. The atmosphere in Boston was full of talk of that kind, and it was not hard for people to believe that a real medium of spirit communication had been found. The merchant's wife wanted a sitting, and Mrs. Piper arranged one, for which she received her first dollar. She had discovered that she could go into trances by an effort of her own will. She would sit down at a table, with her sitter opposite, and leaning her head on a pillow, go off into the trance after a few minutes of silence. There was a clock behind her. She gave her sitters an hour, sometimes two hours, and they wondered how she knew when the hour had expired. At any rate, when the time came around she awoke. In describing her experiences she has said: "At first when I sat in my chair and leaned my head back and went into the trance state, the action was attended by something of a struggle. I always felt as if I were undergoing an anesthetic, but of late years I have slipped easily into the condition, leaning the head forward. On coming out of it I felt stupid and dazed. At first I said disconnected things. It was all a gibberish, nothing but gibberish. Then I began to speak some broken French phrases. I had studied French two years, but did not speak it well." Once she had an Italian for sitter, who could speak no English and asked questions in Italian. Mrs. Piper could speak no Italian, indeed did not understand a word of it, except in her trance state. But she had no trouble in understanding her sitter. After a while her automatic utterance announced the personality of a certain Dr. Phinuit, who was said to have been a noted French physician who had died long before. His "spirit" controlled her for a number of years. After some time Dr. Phinuit was succeeded by one "Pelham," and finally by "Imperator" and "Rector." As the birth of her second child approached Mrs. Piper gave up what she considered a form of hysteria; but after the birth of the child the sittings, paid for at a dollar each, began again. Dr. Hodgson, of the London Society for Psychical Research, saw her at the house of Professor James, and he became so interested in her case that he decided to take her to London to be studied. She spent nearly a year abroad; and after her return the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research was formed, and for a long time Mrs. Piper received a salary to sit exclusively for the society. Their records and reports are full of the things she said and did. Every one who investigated Mrs. Piper had to admit that her case was full of mystery. But if one reads the reports through from beginning to end one cannot help feeling that her spirit messages are filled with nonsense, at least of triviality. Here is a specimen--and a fair specimen, too--of the kind of communication Pelham gave. He wrote out the message. It referred to a certain famous man known in the reports as Mr. Marte. Pelham is reported to have written by Mrs. Piper's hand: "That he (Mr. Marte), with his keen brain and marvelous perception, will be interested, I know. He was a very dear friend of X. I was exceedingly fond of him. Comical weather interests both he and I--me--him--I know it all. Don't you see I correct these? Well, I am not less intelligent now. But there are many difficulties. I am far clearer on all points than I was shut up in the prisoned body (prisoned, prisoning or imprisoned you ought to say). No, I don't mean, to get it that way. 'See here, H, don't view me with a critic's eye, but pass my imperfections by.' Of course, I know all that as well as anybody on your sphere (of course). Well, I think so. I tell you, old fellow, it don't do to pick all these little errors too much when they amount to nothing in one way. You have light enough and brain enough, I know, to understand my explanations of being shut up in this body, dreaming, as it were, and trying to help on science." Some people would say that Pelham had had a little too much whisky toddy when he wrote that rambling, meaningless string of words. Or we can suppose that Mrs. Piper was dreaming. We see in the last sentence a curious mixture of ideas that must have been in her mind. She herself says: "I do not see how anybody can look on all that as testimony from another world. I cannot see but that it must have been an unconscious expression of my subliminal self, writing such stuff as dreams are made of." In another place Mrs. Piper makes the following direct statement: "I never heard of anything being said by myself while in a trance state which might not have been latent in: "1. My own mind. "2. In the mind of the person in charge of the sitting. "3. In the mind of the person who was trying to get communication with some one in another state of existence, or some companion present with such person, or, "4. In the mind of some absent person alive somewhere else in the world." Writing in the Psychological Review in 1898, Professor James says: "Mrs. Piper's trance memory is no ordinary human memory, and we have to explain its singular perfection either as the natural endowment of her solitary subliminal self, or as a collection of distinct memory systems, each with a communicating spirit as its vehicle. "The spirit hypothesis exhibits a vacancy, triviality, and incoherence of mind painful to think of as the state of the departed, and coupled with a pretension to impress one, a disposition to 'fish' and face around and disguise the essential hollowness which is, if anything, more painful still. Mr. Hodgson has to resort to the theory that, although the communicants probably are spirits, they are in a semi-comatose or sleeping state while communicating, and only half aware of what is going on, while the habits of Mrs. Piper's neural organism largely supply the definite form of words, etc., in which the phenomenon is clothed." After considering other theories Professor James concludes: "The world is evidently more complex than we are accustomed to think it, the absolute 'world ground' in particular being farther off than we are wont to think it." Mrs. Piper is reported to have said: "Of what occurs after I enter the trance period I remember nothing--nothing of what I said or what was said to me. I am but a passive agent in the hands of powers that control me. I can give no account of what becomes of me during a trance. The wisdom and inspired eloquence which of late has been conveyed to Dr. Hodgson through my mediumship is entirely beyond my understanding. I do not pretend to understand it, and can give no explanation--I simply know that I have the power of going into a trance when I wish." Professor James says: "The Piper phenomena are the most absolutely baffling thing I know." Professor Hudson, Ph.D., LL.D., author of "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," comes as near giving an explanation of "spiritualism," so called, as any one. He begins by saying: "All things considered, Mrs. Piper is probably the best 'psychic' now before the public for the scientific investigation of spiritualism and it must be admitted that if her alleged communications from discarnate spirits cannot be traced to any other source, the claims of spiritism have been confirmed." Then he goes on: "A few words, however, will make it clear to the scientific mind that her phenomena can be easily accounted for on purely psychological principles, thus: "Man is endowed with a dual mind, or two minds, or states of consciousness, designated, respectively, as the objective and the subjective. The objective mind is normally unconscious of the content of the subjective mind. The latter is constantly amenable to control by suggestion, and it is exclusively endowed with the faculty of telepathy. "An entranced psychic is dominated exclusively by her subjective mind, and reason is in abeyance. Hence she is controlled by suggestion, and, consequently, is compelled to believe herself to be a spirit, good or bad, if that suggestion is in any way imparted to her, and she automatically acts accordingly. "She is in no sense responsible for the vagaries of a Phinuit, for that eccentric personality is the creation of suggestion. But she is also in the condition which enables her to read the subjective minds of others. Hence her supernormal knowledge of the affairs of her sitters. What he knows, or has ever known, consciously or unconsciously (subjective memory being perfect), is easily within her reach. "Thus far no intelligent psychical researcher will gainsay what I have said. But it sometimes happens that the psychic obtains information that neither she nor the sitter could ever have consciously possessed. Does it necessarily follow that discarnate spirits gave her the information? Spiritists say 'yes,' for this is the 'last ditch' of spiritism. "Psychologists declare that the telepathic explanation is as valid in the latter class of cases as it obviously is in the former. Thus, telepathy being a power of the subjective mind, messages may be conveyed from one to another at any time, neither of the parties being objectively conscious of the fact. It follows that a telepathist at any following seance with the recipient can reach the content of that message. "If this argument is valid--and its validity is self-evident--it is impossible to imagine a case that may not be thus explained on psychological principles." Professor Hudson's argument will appeal to the ordinary reader as good. It may be simplified, however, thus: We may suppose that Mrs. Piper voluntarily hypnotizes herself. Perhaps she simply puts her conscious reason to sleep. In that condition the rest of her mind is in an exalted state, and capable of telepathy and mind-reading, either of those near at hand or at a distance. Her reason being asleep, she simply dreams, and the questions of her sitter are made to fit into her dream. If we regard mediums as persons who have the power of hypnotizing themselves and then of doing what we know persons who have been hypnotized by others sometimes do, we have an explanation that covers the whole case perfectly. At the same time, as Professor James warns us, we must believe that the mind is far more complex than we are accustomed to think it. 
59224	----	they were different BY NEIL J. KENNEY _Such magnificent gifts as these were undoubtedly intended for Mankind. But those who possess them are rare indeed, while those who fear the unknown are legion_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _As secretary, receptionist and general nursemaid to them I took it upon myself to dig back through the news files and get enough clips to tell their history from birth until they opened the school. You've all read it so there's no need to go into details about their strange life and still stranger birth. Nor their magnificent education or still more magnificent gifts. It's true, every bit of it; their telepathic and ESPing powers WORKED. They were the only births like them to survive to maturity and beyond._ _During the last contact I had with them (I was their first and most advanced pupil) it came as pure inspiration to take down their transmissions in the special short, shorthand we developed for use among the pupils and ourselves. What follows may be added to the story told by the news clips, differing only in person. I have added nothing in translation of the notes, leaving the narrative as disjointed as they gave it. The events are as they transmitted them, as they lived them. I was in contact with them until--but read, and when you're through reading do as I do every night._ _Pray._ _And hope--for mankind._ * * * * * Well, Kitten, it seems impossible that three grand, successful years of work could end so suddenly with us lying in a ditch or anticipating, ESPwise, an occasional bullet fired from the guns of friends but there it is. God, what a complicated being this so-called modern man is! He seems to be born cloaked with complexities which get even more complex as he grows. No wonder he has been so long on the road, being engaged in a continual battle between ethics and emotions as he has. So here we are, the bridge, the first rungs of a ladder leading to a new and delightful plane of existence for all mankind, wallowing in the mud of an irrigation ditch instead of glorying in the divine world of the mind. If we can but make them see! Maybe the professors were right when they told us to teach under the protection of the university instead of hardheadedly going out on our own. Princess, do you remember Lucille? She was our best pupil, after you, of course. She's the one who turned over the stone that freed our personal gremlin. Oh, it's not really her fault, though she did break our one and only cardinal rule by bringing in an outsider herself instead of leaving such choices to us. Actually the fault was ours because--well, who knows? That wonderful control we practiced for so many years slipped, no matter the reason. It was just one of those inexplicably foolish things people will do when they think they're in love. Guess we thought we could save her some embarrassment or some such thing. You had just left on a long vacation when _that_ one showed up. He was the man that Lucille brought up with her as a prospective pupil, the one that--one wing of them is closing in on us now, Kitten. We'll have to try for the swamp ahead of us. We'll have to lose them for a while if we want time to figure a way out, though we aren't really very good at this sort of cat and mouse game. We can give our own boys a little credit, though. They aren't really trying to hit us. They shoot well enough to be able to make it look very good. All we really have to worry about is Thurlow and his trained deputy, Trainor. There, that was nice. The sheriff himself just spotted us and started a pincer movement--fifty yards in back of us. Good old boy. Hope he doesn't get in trouble over us. At last! If this patch of swampy brush is really as thick as we ESP it we're made, providing the highway troopers of this state don't get too smart and take over the operation. Our sheriff is in charge so far. Lord, if we only weren't so tired! Anyhow, Lucy brought Thurlow in and we gave him the usual treatment. The only trouble is we overdid it slightly and it scared him. Besides telling him what he had for breakfast we ESPed his wallet and told him its contents and when he reached for it in a sort of stunned reflex action we levitated it into his hand. It was a pretty big mistake in view of the fact that he was one of that bunch that was fairly sensitive mentally, but whom we couldn't read thoroughly. We could telepath only the very surface of his mind. He would have made a wonderful adept with the proper training. He was awed but shocked and scared, too. It was outside his realm of experience and he was superstitious in spite of his fine education. Some folks don't let learning sink in to open the rusty locks of prejudice and inhibition. He said things that bared his mind as surely as if we had read him. It wasn't a pretty mind, either. It made us sick physically and the impulses that did come through were deep and angry, giving us a terrific headache and making it hard to concentrate. Later we followed him but still couldn't read him for the anger flashes blotted out his thought stream thoroughly. To him, what we were doing just couldn't happen in good old 1983. We were dealing in the black arts and he told us as much, refusing to listen to reason in any shape. The fact that everyone has these capabilities latent was altogether lost on him. Our licenses, diplomas and degrees meant less than nothing and the longer he went on the more rabid he got, frothing obscenely about such things as tampering with forces better left alone and man thinking with his brains instead of letting the Prince of Darkness do it for him. Had it not been so serious it would have been almost slapstick. Instead he was tragic. When he got to the part about us eventually filling the minds of children with our loathsome disease he ran out of expletives and stormed out of the office in a cloud of anger and fright, muttering that we hadn't heard the last of _him_. Lucy, of course, was heartsick. We didn't have to tell her what the meeting had meant. Nor did we tell her what else we'd ESPed in Thurlow's wallet. She found that out during the rather abortive lesson we tried to give her for she read as we interrupted it (that shows how much off beam we were because we just don't do that) to take a phone call from Casey down at the sheriff's office. Our visitor, Thurlow, was District Judge Thurlow of District Two, a very high man on the law enforcement pole. Casey was good. He'd listened in while Thurlow was complaining to the sheriff and apparently heard the sheriff read the judge off politely but nonetheless firmly, telling him first how valuable we were to the force when it came to interrogating hard-to-crack suspects and as long as we hadn't committed murder or rape or passed any bum checks there was nothing to be done. Especially since the judge His Honor was out of his district! Fortunately we were in District One over which our mutual friend, Judge Kimball, presides. Incidentally, Kimball was still under doctor's care at the time due to his latest heart attack. He was getting along quite well but he was old and his days on the bench were pretty well numbered. Casey thought that District One might conceivably have to appoint a new judge to hold them over until election due to the fall court calendar. As it turned out that didn't happen. Br-r-r! Princess, don't ever let anyone tell you that swamp water can't get cold in summertime. We've got the shakes pretty bad both from our ordeal and from chill. Getting uncomfortably hungry, too. That's what comes of letting an inferior enemy panic you. We certainly haven't acted as though we had better sense. It's just another of those imponderables to chalk up for study. After Casey's call the air seemed to be cleared and under that driving compulsion which has never left us we went on about the business of trying to succeed with nature since she had succeeded so well with us. The study of the deep processes of the mind eclipsed the next two days and only the terrible jangle of that outmoded telephone brought us to the surface again. It's too bad that we had to converse orally with the great masses of the untrained. It's so slow and they could learn so easily. It was Casey again, telling us we were needed down at the station. He was apparently calling us on blind orders, for he couldn't tell us what was up. Figuring that we had another prisoner to crack we closed classes and drove down. The sheriff seemed mystified, too, and just slightly troubled. We could read that much off the surface of his mind, but he was upset enough to make the rest of his thoughts a meaningless jumble of impulses. All he knew was that we were wanted in the judge's chambers. You guessed it, Honey. It was Judge Thurlow filling in for Kimball on an emergency hearing and he figured it was his duty to mankind to give us a little talking to while he was there. After all, the good of the community was his concern now, and he chose to interpret that as the opportunity to place his narrow little views on record. Trainor, the sheriff's deputy faithful only to the judge, because of a favor granted while he served in Thurlow's district, was very busy signing his name to something when we walked into the chambers. It gave us a peculiar feeling to see Thurlow sitting at Kimball's desk. It bore out our theory about a room taking on the personality of its occupant. This room was no longer warm and friendly. The only thing we could read from Thurlow was a selfrighteous anger and a solemn, nasty vow to fight us to the last ditch--which, incidentally, he has done for that irrigation ditch is the last one we ever wish to occupy. That water was miserably cold. Three guesses what Trainor was signing. Of all things, a complaint charging us with questionable educational technique! The one thing not covered by license, as Thurlow made haste to confirm through the State House, and by Trainor's complaint, the one way we could legally come into his hands. It was a dainty little frame but unbreakable. Spreading a sweet legal shovel he asked us questions that minutely covered every phase and method of our teaching, then smiled a nasty smile, the while fixing his own signature to another wisp of terribly binding paper. A restraining order. The words of which forbade us to teach! We were to suspend our life's work or suffer the punishment for contempt of court because of a narrow-minded, righteously wrathful mental prude! How can you fight something like that? Thurlow was the last and highest branch of authority in the area unless we took it to Supreme Court. For a while we were tempted to do that but on what were we to base a case? Public opinion would throw us out of court if the Supreme Justice didn't. We talked to the sheriff when we came down and he and his boys were on our side--emotionally. Legally they had to carry out the judge's orders to place us under institutional restraint if we transgressed. In short, we would be tossed in the pokey if we thumbed our noses at the order. The sheriff's advice was to suspend operations until Supreme Court sat and take it to them. When we asked if he and his staff would be witnesses for us--well, that's water under the oft mentioned bridge. There are some ugly facets of politics that force the men playing them to act as they do. Otherwise we surely wouldn't have been refused. So there we were; no witnesses--no case; because we couldn't bring our pupils into it. It was an uncertain mess at best and we didn't want them to get it in the neck along with us. For the same reason we couldn't involve our former teachers at the university. What poor payment for hours of drudgery to be dragged into a court battle! So with the sheriff's advice to go into another business ringing in our ears, we came back home to sweat it out and think. It took a while, but the only answer we felt was right under the circumstances was to go underground. That makes it sound like the dark ages, doesn't it, Princess, when knowledge has to hide and creep and skulk instead of flowering under the sun? Our gifts couldn't be let go to waste, not after the preparation and development that went into expanding them into a workable set of psychic senses. We _had_ to give Man the benefit of our awakening by waking him in turn. It's much too bad that we were so sheltered at the university. We might have had some practical experience with the world and its people. We might also have known what to do about this awful hunger that is gradually tearing us down. It's getting to be a serious problem in our untrained condition. The prof's wouldn't even let us play handball for fear of injury so consequently we're nothing but a living cliche, skin and bones. Donald feels it strongly. We shall have to try to buoy each other and go on our combined reserves. Pray that we don't get too weak. It's been almost 24 hours since we've eaten, as there wasn't time for breakfast. Our clothes seem to be drying slightly though it's still cool enough to make it uncomfortable and dangerous. This is the way colds grab you. We did pretty well in our choice of an underground location--we thought. Our mistake was in overlooking the police trained mind of our bloodhound friend, Trainor. He's a shrewd man and not unintelligent though sadly misguided. How we should like to have him on our side! In five days of sniffing around he had us located, and in another, he had enough proof of activity to report to Thurlow and come after us with a bench warrant of arrest. It's peculiar that we couldn't stall him or dodge him some way with our much touted IQ, but probably we were still too naive about human relations and most assuredly unversed in the devious twistings of the police mind. After all, though we're twenty-six years old, our experience with people put us in about the three year old class. So you see? Were it to begin all over again the outcome would be different. We would be more practical and worldly. You learn. There was no sense fighting him, because he had the law enforcement agencies of the whole state in back of him. All he had to do was whisper "Sic 'em" and we were dead. So we went along quietly to see Thurlow and that dear man took a singularly fiendish delight in imposing an impossible fine on us for contempt of court. Our particular transgression wasn't definitively covered by law so neither was the fine. The fact that Thurlow was fining us for teaching methods instead of the contempt charge didn't dawn on us until just yesterday. How completely ignorant can you get? He gave us a pretty, selfrighteous speech about the good of the community and a judge's place in it, mentioning in passing that everything wasn't covered by law so it was up to the judge to handle matters as he saw fit. That was what he was trained and elected for and that was what he was doing. Nothing personal, understand. As it was, and well he knew it, we couldn't begin to pay the fine so we were informed that we'd have to sit it out in the county jail at the rate of two dollars a day. The fine was five hundred dollars. The sheriff almost cried when he found we were to be taking advantage of his hospitality. Very likely the full injustice of the judge's complacent little scheme finally got through to him. At any rate, sympathy or not, we had eight months and ten days to serve with time off possible for good behavior. That's where you found us when you finished your vacation and discovered you were temporarily out of a job. Donald took quick advantage of a prisoner's rights to telephone Judge Kimball. He was still in bed but sounded fairly strong. His consternation over our new address was touching and real, but we were sadly informed that ethically the whole matter was beyond him. When Thurlow sat in for him in his district, then Thurlow was law and no reversal could be had outside of the due process of that law through a higher court. He, Kimball, could do nothing until he could get back on the bench. That might be several weeks yet as he wasn't to get out of bed or get excited in any way. We hung up and had our first look at the familiar cells from the prisoner's viewpoint. The change in outlook was subtle but definite. The walls looked grayer. Hope we're not boring you with all this, Kitten, but we must tell it to someone and you are closest and dearest to us. You missed out on nearly all our doings after we closed the school so call it a filling-in process. Someone should have the full story although what good it will ever do is debatable. Perhaps at some future time we can do something with it--if we get out of the present jackpot. Got to move. The state police have taken over the operation and our sheriff is relegated to the role of visiting fireman. It's lamentable that we aren't in his bailiwick. Things might work out better. These troopers are very efficient. Donald ESPs them folding a cordon around our end of the swamp. All we can do is head through its length now. Trainor is with them. Thurlow has joined them also. We get a tiny jab of pain as we pass over him. That impossible man! Naturally our pupils fell off, thinking the school completely shut down, until you visited us and were able to pass the word that discreet visits wouldn't go unrewarded. Only a few drifted back for deeper learning and expansion, as you know. One happy thing about the others who were afraid to come back is that they would still make progress, having once been awakened, though it would be infinitely slow and groping. The nucleus that sat with us on those once a week school days grew stronger very rapidly, for knowledge is cumulative and progressive, and they began to realize what they in turn had to do when they were ready. Credit must be given their strength of mind for seeing and accepting such a responsibility with the enthusiasm they showed. It was too good to last. Trainor's turn at afternoon shift came around and lasted the usual month which gave him plenty of opportunity to watch us like a hawk. He did. We were cautious but we couldn't know what he was watching for, because he didn't know either. He found out one afternoon. Visitors just don't come around and merely sit--staring at each other or the walls. We learned another lesson from that: men with as much training as he had don't always consciously think things out with their surface minds. Their reactions became instinctive and as such, untraceable by the most adept telepath. We knew he was there to spy but that's about all. The net result was a direct order from Thurlow cutting off not only all visitors, but as Trainor gleefully advised us, cancelling all accrued days off for good behavior. That's five days a month in this state and it was almost unbearable. The thorough injustice of the whole affair was beginning to gall mightily, getting under our rather thin skin in many places. What seemed the final crushing blow was the news that filtered in to us from Judge Kimball's court reporter. He'd taken word to the sick man about our latest loving treatment by Thurlow and it angered Kimball enough to make him get out of bed--too soon. He died on the floor of his bedroom. So, not only do we lose a dear friend, but also any chance of his assistance. Thurlow would now sit for District One until election time. That put us entirely on our own resources. After much deliberation, we decided to give in and go back to the university when our sentence was up and take advantage of its sheltering walls for our teaching. We would be absorbed into the faculty and soon all this unpleasantness would pass over. How we passed the time until our release is unimportant to anyone but us. During the remaining months, we delved farther and farther into the mind and gained a much deeper insight into the workings of these gifts we had. Man could be so powerful and work so much for his own good--if he could only be made to realize the potential in his mind! He could even be happy. The bright day came at last, and we walked out of our cell free to begin again. It was raining a gray rain outside, but to us the weather had never looked brighter. As we reached for the sheriff's phone to call the university, Trainor sidled up and laid a scrap of paper on the desk. A glance was enough to make us hang up on the uncompleted call. It was another restraining order. After that we tried to find work on the outside, but it was a sorry failure. The curse of being different is a mighty one indeed. No one seemed to care that we had feelings the same as others and that we could get just as hungry and thirsty without funds to buy. Ahh! There it is again. Those words. Hunger and thirst. As if we needed a reminder. Donald is getting weaker in perception. He has always been the first to feel such things and we've never been able to trace the reason. We certainly have no-- * * * * * _I interject at this point, for telepathic contact with them broke unexplainably. I prayed for their safety for I suddenly knew what it would mean to lose them. What a drab, dreary, bigoted world it would be without them to teach us and help us._ * * * * * God, that was a bad half hour, Puss. These troopers are so well trained that they're more telepathically dead than you can imagine. First, Donald was so weak he let one of them sneak up close enough for a quick rifle shot. It missed, but of course it told exactly where we were. Donald exerted himself and ESPed locations, finding that we had enough time to work on the trooper if we hurried. Normally we'd be no match for him but desperation can work wonders. We resorted to a base form of trickery by affecting to surrender to him. When he came up to put the cuffs on us, we played dirtier by offering him a knee that will keep him from attending his wife for a few days. Rotten trick, but we couldn't afford to let him get his hands on us or it would have been all finished. That makes another count against us. We left his rifle out of reach and ran. Fortunately the others milled around for a precious minute or two when they found him, giving us still more time. Before they got moving again, we broke cover and made it across a county road into a farmer's barn where we burrowed into the hay. We'll stay here a while to rest. Not being the athletic type we sure need it. To go back, our small supply of money was running dangerously low in spite of miserly budgeting. We didn't know what to do outside of robbing a bank to get more. Then it happened. We were browsing through the library one day, when Donald ESPed a stack of returned books not yet filed hoping to turn up something new. The stack was mixed, holding such things as a treatise on grinding optical lenses, a copy of "Gone With the Wind", a couple of western novels, a thin edition of "The Purloined Letter" and several volumes for the home craftsman. Evidently some newlyweds were doing things to their well mortgaged dream house. On the way home, Donald's idea burst in on both of us like some monstrous flashbulb. With our minds being so perfectly tuned through constant work during the years, what one ESPed the telepath had immediately and what one telepathed the ESPer received at once. It was a fine working agreement and became as habitual as breathing. Donald's idea was beautiful for all that it was lifted from another man. Its application was what burnished it to that bright luster of originality. We would go to work in a carnival! If a man could hide a letter in an open letter rack, where better could we be hidden but in a carnival? It was wonderful. We had no trouble getting into one. The owner took one look at what we could do and told us the answer mentally by wondering how little he could offer and still get us. It gave us a certain bargaining point but at our stage of the game all we wanted was in. The thought crossed our minds that we might be lowering our station in life but we were past caring. And of course we found out how wrong we were, that "station in life" is just a point of view. To outsiders carnies are a hard lot, interested in nothing but the quickest way to part the suckers from a dollar. Well, they _were_ hard, to outsiders, but to those inside there is a difference. We found some mighty fine people and some very fertile minds. We enjoyed the first real security we'd known for a long time. We found friendship and a certain amount of fame as moneymakers for the show. We got a raise after working on the boss for a while. Best of all we lost ourselves in the bustle of the show. Shortly after our admission into the ranks of the carnies, we felt safe enough to put out feelers (we were out of the state by then), mental this time, prodding small ideas into the best minds, giving them the urge to ask us questions of a leading nature and so eventually we began another class in telepathy, ESP, and their related subjects. As we traveled from state to state we picked up new pupils from other shows and lost others to the same shows, but the running count was about twenty most of the time. We had to be so very careful in our selections for fear of a repetition of our former mishaps, but it went well. We made no mistakes and turned out some fine pupils, one in particular. He progressed fast enough in the short time we had him to become acutely adept, and when we told him he was ready to teach he accepted it by leaving the carnival to settle down with a home and wife. It was good to see the fruit of our work being put into practice. Next season, we found that in the first pass across the country we were booked for the north end of our home state. For the first time in nearly two years we would be on almost familiar ground. You know what happened then, Baby. You ought to. You were the one we contacted. Telepathy _is_ a lot better than a telephone, isn't it? What you might not know is that our contact with you was another step in this whole sickening drama. How were we to suspect that the train ticket agent was one of those tenacious, bespectacled fellows who doggedly chewed on an idea until it made sense to him? Who would know that he was one of those spiteful, small people who enjoyed doing his civic duty as he saw it? He wondered why so many people were taking the same train on the same day to the same place, when it had never happened before. People just don't travel three hundred miles to take in a one horse carnival. Being a small town he knew most of the folks by name--or at least by sight--and he recalled that you, sweet, were once our secretary. Imagine the excitement he felt at having such a momentous thing happen in his dull and uneventful life. How best to savour the taste of it? Why, call the sheriff, naturally. Oh, it must have been delicious. Let's hope he enjoys the memory. With our luck it was out of the question to have anyone but Trainor answer the phone--and swing into high gear. Apparently Judge Thurlow had run for District One during the election and made it, giving up his own stamping grounds for some reason. It hardly seems possible that he'd do it just on the hope that we might decide to come home and set up shop. No man could be that vindictive, could he? Or are we still much too naive to be allowed out without a keeper? Who knows? We do know that the group was followed by Trainor and another man at Thurlow's orders; and when they saw all of you meet at a certain tent in back of the midway all they had to do was sneak close enough to hear that there was exactly nothing going on! We were all so excited at seeing each other that their presence went unnoticed. Besides, what need to exercise caution when there wasn't an unfriendly face within miles? When Trainor made his telephone call to get the permission to arrest us on the strength of another bench warrant Thurlow prepared in a hurry, his emotions penetrated our little circle; but not soon enough for everyone to get out safely. It all happened so suddenly that our lifelong control snapped. The persecution was so sneaking and so needless! It didn't take long to dispose of the two deputies. Desperation again and thick anger. We lost no time in trussing them solidly and leaving them unconscious. After it was over, we realized what a deadly game it had suddenly become. We were in deep trouble again--deeper than any that had gone before. And we needed time, lots of it. Take our word for it, Kitten, and stay underground during any time you and the others may teach. It's your duty to use care, because you certainly won't be able to advance your state of learning or help others while under detention. Keep in touch with the others. Your ranks will fill, if you can succeed undetected until it's time to come into the open. Don't get into our fix; don't be forced into breaking the law. We didn't break it by teaching supposedly Satanic courses but by ignoring the restraining order, then by beating up the police and running. Running wasn't too bad in itself, but it made it tougher when in our shocked haste we took a car that didn't belong to us. Then, too, we shouldn't have taken it across the state line. That made it a federal offense. Even if the troopers get us, we shall first be guests of the FBI. Sweet mess, isn't it? Lordy, this hay is dry. It's sweet smelling and comfortable lying here but it's dry and dusty. It'll be too bad if nature gives us away through a tickling nose. We can do without her tricks now. Donald has just ESPed a water trough in back of the barn. We must take a chance on it. This raging thirst is as crippling as the lack of food. We drove in a huge circle and left the car well before morning; continuing on foot in the general direction of our friend who had left the carnival to teach. It was our hope to be able to stay there until things cooled down. We finally made it, tired and hungry, and got the welcome we expected. He was overjoyed to see us. You'll never know how cosy and warm that house felt or how utterly _good_ was the smell of baking bread. His wife is a jewel. We received a jolt the next morning before breakfast. The neighbor's little girl came bursting into the house in what apparently was her normal fashion while we were teaching a small class that our friend had collected. She was extraordinarily sensitive and our combined minds made a terrific impact on her perception before we could control it. Her eyes opened and she was all for broadcasting to every child in the block, but Donald got us through a sticky moment. He made it her own personal secret in a way that only children can appreciate and then showed her one of the simpler tricks of ESP. She grasped it at once for children are extraordinarily susceptible to instruction. Their minds haven't had the chance to get cluttered by inhibitions and conventional thoughts. She was wide-eyedly delighted and promised her cross-my-heart promise that no one would ever know about us. But of course, they did. Parents being what they are, it was foolish to assume that an untrained child could keep the signs of her adventure from them. The signs pointed to a story and it didn't take them long to pry it out of her. It wasn't the girl's fault. The adult odds were against her. They poked and prodded at her for the cause of her overly bright eyes and animated spirit, until the poor child was overwrought and blurted out the details of her immense find. The mother was at once sympathetic to her and us, bless her, but not so the father. They both knew she wasn't imagining it because of the stories they'd heard of us over the years and the father blew up. We could sense the whole tableau telepathically, dreading the outcome, knowing what it must be. The father stormed about the house crying death and destruction on us, while the mother tried to get him to listen to reason. He was mentally incapable of doing it. He, like so many of the others, was terribly frightened at the unknown, fearsome thing in their midst. It was unthinkable that we should stay free of captivity when there were places for people like us! We shouldn't be allowed to mingle with normal, decent folks. The upshot was a long distance, collect phone call to the judge who doubtless accepted the charges quite happily. We couldn't stay, so we turned to run once more. That's about all there is, Princess. We've run until we can hardly run any more. We're weak and hungry and sickened by the hatred and stupid, active resistance surrounding us. We don't blame the police. They're merely doing what they are paid to do. Donald has ESPed them filtering through the swamp in a wide semicircle and a few thoughts are leaking through the jumble of shouted orders and mixed impulses. Trainor and the judge are right with them. He seems to be talking earnestly to Trainor but his hatred and anger blot everything out--we can get nothing from him. Donald is getting weaker, but we must stir to get water and try to leave before they see this barn. * * * * * _Here the narrative broke once more for more than an hour, leaving me in an agonized, hopeless suspense, knowing there was no way to help them. Occasionally I sensed a faint stirring in my mind as though they were trying to get through to me and once a deep stab of sorrow amounting almost to pain. It was getting quite late in the evening before they came through once more, weakly but still clearly and coherently._ * * * * * It's hard to concentrate. The ambulance is jerking and bounding along and the pain is frightful. Looking back, there was no other way for it to end. They were too many and too dedicated, while we were only us and on the run, not even on the defensive. Our physical weakness became painfully apparent when we cautiously ventured out back to find the water trough, drank, and stumbled away from our pursuers for a quarter of a mile right into the hands of six waiting state policemen. We'd been so intent on the men in the swamp, so blanketed by Thurlow's hate, and so tired that we didn't sense the danger from another direction in the form of a flanking movement. The operation was the end for us. They all had drawn weapons, but when they saw our sad state they rather sheepishly put them away and took us almost gently in hand. We're getting weaker. Unconsciousness is near again. Would that we could have stayed with them! Instead, one picked up a walkie-talkie and called in our capture. Even in the turmoil of the moment we could pick up flashes of amazed, frightened and curious thoughts as many of them saw us for the first time. Funny how the mind will act at times of stress, making one an observer of one's own actions, so to speak. Another phase opened for study! Thurlow thanked the state men brusquely and said he and his deputies would take over, airily ignoring extradition procedure. The police chief and our sheriff were dubious about the course events were taking, but didn't want trouble so they offered no active resistance. We were too tired to care any more. That was our third mistake, to lose our alertness completely. Had we been quick enough--but no, we couldn't have avoided it. The old story of trained men reacting without conscious thought. Apparently in accordance with previous instruction, Trainor and his helper began jostling us viciously but expertly, making it appear as though we were trying to escape. Before we realized our danger, we heard a cry of warning from the sheriff and a vindictive shout from Thurlow. It still rings in our ears. "Do your duty, Trainor. They're escaping!" Trainor's reflexes jarred him into action and it was over for us almost before it began. It hurt then, but the pain is worse now and total blackness is closing in once more. Fighting it off gets increasingly difficult, alone as I am. You see, Donald has just died, quietly. He's escaped them, but that leaves the fight to me. It won't last long. The load is too much for one alone. The one bright feature is the fact that our work was begun. Stay with it, darling, and carry on for us--please know that you had all our love. Goodbye, Princess. * * * * * _Almost exactly one minute later they arrived at the hospital. I was so numb with grief and sorrow that I didn't withdraw contact, hoping against hope that they, he, would transmit once more. He did, unconsciously. Seconds later the words of two interns drifted through his open mind to mine._ * * * * * "One D. O. A., one dying fast. My God, Rex, why couldn't they leave the poor devils alone? Why couldn't they--" Rex sounded bitter. "You know the answer to that, Tom. They were different so they didn't belong." 
61186	----	GRAMP By Charles V. De Vet It's tough to see into minds when you're only a child--and tougher still when you see what scares you! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Why is Gramma making mad pictures at you?" I asked Gramp. Gramp looked at me. "What pictures, Chum?" "Pictures in her mind like you're lazy. And like she wanted to hurt you," I said. Gramp's eyes got wide. He kept looking at me, and then he said, "Get your cap, Chum. We're gonna take a little walk." Gramp didn't say anything until we walked all the way to the main road and past Mr. Watchorn's corn field. I walked behind him, counting the little round holes his wooden leg made in the gravel. Finally Gramp said, "Abracadabra." That was our secret word. It meant that if I was playing one of our games, I was to stop for awhile. Gramp and I had lots of games we played. One of them was where we made believe. Sometimes we'd play that Gramp and I had been working all day, when we really just stayed in the shade telling stories. Then when we got home and Gramma asked us what we had done, we'd tell her about how hard we had worked. "I really did see mad pictures in Gramma's mind," I said. "Have you ever seen pictures in anybody's mind before?" Gramp asked. "I always see them," I said. "Don't you?" "No," Gramp said after a minute. "Other people can't either. You're probably the only little boy who can." "Is that bad?" "No," Gramp answered. "It's good. But remember how I told you that people don't like other people who are different? Well, even though seeing pictures like you do is a wonderful thing, other people won't like you if they know you can do it. So we'll just keep it a secret between us." I was glad Gramp told me, because he always knows the best things to do. I'm his Chum. I love him better than anyone else in the whole world. Whenever the other kids tease me and call me Crazy Joe I go to Gramp and he tells me funny stories and makes me laugh. * * * * * I remember the first time he told me about people hating other people who are different. "Why do the kids call me Crazy Joe and laugh at me?" I asked him. "Well, you see," Gramp said slowly, "your Daddy worked for Uncle Sam in a big place where they make things that the government won't tell anybody about. Then your Daddy got sick from something in the big place. After a long time he went up to stay with God. Then God took Mommy too, when He gave you to her. And now you're our little boy, mine and Gramma's. And because you're a very special kind of little boy, the other children are jealous. So I wouldn't play with them any more if they tease you. Just don't let them see you're afraid of them. You'll always be Gramp's Little Joe." I love Gramp very much.... We kept walking until we came to Fayette. We went into Carl Van Remortal's store. Gramp sat on a chair by the big iron stove and I sat on his knee on his good leg. The stove must be real old, because it's got 1926 on its door in big iron letters. "Tell me the pictures you see in Mr. Van's mind," Gramp whispered in my ear, "but don't let him hear you." "He's making pictures of the fishing boats coming in," I said. "In the pictures he's talking to Jack La Salle and giving him some money for his fish.... The pictures are getting all mixed up now. He's putting the fish in ice in boxes, but other pictures show him in church. Jack La Salle is in the church too, and Mr. Van's sister Margaret is dressed in a long white dress and standing alongside him." "He's thinking that Jack La Salle will be marrying Margaret pretty soon," Gramp said. "What else is he thinking?" "The pictures are coming so fast now that I can't name them all," I said. Mr. Lawrence St. Ours came into the store, and Gramp told me to read what he was thinking. I looked inside his head. "He's making pictures of himself driving a car, and buying bread, and bacon, and piling hay on his farm, and ..." I said, but then I had to stop. "All the pictures come so fast that I can't read them," I told Gramp. "Everybody makes blurry pictures like that most of the time." "Instead of trying to tell me what the pictures are, see if you can understand what they mean," Gramp said. I tried but it was awful hard and pretty soon I got tired and Gramp and I left the store and went back home. The next morning Gramp and I went out in the barn and Gramp said, "Now let's see what we got here." He had me try to do a lot of things, like lifting something without touching it, and trying to make chickens run by making a picture of them doing that and putting it in their minds. But I couldn't do any of them. After a while he said, "Let's go down to the store again." * * * * * We went to the store almost every day after that. Then sometimes we just walked around Fayette, and Gramp had me practice reading what the pictures in people's minds meant instead of just what they looked like. Sometimes I did it real good. Then Gramp would buy me some candy or ice cream. One day we were following Mr. Mears and I was telling Gramp what I saw in Mr. Mears' mind when Mr. St. Ours drove by in his car. "Mr. Mears is making pictures about feeding meat to Mr. St. Ours's dog and the dog is crawling away and dying," I said to Gramp. Gramp was real interested. He said, "Watch close and read everything you can about that." I did. After, Gramp seemed very happy. He bought me a big chocolate bar that time. Chocolate is my best kind of candy. I read lots of things in other people's minds that made Gramp feel good too, and he bought me candy just about every day. Gramp seemed to have money all the time now instead of having to ask Gramma for any. She wanted to know where he got all the money. But he just smiled with his right cheek like he does and wouldn't tell her. Most of the people in town didn't seem to like Gramp any more. They made mad pictures about him whenever we met them. Sometimes when we were in the store Mrs. Van would come in and she would talk to me. She was awful nice. But she always had sad pictures in her mind and sometimes she would cough real hard and hold a handkerchief up in front of her mouth. When she did that Mr. Van used to get sad too. In his pictures Mrs. Van would be dead and laying in a coffin and they would be burying her in a big hole in the ground. Mr. Van was nice too. He gave me crackers and cookies, or sometimes a big thin slice of cheese. One night Gramp was holding me and buying some groceries and Mr. Van was putting them in a cardboard box, and he was thinking about going to the bank in Escanaba and cashing a check. And the man gave him a big handful of money. I told Gramp, but then Mr. Van came close. I didn't say anymore, like Gramp had told me. Mr. Van was whistling now. He made pictures of giving the money to Mrs. Van. She was getting on a train and going to a place where it was sunny all the time, and her cough went away and she wasn't skinny any more. In his mind Mrs. Van was real pretty. She didn't have the long nose like she really has. When we got in our car Gramp was excited. He asked me where Mr. Van had put the money he brought back from Escanaba. He had bad pictures in his mind about taking Mr. Van's money and I didn't want to tell him. But he grabbed my arm so hard it hurt and I began to cry. Gramp never hurt me before. "What are you crying for?" he asked me, cranky. "I don't want you to take Mr. Van's money," I told him. Gramp let go of my arm and didn't say anything for a while. "Sometimes the pictures you see aren't true," he said. "You know that." He took out his blue handkerchief and made me blow my nose. "Like when you see pictures in Gramma's mind about her hurting me," he said. "She never does, you know. So the pictures aren't true. It's just what we call imagination." "But your pictures are bad! They make me scared," I said. "We all make bad pictures like that, but we don't mean them," Gramp said. "Remember how you said that you'd like to eat the whole apple pie last Sunday? You probably made pictures of doing that. But you never did, because you know that Gramma and me should have some of it too." I guess Gramp can explain just about everything. So I told him where Mr. Van had hid the money under a box of brown sugar. Gramp smiled and started the car. He let me steer while it was going slow. "Who's my Chum?" he asked. "I am," I said, and I laughed real happy. * * * * * The next day when I got up Gramp was gone. I went back of the barn and played. I got a bunch of tin cans and punched holes in them with a nail like Gramp showed me, and I made steps out of rocks and put a can on each step. I poured water in the top can. It ran through the holes from each can to the other all the way down the steps. I heard our car come in the front yard. I went around the barn, and Gramp was just going up the steps to the house. He had been to Fairport where the big store is, and he had bought a lot of things that he was carrying in his arms. At first I was glad because he had bought something that was for me too. But then I saw some bad pictures mixed with the happy ones--of Gramp breaking a window in Mr. Van's store when it was dark and going in and taking something from underneath the brown sugar box. "You told me you wouldn't take Mr. Van's money. And you did!" I said. "Ssh," Gramp said. He put his packages on the porch and sat down and took me on his lap. He took a deep breath. "Remember what I told you about imagination, Chum?" he asked me. "So you know you're not supposed to believe all the pictures you see. Now you're Gramp's Chum. And I want you to promise me again not to tell anyone but me what you see, and I'll tell you if the pictures are real or not. Promise?" I promised, and Gramp opened one of the packages. He took out two new pistols and a belt with double holsters to carry them in. He bent over and buckled them on me. "You look just like Hoppy now," he said. I gave him a big kiss, and ran back of the barn to shoot robbers. * * * * * In the afternoon Gramp was playing he was a bad Indian and trying to scalp me when a strange car drove in our yard. Mr. Van and two men with badges got out. Mr. Van was real mad. "We've come after the money, Bill," he said. Gramp got white. He was scared, but he said, loud, "What the hell are you talking about?" "You know what, Bill," Mr. Van said. "Someone saw you break into the store. It will go easier on you if you admit it." "I told you I don't know what you're talking about," Gramp said. His eyes moved kind of quick. Then he noticed me and he walked over to me. "That's a fine way to talk in front of the boy," he said over his shoulder. He took my hand. "Come on, Chum. We're going in the house." "Just a minute," the biggest policeman said. "We've got a few questions that we have to ask you." Gramp made believe he was brushing some dirt from my pants. "Did anyone see me take the money, Chum?" he whispered to me. "No," I said, even though I didn't understand exactly. "Mr. Van is just pretending he knows you took it but he doesn't." "Good boy." Gramp patted me on the head. "Go into the house now." He turned and walked back to the three men, pushing his wooden leg into the ground hard. I didn't go in the house, though. "Now I've had just about enough of this," Gramp said, with a big frown on his face. "You can't bluff me, Van. Say what you got to say, and get off my property." Mr. Van's shoulders seemed to sag and he got sad. He made the pictures in his mind of Mrs. Van being dead and being put in a big hole. It made me so sorry I couldn't stand it, and I cried, "Tell him you got his money under the seat in our car! Please, Gramp! Give it back to him." Nobody said anything, but everybody turned and looked at me. They stood real still. I saw in Gramp's mind that I had been bad, bad. I ran to him and put my face in his coat and began to cry. I couldn't help it. After a minute Gramp knelt on his good knee in front of me and took my cheeks in both his hands. "I've let you down, Chum," he said. He wasn't mad any more. He picked me up in his arms. "You needed me, Little Joe," he said. "You needed me." His eyes were all smudgy. He squeezed me so hard I couldn't breathe, almost. Then he put me down and said, "Come on," to the two policemen. He walked away between them. Gramp! The pictures in his mind were awful. I could hardly bear to look at them. The worst picture was--me. I cried and cried. 
24655	----	None 
59304	----	BRIGHT ISLANDS BY FRANK RILEY _The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens._--RAINER MARIA RILKE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] When the two Geno-Doctors were gone, Miryam took the red capsule from under the base of the bedlamp and slipped it between her dry lips. Reason told her to swallow the capsule quickly, but instead she held it under her tongue, clinging, against her will, to the last few moments of life. She knew she was being weak, that she was still seeking hope where there was no hope, and she prayed to the ancient God of the Ghetto that the gelatin coating would dissolve quickly. Pain interrupted the prayer, spreading like slow fire from deep within her young body, where the unwanted child of Genetics Center stirred so restlessly, so impatient to be born. The white walls of her Center room blurred in and out of focus. Shadows merged together in brief, uncertain patterns. Lights flickered where there were no lights, and the darkness was so intense it had a glare of its own. At the worst of the pain cycle, Miryam bit down on her under lip until the flesh showed as white as her teeth. She fought off temptation to crunch the capsule and put an end to all pain, all fear. No, she would not go that way. She would go in a moment of blinding clarity, knowing why, savoring the last bitter sweet second of her triumph. With a subconscious gesture of femininity, Miryam brushed the dark, damp hair from her forehead, and wiped the perspiration from her lips. "Pretty little thing," one of the Geno-Service agents had called her, when she was arrested last fall in the Warsaw suburb where she had taught nursery school since escaping from the Ghetto. "Doesn't look a bit like one of her kind," another agent had said, putting his hand under her chin and turning her face to the glare of his flashlight. "No wonder she fooled the Psycho and Chemico squads.... Lucky for us!" "What's the matter, little one?" the first agent had spoken again. "Didn't you know we were coming? I thought all of you people were supposed to be telepaths.... Or doesn't it work when you're asleep?" He flipped the covers off her trembling body and whistled. "Hands off!" the Geno-Sergeant had warned sharply. "She's for Center!" Now the capsule under her tongue was moist and soft. Time fled on swift, fluttering wings. Soon the horror would be done. But the stubborn spark still glowed, and Miryam allowed her mind to drift down the long, shining corridor to the room where the younger of the two Geno-Doctors was changing into a white coat. The older man, who wore the gold trefoil of Geno-Sar on his collar, tilted back in his chair. "She should be just about due," he said cheerfully. "Yes, Sir," replied the young doctor, sounding the proper note of deference for a man who communed daily with the political elite. "What do you think of her?" "Well, Sir, frankly--I was surprised--" The young doctor twisted muscular arms to button the back of his jacket. He had but recently come from the Genetics Sanitarium on the Black Sea, and his face was tanned deep brown. "From reading the weekly reports of your staff, I didn't know she was that--that young--" Miryam trembled with a hope she dared not recognize, but it was crushed out of her by the Geno-Sar's booming voice. "Not only one of the youngest--but one of the very best specimens we've had to work with at Center! You read her psi rating?" "Yes, Sir. Seventy-two point four, wasn't it?" "Seventy-two point six! Absolutely phenomenal! Closest thing to a pure telepath our agents have ever turned up for us! This could be a big night for Center, my boy.... A big night!" The young doctor shook his head to clear away the lingering image of a tragic, lovely face against a tear-stained pillow. Miryam was startled to find this image in his mind, and her pulse leaped again. In a carefully professional tone, the young doctor asked: "What was her rating after insemination? Did the emotional shock...?" "Not at all! Oh, naturally, she was uncooperative in the tests, but pentathol and our cross-references gave us a true picture!" "And the spermatozoa?" "Best we could get! Refrigerated about thirty years ago from a specimen that tested forty-seven point eight." The Geno-Sar paused, and because a comment was obviously in order, the young doctor said: "This certainly could be a big night for Center!" The Geno-Sar snapped his cigarette lighter with an expansive flourish. "All the sciences have been taking a crack at psi--ever since the last Politbureau directive gave it number one priority. You should have heard the talk at Sar-Bureau meeting this afternoon! The Math-Sar actually laughed at Genetics ... told us to stick to our white mice!" The young doctor made a polite cluck of disapproval. "Those stupid mathematicians could learn something of heredity from their own ancients," the Geno-Sar continued, growing heated. "Think of Liebnitz, gifted at 14--Galois, a genius before he was 21!" The Geno-Sar recovered his temper, and winked. "Of course, I didn't say that at the meeting--the Bureau chief is very partial to Math--but I did remind them, most pointedly, of the known data on inherited sensory differences between individuals. And you should have seen the squirming! Especially when I got into the taste studies and the phenyl-thio-carbamide tests! Then, when I told of Genetics research on sense of time--sense of direction--sensitivity to pain, sound and smells--Well, the Chief was hanging on my every word! The Psycho-Sar became desperate to the point of rashness, and he jibed at me about our ancient master, Profim Lysenko." The Geno-Sar's head inclined slightly as he pronounced the name. "But the Chief himself gave the correct answer! He quoted from a Bureau directive which stated clearly that sensory characteristics, like any others, could well have been acquired in the first place, and then passed on through heredity! Oh, I tell you, it was a heart-warming afternoon!" The younger man had been paying him only half attention. "It's strange we should find some cases of psi among her people," he mused. "When I was at the University I always meant to study something about the--" he hesitated and searched for the approved term, "--the specimen races, but I never had time...." For an instant the Geno-Sar's steel-blue eyes narrowed, and Miryam was shocked to find him appraising the young man for possible heresy. She had always regarded the scientific mind as something remote, cold, but never as something that could commit a heresy. However, the Geno-Sar decided to table the subject. "Of course you didn't!" he boomed. "You couldn't have made such a splendid record without total specialization! Each to his own, that's how science has prospered under the benevolence of our party!" He glanced up at the clock. "Well, aren't we just about ready for this delivery?" * * * * * Miryam drew back her mind. What a fool she was to go on seeking! The child resumed its inexorable turning within her swollen body, and she knew she could never give to the world a life conceived so terribly, so coldly, without love or passion or tenderness. Even in these final moments, with the gelatin melting under her tongue, Miryam shuddered with the remembered anguish of struggling up from the depths of anaesthesia to find herself bearing the seed of a child, from a faceless man who had died long ago. Often, during the carefully guarded months of pregnancy, she had wondered about that man, who he had been, how his talent had compared with hers. Miryam knew little about genetics, or any other science. The scientific mind had always frightened her, and she had feared to explore it. But she knew there was no truth to the folklore that psi was a characteristic of her people. She knew of only a few cases outside her own family, although within her family it seemed to have been a characteristic that had recurred frequently for many generations. Her father had cautioned her about selecting a husband, and pleaded with her not to flee the Ghetto. For the past three days, since the nurse had momentarily left the cabinet at the end of the corridor unlocked and unguarded, Miryam had known that she need not be concerned about the success or failure of this terrible experiment. From the nurse's mind she had plucked the essential facts about the potency of the red capsule. This knowledge, for all its loneliness, had been something to cherish, to press to her full breasts, as she would never hold that child of horror. Tears filled her eyes, squeezed in droplets between the closed lids. Tears because she was so alone. Tears of unbearable sadness and pity, for her people, for her youth and her young body, for the warmth that would be eternally cold, for the unnatural child that squirmed and turned, and would never cry. In a last forlorn gesture, in a final seeking before the darkness closed, Miryam let her mind stray out of the white room, out of the marble magnificence of Center. She let her thoughts escape on the soft breeze of the early summer evening. How beautiful it was, even here in the city, amid the science buildings that formed bright islands of light around the minarets and vaulted domes of Government Square. Even these awesome buildings were lovely in the purple dusk. Their windows were like scattered emeralds of light. How could there be so much beauty without compassion? So much knowledge without understanding? So much human genius without humanity? And what a battering of thoughts in the mild air around the centers of science! What a discordance! What a tumult of theories, each of them nurtured within its own walls by the zealous Sars. There were the Departments of Chemistry and Physics. There was the glass-walled tower of Astronomy! There was the Institute of Psychology, with all its many bureaus. And the new Electronics Building, alabaster even in the dusk. They were all there, extending in stately splendor along the main avenues, and along the park, where the gossamer mist was rising. How intolerant were the thoughts they radiated! How sure! Electronics said: "Quite obviously the answer to psi is in the electrical currents of the brain. Our newest electro-encephalograph has demonstrated...." Chemistry said: "Solution to psi inevitably will be found in the chemical balance of the cells...." Parapsychology said: "We must continue to ignore those who insist upon attributing physical properties to a non-physical characteristic...." And underneath this learned babble, Miryam heard the moth-like whispering of her own people, starving in the Ghetto, or hidden throughout the city, disguised, furtive, tense. Her mind came close to Government Square, and she cringed, as she had cringed all her young life. The somatics were unbearable. Hatred and fear, blind prejudice, jealousy, cunning, ceaseless intrigue and plotting, setting Sar against Sar, using the genius of each science, dividing and ruling. No, there was nothing left. No hope, no promise. This was the end of time. This was the night of the world. Withdrawing again, retreating into itself, Miryam's mind brushed the fragment of a thought. It was a half-formed thought, more a groping, more a question, than an idea. It was delicate, fragile, a wraith and a wisp. But it came to her as clear as the note from a silver bell. Startled, she hesitated in her withdrawal, and perceived the young Geno-Doctor in the corridor near her room. He had paused by the casement window, and was staring out at the twinkling islands of light around Government Square. And as his gaze wandered moodily from Tech, to Psycho, to Chemico, to all the incandescent, isolated centers of genius, the idle speculation had formed. "Wouldn't it be an unusual view if all those bright islands were connected by strings of light...?" Once formed, the speculation had fanned the ember of a thought: "Wonder if psi will build those strings of lights?" Then the young doctor turned almost guiltily from the window to meet the Geno-Sar coming down the corridor. And he said with crisp efficiency, "I'll check out 12-A for delivery." "Good boy! I'll go on up and check the staff...." The Geno-Sar rubbed his hands together, and walked off, repeating nervously, "Two psi characteristics must be the answer--two psi--" "Maybe they are," the young doctor murmured softly. "Maybe they are...." * * * * * Delivery, Miryam thought. The life within her throbbed and prodded. There was an ebbing of pain for a moment, and in that moment she saw with the blinding clarity she had sought that this child of hers might bring new hope to the world. That psi ability might be the answer to many things for the race of mankind. What did it matter that it was conceived without love and emotion. What did it matter that she was being used as an experiment ... if this child within her could fulfill the promise. Miryam spat the soft capsule between her quivering lips. She watched it roll and bounce across the polished tile floor, toward the door. Pain returned, and its fire was warm. There were no shadows on the wall. Pain returned, and it had purpose and promise. Wonderingly, she beheld the concept that science, too, lived with fear, each science in its own Ghetto. And if the young doctor was right, if psi.... As the doctor stepped into the room, he bent over and picked up the red capsule. His thumb and forefinger felt the warmth, the moisture, and he looked long and thoughtfully into Miryam's dark, glowing eyes. His fingers shook as he wrapped the capsule in a piece of tissue and dropped it into the pocket of his white jacket. He picked up the chart from the foot of the bed. "Miryam--" His voice was not under complete control, and he began again, with an effort at lightness. "Miryam--that's a strange name. What does it mean?" "It is an ancient spelling," she whispered, her eyes deep and dark, filled with pain and wonder. "You may find it easier to call me--Mary." 
62253	----	STAR OF PANADUR BY ALBERT de PINA AND HENRY HASSE On the barren wastes of Europa, two marooned men fought, battling over an animal whose life one had saved. There was no fear in the animal's eyes--only the gleam of a weird unearthly knowledge that foretold the way the fight would end. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Hugh! Hugh! There's life here ... look ... look at this! Found it in a cavern!" The shrill voice was exultant and gleeful. Hugh Betancourt quickly rose from the fire he tended, and turned startled eyes on the furry bundle Jim Brannigan grasped firmly by the scruff of its neck. At first, nothing was visible but the liquid sheen of the thing's silvery fur; but as Jim roughly thrust it out, Hugh gave an involuntary gasp of surprise. The creature's small, triangular face was nothing less than beautiful! Its eyes were soft and large and luminous, like beryls, set wide apart. Above its broad forehead a short mane of silver fur, beginning in a widow's peak, fell back cloud-soft and shimmering. It was about three feet tall, slim, furred to the throat-line; a strange biped with slender arms and six-fingered hands. "Damn it, Jim, go easy! You've all but strangled it! Here give it to me." Hugh extended his arms. "Don't let it get away from you, it's faster than a jack-rabbit," Jim cautioned, extending the ham-sized hand in which he held the creature. "Luckily, I surprised it in a sort of cave-like gully, where it couldn't escape. It means food, Hugh! Lots of food if we can find more of these animals!" For a moment, the incipient madness of many days on this hellish satellite engulfed Hugh in a wave of nausea. He remembered the gravity-screen tearing from its pivots, and the space-ship caught in the tremendous pull of Jupiter; the last desperate try at the controls, and then the tiny dark bulk of Europa curving up to met them headlong. There had been cheerless days of biting cold when the tiny satellite faced the distant pallid sun. There had been nights that were like a canto out of Dante, as they were bathed in Jupiter's red cold-glow. More recently, and for more reason, Hugh remembered the dwindling food supply which had now quite vanished. "Yes, food," Hugh echoed Jim's words in a hoarse whisper. He grasped the soft warm body in his hands with gentle firmness. The creature did not try to escape, it lay limp and inert with its eyes closed. "But--but food doesn't quite solve our problem. Unless we can find some oxide crystal to alloy in the portable smelter, we're sunk. Jim, that jagged hole in the prow isn't going to repair itself!" Jim's ordinarily red face grew redder with anger, until there was no distinguishing between the color of his hair and that of his face. "All right," he snarled, "so we need the oxide! For days we've been searching all over this cold hell for some, and where are we? I still maintain our immediate problem is food!" "Yes, yes, food," Hugh murmured. Why, he wondered vaguely, was he so reluctant to talk about it while he held this limp warm creature in his arms? He looked down at it again, and was startled to find himself staring into its extraordinary eyes. Limpid, brilliant, full of a semi-human intelligence now, they were scarcely a foot from Hugh's own eyes--and for a single instant Hugh had the crazy idea that they were filled with a strange fixity of purpose, almost as if it were trying to convey something to him there in the appalling silence of Europa. * * * * * A sudden cold came over Hugh that was not the cold of Europa. It took quite an effort for him to tear his own eyes away, then he laughed and whispered inquiringly of himself, "Am I going crazy? Maybe this place is beginning to get me at last. For a moment I thought...." He shrugged uneasily. "What are you mumbling?" Jim demanded irritably, his huge form bulking against the bizarre jagged landscape. "I'd have slit that thing's throat and skinned it already? Here, give it----" "Wait, you fool!" Hugh's ordinarily thoughtful, hazel eyes were bright now and hard, as he drew back from Jim's grasping hand. "We're the first to find life on Europa, the only ones to see what inhabits it; and all you can think of is your damned stomach. You can't be starved, you ate this morning!" "Yes, and that was the last of it," Jim snarled. His face was ugly now and purposeful. "Well, I'm hungry again, and now that I've found these Europan kangaroos I aim to be fed and kept warm. Notice how fine that pelt is?" Hugh had noticed, indeed. He had noticed even more, the peculiar sheen and aliveness of it, as if it were surcharged with a definite energy. As he held the creature close, a warm feeling of well-being slowly diffused through him. And something, _something_ like a faint echo in his brain was like a shadowy background to his thoughts. Yes, he knew; here was food and here was warm fur against the eternal cold of the satellite. But their space suits protected them in a measure against the cold, and if necessary they could subsist a few more days without eating. Perhaps by then they would find some of the rare crystal oxide, enough to repair their ship and leave. Perhaps.... It was a long chance, almost an impossibility, and Hugh knew it; but now, also, he knew what he must do. He did it. With a distasteful glance at his now openly-belligerent partner, he stepped forward. Then with unexpected suddenness he lurched as if he'd lost his footing on the rough terrain. He stumbled sideways. He twisted and fell deliberately to the ground. He opened his arms wide. It was rather clumsily done, Hugh realized that instantly. * * * * * For an infinitesimal moment, the furry creature sprawled too, immobile, where Hugh's momentum had flung it. It gazed with an uncanny intensity into the Earthman's eyes. Then in a single, graceful leap of incredible speed, it was gone into the growing red haze, as night came on and Jupiter's macabre glow shattered the surrounding crags. "You fool, you utter damned fool!" Jim Brannigan screamed, livid with rage. "You did that deliberately!" Then his huge body was launching at Hugh, the great heavy fists lashing out with the force of pistons. Hugh, lighter but more lithe, had only time to roll to one side and regain his feet. Then he was ducking the barrage of blows, evading the murderous rushes, allowing Jim to tire out of his frantic rage. Only once did Hugh strike a blow, a terrific lashing left into the other's solar plexus that doubled the red giant into helpless nausea. "That's all we need now," Hugh said with a measure of calm, "to maim or cripple each other. We'll never get back that way. Come out of it, man! What we've got to do is get that oxide!" "What we've got to get is food! You let the only food go that we had!" Jim Brannigan began to weep, in great racking sobs. Merely nerves, temporary hysterical reaction, Hugh decided. Jim wasn't really hungry yet; he was only anticipating the event. When he got over this, he would sulk. When he got over that, he would start scheming, with that unpredictable mind of his. Knowing the man, Hugh decided to watch him carefully from now on. He took Jim's arm and they walked over to the crippled spacer, lying like a great silver bug with its nose smashed, in the stark hollow of this ravine. They entered. Hugh walked forward and examined the thin sheet of berryllium that patched the ship's wounded hull for the night. He went astern and turned on the generators at quarter speed, to provide a miserly warmth. On his way back to the inner cabin he stopped and peered out of a porthole at a now familiar scene: Europa's dark mad terrain becoming swiftly suffused with Jupiter's red. He entered the cabin, glanced at Jim and saw that he was now in the sulking stage. The hunger problem pressed insistently upon Hugh's own mind. That little furry creature! In spite of hunger, he was still glad he had let it escape; but damn it, he wished he knew why! Hugh thrust the problem from him and glanced again at Jim. Soon Jim's mind, bordering upon necessity, would begin scheming. Hugh knew the man.... Despite an utter weariness, Hugh didn't sleep through the rest of that short night. His mind, alert and hunger-clear, wrestled with the problem of survival in this mad world of snow and silence. In the opposite beryllium-mesh bunk, Jim snored fitfully, as though rehearsing in his sleep some violence in his mind. Hugh arose slowly, and donned with caution the stiff, heavy space-suit as protection against the cold. Adjusting the helmet and oxygen tank, he opened the airlock and ventured out into the Dantesque magnificence of Europa's night. The red opaline haze had the quality of a waking nightmare. The great snow crystals were drifting lazily again, appearing now like livid blotches of ruby. Jupiter loomed like a great gloating nemesis across the entire ragged horizon. Hugh didn't know where he was going. No pre-determined plan guided his footsteps. There was only a great urgency to leave the spacer and go somewhere and seek.... Hugh stopped, brushed the brittle red snow from his face-plate and wished he could wipe the sweat from his brow. Go where, and seek what? Seek oxide crystals of course, he told himself; but there was something else now, something strange and powerful that gripped a part of his mind and urged him on like the fear of madness. He stumbled on for hours it seemed, until he was in the fearsome cavern country. Here the stark, heaven-rearing cliffs were honeycombed with tortuous caves and gullies and immense grottoes. He entered a low gallery-like cave that wound in and downward into the mass of a gigantic cliff. Now an unshakable inner dread plucked at his mind and gripped his throat as he tried to check his precipitate descent, but couldn't. He no longer seemed possessed of any volition of his own. He shrugged fatalistically; then he felt a thrill of excitement, as he noticed a faint luminescence of the surrounding walls. This light increased as he descended deeper and deeper through widening passages. Then at last, at the end of a turn a burst of radiance met his eyes. He was in a grotto of titanic proportions. The substance of its walls and distant ceiling gave it the gentle radiance of a sunless day. But it was a glaucous radiance, ineffably green as the light beneath the waters of a shallow sea. "Holy, roaring comets!" Hugh swore aloud as he stood there quite still, staring. "By all the Red-Tails on Venus, it's oxide--all of it!" His voice echoed inside his helmet and beat against his eardrums. Yes, it was berryllium oxide gleaming at his feet, crystalline and powdery just as men had found it for the first time a century before in the desert wastes of Arizona. The entire floor of the grotto was covered with it as far as his widening eyes could see. He bent in a frenzy of joy and scooped up whole handfuls. He half-babbled over it like a delirious King Midas. He let it trickle fondly through his fingers in a little glittering flood. Saved! Now they could repair the ship and return! Return to Earth and tell of this! Not until several minutes later did Hugh begin to wonder how he had come here. With a rush of apprehension, he remembered a cold and tenacious something that had seized a part of his mind. But now it was gone and he felt strangely limp and tired. He leaped to his feet. Staring around, he wondered if he could retrace his steps back to the space-ship. And in that precise moment he felt his mind seized again with a sort of frantic suddenness. There was no mistaking that very clear warning of, "_Danger! Danger!_" But he could not have acted in time. Even as he spun around he was unaware of the shadow that lengthened behind him, until it loomed very near and a part of it lashed out. Not until the last split second, did Hugh glimpse wild and red-streaked eyes in vivid contrast to the grim and purposeful face behind a helmet plate. Then the part of the shadow that was Jim Brannigan's arm, holding something massive like a rock, completed the swift arc and struck. A sun exploded within Hugh's head. Livid flames engulfed him, consumed him, he tried to cry out but couldn't; then the sun fragments cruelly withdrew, leaving him helpless in a cold blackness through which he fell like a plummet to ultimate extinction. * * * * * Jim Brannigan stood there tensely for a moment, looking at the man he had struck down. But only for a moment. His lips quirked into a tight smile, and his exulting keen eyes took in the cave's glittering expanse. "A fortune in oxide crystals," he murmured, "an inexhaustible mine! And he thought he could cheat me out of it, keep it from me! Good thing I followed him. Serves him right if I've killed him." He didn't seem too worried about it, and he didn't look at Hugh's body again as he started gathering in the rare crystals. "Europa's uncharted, I can claim-deed this whole region! And probably there's another fortune in furs," he added as he suddenly remembered the creature he had captured. Already, in his greedy mind's eye, he saw himself a tycoon, the oxide king, with a corner on furs finer than anything ever seen on Earth, Venus or Mars. This he saw. But what he didn't see were the myriad pairs of burning beryl eyes peering at him from concealed openings in the opaline walls. He was not aware of the increasing energy potential being generated by a growing legion of furred bodies in surrounding caverns, as more and more Panadurs pressed forward to peer out at him. Around Jim Brannigan now the frigid atmosphere began to rise. At first it was pleasantly cool, then warm, and warmer, until it became suffocating. Still the silvery-furred Panadurs, in utter silence, generated heat as their mental forces grew and deliberately united into a single, increasing potential. Their fur stood erect, an angry violet-silver now, crackling a little with the intensity of the effort. As a single unit, they waited, each furry Panadur now touching the other in a living, livid chain of cumulative power. Jim Brannigan ceased his gloating and awoke at last to an indefinable danger. Swiftly he arose and whirled toward the entrance, peering back over his shoulder at the danger he could feel, that he knew was there, but could not see. But already it was too late. Now that increasing energy potential, grown and united into a single purposeful weapon, was being aimed. Jim Brannigan hadn't taken three steps toward the entrance when suddenly, silently, intangible as thought, but infinitely more devastating, it was released! As the devastating bolt struck him, Brannigan collapsed into a crumpled heap, shattered, silent ... inert. * * * * * For hours that lengthened into days, Hugh Betancourt lay unconscious. His blanched features were lifeless and cold, there in the same cavern where Brannigan's treacherous blow had toppled him into oblivion. Then, as a hint of color returned to his cheeks, and a slow strength began to course through his limbs, he regained moments of lucidness; but they were brief and he always lapsed back into delirium. With the wavering unreality of a mirage, vague memories of those strange furred creatures, encircling him, surged into his mind; they seemed to have pressed close to him, holding hands. Strange! They were joined by a line of their fellow Panadurs to a similar circle surrounding a huddled figure a short distance away. But that was crazy! And Hugh's mind would slide back into the darkness again. Once, he thought one of the Panadurs came and placed its exquisite face against his chest, and held it there a long time, as if it were testing the Earthman's metabolism. This seemed so very real! Hugh was aware of an almost crackling silence and the cave ceiling's unchanging luminescence. Still a third time, he imagined that a silver-gray Panadur, almost stately in his measured movements, came over to him with a gleaming jewel in his hand. It was an inch in diameter and the same color as the creature's eyes, a pale luscent green. Majestically, despite his diminutive size, he placed the stone over Hugh's heart. Instantly the gem flamed with the effulgence of a glowing star. The Panadur seemed satisfied. When at last Hugh Betancourt regained full consciousness, and was able to sit up and stare around him, he realized that he had not been a prey to delusions. Although he still felt weak, his mind was crystal clear. Here was the circle of Panadurs still enclosing him. _But the circle had grown_, as if a great many more creatures had joined the uncanny circle in an ecstasy to be in close proximity to the tall earthman. Their furry, vibrating bodies pressed close to him, and their strange, fragile hands touched his wrists and throat and face, as they seemed to caress him with infinite gentleness. Waves of sheer energy seemed to envelop him and penetrate to the deepest recesses of his being, as if by some strange alchemy, these alien creatures of stark Europa were transmitting to him the elemental life force itself. But strangely enough, that other circle of Panadurs enclosing that huddled figure over there, in the semi-gloom, was contracting as it grew smaller and smaller, day by day. Hugh ceased to wonder about all this as he lay back to gather his strength. He fell into a peaceful sleep. * * * * * This time when he awoke, it was a profound sense of well-being far beyond anything he'd ever known. It permeated his body with the exhilarating glow of a rare Venusian wine. One thing, however, still eluded him. He sat up and felt his head where the blow had fallen. He remembered only the excruciating pain in the microscopic instant before the rushing darkness came. There was nothing there now. Not even a scar. "A rock from the ceiling must have fallen," he thought. "My luck to be standing right under it." "_It was not a rock!_" The thought came into his mind clear and unmistakable. Then Hugh found himself staring into the beryl-green eyes of the stately keeper of the jewel. Like a flash, the scene he had not witnessed, of Jim Brannigan stalking him from the space-ship, the murderous blow and the vision of himself lying in a pool of blood on the glittering expanse of oxide crystals, was etched into his mind by the telepathic power of the Panadur. "We know you would have spared us," came the uncanny stream of thought. "Your companion captured me when I, as the chosen leader, went to investigate your arrival. But you deliberately let me go when it meant your own life. But he, whose fur was like the angry spot of the greater world, would have destroyed us. We read his thoughts." "Telepathy, by Mercury's molten heart!" Hugh exclaimed in awe, dimly sensing the prodigious mental power of the being. "And we were going to eat one of them!" He stared around the cave, remembering Jim Brannigan, and it was apparent that Hugh still didn't realize all that had occurred. "I suppose that murdering, mercenary scum's left long ago with the ship, and here I'm stranded! If I ever get my hands on him----" "That you will never do." Hugh was aware of the Panadur again, and he saw the shadowy copy of a smile flit over its features. "We gave you of our energy," the shimmering silver being transmitted. "And we gave you of another life that you might have yours again. It was but justice!" "What? What other life?" And then Hugh tottered where he stood, swayed sickeningly, as the entire meaning burst upon him. He remembered the scenes in his delirium, when two circles, one of which enclosed him and another that enclosed a huddled figure, had been formed by Panadurs, while a living chain of the brooding creatures joined the two circles together. He shuddered as he remembered that his own circle seemed to expand as the other inexorably _contracted_! "There was no choice!" The limpid thought-message from the Panadur impinged upon Hugh's mind. "We know the secret of the release of electronic energy by the disassociation of electronic and neutronic balance in the atomic scale. We reverse the vibration of matter and through magnetic means draw a steady stream of energy--pure energy from matter in whatever state. In your case, we simply transmitted the energy content of the red-furred one to you." * * * * * Hugh hardly dared to glance in the direction where the huddled figure had been, but with an effort of will he steeled himself against the growing nausea and resolutely walked over to the thing. He felt his sanity reeling. He was brought back to sanity by the Panadur, who, all along, had communicated with him. Its fragile, six-fingered hand was extended, palm-upwards and lying on it was a gleaming jewel. "Take it and go!" The message came with majestic power, yet there was a world of kindness in it. "Go back to your ship. You will find its damage repaired. We have done that for you. With the star of Panadur you will be guided back as my thought centers upon it. On the day when you return to our world, gaze upon the star and you will be helped to find again and gather the crystals you seek. _But none from your planet must ever see us again, or even hear of us!_" "I promise!" Hugh exclaimed fervently, remembering Jim Brannigan's intent and that there were many men like Brannigan. Slowly Hugh left the cave, clutching the dazzling gem through which he could feel a directed flow of thought. He was still a little dazed at this miracle. He wanted to laugh and to cry. But the flooding realization that his ship, repaired and ready, awaited him; that he was free to leave this craggy hell of crimson shadows and arctic nights, left only a vast, singing quiet in his soul, too deep for tears. 
50872	----	NOT FIT FOR CHILDREN By EVELYN E. SMITH Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Trading with the natives was like taking candy from a kid--but which were the natives? Ppon lowered himself hastily to the orlop and ran toward me. "Hurry up, Qan!" he projected on a sub-level, trying to escape my mother's consciousness. "They're coming! All the others are up already." "Who's coming?" my mother wanted to know, but her full interest was absorbed by her work, and she gave us only the side of her mind. "You youngsters really must learn to think clearly." "Yes'm." Ppon projected suitable youthful embarrassment, but on a lower level he was giggling. Later I must give him another warning; we young ones could not yet separate the thought channels efficiently, so it was more expedient not to try. "The _zkuchi_ are coming," I lied glibly, knowing that the old ones accept inanity as merely a sign of immaturity, "on hundreds of golden wings that beat faster than light." Grandfather removed a part of his mind from his beloved work. "The _zkuchi_ are purely mythological creatures," he thought crossly. "You're old enough to know better than that.... Qana," he appealed to my mother, "why do you let him believe in such nonsense?" "The _zkuchi_ are part of our cultural heritage, Father," she projected gently. "We must not let the young ones forget our heritage. Particularly if we are to be here for some time." "It seems to me you're unnecessarily pessimistic," he complained. "You know I've never failed you yet. We shall get back, I promise you. It's just that the transmutation takes time." "But it's taken such a long time already," she thought sadly. "Sometimes I begin to have doubts." Then she apparently remembered that serious matters should not be discussed before us young ones. As if we didn't know what was going on. "Run along and play, children," she advised, "but don't forget to check the atmosphere first." Grandfather started to excogitate something about how it would be better if Ppon went and helped his father while I stayed and did my lessons--you never seem to escape from lessons anywhere in the Universe--but we got away before he could finish. * * * * * Topside, the others were jumping up and down in their excitement. Ztul, the half-wit, was so upset he actually _spoke_: "Hurry, Qan, the tourists are coming!" "Ztul, you must never, _never_ make words aloud!" I thought fiercely. "The old ones might hear and find out about the game." "It's a harmless game," Ppon contributed. "And useful, too. Your grandfather needs the stuff." "Yes," I agreed, "but perhaps the old ones wouldn't see it that way. They might even stop the game. Adults have funny ideas, and there's no use asking for trouble." There was a chorus of assenting thought from the others. All of us had our family troubles. We got to work. Quickly we arranged the interiors of the shelters which we had cleverly built out of materials borrowed from below when the old ones' perceptions were directed elsewhere. The essential structure of the materials had not been changed and could easily be replaced when the time came, but there was no use having to give involved explanations. The old ones never seemed to understand anything. At first we had just built the shelters as play huts, but when the first tourists had misunderstood, we had improved upon the original misconception. Now we had a regular street full of rude dwellings. Lucky for us the old ones never came topside. As the little spaceship landed, Ppon and I and four of the others were ready at its door to form a welcoming committee. The rest dispersed to play villagers. The others took turns alternating the two roles, but I, of course, was always leader. After all, I'd made up the game. Two members of the crew dropped lightly out of the ship and slid a ramp into place. Then the passengers--there was a sizable group this time, I noted with satisfaction--came, followed by Sam, the guide, a grizzled old human. He grinned at us. We were old friends, for he'd been leading these tours for ten of their Earth years. The passengers stopped at the foot of the ramp and Sam ran forward to face them. By now we were used to the appearance of the human beings--small, binocular, with smooth, pasty skins--although they had really frightened us when we first laid eyes on them. * * * * * "Now, you see, folks," Sam bellowed through his megaphone, "the scientists don't know everything. They said life could not exist out here in the Asteroid Belt--and, behold, life! They said these little planets were too small, had too little gravity to hold an atmosphere. But you just breathe in that air, as pure and fresh and clean as the atmosphere of our own Earth! Speaking of gravity, you'll notice that we're walking, not floating. Matter of fact, you'll notice it's even a little hard to walk; you seem a bit heavier than at home. And they said there would be hardly any gravity. No, folks, those scientists know a lot of things, I won't deny that, but they sure don't know everything." "Amazing!" a small, bespectacled male passenger said. "I can hardly believe my own senses!" "Watch out for him," Ppon projected to me. "I think he's a scientist of some kind." "Don't teach your ancestor to levitate," I conceptualized back. Of course what struck the passengers first was neither the atmosphere nor the gravity; it was us. They never failed to be surprised, although the travel folders should have shown them what to expect. One of the folders had a picture of me, amusingly crude and two-dimensional, it's true, but not entirely unflattering. I'm not really purple, just a sort of tender fuchsia, but what could you expect from the rudimentary color processes they used? Sam had let me have the original and I always wished I could show it to Mother, but I couldn't without having to explain where it had come from. "They're so cute!" a thin female screamed. "Almost like big squirrels, really, except for all those arms." Her teeth protruded more than those of the small rodent she was thinking about, or than mine, for that matter. "Be careful, ma'am," the guide warned her. "They speak English." "They do? How clever of them. Why, they must be quite intelligent, then." "They are of a pretty high order of intelligence," the guide agreed, "although their methods of reasoning have always baffled scientists. Somehow they seem to _sense_ scientists, think of them as their enemies, and just clam up entirely." "I think they're just simply too cute," she said, gazing at me fondly. "Ah, _srrk_ yourself, madam," I excogitated, confident that humans were non-telepathic. * * * * * She looked a little disturbed, though; I'd better watch myself. After all, as leader I had to set a good example. "This here is Qan," the guide introduced me. "Headman or chief or something of the tribe. He is always on hand to greet us." "Welcome, travelers from a distant star," I intoned, wrapping my mother's second-best cloak more impressively about me, "to the humble land of the _Gchi_. Come in peace, go in peace." "Why, he speaks excellent English," the scientist exclaimed. "They pick up things very fast," Sam explained. "Natives can be very, very shrewd," a stout female commented, clutching her handbag tightly. "And now," Sam said, "we will visit the rude dwellings of this simple, primitive, but hospitable people." "_People!_" Ppon projected. "You better mind your language, Buster! People, indeed!" "Our friend Qan will lead the way." Sam waved toward me. I smiled back at him, but didn't move. "Whatsa matter?" he hissed. "Don't you trust me? Your old pal Sam?" "No," I whispered back. "Last time I let you pay me at the end of the tour, the take was $3.75 short." He tried another tack. "But look, Qan, it's a hell of a job getting all those coins together. Why can't you take paper money instead?" "What good would paper money do me up here?" "What I can't figure out is what good the metal does you up here, either." I beamed. "We eat it." Muttering to himself, he walked over to the ship and called one of the crewmen. They dragged a bag out of the ship's hold. Puffing, they laid it at my feet. I tossed it to Ztul. "Count it," I ordered out loud, "and if there's any missing, no one leaves this planet alive." I snarled ferociously. Everybody laughed. It was part of the act. "You will notice," Sam announced as we led the way down the street, "that the _Gchi_ are all about the same size. No young ones among them. We don't know whether this is because they reproduce differently from us, or because they have concealed their offspring." "The children must be dear little creatures," the toothy female gushed. "If even the adults are cute when they're seven or eight feet tall, the little ones must be simply precious.... Tell me, Chief, do you have any children?" "Don't understand," I grunted. "Concept unfamiliar. Not know what children is." "Funny," remarked the scientist, "he was speaking perfectly good English before." "Watch yourself, kid," Ppon ideated warningly to me. "Children are ..." she began and stopped. "They're--well, how do you reproduce?" * * * * * Ppon, the _oosh_-head, took it upon himself to answer. "If you'll just step into my hut, madam, I'll be delighted to show you." "If you ask me," the scientist stated, "these are frauds." "Whaddya mean frauds?" Sam demanded indignantly. "Human beings dressed up as extraterrestrials. They speak too good an English. Their concepts are too much like ours. Their sense of humor is equally vul--too similar." "You and your big mouth!" I projected to Ppon. "Look who's thinking!" he excogitated back. I could see I'd have to give him a mind-lashing later. It was up to me to save the situation. "If you would like to examine me more closely, sir," I addressed the scientist, "you will see that I am not a human being." He approached me dubiously. "Closer," I said, looking him in the eye, as I bared my teeth and growled. "I have five eyes, sir, and you will notice that I am looking at you with each one of them. I have seven arms, sir--" here I reached out to grab him "--and you will notice that they are all living tissue." "No, you couldn't be a human being," he agreed, backing away as soon as I released my grip, "but the whole thing is ... odd. Very odd." "If anthropologists on Earth can't explain all the customs of the primitives there," Sam tried to placate him, "how can we explain the behavior of extraterrestrials? Let's go into some of the houses. The chief has kindly given us his permission to look around." "Our houses are your houses," I stated, bowing graciously. As always, the tourists grew extremely enthusiastic about the furniture in our simple dwellings. "What lovely--er--things you have," squirrel-tooth commented. "What are they used for?" "Well, the _pryu_ is for the _mrach_, of course," I explained glibly, "and the _wrooov_ is much used for _cvrking_ the _budz_, although the _ywrl_ is preferred by the less discriminating. "Oh," she said. "How I should love to have one of the--'_wroov_' I think it was you said, for my very own. I wonder whether...." By a curious coincidence, Hsoj arrived at this point, carrying a tray full of things and stuff. "Artifacts!" he shouted. "Nice artifacts! Who wants to buy artifacts?" * * * * * All the tourists did. They were pretty good artifacts, if I do say so myself. I'd made them out of the junk I rescued from our dustbins before the disintegration unit got to work. Honestly, I can't understand how the old ones can complain about our being wasteful and then go and throw away all sorts of perfectly useful things. "You must pay the natives in metal," the guide explained. "They accept only coins." "Why?" the stout female wanted to know. "Do they really eat metal?" "I doubt it. One of them ate a couple of pounds of Earth candy a tourist gave him last time and he seemed to enjoy it without ill effects." "Without ill effects!" Ppon excogitated. "You should have seen Ztul afterward, boy!" "Look, Mac." A short fat human offered Hsoj a small silver coin and then five larger brown ones. "Which would you rather have?" "Them." Hsoj pointed unhesitatingly to the brown coins. A smile rippled covertly through the tourists. "They're a simple and child-like people, but really so good-natured," Sam footnoted. All of us gave simple good-natured smiles as Hsoj accepted the gift of the brown coins. "Keep up the good work," I projected. "We can use all the copper we can get." "You like metal, dear?" a female asked Hsoj. She unfastened a belt from around her waist. "Would you take this in exchange for some of your pretty things?" "Say 'yes,'" I conceptualized. "That's steel. Old and worthless to her, but not to us." "I know, I know," Hsoj ideated impatiently. "What makes you think you're the only one who knows anything?" Never had we got such a big haul before, because everybody seemed to have all sorts of metal stuff on him that he valued less than coins. Now came the sad part of the spiel. "Remember, folks, these simple, honest individuals you see before you are but the scanty remnants of a once-proud race who spanned the skies. For their ancestors must have been godlike indeed to have erected such edifices as that commanding structure over there." Sam pointed to the portable atmosphere machine which was set up several _yebil_ away to give our playground proper air. "Once glorious, now fallen into ruin and decay." "You're going to catch _muh_ from the old ones," Ppon ideated, "when they find out you haven't been keeping the machine clean." "Don't be a silly _oosh_," I thought back with a mental grin. "I'm using the atmosphere machine to create atmosphere." "You're getting to be as stupid as a human," he thought in disgust. "May we go inside?" the scientific passenger asked Sam. "No, indeed," I said hastily. "It is our temple, sacred to the gods. No unbeliever may set foot in it." "What are the basic tenets of your religion?" the scientist wanted to know. "We do not talk about it," I said with dignity. "It is tabu. Bad form." * * * * * "And now," announced the guide, glancing at his watch, "we have just time for the war dance before we leave for Vesta." "Against whom are they planning a war?" asked a small passenger, turning pale. "It's a vestigial ritual," Sam explained quickly, "dating back to the days when there were other--er--when there was somebody to fight. Just an invocation to the gods ... general stuff like that ... nothing to be afraid of. Isn't it so, Qan?" "Quite so," I replied, folding all my arms across my mother's cloak. "Come in peace, go in peace. Our motto." We started the dance. It wouldn't have got us a passing mark in first grade, where we'd learned it _rffi_ ago, but our version of the dance of the _zkuchi_ was plenty good enough for the tourists. "If I ever visit Earth, _Janna_ forbid," I thought to Ppon as we executed an intricate caracole, "I'm going to wear earplugs all the time." The dance finished. "Now everybody get together!" Sam shouted, clapping his hands to round up his charges. "We are about to leave little _Gchik_." "He should only know what _gchik_ means," Ppon sniggered mentally. "Little _Gchik_ is barren, dying, its past glories all but forgotten," Sam almost sobbed, "but still its simple, warm-hearted inhabitants carry on bravely...." "Couldn't we _do_ something for them?" suggested the stout female. Everybody murmured assent. This contingency arose all too often--a result of our being just too lovable. "No one can help us," I said in a deep voice, pulling the cloak over my face. The _idzik_ feathers trimming it tickled like crazy. "We must dree our own weird alone. Besides, the air of _Gchik_ has a deleterious effect upon human beings if they're exposed to it for longer than four hours." There was a mad scramble to reach the ship. "Stand by the atmosphere machine, Hsoj," I instructed, "to poison a little air in case anybody wants to take a sample." The scientist actually did, in a little bottle he seemed to have brought along for the purpose; but he got off the "asteroid" as rapidly as the rest of them, after that. We watched the spaceship dwindle to a silver mote in the distance. "Whew," Ppon thought, sinking to the surface. "That war dance sure takes a lot out of a fellow." * * * * * Then he conceptualized indignantly as he--as well as the rest of us--floated off the top level. "Somebody's cut the gravity!" "Must be Grandfather," I mentalized. "I suppose he thinks we've been out long enough, so he's warning us, just as if we were a bunch of infants. I guess we'd better go inside, though. Let's not forget to turn off the atmosphere, fellows. It uses too much energy and the old ones won't let us play topside any more." "You know everything, don't you, Qan?" Ppon sneered. I ignored him. "Pretty good haul," I excogitated as I hefted the bags of metal. "Here, Ztul, catch!" "You always make me carry everything!" he complained. Grandfather caught us as we lowered ourselves from the airlock. I figured he must have been getting suspicious or otherwise he'd never have left his beloved engines. "What's this you youngsters have?" he wanted to know, pouncing on our bags. "Metal, eh? I suppose you were going to make another fake meteorite out of it for me, were you?" "I thought you wanted metal, Grandfather," I sulked. He could have been more appreciative. "Certainly I want metal. You know I need it to get the drive working again. But what I want to know is where you got it from. I'd think you stole it, but how could even little _muhli_ like you steal out here in space?" "They have always brought you metal from time to time, Father," Mother projected, coming out as she overthought us. "So clever of them, I always thought." "Yes, but I've been thinking that their encountering so many meteorites was a singularly curious coincidence. And they were curious meteorites, too. I suppose the young ones made them themselves." "But out of what, Father? You know we don't have any spare metal on the ship. That's why you haven't been able to get the repairs finished before. Where else could they get the metal but from meteorites?" "I don't know where they get their metal from, but certainly not from meteorites. These pieces here are artifacts. Look, the metal has been more or less refined and roughly formed into shapes with crude designs upon them. Tell me the truth, Qan, where did you get these?" "Some people gave them to us," I replied sullenly. "People?" asked my mother. "What are people?" "Natives of this solar system. They call themselves people." "Nonsense!" my grandfather interjected. "It's just another one of your fantasies. You know what the astronomers say--none of the planets of this little system is capable of supporting life." "They come from the third planet," I persisted, trying to keep from disgracing myself by _fllwng_ in front of the other young ones. "There is life there. All of us have seen them. Besides, there is the metal." My companions chorused agreement. "You see, Father," my mother smiled, stroking my head with three hands, "the wise ones are not always right." * * * * * My grandfather nodded his head slowly. "It is not impossible, I suppose. I hope it is true that these--people _gave_ you and your friends the metal, Qan." "Oh, yes, Grandfather," I thought anxiously. "Of their own free will." "Well--" he continued, not altogether convinced--"this lot should be enough to repair the engines. Perhaps, when we take off, we should have a look at the youngsters' third planet on the way home." "But this trip has taken such a long time already, Father," my mother protested. "Almost a _rff_; the young ones have missed nearly two semesters of school. And Qan has been getting some very peculiar ideas--from those _people_, I suppose." "But if there is some sort of intelligent life," Grandfather thought, "it's our duty to visit it. Next time we need to stop the ship for repairs, it might be more convenient to put in at this third planet instead of just hanging out there in space. And the young ones say the natives seem to be friendly." "I'd like to see Sam's face when he comes back and finds his 'asteroid' gone," I conceptualized. "Yes," Ppon agreed, with the edge of his mind, but his main channel was turned in another direction. "That is the end of this game now, you know. In the next game _I_ shall be leader." "Oh, yes?" I thought back. "I'm the leader and I'm staying leader, because I am the biggest and cleverest." "Children!" my mother protested, distressed. "I'm afraid you've picked up some really unpleasant concepts from those dreadful natives." "Come, come, Qana," Grandfather ideated, "we mustn't be intolerant." "Perhaps not," she replied with heat, "and I know the natives probably don't know any better, but I am not going to have my young one or anyone else's contaminated. Visit the third planet if you wish, but not this time. You'll have to make a special trip for it. I'm not going to let you stop off there while the young ones are aboard. It's obviously no fit place for children." 
61335	----	I, EXECUTIONER BY TED WHITE AND TERRY CARR I am the executioner of the law, terrible in my majesty. The doomed felon is--myself! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I always shook when I came out of the Arena, but this time the tension wrapped my stomach in painful knots and salty perspiration stung my neck where I had shaved only a little over an hour earlier. And despite the heavy knot in my stomach. I felt strangely empty. I had never been able to sort out my reactions to an Execution. The atmosphere of careful boredom, the strictly business-as-usual air failed to dull my senses as it did for the others. I could always _taste_ the ozone in the air, mixed with the taste of fear--whether mine, or that of the Condemned, I never knew. My nostrils always gave an involuntary twitch at the confined odors and I felt an almost claustrophic fear at being packed into the Arena with the other nine hundred ninety-nine Citizens on Execution Duty. I had been expecting my notice for several months before it finally came. I hadn't served Execution Duty for nearly two years. Usually it had figured out to every fourteen months or so on rotation, so I'd been ready for it. A little apprehensive--I always am--but ready. At 9:00 in the morning, still only half awake (I'd purposely slept until the last minute), vaguely trying to remember the dream I'd had, I waited in front of the Arena for the ordeal to begin. The dream had been something about a knife, an operation. But I couldn't remember whether I'd been the doctor or the patient. Our times of arrival had been staggered in our notices, so that a long queue wouldn't tie up traffic, but as usual the checkers were slow, and we were backed up a bit. I didn't like waiting. Somehow I've always felt more exposed on the streets, although the brain-scanners must be more plentiful in an Arena than almost anywhere else. It's only logical that they should be. The scanners are set up to detect unusual patterns of stress in our brain waves as we pass close to them, and thus to pick out as quickly as possible those with incipient or developing neuroses or psychoses--the potential deviates. And where else would such an aberration be as likely to come out as in the Arena? I had moved to the front of the short line. I flashed my notification of duty to the checker, and was waved on in. I found my proper seat on the aisle in the "T" section. It was a relief to sink into its plush depths and look the Arena over. Once this had been a first-run Broadway theater--first a place where great plays were shown, and then later the more degenerate motion pictures. Those had been times of vicarious escape from reality--times when the populace ruled, and yet the masses hid their eyes from the world. Many things had changed since then, with the coming of regulated sanity and the achievement of world peace. Gone now were the black arts of forgetfulness, those media which practiced the enticement of the Citizen into irresponsible escape. Now this crowded theater was only a reminder. And a place of execution for those who would have sought escape here. * * * * * Perhaps thirty people were sitting on the floor of the Arena, where once there had been a stage. They sat quietly in chairs not so different from mine, strapped for the moment into a kind of passive conformity. I looked at them with interest. Strangeness has as much attraction as the familiar at times. As usual, most of them were young--from about ten to the early twenties. But at whatever age, they were rebels. They were potential enemies of society. Criminals. Probably some of them hadn't yet realized it. But they were on the verge of anti-social insanity, and the brain-scanners had singled them out. They were so young.... How long does it take a boy to become neurotic, psychotic, dangerous? A flurry of movement at the gates caught my eye. Apparently at least one of them was a full-fledged Rebel. He struggled furiously, and the three proctors were having an awkward time carrying him into the Arena without hurting him. Then, as they moved into the floodlights, I saw with a faint shock that it was a girl. She was dressed in man's clothing, but betrayed by her neurotic and unsanitary long hair. Long, blonde hair. For a moment I forgot where I was, and allowed myself to revel in this nearly forbidden sight. The soft waves fell halfway down her neck, disarrayed now. The floodlights shined on it, a strangely gentle mockery of sunlight. Something within me stirred, and I almost remembered.... Then they were strapping her into one of the chairs, carefully pulling the soft leather straps with their attached metal electrodes around her, pinioning her. One set joined her arms to the armrests, another her legs to the specially devised footrests. Her tunic was opened, and a third set was passed around her chest, the metal plate fastened just under her left breast. And then she was alone. I stared at her, drawn at first to her hair, and then, as my vision focused across the distance, to her eyes. Strange eyes; light blue irises, surrounded by a ring of dark blue, and flecked with gold. They were shining. She had been crying. Her eyes seemed to melt, like a pool of clear water growing deeper; I could almost see into them, into the darkness beneath. I was no longer aware of the chair in which I sat ... only of her, alone before me, so close. Her eyes widened for just an instant when she recognized me. "_Bob._" "_Hello, Rosebud._" "_I knew you'd be here. I knew._" "_It's been a long time.... I think I was trying to forget._" "_Don't,_" she said. "_Don't ever forget._" * * * * * Sun drenched me, and I was rocked back into time. "Hey, you pushed me!" I shouted at her. "Yes," said a faint voice, and then, "I'm sorry," the little golden-haired girl said. I sat up. Mother was going to be mad at me again, I knew. I wiped the seat of my pants with my hand, and then stared at the muddy hand with interest. "Look," I said to her, and showed her my hand. When she stepped forward to look closely at it, I pushed it at her, and smeared mud onto her face. Then I laughed.... * * * * * My laughter faded, blending with hers ... and then ... and then we were no longer standing separately in the sun. It was a dark night, the air fresh and cool to my skin, and the leaves of the trees which stretched over us rustled with a faint wind. I laughed again, a soft girlish sound that brought discomfort to the boy's face before me. "Your mother says. Your father says. Don't you ever say anything for yourself, Bob?" "Look, Rosalie, I'm sorry. Maybe I just don't think the way you do. My father says sex at our age is just another escape from reality. You've got to face yourself as an adult first. He--" "Your father is a bigger nincompoop than you are!" I shouted at him. "I thought you said you loved me. I thought you had some _feelings_ buried under that so-called rational mind of yours! Or does your father say you're too young to _love_ somebody?" He tried to say something, but I was right. He pressed his lips together and looked away. I was almost enjoying it now; with deliberate coolness I buttoned up my tunic, feeling the soft fibers on my skin. "How long does it take to love somebody?" I said, but my voice was beginning to tremble. I turned away from his still figure in the night, and began the slow walk back along the path to the house. Tears stung my eyes, and spilled onto my cheeks; I started to run through the dark. I slammed the door when I ran in, and went directly to my room. At one end of it was a small studio, where an easel was lit coldly by a fluorescent light. Almost blindly I began beating my fists on the still-wet canvas, blurring and then ripping the nearly finished portrait of a young man. * * * * * I was crying quietly when the low, calm voice stopped me on the street. "Just a moment, Miss." I felt the sudden skip in my heart which signaled danger, and when I turned I saw the light green uniform of a proctor in the vague street light. My eyes were still blurred with tears. I couldn't make out his face. "I'm sorry, but I'll have to ask you a few questions." Shielding my face from the light, I tried to make my voice calm. I hoped my homesick tears were hidden, that my cheeks wouldn't glisten in the light. I wanted very badly for him not to see I had been crying. "Yes?" "I'll have to know why you're out on the streets at this time of the morning," the proctor said. "There's a curfew, you know. Unless you can show cause...." Oh God; I had completely forgotten the city's curfew! "I--I'm sorry, Officer. I'm new to the city and I didn't realize...." "You're transient? Where are you staying?" "The Statler Dormitory for Women," I answered meekly. "And why are you out at this hour, so far from the dorm? That's down near 34th Street, almost thirty blocks south." "I know. I couldn't sleep--" His eyes narrowed at that; had I made a mistake? I plunged on: "--and I wanted to see Central Park. I didn't realize there was any harm...." "I guess not this time, Miss, but you'd better get back to your dorm. Take this pass." He scribbled a few words on a pad and then detached a slip of green paper for me. "You can take a train down to 34th Street. Now." "I'd just as soon walk, sir." He stared at me for a moment and then I turned and started for the nearest subway entrance. It had been horrible, those first few days in the Dorm. I'd never dreamed that a sane society could be so ... not cruel, but _unthinking_. Back home in Woodstock we were all supposed to be sane too, but neither Father nor Mother had ever forced any rigid rules on me. They had let me roam the woods, scuffing the dry leaves in autumn, drinking water from the creeks in my cupped hands. They hadn't objected when I was gone for hours. Usually I was just sitting on a log and staring into the sky, and what harm was there in that? They had encouraged my painting. "It's supposed to be a sign of escapism," Dad said, "but there are a lot worse ways of escaping." He made an easel for me, and I used tubes of house-paint tint-colors and stretched canvas and burlap over frames Dad made. He even gave me a book of reproductions of the Old Masters that he'd saved. Life in Woodstock had been pleasant for me, I realized now, even if it had often seemed lonely. I couldn't have told the proctor that I'd really woken up from a dream about Bob before I'd gone out walking. I'd seen Bob's face so clearly, standing in the night, unable to say anything to me. Suddenly it had seemed that my voice was stopped too, and I'd woken up gasping.... I boarded a local train, not caring that an express would be much faster, and began the trip back to my cubicle at the Statler Dorm. If only they hadn't taken my parents.... * * * * * I had succeeded in setting up a makeshift easel in my room at the Dorm, and was working on a painting, wearing some of Dad's old clothes, when the proctors broke in. One of them pointed a small indicator at me, glanced at it and nodded. "She's the one. Instability and escapism. And look at the kind of clothes she wears." "What are you doing?" I whispered. This was how they'd taken my parents! "You're under detention as a criminal against society. Miss," one of the proctors said. "We're all sorry." Another one stepped forward and held out a hand to me as one might a child. "Come along now." "_No!_" I backed away from them, and when they trapped me in the corner I kicked and screamed at them. "Leave me alone, leave me alone! You're killers!" One of them grabbed me and held me around my waist, my arms pinned to my sides. "We're not killers, Miss," he said, and his voice was incredibly calm. "We have nothing to do with it." I twisted free and struck at him, tearing skin from his face with my nails. "_Weren't my parents enough?_" One of them pointed another device at me, and I blacked out. * * * * * When I came to, I was being carried by three proctors through a door and down a hall. My head was fuzzy and throbbing. I caught a glimpse of a stenciled sign in the corridor, lettered neatly over an arrow pointing in the direction we were going. The words leaped out at me: _Execution Arena Floor_. One of the proctors saw that I was conscious and looked down at me pleasantly. "No sense struggling now," he said. "It'll be over soon." I stared back at him for a moment, not understanding. But then the kindness in his face became clear. He pitied me! The proctors were carrying me as gently as possible, as though I were a dog with a broken leg. I felt incredibly sad, and so tired that I was sure I must suddenly weigh twice as much. But they carried me through the door and out onto the floor of the Arena, and there were a thousand people up in the dark waiting for me. There were floodlights on the chairs where the others of the Condemned were strapped. They sat quietly, dully, as though they were the Executioners and the people above were waiting for _them_ to press the buttons. But it was insane! How could they take it so calmly----were they dead already? Did they _want_ to die? Or was I really insane? Where _was_ the sanity in this Arena? I couldn't lie still while they carried me to that chair. I was frightened. I was terrified! They were all so silent, so calm, so kindly. As though nothing at all were happening--nothing at all! I struggled, trying to fight my way free. I kicked and screamed; I had to make some noise in that black silence. But they held me, and strapped me into the chair. And still there was no sound in the Arena. I felt a shock, a tension, and I looked up. There, in the audience, sitting before his little panel with the blue light and the red Executioner's button, was a young man staring at me. I could feel his stare, like a cool hand touching me. It drew me up, into the dimness.... I felt my eyes widen with recognition. "_Bob_," I said. His reply sounded deep inside my mind, "_Hello, Rosebud._" "_I knew you'd be here_," I said, and then I drew him close to me. "_It's been a long time._" "_Don't ever forget_," I said, and opened myself to him at last. * * * * * The lights in the Arena dimmed, rose, dimmed again. The first signal I pressed against the straps, but they were firm and unmoving. Yet I--we--leaned forward, and watched the panel with its blue light. Our stomach was knotted like tight leather cords. The blue light flashed. I reached out a hand to the small red button. The straps bit into our flesh. The panel was dim, ghostly beneath the glaring lights from the dark above. A thousand hands touched a thousand red buttons. One of them was the first to touch the button, the first to complete the circuit. No one knew who he was. No one even knew if every button was connected, but someone touched a button and somewhere the circuit was completed. _Shock!_ Pain jerked our body rigid! We _screamed_; our skin blistered as hair singed and fell away. And there was a greater shock, a pain somewhere else, as our images cleaved and I fell away from her. I reached out my hand to her, and almost felt her touch ... but my hand was on the button, and she was slumped in her chair on the floor of the Arena. I jerked my hand away from the button as though it were hot electricity. My whole body was moist with perspiration. I stared about me, suddenly and deeply frightened. Which of us had screamed? I'd felt it surging up in me, felt it tearing at my throat, bursting from my mouth--but next to me the others were unconcernedly waiting for me to rise from my seat so that we could file in an orderly fashion from our places in the Arena. They had noticed nothing. When I stood up my legs were trembling. I could still feel where the leather straps had bitten into them. I stepped carefully up the stairs and went out into the morning sunshine. Though the floodlights had been bright in the Arena, still the sunlight hurt my eyes. I paused at the door, and looked at my ring-watch. It was nine-thirty. Only half an hour had passed. How long does it take to destroy a few spoiled lives? It was over. I forced my breathing into a more normal rate and stepped onto the sidewalk. Don't think about it, I told myself. After all, it had been years earlier that I had really lost her.... I had almost made it to the corner when I felt the tap on my shoulder, began to turn, saw the green-sleeved arm extending toward me a familiar black indicator, and heard the proctor say: "This is the one. Definite case: schizoid condition, latent telepath." "We're all sorry," said another of them. And they led me away to face it again. 
24723	----	None 
23599	----	[Illustration] Illustrated by Bernklau THE BIG FIX BY GEORGE O. SMITH _Anyone who holds that telepathy and psi powers would mean an end to crime quite obviously underestimates the ingenuity of the human race. Now consider a horserace that_ had _to be fixed ..._ It was April, a couple of weeks before the Derby. We were playing poker, which is a game of skill that has nothing to do with the velocity of horse meat. Phil Howland kept slipping open but he managed to close up before I could tell whether the combination of Three-Five-Two-Four meant a full house of fives over fours or whether he was betting on an open-ended straight that he hadn't bothered to arrange in order as he held them. The Greek was impenetrable; he also blocked me from reading the deck so that I could estimate his hand from the cards that weren't dealt out. Chicago Charlie's mind was easy to read but no one could trust him. He was just as apt to think high to score someone out as he was to think low to suck the boys in. As for me, there I was, good old Wally Wilson, holding a pat straight flush from the eight to the queen of diamonds. I was thinking "full house" but I was betting like a weak three of a kind. It was a terrific game. Between trying to read into these other guy's brains and keeping them from opening mine, and blocking the Greek's sly stunt of tipping over the poker chips as a distraction, I was also concerned about the eight thousand bucks that was in the pot. The trouble was that all four of us fully intended to rake it in. My straight flush would be good for the works in any normal game with wild cards, but the way this bunch was betting I couldn't be sure. Phil Howland didn't have much of a shield but he could really read, and if he read me--either my mind or my hand--he'd automatically radiate and that would be that. I was about at the point of calling for the draw when the door opened without any knock. It was Tomboy Taylor. We'd been so engrossed with one another that none of us had caught her approach. The Greek looked up at her and swore something that he hadn't read in Plato. "Showdown," he said, tossing in his hand. I grunted and spread my five beauties. Phil growled and shoved the pot in my direction, keeping both eyes on Tomboy Taylor. She was something to keep eyes on, both figuratively and literally. The only thing that kept her from being a thionite dream was the Pittsburgh stogie that she insisted upon smoking, and the only thing that kept her from being some man's companion in spite of the stogie was the fact that he'd have to keep his mouth shut or she'd steal his back teeth--if not for fillings, then for practice. "You, Wally Wilson," she said around the cigar, "get these grifters out of here. I got words." The Greek growled. "Who says?" "Barcelona says." I do not have to explain who Barcelona is. All I have to say is that Phil Howland, The Greek, and Chicago Charlie arose without a word and filed out with their minds all held tight behind solid shields. * * * * * I said, "What does Barcelona want with me?" Tomboy Taylor removed the stogie and said evenly, "Barcelona wants to see it Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace next month." When I got done gulping I said, "You mean Barcelona wants me to fix the Kentucky Derby?" "Oh no," she replied in a very throaty contralto that went with her figure and her thousand dollars worth of simple skirt and blouse. "You needn't 'Fix' anything. Just be sure that it's Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace in that order. One, two, three. Do I make Barcelona quite clear?" I said, "Look, Tomboy, neither of them platers can even _run_ that far, let alone running ahead." "Barcelona says they can. And will." She leaned forward and stubbed out the Pittsburgh stogie and in the gesture she became wholly beautiful as well as beautifully wholesome. As she leaned toward me she unfogged the lighter surface of her mind and let me dig the faintly-leaking concept that she considered me physically attractive. This did not offend me. To the contrary it pleased my ego mightily until Tomboy Taylor deliberately let the barrier down to let me read the visual impression--which included all of the implications contained in the old cliché: "... And don't he look nacheral?" "How," I asked on the recoil, "can I fix the Derby?" "Barcelona says you know more about the horse racing business than any other big time operator in Chicago," she said smoothly. "Barcelona says that he doesn't know anything about horse racing at all, but he has great faith in your ability. Barcelona says that if anybody can make it Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace, one, two, and three, Wally Wilson is the man who can do it. In fact, Barcelona will be terribly disappointed if you can't." I eyed her carefully. She was a composed and poised beauty who looked entirely incapable of uttering such words. I tried to peer into her mind but it was like trying to read the fine print of a telephone directory through a knitted woolen shawl. She smiled at me, her shapely lips curving graciously. I said, "Barcelona seems to have a lot of confidence in my ability to arrange things." With those delicate lips still curved sweetly, she said, "Barcelona is willing to bet money on your ability as a manager." At this point Tomboy Taylor fished another Pittsburgh stogie out of her hundred dollar handbag, bit off the end with a quick nibble of even, pearly-white teeth, and stuffed the cigar in between the arched lips. She scratched a big kitchen match on the seat of her skirt after raising one shapely thigh to stretch the cloth. She puffed the stogie into light and became transformed from a beauty into a hag. My mind swore; it was like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Out of the corner of her mouth she replied to my unspoken question: "It helps to keep grippers like you at mind's length." Then she left me alone with my littered card table and the eight thousand buck final pot--_and_ the unhappy recollection that Barcelona had gotten upset at something Harold Grimmer had done, and he'd gone into Grimmer's place and busted Grimmer flat by starting with one lousy buck and letting it ride through eighteen straight passes. This feat of skill was performed under the mental noses of about eight operators trained to exert their extrasensory talents toward the defeat of sharpshooters who tried to add paraphysics to the laws of chance. * * * * * Lieutenant Delancey of the Chicago police came in an hour later. He refused my offer of a drink, and a smoke, and then because I didn't wave him to a chair he crossed my living room briskly and eased himself into my favorite chair. I think I could have won the waiting game but the prize wasn't good enough to interest me in playing. So I said, "O.K., lieutenant, what am I supposed to be guilty of?" His smile was veiled. "You're not guilty of anything, so far as I know." "You're not here to pass the time of day." "No, I'm not. I want information." "What kind of information?" "One hears things," he said vaguely. "Lieutenant," I said, "you've been watching one of those halluscene whodunit dramas where everybody stands around making witty sayings composed of disconnected phrases. You'll next be saying 'Evil Lurks In The Minds Of Men,' in a sepulchral intonation. Let's skip it, huh? What kind of things does one hear and from whom?" "It starts with Gimpy Gordon." "Whose mind meanders." He shrugged. "Gimpy Gordon's meandering mind is well understood for what it is," he said. "But when it ceases to meander long enough to follow a single train of thought from beginning to logical end, then something is up." "Such as what, for instance." The lieutenant leaned back in my easy-chair and stared at the ceiling. "Wally," he said, "I was relaxing in the car with Sergeant Holliday driving. We passed a certain area on Michigan near Randolph and I caught the strong mental impression of someone who--in this day and age, mind you--had had the temerity to pickpocket a wallet containing twenty-seven dollars. The sum of twenty-seven dollars was connected with the fact that the rewards made the risk worth taking; there were distinct impressions of playing that twenty-seven bucks across the board on three very especial nags at the Derby. The impression of the twenty-seven bucks changed into a mental vision of a hand holding a sack of peanuts. There was indecision. Should he take more risk and run up his available cash to make a larger killing, or would one Joseph Barcelona take a stand-offish attitude if some outsider were to lower the track odds by betting a bundle on Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace." I said, "Lieutenant, you've a pickpocket to jug. Horse betting is legal." "Since wagering on the speed of a horse has been redefined as 'The purchase of one corporate share to be valid for one transaction only and redeemable at a par value to be established by the outcome of this aforesaid single transaction,' horse betting is legal. This makes you an 'Investment Counselor, short-term transactions only,' and removes from you the odious nomenclature of 'Bookie.' However, permit me to point out that the buying and selling of shares of horseflesh does not grant a license to manipulate the outcome." "You sound as though you're accusing me of contemplating a fix." "Oh no. Not that." "Then what?" "Wally, Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace were refused by the National Association Of Dog Food Canners because of their substandard health. If I'm not mistaken, the Derby Association should have to run the race early that Saturday afternoon." "Early?" "Uh-huh. Early. Y'see, Wally, the blue laws of the blue grass state make it illegal to run horseraces on Sunday, hence the start of the Derby must be early enough to let our three platers complete the race before midnight." "Lieutenant, there still stands a mathematical probability that--" "That the rest of the field will catch the Martian Glanders as they lead our three dogs past the clubhouse turn?" "Lieutenant, you are wronging me." "I haven't said a thing." "Then why have you come here to bedevil me, lieutenant? If Barcelona has ideas of arranging a fix--" "If Barcelona has such notions, Wally Wilson would know about it." "Everybody," I said, "entertains notions of cleaning up a bundle by having the hundred-to-one shot come in by a length. Even Barcelona must have wild dreams now and then--" "Come off it," he snapped. "Something's up and I want to know what's cooking." * * * * * "Lieutenant, you're now asking me to describe to you how someone might rig the Kentucky Derby in a world full of expert telepaths and perceptives and manipulators, a large number of which will be rather well-paid to lend their extrasensory power to the process of keeping the Derby pure." He eyed me sourly. "Remember, 'Fireman' O'Leary?" "That's an unfair allegation," I replied. "The rumor that he started the Chicago Fire is absolutely unfounded." "As I recall, 'Fireman' O'Leary came by his nickname about one hundred years after the holocaust that started on DeKoven Street in 1871. It seems that 'Fireman' O'Leary was most useful in helping the fillies home at Washington Park by assaulting them in the region of the bangtail with small bollops of pure incandescence. He was a pyrotic." "That is a false accusation--" "It was never proved," admitted the lieutenant, "because any one who accused anybody of making use of extrasensory faculties in 1971 would have been tossed into that establishment out on Narragansett Avenue where the headshrinkers once plied their mystic trade." "Things are different now." "Indeed they are, Wally. Which is why I'm here. No one but a fumbling idiot would try anything as crude as speeding a dog over the line by pyrotics or by jolting the animals with a bolt of electrical energy." "So--?" "So considering the sad and sorry fact that human nature does not change very much despite the vast possibility for improvement, we must anticipate a fix that has been contrived and executed on a level that takes full cognizance of the widespread presence of psi-function." "But again, why me?" "Was not 'Fireman' O'Leary an ancestor of yours?" "He was my maternal grandparent." "And so you do indeed come from a long line of horse operators, don't you?" "I resent your invidious implications." "And wasn't 'Wireless' Wilson the paternal ancestor from whom the family name has come?" "I fail to see ... the allegation that my father's father employed telepathy to transmit track information faster than the wire services has never been proved." He smiled knowingly. "Wally," he said slowly, "if you feel that allegations have somehow impugned the pure name of your family, you could apply for a review of their several appearances in court. It's possible that 'Fireman' O'Leary did _not_ use his pyrotic talent to enhance the running speed of some tired old dogs." "But--" "So I think we understand one another, Wally. There is also reason to believe that psionic talent tends to run in families. You're a psi-man and a good one." "If I hear of anything--" "You'll let me know," he said flatly. "And if Flying Heels, Moonbeam, _and-or_ Lady Grace even so much as succeed in staying on their feet for the whole race, I'll be back demanding to know how you--Wally Wilson--managed to hold them up!" After which the good Lieutenant Delancey left me to my thoughts--which were most uncomfortable. Barcelona had to be kept cheerful. But the dogs he'd picked could only come in first unassisted if they happened to be leading the field that started the _next_ race, and even then the post time would have to be delayed to give them a longer head start. That meant that _if_ our three platers came awake, _everybody_ would be looking for the fix. Anybody who planned a caper would sure have to plan it well. Barcelona hadn't planned the fix, he merely stated a firm desire and either Barcelona got what he wanted or I got what I didn't want, and I had to do it real good or Delancey would make it real hot for me. I was not only being forced to enter a life of crime, I was also being forced to perform cleverly. It wasn't fair for the law to gang up with the crooks against me. And so with a mind feeling sort of like the famous sparrow who'd gotten trapped for three hours in a badminton game at Forest Hills, I built a strong highball, and poured it down while my halluscene set was warming up. I needed the highball as well as the relaxation, because I knew that the "Drama" being presented was the hundred and umpty-umpth remake of "Tarzan of the Apes" and for ninety solid minutes I would be swinging through trees without benefit of alcohol. Tarzan, you'll remember, did not learn to smoke and drink until the second book. * * * * * The halluscene did relax me and kept my mind from its worry even though the drama was cast for kids and therefore contained a maximum of tree-swinging and ape-gymnastics and a near dearth of Lady Jane's pleasant company. What was irritating was the traces of wrong aroma. If one should not associate the African jungle with the aroma of a cheap bar, one should be forgiven for objecting to Lady Jane with a strong flavor of tobacco and cheap booze on her breath. And so I awoke with this irritating conflict in my senses to discover that I'd dropped out of my character as Tarzan and my surroundings of the jungle, but I'd somehow brought the stench of cheap liquor and moist cigarettes with me. There was an occupant in the chair next to mine. He needed a bath and he needed a shave but both would have been wasted if he couldn't change his clothing, too. His name was Gimpy Gordon. I said, "Get out!" He whined, "Mr. Wilson, you just gotta help me." "How?" "Fer years," he said, "I been living on peanuts. I been runnin' errands for hard coins. I been--" "Swiping the take of a Red Cross box," I snapped at him. "Aw, Mr. Wilson," he whined, "I simply gotta make a stake. I'm a-goin' to send it back when I win." "Are you going to win?" "Can't I?" For a moment I toyed with the idea of being honest with the Gimp. Somehow, someone should tell the duffer that all horse players die broke, or that if he could make a living I'd be out of business. Gimpy Gordon was one of Life's Unfortunates. If it were to rain gold coins, Gimpy would be out wearing boxing gloves. His mental processes meandered because of too much methyl. His unfortunate nickname did not come from the old-fashioned reason that he walked with a limp, but from the even more unfortunate reason that he _thought_ with a limp. In his own unhealthy way he was--could we call it "Lucky" by any standard of honesty? In this world full of highly developed psi talent, the Gimp _could_ pick a pocket and get away with it because he often literally could not remember where and how he'd acquired the wallet for longer than a half minute. And it was a sort of general unwritten rule that any citizen so utterly befogged as to permit his wealth to be lifted via light fingers should lose it as a lesson! But then it did indeed occur to me that maybe I could make use of the Gimp. I said, "What can I do, Gimpy?" "Mr. Wilson," he pleaded, "is it true that you're workin' for Barcelona?" "Now, you know I can't answer that." I could read his mind struggling with this concept. It was sort of like trying to read a deck of Chinese Fortune Cards being shuffled before they're placed in the machine at the Penny Arcade. As the drunk once said after reading the Telephone Directory: "Not much plot, but _egad_! What a cast of characters!" The gist of his mental maundering was a childlike desire to have everything sewed up tight. He wanted to win, to be told that he'd win, and to have all the rules altered ad hoc to assure his winning. Just where he'd picked up the inside dope that Barcelona favored Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace in the Derby I could not dig out of him. Just how Gimpy had made the association between this clambake and me--good old Wally Wilson--I couldn't dig either. But here he was with his--by now--sixty-five bucks carefully heisted, lifted, pinched and fingered, and by the great Harry, Gimpy was not a-goin' to lay it across the board on those three rejects from a claiming race unless he had a cast-iron assurance that they'd come in across the board, one, two, and three. I said slowly, "_If_ I were even thinking of working for Mr. Barcelona," I told him, "I would be very careful never, never to mention it, you know." * * * * * This bundle of The Awful Truth hit him and began to sink in with the inexorable absorption of water dropping down into a bucket of dry sand. It took some time for the process to climax. Once it reached Home Base it took another period of time for the information to be inspected, sorted out, identified, analyzed, and in a very limited degree, understood. [Illustration] He looked up at me. "I couldn't cuff a hundred, could I?" I shook my head. I didn't have to veil my mind because I knew that Gimpy was about as talented a telepath as a tallow candle. Frankly between me and thee, dear reader, I do not put anybody's bet on the cuff. I do a fair-to-middling brisk trade in booking bets placed and discussed by telepathy, but the ones I accept and pay off on--if they're lucky--are those folks who've been sufficiently foresighted to lay it on the line with a retainer against which their losses can be assessed. On the other hand I could see in Gimpy's mind the simple logic that told him that as a bookmaker I'd be disinclined to lend him money which he'd use to place with me against a sure-thing long shot. If I were to "Lend" him a century for an on-the-cuff bet on a 100:1 horse, especially one that I knew was sure to come in, I might better simply hand him one hundred times one hundred dollars as a gift. It would save a lot of messy bookkeeping. So the fact that I wouldn't cuff a bet for Gimpy gave him his own proof that I was confirming the fix. Then I buttered the process. "Gimp, do you know another good bookmaker?" "Sure. But you're the best." "Know one that'll take a bet from you--one that you don't like?" "Sure, Mr. Wilson." "Then," I said hauling a thousand out of my wallet, "Put this on _our horses_ for me." He eyed the grand. "But won't Mr. Barcelona be unhappy? Won't that run down the track odds?" I laughed. "The whole world knows them dogs as also-rans," I said. "Gimpy, they put long shots like those into races just to clip the suckers who think there is a real hundred-to-one chance that a 100:1 horse will outrun favorites." "Well, if you say so, Mr. Wilson." "I say so." "Thanks. I'll pay it back." He would. I'd see to that. Gimpy Gordon scuttled out of my bailiwick almost on a dead run. He was positively radiating merriment and joy and excitement. The note in his hand represented a sum greater than he had ever seen in one piece at any time of his life, and the concept of the riches he would know when they paid off on the Kentucky Derby was vague simply because Gimpy could not grasp the magnitude of such magnificence. Oddly, for some unexpected reason or from some unknown source hidden deep in his past, his mind pronounced it "Darby." * * * * * I returned to my African jungle still bored with the lack of anything constructive. I returned at about the point where Tarzan and Jane were going through that silly, "Me Tarzan; You Jane" routine which was even more irritating because the program director or someone had muffed the perfume that the Lady Jane wore. Instead of the wholesome freshness of the free, open air, Jane was wearing a heady, spicy scent engineered to cut its way through the blocking barrier of stale cigar smoke, whisky-laden secondhand air, and a waft of cooking aroma from the kitchen of the standard cosmopolitan bistro. Worse, it got worse instead of better. Where a clever effects-director might have started with the heavy sophisticated scent and switched to something lighter and airier as Jane was moved away from civilization, this one had done it backwards for some absolutely ridiculous reason. It finally got strong enough to distract me out of my characterization, and I came back to reality to realize once more that reality had been strong enough to cut into the concentration level of a halluscene. There was strong woman-presence in my room, and as I looked around I found that Tomboy Taylor had come in--just as Gimpy Gordon had--and was sitting in the other halluscene chair. She was probably playing Lady Jane to my Tarzan. Tomboy Taylor had changed to a short-skirted, low-necked cocktail dress; relaxed with her eyes closed in my halluscene chair she looked lovely. She looked as vulnerable as a soft kitten. Remembering that it's the soft vulnerable ones that claw you if you touch, I refrained. I went to my little bar and refilled my highball glass because swinging through the jungle makes one thirsty, and while I was pouring I took a sly peek into Tomboy Taylor's mind. She was not halluscening. She was watching me. And when I made contact with her, she radiated a sort of overall aura of amusement-emotion, covered up her conscious deliberation, and blocked any probing by directing me mentally, "Make it two, Wally." I built her one, handed it to her, and then said, "Folks these days sure have forgotten how to use doorbells." "If you don't want people coming in, Wally, you should restrict your mindwarden a little. It's set to admit anybody who does not approach the door with vigorous intent to commit grave physical harm. When the thing radiates 'Come in and relax' is a girl supposed to stand outside twiggling on the doorbell?" I dropped the subject thinking that maybe I shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. It's one that can't be answered by logic, whereas a firm emotional statement of like or dislike stops all counter-argument and I'd made the mistake of questioning my own judgment. So I eyed her and said, "Tomboy, you did not come here to indulge in small talk." "No," she admitted. "I'm here to keep track of you, Wally." "Oh?" "Our great and good friend wants me to make notes on how clever you are at arranging things." "You mean Barcelona sent you." "That's about it." I looked at her askance. "And how long are you going to stay?" She smiled. "Until Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace come across the finish line One, Two, and Three at Churchill Downs on Derby Day." I grinned at her. "Considering that trio of turtles, Tomboy, it may be for years and it may be forever." She held up her glass in a sort of a toast. "Or," she said, "'Til death do us part!" A little bitterly I said, "One might think that Barcelona doesn't trust me." She replied, "It isn't a matter of trust. Barcelona holds you among his very closest friends. He is well aware of the fact that you would do anything for him, that you prize his friendship so highly yourself that you would go to the most desperate lengths to keep it firm and true. Yet he realizes that the simple desire he has recently expressed does place you in a delicate mental attitude. You are likely to feel that he shouldn't have expressed this desire since you feel obligated to fulfill it. He feels that maybe this obligation to maintain friendship at all costs may cause resentment. Since Barcelona does not want you to resent him, he sent me to be your companion in the hope that I might get some forewarning should your friendship for him begin to weaken." * * * * * Just why in this day and age she didn't just come out and say--or think--flatly that she was there to keep me in line, I don't know. But there she was, talking all around the main point and delivering the information by long-winded inference. Even so, without her Pittsburgh stogie, Tomboy Taylor was a mighty attractive dish, and I knew that she could also be a bright and interesting conversationalist if she wanted to be. Under other circumstances I might have enjoyed the company, but it was no pleasure to know that every grain of her one hundred and fourteen pounds avoirdupois was Barcelona's Personal Property. At that moment I realized that I was not too much concerned with what Barcelona's reaction might be. Instead, I was wishing that things were different so that any activity between us would be for our own personal gain and pleasure rather than the order of or the fight against one Joseph Barcelona. There was one consolation. Tomboy Taylor had not come equipped with a box of Pittsburgh stogies with which to make my appreciation of beauty throw up its lunch. She said, sweetly, "The better to ensnare you, my dear." But as she spoke, for just a moment her thick woolly mind shield thinned out enough for me to catch a strange, puzzled grasp for understanding. As if for the first time she had been shown how admiration for physical attractiveness could be both honest and good. That my repugnant attitude over her Pittsburgh stogies was not so much based upon the spoiling of beauty by the addition of ugliness, but the fact that the act itself cheapened her in my eyes. Then she caught me peeking and clamped down a mind screen that made the old so-called "Iron Curtain" resemble a rusty sieve. "I'm the one that's supposed to keep track of you, you remember," she said, once more covering up and leaping mentally to the attack. "I'll remember," I said. "But will you tell me something?" "Maybe," she said in a veiled attitude. "Is your boy friend really interested in cleaning up, or is he interested in watching me squirm out of a trap he set for me?" "In the first place," she said, "I may have been seen in Barcelona's presence but please remember that my association with Mr. Joseph Barcelona has always been strictly on a financial plane. This eliminates the inference contained under the phrase 'Boy Friend.' Check?" "O.K., Tomboy, if that's the--" "That's not only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together, you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain 'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once in a while." I nodded soberly. I held out a hand but she put her empty highball glass in it instead of her own little paw. I shrugged and mixed and when I returned and handed it to her I said, "I'll make you a deal. I'll call you 'Nora' just so long as you maintain the manners and attitude of a female, feminine, lady-type woman. I'll treat you like a woman, but you've got to earn it. Is that a deal?" She looked at me, her expression shy and as defenseless as a bruiser-type caught reading sentimental poetry. I perceived that I had again touched a sensitive spot by demanding that she be more than physically spectacular. Her defenses went down and I saw that she really did not know the answer to my question. I did. It had to do with something that only the achievement of a God-like state--or extreme old age--would change. This time it was not so much the answer to why little boys walk high fences in front of little girls. It had much more to do with the result of what happens between little boys when the little girl hides her baseball bat and straightens the seams of her stockings when one certain little boy comes into sight. Joseph Barcelona did not admire my ability. He had, therefore, caused me to back myself into a corner where I'd be taken down a peg, shown-up as a second-rater--with the little girl as a witness. And why had Barcelona been so brash as to send the little girl into my company in order for her to witness my downfall? Let me tell you about Joe Barcelona. * * * * * Normally honest citizens often complain that Barcelona is living high off'n the hawg instead of slugging it out in residence at Stateville, Joliet, Illinois. With their straight-line approach to simple logic, these citizens argue that the advent of telepathy should have rendered the falsehood impossible, and that perception should enable anybody with half a talent to uncover hidden evidence. Then since Mr. Joseph Barcelona is obviously not languishing in jail, it is patent that the police are not making full use of their talented extrasensory operators, nor the evidence thus collected. And then after having argued thus, our upstanding citizen will fire off a fast thought to his wife and ask her to invite the neighbors over that evening for a game of bridge. None of these simple-type of logicians seem to be aware of the rules for bridge or poker that were in force prior to extrasensory training courses. Since no one recognized psionics, the rules did not take telepathy, perception, manipulation, into any consideration whatsoever. Psionics hadn't done away with anything including the old shell game. All psionics had done was to make the game of chance into a game of skill, and made the game of skill into a game of talent that required better control and longer training in order to gain full proficiency. In Barcelona's case, he had achieved his own apparent immunity by surrounding himself with a number of hirelings who drew a handsome salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a high priority and a penalty clause for delayed delivery. People who wonder how Barcelona can think for himself with all of that terrific mental racket going on do not know that Barcelona is one of those very rare birds who can really concentrate to the whole exclusion of any distraction short of a vigorous threat to his physical well-being. And so his trick of sending Nora Taylor served a threefold purpose. It indicated his contempt for me. It removed Nora from his zone of interference so that she could really witness firsthand my mental squirmings as I watched my own comeuppance bearing down on me. It also gave him double the telepathic contact with me and my counter-plans--if any. In the latter, you see, Barcelona's way of collecting outside information was to order a temporary cease-fire of the mental noise barrage and then he'd sally forth like a one-man mental commando raid to make a fast grab for what he wanted. Since the best of telepaths cannot read a man's opinion of prunes when he's thinking of peanuts, it is necessary for someone to be thinking of the subject he wants when he makes his raid. Having two in the know and interested doubled his chance for success. There was also the possibility that Barcelona might consider his deliberate "Leak" to Gimpy Gordon ineffective. Most sensible folks are disinclined to treat Gimpy's delusions of grandeur seriously despite the truth of the cliché that states that a one-to-one correspondence does indeed exist between the perception of smoke and the existence of pyrotic activity. Nora Taylor would add some certification to the rumor. One thing simply had to be: There must be no mistake about placing information in Lieutenant Delancey's hands so as to create the other jaw of the pincers that I was going to be forced to close upon myself. * * * * * I tried a gentle poke in the general direction of Barcelona and found that the mental noise was too much to stand. I withdrew just a bit and closed down the opening until the racket was no more than a mental rumor, and I waited. I hunched that Barcelona would be curious to know how his contact-girl was making out, and might be holding a cease-fire early in this phase of the operation. I was right. The noise diminished with the suddenness of turning off a mental switch, and as it stopped I went in and practically popped Barcelona on the noodle with: "How-de-do, Joseph." He recoiled at the unexpected thrust, but came back with: "Wally Wilson! Got a minute?" I looked at the calendar, counted off the days to Derby Day in my mind and told him that I had that long--at the very least and probably much, much longer. "Thinks you!" "Methinks," I replied. "Wally boy," he returned, "you aren't playing this very smart." "Suppose you tell me how you'd be playing it," I bounced back at him. "Tell you how I have erred?" He went vague on me. "If I were of a suspicious nature, I would begin to wonder about certain connective events. For instance, let's hypothecate. Let's say that a certain prominent bookmaker had been suspected of planning to put a fix on a certain important horse race, but of course nothing could be proved. Now from another source we suddenly discover strong evidence to suggest that this bookmaker is not accepting wagers on the horses he is backing, but conversely is busy laying wagers on the same nags through the help of a rather inept go-between." I grunted aloud which caused Nora Taylor to look up in surprise. I was tempted to say it aloud but I did not. I thought: "In simple terms, Joseph, you are miffed because I will not cover your bets." "I thought nothing of the sort." "Let's hedge? I love you too, Joseph." "Well, are you or aren't you?" "Are I what? Going to top the frosting by financing your little scheme to put the pinch on me?" "Now, Wally--" "Can it, Joseph. We're both big boys now and we both know what the score is. You know and I know that the first time I or one of my boys takes a bet on any one of the three turtles you like, the guy who laid the bet is going to slip the word to one of your outside men. And you're going to leap to the strange conclusion that if Wally Wilson is accepting bets against his own fix, he must know something exceedingly interesting." [Illustration] "Now, who's been saying anything about a fix, Wally?" "The people," I thought bluntly, "who have most recently been associated with your clever kind of operator." "That isn't very nice, Wally." If it had been a telephone conversation, I'd have slammed the telephone on him. The mealymouthed louse and his hypocritical gab was making me mad--and I knew that he was making me mad simply to make me lose control of my blanket. I couldn't stop it, so I let my anger out by thinking: "You think you are clever because you're slipping through sly little loopholes, Joseph. I'm going to show you how neat it is to get everything I want including your grudging admission of defeat by the process of making use of the laws and rules that work in my favor." "You're a wise guy," he hurled back at me. "I'm real clever, Barcelona. And I'm big enough to face you, even though Phil Howland, The Greek, and Chicago Charlie make like cold clams at the mention of your name." "Why, you punk--" "Go away, Barcelona. Go away before I make up my mind to make you eat it." I turned to Nora Taylor and regarded her charms and attractions both physical and mental with open and glowing admiration. It had the precalculated result and it wouldn't have been a whit different if I'd filed a declaration of intent and forced her to read it first. It even satisfied my ambient curiosity about what a telepathed grinding of the teeth in frustrated anger would transmit as. And when it managed to occur to an unemployed thought-center of my brain that the lines of battle were soft and sweetly curved indeed, Joseph Barcelona couldn't stand it any more. He just gave a mental sigh and signaled for the noisemakers to shut him off from contact. * * * * * Derby Day, the First Saturday in May, dawned warm and clear with a fast, dry track forecast for post time. The doorbell woke me up and I dredged my apartment to identify Nora fiddling in my two-bit kitchen with ham and eggs. Outside it was Lieutenant Delancey practising kinematics by pressing the button with a levitated pencil instead of shoving on the thing directly. (I'd changed the combination on the mindwarden at Nora's suggestion.) As I struggled out of bed, Nora flashed, "You get it, Wally," at me. She was busy manipulating the ham slicer and the coffee percolator and floating more eggs from the refrigerator. The invitation and the acceptance for and of breakfast was still floating in the mental atmosphere heavy enough to smell the coffee. I replied to both of them, "If he can't get in, let him go hungry." Lieutenant Delancey manipulated the door after I'd reset the mindwarden for him. He came in with a loud verbal greeting that Nora answered by a call from the kitchen. I couldn't hear them because I was in the shower by that time. However, I did ask, "What gives, lieutenant?" "It's Derby Day." "Yeah. So what?" "Going to watch it from here?" he thought incredulously. "Why not? Be a big jam down there." "I've a box," he said. "No ... how--?" "Both the Derby Association and the Chicago Police Force have assigned me to protect you from the evil doings of sinners," he said with a chuckle. "And I suggested that the best way of keeping an official eye on you was to visit you at the scene of the alleged intended crime and to serve that end they provided me with a box where we can all be together." I tossed, "And if we do not elect to go to Kentucky?" He chuckled again. "Then I shall have to arrest you." "For what?" "There is an old law in the City Statute that declares something called 'Massive Cohabitation' to be illegal. You have been naughty, Wally." Nora exploded. "We have not!" she cried. Lieutenant Delancey laughed like a stage villain. "The law I mention," he said after a bit of belly-laughing, "was passed long, long ago before telepathy and perception were available to provide the truth. At that time the law took the stand that any unmarried couple living together would take advantage of their unchaperoned freedom, and if this state of cohabitation went on for a considerable length of time--called 'Massive' but don't ask me to justify the term--the probability of their taking pleasure in one another's company approached a one hundred per cent positive probability. "Now this law was never amended by the Review Act. Hence the fact that you have been chastely occupying separate chambers has nothing to do with the letter of the law that says simply that it is not lawful for an unmarried couple to live under the same unchaperoned roof." I came out of the shower toweling myself and manipulating a selection of clean clothing out of the closet in my bedroom. "The law," I observed, "is administered by the _Intent_ of the Law, and not by the Letter, isn't it?" "Oh, sure," he said. "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. Maybe take weeks, you know." "And what's the alternative?" I grunted. "Flight," he said in a sinister tone as I came out of my bedroom putting the last finishes on my necktie. "Flight away from the jurisdiction of the law that proposes to warp the meaning of the law to accomplish its own ends." "And you?" "My duty," he grinned, "is to pursue you." "In which case," observed Nora Taylor, "we might as well fly together and save both time and money." "That is why I have my personal sky-buggy all ready to go instead of requisitioning an official vehicle," he said. He scooped a fork full of eggs and said, "You're a fool, Wally. The lady can cook." I chuckled. "And what would happen if I hauled off and married her?" "You mean right here and now?" "Yes." "Sorry. I'd have to restrain you. You see, you couldn't get a legal license nor go through any of the other legal activities, ergo there would be a prima facie illegality about some part of the ceremony. Without being definite as to which phase, I would find it my duty to restrain you from indulging in any act the consummation of which would be illegal." Nora said in pseudo-petulant tone, "I've been damned with very faint praise." "How so?" "Wally Wilson has just said that he'd rather marry me than go to the Kentucky Derby with you." Lieutenant Delancey said, "I urge you both to come along. You see, my box is also being occupied by an old friend of yours. I managed to talk him into joining us, and with reluctance he consented." "I'm a mind reader," I said. "Our friend's name is Joseph Barcelona?" "As they say on the space radio, 'Aye-firm, over and out!'" * * * * * Barcelona was there with two of his boys. Watching them were four ununiformed officers. Nora and I and the lieutenant were joined later by Gimpy Gordon, who might have been radiating childlike wonder and a circus-air of excitement at actually being _at_ the Derby. He might have been. No one could cut through the constant, maddening mental blah-blah-blah that was being churned out by Barcelona's noisemakers. He greeted me curtly, eyed Nora hungrily. He said: "You look pretty confident, Wilson." "I can't lose," I said. "No? Frankly I don't see how you can win." I smiled. "Without mentioning any names, Joseph, I feel confident that the final outcome of this racing contest will be just as you want it to be. I shall ask that no credit be given me, although I shall be greatly admired by our mutual friend Miss Nora Taylor who will think that I am truly wonderful for making you happy. And it is more than likely that she may marry me once I have shown you, and she, _and_ Lieutenant Delancey, that I am a law-abiding citizen as well as a man who values friendship enough to do as his old pal Joe Barcelona desires." "It's going to be one of the neatest tricks of the week," he said. "It will be done by the proper application of laws," I said modestly. Behind us, Gimpy Gordon light-fingered a half dollar out of Delancey's pocket and was attracting the attention of a hot dog peddler by waving his program. Some folks nearby were eying Barcelona's noisemakers angrily but making very little visible protest once they identified him. Nora was reading her program and underlining some horses. The whole place began to grow into a strange excited silence as the track board began to go up. It was to be a nine-horse race, and at the top of the list were three--count them--three odds-on favorites: 1. Murdoch's Hoard 1:2 2. Mewhu's Jet 3:5 3. Johnny Brack 5:7 4. Piper's Son 8:5 5. Daymare 3:1 6. Helen O'Loy 8:1 And then, of course, there were our three mud turtles which must have been entered by someone who thought that the Kentucky Derby was a claiming race and who hoped that the LePage's Glue people would make a bid for the three mounds of thoroughbred horseflesh that dropped dead in the backstretch: 7. Flying Heels 100:1 8. Moonbeam 250:1 9. Lady Grace 500:1 The rack hadn't hit the top of the slide before there was a sort of mass-movement towards the mutuel windows. The ones who didn't go in person tried to hurl betting-thoughts in the hope of getting there early and failing this they arose and followed the crowd. Slowly the odds began to change; the figures on our three platers began to rise. There was very little activity on the other six horses. Slow-thinking Gimpy Gordon started to get up but I put out a hand to stop him. "But the odds are dropping," he complained. "Gimpy," I said, "they pay on the final listing anyway. But would you like a tip?" "Sure," he said nervously. "My tip is to keep your cash in your pocket. Put it on the nose of some horse and it's likely to get blown away by a high wind." The odds were changing rapidly. What with psionic information receivers, trend predictors and estimated anticipators, the mutuel computers kept up with the physical transfer of funds, figured out the latest odds, and flipped the figures as fast as the machinery could work the dials. In no more than a few minutes the odds on the three platers looked more like the odds on horses that stood a chance of winning. * * * * * Barcelona looked at me. "What did you do, wise guy?" "Who ... me? Why, I didn't do anything that you did not start--except that maybe I was a little more generous." "_Spiel!_" he snarled. "Why, shucks, Joseph. All I did was to slip good old Gimpy Gordon a tip." "How much?" "Just a lousy little thousand dollar bill." "A grand! For what, wise guy?" "Why, just for telling me what horses you picked for the Derby." Barcelona looked at the odds on his horses. Flying Heels had passed even money and was heading for a one-to-two odds-on. The other platers were following accordingly. "And what did you tell Gimpy, Wilson?" "You tell him, Gimp," I said. "Why, Wilson just said that we should ride along with you, Mr. Barcelona, because you are such a nice guy that everybody works awfully hard to see that you get what you want." "There's more!" roared Barcelona. "Only that I shouldn't mention it to anybody, and that I shouldn't place my bet until the mutuel windows open because if I did it would louse up the odds and make you unhappy." Gimpy looked at Barcelona's stormy face and he grew frightened. "Honest, Mr. Barcelona, I didn't say a word to nobody. Not a word." He turned to me and whined plaintively, "You tell him, Mr. Wilson. I didn't say a word." I soothed him. "We know you didn't, Gimpy." Barcelona exploded. "Ye Gods!" he howled. "They used that gimmick on me when I lost my first baby tooth. 'Don't put your tongue in the vacant place,' they said, 'and don't think of the words _Gold Tooth_ and it'll grow in natural gold!'" As he spoke the odds on Flying Heels changed from a staggering One-to-Eight to an even more staggering One-to-Ten. That meant that anybody holding less than a ten-dollar bet on such a winner would only get his own money back because the track does not insult its clients by weighing them down with coins in the form of small change. They keep the change and call it "Breakage" for any amount over an even-dollar money. Delancey said to Barcelona, "You have had it, Joseph." Barcelona snarled, "Put the big arm on Wilson here. He's the fast man with the big fix." "Wilson didn't fix any race, Joseph. He just parlayed some of the laws of human nature into a win for himself and a lose for you." "Now see here--what's this guff about human nature?" "Well, there's the human desire to ride with a winner, and the human frailty that hopes to get something for nothing. To say nothing of the great human desire to be 'On the Inside' track or 'In the Know' so that they can bet on the 'Sure Thing'. And so," said Delancey, "we've about twenty thousand human beings full of human nature holding tickets on your three dogs, Joseph. They bet their money because the 'Inside Dope' said that the big fix was in. And I can tell you that what twenty thousand people are going to do to this 'Inside Dope' when their nags run last is going to make Torquemada ask permission to return to life for a Second Inquisition, this time with extrasensory tortures." He turned to me as Barcelona went pale. "Wally," he asked, "want to bet that someone doesn't remember that old question of whether it is possible to break every bone in a man's body without killing him?" "I'd be a fool to cover that one," I said. "But I'll play even money and on either side of whether Joseph dies or lives through the process." "Stop it!" screamed Barcelona. He grabbed me by the arm. "Wilson," he pleaded, "Can you? Stop it, I mean? Can you fix it?" "Sure," I said. "Legally?" "Yep. But it'll cost you." "Just money?" "Just money--and admitting that you lost, Joseph!" "I lose," he said. "Go ahead!" "O.K., Joseph. Now, let's be real honest. Those three longshore turtles belong to you, don't they?" "Yes." "And right now you wouldn't even want to see them run, would you? In fact, you really want that they shouldn't run." "Yes." "All right, Joseph. Call off your noisemakers and toss the Head Steward a thought. Tell him you're scratching your entries." "But that won't stop the people from losing their money." "Natch. So next you broadcast a thought that because of this terrible, grievous error you are refunding their money out of your own pocket since the Track Association will not or is not obliged to." He turned to his pair of rattleheads and snarled, "All right. Shut up!" A mental silence fell that was like the peace of rest after a busy day. As Barcelona was tossing his cancellation at the Steward and preparing to make a full and plausible explanation to the gambling instinct of the Kentucky Derby crowd, I considered the matter carefully: "Let's see," I thought. "He wants 'em not to run and so he can't complain to me if they do not. I didn't fix the race, so Lieutenant Delancey can't accuse me of that. That makes everybody happy, and I win!" A small hand stole into mine. "How about me, Wally?" Nora asked sweetly. I looked down at a thionite dream come true by the glow in her eyes that admired no one else but me. "You're mine," I reminded her, "until Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace win One, Two, and Three at the Kentucky Derby." "Or," she said mischievously, "'Til death do us part!" * * * * * I was instructing her how to respond to a kiss as a lady should respond when about two hundred thousand noisy, exuberant human natures yelled and radiated and thought: "They're Off!" But they didn't mean us. They were watching a bunch of long-faced hayburners chasing one another around a dusty track. Human nature ain't changed a bit. It's just more complicated in an extrasensory sort of way. THE END [Illustration] Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ December 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 
61271	----	THE MAN WHO FLEW BY CHARLES D. CUNNINGHAM, JR. The Man Who Flew could not exist--but he had committed a foul crime! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Clouds hung low over the city, gray and dismal. The shining metal thruway partially reflected their somber visage. A few vehicles scurried nervously through the city. Keller turned away from the window dismally. His conscience was bothering him, and it affected his every movement. Looking over his humbly furnished office, he entertained the thought, not for the first time, that he should change jobs if he wanted to eat. A buzz sounded--the intercom system. That would be Sally, his secretary. It was a mystery what she would want. Usually she never bothered him except in case of an emergency, and the last client Keller had had dropped his case three months ago. Apparently it was another customer, unlikely as it seemed. Keller heard voices outside, Sally's irritated and protesting, and a nervous baritone. Abruptly the door opened, disclosing a rugged, bushy-haired C-3 (average intelligence and advanced extra-sensory perception, but unexercised), who was in a bad state of nerves. He seemed to have forced his way past Sally into the inner office. Keller flashed a thought at Sally: **How does he look?** **Not so hot,** she answered. **I didn't bother to scan much--don't want to lower myself to that depth--but he seems to be a big payer. He's impatient, though. And he wants everything run his way.** Oh, fine, thought Keller. My first victim in three months, and it has to be the Big Shot type. He made the usual Q-R opening; curtly and efficiently: "Your name?" "Uh--Harold Radcliffe." "Why the hesitation?" But Keller had scanned it already. The man was simply cautious. He continued without letting Radcliffe answer: "Age?" 33. "Occupation?" Hesitation: Salesman. "Residence?" After writing this and Radcliffe's telephone number down, he closed his grimy black notebook and sat back. "And now, Mr. Radcliffe, why exactly did you come here?" Radcliffe, unsure of himself at first, gathered confidence as he noticed Keller's interest growing. He began: "Well sir, for this job I need one of the best detectives--" he paused at Keller's grimace--"and since you're one of the few detectives in the city who can read minds, and the only A-2 'tec in the state--" He shrugged, and finished, "I figured you'd be the man for me." Keller saw that he was telling the truth, after a quick check into the man's mind. "All right, Mr. Radcliffe. What's your problem?" * * * * * Radcliffe seemed to not be able to focus his thoughts. His mind, Keller saw, was a loose stream of unconnected thoughts, trying to merge into a whole. Keller could read no message out of them. He suspected a block--an unusual thing for a C-3, but not impossible. He gave up, sat back and awaited the other's response. Finally it came, jerking Keller out of his chair. "It's murder, Mr. Keller. The murder of my wife." Murder! It was the first suspected murder in thirteen years. Ever since the Ricjards case in '04, peace and tranquility reigned in a calm and placid nation. For thirteen peaceful years there had been no hint of manslaughter other than accidental. It had been conditioned out of humans at the prenatal stage, and unless there was a violent, all-encompassing urge to kill, murder was completely out of the question. It was hard to believe. But it was not a lie; no non-tele could block a lie, and Keller scanned the truth in Radcliffe's brain. "Wait a minute, Radcliffe. Are you sure it's not murder by accident--unintentional manslaughter, as the police term it? Or it could be suicide. Had you thought of that?" Radcliffe shook his head impatiently. He rose out of his chair, pacing the floor nervously. "It could not possibly be accident. You'll see that when you investigate the case. Suicide? It's possible. Anything is possible, I suppose, but I would lay any kind of odds against it. We had just been to the theater. We returned to our apartment at about five minutes to eleven. "After undressing and showering, I started to turn in. I noticed a light on in her room--we sleep in separate rooms--and called to her, to see if anything was wrong. There was no answer. "I figured that she had gone to sleep with the light on, and went into the room to turn it off. That was when I saw her on the floor." He stopped. Keller read grief, fear and love in his memory. "How had she been killed?" "It was a handgun, Mr. Keller. Her face was all blackened and charred. Barely recognizable. But I knew it must be her. Our rooms connect, you see. There are two other doors to each room; one to the outside hall, and one to each bathroom. "When she was shot, my door was locked on the inside--triple-locked, I remember, because I felt like being left alone that night. It was locked by chain, bar and bolt. It's a fairly ancient apartment house. We like it that way. Her bathroom door was open and there was no one hiding inside. The same went for my bathroom. And both hall doors were locked and bolted. "The windows were locked on the inside, and there is no opening to shoot through that would not leave traces. I checked. "Even if the killer had gotten in some way or other, there was no way he could get out and still leave the doors and windows locked up tight." Keller thought, there is one way, Mr. Radcliffe. But he kept it to himself for the moment. * * * * * He looked up and smiled as confidently as he could. "I'll be glad to take your case, Mr. Radcliffe. Of course you want me to spare no expenses," he added hopefully. At Radcliffe's harassed nod, he relaxed. Next came the most dangerous part of the job. It was a part which had eliminated several competent detectives from their jobs--the Probe phase. This involved plunging into the subject's mind, and sorting out relevant details which could furnish extra clues. Several Probers had got themselves trapped in the subject's mind, unable to get out because of a mental block or insanity. It might, however, be unnecessary. He flashed a thought to the girl in the adjoining room: **Sal, should I give him the H-R treatment?** Answer: **Emphatically! He's hiding something. Not intentionally, but it needs to be uncovered. A superficial scanning of the preconscious doesn't get the job done.** Keller sighed. The Probe (also called the H-R treatment, because a certain amount of hypnotism was involved) was trying on not only the subject but also the scanner. He said: "Now, Mr. Radcliffe, I'm going to go into your subconscious mind and get your impressions of last night. I want you to concentrate on ... let's say ... the moment when you saw your wife." He shut off all of his five senses, and took the plunge. The image formed: Shrieking terror. A tinge of ozone in the air. The Creature creeping up from behind. A beheaded teddy bear lying full length on the floor. A hole in the air near the door, colored red. Floating demon--where? Nonononono! The Creature bending over him. Terror--heat. No! THE MAN WHO FLEW. Melting walls. The door (now violet) disintegrating. The teddy bear shriveling now--turns into a snake-- He emerged. Before he could take full control of his body, a thought came: **Rick? How did you come out?** He flashed her the image. **Lousy. I can't get a true impression-picture to save my life. Just a lousy nightmare, fantasy-symbolism deal. But I did get something out of that mess. I'll let you know about it as soon as I verify it.** * * * * * To Radcliffe, since the time when Keller had stopped talking until right now, as Keller opened his eyes and frowned in thought, no time had elapsed. In actuality, the time taken was one and one-half microseconds. Keller flashed: **Sally, tune in on this conversation, please.** "Radcliffe," he said slowly, "When did you lose your sight?" The other man sat up rigidly, then relaxed. "How did you find out? Did you scan it?" "No. When I was receiving your impressions, I caught an idea of melting walls. Then there were nameless creatures and demons floating around. I examined your senses when I came out, and saw that you were blind. What is it--sort of a sight perception-tuning sense?" Radcliffe nodded. "I can sense everything except colors. Everything seems black, white and gray to me." He paused wearily. "Otherwise, there's no difference. No one else knew about it. Not even my wife." Keller nodded. "Now, let's try it again. Concentrate on the moment when you entered here and saw me for the first time." He flashed a thought to Sally. **Those Creatures were his fear of the unknown. He's got a lot of fright in there. Probably afraid that the killer would jump out at him from some shadowy corner. I don't quite see how he could visualize different colors, having never seen them before--but that's probably my interpretation of them. Here goes.** The image: Heat. Light. The teddy bear rising up again. Fear. THE MAN WHO FLEW. The snake again--coiling--striking--missing. Fleeing. Dying. Melting walls. Voices around him--laughing--shrieking. Colors of the rainbow. The creature dying--dead--dissolving. No more.... Voices again. Talking to him. Telling him--what? His life flashing before him--stopping. His brain--_undressing_? Hole in the air at--the desk? Fear. THE MAN WHO FLEW. Fear-terror-hate-revenge ... determination.... **Sally? Did you catch all that mess?** **Unfortunately.** **Something's wrong, Sally. I should be seeing something akin to the actual events through his eyes. Instead all I get is this meaningless stuff--unless--oh, God, now I see!** Pause. **I wonder who the Man Who Flew is?** **You've got me. And how about the dissolving creature?** **That shows his confidence in having someone to tell his story to. All his unknown fear is vanishing.** **And then there's the hole in the air.** **Yeah. I think I'll surface again, and try some straight questions on him.** * * * * * "Radcliffe," began Keller, "you haven't reported this to the police, have you?" Radcliffe grinned. "Hardly. That would start the biggest scandal in years. I want it kept quiet until we found out who killed her." "Well, we've ruled out accidental murder. You found no handgun in the room when you searched it?" "No firearm of any kind." Keller nodded. He let his mind drift back over four years-- To a time when he was in love with Mildred Simmons and had proposed to her ... and she had rejected him, saying she loved Harold Radcliffe. He had walked away, a bitter man. She had had many enemies, he mused, and almost as many friends. He did not know of anyone who knew her who was not either violently for or violently against her and all that she stood for. He looked up. "How old was your wife when she died?" "Thirty-one. Two years younger than I am." "Do you know of anyone who would want to kill her?" It was a routine question, but to Keller it was very important. "No. I knew many people who disliked her intensely--I'm not denying that--but not to the point of murder. Of course, she wasn't around me half the time. I might not know." "Well, Radcliffe, I think that'll be all for today. Mind if I go with you back to your apartment to look it over?" "I don't live there any more. I moved out after I had disposed of her body. I couldn't stand to live there any longer." Radcliffe shook hands and departed. Keller read confidence and positiveness that he, Keller, would come through. Keller was not so sure. He decided to have a look around Radcliffe's apartment. He strolled aimlessly around the apartment for a few moments, pausing here and there to check details which might or might not help him in analyzing the Radcliffes' character: furniture design, carpeting, thermostat setting, toilet articles and so on. Then he got down to a thorough examination of the room. There were no secret panels or trapdoors of any kind. So entrance by a hithertofore unknown passageway was completely out. He checked the air conditioner to see if any rigmarole could be fixed up with it to make it appear that the victim had been shot with a handgun, but this, too, drew a blank. After a few more minutes' examination, he decided to return. On an impulse, he decided to see where Radcliffe had gone. Attuning his mind to the already-recorded pattern of Radcliffe's brain, he received direction, distance and motion--acceleration, direction, rate. To his surprise he noted that Radcliffe had turned back and was heading toward Keller's office again. Hastily, Keller returned to the office before him. * * * * * In about twenty minutes, Radcliffe barged in as before. "Keller," he said, "I think I'm going to be called out of town tonight. So if you want any more information directly from me, you'll have to get it now." Keller flashed: **Sally. Watch his conscious thoughts, and also his impressions. I'm going to try some unconscious identification-response. Wish me luck. Or do you want to burrow around in his subconscious with me a little more?** **I think I will. I'm actually beginning to enjoy it, to tell the truth.** Keller said aloud, "I'll go under again. That'll be the last time." Image: Nonono. Fire. Flame. Gun. Fearhateterrorlove. **Radcliffe, I am the creature.** No! Dead. You're not--I hate you--gone. Disbelief. Hate. No fear. Forgetfulness. Block. Withdrawal. **Radcliffe.** Me. **I'm the melting walls.** Terror? Uncertainty. Indecision. Realization. Contemptpityscorn. Sharp mental block. Withdrawal. **Radcliffe.** Me. **I'm the teddy bear.** (This was, he thought, Radcliffe's wife-image.) Indecision. Realization. Withdrawal. Blank. **Radcliffe, I'm the hole in the air.** But Keller's reply was cut short by a cry of terror in his brain. **RICK!** It was Sally. * * * * * Keller went down immediately. **What?** No response. **WHAT?** Still no response. Then he could hear her cry--fading in depth--now dying--gone. **Radcliffe.** Mememe. **Sally.** Memeususwetwowetwo.... It had happened. Sally was trapped in his preconscious, absorbed by his dominating mind block. Gone. Forever. Determination, savage and enraged. A desperate shot in the dark: **RADCLIFFE!** Mememememememe.... **Radcliffe, I am the MAN WHO FLEW.** Nononono. Fear. Terror. Hate. Block. Withdrawal, but incomplete.... Coming out of his Probe, Keller saw the result of his last implanted thought: Radcliffe, now in a tight fetal ball, lay on the floor. His face was absolutely devoid of expression. His conscious mind was a constant _gobble-gobble-gobble_. Keller entered the next room, to find Sally sprawled limply across her desk. Mindless, soulless, as if she had never had a mind or soul--Keller lifted her tenderly onto the floor and chose the most merciful way out, disintegrating her body with an atomic gun from the closet. Then, again, the Probe.... **Radcliffe.** Mememe. **I'm Sally.** Nonono. (Gloating.) Gonegonegone. **Radcliffe, _where's Sally_?** Gone. Satisfaction. Triumph. Laughter. Delirious happiness. **Radcliffe, I'm everything. I'm the creature. The snake, THE MAN WHO FLEW, the hole in the air, the flames, everything you've hated, feared and dreaded.** Withdrawal. Thunderbolt! More and more now. Frantically, Keller defended himself, throwing up block after block, only to have it torn down by the ever-spreading bolts of pure mental energy. Finally he withdrew into his own body in haste, realizing that Radcliffe's conquest would mean his revival. * * * * * When he opened his eyes, Radcliffe was sitting in the chair, yawning. Probably, Keller thought, he had no knowledge of his fetal state. Good. "Well, Radcliffe," he said, "I need only one more thing to complete the picture. Now focus again on 11:17 last night, when you found your wife dead on the floor." Image: Fear. Terror. Anxiety. Nonono. Hole in the air. THE MAN WHO FLEW. Pain. Withdrawal. Complete mental block. With a shock, Keller realized that in seven hours Radcliffe had been turned into an A-3--just below Keller--thanks to ... Sally. He analyzed the symbols. Impressions: No teddy bear (no real concern for the wife, then). No creature (no more unknown fears). No snake or demon or flames, signifying evil and terror. Just the hole in the air and the man who flew. Strange ... he realized that meant one thing--he had to go down one last final time--to end it all.... **Radcliffe.** Me. **Radcliffe, who is Sally?** Memeusususwetwowetwo. **Shut up! Radcliffe, I know who killed your wife.** Terror. Shock. Ordeal. Decision. Determination. Yes. We hear you. **THE MAN WHO FLEW RADCLIFFE! THE MAN WHO FLEW KILLED YOUR WIFE. THE HOLE IN THE AIR IS WHAT YOU SENSED--THE VACUUM THAT HE LEFT WHEN HE TELEPORTED HIMSELF OUT OF THE MELTING WALLS ARE, RADCLIFFE. THE WALLS THAT COULDN'T HOLD THE MAN WHO FLEW--THE MAN WHO KILLED YOUR WIFE.** I, I, I, I.... **RADCLIFFE, WHO KILLED YOUR WIFE? WHO KILLED YOUR WIFE WITH THAT HANDGUN, AND THEN APPARENTLY DISAPPEARED INTO THIN AIR?** Nonono.... IT'S ME, RADCLIFFE. I AM THE MAN WHO FLEW. HOW ELSE WOULD I KNOW THAT IT WAS AT 11:17 THAT YOU FOUND YOUR WIFE DEAD? HOW ELSE COULD I GO FROM HERE TO YOUR APARTMENT WITHOUT KNOWING IT WAS RAINING?** Youyouyou.... **THAT'S RIGHT, RADCLIFFE. BUT IT'S TOO LATE NOW. ISN'T IT? YOU'RE GONE, AREN'T YOU? NO. RADCLIFFE! DON'T! NONOnonono.... Radcliffe....** Memeusus.... Wethreewethreewethree.... 
22763	----	_Just about a year ago, two enthusiastic young men came to see me, and during the course of the visit announced that they were starting a campaign to make their living in science fiction--and also to become "names" in the best science fiction magazines. They planned to collaborate on some material, and write on their own as well, intending to make the grade both ways._ _One of the pair was a well-known science fiction fan, who had appeared once or twice in the "pro mags," as fans designate journals like this one. The other was Randall Garrett, who had previously sold a respectable number of stories to various magazines in the science fiction and fantasy field._ _I shall not try to insult your intelligence by stating that I told them I knew they could do it; on the contrary, I larded doubt with sympathy. However, this story, and Robert A. Madle's "Inside Science Fiction" will show how wrong I was!_ SUITE MENTALE by Randall Garrett _Illustrated by EMSH_ OVERTURE--ADAGIO MISTERIOSO The neurosurgeon peeled the thin surgical gloves from his hands as the nurse blotted the perspiration from his forehead for the last time after the long, grueling hours. "They're waiting outside for you, Doctor," she said quietly. The neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were still finishing up the operation, attending to the little finishing touches that did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist. Such things as suturing up a scalp, and applying bandages. The nurse took the sterile mask--no longer sterile now--while the doctor washed and dried his hands. "Where are they?" he asked finally. "Out in the hall, I suppose?" [Illustration] She nodded. "You'll probably have to push them out of the way to get out of Surgery." * * * * * Her prediction was almost perfect. The group of men in conservative business suits, wearing conservative ties, and holding conservative, soft, felt hats in their hands were standing just outside the door. Dr. Mallon glanced at the five of them, letting his eyes stop on the face of the tallest. "He may live," the doctor said briefly. "You don't sound very optimistic, Dr. Mallon," said the FBI man. Mallon shook his head. "Frankly, I'm not. He was shot laterally, just above the right temple, with what looks to me like a .357 magnum pistol slug. It's in there--" He gestured back toward the room he had just left. "--you can have it, if you want. It passed completely through the brain, lodging on the other side of the head, just inside the skull. What kept him alive, I'll never know, but I can guarantee that he might as well be dead; it was a rather nasty way to lobotomize a man, but it was effective, I can assure you." The Federal agent frowned puzzledly. "Lobotomized? Like those operations they do on psychotics?" "Similar," said Mallon. "But no psychotic was ever butchered up like this; and what I had to do to him to save his life didn't help anything." The men looked at each other, then the big one said: "I'm sure you did the best you could, Dr. Mallon." The neurosurgeon rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and looked steadily into the eyes of the big man. "You wanted him alive," he said slowly, "and I have a duty to save life. But frankly, I think we'll all eventually wish we had the common human decency to let Paul Wendell die. Excuse me, gentlemen; I don't feel well." He turned abruptly and strode off down the hall. * * * * * One of the men in the conservative suits said: "Louis Pasteur lived through most of his life with only half a brain and he never even knew it, Frank; maybe--" "Yeah. Maybe," said the big man. "But I don't know whether to hope he does or hope he doesn't." He used his right thumbnail to pick a bit of microscopic dust from beneath his left index finger, studying the operation without actually seeing it. "Meanwhile, we've got to decide what to do about the rest of those screwballs. Wendell was the only sane one, and therefore the most dangerous--but the rest of them aren't what you'd call safe, either." The others nodded in a chorus of silent agreement. NOCTURNE--TEMPO DI VALSE "Now what the hell's the matter with me?" thought Paul Wendell. He could feel nothing. Absolutely nothing: No taste, no sight, no hearing, no anything. "Am I breathing?" He couldn't feel any breathing. Nor, for that matter, could he feel heat, nor cold, nor pain. "Am I dead? No. At least, I don't _feel_ dead. Who am I? What am I?" No answer. _Cogito, ergo sum._ What did that mean? There was something quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ideas seemed to come from nowhere; fragments of concepts that seemed to have no referents. What did that mean? What is a referent? A concept? He felt he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use they were he didn't know. There was something wrong, and he had to find out what it was. And he had to find out through the only method of investigation left open to him. So he thought about it. SONATA--ALLEGRO CON BRIO The President of the United States finished reading the sheaf of papers before him, laid them neatly to one side, and looked up at the big man seated across the desk from him. "Is this everything, Frank?" he asked. "That's everything, Mr. President; everything we know. We've got eight men locked up in St. Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic, and one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get anything out of them." The President leaned back in his chair. "I really can't quite understand it. Extra-sensory perception--why should it drive men insane? Wendell's papers don't say enough. He claims it can be mathematically worked out--that he _did_ work it out--but we don't have any proof of that." The man named Frank scowled. "Wasn't that demonstration of his proof enough?" A small, graying, intelligent-faced man who had been sitting silently, listening to the conversation, spoke at last. "Mr. President, I'm afraid I still don't completely understand the problem. If we could go over it, and get it straightened out--" He left the sentence hanging expectantly. "Certainly. This Paul Wendell is a--well, he called himself a psionic mathematician. Actually, he had quite a respectable reputation in the mathematical field. He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but he dropped it several years ago--said that the human mind couldn't be worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied various branches of psychology, and eventually dropped them all. He built several of those queer psionic machines--gold detectors, and something he called a hexer. He's done a lot of different things, evidently." "Sounds like he was unable to make up his mind," said the small man. * * * * * The President shook his head firmly. "Not at all. He did new, creative work in every one of the fields he touched. He was considered something of a mystic, but not a crackpot, or a screwball. "But, anyhow, the point is that he evidently found what he'd been looking for for years. He asked for an appointment with me; I okayed the request because of his reputation. He would only tell me that he'd stumbled across something that was vital to national defense and the future of mankind; but I felt that, in view of the work he had done, he was entitled to a hearing." "And he proved to you, beyond any doubt, that he had this power?" the small man asked. Frank shifted his big body uneasily in his chair. "He certainly did, Mr. Secretary." The President nodded. "I know it might not sound too impressive when heard second-hand, but Paul Wendell could tell me more of what was going on in the world than our Central Intelligence agents have been able to dig up in twenty years. And he claimed he could teach the trick to anyone. "I told him I'd think it over. Naturally, my first step was to make sure that he was followed twenty-four hours a day. A man with information like that simply could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands." The President scowled, as though angry with himself. "I'm sorry to say that I didn't realize the full potentialities of what he had said for several days--not until I got Frank's first report." * * * * * "You could hardly be expected to, Mr. President," Frank said. "After all, something like that is pretty heady stuff." "I think I follow you," said the Secretary. "You found he was already teaching this trick to others." The President glanced at the FBI man. Frank said: "That's right; he was holding meetings--classes, I suppose you'd call them--twice a week. There were eight men who came regularly." "That's when I gave the order to have them all picked up. Can you imagine what would happen if _everybody_ could be taught to use this ability? Or even a small minority?" "They'd rule the world," said the Secretary softly. The President shrugged that off. "That's a small item, really. The point is that _nothing_ would be hidden from _anyone_. "The way we play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease to be a game of strategy, and become a game of pure chance. * * * * * "We'd have to start playing Life another way. It would be like chess, where you can see the opponent's every move. But in all human history there has never been a social analogue for chess. That's why Paul Wendell and his group had to be stopped--for a while at least." "But what could you have done with them?" asked the Secretary. "Imprison them summarily? Have them shot? What _would_ you have done?" The President's face became graver than ever. "I had not yet made that decision. Thank Heaven, it has been taken out of my hands." "One of his own men shot him?" "That's right," said the big FBI man. "We went into his apartment an instant too late. We found eight madmen and a near-corpse. We're not sure what happened, and we're not sure we want to know. Anything that can drive eight reasonably stable men off the deep end in less than an hour is nothing to meddle around with." "I wonder what went wrong?" asked the Secretary of no one in particular. SCHERZO--PRESTO Paul Wendell, too, was wondering what went wrong. Slowly, over a period of immeasurable time, memory seeped back into him. Bits of memory, here and there, crept in from nowhere, sometimes to be lost again, sometimes to remain. Once he found himself mentally humming an odd, rather funeral tune: _Now, though you'd have said that the head was dead, For its owner dead was he, It stood on its neck with a smile well-bred, And bowed three times to me. It was none of your impudent, off-hand nods...._ Wendell stopped and wondered what the devil seemed so important about the song. Slowly, slowly, memory returned. When he suddenly realized, with crashing finality, where he was and what had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane. Or he would have, if he could have become violent. MARCHE FUNEBRE--LENTO "Open your mouth, Paul," said the pretty nurse. The hulking mass of not-quite-human gazed at her with vacuous eyes and opened its mouth. Dexterously, she spooned a mouthful of baby food into it. "Now swallow it, Paul. That's it. Now another." "In pretty bad shape, isn't he?" Nurse Peters turned to look at the man who had walked up behind her. It was Dr. Benwick, the new interne. "He's worthless to himself and anyone else," she said. "It's a shame, too; he'd be rather nice looking if there were any personality behind that face." She shoveled another spoonful of mashed asparagus into the gaping mouth. "Now swallow it, Paul." "How long has he been here?" Benwick asked, eyeing the scars that showed through the dark hair on the patient's head. "Nearly six years," Miss Peters said. "Hmmh! But they outlawed lobotomies back in the sixties." "Open your mouth, Paul." Then, to Benwick: "This was an accident. Bullet in the head. You can see the scar on the other side of his head." * * * * * The doctor moved around to look at the left temple. "Doesn't leave much of a human being, does it?" "It doesn't even leave much of an animal," Miss Peters said. "He's alive, but that's the best you can say for him. (Now swallow, Paul. That's it.) Even an ameba can find food for itself." "Yeah. Even a single cell is better off than he is. Chop out a man's forebrain and he's nothing. It's a case of the whole being _less_ than the sum of its parts." "I'm glad they outlawed the operation on mental patients," Miss Peters said, with a note of disgust in her voice. Dr. Benwick said: "It's worse than it looks. Do you know why the anti-lobotomists managed to get the bill passed?" "Let's drink some milk now, Paul. No, Doctor; I was only a little girl at that time." "It was a matter of electro-encephalographic records. They showed that there was electrical activity in the prefrontal lobes even after the nerves had been severed, which could mean a lot of things; but the A-L supporters said that it indicated that the forebrain was still capable of thinking." Miss Peters looked a little ill. "Why--that's _horrible_! I wish you'd never told me." She looked at the lump of vegetablized human sitting placidly at the table. "Do you suppose he's actually _thinking_, somewhere, deep inside?" "Oh, I doubt it," Benwick said hastily. "There's probably no real self-awareness, none at all. There couldn't be." "I suppose not," Miss Peters said, "but it's not pleasant to think of." "That's why they outlawed it," said Benwick. RONDO--ANDANTE MA NON POCO Insanity is a retreat from reality, an escape within the mind from the reality outside the mind. But what if there is no detectable reality outside the mind? What is there to escape from? Suicide--death in any form--is an escape from life. But if death does not come, and can not be self-inflicted, what then? And when the pressure of nothingness becomes too great to bear, it becomes necessary to escape; a man under great enough pressure will take the easy way out. But if there is no easy way? Why, then a man must take the hard way. For Paul Wendell, there was no escape from his dark, senseless Gehenna by way of death, and even insanity offered no retreat; insanity in itself is senseless, and senselessness was what he was trying to flee. The only insanity possible was the psychosis of regression, a fleeing into the past, into the crystallized, unchanging world of memory. So Paul Wendell explored his past, every year, every hour, every second of it, searching to recall and savor every bit of sensation he had ever experienced. He tasted and smelled and touched and heard and analyzed each of them minutely. He searched through his own subjective thought processes, analyzing, checking and correlating them. _Know thyself._ Time and time again, Wendell retreated from his own memories in confusion, or shame, or fear. But there was no retreat from himself, and eventually he had to go back and look again. He had plenty of time--all the time in the world. How can subjective time be measured when there is no objective reality? * * * * * Eventually, there came the time when there was nothing left to look at; nothing left to see; nothing to check and remember; nothing that he had not gone over in every detail. Again, boredom began to creep in. It was not the boredom of nothingness, but the boredom of the familiar. Imagination? What could he imagine, except combinations and permutations of his own memories? He didn't know--perhaps there might be more to it than that. So he exercised his imagination. With a wealth of material to draw upon, he would build himself worlds where he could move around, walk, talk, and make love, eat, drink and feel the caress of sunshine and wind. It was while he was engaged in this project that he touched another mind. He touched it, fused for a blinding second, and bounced away. He ran gibbering up and down the corridors of his own memory, mentally reeling from the shock of--_identification_! * * * * * Who was he? Paul Wendell? Yes, he knew with incontrovertible certainty that he was Paul Wendell. But he also knew, with almost equal certainty, that he was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was living--had lived--in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But he knew nothing of the Captain other than the certainty of identity; nothing else of that blinding mind-touch remained. Again he scoured his memory--Paul Wendell's memory--checking and rechecking the area just before that semi-fatal bullet had crashed through his brain. And finally, at long last, he knew with certainty where his calculations had gone astray. He knew positively why eight men had gone insane. Then he went again in search of other minds, and this time he knew he would not bounce. QUASI UNA FANTASIA POCO ANDANTE PIANISSIMO An old man sat quietly in his lawnchair, puffing contentedly on an expensive briar pipe and making corrections with a fountain pen on a thick sheaf of typewritten manuscript. Around him stretched an expanse of green lawn, dotted here and there with squat cycads that looked like overgrown pineapples; in the distance, screening the big house from the road, stood a row of stately palms, their fronds stirring lightly in the faint, warm California breeze. The old man raised his head as a car pulled into the curving driveway. The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped, and a man climbed out of the vehicle. He walked with easy strides across the grass to where the elderly gentleman sat. He was lithe, of indeterminate age, but with a look of great determination. There was something in his face that made the old man vaguely uneasy--not with fear but with a sense of deep respect. "What can I do for you, sir?" "I have some news for you, Mr. President," the younger one said. The old man smiled wryly. "I haven't been President for fourteen years. Most people call me 'Senator' or just plain 'Mister'." * * * * * The younger man smiled back. "Very well, Senator. My name is Camberton, James Camberton. I brought some information that may possibly relieve your mind--or, again, it may not." "You sound ominous, Mr. Camberton. I hope you'll remember that I've been retired from the political field for nearly five years. What is this shattering news?" "Paul Wendell's body was buried yesterday." The Senator looked blank for a second, then recognition came into his face. "Wendell, eh? After all this time. Poor chap; he'd have been better off if he'd died twenty years ago." Then he paused and looked up. "But just who are you, Mr. Camberton? And what makes you think I would be particularly interested in Paul Wendell?" "Mr. Wendell wants to tell you that he is very grateful to you for having saved his life, Senator. If it hadn't been for your orders, he would have been left to die." The Senator felt strangely calm, although he knew he should feel shock. "That's ridiculous, sir! Mr. Wendell's brain was hopelessly damaged; he never recovered his sanity or control of his body. I know; I used to drop over to see him occasionally, until I finally realized that I was only making myself feel worse and doing him no good." [Illustration] "Yes, sir. And Mr. Wendell wants you to know how much he appreciated those visits." * * * * * The Senator grew red. "What the devil are you talking about? I just said that Wendell couldn't talk. How could he have said anything to you? What do you know about this?" "I never said he _spoke_ to me, Senator; he didn't. And as to what I know of this affair, evidently you don't remember my name. James Camberton." The Senator frowned. "The name is familiar, but--" Then his eyes went wide. "Camberton! You were one of the eight men who--Why, _you're the man who shot Wendell_!" Camberton pulled up an empty lawnchair and sat down. "That's right, Senator; but there's nothing to be afraid of. Would you like to hear about it?" "I suppose I must." The old man's voice was so low that it was scarcely audible. "Tell me--were the other seven released, too? Have--have you all regained your sanity? Do you remember--" He stopped. "Do we remember the extra-sensory perception formula? Yes, we do; all eight of us remember it well. It was based on faulty premises, and incomplete, of course; but in its own way it was workable enough. We have something much better now." The old man shook his head slowly. "I failed, then. Such an idea is as fatal to society as we know it as a virus plague. I tried to keep you men quarantined, but I failed. After all those years of insanity, now the chess game begins; the poker game is over." "It's worse than that," Camberton said, chuckling softly. "Or, actually, it's much better." "I don't understand; explain it to me. I'm an old man, and I may not live to see my world collapse. I hope I don't." Camberton said: "I'll try to explain in words, Senator. They're inadequate, but a fuller explanation will come later." And he launched into the story of the two-decade search of Paul Wendell. CODA--ANDANTINO "Telepathy? Time travel?" After three hours of listening, the ex-President was still not sure he understood. "Think of it this way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given instant as being surrounded by a shield--a shield of privacy--a shield which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you _have_ to have it in order to retain your privacy--your sense of identity, even. But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get in, _you_ can't get out! "You can call this shield 'self-consciousness'--perhaps _shame_ is a better word. Everyone has it, to some degree; no telepathic thought can break through it. Occasionally, some people will relax it for a fraction of a second, but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up again." "Then how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?" The Senator looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into his briar. "You don't go _through_ it; you go _around_ it." * * * * * "Now wait a minute; that sounds like some of those fourth dimension stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger, I read a murder mystery--something about a morgue, I think. At any rate, the murder was committed inside a locked room; no one could possibly have gotten in or out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer traveled through the fourth dimension in order to get at the victim. He didn't go through the walls; he went around them." The Senator puffed a match flame into the bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man. "Is that what you're driving at?" "Exactly," agreed Camberton. "The fourth dimension. Time. You must go back in time to an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant has no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world. You must travel back down your own four-dimensional tube of memory in order to get outside it, and to do that, you have to know your own mind completely, and you must be _sure_ you know it. "For only if you know your own mind can you communicate with another mind. Because, at the 'instant' of contact, you _become_ that person; you must enter his own memory at the beginning and go _up_ the hyper-tube. You will have all his memories, his hopes, his fears, his _sense of identity_. Unless you know--beyond any trace of doubt--who _you_ are, the result is insanity." * * * * * The Senator puffed his pipe for a moment, then shook his head. "It sounds like Oriental mysticism to me. If you can travel in time, you'd be able to change the past." "Not at all," Camberton said; "that's like saying that if you read a book, the author's words will change. "Time isn't like that. Look, suppose you had a long trough filled with supercooled water. At one end, you drop in a piece of ice. Immediately the water begins to freeze; the crystallization front moves toward the other end of the trough. Behind that front, there is ice--frozen, immovable, unchangeable. Ahead of it there is water--fluid, mobile, changeable. "The instant we call 'the present' is like that crystallization front. The past is unchangeable; the future is flexible. But they both exist." "I see--at least, I think I do. And you can do all this?" "Not yet," said Camberton; "not completely. My mind isn't as strong as Wendell's, nor as capable. I'm not the--shall we say--the superman he is; perhaps I never will be. But I'm learning--I'm learning. After all, it took Paul twenty years to do the trick under the most favorable circumstances imaginable." "I see." The Senator smoked his pipe in silence for a long time. Camberton lit a cigaret and said nothing. After a time, the Senator took the briar from his mouth and began to tap the bowl gently on the heel of his palm. "Mr. Camberton, why do you tell me all this? I still have influence with the Senate; the present President is a protégé of mine. It wouldn't be too difficult to get you men--ah--put away again. I have no desire to see our society ruined, our world destroyed. Why do you tell me?" * * * * * Camberton smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid you might find it a little difficult to put us away again, sir; but that's not the point. You see, we need you. We have no desire to destroy our present culture until we have designed a better one to replace it. "You are one of the greatest living statesmen, Senator; you have a wealth of knowledge and ability that can never be replaced; knowledge and ability that will help us to design a culture and a civilization that will be as far above this one as this one is above the wolf pack. We want you to come in with us, help us; we want you to be one of us." "I? I'm an old man, Mr. Camberton. I will be dead before this civilization falls; how can I help build a new one? And how could I, at my age, be expected to learn this technique?" "Paul Wendell says you can. He says you have one of the strongest minds now existing." The Senator put his pipe in his jacket pocket. "You know, Camberton, you keep referring to Wendell in the present tense. I thought you said he was dead." Again Camberton gave him the odd smile. "I didn't say that, Senator; I said they buried his body. That's quite a different thing. You see, before the poor, useless hulk that held his blasted brain died, Paul gave the eight of us his memories; he gave us _himself_. The mind is not the brain, Senator; we don't know what it _is_ yet, but we do know what it _isn't_. Paul's poor, damaged brain is dead, but his memories, his thought processes, the very essence of all that was Paul Wendell is still very much with us. "Do you begin to see now why we want you to come in with us? There are nine of us now, but we need the tenth--you. Will you come?" "I--I'll have to think it over," the old statesman said in a voice that had a faint quaver. "I'll have to think it over." But they both knew what his answer would be. Transcriber's Note This etext was produced from _Future Science Fiction_ No. 30, 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 
29151	----	[Illustration: THE PAD THAT "BLINDFOLDS" THE YOGI The above is a photograph of the actual porous plaster and pads produced by YOGA RAMA as a means of "blindfolding." The plaster is seen exactly as it was when taken off by Mr. WILLIAM MARRIOTT. It will be seen that the pads have shifted, allowing comparatively clear vision with one eye. The tissue paper, making the plaster non-adhesive, will also be noticed. [_Page 52_] TELEPATHY GENUINE AND FRAUDULENT BY W. W. BAGGALLY MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH WITH A PREFACE BY SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S. METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON _First Published in 1917_ PREFATORY NOTE My friend, Mr. W. W. Baggally, an experienced investigator of supernormal phenomena, has set down some of his experiences in connexion with the subject of Telepathy, and I heartily commend his book to the public as the record of a careful, conscientious, and exceptionally skilled and critical investigator. It would be difficult to find anyone more competent by training and capacity to examine into the genuineness of these subtle and elusive phenomena, which yet are of the utmost importance in the development of psychological science. Telepathy, or the direct action of mind on mind apart from the ordinary channels of sense, opens a new chapter; it is not a coping-stone completing an erection, but a foundation-stone on which to build. OLIVER J. LODGE CONTENTS PART I GENUINE TELEPATHY PAGE Experimental Telepathy 1 Spontaneous Telepathy 18 Telepathy between Human Beings and Animals 30 PART II FRAUDULENT TELEPATHY Accounts of Cases 35 Description of Various Methods used by Public Performers for effecting their So-called Transmission of Thought 57 PART III THE ZANCIGS Public Experiments 68 Private Experiments 70 Experiments before Committees 82 Importance of establishing Genuine Telepathy as a Scientific Fact 92 TELEPATHY PART I GENUINE TELEPATHY Sir William F. Barrett, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, more than forty years ago tried some experiments which led him to believe that something then new to science, which he provisionally called "thought transference" and which is now known as "telepathy," really existed. At the first general meeting of the Society, on the 17th July 1882, he read a paper entitled "First Report on Mind Reading." Since that date the Society has carried out a great number of experiments which tend to show that telepathy is a scientific fact. The evidence for its existence is twofold--that which can be gathered experimentally, and that which arises spontaneously. To the first category belong those experiments in the transmission of the images of drawings or diagrams by means of an effort of the will of a person known as the _agent_ to the mind of another person designated the _percipient_, when the transmission is carried out otherwise than through the ordinary channel of the senses. To the second category belong those hallucinations of seeing a person at the moment of death or at a crisis, evidence for which has been obtained abundantly by the Society for Psychical Research and has been embodied in the work _Phantasms of the Living_, and in the _Census of Hallucinations_--a report on which appeared in the _Proceedings_ of the Society in 1894. There are several theories to explain the action of telepathy. The first compares it to wireless telegraphy. On this hypothesis it is supposed that it is due to ethereal wave action:--Thought causes motion in the brain cells of the agent, the cells then impart motion to the surrounding ether in the form of waves which impinge on the brain cells of the percipient and give rise to a corresponding thought to that which started the ethereal wave motion. This theory offers great difficulties. An opponent to it points out that "A wireless message is transmitted by a succession of single ethereal wave impulses produced by the electric sparks at the starting station and received by the coherer at the receiving station, whereas a diagram to be transmitted would require a number of brain-waves produced simultaneously and arranged in the form of the diagram." Another mode of putting the matter recently advanced is that the agent does not transmit his thought, but that the percipient reads clairvoyantly what is in the agent's mind. There is also the spiritualistic theory. It is asserted that an external entity, or spirit, conveys the images or thoughts from one mind to another. Another theory is that telepathy takes place in the subconscious mind, and that the subconscious mind of the agent is in communication with the subconscious mind of the percipient by means of the universal mind underlying all things and of which individual subconscious minds form part. Not one of these theories has been accepted as proved by the Society for Psychical Research. In cases of spontaneous telepathy it is now generally believed that the appearance of a person at the time of death or at a crisis is not caused by an objective bodily ghost, but arises from a telepathic impact from the agent formulating itself into his image in the mind of the percipient. In the case of two persons seeing an apparition at the same time, this may be due to the two percipients receiving each, separately, a telepathic impression, or there may be only one percipient who telepathically impresses the hallucination on the mind of the second person. I will now proceed to relate some cases of telepathy which have come under my personal observation. My first experiment in the transmission of images of drawings and diagrams took place in the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research in May 1902. A private lady, Miss M. Telbin, acted as percipient, and I acted as agent. There were present at the time Mr. J. G. Piddington, Honorary Secretary of the Society, and Mr. Thomas, the then Acting Secretary. During the first experiment Miss Telbin, who was a stranger to me, sat with her back towards a large opaque screen. In front of her stood a small table upon which rested a crystal ball. She was asked to gaze at the crystal and to describe any vision that might appear to form itself therein. I may parenthetically remark that the object of crystal-gazing is to concentrate the mind and to withdraw it from outward influences. The vision seen in the crystal does not exist objectively, but only in the mind of the seer. On the other side of the screen, entirely hidden from the view of Miss Telbin, sat Mr. Piddington and myself. This gentleman proceeded to take from a box, which was behind the screen and on the floor between his and my chairs, various articles, and to hand them silently, one at a time, to me. I then concentrated my thoughts successively on each article. Miss Telbin gave an account of what she saw in the crystal, and Mr. Thomas, who sat in such a position that both Mr. Piddington and myself were hidden from his view, took notes of what occurred. The first article handed me was a _Windsor Magazine_, on the cover of which there was an engraving of Windsor Castle. I concentrated my thoughts on this engraving, and Miss Telbin then gave a description of the vision that presented itself to her mental view. She first observed that she could see trees on the left side of the picture, and cottages also on the left, and that there was water. These details were correct so far as they went, but the subsequent details that she gave were incorrect, and the experiment was abandoned as a failure. I then replaced the magazine in the box from which it had been taken, so that Miss Telbin had no opportunity of seeing the magazine during the experiment nor after. Other experiments were being tried when Miss Telbin spontaneously said that she had had a vision of Windsor Castle. This experiment may be regarded as a case of deferred telepathy. Another experiment with the same lady, in which simultaneous double telepathy occurred, is of better evidential value. Miss Telbin again sat with her back to the screen, and instead of the crystal a piece of paper and a pencil were placed on the table in front of her. This time Mr. Thomas and I sat behind the screen hidden from her view, and Mr. J. G. Piddington took notes. Mr. Thomas and I acted as simultaneous agents. We each held a small piece of cardboard with a diagram on it known to the agent viewing it, but not to the other agent. These diagrams belonged to the Society for Psychical Research and had not been seen by Mr. Thomas nor by me previous to the experiment. They were in a box which was at our feet behind the screen. We each took a diagram from the box, taking care that we did not see each other's diagram. We concentrated our minds on our respective diagrams, and Miss Telbin drew her impressions on the piece of paper in front of her. The following drawings show the results:-- [Illustration: MR. BAGGALLY'S DIAGRAM. MISS TELBIN'S DRAWING. MR. THOMAS'S DIAGRAM. MISS TELBIN'S DRAWING.] At the time that Miss Telbin got the impression of the diagram with three sections, she made the remark that it looked like three leaves. The correspondence between the drawings and the diagrams is very great, and difficult to account for by chance. The following points have to be considered. First, that Miss Telbin only made two drawings and not many from which two might have been selected in which there was a resemblance to the diagrams. Secondly, that Mr. Thomas's diagram was correctly reproduced although in a reversed position (the reversal of a figure sometimes happens in experiments in telepathy). Thirdly, that my diagram of three triangles, although not reproduced in the form of triangles, was drawn correctly as regards there being three sections, and that the relative position of the sections was given correctly. Fourthly, that Miss Telbin had not previously seen any of the diagrams, and therefore the chances against her being able to hit upon any diagram which was then being used were very great. Fifthly, that the chances against her being able to hit upon two diagrams simultaneously were even greater. The explanation that the result might have been due to collusion between the persons experimenting of course cannot be entertained, at least by myself, who was one of the experimenters. It was not possible for the percipient to see through the large screen which was behind her, and there were no mirrors in the room in which the small diagrams could have been reflected. No word was spoken to give her the slightest clue. These two successful telepathic experiments led to further ones at a distance between this lady and myself. It will be of interest to insert here an account of an experiment in telepathy, similar to the one I have just described, between two agents and one percipient, which Sir Oliver Lodge carried out in the year 1884. When the experiment was tried with Miss Telbin, Mr. Thomas, and myself I was not aware that Sir Oliver Lodge had already tried an experiment of a like nature. SIR OLIVER LODGE'S ACCOUNT "My own first actual experience of thought transference, or experimental telepathy, was obtained in the years 1883 and 1884 at Liverpool, when I was invited by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie of that city to join in an investigation which he was conducting with the aid of one or two persons who had turned out to be sensitive, from among the employees of the large drapery firm of George Henry Lee & Co. "A large number of these experiments had been conducted before I was asked to join, throughout the spring and autumn of 1883, but it is better for me to adhere strictly to my own experience and to relate only those experiments over which I had control. "Most of these experiments were confirmations of the kind of thing that had been observed by other experimenters. But one experiment which I tried was definitely novel, and, as it seems to me, important; since it clearly showed that when two agents are acting, each contributes to the effect, and that the result is due, not to one alone, but to both combined. The experiment is thus described by me in the columns of _Nature_, vol. xxx., page 145, for 12th June 1884:-- "_An Experiment in Thought Transference_ "Those of your readers who are interested in the subject of thought transference, now being investigated, may be glad to hear of a little experiment which I recently tried here. The series of experiments was originated and carried on in this city by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, and he has prevailed on me, on Dr. Herdman, and on one or two other more or less scientific witnesses, to be present on several occasions, critically to examine the conditions, and to impose any fresh ones that we thought desirable. I need not enter into particulars, but I will just say that the conditions under which apparent transference of thought occurs from one or more persons, steadfastly thinking, to another in the same room blindfold and wholly disconnected from the others, seem to me absolutely satisfactory, and such as to preclude the possibility of conscious collusion on the one hand or unconscious muscular indication on the other. "One evening last week--after two thinkers, or agents, had been several times successful in instilling the idea of some object or drawing, at which they were looking, into the mind of the blindfold person, or percipient--I brought into the room a double opaque sheet of thick paper with a square drawn on one side and a St. Andrew's cross or X on the other, and silently arranged it between the two agents so that each looked on one side without any notion of what was on the other. The percipient was not informed in any way that a novel modification was being made; and, as usual, there was no contact of any sort or kind--a clear space of several feet existing between each of the three people. I thought that by this variation I should decide whether one of the two agents was more active than the other; or, supposing them about equal, whether two ideas in two separate minds could be fused into one by the percipient. "In a very short time the percipient made the following remarks, every one else being silent: 'The thing won't keep still.' 'I seem to see things moving about.' 'First I see a thing up there, and then one down there.' 'I can't see either distinctly.' The object was then hidden, and the percipient was told to take off the bandage and to draw the impression in her mind on a sheet of paper. She drew a square, and then said, 'There was the other thing as well,' and drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, saying afterwards, 'I don't know what made me put it inside.' [Illustration: ORIGINALS.] [Illustration: REPRODUCTION.] "The experiment is no more conclusive as evidence than fifty others that I have seen at Mr. Guthrie's, but it seems to me somewhat interesting that two minds should produce a disconnected sort of impression on the mind of the percipient, quite different from the single impression which we had usually obtained when two agents were both looking at the same thing. Once, for instance (to take a nearly corresponding case under those conditions), when the object was a rude drawing of the main lines in a Union Jack, the figure was reproduced by the percipient as a whole without misgiving; except, indeed, that she expressed a doubt as to whether its middle horizontal line were present or not, and ultimately omitted it." [Illustration: ORIGINAL.] [Illustration: REPRODUCTION.] As I have said, the two successful telepathic experiments which I have described, and which took place in the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research, led to further experiments at a distance between Miss Telbin and myself. AT 7 P.M. I drew the following diagram [Illustration] AT 7 P.M. Miss TELBIN'S drawings [Illustration] AT 7:10 P.M. I fixed my attention on a flower [Illustration] AT 7:10 P.M. Miss TELBIN obtained several incorrect scrawls, but amongst them one under which she had written the words [Illustration] "First impression" AT 7:20 P.M. I looked at a pair of opera glasses, at which I gazed first lengthwise [Illustration] then sideways [Illustration] AT 7:20 P.M. Miss TELBIN'S drawings were-- First impression [Illustration] A series of crescents [Illustration] And this drawing [Illustration] Also four drawings [Illustration] It was arranged that we should sit on certain days in the week, and that at a fixed hour I should act as agent and transmit to her my thoughts, she being at the time in her residence in West Hampstead, and I in Kensington. The distance between these localities as the crow flies is four miles. The result of our first sitting, which took place on 20th May 1902, is shown on the preceding page. There was no possibility that the agent or the percipient could have copied the drawings, as the letters embodying them that we wrote to each other were posted on the evening of the same day and received by the first post the following morning, having crossed in the post. Telepathy was clearly indicated in this experiment. We continued trying experiments for some months after, but did not get such good results as at the beginning. On one occasion, however, we obtained a successful negative result. I was not feeling well, and did not fix my attention on any object. On the following morning Miss Telbin's letter said, "I could get nothing from you last night." It was, to say the least, curious that she should not have received an impression on the only night that I had not attempted to experiment. On another occasion, when Miss Telbin was in London and I in Folkestone, I arranged to transmit to her the impression of a diagram on a certain day at 8 p.m. It chanced that on that evening there was a performance at the theatre, at which my wife wished to be present. I therefore decided to telegraph to Miss Telbin that I would be unable to try the experiment that night, but after a good deal of hesitation I changed my mind, and thought that I would endeavour to transmit the impression of the diagram on my way to the theatre. The letter that I received from Miss Telbin the next day was to this effect:-- "I got a good deal of writing last night which was illegible, but amongst it I read the words 'going out' and 'rain.'" Now this may be a mere coincidence, but it was strange that the words "going out" should correctly represent the idea that was in my mind during a great part of the preceding day. I had much worried, hesitating whether I should telegraph or not. The result appears to indicate the transmission of my mental state. The word "rain" represented correctly the state of the weather at Folkestone, but, as it often rains in England, this was of no evidential value. In regard to spontaneous telepathy I may bring before the reader two cases which I personally investigated, the percipient in the first case being a gentleman who belonged to a circle which regularly met for the study of psychic phenomena, and of which circle I was a member. The percipient, Mr. John Polley, gave me an account of his vision as follows:-- "At a séance held within sound of Big Ben on 8th May 1901, there were present Mrs. E. V. M., Mr. Thomas Atwood, and myself. As Mr. Atwood resumed his seat after delivering an address (about 8.30 p.m.) I became aware of a vision which presented itself as being some five feet distant from me, and displayed part of the interior of a room, namely, that part where the stove stood. The fire in the stove was small and dull, and close beside it was an overturned chair. In front of the fire was something that looked like a fire-guard or clothes-horse, but this was not clear to me. Playing, or climbing over this article, was a child, who fell forward, and when it regained its feet I noticed that its dress was on fire. I made no reference to the matter at the time, as I had an impression that the vision might be connected with some occurrence in the family of Mrs. M., and I was averse to mentioning it for fear of awakening sad memories. Shortly afterwards the whole vision was repeated, and this time I had an uncontrollable impulse to speak. Upon describing what I had seen for the second time, I was much relieved to hear that the matter was not recognized as being connected in any way with the sitters. I may mention here that the child appeared to be about three years old, and, judging from the style of dress, I described it as a girl, although the vision would apply equally to a boy, as at that early age the short clothes worn by both sexes would be very similar. "Next Thursday morning, 9th May 1901, upon awakening, I described to my wife the events of the previous evening's séance. On the evening of the same day, namely, Thursday, 9th May, I was out with a friend, and upon my return home at 11.50 p.m., my sister, Mary Louisa Polley, who resided with me at the time, made the remark, 'I have a piece of bad news for you.' 'Well,' I replied, 'what is it? Let me know.' And she answered, 'Brother George's little son, Jacky, has been burned to death.' Like a flash I realized the connexion of the sad event with my vision of the previous night. I then asked my sister, 'How did you know this, and when?' She replied, 'Mr. Fred Sinnett told me when he came over to see us this evening.' (Signed) "JOHN POLLEY" I obtained from the other sitters at the séance the following statement:-- "At the séance held on the evening of Wednesday, 8th May 1901, at which were present Mrs. E. V. M., Mr. Thomas Atwood, and Mr. John Polley, we, the undersigned, testify that Mr. John Polley gave to us a description of a vision of the burning of a child which he saw at this séance. (Signed in full) "E. V. M. "THOMAS ATWOOD" I personally interviewed Mr. John Polley's wife and sister and received a written statement from each confirming Mr. Polley's account. A local paper containing an account of the inquest on the child states that the accident took place on Tuesday, 7th May, and the child was taken to a hospital immediately and there died. The father of the child wrote to me as follows:-- "DEAR SIR,--In reply to your inquiry respecting my late son, John Frederick, I beg to say that on Tuesday, 7th May, my wife went out to do some shopping, leaving my son, aged two years and two months, in a bedroom with another brother aged seven. Whilst the elder brother was getting some toys to play with, the deceased thrust some paper in the fire, pulled it out again, and set fire to his clothes. Some neighbours took him to the Children's Hospital, Paddington Green, where he passed away on Wednesday, 8th May, at 11.45 a.m. No intimation of this was given by myself or any member of our family to my brother, Mr. John Polley, until a friend of the family called at my address on Thursday, 9th May, between 1 and 2 p.m., when we informed him of the sad loss that we had sustained, and he told us that he intended calling on my brother that evening, and we asked him if he would communicate the news to my brother and sister who reside at Church Street, Stoke Newington. Of course, Sir, you know I am antagonistic to your views, but my brother has told me it is for the interests of science. If this is so, I take great pleasure in its furtherance.--Yours sincerely, (Signed) "FREDERICK GEORGE POLLEY" In the above case it appears to me that the vision of the burning child which Mr. John Polley saw arose out of a spontaneous telepathic impression, either from the mind of the father of the child to his brother's (Mr. John Polley's mind), or from the mind of one of the persons who was cognizant of the sad event. In regard to the second case of spontaneous telepathy to which I have referred, I cannot do better than to give the account of same as it appeared in the _Journal of the Society for Psychical Research_ of June 1912:-- "The following case of a reciprocal telepathic impression occurring to two persons at the same time has been communicated to us by Mr. W. W. Baggally. Both Miss Emma Steele and Mr. Claude Burgess, the lady and gentleman concerned in the case, are known personally to Mr. Baggally. "Miss Steele writes as follows:-- "'16 and 17 SILLWOOD PLACE, "'BRIGHTON, _13th March 1912_ "'Mr. Claude Burgess, who is an invalid, had been staying at my private hotel, at the above address, for some months. He left on 15th February to take up his residence at No. 10 Belgrave Place, Kemp Town, Brighton. In the interval between the date of his leaving and the night of the 5th inst., when I had the remarkable dream (if it can be called a dream) which I am about to relate, I had not seen Mr. Burgess, and nothing had occurred to cause me to think particularly about him. "'On the above night I retired to rest at my usual time. I awoke finding myself standing in the middle of my room and answering, "All right, I'm coming," to Mr. Burgess, who, I thought, called three times: "Miss Steele! Miss Steele! Miss Steele!" "'By the time I had put on my dressing-gown and lighted the gas I was fully awake. I then remembered Mr. Burgess was no longer in the house. I looked at the clock and noticed it was exactly 3 a.m. When I came downstairs next morning I told my cook my dream, and remarked I hoped nothing had happened to Mr. Burgess. During the next day, Wednesday, 6th March, in the afternoon, a man called while I was out and left a note from Mr. Burgess, which I enclose. I was much surprised by its contents. It struck me most forcibly getting it from him, as he is paralysed and has to write with great difficulty with his left hand. He very seldom writes now, so it must have made a great impression on him seeing me as he relates in his letter. "'EMMA M. STEELE' "The letter from Mr. Burgess to Miss Steele referred to above, which is now in our possession, was as follows:-- "'10 BELGRAVE PLACE, BRIGHTON "'MY DEAR EMMA,--I had a funny dream about you last night. I dreamed that you appeared at about 3 a.m. Just a glimpse of you. It's funny, isn't it?--Yours, "'CLAUDE BURGESS' "Miss Steele's cook made the following statement to Mr. Baggally:-- "'_13th March 1912_ "'On Wednesday morning, the 6th March last, Miss Emma Steele came down from her bedroom at 8.30. I saw she was looking pale. I asked her if she were not well. She replied that she had had a strange dream. She heard Mr. Burgess call her three times. She told me that she suddenly jumped up and put her dressing-gown on. By the time she had put on her dressing-gown and lit the gas she remembered Mr. Burgess had left the house. She said it was about 3 o'clock a.m. when she heard Mr. Burgess call. (Signed) "'SARAH POLLARD' "The following statement was written by Mr. Baggally on 13th March 1912, from Mr. Claude Burgess's dictation:-- "'On Tuesday night, 5th March 1912, I woke up at about 3 a.m. with a start. I saw Miss Emma Steele standing at the door of my bedroom. I had closed the door, but she appeared to have opened it. She was attired in her ordinary dress. "'I was much surprised. It was an absolutely distinct apparition. I had not been thinking of her the previous day, and I cannot tell why she appeared to me. "'The apparition lasted about five seconds. I was not at all frightened, and went to sleep immediately after. "'I was so struck by what I had seen that, next morning, the 6th March, at about 11 o'clock, I wrote a letter to Miss Steele which I handed to Mr. William Watkins, the proprietor of the establishment where I now reside, for him to send to Miss Steele. In this letter I told Miss Steele that I had dreamed that she had appeared to me on the previous night. (Signed) "'CLAUDE BURGESS' "In reply to Mr. Baggally's personal inquiries, Mr. Claude Burgess stated that it was the first time that he had had a hallucination of this kind, and he had not had one since. _Statement by Mr. William Watkins_ "'10 BELGRAVE PLACE, "'BRIGHTON, _13th March 1912_ "'Mr. Claude Burgess delivered to me a letter which he had written to Miss Steele, at about 11 a.m. on 6th March, which I handed to a man of the Church Army Labour Home to take to Miss Steele. The same morning at 8 a.m. Mr. Burgess told me he had dreamt of Miss Steele. "'WILLIAM WATKINS' _Statement by Mr. Baggally_ "'I called on the afternoon of the 13th March 1912 at the offices of the Church Army Labour Home, St. James Street, Brighton, and saw the Secretary, who showed me an entry in their books confirming the fact that, at the request of Mr. William Watkins, a man in their employ had delivered a letter to Miss Emma Steele of 16 Sillwood Place, Brighton, in the afternoon of 6th March 1912. "'I have interviewed all the persons connected with this case, and they confirmed their respective statements. "'W. W. BAGGALLY' "In reply to our further questions as to whether Mr. Burgess's experience was a dream or a waking hallucination, Mr. Baggally wrote to us on 1st April 1912:-- "'I had an interview with Mr. Burgess to-day, and the following is the information I received from him respecting the points you raise. He said to me:-- "'"(1) I used the word 'dream' in my letter to Miss Steele for want of a better word. (2) I woke up and then had the vision of Miss Steele. (3) I did not notice anything in the room at the time I had the vision. The room appeared dark. (4) Miss Steele appeared to me in a bright light, not self-luminous or phosphorescent, but just as she would have appeared in daylight. She appeared to me in the part of the room where the door was."' "Mrs. Baggally sends us the following statement enclosed in a letter dated 27th April 1912:-- "'I was in the drawing-room of Miss E. Steele's sister on the evening of Wednesday, 6th March, when Miss Emma Steele came in, saying in an excited manner, "Where is Mr. Baggally? He will be so interested in this." "'She held in her hand a letter from Mr. Burgess, and proceeded to tell me that the previous night she had heard, as she thought, Mr. Burgess fall on the floor of the bedroom over her own. She sprang out of bed. "'Finding herself in the middle of the room, she heard him call "Miss Steele!" three times. She then suddenly remembered that Mr. Burgess was no longer living in her hotel. She struck a light, looked at the clock, and found it was 3 o'clock. The following morning she felt so tired that when giving orders to her cook, the latter noticed her fatigue and commented upon it. She told the cook the reason was that she heard Mr. Burgess apparently calling her at 3 o'clock. "'Miss Steele proceeded to say that Mr. Burgess had, curiously enough, sent her that afternoon the note which at that moment she held in her hand, and in which he told her that he dreamt she had appeared to him at 3 a.m. the previous night. "'Miss Steele appeared much impressed and wondered if anything had happened to Mr. Burgess. I informed my husband that same night, on his return home, of what Miss E. Steele had told me. "'LAURA E. BAGGALLY' "'On my return home on the evening of 6th March my wife related to me what appears in her statement above. "'W. W. BAGGALLY'" The above case is evidentially a good one, inasmuch as both Miss Emma Steele and Mr. Burgess each reported on the morning of 6th March (the one to her cook and the other to his landlord) their experiences of the previous night before either of them was aware that a reciprocal telepathic impression had occurred between them. There appears to be evidence that telepathy can also occur between the mind of a human being and that of an animal. The reader will doubtless recollect Mr. H. Rider Haggard's case which appeared in the public press. This gentleman, on the night of Saturday, 9th July 1904, dreamed that a favourite dog of his eldest daughter was lying on its side among brushwood by water, and that it was trying to transmit in an undefined fashion the knowledge that it was dying. Next day the dog was missing. The body of the dog was subsequently found floating in the water near a bridge. An examination of the attendant circumstances pointed to the dog having met its death on the night of Mr. Rider Haggard's dream. As a result of this gentleman having made public this experience, he received from numerous correspondents accounts of telepathy between the minds of the writers of the letters and the minds of animals. These accounts were sent by Mr. Rider Haggard to the Secretary of the S.P.R., who handed them to me for investigation. A very good case was that communicated by Lady C. The following is the account of her experience:-- "On one hot Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1900 I went, after luncheon, to pay my customary visit to the stables to give sugar and carrots to the horses, among the number being a favourite mare named Kitty. She was a shy, nervous, well-bred animal, and there existed between us a great and unusual sympathy. I used to ride her every morning before breakfast (whatever the weather might be)--quiet, solitary rides on the cliffs which overhung the sea at Castle F., and it always seemed to me that Kitty enjoyed that hour in the freshness of the day as much as I did. On this particular afternoon I left the stables, and walked along to the garden, a distance of a quarter of a mile, and established myself under a tree with an interesting book, fully intending to remain there for a couple of hours. After about twenty minutes an uncomfortable sensation came between me and my reading, and at once I felt sure that there was something the matter with Kitty. I tried to put the feeling from me, and to go on with my book, but the impression grew stronger, and I felt compelled to hasten back to the stables. I went straight to Kitty's box and found her 'cast,' and in urgent need of help. The stablemen were in a distant part of the stables, whence I fetched them to have the mare up. Their surprise was great to find me in the stables for the second time that afternoon." I wrote to Lady C., and received the following reply:-- "_27th December 1904_ "Lady C. would be glad indeed to have the case investigated, as it always seemed to her to be of the greatest possible interest. At the same time, it may be difficult at this date to get a statement from the stablemen, one of whom is somewhere in England, but Lady C. will try to do so. She is absolutely convinced that no one entered the stable. Had the stablemen done so they would at once have helped the mare to get up, and anyone else would have given the alarm. It seems a direct case of telepathy from animal mind to human." Lady C. afterwards sent me a statement from a former coachman; it is this:-- "_31st December 1904_ "I was coachman at Castle F. at the time. Lady C. came to the stables after luncheon as usual on a Sunday afternoon with carrots and sugar for the horses. Kitty was then loose in her box and quite well. I then went to my room over the stables, the other stablemen being also upstairs, and to my surprise, after half an hour or three-quarters of an hour later, her ladyship, who had been to the garden, called me and the other stablemen to come and help Kitty up, as she was lying 'cast'[1] in her box. No one had gone into the stable in the interval. (Signed) "E. N." [Footnote 1: This word is used by veterinary surgeons to describe the state of a horse that has fallen down in its box in a stable and cannot rise.] Telepathy may possibly exist between the mind of an animal and that of a human being and _vice versa_, but a sufficient number of cases have not been collected to establish this as a fact. PART II FRAUDULENT TELEPATHY I now come to another class of so-called thought transference--that exhibited at public entertainments in which genuine telepathy plays no part. On the 25th November 1912 Miss Isabel Newton, the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, and I attended the demonstration given by Yoga [_sic_] Rama of his alleged occult powers at the "Little Theatre," Adelphi. Accounts had appeared in the public press of a previous private performance given by this so-called Abyssinian Mystic, at which Sir John Simon, the Solicitor-General, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Anthony Hope had assisted, and it was stated that Yoga Rama had been able to read the thoughts of the Solicitor-General by supernormal means. In order to demonstrate, in a public manner, the alleged occult power of this "psychic," a stage performance was given at the "Little Theatre" on the afternoon of the above-mentioned date. A large audience was present, and their expectations of witnessing manifestations of an occult nature were raised by the contents of the programme, wherein it appeared that Yoga Rama was to give a demonstration of "The power of mind over mind" by means of-- "1. Clairaudience. "2. The possibility of the interpretation of vibrations without the aid of sound. "3. Psychometry by sense of touch. "4. Telepathy. The disclosure of names thought of by persons in the audience. "5. Disclosure of personalities by subconscious means. "6. Revelations by a circumstantial chain of mind pictures. "7. Various demonstrations of ideas silently conveyed to the spectator by suggestion. "8. Descriptions of cities and places by mind pictures. "9. Messages." Before Yoga Rama made his appearance a gentleman (a Mr. Fletcher) delivered a short speech from the stage. He stated that the "Yoga" had acquired his occult powers by contemplation after many years' study. He went on to say that in the Eastern World the occult powers of the mind had been more studied than in the Western World, but at the present day the Western World looked upon these powers with much less prejudice than formerly. After Mr. Fletcher had retired, Yoga Rama made his appearance from between the centre of two curtains which hung at the back of the stage. He was attired in a long loose black gown and wore a large crimson turban. He advanced to the front of the stage and made a speech which had a smattering of a theosophical discourse. He described four kinds of Yogi. The first kind, he said, was frequently met in India. These Yogi worked on the physical plane and produced effects resembling the feats of a conjurer. The second kind worked in the mental plane (to this class he implied that he belonged). The third dealt with the spiritual problems of life. The fourth was absorbed in meditation. He continued his speech by saying that he required the sympathy of the persons with whom he would experiment. If they mentally opposed him he could do nothing, but if their minds were sympathetic and not antagonistic he would succeed. The speeches of Mr. Fletcher and of Yoga Rama still further raised the expectations of the audience that they were about to witness that afternoon a demonstration of the power of mind over mind by supernormal means. Yoga Rama, after the conclusion of his speech, called for thirty persons (ladies and gentlemen) to come upon the stage and form a Committee. A gentleman and I first answered the call. We were soon followed by a rush of ladies and gentlemen who rather inconveniently filled the stage, but this did not interfere with the performance, as the majority of the ladies and gentlemen kept at the back of the stage while Yoga Rama carried out his experiments with a limited number of the members of the Committee. In order to be more at his ease, Yoga Rama removed his turban. I placed it under a table which stood on the stage. I then had a good look at him. I found he was a black man with short crisp curly hair. From his appearance and the fluency with which he speaks English, I came to the conclusion that he is not an Abyssinian, but an American or West Indian negro. Amongst the members of the Committee were Mr. Zancig and Mr. William Marriott. Both of these gentlemen I have had the pleasure of knowing for some years. They, together with Mr. Charles Guttwoch (a friend of Mr. Marriott), three or four other gentlemen, and myself, were the only members of the Committee who actively endeavoured to ascertain whether Yoga Rama's experiments depended for their success on trickery or on other causes. The other members of the Committee remained passive spectators. As regards the lady members with whom Yoga Rama tried a few experiments, they declared themselves, at the conclusion of the performance, to be believers in his alleged supernormal claims. Before the experiments commenced, Yoga Rama asked that some one should blindfold him with some articles which lay on a small table in the centre of the stage. These consisted of two pieces of folded paper just large enough to cover the eyebrows and eyes, a piece of porous plaster perforated with holes, a thin white cotton handkerchief, two gloves, and a long red silk scarf. Mr. Marriott offered to blindfold him. I stood close to him while this was being done. Mr. Marriott placed the pieces of paper first on Yoga Rama's eyes, then the porous plaster, then the cotton handkerchief, after this the two gloves, and finally the red scarf which he wound several times round his head. The tip of Yoga Rama's nose could be seen under the plaster, the white cotton handkerchief, and the scarf. Yoga Rama, who remained standing, then requested some one to sit on a chair in front of him, to think of a name, then to hold his left hand (_i.e._ the sitter's left hand) in front of the sitter's face, and to trace on the palm of the left hand with the forefinger of the right the first letter of the name thought of. The sitter was then asked to give taps on his left hand or make movements in the air with his right hand corresponding to the number of letters of which the name thought of consisted. When Yoga Rama suggested (as he subsequently did) that the name of a flower or of a city should be thought of, he requested that the same procedure of tracing the first letter of the name and giving a number of taps or making movements with the right hand corresponding to the number of letters should be followed, but when he suggested that a play of Shakespeare should be thought of he only asked that the first one or two letters of the title should be traced on the palm of the left hand of the sitter with the forefinger of the other hand. He did not then ask that taps or movements of the right hand should be given or made. About an hour and a half of the first part of the performance was taken up by experiments of the above nature. These were varied only by one experiment of telling the title of a hymn which a lady thought of, one of reading the thoughts of a young lady, and one experiment with playing cards. Yoga Rama then made a long speech about happiness depending on our own selves and our being what we willed ourselves to be. He asserted that he had overcome in himself the passion of anger. He laboured these points so much and repeated himself so often that it became manifest he was making the speech solely with the object of filling up the time. The patience of the Acting Committee became exhausted, and one of the members advanced to the front of the stage, interrupted Yoga Rama, and, appealing to the audience, said he had no doubt but that he had their support when he asserted that they had come to the theatre not to hear speeches but to witness experiments. Yoga Rama brought his speech abruptly to a close after saying he would now demonstrate the power he had acquired of controlling the functions of his body and of rendering it insensible to pain. To show the control over his body he asked two members of the Committee to stand by his side and to look at their watches and note the length of time he was able to cease from breathing. To show his insensibility to pain he said he would stand barefooted on a board studded with long nails, and also stand on broken glass. I have given an account of the nature of the performance with which Yoga Rama favoured us. I will now proceed to describe the experiments more in detail and to comment upon them. Mr. Marriott was the first person to sit on the chair in front of Yoga Rama. He was told to hold his left hand in front of his face, to trace the first letter of the name thought of on the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of the right, and give the taps or make the movements in the air with his right hand in the manner already described. Mr. Marriott, instead of holding his left hand up, held his right hand. Yoga Rama immediately said, "Not your right hand but your left." This was a suspicious circumstance, as it indicated that Yoga Rama could see notwithstanding he was blindfolded. Now conjurers know that blindfolding in the manner above described is not a precaution against seeing, as at the time of blindfolding what the conjurer does is to shut his eyes tightly and bring his eyebrows well down. When the blindfolding is finished, the conjurer opens his eyes and draws his eyebrows up; the bandages will then be displaced and drawn up from their original position and he will be able to see under the bandages through the spaces between the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. This, in the joint opinion of Mr. Zancig, Mr. Marriott, and myself, is what Yoga Rama did, and our opinion was confirmed when we examined the bandages at the time they were removed from the performer's eyes, as will be described later. Yoga Rama's method of telling the name thought of is to watch the movement of the finger of the sitter's right hand while he traces the first letter of the name on the palm of the left. This indicates to him the first letter of the name, then he counts the number of taps or movements given by the sitter's right hand. Thus, if the first letter were W and the number of taps or movements seven, the name in all likelihood would be William, or, if the first letter were W and the number of taps or movements six, the name would probably be Walter. Ordinary Christian names are limited in number, and Yoga Rama took care to know beforehand whether the sitter were thinking of a female name or of a male name. It was therefore not a difficult matter for him to hit upon the name. Moreover, when he was in doubt, as was often the case, he not only asked that the first letter should be traced, but the second and the third and the fourth, etc. Before hazarding a guess Yoga Rama often asked whether the second or third or fourth, etc., letter of the name were a letter that he mentioned. Thus, if he were not quite sure that W had been traced, but he had noticed that seven taps or movements had been given, he would say is not the fourth letter of the name L. If the sitter answered in the affirmative, he would be pretty sure that William was the name, but if the sitter's answer were a negative one, Yoga Rama asked that the letters should be traced again and the taps, etc., repeated. Yoga Rama resorted to the above-described method when he asked the sitter to think of the name of a flower or of a city, but he only tried one or two experiments with the names of flowers or cities, the reason being, obviously, that as the names of flowers or cities are not so limited in number as Christian names, he fought shy of them. The reason he gave for not being able to guess readily the name of a flower was, he said, that he was not a botanist. As regards the titles of Shakespeare's plays he only asked that one or two of the first letters of the title should be traced on the left hand, and did not require any taps or movements of the right hand. Any person acquainted with Shakespeare's plays and knowing the first one or two letters of the title could have guessed with equal facility which play was in the mind of the sitter. After getting the name of the play, Yoga Rama asked the sitter to think of a personage in that play. He only requested that this should be done once or twice, and was not successful in getting the name of the personage at the first guess, but only after making two or three guesses. In the experiment of telling the title of a hymn which a lady had in her mind, Yoga Rama resorted to the same method of asking her to trace the first letter of the title of the hymn on the palm of her left hand. She traced the letter L, and he hazarded the guess that it was "Lead, kindly light," which proved to be correct. Apparently the most successful experiments were one carried out with a young lady and one with myself. Yoga Rama asked the young lady to think of something. He then, without asking her to trace any letter or make movements with her right hand, told her that she wished to get married. She acknowledged that that was the thought in her mind. This caused a good deal of amusement amongst the audience. The young lady left the stage immediately after the experiment. This step on her part gave rise in the minds of some of the members of the Committee that she was an accomplice, and that, as the experiment had been carried out, she was no longer required by Yoga Rama. These members of the Committee may be doing an injustice to the young lady, but it was unfortunate she should have left the stage at that moment. As regards the experiment with myself, I stood in front of Yoga Rama and did not sit down, neither did I place my left hand in front of my face as other experimenters had done, but close against my body when tracing the letters of my second name, which was the one I had in my mind. My object in standing up was to have my hands out of the line of his vision. I took care that the movement of the forefinger of my right hand when tracing the letters should not be seen by him. Yoga Rama repeatedly asked me to trace and retrace all the letters of the name. He then gave the name correctly. Although this experiment appeared to indicate that the performer possessed telepathic powers, it must be borne in mind that he might have known who I was, as he had been practising his so-called occult powers for some time in London under the name of Professor Pickens before he assumed that of Yoga Rama. It was not necessary that he should see my face in order to know with whom he was experimenting. It was observed that he took a very careful stock of the dresses of the Acting Committee before he was blindfolded. It was only necessary, therefore, that he should see the lower part of the dress for him to know which member of the Committee stood in front of him. As one member after the other experimented with him he described their dress. He asserted that he was able to do this by a sort of telepathic vision. The experiment with the playing cards was a simple conjuring trick. Yoga Rama produced a pack of cards and asked the Committee to see that it was unopened. I opened the pack, shuffled the cards, and handed them to Mr. Marriott, who had been asked by the Professor to retire to a corner of the stage and choose a card which he was to show to two members of the Committee. Mr. Guttwoch and I accompanied Mr. Marriott to the corner of the stage and saw which card Mr. Marriott had chosen. Mr. Marriott then shuffled the pack again and handed it to Yoga Rama, who put it in his pocket. Yoga Rama then asked Mr. Marriott what card he had chosen. Mr. Marriott informed him. He then wrote something on a piece of paper which he folded and handed to one of the members of the Committee to hold. He then drew from his pocket another pack of cards similar in appearance to the original pack (that it was not the original pack was evidenced by the fact that the bottom card of the pack which Yoga Rama drew from his pocket was not the same as the bottom card of the original pack), but which had the cards arranged in an order known to Yoga Rama. He proceeded to pass the cards one after the other before Mr. Marriott's eyes, asking him to tell him when he came to the card he had chosen. When Yoga Rama came to the card, Mr. Marriott told him. Yoga Rama then said, "What is the card in front of the one you chose and the one behind it?" He was informed which they were. He then asked that the piece of paper should be opened, and it was found that the names of the cards had been written by him on the piece of paper. What occult power Yoga Rama intended to demonstrate by this simple conjuring trick I fail to see. It could not have been telepathy, as the two cards (the names of which Yoga Rama had written) had not been chosen nor thought of by Mr. Marriott. A few words will suffice to describe the experiments which Yoga Rama carried out to show (1) the control he had acquired over the functions of his body, and (2) his insensibility to pain. As has already been stated, he asked two members of the Committee to stand by him and note by their watches the length of time that he was able to cease breathing. He retained his breath for fifty seconds. A member of the Committee at the back of the stage called out, when the length of time was announced, "That is nothing. I can stop breathing for a full minute." This exclamation appeared to disconcert Yoga Rama a good deal. The standing barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some bottles on a piece of felt. He pounded away on the glass with a hammer till he had reduced the greater part to nearly a powder. He carefully pushed the larger pieces of glass on one side and stood on the powdered portion. I will now proceed to state the reasons which lead me to the conclusion that Yoga Rama was able to see, although apparently blindfolded. 1. The bandages were removed from his eyes by Mr. Marriott, who had blindfolded him at the commencement of the performance. While this was being done I had my face about two feet away from Yoga Rama's face and I carefully noted the position of each article as it was being removed. The lower edge of the porous plaster was above the tip of the performer's nose, and the edge of the white handkerchief above the edge of the plaster, and above the edge of the handkerchief was the edge of the crimson scarf. The edges of the handkerchief and scarf were sufficiently high up, so that, had the blindfolding depended only on these, he could have seen under them. The gloves which had been placed on the handkerchief need not be taken into account, as the folded pieces of paper on his eyes prevented them from pressing into the sockets of Yoga Rama's eyes, and he, by merely closing the eyes and bringing the eyebrows well down when he was being blindfolded and then opening his eyes and lifting the eyebrows well up, could displace the gloves from their original position and cause them to rise, as a conjurer well knows; therefore the blindfolding really depended on the position of the porous plaster. Now when Mr. Marriott placed the plaster over the pieces of paper he took care that the lower edges of both pieces should be on one of the lines of holes which existed in the plaster as shown in the accompanying engraving (which is taken from a photograph). He also took care that the lower edge of the plaster should stick against Yoga Rama's cheeks. On examining the plaster just before it was removed we found that the lower edge no longer stuck against the performer's cheeks. There were hollow spaces between the bridge of his nose and his cheeks through which he could have seen with a downward glance. The point now arises whether he used both his eyes or only one. I noticed that Yoga Rama always kept the right side of his face towards the sitters when trying the experiments. If the reader will look at the engraving, which shows the exact position of the folded pieces of paper at the time of the removal of the plaster from Yoga Rama's face, he will see that the piece of paper which covered his right eye is no longer on the same line of holes as the left piece, but is higher up, and, what is most suspicious, he will note some pieces of tissue paper which were stuck on the plaster by Yoga Rama and were under the pieces of folded paper, which prevented these from adhering to the plaster; thus by an upper movement of the eyebrows Yoga Rama succeeded in raising the folded piece of paper which covered his right eye, and with this eye he glanced under the plaster and watched the movements of the sitter's hands, etc. 2. As I have stated above, Yoga Rama always kept the right side of his head towards the person with whom he was experimenting. He tried one experiment with a gentleman who sat in the second row of the stalls. He then turned his body round so that the right side of his face was in the same position relatively to this gentleman as it had been to the sitters on the stage. Moreover, the lights in the body of the theatre were not alight when Yoga Rama was trying his alleged thought-readings with the members of the Committee on the stage, but when he experimented with the gentleman in the stalls, one of the electric chandeliers in the body of the theatre, not far from the gentleman, was immediately lit, thus enabling Yoga Rama to watch the movements of the gentleman's right hand when tracing the letters of the name he had chosen on the palm of his left hand, and giving the taps corresponding to the number of the letters. 3. At the conclusion of the performance, after the bulk of the audience had left, some persons remained in the foyer of the theatre, and a discussion arose, during which some of the persons present asserted that Yoga Rama had brought about his results by supernormal means. Mr. Marriott, Mr. Guttwoch, and I denied this. At that moment Yoga Rama came into the foyer, and he was accused by us of having been able to see. He asserted that he had not seen, and to prove it offered to try some experiments while a handkerchief was held tightly against his eyes. Mr. Guttwoch held a handkerchief against his eyes. As Yoga Rama was not now able to see, he resorted to a different method from the one he used on the stage. He held the wrist of the left hand of a lady with the thumb and three fingers of his right hand, while his forefinger rested against the back of the lady's hand. He then asked her to trace the letters of the name thought of with the forefinger of her right hand on the palm of her left hand, which was being held by him. He was able to tell the name, but only after repeated tracing of the letters by the lady. Yoga Rama not being able to be guided by sight as in his stage performances, now guided himself by the sense of touch. Although I have never before carried out an experiment of this nature myself, when Miss Newton and I returned to the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research I tried the experiment with her. I closed my eyes and held her wrist, and was able to feel the letter which she traced on the palm of her hand. Manifestly this is a difficult trick to perform, and requires great practice. I noticed that Yoga Rama chose the hand of a lady in preference to that of a gentleman, obviously because a lady's hand is thinner than that of a man, and the motion of her finger would be more easily felt. What convinced me more than any of the above reasons that Yoga Rama was able to see during his performance is the following fact. I placed the sticking plaster over my eyes after it had been taken from Yoga Rama's eyes and, to my surprise, I found I could perfectly well see through it. The numerous small holes with which it was perforated allowed me to do this. The audience at the "Little Theatre" had had their expectations raised that they were to witness manifestations of the occult powers of the mind through the mediumship of an Abyssinian Yogi, instead of which they witnessed an ordinary conjuring entertainment by a man who previously to assuming the name of "Yoga [_sic_] Rama" was known as Professor A. D. Pickens of Conduit Street, London. Besides the method used by Yoga Rama for producing his so-called thought transference, there are others resorted to by public entertainers. The one most in use is by means of a verbal code. The letters of the alphabet are substituted and a word can be conveyed by the agent asking a series of questions, each question beginning with a substituted letter. The percipient has to remember what letters the substituted ones represent; he takes note of the first letter only of each question, puts them together in his mind, and thus gets the word that it is the intention of the agent to convey. I have made a table (shown opposite) which shows one of these systems. If the name "Alfred" is to be conveyed, it can be done by the following questions:-- Here is a name = A Can you see it? = L Endeavour to do so = F Mind what you are doing = R Go on = D The letter E is understood. TABLE +-----------------------------------++------------------------------+ | SUBSTITUTED LETTERS TABLE || NUMBERS TABLE | +--------+----------+---------------++------------------------------+ | A is H | J is L | S is N || No. 1 is Say | | B " T | K " Pray | T " P || " 2 " Be | | C " S | L " C | V " Look || " 3 " Can | | D " G | M " O | W " R || " 4 " Do | | E " F | N " D | X " See this || " 5 " Will | | F " E | O " V | Y " Q || " 6 " What | | G " A | P " J | Z " Hurry || " 7 " Please | | H " I | Q " W | || " 8 " Are | | I " B | R " M | || " 9 " Now | | | | || " 10 " Tell | +========+==========+===============++==============================+ | SETS | +----------------+---------------------+-------------+--------------+ | SET A | SET B | SET C | SET D | +----------------+---------------------+-------------+--------------+ | _What is | _What article | _What is it | _What | | this?_ | is this?_ | made of?_ | colour?_ | | | | | | | No. 1. Watch | No. 1. Handkerchief | No. 1. Gold | No. 1. White | | " 2. Bracelet | " 2. Necktie | " 2. Silver | " 2. Black | | " 3. Guard | " 3. Bag | " 3. Copper | " 3. Blue | | " 4. Chain | " 4. Glove | " 4. Lead | " 4. Brown | | " 5. Breastpin | " 5. Purse | " 5. Zinc | " 5. Red | | " 6. Necklace | " 6. Basket | " 6. Wood | " 6. Green | | " 7. Ring | " 7. Book | " 7. Brass | " 7. Yellow | | " 8. Rosary | " 8. Head-dress | " 8. Paper | " 8. Grey | | " 9. Cross | " 9. Fan | " 9. Silk | " 9. Purple | | " 10. Charm | " 10. Key | " 10. Glass | " 10. Violet | +----------------+---------------------+-------------+--------------+ The transmission of the nature of an article is by dividing articles that would be likely to be brought to a public entertainment into sets of ten, each set being indicated by a different question. These sets have to be learned by heart by the agent and the percipient. I give in the table four sets to illustrate my meaning. After asking the question which conveys the set to which the article belongs, a second question is asked, beginning with the word corresponding to the number on the number table. This will indicate what number in the set the article corresponds to. As an example: when the question "What is this?" is asked, it means that the article corresponds to SET A. If the second question begins with "Do," such as "Do you know?", this question on referring to the number table would mean No. 4; therefore the article would be a chain. Now, if the question "What is it made of?" is asked, it would refer to SET C, and if this question is followed by "Can you tell me?", on referring to the number table it will be found to correspond to No. 3; therefore the article would be a chain made of copper. When an article is not in any one of the sets the substituted letter code is used. Of course public entertainers learn by heart a number of sets, not only four. For silent thought transference occasionally electrical contrivances are resorted to. These are placed in different parts of the hall, and when being pressed by the foot or hand of the agent will convey a message to a certain part of the stage upon which the percipient (who may be blindfolded) rests his foot. There is another silent method which can be worked by a confederate who is placed behind a curtain close to the chair on the stage upon which the blindfolded percipient sits. The confederate watches the performer who stands amongst the audience and reads through a spyglass what he is writing on his tablet when putting down what members of the audience wish to be done. The confederate then communicates the contents of the writing to the percipient on the stage by whispering or by an electrical apparatus. The position of the performer or agent while he is writing in a clear hand on his tablets with his back to the stage easily enables a confederate to read the writing. Then there is the silent method of a French conjurer, some of whose performances I have witnessed, which consists of suggesting or "forcing" the spectators to do certain things, each action having a corresponding number which he conveys to his lady assistant, who is blindfolded, by touching her foot with his after she has come down from the stage and stands by his side amongst the audience. The "time-coding" method consists of silently counting by the agent and percipient at the same rate, starting from a preconcerted signal and ending at another preconcerted signal. The performer amongst the audience has in his hand a piece of paper on which is written the number that he wishes to silently convey to the other blindfolded performer on the stage. At the moment that he bends his head to look at the number he begins silently counting at a certain rate; a confederate behind the scenes begins counting at the same rate from the moment that the performer bends his head. When the performer lifts his head he ceases counting, so does the confederate. Each number written on the paper is thus conveyed, and the confederate communicates the total to the blindfolded performer by means of an electrical apparatus or otherwise. I have attended several performances in public halls in London at which thought transference--so-called--was carried out by the above trick methods. Sir Oliver Lodge was present with me at one of the performances at which the time-coding method was used. He has sent me the following note:-- "I was with Mr. Baggally on one of these occasions, and took note of the fact that he could often guess what was being transmitted by the performers quite as well as they could themselves. We sat in a box looking at them, and he often told me before they had spoken what they were going to say (or words to that effect). "I perceived even without his assistance that the performance, which was stimulated by the success of the Zancigs, was an exceedingly inferior imitation of what they had achieved, and was manifestly done by a code of some kind. "O. J. L." Some of the methods resorted to by public entertainers are so ingenious that the spectator is led to believe that genuine thought transference has taken place. The following correspondence, which appeared in the spiritualistic weekly paper called _Light_, illustrates a case in point. In the number of _Light_ of the 25th October 1902 there appeared this letter headed "Thought Transference":-- "SIR,--A few years ago Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin gave the following entertainment in almost every large town in the three kingdoms. The public were invited to write any question or questions they desired to have answered on a piece of paper, to place it in their pockets, and keep it there without communicating its contents to anyone, and then when they went to the hall their names were called out and their question answered without the papers leaving their possession. About fifty such inquiries were answered each evening without a single failure by Mrs. Baldwin, who sat blindfolded with her back to the audience. From my experience and that of my friends, collusion was impossible, and the only way of accounting for the performance was by thought transference or telepathy between Mrs. Baldwin and those of the audience with whom she was in mental sympathy. (Signed) "C. A. M." Commenting on this letter, I wrote to _Light_, and my communication appeared the following week. It was to this effect:-- "Under the heading of 'Thought Transference,' your correspondent, C. A. M., gives an account of some entertainments by Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, at which he says" (I here quoted from C. A. M.'s letter, and then continued as follows):--"I never was present at entertainments given by Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, and therefore cannot express an opinion as to the _modus operandi_ in their particular case, but I would point out that their entertainments bear a close resemblance to those given by conjurers. The explanation of the mystery in a conjurer's case is as follows:--The conjurer asks members of the audience to write their questions secretly, to sign their names at the bottom of the question, and then to fold the pieces of paper on which the questions are written and place them in their pockets. To facilitate the writing he hands pencils round and tablets upon which to rest the pieces of paper during the writing of the questions, or the members of the audience, if they so wish, can retire into an adjoining room and write their questions on a table. The tablets and pencils are then collected by an assistant who is a confederate, who then retires from the hall to the room where the table is. The tablets and table have false surfaces of leather or other material, which, on being removed by the confederate, disclose a layer of carbon paper resting on another of white paper upon which the questions have been recorded unknown to the inquirers. The confederate then proceeds to read the questions with their respective attached signatures, and to communicate them to the blindfolded medium by an electrical apparatus upon which the medium's foot rests, or by other mechanical means." I signed my letter W. W. B. A fortnight after, the following letter appeared in _Light_:-- "SIR,--With reference to the communication by W. W. B. referring to the supposed thought transference, and mentioned by another correspondent, C. A. M., in connection with the entertainments of Professor Baldwin (an American conjurer and brother mason), whom I met in Cape Town on two separate occasions, permit me to state that (1) if it is the same Baldwin, he is one of the cleverest illusionists in his special line of trick thought transference, and W. W. B. is quite right. (2) I know that Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin did most of their experiments by trick, because, being one of the chosen committee to test the so-called thought reading, I fixed it absolutely as trickery on the lines indicated by W. W. B. (Signed) "BERKS HUTCHINSON" I was gratified to read this letter and to find that my conjecture was correct that the Baldwin performance was a mere exhibition of conjuring. PART III THE ZANCIGS Some years ago there appeared at the Alhambra Theatre, London, two entertainers--Mr. and Mrs. Zancig--whose performances were of so puzzling a nature that to many who had witnessed them the only explanation of the results obtained appeared to be that genuine telepathy was at play. The _Daily Mail_ newspaper arranged that Mr. and Mrs. Zancig should be subjected to a series of severe tests at its office, and on the 30th November 1906 these were carried out. On the 1st December the _Daily Mail_ published a full account of these experiments. The publication of this and of other accounts by persons who had witnessed the remarkable performances of the Zancigs led to a heated controversy between the correspondents of the _Daily Mail_ and the _Daily Chronicle_. Those of the first paper mostly asserted that the performance was an exhibition of true telepathy, while those of the second paper declared that codes--visual and verbal--would account for the phenomena. Previously to the experiment carried out by the _Daily Mail_ I had obtained a letter of introduction to the Zancigs from a friend of mine who had had private tests with them, but as it was necessary to have the permission of the manager of the Alhambra before an interview with the Zancigs could be arranged, I called at the offices of that theatre, and saw Mr. Scott, the manager. I informed him that I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, which body I told him took the deepest interest in telepathy. I handed him a letter that I had written to Mr. Zancig, and on the 29th November 1906 I received the following communication from the last-named gentleman:-- "DEAR SIR,--I received a letter from Miss H. A. Dallas, telling me that you would like to meet us. Now, my dear sir, we would be pleased to make your acquaintance, and have you call for a visit, but if it is for any private show and to be tried and judged if our work is, as we represent, 'two minds with but a single thought,' I will have to say No. We have done nothing since we arrived in London but have callers to test and try us every day, from three to four ladies and gentlemen. My wife and I agreed to all tests they put to us, and all was quite satisfactory. Personally I do not care, but it has been quite a strain on my wife. Should you care to witness our show, you would be able to see us at ten p.m. on the Alhambra stage, but if you care to call and see us, and have a little talk, we both would be pleased to meet you.--Trusting that I am understood, I remain, yours sincerely, (Signed) "JULIUS ZANCIG" Although the contents of the above letter were of a discouraging nature, I determined to strike the iron while it was hot; therefore, on the evening of the same day I called, accompanied by my wife, at the flat where the Zancigs resided. They were at the time partaking of their evening meal. We apologized for our intrusion, but by the kind way that they received us we were soon put at our ease. I informed Mr. Zancig that I was much interested in telepathy, and that I had personally carried out experiments in this branch of psychical research, and that I was assured of the truth of its existence through the successes that I had obtained. Mr. and Mrs. Zancig impressed my wife and myself most favourably by their unaffected and simple manner. After a conversation which lasted about ten minutes, Mr. Zancig very kindly spontaneously offered to try some experiments. I will now describe these. Madame Zancig went to the other end of the room farthest away from where Mr. Zancig, my wife, and I sat. She faced the wall with her back to us; Mr. Zancig then wrote with a chalk a line of figures on a slate which he held in his left hand, and called out the word "Ready." Madame Zancig immediately named the figures correctly and in their proper order. The same kind of experiment was tried successfully three times. The results might have been due to telepathy, but I was not satisfied, as it could have been possible that the figures were prearranged, or that Madame Zancig could tell by the sound of the chalk what figures were being written. I also had in my mind the fact that there is a method of communicating figures by time-coding. Mr. Zancig then asked me to write a double line of figures. I handed the slate to him, and after he had called out "Ready" Madame Zancig proceeded to cast them up correctly. As Madame Zancig named all my figures aloud as she was summing them up, this experiment was of a more complicated nature than the previous ones; nevertheless, I was not entirely satisfied, as time-coding in putting down the resultant figures by Mr. Zancig, and the hearing of the sound of the chalk by Madame Zancig when I was writing my own figures, might have accounted for the favourable result. To prevent the possibility of communicating by an electrical or other apparatus concealed under the carpet, I requested Mr. Zancig to raise his feet from the floor. He immediately complied by sitting on the table, where he remained to the last experiment. Madame Zancig then retired into an adjoining bedroom with a slate in her hand; the door was closed, but not entirely. My wife wrote down two lines of figures, the slate was handed by her to Mr. Zancig, who called out "Ready," and he then proceeded without speaking to add them up. Madame Zancig then came into the room with the correct result written by herself on her slate. This was a more crucial test than the last, but still, although visual-coding was excluded, sound-coding while Mr. Zancig was writing the resultant sum was not entirely so. Then followed the experiment of transmitting a selected line in a book. Mr. Zancig handed me a book and asked me to open it at any page and to point out a line. After I had done so I handed the book to him. He called out "Ready." Then his wife opened a duplicate book at the proper page, and read the line which I had selected. Doubtless the words of the line were not communicated telepathically or otherwise by Mr. Zancig, but only the number of the page and the number of the line counting from the top of the page. Nevertheless, it was difficult to discover by what method this was done, as Mr. Zancig simply called out "Ready." There did not appear to be time for the numbers of the page and line to be transmitted by time-coding. The reader will observe that as the experiments proceeded they appeared to present increasing evidence that true telepathy was at work. The following and last experiment that I tried on this occasion was the most crucial. I requested Mr. Zancig to go out with me on to the landing outside the door of the flat. I did not previously inform Madame Zancig nor Mr. Zancig of the nature of the test that I was about to put. Madame Zancig remained in the room with my wife. The door was closed, but not completely. When we were on the landing I suddenly drew my cheque-book out of my pocket, tore out a cheque, and handed it to Mr. Zancig, requesting him to transmit the number. Mr. Zancig observed to me in a whisper that the noise of the traffic in the street was very disturbing. This was true, as the hall door to the street was open. He then remained silent while he looked at the cheque. My wife then came out on to the landing, and handed me a slate upon which Madame Zancig had during the experiment written the words, "In the year 1875." Mr. Zancig then said aloud, "This is not what we want; it is the number." My wife returned into the room with the slate, and the door was closed, but not completely. It was impossible, however, for Madame Zancig to see her husband. The suspicion arose in my mind that the number on the cheque might have been communicated to Madame Zancig by the words that Mr. Zancig had spoken aloud. I therefore took the cheque that he had in his hand and substituted another one with a different number that I tore from the bottom of my cheque-book. Mr. Zancig remained absolutely silent during the whole time that this second experiment lasted. My wife again came out of the room with the slate, upon which Madame Zancig had written quite correctly, in their proper order, four of the five numbers of the second cheque, with the exception of the last figure, which was wanting, but just as we were returning to the room Madame Zancig said, "There was another figure; it was four"--which was correct. This impressed me as a good test, with regard to the three last numbers of this cheque, which were different from the corresponding ones of the first cheque. Madame Zancig could not see her husband, and he remained absolutely silent while the experiment was being carried out. I insert here a note by Sir Oliver Lodge in which he gives an account of an experiment of a similar nature, and also of other experiments which he tried with the Zancigs. "Independently of the more thorough investigations of Mr. Baggally, I myself was favoured with a private interview with the Zancigs, who were friendly and considerate and helpful; and I tried the experiment of having Mrs. Zancig outside the room, though with door open, and Mr. Zancig with me and quite silent. I wrote five or six figures on a slate, taking care to make no noise, and Mrs. Zancig failed to get them correctly. Zancig seemed distressed at that, and after a little time groaned out, 'Oh, surely you can do this'; almost immediately after which Mrs. Zancig came into the room with the correct figures written on her slate. It was difficult to see how the sentence had conveyed the figures, but it was instructive to find that utterance of some kind seemed necessary. It was partly this, and partly the manifest difficulty of eliminating all possibilities of code between a pair of performers accustomed to go about together, with years of experience behind them, that prevented me from doing what I probably ought to have done, though circumstances did not render it very easy, namely, to make a serious study of the Zancig phenomena. "Moreover, I questioned Mr. Zancig about codes, and found that he was familiar with a great many. He was quite frank about it, and rather implied, as I thought, that at times he was ready to use any code or other normal kind of assistance that might be helpful, though he assured me that he found that he and his wife did possess a faculty which they did not in the least understand, but which was more efficient and quicker than anything they could get by codes. On the whole, I think this extremely likely, but the rapidity and the certainty and dependableness of the power went far beyond anything that I could imagine as possible between people who depended on supernormal faculty alone. But if there was a mixture of devices between people so skilled, I despaired of bringing the genuine part of the phenomenon to a definite issue. "I do not think that either this or the weight of my other avocations are a sufficient excuse for this neglect, but it certainly was not easy to get opportunities for careful investigation. One of the main difficulties was that they were not free agents, having entered into contracts with managers whose financial interests partly depended upon the continued uncertainty of the public as to the causes underlying their very remarkable performance. Moreover, I knew that so skilled an investigator as Mr. Baggally was more favourably impressed with them than I was myself, and was able to give to them some considerable time and attention. "The extraordinary and rapid success with which Mrs. Zancig named one thing after another, handled or seen by her husband as he went through the hall in their public performances, is familiar to everybody who attended those exhibitions; but one episode which I have not put on record did impress me as rather exceptionally good, though entirely unsensational and unnoticeable at the time. I relate it here:-- "The Zancigs happened to come to Birmingham for a week during the University Vacation when I was away. On the last day of their performance I happened unexpectedly to return to Birmingham, and was dining at the club with some other men. Some one remarked that the Zancigs were performing, and suggested that we should cut dessert and go and see them; so we went in the middle of the performance and sat at the back of the gallery. Everything went on as usual. Mrs. Zancig was on the stage, blindfolded, I think, though I attach no importance to that. Mr. Zancig had been through the body of the hall, and was coming along the side gallery, taking objects from members of the audience as he went, and having them described quickly one after the other as usual, when he caught sight of me at the back of the gallery, and indicated recognition by a little start. The next object that he took in hand (a purse or what not) he said, 'What is this?' and Madame Zancig on the stage said 'Oliver.' Zancig shook his head and muttered, 'No, that's what I was thinking of, but what's this?' On which she said whatever it was correctly, and the performance went on as usual; my friends in due time getting their tests efficiently done. Nobody noticed the incident in particular; it was over in a second. It conveyed no impression of anything except of a slight confusion,--an error, in fact, immediately corrected,--but I could not fail to notice that the very unimportant incident tended in favour of the view that a power of sympathy or communication between them was genuine, since she got an undesired and unintended impression which certainly was at the moment in Mr. Zancig's mind. "O. J. L." Later, on the same evening of the experiment with the numbers on my cheque-book which I have described above, my wife and I attended the public performance at the Alhambra. We were seated at a distance from the stage. When Mr. Zancig came amongst the audience my wife handed him a piece of something black, the nature of which it was difficult to tell at first sight. He stooped down and asked in a whisper, "What is that?" My wife answered, also in a whisper, "Liquorice." Madame Zancig immediately called out from the stage, "Liquorice." No word had been spoken by Mr. Zancig after my wife had whispered the word "Liquorice." I then handed a visiting-card with a double name. Zancig read to himself in a low voice the last name, which was Hutchinson, and said, "What is the first name?" Madame Zancig called out "Berks"; this was correct. It appeared to me suspicious, however, that the question, "What is the first name?" although appropriate and natural, should contain the same number of words as there are letters in the name Berks--namely, five. Therefore some months after, at another performance, I wrote the same name, Berks Hutchinson, on a piece of paper and handed it to Mr. Zancig. This time he asked, "What is this?" Madame Zancig replied, "A piece of paper with a name." Mr. Zancig said, "Give the name." She replied, "Berks Hutchinson." I attended a series of performances at the Alhambra, and took down the questions and answers in order, if possible, to discover the code. On witnessing a first performance the spectator might be led to believe that word-coding alone is at the bottom of the mystery, but if notes are taken at a number of performances he will find that the same question is answered differently time after time. From my experiments with the Zancigs I came to the conclusion that although the alleged transmission of thought might possibly depend on a code or codes which I was unable to unravel, yet their performance was of such a nature that it was worthy of serious scientific examination. On the assumption that they possessed genuine telepathic powers it would be a pity that the opportunity of investigating their claim should be missed. I therefore set myself to work to arrange with Mr. Alfred Moul, managing director of the Alhambra, and Mr. Zancig for some experiments to be tried before a Committee of the members of the Society for Psychical Research. An article appeared in the _Daily Mail_, inspired evidently by Mr. Moul, from which I now quote:-- "We have suggested to Mr. Zancig that in preference to inquiries into telepathy by unskilled persons he should place himself in the hands of the Society for Psychical Research, of which Mr. Gerald Balfour is the President, and of which Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and other distinguished scientists are leading members. Mr. Zancig has informed us that he has already received a communication from that Society, and that he was entirely willing to place himself and Madame Zancig at the disposal of the Society for a thoroughly scientific series of tests." The investigation by the Society for Psychical Research, at which I was present, took place on the 18th January 1907. I regret that I cannot give an account of what took place at this meeting, as it was mutually arranged between Mr. Moul and the S.P.R. that the results should not be divulged. They appeared, however, sufficiently favourable to some of the members present (though not to all) to induce them to subsequently form an unofficial Committee to carry out further tests. These unofficial experiments did not take place till 26th July 1907. In the meantime I continued my own private experiments. A striking one is the following. I was in the balcony of the Alhambra on the 19th January 1907, and when Mr. Zancig came to that part of the house I handed him a piece of paper on which I had written the word "Istapalapan." I took care that he should not see the word previously to my giving him the paper. Zancig remarked to me in a whisper, "This is a long word." Owing to the distance from his wife it could not have been possible for her to overhear these words. Then Mr. Zancig called out, "Spell this." Madame Zancig immediately wrote on the blackboard which was on the stage "Istapala," and when she came to the second "p" she wrote "f" and then "san." I have often noticed that when Madame Zancig makes a mistake in a letter or number there is a similarity in the form of the letter or number to that which was to be transmitted; thus, she would put down "f" for "p," "7" for "9." "fsan" in this case is very like "pan," and Mr. Zancig may have mistaken the letters. I fail to understand how in this experiment he was able to code such a long word as "Istapalafsan" by the simple words "Spell this." It would appear as if Madame Zancig really saw what Mr. Zancig was looking at. The reader will recollect that in his preliminary remarks at each of his performances Zancig says, "What I see, Madame Zancig sees." I have several times observed this alleged peculiarity, notably so on the occasion of the tests at the Gramophone offices, which took place on the 22nd February 1907, and at which I was one of the members of the Committee. Mr. and Mrs. Zancig were divided by a large screen. They could not see each other. A recording trumpet was placed near each, into which they spoke. A table was placed by the side of Mr. Zancig on which a great number of articles had been placed by the members of the Committee. Madame Zancig with great rapidity named the articles as Mr. Zancig took them up in answer to his "What is this? and this?" etc. An incident which struck me as remarkable was the following. Mr. Zancig raised a pencil, saying, "What is this?" and after Madame Zancig had correctly stated what it was, he took up immediately (not in the vicinity of the pencil, but some distance from it) a case, and said, "And this?" Instead of naming the article Madame Zancig proceeded to enumerate in their proper order the articles that lay between the two articles which Mr. Zancig had taken up. Thus, a pencil, a seal, a penknife, a case. It appeared as if Madame Zancig had actually seen the articles over which her husband had passed his hand. An excellent test was the following. Dr. W. M'Dougall, a member of the Council of the S.P.R., who was present at these tests, borrowed a book from one of the members of the Committee. He came to the side of the screen where Mr. Zancig stood, opened the book at a certain page, then pointed to the middle of a line in the centre of the page. Mr. Zancig, without taking the book in his hand, glanced at the line, then Dr. M'Dougall shut the book, took it to the other side of the screen, and handed it closed to Madame Zancig. Mr. Zancig remained absolutely silent, placed his hand against his forehead, and appeared to make a strong mental effort. Madame Zancig, after the lapse of a minute, opened the book at the proper page and began reading at the word in the middle of the line that had been chosen by Dr. M'Dougall. Some members of the Committee and I stood quite close to Mr. Zancig. We did not hear him utter a sound. He could not be seen by Madame Zancig owing to the screen. I was present at the _matinée_ performance given under the auspices of the _Daily Mirror_ newspaper at the Alhambra. Dr. H., principal surgeon of a well-known hospital, handed to Mr. Zancig a set of skeins of silk of different colours. These were then passed on to Madame Zancig, who was on the stage. Dr. H. pointed silently to a skein of silk of a corresponding set which he had retained, and which he took care Madame Zancig could not see. Mr. Zancig, who preserved absolute silence, and remained motionless, looked at the colour of the skein, and in the space of half a minute his wife picked out a skein of the corresponding colour from the set that she had in her possession. This test was tried successfully three times. I particularly took note that Mr. Zancig remained silent and motionless, retaining the same position of his body during the course of the three experiments. I have tried tests with Mr. and Madame Zancig in the transmission of diagrams. I took with me to a private house to which I was invited an envelope containing cards with diagrams on them. Madame Zancig sat behind a large screen at the end of the room. By her side sat a lady, a friend of mine, who watched Madame Zancig and saw that she did not move from her chair. Mr. Zancig stood close to me near the other end of the room. I presented the envelope to him, retaining it in my hand. He drew out one of the cards on which was a diagram not known either to him or to me till he looked at it. He fixed his gaze intently on it, remained motionless, and in a whisper said to me, "Please say ready." I called out, "Ready," and his wife then drew a diagram on a piece of paper, at the same time saying, "Something like half a moon." [Illustration: MR. ZANCIG'S DIAGRAM] [Illustration: MADAME ZANCIG'S DRAWING] Mr. Zancig then drew another card from the envelope. This time he did not speak, but nodded his head once, and I called out, "Ready." Madame Zancig thereupon observed, "It is a square within a square." The diagram that Mr. Zancig was looking at was this: [Illustration] his wife drew this: [Illustration] Two more cards were then drawn, but Madame Zancig did not succeed; she got absolutely wrong drawings. At a public performance at Eastbourne I handed Mr. Zancig this diagram: [Illustration] He called out, "Draw this." Madame Zancig, who was on the platform, said, "It is something like this." She made a motion with her right arm like drawing a capital V; she then drew it on the blackboard. After this she slowly drew a horizontal line through the V, thus: [Illustration] Mr. Zancig said, "Give the number." She then placed a 2 in the proper position. He then called out, "Give the rest." She thereupon placed the _a_ under the line, thus: [Illustration] Mr. Zancig said, "What more?" His wife placed the sign of + correctly, but she rubbed it out several times as if in doubt. Finally she put down the sign of + and a capital X, so that her drawing appeared like this: [Illustration] I have had many other experiments with this gifted couple, but have not yet obtained the crucial test of getting Mr. Zancig to be in a distant room with closed doors, while his wife was in another room. The possibility of their using a sound code at one time and a visual code at another is therefore not entirely precluded. Although I have been quite unable to discover the methods by which they can possibly communicate when a visual and a sound code are not detected, yet I will reserve my ultimate opinion until I obtain tests under the crucial conditions that I have named. Not only did I personally meet with difficulties in endeavouring to explain the performances of Mr. and Madame Zancig, but also the members of the unofficial Committee that I have referred to. I now give an extract from our unofficial report. "... It must be remembered that the antecedent probabilities in favour of a code to explain all performances of this kind are enormous. "While we are of opinion that the records of experiments in telepathy made by the Society for Psychical Research and others raise a presumption for the existence of such a faculty at least strong enough to entitle it to serious scientific attention, the most hopeful results hitherto obtained have not been in any way comparable as regards accuracy and precision with those produced by Mr. and Madame Zancig. Further, there is, so far as we are aware, no case of any public performers (including certain recent examples) where the use of a code or apparatus has not been more or less readily discoverable or clearly to be inferred. In considering, therefore, the claim of Mr. and Madame Zancig to the possession of a genuine telepathic faculty, one is faced by the initial difficulty that such a faculty must be regarded as unique in quality, and Mr. and Madame Zancig themselves as unique in kind, a difficulty on the force of which it is not necessary to insist. On the other hand, the difficulty of suggesting by what method, if not by telepathy, they communicate is considerable. Those who have only witnessed the public theatre performances, clever and perplexing as these are, will not appreciate how hard it is to offer any plausible explanation of their _modus operandi_." In conclusion, I would wish to point out that the establishment of the fact that telepathy is a scientific truth would have bearings of the greatest importance. It would show that the transmission of thought could occasionally be effected otherwise than by the ordinary sense channels. It would change the materialistic conception that thought only acts within the limits of the brain. It would modify the materialistic scientific view of the relation of mind to matter. I trust that what I have written will act as an incentive to some of my readers to try experiments in this branch of psychical research.[2] It is not enough that a few individuals by patient inquiry and experiment should have been convinced of the reality of telepathy. What is wanted is that scientific men generally, by the record of an overwhelming number of experiments under the strictest test conditions, should be convinced of its truth. Once let them be so, then public conviction will in due time follow. Meanwhile I feel bound to state that, in spite of initial improbability, the experiences which I myself have had, as partly narrated in this book, especially those briefly summarized in Part I, have convinced me that the telepathic faculty does exist, and that its detection is a genuine extension of scientific knowledge; though much more will have to be done before the bare fact receives its explanation and is permanently incorporated in a coherent system of Science. [Footnote 2: Information relating to cases of genuine telepathy may be sent to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, 20 Hanover Square, London, who will be pleased to investigate them.] PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Transcriber's Note: Punctuation errors have been corrected without note. On p. 20, "11.5 p.m." was corrected to "11.50 p.m." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
37203	----	produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) TELEPATHY AND THE SUBLIMINAL SELF [Illustration: NATHAN EARLY _Phototype from an Automatic Painting._ (See page 196.)] TELEPATHY AND THE SUBLIMINAL SELF AN ACCOUNT OF RECENT INVESTIGATIONS REGARDING HYPNOTISM, AUTOMATISM, DREAMS, PHANTASMS, AND RELATED PHENOMENA BY R. OSGOOD MASON, A.M., M.D. _Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine_ NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1897 Copyright, 1897, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. PREFACE. To whatever conclusions it may lead us, there is no mistaking the fact that now more than ever before is the public interested in matters relating to the "New Psychology." Scarcely a day passes that notice of some unusual psychical experience or startling phenomenon does not appear in popular literature. The newspaper, the magazine, and the novel vie with each other in their efforts to excite interest and attract attention by the display of these strange incidents, presented sometimes with intelligence and taste, but oftener with a culpable disregard of both taste and truth. The general reader is not yet critical regarding these matters, but he is at least interested, and desires to know what can be relied upon as established truth amongst these various reports. There is inquiry concerning Telepathy or Thought-Transference--is it a fact or is it a delusion? Has Hypnotism any actual standing either in science or common sense? What of Clairvoyance, Planchette, Trance and Trance utterances, Crystal-Gazing and Apparitions? In the following papers intelligent readers, both in and out of the medical profession, will find these subjects fairly stated and discussed, and to some of the questions asked, fair and reasonable answers given. It is with the hope of aiding somewhat in the efforts now being made to rescue from an uncertain and unreasoning supernaturalism some of the most valuable facts in nature, and some of the most interesting and beautiful psychical phenomena in human experience, that this book is offered to the public. To such studies, however, it is objected by some that the principles involved in these unusual mental actions are too vague and the facts too new and unsubstantiated to be deserving of serious consideration; but it should be remembered that all our knowledge, even that which is now reckoned as science, was once vague and tentative; it is absurd, therefore, to ignore newly-found facts simply because they are new and their laws unknown; nevertheless, in psychical matters especially, this is the tendency of the age. But even if upon the practical side these studies should be deemed unsatisfactory, it would not follow that they are without use or interest. It is a truism that our western civilization is over-intense and practical; it is materialistic, hard, mechanical; it values nothing, it believes in nothing that cannot be weighed, measured, analyzed, labelled and appraised;--feeling, intuition, aspiration, monitions, glimpses of knowledge that are from within--not external nor distinctly cognizable,--these are all slighted, despised, trampled upon by a supercilious dilettanteism on the one hand and an uninstructed philistinism on the other, and the result has been a development that is abnormal, unsymmetrical, deformed, and tending to disintegration. To a few, oriental mysticism, to others the hasty deductions of spiritualism, and to many more the supernaturalism of the various religious systems, offer at least a partial, though often exaggerated, antidote to this inherent vice, because they all contemplate a spiritual or at least a transcendental aspect of man's nature in contrast to that which is purely material. But even these partial remedies are not available to all, and they are unsatisfactory to many. As a basis to a more symmetrical and permanent development, some generally recognized facts relative to the constitution and action of these more subtle forces in our being must be certified; and as an introduction to that work, it is hoped that these studies in the outlying fields of psychology will not be found valueless. A portion of the papers here presented are republished, much revised, by courtesy of _The New York Times_. NEW YORK, _October, 1896_. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. Psychical Research--Telepathy or Thought-Transference 1 CHAPTER II. Mesmerism and Hypnotism--History and Therapeutic Effects 28 CHAPTER III. Hypnotism--Psychical Aspect 51 CHAPTER IV. Lucidity or Clairvoyance 74 CHAPTER V. Double or Multiplex Personality 116 CHAPTER VI. Natural Somnambulism--Hypnotic Somnambulism--Dreams 129 CHAPTER VII. Automatism--Planchette 151 CHAPTER VIII. Automatic Writing, Drawing and Painting 181 CHAPTER IX. Crystal-gazing 198 CHAPTER X. Phantasms 224 CHAPTER XI. Phantasms, Continued 262 CHAPTER XII. Conclusions 307 CHAPTER I. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH--TELEPATHY OR THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. The status of the old-fashioned ghost story has, within the past ten years, perceptibly changed. Formerly, by the credulous generality of people, it was almost universally accepted without reason and without critical examination. It was looked upon as supernatural, and supernatural things were neither to be doubted nor reasoned about, and there the matter ended. On the other hand, the more learned and scientific, equally without reason or critical examination, utterly repudiated and scorned all alleged facts and occurrences relating to the subject. "We know what the laws of nature are," they said, "and alleged occurrences which go beyond or contravene these laws are upon their face illusions and frauds." And so, with them also, there the matter ended. In the meantime, while the irreclaimably superstitious and credulous on the one hand, and the unco-scientific and conservative on the other, equally without knowledge and equally without reason, have gone on believing and disbelieving, a large number of people--intelligent, inquiring, quick-witted, and reasonable, some scientific and some unscientific--have come to think seriously regarding unusual occurrences and phenomena, either witnessed or experienced by themselves or related by others, and whose reality they could not doubt, although their relations to ordinary conditions of life were mysterious and occult. In the investigation of these subjects some new and unfamiliar terms have come into more or less common use. We hear of mind-reading, telepathy, hypnotism, clairvoyance, and psychical research, some of which terms still stand for something mysterious, uncanny, perhaps even supernatural, but they have at least excited interest and inquiry. The subjects which they represent have even permeated general literature; the novelist has made use of this widespread interest in occult subjects and has introduced many of the strange and weird features which they present into his department of literature. Some have made use of this new material without knowledge or taste, merely to excite wonder and attract the vulgar, while others use it philosophically, with knowledge and discrimination, for the purpose of educating their readers in a new and important department of knowledge and thought. Amongst the more scientific, societies have been formed, reports have been read and published, so that in scientific and literary circles as well as among the unlearned the subject has become one of interest. The object of these papers will be briefly to tell in connection with my own observations, what is known and what is thought by others who have studied the subject carefully, and especially what has been done by the English Society for Psychical Research and kindred societies. When an expedition is sent out for the purpose of exploring new and unknown regions, it is often necessary to send forward scouts to obtain some general ideas concerning the nature of the country, its conformation, water-courses, inhabitants, and food supplies. The scouts return and report what they have discovered; their reports are listened to with interest, and upon these reports often depend the movements and success of the whole expedition. It will easily be seen how important it is that the scouts should be intelligent, sharp-witted, courageous and truthful; and it will also be evident that the report of these scouts concerning the new and unknown country is much more valuable than the preconceived opinions of geographers and philosophers, no matter how eminent they may be, who have simply stayed at home, enjoyed their easy-chair, and declared off-hand that the new country was useless and uninhabitable. The outlying fields of psychology, which are now the subject of psychical research, are comparatively a new and unexplored region, and until within a few years it has been considered a barren and unproductive one, into which it was silly, disreputable, and even dangerous to enter; the region was infested with dream-mongers, spiritualists, clairvoyants, mesmerists, and cranks, and the more vigorously it was shunned the safer would he be who had a reputation of any kind to lose. Such substantially was the condition of public sentiment, and especially of sentiment in strictly scientific circles, fourteen years ago, when the English Society for Psychical Research came into being. The first movement in the direction of systematic study and exploration in this new field was a preliminary meeting called by Prof. W. F. Barrett, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a few other gentlemen on Jan. 6, 1882, when the formation of such a society was proposed; and in the following month the society was definitely organized and officers were chosen. The first general meeting for business and listening to reports took place July 17th of the same year. The persons associated in this society were of the most staid and respectable character, noted for solid sense, and a sufficient number of them for practical work were also trained in scientific methods, and were already eminent in special departments of science. Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Trinity College, Cambridge, was President; Prof. W. F. Barrett, F. R. S. E., Royal College of Science, Dublin, and Prof. Balfour Stewart, F. R. S., Owens College, Manchester, were Vice-Presidents, and among the members were a large number of well-known names of Fellows of various learned and royal societies, professional men, and members of Parliament, altogether giving character to the society, as well as assuring sensible methods in its work. Among the subjects first taken up for examination and, so far as possible, for experimental study, were the following:-- (1) Thought-transference, or an examination into the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any generally recognized mode of perception or communication. (2) The study of hypnotism and the forms of so-called mesmeric trance. (3) An investigation of well-authenticated reports regarding apparitions and disturbances in houses reputed to be haunted. (4) An inquiry into various psychical phenomena commonly called Spiritualistic. The first report made to the society was concerning thought-reading, or thought-transference, and was a description of various experiments undertaken with a view to determine the question whether one person or one mind can receive impressions or intelligence from another person or mind without communication by word, touch, or sign, or by any means whatsoever apart from the ordinary and recognized methods of perception, or the ordinary channels of communication. What is meant by thought-transference is perhaps most simply illustrated by the common amusement known as the "willing game"; it is played as follows:-- The person to be influenced or "willed" is sent out of the room; those remaining then agree upon some act which that person is to be willed to accomplish; as, for instance, to take some particular piece of bric-à-brac from a table or cabinet and place it upon the piano, or to find some article which has been purposely hidden. The person to be willed is then brought back into the room; the leader of the game places one hand lightly upon her shoulder or arm, and the whole company think intently upon the act agreed upon in her absence. If the game is successful, the person so willed goes, with more or less promptness, takes the piece of bric-à-brac thought of, and places it upon the piano, as before agreed upon by the company, or she goes with more or less directness and discovers the hidden article. Nervous agitation, excitement, even faintness or actual syncope, are not unusual accompaniments of the effort on the part of the person so willed, circumstances which at least show the unusual character of the performance and also the necessity for caution in conducting it. If the game is played honestly, as it generally is, the person to be willed, when she returns to the room, is absolutely ignorant of what act she is expected to perform, and the person with whom she is placed in contact does not intentionally give her any clue or information during the progress of the game. In the more formal experiments the person who is willed is known as the sensitive, subject, or percipient; the person who conducts the experiment is known as the agent or operator. The sensitive is presumed to receive, in some unusual manner, from the minds of the agent and the company, an impression regarding the action to be performed, without communication between them in any ordinary manner. This is one of the simplest forms of thought-transference; it is, of course, liable to many errors, and is useless as a scientific test. Bishop, Cumberland, and other mind readers who have exhibited their remarkable powers all over the world, were doubtless sensitives who possessed this power of perception or receiving impressions in a high degree, so that minute objects, such as an ordinary watch-key, hidden in a barrel of rubbish in a cellar and in a distant part of an unfamiliar city, is quickly found, the sensitive being connected with the agent by the slightest contact, or perhaps only by a string or wire. The question at issue in all these cases is the same, namely, do the sensitives receive their impressions regarding what they have to do from the mind of the agent by some process other than the ordinary means of communication, such as seeing, hearing, or touch; or do they, by the exceeding delicacy of their perception, receive impressions from slight indications unintentionally and unconsciously conveyed to them by the agent through the slight contact which is kept up between them? The opinion of a majority of scientific persons has been altogether averse to the theory of thought-transference from one mind to another without the aid of the senses and the ordinary means of communication; and they have maintained that intimations of the thing to be done by the sensitive were conveyed by slight muscular movements unconsciously made by the agent and perhaps unconsciously received by the sensitive. To explain, or rather to formulate these cases, Dr. William B. Carpenter, the eminent English physiologist, proposed the theory of "unconscious muscular action" on the part of the agent and "unconscious cerebration" on the part of the sensitive; and his treatment of the whole subject in his "Mental Physiology," which was published twenty years ago, and also in his book on "Mesmerism and Spiritualism," was thought by many to be conclusive against the theory of mind-reading or thought-transference. Especially was this view entertained by the more conservative portion of the various scientific bodies interested in the subject, and also by that large class of people, scientific and otherwise, who save themselves much trouble by taking their opinions ready made. It was a very easy way of disposing of the matter, so thoroughly scientific, and it did not involve the necessity of studying any new force or getting into trouble with any new laws of mental action; it was simply delightful, and the physiologists rubbed their hands gleefully over the apparent discomfiture of the shallow cranks who imagined they had discovered something new. There was only one troublesome circumstance about the whole affair. It was this: that cases were every now and then making their appearance which absolutely refused to be explained by the new theory of Dr. Carpenter, and the only way of disposing of these troublesome cases was to declare that the people who observed them did not know how to observe, and did not see what they thought they saw. This was the state of the question, and this the way in which it was generally regarded, when it was taken up for investigation by the Society for Psychical Research. Experiments on the subject of thought-transference fall naturally into four classes: (1) Those where some prearranged action is accomplished, personal contact being maintained between the operator and the sensitive. (2) Similar performances where there is no contact whatever. (3) Where a name, number, object, or card is guessed or perceived and expressed by speech or writing without any perceptible means of obtaining intelligence by the senses or through any of the ordinary channels of communication. (4) Where the same ideas have occurred or the same impressions have been conveyed at the same moment to the minds of two or more persons widely separated from each other. The first and second of these classes are simply examples of the "willing game" carried on under more strict conditions, but they are not counted as of special value on account of the possibility of information being conveyed when contact is permitted, and by means of slight signals, mere movements of the eye, finger, or lip, which might quickly be seized upon and interpreted by the sensitive, even when there was no actual contact. The third and fourth class, however, seem to exclude these and all other ordinary or recognizable means of communication. The following are examples of the third class, namely, where some object, number, name, or card has been guessed or perceived without the aid of the senses, and without any of the ordinary means of communication between the operator and the subject. The first experiments here reported were made in the family of a clergyman, by himself, together with his five daughters, ranging from ten to seventeen years of age, all thoroughly healthy persons, and without any peculiar nervous development. The daughters and sometimes, also, a young maid-servant, were the sensitives, and the clergyman, when alone with his family, acted as agent. The test experiments made in this family were conducted by two competent and well-qualified observers, members of the society, and no member of the family was permitted to know the word, name, or object selected, except that the child chosen to act as sensitive was told to what class the object belonged; for instance, whether it was a number, card, or name of some person or place. The child was then sent out of the room and kept under observation while the test object was agreed upon, and was then recalled by one of the experimenters; and while giving her answers she "stood near the door with downcast eyes," and often with her back to the company. The experiments were conducted in perfect silence excepting the child's answer and the "right" or "wrong" of the agent. It has been charged that these children, later, were caught signalling during the experiments. This is true by their own confession, but it is also true that there was no signalling during the earlier experiments, also that the signalling when used did not improve the results, and furthermore that after they began signalling the effort to keep the mind consciously active and acute during their trials injured the passive condition necessary for success, and eventually destroyed their sensitiveness and thought-reading power altogether. Besides, most of the tests were made when only the one child was in the room, and, as will be noticed, many of the tests were of such a nature that signalling would be out of the question, especially with their little experience and clumsy code. The following results were obtained, the name of the object agreed upon being given in italics:-- _A white-handled penknife._ Was named and color given on the first trial. _A box of almonds._ Named correctly. _A three-penny piece._ Failed. _A box of chocolate._ A button box. _A penknife, hidden._ Failed to state where it was. Trial with cards, to be named:-- _Two of clubs._ Right. _Seven of diamonds._ Right. _Four of spades._ Failed. _Four of hearts._ Right. _King of hearts._ Right. _Two of diamonds._ Right. _Ace of hearts._ Right. _Nine of spades._ Right. _Five of diamonds._ Four of diamonds (wrong); then four of hearts, (wrong); then five of diamonds, which was right on the third trial. _Two of spades._ Right. _Eight of diamonds._ Wrong. _Ace of diamonds._ Wrong. _Three of hearts._ Right. _Four of clubs._ Wrong. _Ace of spades._ Wrong. The following results were obtained with fictitious names:-- _William Stubbs._ Right. _Eliza Holmes._ Eliza H. _Isaac Harding._ Right. _Sophia Shaw._ Right. _Hester Willis._ Cassandra--then Hester Wilson. _John Jones._ Right. _Timothy Taylor._ Tom, then Timothy Taylor. _Esther Ogle._ Right. _Arthur Higgins._ Right. _Alfred Henderson._ Right. _Amy Frogmore._ Amy Freemore, then Amy Frogmore. _Albert Snelgrove._ Albert Singrore, then Albert Grover. On another occasion the following result was obtained with cards, Mary, the eldest daughter, being the percipient: In thirty-one successive trials the first only was an entire failure, six of spades being given in answer for the eight of spades. Of the remaining thirty consecutive trials, in seventeen the card was correctly named on the first attempt, nine on the second, and four on the third. It should here be observed, that according to the calculus of probabilities, the chances that an ordinary guesser would be correct in his guess on the first trial is, in cards, of course, one in fifty-one, but in these trials, numbering 382 in all, and extending over six days, the average was one in three, and second and third guesses being allowed the successes were more than one in two, almost two in three. The chances against guessing the card correctly five times in succession are more than 1,000,000 to 1, and against this happening eight times in succession are more than 142,000,000 to 1, yet the former happened several times and the latter twice--once with cards and once with fictitious names, the chances against success in the latter case being almost incalculable. The following experiments were also made among many others, Miss Maud Creery being the percipient:-- "(1) What town have we thought of? A. Buxton: which was correct. "(2) What town have we thought of? A. Derby. What part did you think of first? A. Railway station. (So did I.) What next? A. The market-place. (So did I.) "(3) What town have we thought of? A. Something commencing with L. (Pause of a minute.) Lincoln. (Correct.) "(4) What town have we thought of? A. Fairfield. What part did you think of first? A. The road to it. (So did I.) What next? A. The triangular green behind the Bull's Head Inn. (So did I.)" In seeking an explanation for these remarkable results coincidence and chance may, it would seem, be utterly excluded. Touch and hearing must also be excluded, since the guesser did not come in contact with any person during the experiments, and they were conducted in perfect silence excepting the answers of the percipient or the "yes" or "no" of the agent. We have left, then, only the unconscious indications which might possibly be given by look, movement of a finger, lip, or muscle by persons who were present especially on account of their desire and ability to detect any such communication, and on account of their ability to avoid giving information in any such manner themselves. It seems, in fact, quite incredible that information thus conveyed could be sufficient to affect the result in so large a number of experiments, especially where the experiments included the names of places and fictitious names of persons. Even where signalling is successfully carried on, as, for instance, in stage tricks, it is a regular feat of memory accomplished between two people who have studied and practised it assiduously for a long time, while here were simply children, brought in contact, without rehearsal, with strangers, whose object it was to detect the trick if any were practised among them. We are forced, then, to the conclusion that the knowledge which these sensitives exhibited concerning the objects, names, or cards which were given them as tests, did not come to them by any ordinary sense of perception obtained either legitimately or by trick, but came to them directly from the minds of other persons acting as agents and striving to impress them, and that this knowledge or these impressions were received by some means other than through the ordinary channels of communication. Another method of demonstrating thought-transference which should be mentioned here, is by means of diagrams. The experiment may be made as follows:--The percipient, being blindfolded, is seated at a table with his back to the operator, without contact and in perfect silence. A diagram--for instance, a circle with a cross in the centre--is distinctly drawn by a third person and so held as to be in full view of the operator, who looks at it in silence, steadily and with concentrated attention. The impression made by the diagram upon the mind of the operator is gradually perceived by the percipient, who, after a time varying from a few seconds to several minutes, declares himself ready. The bandages are then removed from his eyes, and to the best of his ability he draws the impression which came to him while blindfolded. The results have varied in accuracy, very much as did the results in the experiments with objects and cards already described. The following diagrams are from drawings and reproductions made in the manner just described. They are from the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and were the result of experiments made by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie and Mr. James Birchall, two prominent and cultivated citizens of Liverpool, together with three or four ladies, personal friends of theirs, all of whom undertook the experiments with the definite purpose of testing the truth or falsity of thought-transference. [Illustration: I. Original Drawing. I. Reproduction. II. Original Drawing. II. Reproduction. III. Original Drawing. III. Reproduction. IV. Original Drawing. IV. Reproduction. ] I will also quote another experiment, which is only a fair example of a very large number, carefully carried out from April to November, 1883. In many of the experiments members of the Committee on Thought-transference from the S. P. R. were present. APRIL 20th, 1883.--Present, Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Birchall, Mr. Steel, and four ladies:-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- AGENT. |PERCIPIENT.| OBJECT. | RESULT. --------|-----------|-----------------------|-------------------------- Mrs. E. | Miss R. | A square of pink silk | "Pink ... Square." | | on black satin. | Answered almost | | | instantly. | | | do. | do. | A ring of white silk | "Can't see it." | | on black satin. | | | | Miss R. | Miss E. | Word R E S, letter by | Each letter was named | | letter. | correctly by Miss E. as | | | it was placed before | | | Miss R. | | | do. | do. | Letter Q. | "Q." First answer. | | | do. | do. | Letter F. | "F." First answer. | | | All | | | present.| Miss R. | A gilt cross held by | "It is a cross." Asked, | | Mr. G. behind the | which way is it held, | | percipient. | percipient replied, | | | "The right way." Correct. | | | do. | do. | A yellow paper knife. | "Yellow ... is it a | | | feather?... It looks | | | like a knife with a | | | thin handle." | | | do. | do. | A pair of scissors | "It is silver ... No, it | | standing open and | is steel ... It is a pair | | upright. | of scissors standing | | | upright." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Success was different on different occasions, but this represents an ordinary series of experiments at one sitting. In these experiments with objects, the percipient was blindfolded and the object moreover was kept out of range of vision. In some experiments slight contact was permitted, and in some it was not, but it was found that contact had little if any effect upon the result. Remarkable success was also obtained in the transference of sensation, such as taste, smell, or pain, while the percipient was in a normal condition, that is, not hypnotized. The following is an average example of the transference of taste:-- The tasters, Mr. Guthrie (M. G.), Mr. Gurney (E. G.), and Mr. Myers (M.). The percipients were two young ladies in Mr. Guthrie's employ. SEPT. 3, 1883. --------------------------------------------------------------------- TASTERS. |PERCIPIENT.| SUBSTANCE. | ANSWER GIVEN. ----------|-----------|----------------|----------------------------- E. G. & M.| E. | Worcestershire | | | Sauce. | "Worcestershire Sauce." | | | M. G. | R. | " | "Vinegar." | | | E. G. & M.| E. | Port wine. | "Between eau de Cologne | | | and beer." | | | M. G. | R. | " | "Raspberry Vinegar." | | | E. G. & M.| E. | Bitter aloes. | "Horrible and bitter." | | | M. G. | R. | Alum. | "A taste of ink--of iron--of | | | vinegar. I feel it on my | | | lips--it is as though I had | | | been eating alum." --------------------------------------------------------------------- Some very striking experiments were made by Mr. J. W. Smith of Brunswick Place, Leeds, as agent, and his sister Kate as percipient. Their success with diagrams fully equalled those already given, and with objects the results have seldom been equalled. The following trials were made March 11th, 1884. The intelligence and good faith of the participants is undoubted. Agent: J. W. Smith. Percipient: Kate Smith. OBJECT SELECTED. NAMED. Figure 8 Correct first time. Figure 5 " " " Black cross on white ground " " " Color blue " " " Cipher (0) " " " Pair of Scissors.--Percipient was not told what (i. e. what form of experiment, figure, color or object) was to be next--but carefully and without noise a pair of scissors was placed on white ground, and in about one minute and a half she exclaimed: "Scissors!" The number of facts and experiments bearing upon this division of our subject is well-nigh inexhaustible; those already presented will serve as illustrations and will also show upon what sort of evidence is founded the probability that perceptions and impressions are really conveyed from one mind to another in some other manner than by the ordinary and recognized methods of communication. It remains to give one or two illustrations of the fourth division of the subject, namely, where similar thoughts have simultaneously occurred, or similar impressions have been made upon the minds of persons at a distance from each other without any known method of communication between them. The first case was received and examined by the society in the summer of 1885. One of the percipients writes as follows:-- "My sister-in-law, Sarah Eustance, of Stretton, was lying sick unto death, and my wife had gone over there from Lawton Chapel (twelve or thirteen miles off) to see and tend her in her last moments. On the night before her death I was sleeping at home alone, and, awaking, I heard a voice distinctly call me. "Thinking it was my niece Rosanna, the only other occupant of the house, I went to her room and found her awake and nervous. I asked her whether she had called me. She answered: 'No; but something awoke me, when I heard some one calling.' On my wife returning home after her sister's death she told me how anxious her sister had been to see me, craving for me to be sent for, and saying, 'Oh, how I want to see Done once more!' and soon after became speechless. But the curious part was that, about the same time that she was 'craving,' I and my niece heard the call." In answer to a letter of inquiry he further writes:-- "My wife, who went from Lawton that particular Sunday to see her sister, will testify, that as she attended upon her (after the departure of the minister) during the night, she was asking and craving for me, repeatedly saying, 'Oh, I wish I could see Uncle Done and Rosie once more before I go!' and soon after she became unconscious, or at least ceased speaking, and died the next day, of which fact I was not aware until my wife returned on the evening of the Fourth of July." Mrs. Sewill, the Rosie referred to, writes as follows:-- "I was awakened suddenly, without apparent cause, and heard a voice calling me distinctly, thus: 'Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.' We (my uncle and myself) were the only occupants of the house that night, aunt being away attending upon her sister. I never was called before or since." The second case is reported by a medical man of excellent reputation to whom the incident was related by both Lady G. and her sister, the percipients in the case. It is as follows:-- "Lady G. and her sister had been spending the evening with their mother, who was in her usual health and spirits when they left her. In the middle of the night the sister awoke in a fright and said to her husband: 'I must go to my mother at once; do order the carriage. I am sure she is taken ill.' The husband, after trying in vain to convince his wife that it was only a fancy, ordered the carriage. As she was approaching her mother's house, where two roads meet, she saw Lady G.'s carriage approaching. As soon as they met, each asked the other why she was there at that unseasonable hour, and both made the same reply:-- "'I could not sleep, feeling sure my mother was ill, and so I came to see.' As they came in sight of the house they saw their mother's confidential maid at the door, who told them, when they arrived, that their mother had been taken suddenly ill and was dying, and that she had expressed an earnest wish to see her daughters." The reporter adds:-- "The mother was a lady of strong will and always had a great influence over her daughters." Many well-authenticated instances of a similar character could be cited, but the above are sufficient for illustration, which is the object here chiefly in view, and other facts still further illustrating this division of the subject will appear in other relations. The foregoing facts and experiments are sufficient to indicate what is understood by thought-transference, or telepathy, and also to indicate what might be called the skirmishing ground between the class of psychologists represented by the active workers in the Society for Psychical Research and kindred societies on the one hand, and the conservative scientists, mostly physiologists, who are incredulous of any action of the mind for which they cannot find an appropriate organ and a proper method, on the other. It is not claimed that thought-transference as here set forth is established beyond all possibility of doubt or cavil, especially from those who choose to remain ignorant of the facts, but only that its facts are solid and their interpretation reasonable, and that thought-transference has now the same claim to acceptance by well-informed people that many of the now accepted facts in physical science had in its early days of growth and development. The reality of thought-transference being once established, a vast field for investigation is opened up; a new law, as it were, is discovered; and how far-reaching and important its influence and bearing may be upon alleged facts and phenomena which heretofore have been disbelieved, or set down as chance occurrences, or explained away as hallucinations, is at present the interesting study of the experimental psychologist. CHAPTER II MESMERISM AND HYPNOTISM--HISTORY AND THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS. No department of psychical research is at present exciting so widespread an interest as that which is known under the name of Hypnotism; and inquiries are constantly made by those to whom the subject is new, regarding its nature and effects, and also how, if at all, it differs from the mesmerism and animal magnetism of many years ago. Unfortunately, these questions are more easily asked than answered, and well-informed persons, and even those considered experts in the subject, would doubtless give different and perhaps opposing answers to them. A short historical sketch may help in forming an opinion. From the remotest periods of human history to the present time, certain peculiar and unusual conditions of mind, sometimes associated with abnormal conditions of body, have been observed, during which unusual conditions, words have unconsciously been spoken, sometimes seemingly meaningless, but sometimes conveying knowledge of events at that moment taking place at a distance, sometimes foretelling future events, and sometimes words of warning, instruction, or command. The Egyptians and Assyrians had their magi, the Greeks and Romans their oracles, the Hebrews their seers and prophets, every great religion its inspired teachers, and every savage nation had, under some name, its seer or medicine-man. Socrates had his dæmon, Joan of Arc her voices and visions, the Highlanders their second sight, Spiritualists their mediums and "controls." Even Sitting Bull had his vision in which he foresaw the approach and destruction of Custer's army. Until a little more than a hundred years ago all persons affected in any of these unusual ways were supposed to be endowed with some sort of supernatural power, or to be under external and supernatural influence, either divine or satanic. About 1773 Mesmer, an educated German physician, philosopher, and mystic, commenced the practice of curing disease by means of magnets passed over the affected parts and over the body of the patient from head to foot. Afterward seeing Gassner, a Swabian priest, curing his patients by command, and applying his hands to the affected parts, he discarded his magnets, concluding that the healing power or influence was not in them, but in himself; and he called that influence animal magnetism. Mesmer also found that a certain proportion of his patients went into a sleep more or less profound under his manipulations, during which somnambulism, or sleep-walking, appeared. But Mesmer's chief personal interest lay in certain theories regarding the nature of the newly-discovered power or agent, and in its therapeutic effects; his theories, however, were not understood nor appreciated by the physicians of his time, and his cures were looked upon by them as being simply quackery. Nevertheless, it was he who first took the whole subject of these abnormal or supranormal conditions out of the domain of the supernatural, and in attempting to show their relation to natural forces he placed them in the domain of nature as proper subjects of rational study and investigation; and for this, at least, Mesmer should be honored. Under Mesmer's pupil, the Marquis de Puysegur, the facts and methods relating to the magnetic sleep and magnetic cures were more carefully observed and more fully published. Then followed Petetin, Husson, and Dupotet, Elliotson in England and Esdaile in India. So from Mesmer in 1773 to Dupotet and Elliotson in 1838 we have the period of the "early mesmerists." During this period the hypnotic sleep was induced by means of passes, the operators never for a moment doubting that the influence which produced sleep was a power of some sort proceeding from themselves and producing its effect upon the patient. In addition to the condition of sleep or lethargy, the following conditions were well known to the "early mesmerists"; somnambulism, or sleep-walking, catalepsy, anæsthesia, and amnesia, or absence of all knowledge of what transpired during the sleep. Suggestion during sleep was also made use of, and was even then proposed as an agent in education and in the cure of vice. This was the condition of the subject in 1842, when Braid, an English surgeon, made some new and interesting experiments. He showed that the so-called mesmeric sleep could be produced in some patients by other processes than those used by the early mesmerists; especially could this be accomplished by having the patient gaze steadily at a fixed brilliant object or point, without resorting to passes or manipulations of any kind. He introduced the word hypnotism, which has since been generally adopted; he also proposed some new theories relating to the nature of the hypnotic sleep, regarding it as a "profound nervous change," and he still further developed the idea and use of suggestion. Otherwise no important changes were made by him in the status of the subject. It was not looked upon with favor by the profession generally, and its advocates were for the most part still considered as cranks and persons whose scientific and professional standing and character were not above suspicion. The period of twenty-five years from 1850 to 1875, was a sort of occultation of hypnotism. Braidism suffered nearly the same fate as mesmerism--it was neglected and tabooed. A few capable and honest men, like Liébeault of Nancy and Azam of Bordeaux, worked on, and from time to time published their observations; but for the most part these workers were neglected and even scorned. To acknowledge one's belief in animal magnetism or hypnotism was bad form, and he who did it must be content to suffer a certain degree of both social and professional ostracism. The field was given over to town-hall lectures on mesmerism, by "professors" whose titles were printed in quotation marks even by the local papers which recorded their exploits. But a change was about to be inaugurated. In 1877 Prof. Charcot, then one of the most scientific, most widely-known, and most highly-esteemed of living physicians, not only in France but in all the world, was appointed, with two colleagues, to investigate the treatment of hysteria by means of metallic disks--a subject which was then attracting the attention of the medical profession in France. So, curiously enough, it happened that Charcot commenced exactly where Mesmer had commenced a hundred years before. He experimented upon hysterical patients in his wards at La Salpêtrière, and, as a result, he rediscovered mesmerism under the name of hypnotism, just a century after it had been discovered by Mesmer and disowned by the French Academy. But Charcot, after having satisfied himself by his experiments, did not hesitate to announce his full belief in the facts and phenomena of hypnotism, and that was sufficient to rehabilitate the long-neglected subject. The attention of the scientific world was at once turned toward it, it became a legitimate subject of study, and hypnotism at once became respectable. From that time to the present it has formed one of the most conspicuous and interesting subjects of psychical study; it has become to psychology what determining the value of a single character is to reading an ancient inscription in a lost or unknown language--it is a bit of the unknown expressed in terms of the known and helps to furnish clues to still greater discoveries. With the scientific interest in hypnotism which was brought about through the great name and influence of Charcot, all doubt concerning the reality of the phenomena which it presents disappeared. Hypnotism was a fact and had come to stay. Charcot, who conducted his experiments chiefly among nervous or hysterical patients, looked upon the hypnotic condition as a disease, and considered the phenomena presented by hypnotic subjects as akin to hysteria. In addition to the method of producing the hypnotic condition used by Braid, he used, among others, what he called "massive stimulation," which consisted in first fully absorbing the subject's attention and then producing a shock by the loud sounding of a concealed gong, or the sudden display or sudden withdrawal of an electric light. By this means hysterical subjects were often thrown into a condition of catalepsy, from which somnambulism and other hypnotic phenomena were sometimes deduced. I have myself seen nervous patients thrown into the cataleptic state by the "massive stimulation" of a huge truck passing by, loaded with clanging rails or building iron, or by other sudden shock, but I did not consider the process therapeutic nor in any way useful to the patient. Indeed, I have considered the present method of transporting those beams and rails of iron through our streets and past our dwellings, without the slightest attempt to modify their shocking din and clangor, a piece of savagery which should at once be made the subject of special legislation looking to the prompt punishment of the perpetrators of the outrage. As a matter of fact, neither the methods employed, the psychical conditions induced, nor the therapeutic effects attained at La Salpêtrière, where most of these experiments were at that time carried on, were such as to particularly commend themselves to students of psychology. Nevertheless the great name and approval of Charcot served to command for hypnotism the attention and the favorable consideration of the scientific world. Soon after the experiments of Charcot and his associates in Paris were published, Prof. Bernheim commenced a most thorough and important study of the subject in the wards of the hospital at Nancy. These studies were made, not upon persons who were already subjects of nervous disease, as was the case with Charcot's patients, but, on the contrary, upon those whose nervous condition was perfectly normal, and even upon those whose general health was perfect. The result of Bernheim's experiments proved that a very large percentage of all persons, sick or well, could be put into the hypnotic condition. He claimed that suggestion was the great factor and influence, both in bringing about the condition, and also in the mental phenomena observed, and the cures which were accomplished. He claimed, moreover, that the hypnotic sleep did not differ from ordinary sleep, and that no magnetism nor other personal element, influence, or force entered in any way into the process--it was all the power and influence of suggestion. Four distinct and important periods then are found in the history of hypnotism: First, the period of the early mesmerists, extending from the time of Mesmer, 1773, until that of Braid, 1842--nearly seventy years--during which the theory of animal magnetism, or of some actual force or subtle influence proceeding from the operator to the subject, prevailed. Second, the period of thirty-five years during which the influence of Braid's experiments predominated, showing that other methods, and especially that by the fixed gaze, were efficient in producing the hypnotic sleep. Third, the short period during which the influence of Charcot and the Paris school prevailed. Fourth, the period since Bernheim began to publish his experiments, and which may be called the period of suggestion. With this brief sketch in mind, we are prepared to examine some of the more important phenomena of hypnotism, both in its early and its later developments. A simple case would be as follows:-- A patient comes to the physician's office complaining of continual headaches, general debility, nervousness, and unsatisfactory sleep. She is willing to be hypnotized, and is accompanied by a friend. The physician seats her comfortably in a chair, and, seating himself opposite her, he takes her thumbs lightly between his own thumbs and fingers, asks her to look steadily at some convenient object--perhaps a shirt-stud or a specified button upon his coat. Presently her eyelids quiver and then droop slowly over her eyes; he gently closes them with the tips of his fingers, holds them lightly for a moment, and she is asleep. He then makes several slow passes over her face and down the front of her body from head to foot, also some over her head and away from it, all without contact and without speaking to her. He lets her sleep ten or fifteen minutes--longer, if convenient--and then, making two or three upward passes over her face, he says promptly: "All right; wake up." She slowly opens her eyes, probably smiles, and looks a little foolish at having slept. He inquires how she feels. She replies: "I feel remarkably well--so rested--as though I had slept a whole night." "How is your head?" (Looking surprised.) "It is quite well--the pain is all gone." "Very well," he says. "You will continue to feel better and stronger, and you will have good sleep at night." And so it proves. Bernheim or a pupil of his would sit, or perhaps stand, near his patient, and in a quiet but firm voice talk of sleep. "Sleep is what you need. Sleep is helpful and will do you good. Already, while I am talking to you, you are beginning to feel drowsy. Your eyes are tired; your lids are drooping; you are growing more and more sleepy; your lids droop more and more." Then, if the eyelids seem heavy, he presses them down over the eyes, all the time affirming sleep. If sleep comes, he has succeeded; if not, he resorts to gestures, passes, the steady gaze, or whatever he thinks likely to aid his suggestion. When the patient is asleep he suggests that when she awakes her pains and nervousness will be gone, and that she will have quiet and refreshing sleep at night. What is the condition of the patient while under the influence of this induced sleep? Pulse and respiration are little, if at all, changed; they may be slightly accelerated at first, and later, if very deep sleep occurs, they may be slightly retarded. Temperature is seldom changed at all, though, if abnormally high before the sleep is induced, it frequently falls during the sleep. If the hand be raised, or the arm be drawn up high above the head, generally it will remain elevated until it is touched and replaced, or the patient is told that he can let it fall, when he slowly lowers it. In many cases the limbs of the patient may be flexed or the body placed in any position, and that position will be retained for a longer or shorter period, sometimes for hours, without change. Sometimes the condition is one of rigidity so firm that the head may be placed upon one chair and the heels upon another, and the body will remain stiff like a bridge from one chair to the other, even when a heavy weight is placed upon the middle of the patient's body or another person is seated upon it. This is the full cataleptic condition. Sometimes the whole body will be in a condition of anæsthesia, so that needles may be thrust deep into the flesh without evoking any sign of pain or any sensation whatever. Sometimes, when this condition of anæsthesia does not appear with the sleep, it may be induced by passes, or by suggesting that a certain limb or the whole body is without feeling. In this condition the most serious surgical operations have been performed without the slightest suffering on the part of the patient. From the deep sleep the patient often passes of his own accord into a condition in which he walks, talks, reads, writes, and obeys the slightest wish or suggestion of the hypnotizer--and yet he is asleep. This is called the alert stage, or the condition of somnambulism, and is the most peculiar, interesting, and wonderful of all. The two chief stages of the hypnotic condition, then, are, first: the lethargic stage; second, the alert stage. The stage of lethargy may be very light--a mere drowsiness--or very deep--a heavy slumber--and it is often accompanied by a cataleptic state, more or less marked in degree. The alert stage may also vary and may be characterized by somnambulism, varying in character from a simple sleepy "yes" or "no" in answer to questions asked by his hypnotizer, to the most wonderful, even supranormal, mental activity. From any of these states the subject may be awakened by his hypnotizer simply making a few upward passes or by saying in a firm voice, "All right, wake up," or, again, by affirming to the patient that he will awake when he (the hypnotizer) has counted up to a certain number, as, for instance, five. Generally, upon awakening, the subject has no knowledge or remembrance of anything which has transpired during his hypnotic condition. This is known as amnesia. Sometimes, however, a hazy recollection of what has happened remains, especially if the hypnotic condition has been only slight. Up to the present time hypnotism has been studied from two separate and important standpoints and for two well-defined purposes: (1) For its therapeutic effects, or its use in the treatment of disease and relief of pain; (2) for the mental or psychical phenomena which it presents. The following cases will illustrate its study and use from the therapeutic standpoint--and, first, two cases treated by the old mesmerists, 1843-53. They are from reports published in The Zoist:-- (1) Q. I. P., a well-known artist, fifty years ago, had been greatly troubled and distressed by weak and inflamed eyes, accompanied by ulceration of the cornea, a condition which had lasted more than four years. He was never free from the disease, and often it was so severe as to prevent work in his studio, and especially reading, for months at a time. He had been under the care of the best oculists, both in New York and London, for long periods and at different times, but with very little temporary and no permanent relief. He was urged, as a last resort, to try animal magnetism, as it was then called. Accordingly, he consulted a mesmeric practitioner in London, and was treated by passes made over the back of the head and down the spine and from the centre of the forehead backward and outward over the temples and down the sides of the head. All other treatment was discontinued. No mesmeric phenomena of any kind were produced, not even sleep, but from the first day a degree of comfort and also improvement was experienced. The treatment was given one hour daily for one month. The improvement was decided and uninterrupted, such as had never before been experienced under any form of medical or surgical treatment, no matter how thoroughly carried out. The general health was greatly improved, and the eyes were so much benefited that they could be relied upon constantly, both for painting and reading, and the cure was permanent. (2) A case of rheumatism treated by Dr. Elliotson of London. The patient, G. F., age thirty-five years, was a laborer, and had suffered from rheumatism seven weeks. When he applied to Dr. Elliotson, the doctor was sitting in his office, in company with three friends--one a medical gentleman, and all skeptics regarding mesmerism. They all, however, expressed a desire to see the treatment, and, accordingly, the patient was brought in. He came with difficulty, upon crutches, his face betokening extreme pain. He had never been mesmerized. The doctor sat down opposite his patient, took his thumbs in his hands, and gazed steadily in his eyes. In twenty minutes he fell into the mesmeric sleep. Several of the mesmeric phenomena were then produced in the presence of his skeptical friends, after which he was allowed to sleep undisturbed for two hours. No suggestions regarding his disease are reported as having been made to the patient during his sleep. He was awakened by reverse passes. Being fairly aroused, he arose from his chair, walked up and down the room without difficulty, and was perfectly unconscious of all that had transpired during his sleep; he only knew he came into the room suffering, and on crutches, and that he was now free from pain and could walk with ease without them. He left one crutch with the doctor and went out twirling the other in his hand. He remained perfectly well. Dr. Elliotson afterward tried on three different occasions to hypnotize him but without success. Others also tried, but all attempts in this direction failed. I will here introduce one or two cases from my own notebook:-- (1) A. C., a young girl of Irish parentage, fifteen years old, light skin, dark hair and eyes, and heavy eyebrows. Her father had "fits" for several years previous to his death. I first saw the patient Dec. 4, 1872; this was five years before Charcot's experiments, and nearly ten years before those of Bernheim. She was then having frequent epileptic attacks, characterized by sudden loss of consciousness, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, biting the tongue, and dark color. She had her first attack six months before I saw her, and they had increased in frequency and in severity until now they occurred twenty or more times a day, sometimes lasting many minutes, and sometimes only a few seconds; sometimes they were of very great severity. She had received many falls, burns, and bruises in consequence of their sudden accession. They occurred both day and night. On my second visit I determined to try hypnotism. Patient went to sleep in eight minutes, slept a short time and awoke without interference. She was immediately put to sleep again; she slept only a few minutes, and again awoke. DEC. 7.--Her friends report that the attacks have not been so frequent and not nearly so violent since my last visit. Hypnotized; patient went into a profound sleep and remained one hour; she was then awakened by reverse passes. DEC. 8.--The attacks have been still less frequent and severe; she has slept quietly; appetite good. Hypnotized and allowed her to sleep two hours, and then awoke her by the upward passes. DEC. 9.--There has been still more marked improvement; the attacks have been very few, none lasting more than half a minute. Hypnotized and allowed her to remain asleep three hours. Awoke her with some difficulty, and she was still somewhat drowsy when I left. She went to sleep in the afternoon and slept soundly four hours; awoke and ate her supper; went to sleep again and slept soundly all night. DEC. 10.--There has been no return of the attacks. A month later she had had no return of the attacks. She soon after left town, and I have not heard of her since. In this case no suggestions whatever were made. (2) B. X., twenty-four years of age, a sporting man; obstinate, independent, self-willed, a leader in his circle. He had been a hard drinker from boyhood. He had been injured by a fall three years before, and had been subject to severe attacks of hæmatemesis. I had known him for three or four months previous to June, 1891. At that time he came into my office one evening somewhat under the influence of alcoholic stimulants. After talking a few moments, I advised him to lie down on the lounge. I made no remarks about his drinking, nor about sleep. I simply took his two thumbs in my hands and sat quietly beside him. Presently I made a few long passes from head to feet, and in five minutes he was fast asleep. His hands and arms, outstretched and raised high up, remained exactly as they were placed. Severe pinching elicited no sign of sensation. He was in the deep hypnotic sleep. I then spoke to him in a distinct and decided manner. I told him he was ruining his life and making his family very unhappy by his habit of intemperance. I then told him very decidedly that when he awoke he would have no more desire for alcoholic stimulants of any kind; that he would look upon them all as his enemies, and he would refuse them under all circumstances; that even the smell of them would be disagreeable to him. I repeated the suggestions and then awoke him by making a few passes upward over his face, I did not inform him that I had hypnotized him, nor speak to him at all about his habit of drinking. I prescribed for some ailment for which he had visited me and he went away. I neither saw nor heard from him again for three months, when I received a letter from him from a distant city, informing me that he had not drank a drop of spirituous liquor since he was in my office that night. His health was perfect, and he had no more vomiting of blood. June, 1892, one year from the time I had hypnotized him, he came into my office in splendid condition. He had drank nothing during the whole year. I have not heard from him since. The following case illustrates Bernheim's method:-- Mlle. J., teacher, thirty-two years old, came to the clinique, Feb. 17, 1887, for chorea, or St. Vitus's dance. Nearly two weeks previous she had been roughly reprimanded by her superior which had greatly affected her. She could scarcely sleep or eat; she had nausea, pricking sensations in both arms, delirium at times, and now incessant movements, sometimes as frequent as two every second, in both the right arm and leg. She can neither write nor attend to her school duties. Bernheim hypnotizes her by his method. She goes easily into the somnambulic condition. In three or four minutes, under the influence of suggestion, the movements of the hand and foot cease; upon waking up, they reappear, but less frequently. A second hypnotization, with suggestion, checks them completely. FEB. 19th.--Says she has been very comfortable; the pricking sensations have ceased. No nervous movements until nine o'clock this morning, when they returned, about ten or eleven every minute. New hypnotization and suggestion, during which the motions cease, and they remain absent when she wakes. 21st.--Has had slight pains and a few choraic movements. 25th.--Is doing well; has no movements; says she is cured. She returned a few times during the next four months with slight nervous movements, which were promptly relieved by hypnotizing and suggestion. Bernheim, in his book, "Suggestive Therapeutics," gives details of over one hundred cases, mostly neuralgic and rheumatic, most of which are described as cured, either quickly or by repeated hypnotization and suggestion. The Zoist, a journal devoted to psychology and mesmerism nearly fifty years ago, gives several hundred cases of treatment and cure by the early mesmerists, some of them very remarkable, and also many cases of surgical operations of the most severe or dangerous character painlessly done under the anæsthetic influence of mesmerism before the benign effects of ether or chloroform were known. These cases are not often referred to by the modern student of hypnotism. Nevertheless, they constitute a storehouse of well-observed facts which have an immense interest and value. It will thus be seen that throughout the whole history of hypnotism, under whatever name it has been studied, one of its chief features has been its power to relieve suffering and cure disease; and at the present day, while many physicians who are quite ignorant of its uses, in general terms deny its practicability, few who have any real knowledge of it are so unjust or regardless of facts as to deny its therapeutic effects. CHAPTER III. HYPNOTISM--PSYCHICAL ASPECT. As before remarked the phenomena of hypnotism may be viewed from two distinct standpoints--one, that from which the physical and especially the therapeutic features are most prominent, the standpoint from which we have already viewed the subject; the other is the psychical or mental aspect, which presents phenomena no less striking, and is the one which is especially attractive to the most earnest students of psychology. The hypnotic condition has been variously divided and subdivided by different students and different writers upon the subject; Charcot, for instance, makes three distinct states, which he designates (1) catalepsy, (2) lethargy, and (3) somnambulism, while Bernheim proposes five states, or, as he designates them, degrees of hypnotism, namely, (1) sleepiness, (2) light sleep, (3) deep sleep, (4) very deep sleep, (5) somnambulism. All these divisions are arbitrary and unnatural; Bernheim's five degrees have no definite limit or line of separation one from the other, and Charcot's condition of catalepsy is only lethargy or sleep in which the subject may, to a greater or less degree, maintain the position in which he is placed by his hypnotizer. There are, however, as already stated, two distinct and definite conditions, namely, (1) lethargy, or the inactive stage, and (2) somnambulism, or the alert stage, and if, in examining the subject, we make this simple division, we shall free it from much confusion and unnecessary verbiage. When a subject is hypnotized by any soothing process, he first experiences a sensation of drowsiness, and then in a space of time, usually varying from two to twenty minutes, he falls into a more or less profound slumber. His breathing is full and quiet, his pulse normal; he is unconscious of his surroundings; or possibly he may be quiet, restful, indisposed to move, but having a consciousness, probably dim and imperfect, of what is going on about him. This is the condition of lethargy, and in it most subjects, but not all, retain to a greater or less degree whatever position the hypnotizer imposes upon them; they sleep on, often maintaining what, under ordinary circumstances, would be a most uncomfortable position, for hours, motionless as a statue of bronze or stone. If, now, he speaks of his own accord, or his magnetizer speaks to him and he replies, he is in the somnambulic or alert stage. He may open his eyes, talk in a clear and animated manner; he may walk about, and show even more intellectual acuteness and physical activity than when in his normal state, or he may merely nod assent or answer slowly to his hypnotizer's questions; still, he is in the somnambulic or alert stage of hypnotism. The following are some of the phenomena which have been observed in this stage. It is not necessary to rehearse the stock performances of lecture-room hypnotists. While under the influence of hypnotic suggestion a lad, for instance, is made to go through the pantomime of fishing in an imaginary brook, a dignified man to canter around the stage on all fours, under the impression that he is a pony, or watch an imaginary mouse-hole in the most alert and interested manner while believing himself a cat; or the subject is made to take castor oil with every expression of delight, or reject the choicest wines with disgust, believing them to be nauseous drugs, or stagger with drunkenness under the influence of a glass of pure water, supposed to be whisky. All these things have been done over and over for the last forty years, and people have not known whether to consider them a species of necromancy or well-practiced tricks, in which the performers were accomplices, or, perhaps, a few more thoughtful and better-instructed people have looked upon them as involving psychological problems of the greatest interest, which might some day strongly influence all our systems of mental philosophy. But whether done by the mesmerist of forty years ago or the hypnotist of the past decade, they were identical in character, and were simply genuine examples of the great power of suggestion when applied to persons under the mesmeric or hypnotic influence. Such exhibitions, however, are unnecessary and undignified, if not positively degrading, to both subject and operator, whether given by the self-styled professor of the town-hall platform or the aspiring clinical professor of nervous diseases before his packed amphitheatre of admiring students. One of the most singular as well as important points in connection with hypnotism is the rapport or relationship which exists between the hypnotizer and the hypnotized subject. The manner in which the hypnotic sleep is induced is of little importance. The important thing, if results of any kind are to be obtained, is that rapport should be established. This relationship is exhibited in various ways. Generally, while in the hypnotic state, the subject hears no voice but that of his hypnotizer; he does no bidding but his, he receives no suggestions but from him, and no one else can awaken him from his sleep. If another person interferes, trying to impose his influence upon the sleeping subject, or attempts to waken him, distressing and even alarming results may appear. The degree to which this rapport exists varies greatly in different cases, but almost always, perhaps we should say always, the condition exists in some degree. In some rare cases this rapport is of a still higher and more startling character, exhibiting phenomena so contrary to, or rather, so far exceeding, our usual experience as to be a surprise to all and a puzzle to the wisest. One of these curious phenomena is well exhibited in what is known as community of sensation, or the perception by the subject of sensations experienced by the operator. The following experiment, observed by Mr. Gurney and Dr. Myers of the Society for Psychical Research, will illustrate this phase of the subject. The sensitive in this experiment is designated as Mr. C., and the operator as Mr. S. There was no contact or any communication whatsoever of the ordinary kind between them. C. was hypnotized, but was not informed of the nature of the experiment which was to be tried. The operator stood behind the hypnotized subject, and Mr. Gurney, standing behind the operator, handed him the different substances to be used in the experiment, and he, in turn, placed them in his own mouth. Salt was first so tasted by the operator, whereupon the subject, C., instantly and loudly cried out: "What's that salt stuff?" Sugar was given. C. replied, "Sweeter; not so bad as before." Powdered ginger; reply, "Hot, dries up your mouth; reminds me of mustard." Sugar given again; reply, "A little better--a sweetish taste." Other substances were tried, with similar results, the last one tasted being vinegar, when it was found that C. had fallen into the deeper lethargic condition and made no reply. Another experiment is reported by Dr. William A. Hammond of Washington. The doctor said: "A most remarkable fact is, that some few subjects of hypnotism experience sensations from impressions made upon the hypnotizer. Thus, there is a subject upon whom I sometimes operate whom I can shut up in a room with an observer, while I go into another closed room at a distance of one hundred feet or more with another observer. This one, for instance, scratches my hand with a pin, and instantly the hypnotized subject rubs his corresponding hand, and says, 'Don't scratch my hand so;' or my hair is pulled, and immediately he puts his hand to his head and says, 'Don't pull my hair;' and so on, feeling every sensation that I experience." This experiment, it must be borne in mind, is conducted in closed rooms a hundred feet apart, and through at least two partitions or closed doors, and over that distance and through these intervening obstacles peculiar and definite sensations experienced by one person are perceived and definitely described by another person, no ordinary means of communication existing between them. This is an example of the rapport existing between the operator and hypnotized subject carried to an unusual degree. The following experiments are examples of hypnotizing at a distance, or telepathic hypnotism, and while illustrating still further the rapport, or curious relationship, existing between hypnotizer and subject, are also illustrations of the rarer psychic phenomena of hypnotism. The first series of experiments is given by Prof. Pierre Janet of Havre and Dr. Gibert, a prominent physician of the same city. The subject was Mme. B., a heavy, rather stolid, middle-aged peasant woman, without any ambition for notoriety, or to be known as a sensitive; on the contrary, she disliked it, and the experiments were disagreeable to her. She was, however an excellent example of close rapport with her hypnotizer. While in the deep sleep, and perfectly insensible to ordinary stimuli, however violent, contact, or even the proximity of her hypnotizer's hand, caused contractures, which a light touch from him would also remove. No one else could produce the slightest effect. After about ten minutes in this deep trance she usually passed into the alert, or somnambulic stage, from which also no one but the operator could arouse her. Hypnotization was difficult or impossible unless the operator concentrated his thoughts upon the desired result, but by simply willing, without passes or any physical means whatsoever, the hypnotic condition could be quickly induced. Various experiments in simply willing post-hypnotic acts, without suggestion through any of the ordinary channels of communication, were also perfectly successful. Dr. Gibert then made three experiments in putting this subject to sleep when she was in another part of the town, a third of a mile away from the operator, and at a time fixed by a third person, the experiment also being wholly unexpected by the subject. On two of these occasions Prof. Janet found the subject in a deep trance ten minutes after the willing to sleep, and no one but Dr. Gibert, who had put her to sleep, could rouse her. In the third experiment the subject experienced the hypnotic influence and desire to sleep, but resisted it and kept herself awake by washing her hands in cold water. During a second series of experiments made with the same subject, several members of the Society for Psychical Research were present and took an active part in them. Apart from trials made in the same or an adjoining room, twenty-one experiments were made when the subject was at distances varying from one-half to three-fourths of a mile away from her hypnotizer. Of these, six were reckoned as failures, or only partial successes; there remained, then, fifteen perfect successes in which the subject, Mme. B., was found entranced fifteen minutes after the willing or mental suggestion. During one of these experiments, the subject was willed by Dr. Gibert to come through several intervening streets to him at his own house, which she accomplished in the somnambulic condition, and under the observation of Prof. Janet and several other physicians. Another series of experiments was made with another subject by Dr. Héricourt, one of Prof. Richet's coadjutors. The experiments included the gradual extension of the distance through which the willing power was successful, first to another room, then to another street, and a distant part of the city. One day, while attempting to hypnotize her in another street, three hundred yards distant, at 3 o'clock P. M., he was suddenly called away to attend a patient, and forgot all about his hypnotic subject. Afterward he remembered that he was to meet her at 4:30, and went to keep his appointment. But not finding her, he thought possibly the experiment, which had been interrupted might, after all, have proved successful. Upon this supposition, at 5 o'clock he willed her to awake. That evening, without being questioned at all, she gave the following account of herself: At 3 P. M. she was overcome by an irresistible desire to sleep, a most unusual thing for her at that hour. She went into an adjoining room, fell insensible upon a sofa, where she was afterward found by her servant, cold and motionless, as if dead. Attempts on the part of the servant to rouse her proved ineffectual, but gave her great distress. She woke spontaneously and free from pain at 5 o'clock. By no means the least interesting of the higher phenomena of hypnotism are post-hypnotic suggestions, or the fulfilment after waking of suggestions impressed upon the subject when asleep. A few summers ago at a little gathering of intelligent people, much interest was manifested and a general desire to see some hypnotic experiments. Accordingly, one of the ladies whose good sense and good faith could not be doubted, was hypnotized and put into the condition of profound lethargy. After a few slight experiments, exhibiting anæsthesia, hallucinations of taste, plastic pose, and the like, I said to her in a decided manner: "Now I am about to waken you. I will count five, and when I say the word 'five' you will promptly, but quietly and without any excitement, awake. Your mind will be perfectly clear, and you will feel rested and refreshed by your sleep. Presently you will approach Mrs. O., and will be attracted by the beautiful shell comb which she wears in her hair, and you will ask her to permit you to examine it." I then commenced counting slowly, and at the word "five" she awoke, opened her eyes promptly, looked bright and happy, and expressed herself as feeling comfortable and greatly rested, as though she had slept through a whole night. She rose from her chair, mingled with the company, and presently approaching Mrs. O., exclaimed: "What a beautiful comb! Please allow me to examine it." And suiting the action to the word, she placed her hand lightly on the lady's head, examined the comb, and expressed great admiration for it; in short, she fulfilled with great exactness the whole suggestion. She was perfectly unconscious that any suggestion had been made to her; she was greatly surprised to see that she was the centre of observation, and especially at the ripple of laughter which greeted her admiration of the comb. To another young lady, hypnotized in like manner, I suggested that on awaking she should approach the young daughter of our hostess, who was present, holding a favorite kitten in her arms, and should say to her, "What a pretty kitten you have! What is her name?" The suggestion was fulfilled to the letter. It was only afterward that I learned that this young lady had a very decided aversion to cats, and always avoided them if possible. Suggestions for post-hypnotic fulfilment are sometimes carried out after a considerable time has elapsed, and upon the precise day suggested. Bernheim, in August, 1883, suggested to S., an old soldier, while in the hypnotic sleep, that upon the 3d of October following, sixty-three days after the suggestion, he should go to Dr. Liébeault's house; that he would there see the President of the Republic, who would give to him a medal. Promptly on the day designated he went. Dr. Liébeault states that S. came at 12:50 o'clock; he greeted M. F., who met him at the door as he came in, and then went to the left side of the office without paying any attention to any one. Dr. Liébeault continues:-- "I saw him bow respectfully and heard him speak the word 'Excellence.' Just then he held out his right hand, and said, 'Thank your Excellence.' Then I asked him to whom he was speaking. 'Why, to the President of the Republic.' He then bowed, and a few minutes later took his departure." A patient of my own, a young man with whom I occasionally experiment, exhibits some of the different phases and phenomena of hypnotism in a remarkable manner. He goes quickly into the stage of profound lethargy; after allowing him to sleep a few moments, I say to him: "Now you can open your eyes and you can see and talk with me, but you are still asleep, and you will remember nothing." He opens his eyes at once, smiles, gets up and walks, and chats in a lively manner. If I say: "Now you are in the deep sleep again," and pass my hand downward before his eyes, immediately his eyes close and he is in a profound slumber. If five seconds later I again say, "Now you can open your eyes," he is again immediately in the alert stage. For experiment I then take half a dozen plain blank cards, exactly alike, and in one corner of one of the cards I put a minute dot, so that upon close inspection it can be recognized. Holding these in my hand, I say to him: "Here are six cards; five of them are blank, but this one (the one I have marked, he only seeing the plain side) has a picture of myself upon it. It is a particularly good picture, and I have had it prepared specially for this occasion. Do you see the picture?" "Of course I do," he replies. "What do you think of it?" I ask him. He looks at me carefully and compares my face with the suggested picture on the card and replies, "It is excellent." "Very well, give me the cards." He hands them to me and I shuffle and disarrange them as much as possible. I then show them to him, holding them in my hand, and say: "Now show me the card which has my picture upon it." He selects it at once. I only know it is correct by looking for the dot upon the back, which has all the while been kept carefully concealed from him. I then say to him: "Now, I am going to awaken you, and when awake you will come to the desk, select from the cards which I now place there the one which has my picture, and show it to me." He awakes at my counting when I reach the word five, as I have suggested to him. He remembers nothing of what has passed since he was hypnotized, but thinks he has had a long and delightful sleep. I sit at my desk; he walks up to it, examines the six cards which are lying there, selects one, and showing it to me, remarks, "There is your picture." It was the same marked card. On another occasion, while he was asleep and in the alert stage, Mrs. M. was present. I introduced her, and he spoke to her with perfect propriety. Afterward I said: "Now, I will awake you, but you will only see me. Mrs. M. you will not see at all." I then awoke him, as usual. He commenced talking to me in a perfectly natural and unrestrained manner. Mrs. M. stood by my side between him and myself, but he paid not the slightest attention to her; she then withdrew, and I remarked indifferently: "Wasn't it a little peculiar of you not to speak to Mrs. M. before she went out?" "Speak to Mrs. M!" he exclaimed, with evident surprise. "I did not know she had been in the room." One day when Drs. Liébeault and Bernheim were together at their clinic at the hospital, Dr. Liébeault suggested to a hypnotized patient that when she awoke she would no longer see Dr. Bernheim, but that she would recognize his hat, would put it on her head, and offer to take it to him. When she awoke, Dr. Bernheim was standing in front of her. She was asked: "Where is Dr. Bernheim?" She replied: "He is gone, but here is his hat." Dr. Bernheim then said to her, "Here I am, madam; I am not gone, you recognize me, perfectly." She was silent, taking not the slightest notice of him. Some one else addressed her; she replied with perfect propriety. Finally, when about to go out she took up Dr. Bernheim's hat, put it on her head, saying she would take it to him; but to her Dr. Bernheim was not present. To the number of curious phenomena, both physical and mental, connected with hypnotism, it is difficult to find a limit; a few others seem too important in their bearing upon the subject to be omitted, even in this hasty survey. Some curious experiments in the production of local anæsthesia were observed by the committee on mesmerism from the Society for Psychical Research. The subject was in his normal condition and blindfolded; his arms were then passed through holes in a thick paper screen, extending in front of him and far above his head, and his ten fingers were spread out upon a table. Two of the fingers were then silently pointed out by a third person to Mr. S., the operator, who proceeded to make passes over the designated fingers. Care was taken that such a distance was maintained between the fingers of the subject and operator that no contact was possible, and no currents of air or sensation of heat were produced by which the subject might possibly divine which of his fingers were the subject of experiment. In short, the strictest test conditions in every particular, were observed. After the passes had been continued for a minute, or even less time, the operator simply holding his own fingers pointed downward toward the designated fingers of the subject, the two fingers so treated were found to be perfectly stiff and insensible. A strong current of electricity, wounding with a pointed instrument, burning with a match--all failed to elicit the slightest sign of pain or discomfort, while the slightest injury to the unmagnetized fingers quickly elicited cries and protests. When told to double up his fist the two magnetized fingers remained rigid and immovable, and utterly refused to be folded up with the others. A series of one hundred and sixty experiments of this character was made with five different subjects. Of these, only seven were failures. In another series of forty-one experiments this curious fact was observed. In all these experiments the operator, while making the passes in the same manner and under the same conditions as in the former series, silently willed that the effect should not follow; that is, that insensibility and rigidity should not occur. In thirty-six of these experiments insensibility did not occur; in five cases the insensibility and rigidity occurred--in two cases perfectly, in three imperfectly. That some quality is imparted even to inanimate objects by some mesmerizers, by passes or handling, through which a sensitive or subject is able to recognize and select that object from among many others, seems to be a well-established fact. The following experiments are in point:-- A gentleman well known to the committee of investigation, and who was equally interested with it in securing reliable results, was selected as a subject. He was accustomed to be hypnotized by the operator, but in the present case he remained perfectly in his normal condition. One member of the committee took the subject into a separate room on another floor and engaged him closely in conversation. The operator remained with other members of the committee. Ten small miscellaneous articles, such as a piece of sealing wax, a penknife, paperweight, card-case, pocketbook, and similar articles were scattered upon a table. One was designated by the committee, over which the mesmerist made passes, sometimes with light contact. This was continued for one or two minutes, and when the process was completed the mesmerist was conducted out and to a third room. The articles were then rearranged in a manner quite different from that in which they had been left by the operator, and the subject from the floor above was brought into the room. The several objects were then examined by the sensitive, who upon taking the mesmerized object in his hand, immediately recognized it as the one treated by his mesmerizer. The experiment was then varied by using ten small volumes exactly alike. One volume was selected by the committee, over which the operator simply made passes with out any contact whatsoever. Three or four other volumes of the set were also handled and passes made over them by a member of the committee. The operator then being excluded, the sensitive was brought in and immediately selected the magnetized volume. This he did four times in succession. In reply to the question as to how he was able to distinguish the magnetized object from others, he said that when he took the right object in his hand he experienced a mild tingling sensation. My own experiments with magnetized water have presented similar results. The water was treated by simply holding the fingers of both hands brought together in a clump, for about a minute just over the cup of water, but without any contact whatsoever. This water was then given to the subject without her knowing that she was taking part in an experiment; but alternating it or giving it irregularly with water which had not been so treated, and given by a third person, in every case the magnetized water was at once detected with great certainty. In describing the sensation produced by the magnetized water one patient said the sensation was an agreeable warmth and stimulation upon the tongue, another that it was a "sparkle" like aerated water; it sparkled in her mouth and all the way down into her stomach. Such are a few among the multitude of facts and phenomena relating to hypnotism. They suffice to settle and make sure some matters which until lately have been looked upon as questionable, and, on the other hand, they bring into prominence others of the greatest interest which demand further study. Among the subjects which may be considered established may be placed, (1) The reality of the hypnotic condition. (2) The increased and unusual power of suggestion over the hypnotized subject. (3) The usefulness of hypnotism as a therapeutic agent. (4) The perfect reality and natural, as contrasted with supernatural, character of many wonderful phenomena, both physical and psychical, exhibited in the hypnotic state. On the other hand, much remains for future study; (1) The exact nature of the influence which produces the hypnotic condition is not known. (2) Neither is the nature of the rapport or peculiar relationship which exists between the hypnotizer and the hypnotized subject--a relationship which is sometimes so close that the subject hears no voice but that of his hypnotizer, perceives and experiences the same sensations of taste, touch, and feeling generally as are experienced by him, and can be awakened only by him. (3) Nor is it known by what peculiar process suggestion is rendered so potent, turning, for the time being, at least, water into wine, vulgar weeds into choicest flowers, a lady's drawing-room into a fishpond, and clear skies and quiet waters into lightning-rent storm-clouds and tempest-tossed waves; turning laughter into sadness, and tears into mirth. In dealing with the subject of hypnotism in this hasty and general way, only such facts and phenomena have been presented as are well known and accepted by well-informed students of the subjects. Others still more wonderful will later claim our attention. CHAPTER IV. LUCIDITY OR CLAIRVOYANCE. While there is doubtless a recognized standard of normal perception, yet the acuteness with which sensations are perceived by different individuals, even in ordinary health, passes through a wide scale of variation, both above and below this standard. The difference in the ability to see and recognize natural objects, signs, and indications, between the ordinary city denizen and, for instance, the American Indian or the white frontiersman, hunter, or scout, is something marvellous. So, also, regarding the power to distinguish colors. One person may not be able to distinguish even the simple or primary colors, as, for example, red from blue or green, while the weavers of Central or Eastern Asia distinguish with certainty two hundred or three hundred shades which are entirely undistinguishable to ordinary Western eyes. So of sound. One ear can hardly be said to make any distinction whatever regarding pitch, while to another the slightest variation is perfectly perceptible. Some even do not hear at all sounds above or below a certain pitch; some persons of ordinary hearing within a certain range of pitch, nevertheless, have never heard the song of the canary bird, and perhaps have lived through a large portion of their lives without even knowing that it was a song-bird at all. Its song was above the range of their hearing. Some never hear the sound of the piccolo, or octave flute, while others miss entirely the lowest notes of the organ. There is the same great difference in perception by touch, taste, and smell. In certain conditions of disease, accompanied by great depression of the vital forces, this deviation from normal perception is greatly increased. I have had a patient who presented the following briefly-outlined phenomena:-- After a long illness, during which other interesting psychical phenomena were manifested, as convalescence progressed, I had occasion to notice instances of supernormal perception, and to test it I made use of the following expedient: Taking an old-fashioned copper cent, I carefully enveloped it in a piece of ordinary tissue paper. This was then covered by another and then another, until the coin had acquired six complete envelopes of the paper, and formed a little flat parcel, easily held in the palm of my hand. Taking this with me, I visited my patient. She was lying upon a sofa, and as I entered the room I took a chair and sat leisurely down beside her, having the little package close in the palm of my right hand. I took her right hand in mine in such a manner that the little package was between our hands in close contact with her palm as well as my own. I remarked upon the weather and commenced the routine duty of feeling her pulse with my left hand. A minute or two was then passed in banter and conversation, designed to thoroughly engage her attention, when all at once she commenced to wipe her mouth with her handkerchief and to spit and sputter with her tongue and lips, as if to rid herself of some offensive taste or substance. She then looked up suspiciously at me and said: "I wonder what you are doing with me now." Then suddenly pulling her hand away from mine she exclaimed: "I know what it is; you have put a nasty piece of copper in my hand." Through all these coverings the coppery emanation from the coin had penetrated her system, reached her tongue, and was perceptible to her supernormal taste. This patient could distinguish with absolute certainty "mesmerized" water from that which had not been so treated; my finger, also, pointed at her even at a distance and when her back was turned to me caused convulsive action, and the same result followed when the experiment was made through a closed door, and when she did not suspect that I was in the neighborhood. It will be seen, then, how marvellously the action of certain senses may be exalted by long and careful training on the one hand, and suddenly by disease on the other. We have seen, moreover, how some persons known as sensitives are able to receive impressions by thought-transference so as to name cards, repeat words and fictitious names, both of persons and places, merely thought of but not spoken by another person known as the agent or operator, and to draw diagrams unmistakably like those formed in the mind or intently looked upon by the agent. We have also seen how the hypnotized or mesmerized subject is able to detect objects which have only been touched or handled by the mesmerizer, and even to feel pain inflicted upon him, and recognize by taste substances put in the mesmerizer's mouth. It will be seen, then, that not only increased but entirely supernormal perception on the part of some individuals is a well-established fact. But all these conditions of increased power of perception, and especially thought-transference, must be carefully distinguished from independent clairvoyance. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the method or philosophy of clairvoyance, but simply to call attention to well-authenticated facts illustrating the exercise of this power, and to briefly point to the current theories regarding it. A belief in supernormal perception, and especially in the clairvoyant vision, is apparent in the history, however meagre it may be, of every ancient nation. Hebrew history is full of instances of it. A striking example is recorded as occurring during the long war between Syria and Israel. The King of Syria had good reasons for suspecting that in some manner the King of Israel was made acquainted with all his intended military operations, since he was always prepared to thwart them at every point. Accordingly he called together his chiefs and demanded to know who it was among them who thus favored the King of Israel, to which one of the chiefs replied: "It is none of thy servants, O King: but Elisha, a prophet that is in Israel, telleth the King of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy chamber." Pythagoras, a century before the time of Socrates, found this faculty believed in, and made use of in Egypt, Babylon, and India, and he himself, as the founder of the early Greek philosophy and culture, practised and taught the esoteric as well as the exoteric methods of acquiring knowledge, and he is credited with having acquired by esoteric methods--internal or mental perception and clairvoyant vision--a knowledge of the true theory of the solar system as expounded and demonstrated in a later day by Copernicus. As an example of responses by the Greek oracles, take the experience of Croesus, the rich King of Lydia. He sent messengers to ascertain if the Pythoness could tell what he, the King of Lydia, was doing on a certain specified day. The answer came:-- "I number the sands--I fathom the sea. I hear the dumb--I know the thoughts of the silent. There cometh to me the odor of lamb's flesh. It is seething, mixed with the flesh of a tortoise. Brass is beneath it, and brass is also above it." The messenger returned and delivered the reply, when he found that Croesus, in order to do something most unlikely to be either guessed or discovered, had cut in pieces a lamb and a tortoise, and seethed them together in a brazen vessel having a brazen cover. Apollonius Tyaneus, a Pythagorian philosopher and chief of a school of philosophy which was the predecessor of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, is credited with most remarkable clairvoyant powers. Many instances of this faculty are recorded and believed upon the best of ancient authority. One instance relates to the assassination of Domitian. Apollonius was in the midst of a discourse at Ephesus, when suddenly he stopped as though having lost his train of thought. After a moment's hesitation, to the astonishment of his auditors, he cried out: "Strike! strike the tyrant." Seeing the surprise of the people he explained that at the very moment at which he had stopped in his discourse the tyrant was slain. Subsequent information proved that Domitian, the reigning tyrant, was assassinated at that very moment. Ancient historians, philosophers and poets all unite in defending the truth of the oracles and their power of perceiving events transpiring at a distance, and also of foreseeing those in the future. Herodotus gives more than seventy examples of oracular responses, dreams and portents which he affirms were literally fulfilled. Livy gives more than fifty, Cicero many striking cases; and Xenophon, Plato, Tacitus, Suetonius, and a host of other writers all give evidence in the same direction. Now whether these responses and visions were, as all these intelligent people supposed, from a supernatural source, or as we shall endeavor to show, had their origin in certain faculties naturally appertaining to the mind, and which at certain times and under certain favorable circumstances came into activity, it certainly shows that the most intelligent men amongst all the most cultivated nations of the past have been firm believers in the reality of clairvoyance. Coming down to later times, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Frederica Hauffé, the seeress of Proverst, were marked examples of the clairvoyant faculty. Some have affected to discredit Swedenborg's clairvoyant powers, but apart from his revelations regarding a spiritual world, which, of course, it is at present impossible to substantiate, whatever may be our belief regarding them, if human testimony is to be regarded of any value whatever in matters of this kind, the following oft-told incident should be counted as established for a verity. On a Saturday afternoon in September, 1756, Swedenborg arrived in Gottenburg from England. Gottenburg is three hundred miles from Stockholm, which was the home of Swedenborg. On the same evening he was the guest of Mr. William Castel, with fifteen other persons, who were invited to meet him, and who, on that account, may be supposed to have been of more than ordinary consequence and intelligence. About six o'clock Swedenborg seemed preoccupied and restless. He went out into the street, but soon returned, anxious and disturbed. He said that at that moment a great fire was raging at Stockholm. He declared that the house of one of his friends was already destroyed, and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock he announced that the fire was arrested only three doors from his own house. The information, and the peculiar manner in which it was imparted, created a great sensation, not only in the company assembled at Mr. Castel's, but throughout the city. On Sunday morning the governor sent for Swedenborg, who gave him a detailed account of the conflagration and the course it had pursued. On Monday, the third day, a courier arrived from Stockholm, who also gave the governor a detailed account of the fire, which agreed in every respect with that already given by Swedenborg. Nearly a century after Swedenborg, lived Mme. Hauffé, known as the seeress of Proverst. She died in 1829 at the age of twenty-eight years. As a child she exhibited peculiar psychical tendencies, but it was only during the last six years of her life, and after exhausting illnesses, that her peculiar clairvoyant powers were conspicuously developed. Justinus Kerner, an eminent physician and man of letters, was her attending physician during the last three years of her life, and afterward became her biographer. She first came under his care at Weinsberg in 1826. At that time her debility was excessive, and nearly every day she fell spontaneously into the somnambulic condition, became clairvoyant, and related her visions. On the day of her arrival at Weinsberg, having gone into this trance condition, she sent for Kerner but he refused to see her until she awoke. He then told her that he would never see her nor listen to her while she was in this abnormal state. I mention this simply to show that her physician was not then at all in sympathy with her regarding her peculiar psychological condition, though afterward he became thoroughly convinced of its genuineness and of her honesty. He relates the following incident, which, with many others, came under his own observation:-- Soon after her arrival at Weinsberg, and while still a perfect stranger to her surroundings, while in her somnambulic condition, she said that a man was near her and desired to speak with her, but that she could not understand what he wanted to say. She said he squinted terribly, and that his presence disturbed her, and she desired him to go away. On his second appearance, some weeks later, she said he brought with him a sheet of paper with figures upon it, and that he came up from a vault directly underneath her room. As a matter of fact, the wine vaults of Mr. F., a wine merchant doing business the next door, extended under Mme. Hauffé's apartment, and Kerner, who was an old resident of the place, recognized from the seeress's description of her visitor a man who formerly was in Mr. F.'s employ as manager and bookkeeper. This man had died six years before, and had left something wrong with his accounts--in fact, there was a deficit of 1,000 florins, and the manager's private book was missing. The widow had been sued for the amount, and the matter was still unsettled. Again and again did this apparition come to Mme. Hauffé, bringing his paper and entreating her to interest herself in this affair. He declared that the necessary paper to clear up the whole matter was in a building sixty paces from her bed. Mme. Hauffé said that in that building she saw a tall gentleman engaged in writing in a small room, which opened into a large one where there was a desk and chests; that one of the chests was open, and that on the desk was a pile of papers, among which she recognized the missing document. The wine merchant, being present, recognized the office of the chief bailiff, who had the business in charge. Kerner went at once to the office and found everything as described, but, not finding the missing paper, concluded that her clairvoyance was at fault. Mme. Hauffé, in her description of the paper said it had columns of figures upon it, and at the bottom was the number 80. Kerner prepared a paper corresponding to this description, and at the next séance presented it to her as the missing document. But she at once rejected it, saying the paper was still where she had before seen it. On renewing the search the paper was found as described, and the bailiff was to bring it on the following day. He came accordingly. In her sleep, the seeress exclaimed: "The paper is no longer in its place, but this is wonderful. The paper which the man always has in his hand lies open. Now I can read more: 'To be carried to my private book,' and that is what he always points to." The bailiff was astonished, for instead of bringing the paper with him as Kerner had directed, he had left it lying open on his desk. All these things are attested by the bailiff, the wine merchant, Kerner, and others who witnessed them. Kerner himself visited the seeress more than a thousand times, and although during the first part of his observations he was skeptical, he was never able to detect her in the slightest attempt at deception. She was in no way elated over her peculiar power, on the contrary, she disliked to speak of it, and would gladly have been free from it altogether. Her clairvoyant powers were tested by hundreds of excellent observers during the last four years of her life. The case of Alexis, the noted French somnambulist and clairvoyant, is worthy of notice here. I remember very well the account of a séance at a gathering of prominent Americans in Paris in 1853, of which the following is an abstract:-- Thick masses of cotton were bound firmly over his eyes in such a manner as to render it impossible for him to see in the ordinary way, and in this condition he described pictures, read signatures of letters folded in several envelopes, played games of cards with almost uniform success, and, being asked to select the best pianist in the room from a number present, who simply presented their hands for his inspection, he quickly selected a young man not yet eighteen years old, who had won four first prizes at the Conservatoire, and was really the best pianist of his age in Europe. In playing cards he picked up the trick with a rapidity and certainty which showed how clearly he knew the position of the cards upon the table. Keeping those dealt to him in his left hand he held the card he intended to play in his right, and never once changed the card upon the play of his partner. He knew his adversary's hand as well as his own. The writer adds: "The cards used were bought by myself, half an hour before, so that any suspicion of prepared cards would be idle and absurd." It remains to note some more recent instances reported by persons well known and specially qualified to judge of their truthfulness and value. The first case which I will present is embodied in a report "On the Evidence of Clairvoyance," by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, wife of Prof. Sidgwick, formerly president of the Society for Psychical Research. It was furnished by Dr. Elliott Coues of Washington, D. C., where the incident occurred, and was afterward investigated by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, secretary of the society. Both the persons participating in the incident were well known to Prof. Coues, and were both persons of prominence, one, Mrs. C., being well known as a writer and lecturer, and the other, designated as Mrs. B., was well known for her rare psychic faculties and her absolute integrity. The incidents of the case are simple and unimportant, but they have a special value on account of their clearness, freedom from the possibility of external suggestion, and the well known ability and integrity of the reporter. The following are the points in the case:-- In Washington, D. C., January 14, 1889, between 2 and 3 o'clock P. M., Mrs. C., having been engaged in writing in the Congressional Library, left the building at 2:40 o'clock, and one or two minutes later was at her residence, in Delaware Avenue, carrying her papers in her hand. In ascending the steps leading from the street to the front yard she stumbled and fell. She was not hurt, but "picked herself up" and went into the house. About the same hour, certainly between 2 and 3 o'clock, Mrs. B., sitting sewing in her room a mile and a half away, sees the occurrence in all its details. The ladies are friends. They had met the day previous, but not since. The vision is wholly a surprise to Mrs. B. Nevertheless, it is so vivid that she at once sits down and writes to Mrs. C., describing minutely the occurrence, which letter Mrs. C. receives the next morning with much surprise. The following is an extract from the letter:-- "I was sitting in my room sewing this afternoon about 2 o'clock, when what should I see but your own dear self--but heavens! in what a position! You were falling up the front steps in the yard. "You had on your black skirt and velvet waist, your little straw bonnet, and in your hand were some papers. When you fell, your hat went in one direction and your papers in another. You very quickly put on your bonnet, picked up your papers, and lost no time in getting into the house. You did not appear to be hurt, but looked somewhat mortified. It was all so plain to me that I had ten notions to one to dress myself and come over and see if it were true, but finally concluded that a sober, industrious woman like yourself would not be stumbling around at that rate, and thought I'd best not go on a wild-goose chase. "Now, what do you think of such a vision as that? Is there any possible truth in it? I feel almost ready to scream with laughter whenever I think of it; you did look too funny spreading yourself out in the front yard. 'Great was the fall thereof.' I can distinctly call to mind the house in which you live, but for the life of me I cannot tell whether there are any steps from the sidewalk into the yard, as I saw them, or not." In answer to Mr. Myers' letter of inquiry to Mrs. C., she says that the incident was described exactly--the dress as correctly as she could have described it herself. There were two steps from the sidewalk to the yard, and it was on the top one of these two steps that Mrs. C. stumbled. The manner of the fall, the behavior of the bonnet and papers, and her own sensations were all correctly described. The next case--also embodied in the same report and examined in the same careful manner by Mr. Myers--was the exhibition of clairvoyant powers by a woman called Jane, the wife of a pitman in the County of Durham, in England. She received no fees and was averse to being experimented with for fear of being ridiculed or called a witch by her associates. She was a particularly refined woman for one of her class, sweet, gentle, with delicately cut features, religious and conscientious to a remarkable degree. She was a marked example of those who, in the trance condition, could not be induced by suggestion to do a wrong or a mean act, or one which she would consider wrong in her normal state. In her sleep she was anæsthetic, felt herself quite on an equality with the operator, always spoke of herself as "we," and of her normal self as "that girl." The following instance of her clairvoyance was furnished by Dr. F., who knew her well for many years, and is from notes taken at the time:-- On the morning of the day fixed for the experiment the doctor arranged with a patient in a neighboring village that he should be in a particular room between the hours of 8 and 10 in the evening. The patient was just recovering from a severe illness and was weak and very thin and emaciated. This gentleman and the doctor were the only persons who knew anything of the arrangement or the proposed experiment. After having secured the proper somnambulic condition in the subject, Dr. F. directed her attention to the house where his patient was supposed to be awaiting the experiment, as arranged. She entered the house, described correctly the rooms passed through, in one of which she mentioned a lady with black hair lying on a sofa, but no gentleman. The doctor's report then goes on as follows:-- "After a little she described the door opening and asked with a tone of great surprise: "'Is that a man?' "I replied, 'Yes; is he thin or fat?' "'Very fat,' she answered; 'but has the gentleman a cork leg?' "I assured her that he had not, and tried to puzzle her still more about him. She, however, persisted in her statement that he was very fat, and said that he had a great 'corporation,' and asked me whether I did not think such a fat man must eat and drink a great deal to get such a corporation as that. She also described him as sitting by the table with papers beside him, and a glass of brandy and water. "'Is it not wine?' I asked. "'No,' she said, 'It's brandy.' "'Is it not whisky or rum?' "'No, it is brandy,' was the answer; 'and now,' she continued,'the lady is going to get her supper, but the fat gentleman does not take any.' "I requested her to tell me the color of his hair, but she only replied that the lady's hair was dark. I then inquired if he had any brains in his head, but she seemed altogether puzzled about him, and only said she could not see any. I then asked her if she could see his name upon any of the papers lying about. She replied, 'Yes;' and upon my saying that the name began with E, she spelled each letter of the name, "Eglinton." "I was so convinced that I had at last detected her in a complete mistake that I arose and declined proceeding further in the experiment, stating that, although her description of the house and the name of the person was correct, in everything connected with the gentleman himself she had told the exact opposite of the truth. "On the following morning Mr. E., my patient, asked me the result of the experiment. He had found himself unable to sit up so late, he said, but wishful fairly to test the powers of the clairvoyante, he had ordered his clothes to be stuffed into the form of a human figure, and, to make the contrast more striking, he had an extra pillow pushed into the clothes, so as to form a 'corporation.' This figure had been placed by the table in a sitting position and a glass of brandy and water and the newspapers placed beside it. The name, he said, was spelled correctly, though up to that time I had been in the habit of writing it 'Eglington' instead of 'Eglinton.'" Dr. Alfred Backman of Kolmar, Sweden, a corresponding member of the Society for Psychical Research and a good practical hypnotist has had unusually good fortune in finding clairvoyants among his own patients in that northern country. Two in particular, Anna Samuelson and Alma Redberg, gave most excellent examples of clairvoyant vision, describing rooms, surroundings, persons, and also events which were at the moment transpiring, though quite unknown and unsuspected by any one present at the experiment. Several of these cases are included in Mrs. Sidgwick's report. Instead of these cases, however, I prefer to adduce an instance or two reported by Dr. Dufay, a reputable physician of Blois and subsequently a senator of France. The cases were first reported to the French _Société de Psychologie Physiologique_, which was presided over by Charcot, and published in the _Revue Philosophique_ for September, 1888. Dr. Gerault, a friend of Dr. Dufay, had a maid-servant named Marie, who was a natural _somnambule_, but who was also frequently hypnotized by Dr. Gerault. Dr. Dufay witnessed the following experiments:-- Being hypnotized, Marie was describing to a young lady soon to be married, some characteristics of her lover, much to the amusement of the lady, who was clapping her hands and laughing merrily. Suddenly, almost with the rapidity of lightning, the scene changed from gay to grave. The somnambulist panted for breath, tears flowed down her face, and perspiration bathed her brow. She seemed ready to fall, and called on Dr. Gerault for assistance. "What is the matter, Marie?" said the doctor; "from what are you suffering?" "Ah, sir!" said she; "ah, sir! how terrible! he is dead!" "Who is dead? Is it one of my patients?" "Limoges, the ropemaker--you know, in the Crimea--he has just died. Poor folks--poor folks!" "Come, come, my child," said the doctor, "you are dreaming--it is only a bad dream." "A dream," replied the somnambulist. "But I am not asleep. I see him--he has just drawn his last breath. Poor boy! Look at him." And she pointed with her hand, as if to direct attention to the scene which was so vivid before her. At the same time she would have run away, but hardly had she risen to go when she fell back, unable to move. It was a long time before she became calm, but, on coming to herself, she had no recollection of anything which had occurred. Some time after, Limoges senior received news of the death of his son. It occurred near Constantinople on the same day that Marie had witnessed it in her clairvoyant vision. On another occasion there was a séance at which ten or twelve persons were present. Marie was put to sleep and had told the contents of several pockets and sealed packages prepared for the purpose. Dr. Dufay came in late purposely, so as to be as much out of rapport with her as possible. He had just received a letter from an officer in Algiers, stating that he had been very ill with dysentery from sleeping under canvas during the rainy season. This letter he had placed in a thick envelope, without address or postmark, and carefully stuck down the edges. This again was placed in another dark envelope and closed in like manner. No one but himself knew of the existence of this letter. Unobserved, he passed the letter to a lady present, indicating that it was to be given to Dr. Gerault, who received it without knowing from whom it came, and placed it in Marie's hand. "What have you in your hand?" asked the doctor. "A letter." "To whom is it directed?" "To M. Dufay." "By whom?" "A military gentleman whom I do not know." "Of what does he write?" "He is ill--he writes of his illness." "Can you name his illness?" "Oh, yes; very well. It is like the old woodcutter's of Mesland, who is not yet well." "I understand; it is dysentery. Now listen, Marie. It would give M. Dufay much pleasure if you would go and see his friend, the military gentleman, and find out how he is at present." "Oh, it is too far; it would be a long journey." "But we are waiting for you. Please go without losing time." (A long pause.) "I cannot go on; there is water, a lot of water." "And you do not see any bridge?" "Of course there is no bridge." "Perhaps there is a boat to cross in, as there is to cross the Loire at Chaumont." "Boats--yes--but this Loire is a regular flood; it frightens me." "Come, come; take courage--embark." (A long silence, agitation, pallor, nausea.) "Have you arrived?" "Nearly; but I am much fatigued, and I do not see any people on shore." "Land and go on; you will soon find some one." "There, now I see some people--they are all women, dressed in white. But that is queer--they all have beards." "Go to them and ask where you will find the military gentleman." (After a pause.) "They do not speak as we do--and I have been obliged to wait while they called a little boy with a red cap, who understands me. He leads me on, slowly, because we are walking in sand. Ah! there is the military gentleman. He has red trousers and an officer's cap. But he is so very thin and ill. What a pity he has not some of your medicine!" "What does he say caused his illness?" "He shows me his bed--three planks on pickets--over wet sand." "Thanks. Advise him to go to the hospital, and now return to Blois." The letter was then opened and read to the company and caused no little astonishment. Remarkable instances of clairvoyance have not been frequently reported in America. Nevertheless, well-authenticated cases are by no means wanting. Dr. S. B. Brittan, in his book entitled "Man and His Relations," relates several such cases. The following came under his own observation:-- In the autumn of 1855 he saw Mr. Charles Baker of Michigan, who, while out on a hunting excursion, had been accidentally shot by his companion. The charge passed through his pocket, demolishing several articles and carrying portions of the contents of the pocket deep into the fleshy part of his thigh. The accident was of a serious character, causing extreme suffering, great debility, and emaciation, lasting several months, as well as much anxiety regarding his ultimate recovery. He was in this low condition when seen by Dr. Brittan. The doctor soon after returned East, and called on Mrs. Metler of Hartford, with whose clairvoyant power he was familiar, and requested her to examine into the condition of a young man who had been shot. No information was given as to his residence, condition, or the circumstances attending the accident. She directly found the patient, described the wound, and declared that there was a piece of copper still in the wound, and that he would not recover until it was removed. Young Baker, however, was sure he had no copper in his pocket at the time of the accident; the medical attendant found no indications of it, so it was concluded that the clairvoyant had made a mistake. Later, however, a foreign substance made its appearance in the wound, and was removed by the mother of the patient with a pair of embroidery scissors; it proved to be a copper cent. The removal of the foreign substance was followed by rapid recovery. The discovery of the copper coin was made by the clairvoyant while at a distance of nearly one thousand miles from the patient. Mrs. H. Porter, while at her home in Bridgeport, Conn., in the presence of the same writer, declared that a large steamer was on fire on the Hudson River; that among other objects in the vicinity she could clearly distinguish the village of Yonkers, and that the name of the steamer was the Henry Clay. The whole sad catastrophe was described by her with minuteness, as if occurring in her immediate presence. The next morning the New York papers gave a full account of the burning of the Henry Clay off the village of Yonkers--an occurrence which, doubtless, some of my readers may still remember--corresponding in every important particular with that given by the clairvoyant. Mr. John Fitzgerald of Brunswick, Me., once a somewhat noted temperance lecturer, but at the time now referred to a bedridden invalid, saw, clairvoyantly, and fully described the great fire in Fall River, Mass., in 1874, by which a large factory was destroyed. He described the commencement and progress of the fire, the means employed to rescue the operatives, criticised the work of the firemen, shouted directions, as if he were present, and at last as the roof fell in, he fell back upon the pillow and said: "It is all over--the roof has fallen, and those poor people are burned." It was not until three days later that Mrs. Fitzgerald obtained a paper containing an account of the fire. This she read to her husband, who frequently interrupted her to tell her what would come next as "he had seen it all." The account corresponded almost exactly with the description given by Mr. Fitzgerald while the fire was in progress. I have, myself, recently found a very excellent subject whom I will call A. B., whom I first hypnotized on account of illness, but who afterward proved to have psychic perception and clairvoyant powers of a remarkable character. Once, while in the hypnotic condition, I asked her if she could go away and see what was transpiring in other places, as for instance, at her own home. She replied that she would try. I then told her to go to her home, in a small town three hundred miles away and quite unknown to me, and see who was in the house and what they were doing. After a minute of perfect silence she said: "I am there." "Go in," I said, "and tell me what you find." She said: "There is no one at home but my mother. She is sitting in the dining-room by a window; there is a screen in the window which was not there when I left home. My mother is sewing." "What sort of sewing is it?" I asked. "It is a waist for D." (her little brother). I wrote down every detail of her description, and then awoke her. She had no recollection of anything which had transpired, but said she had had a restful sleep. I then desired her to write at once to her mother and ask who was in the house at four o'clock this same afternoon, where she was, and what she was doing. The answer came, describing everything exactly as set down in my notes. On another occasion when I made my visit, it happened to be the day of the races occurring at a well known track some ten miles away, and members of the household where she was residing had gone to witness them. Neither she nor I had ever attended these races--we knew nothing of the appearance of the place, of the events that were expected, nor even of the ordinary routine of the sport. She was put into the deep hypnotic sleep, and thinking it a good opportunity to test her clairvoyance, I requested her to go to the grounds and I carefully directed her on her journey. Once within the inclosure she described the bright and cheerful appearance--the pavilion, the judge's stand, and the position of persons whom she knew. She said there was no race at the time; but that boys were going around among the spectators and getting money; that the people seemed excited; that they stood up and held out money, and beckoned to the boys to come--but she did not know what it meant. I suggested that perhaps they were betting. She seemed to look carefully and then said: "That is just what they are doing." She then described the race which followed, was much excited, and told who of the persons she knew were winners. I then said: "You will remember all this and be able to tell M. when she comes home." It was found that everything had transpired as she had described. One of the races had been a failure, the horses coming in neck and neck; all bets were cancelled and new bets were made, which caused the excitement which she had witnessed. She surprised those who were present by the accuracy of her description, both of the place and the events, especially of the excitement caused by making the new bets. On the same occasion, before awakening her, I said to her: "Now, I have something very particular to say to you and I want you to pay close attention. "This evening when your dinner is brought up to you--you, A. B.'s second self, will make A. B. see me come in and stand here at the foot of the bed. I shall say to you: 'Hello! you are at dinner. Well, I won't disturb you,' and immediately I shall go. And you will write me about my visit." I then awoke her in the usual manner. This was Tuesday, July 3, 1894. On Thursday following I received this note, which I have in my possession. "DEAR DR. MASON:-- "As I was eating my dinner on Tuesday I heard some one say 'Good-evening.' I turned around surprised, as I had heard no one enter the room, and there at the foot of the bed I saw _you_. "I said 'Halloo! won't you sit down?' you said: 'Are you taking your dinner? Then I won't detain you,' and before I could detain you, you disappeared as mysteriously as you had come. Why did you leave so suddenly? Were you angry? Mary, the nurse, says you were not here at all at dinner-time. I say you were. Which of us is right? "Sincerely, "A. B." (Full name signed.) The clairvoyant faculty is sometimes exercised in sleep, and hence the importance so often attached to dreams. I have a patient, Miss M. L., thirty-five years of age, who has been under my observation for the past fifteen years, and for whose truthfulness and good sense I can fully vouch. From childhood she has been a constant and most troublesome somnambulist, walking almost every night, until two years ago when I first hypnotized her and suggested that she should not again leave her bed while asleep, and she has not done so. This person's dreams are marvellously vivid, but her most vivid ones she does not call dreams. She says, "When I dream I dream, but when I see I see." Nine years ago, M. L., had a friend in New Mexico whom I will call G., from whom she had not heard for months, and of whose surroundings she knew absolutely nothing. One night she dreamed, or, as she expresses it, _saw_ this friend in Albuquerque. She was, as it seemed to her, present in the room where he was, and saw everything in it with the same degree of distinctness as though she were actually present. She noticed the matting on the floor, the willowware furniture, bed, rocking-chair, footstool, and other articles. He was talking with a companion, a person of very striking appearance, whom she also minutely observed as regarded personal appearance, dress, and position in the room. He was saying to this companion that he was about to start for New York for the purpose of interesting capitalists in a system of irrigation which he had proposed. His companion was laughing sarcastically and ridiculing the whole scheme. He persisted, and the conversation was animated--almost bitter. Three weeks later, early one morning, she dreamed that this man was in New York. She saw him coming up the street leading to her house, and saw her father go forward to meet him. At breakfast she told her father her dream, and they also talked freely about her former dream or vision of three weeks before. After breakfast her father sat upon the front stoop reading the morning paper, and M. L. went about some work. Suddenly she heard her father call out in a startled sort of way: "Mary, sure enough, here comes G.!" She stepped to the window and there was G. coming up the street and her father going forward to meet him exactly as she had seen him in her dream. He had just arrived from the West, and had come for the very purpose indicated by his conversation in M. L.'s vision. After some general conversation M. L. said to G.; "By the way, who was that remarkable person you were talking with about this journey, three weeks ago?" mentioning the night of her dream. With evident surprise he said: "What do you mean?" She then related the whole dream just as she had experienced it, even to the minutest details. His astonishment was profound. He declared that the details which she gave could never have been so exactly described except by some one actually present; and with some annoyance he accused her of playing the spy. There are many other instances of remarkable clairvoyant vision on her part, and especially two which have occurred within the year--the visions having been fully described before the events were known. Such are a few among hundreds of cases which might be adduced as examples of the clairvoyant power. They are from every period of history, from the earliest down to our own times. Looked at broadly, they at least show that a belief in the clairvoyant power of some specially endowed persons has existed throughout the historic period; they also exhibit a great similarity in their character and the circumstances under which they are observed. Apollonius stops short in his discourse, apparently in his natural state, sees the assassination of Domitian, and shouts, "Strike the tyrant!" Fitzgerald at Brunswick suddenly beholds the burning factories at Fall River, and shouts his orders to the firemen. Others spontaneously go into the somnambulic condition and only then become clairvoyant; while still others need the assistance of a second person to produce somnambulism and independent vision. What is the nature and what the method of this peculiar vision which has been named clairvoyance? Is it a quickening and extension of ordinary vision, or is it a visual perception obtained in some other manner, independent of the natural organ of sight? It has been noted how vastly the action of the senses may be augmented by cultivation, but never has cultivation increased vision to such an extent as to discover a penny a thousand miles away and through opaque coverings. Besides, the clairvoyant vision is exercised quite independent of the bodily eye. The eyes may be closed, they may be turned upward or inward so that no portion of the pupil is exposed to the action of light, or they may be covered with thick pads of cotton or closed with plasters or bandages, yet the clairvoyant vision in proper subjects is obtained in just the same degree and with just the same certainty as when the eyes are fully exposed to the light. It is true there has been much doubt and discussion on this vital point, the objectors maintaining that sight was possible and practicable by experts, notwithstanding the precautions used in blindfolding; in short, that the whole thing might safely be set down as deception and fraud. In the face of facts such as are here cited, and the thousand others that might be adduced, it is hardly possible to treat this charge seriously. To such objectors, cumulative evidence regarding facts out of their own mental horizon is useless. Their motto is: "No amount of evidence can establish a miracle;" and their definition of a miracle is something done, or alleged to have been done, contrary to the laws of nature. But the objector who refuses credence to well-attested facts on that ground alone, simply assumes that he is acquainted with all the laws of nature. A miracle, really, is only something alleged to have been done, and we are not able to explain how; nevertheless, it may be perfectly in accordance with natural laws which we did not understand or even know existed. To the West Indian, whom Columbus found in the New World, an eclipse of the sun was a miracle of the most terrible character; to the astronomer it was a simple fact in nature. To the ignorant boor, "talking with Chicago" or cabling between New York and London is a miracle; to the electrician it is an everyday, well-understood affair. For a long time scientific men did not believe in the existence of globular, slowly-moving electricity; if such a thing had existed, it certainly should have put in an appearance before members of the "Academy," or "Royal Society" some time in the course of all these years; but it never had done so; only a few cooks, blacksmiths, or back-woodsmen had ever seen it, and they certainly were not the sort of people to report scientific matter; they did not know how to observe, and undoubtedly "they did not see what they thought they saw." But for all that, globular, slowly-moving electricity is now a well known fact in nature. Neither the West Indian, the ignorant boor, nor the man of science had, at the time these several facts were presented to him, "any place in the existing fabric of his thought into which such facts could be fitted." The fabric of thought in each case must be changed, enlarged, modified, before the alleged facts could be received or assimilated. The objector to the fact of clairvoyance and other facts in the new psychology is often simply deficient in the knowledge which would enable him properly to judge of these facts; he may be an excellent mathematician, physicist, editor, or even physician, but he has been educated to deal with a certain class of facts, and only by certain methods, and he is wholly unfitted to deal with another class of facts, perhaps requiring quite different treatment. An excellent chemist might not be just the man to analyze questions of finance or to testify as an expert on the tariff, or a suspension bridge; the "texture of his thought" would need some modifying to fit him for these duties; indeed, he is fortunate if he can even be quite sure of morphia when he sees it; it might be a ptomaine. If, then, the objector to well authenticated facts in any department of research expects his objections to be seriously considered, he must, at least, exhibit some intelligence in that department of research to which his objection relates. I shall then simply reiterate the statement that there is abundant evidence of visual perception by some specially constituted persons, independent of any use of the physical organ of sight. What the exact nature or method of this supranormal vision is, may not yet be absolutely settled, any more than the exact nature of light or of life or even of electricity is settled, and each of their various methods of action known, though of the fact itself in any of these cases there is no doubt. From a careful consideration of the best authenticated facts and examples, we are led to believe that the faculty of clairvoyance is no supernatural gift, but may be possessed, to some degree, by many, perhaps by all, people; that it is a natural condition, developed and brought into exercise by a few, but undeveloped and dormant in most; that the faculty may include not only the power of obtaining visual perceptions at a distance and under circumstances which render ordinary vision impossible, but also the perception of general truth and the relation of things in nature to such a degree as to render the person who possesses it a teacher and prophet of seemingly supernatural endowments. Carefully excluding cases of unusual extension, or skill in using normal perceptive faculties, and also thought-transference, which, although bearing a certain relation to clairvoyance, should not be confounded with it, the phenomena of independent clairvoyance appear in certain persons under the following conditions:-- In certain states, brought about by disease, and at the near approach of death, in the hypnotic condition, whether self-induced or produced by the influence of a second person, and especially in the condition known as trance; it may also appear in sleep of the ordinary kind--in dreams, and especially in the condition of reverie or the state between sleeping and waking; a few persons also possess the clairvoyant faculty while in their natural condition, without losing their normal consciousness. In general it may be said that the faculty is most likely to appear when there exists a condition of abstraction, and the mind is acting without the restraint and guidance of the usual consciousness--and it reaches its most perfect exercise when this usual guidance ceases entirely--the body becoming inactive and anæsthetic and the mind acting independent of its usual manifesting organs. Such is the condition in trance. This view is, of course, in direct opposition to the materialistic philosophy which makes the mind simply a "group of phenomena," the result of organization, and absolutely dependent upon that organization for its action, and even for its existence. To discuss this question here would occupy too much space; besides, one of the objects of these papers is to show this mind, spirit, psychos, mentality, "group of phenomena," whatever it may be, and whatever name may be applied to it, acting under circumstances which will enable us to consider with greater intelligence this very question, viz.: Whether the mind, under some circumstances, is not capable of intelligent action independent of the brain and the whole material organization through which it ordinarily manifests itself. CHAPTER V. DOUBLE OR MULTIPLEX PERSONALITY. If there be any one thing in the empirical psychology of the past which has been considered settled past all controversy, it is the unity and continuity of human personality. Whatever might be believed or doubted concerning the after life, for this life at least believers and skeptics alike are united in the full assurance of a true, permanent, and unmistakable self. The philosopher Reid, a hundred years ago, in discussing this subject, wrote as follows:-- "My thoughts and actions and feelings change every moment. They have no continued but a successive existence, but that self or I to which they belong is permanent, and has the same relation to all succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine. The identity of a person is perfect--it admits of no degrees--and is not divisible into parts." Now, while this dogma, which still expresses the general consensus of mankind, may in a sense be well founded, still certain facts have been ascertained by the observant scouts in the outlying fields of psychology which, unless they can be interpreted to mean something different from their seeming and obvious import, make strongly against that stability and unquestioned oneness of human personality about which every individual in his own consciousness may feel so absolutely certain. What are these facts which have come to the notice of students of psychology? The case of Félida X., reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux, is one of the earliest to attract the serious attention of medical men and students of psychology, and has become classic in relation to the subject. She was a nervous child, given to moody spells and hysterical attacks, and, in 1856, when she was about fourteen years of age, she also began to have more serious attacks of an epileptiform character, from which she would emerge into a new and unusual condition, which was at first taken to be somnambulism. In this condition her general appearance was quite changed, and she talked and acted in a manner altogether different from her usual self. These attacks were at first very brief, lasting only a few minutes, but gradually they increased in duration until they occupied hours, and even days. In her usual state she had no recollection and no knowledge whatever of her second condition, and the whole time spent in that condition was to her a blank; on the other hand, all the different occasions when she had been in this second condition were linked together, constituting a distinct chain of memories and a personality just as consciously distinct and conspicuous as her original self. In her second state she not only had the distinct memories connected with her own secondary personality, but she also knew facts concerning the first or original self, but only as she might have knowledge of any other person. The two personalities were entirely different in character and disposition; the original one was sickly, indolent, and melancholy, while the new one was in good health, and in disposition bright, cheerful, and industrious. She married early in life, and was intelligent and efficient in the care of her family, rearing children and attending to the little business of a shop. At length this secondary self came to occupy nearly the whole time, and considered herself the normal personality, as, indeed, she was, being superior in every way to the original one. She knew very well how unhappy and miserable was the condition of the primary self, and, while she pitied her and did what she could to assist her, she disliked to have her return. She called the condition of the primary self, "that stupid state." The lapses of the original or No. 1 personality became at length so frequent, or rather, so continuous, that she lost the proper knowledge and relation of things about her. She was a stranger in her own home, and on that account became still more morose and melancholy. To relieve as much as possible this distressing state of affairs the second self, or No. 2, when she knew that No. 1 was about to appear, would write her a letter, informing her of the general condition of the household, whom she might expect to meet, and where she would find certain needful articles; she would also offer advice regarding the conduct of affairs, which was always appropriate and useful and far superior to the judgment of the original self in the matters to which it referred. As a second well marked and abundantly authenticated example of this divided or secondary personality, I will refer to a case in our own country and in our own vicinity. Jan. 17th, 1887, Ansel Bourne, an evangelist, left his home in Rhode Island, and, after transacting some business in Providence, one item of which was to draw some money to pay for a farm for which he had bargained, he went to Boston, then to New York, then to Philadelphia, and, finally, to Norristown, Penn., fifteen or twenty miles from Philadelphia, where he opened a small store for the sale of stationery, confectionery, and five-cent articles. In this business he was known as A. J. Brown. He lived in a room partitioned off from the back of the store, eating, sleeping, and doing his own cooking there. He rented the store from a Mr. Earl, who also, with his family, lived in the building. Mr. Brown went back and forth to Philadelphia for goods to keep up his stock, and seems to have conducted his business as if accustomed to it. Sunday, March 13th, he went to church, and at night went to bed as usual. On Monday, March 14th, about 5 o'clock in the morning, he awoke and found himself in what appeared to him an altogether new and strange place; he thought he must have broken into the place, and was much troubled, fearing arrest. Finally, after waiting two hours in great uneasiness of mind, he got up and found the door locked on the inside. He went out into the hall, and, hearing some one moving about, he rapped at the door. Mr. Earl, his landlord, opened it, and said: "Good-morning, Mr. Brown." "Where am I?" said Mr. Brown. "You are all right," replied Mr. Earl. "I'm all wrong, and my name is not Brown. Where am I?" "You are in Norristown." "Where is Norristown?" "In Pennsylvania, about seventeen miles west of Philadelphia." "What day of the month is it?" inquired Mr. Brown. "The 14th," replied Mr. Earl. "Does time run backward here? When I left home it was the 17th." "Seventeenth of what?" said Mr. Earl. "Seventeenth of January." "Now it is the 14th of March," said Mr. Earl. Mr. Earl thought Mr. Brown was out of his mind, and sent for a physician. To the doctor he said his name was Ansel Bourne; that he remembered seeing the Adams Express wagons on Dorrance Street in Providence on Jan. 17th, and remembered nothing since, until he awoke here this morning, March 14th. "These people," said he, "tell me that I have been here six weeks, and have been living with them all this time; I have no recollection of ever having seen one of them, until this morning." His nephew, Mr. H., was telegraphed to in Providence. "Do you know Ansel Bourne?" Reply: "He is my uncle; wire me where he is, and if well." Mr. H., went on to Norristown, took charge of his uncle and his affairs, sold out his store property, and Mr. A. J. Brown went back and resumed his life in Rhode Island as Ansel Bourne, but the time from Jan. 17th to March 14th was to him a blank. Prof. James of Harvard and Dr. Hodgson, Secretary of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical Research, who reported this case to the society, now became interested in the matter. They went to see Ansel Bourne and learned the above history; but of the journey from Providence to Norristown in January no account of any kind could be obtained. Finally, he was put into the hypnotic condition, when he was again A. J. Brown, and gave a connected account of his journey to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and of his stay in each of these cities; of his arrival at Norristown, and of his experience there up to the morning of March 14th, when everything was again confused. As A. J. Brown he knew of Ansel Bourne and of his remarkable history, but could not state positively that he had ever met him. This transition was repeatedly made. Immediately on being put in the hypnotic trance and aroused to somnambulism he was A. J. Brown, a distinct personality, perfectly sane, and with a full appreciation of the relation of things as relating to that personality, and with a distinct chain of memories, beliefs, and affections; but, when introduced to the wife of Ansel Bourne, he entirely repudiated the idea of her ever having been his wife, though he might some time have seen her. Immediately on being awakened from this hypnotic condition he was Ansel Bourne, with his usual consciousness, beliefs, affections, and chain of memories; but the primary Ansel Bourne personality had no knowledge whatever of the secondary, or A. J. Brown, personality, and for any act, either criminal or righteous, committed by the person A. J. Brown, the person Ansel Bourne had no more knowledge and consequently no more responsibility than for any good or bad action committed by a person in Australia and of whose existence he was ignorant. A few other cases quite similar and in every respect of equal interest have been observed, notably that known as Louis V., which was reported by Dr. Voisin of Paris and by several other well-known French physicians, under whose care from time to time he has been, and whose several reports have been summed up by Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers, the efficient London Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research. Here the stability of personality was unsettled at the age of fourteen by a terrible fright from a viper. Four or five distinct personalities were represented. (1) In his childhood, previous to his fright by the viper, he had good health and was an ordinary, quiet, obedient, well-behaved boy. (2) A new personality, of which the primary self had no knowledge, was induced by the fright. This No. 2 personality had frequent epileptic attacks, but was able to work, learning the trade of a tailor. (3) After one of these attacks of great violence, lasting fifty hours, another personality came to the surface--a greedy, violent, quarrelsome, drunken, thievish vagabond, paralyzed on one side, and with an impediment in his speech. He was an anarchist, an atheist, and a blackguard, always ranting and thrusting his opinions upon those about him, perpetrating bad jokes, and practicing disgusting familiarities with his physicians and attendants. In this state, he knows nothing of the tailor's business, but he is a private of marines. (4) He is a quiet, sensible man, retiring in behavior and modest in speech. If he is asked his opinions upon politics or religion, he bashfully replies that he would rather leave such things to wiser heads than his. In this condition he is without paralysis and speaks distinctly. (5) As a man forty years of age he returns to the condition of childhood previous to his fright--a child in intellect and knowledge, having no occupation; he is simply an ordinary, quiet, well-behaved, obedient boy. Each of these personalities was distinct from all the others; the earlier ones had no knowledge of those which came after them; the later ones had a knowledge of the earlier ones, but only as they might have knowledge of any other person. A fourth typical case is that of Alma Z., recently reported by me for _The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_. In this case, an unusually healthy, strongly intellectual girl, an expert in athletic sport and a leader wherever she might be, on account of overwork, and finally, of broken-down health, developed a second, and, later, a third personality. Each was widely different from the others, all were normal so far as a perfect knowledge of and adaptation to their surroundings were concerned, and all were of unusual intellectual force and brightness, as well as moral worth; but each was distinct, peculiar, and even in marked contrast to the others in many important characteristics. No. 1 had no knowledge of No. 2 nor of No. 3, except from circumstances and the report of others, and also from letters which passed between them giving information to No. 1 regarding changes which had occurred in her absence, as, for instance, of expected company or other engagement which it would be important for her to know. Both of the later personalities were peculiarly fond of No. 1, and devoted to her welfare on account of her superior knowledge and admirable character. The case has been under my observation, both professionally and socially, for many years, and, in addition to its typical character, it presented an example of the singular fact of the persistence of the later personality, with the ability to observe, retain its chain of memories, and afterward report them, while the primary self was at the same time the dominant and active personality. An instance of this occurred at one of the concerts of a distinguished pianist a few years since. No. 3 was the reigning personality, and she was herself a lover of music and an excellent critic. Beethoven's concerto in C major was on the programme, and was being performed in a most charming manner by soloist and orchestra. I was sitting near her in the box, when all at once I noticed a change in the expression of her face, which denoted the presence of No. 1. She listened with intense interest and pleasure to the performance, and at its close I spoke a few words to her, and she replied in her usual charming manner. It was No. 1 without doubt. Soon after, she leaned back in her chair, took two or three quick, short inspirations, and No. 3 was present again. She turned to me smiling and said: "So No. 1 came for her favorite concerto; wasn't it splendid that she could hear it?" I said: "Yes; but how did you know she was here?" "Oh, I sat on the front of the box," she said. "I heard the music, too, and I saw you speaking to her." The four cases here briefly outlined represent both sexes, two distinct nationalities, and widely-varying conditions in life. In each case one or more personalities crop out, so to speak, come to the surface, and become the conscious, active, ruling personality, distinct from the original self, having entirely different mental, moral, and even physical, characteristics; different tastes, and different sentiments and opinions; personalities entirely unknown to the original self, which no one acquainted with that original self had any reason to suppose existed in connection with that organization. The cases present so many points of similarity in their history as to render it probable, if not certain, that some common principle, law, or mental state underlies them all--some law which, if clearly defined, would be valuable in reducing to order the seemingly lawless mass of phenomena which constantly meets us in this new and but little explored field of research. It may be, also, that other mental states more frequently met with and more easily observed present points in common with these more striking and unusual ones; and that they also may assist us in finding the clue. CHAPTER VI. NATURAL SOMNAMBULISM--HYPNOTIC SOMNAMBULISM--DREAMS. The first of these more accessible conditions to claim attention is natural somnambulism, or sleep-walking. The phenomena of this peculiar state have been observed from time immemorial, and have always been looked upon as one of the most wonderful and interesting subjects in the domain of the old psychology. In this state the subject, while apparently in ordinary sleep, arises from his bed and proceeds, sometimes to perform the most ordinary, everyday actions--cooking a dinner, washing clothes, sawing wood, or going out to a neighboring market town to transact business; sometimes, on the other hand, he does the most unusual things; he performs perilous journeys in dangerous and unfamiliar places in perfect safety and with unusual ease; sometimes intellectual work of a difficult nature, such as had baffled the student in his waking hours, is easily accomplished, and he finds the solution of his mathematical problem or the needed point in his argument all plainly wrought out and prepared for him when he goes to his desk the following morning; moreover, if the work from any cause should be interrupted, and the same conditions recur upon the following or some subsequent night, it may be resumed at the point where it was interrupted; or if the somnambulist talks, as well as acts, in his sleep the conversation shows that each succeeding occasion is connected with previous ones, all together constituting a chain of memories similar to that of the different personalities which have been presented in the four cases already described. Sometimes all these different actions are accomplished without light or with the eyes fast closed, or else open and staring, but without vision. Sometimes, however, the new personality developed in the sleep of the somnambulist fails to come into proper relations with his surroundings, when he may also fail to accomplish the dangerous journey, and may walk from an open window or an unguarded balcony with disastrous results. The second condition which presents analogies to the duplex or multiplex personalities, which are under consideration, is that of the somnambulism which occurs in the hypnotic sleep. While usually the hypnotic subject is passive and unconsciously receives the suggestions which are impressed upon him, not unfrequently a personality comes to the front which acts independently, and presents all the characteristics which we have found pertaining to a distinct personality. A rare example of this alternating personality brought about by hypnotism is afforded by the French subject, Mme. B., whose acquaintance we have already made as a subject upon whom hypnotism at a distance was successfully carried out by Prof. Janet and Dr. Gibert of Havre. As we have already seen, in her ordinary condition Mme. B. is a stolid, substantial, honest French peasant, about forty years of age, of very moderate intelligence, and without any education or any ambition for notoriety. In this state Prof. Janet calls her Léonie. Hypnotized, she is at once changed into a bright, vivacious, mischief-loving, rather noisy personality, who considers herself on excellent terms with the doctor, and whom the professor names Léontine. Later, by further hypnotization and a deeper trance, there appears a sedate, sensible personality, intellectually much superior to Léonie, the primary self, and much more dignified than the vivacious Léontine, and this third personality Prof. Janet calls Léonore. Léontine, the hypnotic or second self, knows Léonie, the original Mme. B., very well, and is very anxious not to be confounded with her. She always calls her "the other one," and laughs at her stupidity. She says, "That good woman is not I, she is too stupid." One day Prof. Janet hypnotized Léonie, and as usual at once Léontine was present. Prof. Janet then suggested to Léontine that when she awoke and Léonie had resumed the command, she (Léontine) should take off the apron of Léonie, their common apron, on their one physical personality, and then tie it on again. She was then aroused from her hypnotic condition, and at once Léonie was present without the slightest knowledge of Léontine, for she never knew of this second personality, nor of hypnotic suggestion in any form. Léonie, supposing the professor's experiment was over, was conducting him to the door, talking indifferently in her slow, dull way, and at the same time unconsciously her fingers were working at her apron-strings. The loosened apron was falling off when the professor called her attention to it. She exclaimed, "Why, my apron is falling off!" and then, fully conscious of what she was doing, she replaced and tied it on again. She then continued her talk. She only supposed that somehow accidentally the apron had come untied and she had retied it, and that was all. To the now submerged Léontine, however, this was not enough; her mission had not been completed, and at her silent prompting Léonie again fumbled at the apron-strings; unconsciously she untied and took off the apron, and then put it on again without her attention having been drawn to what she had now the second time done. The next day Prof. Janet again hypnotized Léonie and Léontine made her appearance. "Well," said she, "I did what you told me yesterday. How stupid 'the other one' looked while I took her apron off? Why did you tell her that her apron was falling off? Just for that, I had to do the job all over again." Here the hypnotic or secondary self, as in my own reported case, appears as a persistent entity, remembering and reasoning, while the primary self was at the same time in command of their common body. Léontine not only caused Léonie to untie and retie her apron, but she enjoyed the fun, remembered it, and told it the next day. Again Léonore was as much ashamed of Léontine's flippancy as Léontine was of Léonie's stupidity. "You see well enough," she said, "that I am not that prattler, that madcap. We do not resemble each other in the least." In fact, she sometimes gave Léontine good counsel in regard to her behavior, and in a peculiar manner--by producing the hallucination of hearing a voice, thus again showing the conscious activity of the submerged self while a primary self was at the same time dominant and active. As Dr. Janet relates the incident, Léontine was one day in an excited, hysterical condition, noisy and troublesome with her chatter, when suddenly she stopped her senseless talk and cried out with terror: "Oh! Who is it there talking to me like that?" "No one was speaking to you." "Yes, there on the left." And she opened a closet door in the direction indicated, to see that no one was hidden there. "What is it that you hear?" asked the professor. "I hear a voice on the left there which keeps saying to me: 'Enough, enough; be quiet. You are a nuisance!'" which, the professor remarks, was exactly the truth. Léonore, in her turn, was then brought to the surface. "What was it that happened," asked Prof. Janet, "when Léontine was so frightened?" "Oh, nothing," she replied. "I told her she was a nuisance and to keep quiet. I saw she was annoying you. I don't know why she was so frightened." I may be pardoned for mentioning one other fact regarding the relationship of these singular personalities, because it illustrates more pointedly if possible than anything else their entire duplex and separate character. Léonie or Madame B. is married, but Léontine is not. Madame B. however, was hypnotized at her accouchements, and became Léontine. So Léontine was the presiding personality when the children were born. Léontine therefore considers herself the mother of two children, and would be greatly grieved were any doubts expressed regarding her right of motherhood in them. The analogies between the mental conditions presented respectively in ordinary somnambulism and the somnambulism of the hypnotic trance, and the mental conditions presented in the four cases previously recited are numerous and obvious; in fact, they seem as indeed they are, like the same conditions differently produced and varying in the length of time they occupy, and it is evident that in them there is brought to view a mental state of sufficient uniformity, as well as of sufficient interest and importance, to be worthy of serious consideration. The facts thus far brought into view are these: That in a considerable number of persons there may be developed, either spontaneously or artificially, a second personality different in character and distinct in its consciousness and memories from the primary or original self; that this second personality is not a mere change of consciousness, but in some sense it is a different entity, having a power of observation, attention and memory not only when the primary self is submerged and without consciousness or volition, but also at the same time that the primary self is in action, performing its usual offices, and in its turn it is equally capable of managing the affairs and performing the offices properly pertaining to the common body whenever needed for that purpose. Reckoning these different personalities as No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, etc., No. 1 has no knowledge of No. 2, nor of any succeeding personality, nor of their acts, but the time occupied by them is to No. 1 a blank, during which it is without volition, memory, or consciousness. No. 2 has a distinct consciousness and chain of memories of its own, but it also knows more or less perfectly the history and acts of No. 1--it knows this history, however, only as pertaining to a third person; it knows nothing of No. 3, nor of any personality subsequently coming into activity. No. 3 has also its distinct personality, and knows both No. 1 and No. 2, but knows them only as separate and distinct personalities; it does not know any personality coming into activity after itself. So distinct are these personalities that No. 2 not only may not possess the acquirements, as, for instance, the book knowledge, trade, or occupation of No. 1, but may possess other capabilities and acquirements entirely foreign to No. 1, and of which it possessed no knowledge. Ansel Bourne was a farmer and preacher, and knew nothing of storekeeping. A. J. Brown, the second personality, was a business man, neither farmer nor preacher. Louis V., as No. 2, was a tailor, and a very good boy; as No. 3, he was a private of marines, and knew nothing of tailoring, and he was a moral monster; while, in what might be called his No. 5 condition, he was again an undeveloped child, as he was before his fright. Still another fact which comes prominently into view in examining these cases is that the No. 2 personality may not, by any means, be inferior to the No. 1, or original self. In none of the cases cited has the intellectual capacity of the later developed personality been inferior to that of the original self, and generally it was notably superior; only in the No. 3 personality of Louis V. was the moral state worse than in No. 1, and, in general, the moral standing of No. 2 or No. 3 was fully equal to the primary self. The emergence and dominance of a secondary personality, therefore, does not by any means imply that the general standing of the individual dominated by this second personality, as judged by disinterested observers, is in any way inferior to the same individual dominated by the primary self, but, on the contrary, a superior personality is rather to be expected, and especially is this true when the secondary personality is intelligently sought and brought to view by means of hypnotism. It is, however, quite impossible by any _á priori_ reasoning, or from the character of the primary self, to form any definite estimate concerning the character or general characteristics of any new personality which may make its appearance, either spontaneously or through the aid of hypnotism. Having become to a certain degree familiarized with the idea that in some persons, at least, and under some peculiar circumstances, a second personality may come to the surface and take the place for a longer or shorter time of the primary self, it may be asked whether, after all, these comparatively few persons in which this unusual phenomena has been observed are essentially different in their mental constitution from other people. When those best acquainted with the slender and melancholy Félida N., or the ordinary, quiet, well-behaved Louis V.; the industrious and respected evangelist Ansel Bourne, or the large-brained, intellectual leader of women, Alma Z., saw them in their ordinary state, before any subliminal personality had emerged and made itself known, no one of those most intimate acquaintances, no expert in character-reading, no student of mental science could have given any reasonable intimation that any one of them would develop a second personality, much less give any trustworthy opinion as to the character which the new personality would possess. A few months ago I was called in haste to see a patient, a large, strong man of one hundred and eighty pounds weight, who had been thrown down and trampled upon by his nineteen-year-old son during an attack of somnambulism, and had received such serious injuries as to require immediate surgical aid. The next day this son came to consult me regarding his unfortunate habit of sleep-walking, which has often got him into trouble before, and has now resulted in serious injury to his father. He is a slight youth of one hundred and twenty pounds weight, light hair, gray eyes, and a bright, frank face, expressive of good health and good nature--"a perfect gentleman," as his father expressed it, "when himself, but ten men cannot manage him when he gets up in his sleep; he will do what he sets out to do." Who would ever imagine that this slender, good-natured, gentlemanly lad, sooner than any other lad, would in his sleep develop somnambulism and a second personality, or that when it came that second personality should prove a stubborn Samson? Little could Prof. Janet imagine that beneath the surface consciousness of that serene and stupid Léonie dwelt the frisky, vivacious, fun-loving Léontine, waiting only the magic key of hypnotism to unlock and bring her to the surface to reign instead of the heavy Léonie. The people who, in various ways, develop second personalities may not differ, it seems, in any perceptible manner from other people; is it not quite possible, then, that other normal, ordinary people, possess a second personality, deep-down beneath their ordinary, everyday self, and that under conditions which favor a readjustment, this hidden subliminal self may emerge and become for a longer or a shorter time the conscious, acting one; and not only so, but may prove to be the brighter and better organized of the two? Having now, as it were, a chart, imperfect though it be, of this outlying region, having some idea what to look for, and in what direction to look for it, it is possible that glimpses of this subliminal personality which each one unconsciously carries with him may be obtained under ordinary conditions and in everyday life, more frequently and more easily than we had imagined; for, as Ribot expresses it, the ordinary conscious personality is only a feeble portion of the whole psychical personality. One example of this more usual form of double personality is afforded in ordinary dreaming. The dream country, like most of this outlying territory, has for the most part been studied without chart or compass. There is scarcely a point connected with the discussion of the subject upon which the most eminent authorities are not divided; it is Locke against Descartes, Hamilton against Locke, and Hobbes against the field. If there be any one point, however, on which there is tolerable unanimity among all writers, ancient and modern, great and small, it is the absence in dreams of the normal acts and processes of volition, and, especially, of the faculty of attention. Now, this is exactly the condition which is conducive to the more or less perfect emergence and activity of the subliminal self, under whatever circumstances it occurs. There is first, loss of consciousness from catalepsy, fright, depressing illness, hypnotism, or natural sleep, that is to say, the power of attention or volition in the primary self is abolished; then comes a readjustment of personalities, varying in completeness according to the ease with which, in different persons, this readjustment may be effected, and according to the completeness of the abolition of the power of attention and volition. In sleep the conditions are favorable for this readjustment, and the subliminal self comes more or less perfectly to the surface; then appears that most peculiar and interesting series of pictures and visions which we call dreams; sometimes the rearranged, or rather unarranged, impressions and perceptions of the waking hours brought together, possibly just before the power of attention is entirely lost; sometimes the Puck-like work of the subliminal personality, the Léontines of the dream-country influencing the unconscious or semi-conscious primary self; sometimes the veridical or truth-telling dreams, which have been the wonder of all ages, and sometimes giving complete and active supremacy to the subliminal self as in natural somnambulism. Another portion of the field in which it might be profitable to look for evidence of the existence of a subliminal personality is in the eccentric work of genius; and still another, in the unexpected and often heroic actions of seemingly ordinary persons under the stress and stimulus of a great emotion, as of joy, sorrow, or anger, or of intense excitement, as for instance, the soldier in battle, the fireman at the post of danger, or the philosopher or astronomer on the eve of a new discovery; in all these cases the ordinary personality with its intense self-consciousness and self-considering carefulness is submerged--it disappears--the power of voluntary attention to mental states or physical action is lost; a new and superior personality comes to the surface and takes control. The supreme moment passes, and the primary self resumes sway, scarcely conscious of what has been done or how it was accomplished; even sensation has been abolished, and it is only now that he discovers the bleeding bullet-wound, the charred member, or the broken bone. In physical science, whenever some new fact or law or principle has been discovered, it is at once seen that many things which before were obscure, or perhaps could only be accounted for by a theory of chance, or of direct interference by an omnipotent Deity, are now illuminated by a new light, and order reigns where before only confusion and darkness were visible. Something of the same sort is beginning to be recognized in the world of mental and psychical phenomena. If the mathematical exactness which measured the force of gravity, or placed the sun in one of the foci of an ellipse instead of the centre of a circle cannot be applied here, it is only on account of the vast complexity of the problem presented, and of which we know so few of the elements. When matter alone is concerned we know exactly how it will act under given conditions. When life is added, the problem becomes more complex. The general law of evolution and the special law of natural selection in the development of species are accepted facts, although we cannot with success apply to them mathematical formulæ. When mind is added to life, the problem becomes still more complicated and mathematical exactness still less likely to be attained. Many facts, however, are being ascertained in psychical science, and some principles are being established which help to bring order out of confusion and shed light on some dark places. The recognition of a subliminal self as forming a part of the psychical organization of man will throw light upon many obscure mental phenomena and bring order out of seemingly hopeless confusion. Placed before us as a working hypothesis, many other facts, before errant and unclassified, group themselves about it in wonderful clearness and harmony. Granting, then, provisionally at least, the reality of the secondary self, what are its relations to the primary self and their common physical organization, and how came it to occupy these relations? Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers, to whom I have already referred, whose acute intellect and scholarly attainments have been of the highest value to the society in every department of its investigations, has also taken up this subject with his usual skill and judgment. He looks upon it from the standpoint of evolution, commencing with the earliest period of animal life. He compares the whole psychical organization, together with its manifesting physical organization, to the thousand looms of a vast manufactory. The looms are complex and of varying patterns, for turning out different sorts of work. They are also used in various combinations, and there are various driving bands and connecting machinery by which they may severally be connected or disconnected, but the motive power which drives the whole is constant for all, and all works automatically to turn out the styles of goods that are needed. "Now, how did I come to have my looms and driving-gear arranged in this particular way? Not, certainly, through any deliberate choice of my own. My ancestor, the ascidian, in fact, inherited the business when it consisted of little more than a single spindle; since his day my nearer ancestors have added loom after loom." Changes have been going on continually; some of the looms are now quite out of date, have long been unused, and are quite out of repair or fallen to pieces. Others are kept in order because the style of goods which they turn out is still useful and necessary. But the class of goods called for has greatly changed of late. For instance, the machinery at present in operation is best adapted to turning out goods of a decidedly egoistic style, for self-preservation, persistence in the struggle for life, and for self-gratification; but a style is beginning to be called for of the altruistic pattern. For this kind of goods the machinery is not well adapted. It is old-fashioned, and changes are necessary. If there are any looms in the establishment unknown and unused which can be turned to account, or any way of modifying such as we have to meet the demand, it is for our interest to know it. But the methods of adjustment, and arrangements for bringing new looms into operation are hidden and difficult of access, so we observe factories where spontaneous readjustments are going on and new looms, not known to have been in the establishment, are being brought automatically into action and are found to work fairly well. Such instances are found in the establishment of Félida X. or Louis V., from which valuable hints are obtained regarding changes and readjustments. Furthermore, in hypnotism, we find a safe and, at the same time, powerful lever, for readjustment, by means of which in some establishments new looms can be brought into play and shut off again almost at will; and often while the new looms are at work doing good service we are able to get at the old ones, repair and modernize them so as to make them useful, and the immense value of hypnotism in this educational and reformatory work has hardly begun to be known or appreciated. A single instance out of many must suffice for illustration. In the summer of 1884 there was at the Salpêtriére a young woman of a deplorable type, Jeanne S., who was a criminal lunatic, filthy, violent, and with a life history of impurity and crime. M. Auguste Voisin, one of the physicians of the staff, undertook to hypnotize her May 31st. At that time she was so violent that she could only be kept quiet by a strait-jacket and the constant cold douche to her head. She would not look at M. Voisin, but raved and spat at him. He persisted, kept his face near and opposite to hers, and his eyes following hers constantly. In ten minutes she was in a sound sleep, and soon passed into the somnambulistic condition. The process was repeated many days, and gradually she became sane while in the hypnotic condition, but still raved when she awoke. Gradually, then, she began to accept hypnotic suggestion, and would obey trivial orders given her while asleep, such as to sweep her room, etc.; then suggestions regarding her general behavior; then, in her hypnotic condition, she began to express regret for her past life and form resolutions of amendment, which she fully adhered to when she awoke. Two years later she was a nurse in one of the Paris hospitals, and her conduct was irreproachable. M. Voisin has followed up this case by others equally striking. Such is an imperfect sketch of the discoveries, experiments, and studies which have been made in the domain of human personality. It is merely a sketch, and certainly it is in no spirit of dogmatism that it is presented; but as a collection of facts relating to human nature and the constitution and action of the human mind, it is at least curious. It need not destroy our convictions regarding the essential unity of personality, but it must necessarily enlarge our conceptions of what _constitutes an individual_, and how under various circumstances that individual may act. From many points of view, and in relation to many departments of study and of human development--legal, moral, social, and educational--the subject presents important bearings; and, furthermore, in the solution of other psychological problems it will be found to possess the greatest possible interest and value. CHAPTER VII. AUTOMATISM--PLANCHETTE. Our ordinary actions, both physical and mental, are, for the most part, subject to our own voluntary guidance and choice. Of this, at least, we feel sure. We work, walk, talk, play upon an instrument, read a book, or write a letter, because we choose to do these things; and ordinarily they are done under the full guidance of our will and intelligence. Sometimes, however, actions are performed by us without our choice or guidance, and even without our consciousness, and such actions are called automatic. The thrifty housewife, perhaps also being of a literary turn of mind, may become deeply absorbed in an exciting novel, while at the same time her busy fingers, without thought or effort on her part, skilfully ply the knitting needles, or her well accustomed foot, with gentle motion, rocks the cradle. During an exciting conversation, or the absorbing consideration of some important subject or problem, the act of walking is performed without will or consciousness; the pianoforte player runs his scales and roulades with marvellous rapidity and precision while reading a book or carrying on an animated conversation. Such actions are performed automatically. When we come to examine a large number of actions performed in this automatic manner, we observe that they exhibit great diversity in the kind and degree of automatism displayed in their performance. In the cases above mentioned the mind is simply altogether engaged in doing one thing, and at the same time the muscles go on without any conscious direction or supervision, doing altogether another thing, but generally something which they had before been accustomed to do. This is often called absent-mindedness; it is also one of the most common and simple forms of automatism. We set the machine to work, and it goes itself. Another kind of automatism is that which often appears in connection with peculiar gifts or talents, and is especially associated with genius. It is seen, for example, in the poet and the orator, and in those capable of improvisation, especially in music or in verse. The pianist or organist seats himself at the instrument without the remotest idea of what he is to perform--he simply commences. The theme he is to present, the various melodies, harmonies, changes, and modulations which come at his touch are often as much a surprise and delight to himself as to the most interested listener. Something within him furnishes and formulates the ideas, and causes him to express them artistically upon the instrument of his choice without any effort, or even supervision of his own--he is simply conscious of what is produced--but if he should undertake consciously to guide or in any way interfere with the production, the extraordinary beauty and excellence of the performance would at once cease. Still another kind of automatism is illustrated in somnambulism. The somnambulist arises from his bed in his sleep, and proceeds to prepare a meal or work out a mathematical problem or write a thesis or a letter, or sometimes to describe distant scenes and events transpiring far away. Here the actions, both physical and mental, are performed, not only without the exercise of the actor's own choice or control, but he has no knowledge of them whatever. They are altogether outside the domain of his consciousness, and have their origin in some centre of intelligence quite apart from his own ordinary consciousness, and they only appear or find expression through his physical organization. Let us examine a little more closely into these different forms of automatism. Twenty-five years ago a curious little piece of mechanism--apparently half toy and half an instrument for amateur conjuring--made its appearance in the windows of the toyshops and bookstores of the United States. It was a little heart-shaped piece of mahogany, or other hard wood, about seven inches by five in dimensions, with two casters serving for feet at the base of the heart, while a closely-fitting pencil passed through a hole at the point or apex. Thus a tripod was formed, moving with perfect ease and freedom in any direction, while the pencil, which formed the third foot, left its plain and continuous tracing wherever the instrument was moved. This little toy was called Planchette, and wonderful tales were told of its strange performances when rightly used. Evenly adjusted upon a plain wood table, if a properly-constituted person placed his or her finger-tips lightly upon its surface, it soon began to move about, without any muscular effort or any wish or will on the part of the operator; a broad, smooth sheet of paper being placed beneath it upon the table, figures, words, and sentences were plainly traced by the pencil, all in the style of a veritable oracle, and greatly to the delight of the curious, the wonder of the superstitious, and the mystification of people generally. Not every one, however, could command the services of the modern oracle; only to the touch of a certain few was it responsive; to the many it was still and silent as a sphinx. One in ten, perhaps, could obtain a scrawl; one in twenty, intelligible sentences, and one in a hundred could produce remarkable results. Few persons witnessing its performances under favorable circumstances failed to be interested, but different people looked at it from quite different standpoints. The habitual doubter saw in it only a well-managed trick, which, however, he failed to detect; the spiritualist saw undoubted evidence of spiritual manifestations, while the great majority of common-sense people saw writing done, evidently without will or effort on the part of the writer, producing messages of every grade, from the most commonplace twaddle, foolishness, and even falsehood, to the exhibition of intelligence of a high order, a sparkling wit, and a perception of events, past, present, and sometimes even of those still in the future, most acute and unusual. What was the cause of these involuntary movements, or whence came the messages written, they did not know, and few even cared to speculate. That was twenty-five years ago, and the two theories already alluded to were about the only ones adduced to account for the phenomena. Dr. Carpenter's theory of "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious muscular action" did not cover the ground; there was altogether too much cerebration not to have a consciousness connected with it in some way. The theory did not cover the facts. Twenty-five years have failed to detect the long-talked-of trick of the skeptic; they have also failed to substantiate the claim of spiritualists, and Planchette-writing is almost as much a mystery as ever. Fairly studied, then, what does Planchette really do? From a physical standpoint its performances are simply automatic writing or drawing. To deny the automatic character of the movements of Planchette at this day is simply absurd. That writing can be produced with it voluntarily, no one doubts, but that it generally is produced automatically, that is, without the choice or control of the writers, and without their knowledge of what is being written, it would be waste of time here to attempt to prove; the theory of fraud is untenable, and the real question at issue is the psychical one, namely, whence come the messages which it brings? These messages may be divided into three general classes: (1) Those which are trivial or irrelevant. (2) Those which show intelligence and have some unmistakable relation to the subject of which they purport to give information, but all of which is known either to the writers or some person present. (3) Those which bring, or profess to bring, information unknown in any way, either to the writer or any person present. The first of these divisions need not detain us, though it contains a very large share of all the messages received, as it simply illustrates the fact of automatism, which is equally well illustrated in the other classes of messages, which are of a more interesting character. The second class, namely, messages which show intelligence and have an unmistakable relation to the subject concerning which information is asked, and yet contain nothing beyond the knowledge of the writers or of persons present, is also very large. The following is a sketch of my own first experience with Planchette. I may remark that subsequent trials brought out the fact that for myself alone Planchette will do nothing; it will not even move a hair's-breadth; but when, as is often the case, two persons are needed for success, I am often selected by Planchette to assist when it is consulted in the matter. On one occasion, I was calling at a friend's house, in the spring of 1868. Planchette was then much in vogue, and one stood on a side-table in the room. A young daughter of my friend--a school-girl fifteen or sixteen years of age--remarked that Planchette would move and sometimes even write for her, and she asked me to join her in a trial. I consented, and, to our surprise, the moment our fingers were placed lightly upon the instrument it moved off with great energy. Questions were then asked, and the answers were written with promptness and intelligence, greatly to the amusement of the company. Desiring to know who our mysterious correspondent might be, we politely said, "Planchette, will you kindly inform us who it is that writes these answers?" to which it replied, "Peter Stuyvesant." "Old Governor Stuyvesant?" we asked. "Yes," was the reply. Now it so happened that a short time previous to our séance the old pear tree, known as the Stuyvesant pear tree, which had stood for more than two hundred years at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, having become decayed and tottering, was thrown down by a blow from a passing truck and had been ruthlessly chopped to pieces by workmen; and the event had been generally noticed and commented upon. Accordingly we replied, "We are very glad to hear from you, Governor. How about the old pear tree?" To this a reply was promptly written, but neither of us had the slightest idea what it might be. The young lady took up the paper and commenced to read, but was shocked and greatly confused to find, clearly written, in a hand quite foreign to us both, "It's a ---- ---- shame!" the blanks here being filled by the most emphatic expletives, and without the slightest abbreviation. Another excellent Planchette-writer was Miss V., a friend of the family, who was spending a few days at my house in March, 1889. She was a young German lady of unusual intelligence, vivacity, and good sound sense. She knew of spiritualism only by passing remarks which she might have heard, and had never either seen or heard of Planchette. She was herself a somnambulist, or, rather, a somniloquist, for she never walked in her sleep, but talked with the greatest ease, carrying on long conversations without the slightest memory afterwards of what had been said. She was also an excellent hypnotic subject, and the suggested effects of medicines were much more prompt and certain than the effect of the medicines themselves, when used in the ordinary way. For experiment one evening I proposed that we should try Planchette. As soon as our fingers were placed upon the instrument, it moved off across the table with the greatest promptness, and at once it replied to questions with unusual appropriateness and intelligence. The astonishment of Miss V. was altogether too profound and too apparent to admit of any suspicion of collusion on her part, and she had seen that the board would not move for me alone, yet she could not be persuaded that when we wrote together there was not some trick, and that I did not move the board voluntarily to produce the writing. At length a message came concerning one of her own relatives, of whom she was sure that I could have no knowledge whatever, and she was convinced that at all events that message could not have originated with me. Accordingly she became a most valuable and interested partner in the experiments, and the chief medium through whom Planchette gave its communications. Our sittings continued four or five consecutive evenings, and hundreds of communications and answers to questions were given by different intelligences or personalities, with entirely different modes of expression and different kinds of writing; some were religious, some philosophical, some were anxious to give advice, and some were profane; this last-mentioned phase appearing especially if we were persistent in inquiring too closely into the identity and former condition of the communicating personality. On one occasion a message was written which was so strange in its appearance that none of us could at first make it out. At length we discovered some familiar negro phrase, and applying this key, we found we had a message of regular plantation negro talk, bearing a very strong resemblance to Uncle Remus's talk to the little boy, which some of us had just been reading. On asking who the "intelligence" was, it wrote, "Oh, I'se a good ole coon." Neither Miss V. nor myself had ever heard such a dialect spoken, nor knew that any sort of person of the negro race was ever called a "coon." On another occasion, Miss V. was anxious to know and asked Planchette if a relative of hers, whom she named, was staying in town that night. The answer came, "Yes." "Where is he stopping?" Answer: "At the H. House." "What is he doing now?" Answer: "He has just finished his dinner, settled his bill at the cashier's desk, and is now walking up Broadway with his cousin." She afterward learned that this information was correct in every particular. On the last evening of our experiments the force displayed in the writing was something surprising. Miss V. always experienced a certain amount of pain in her arms while writing, as if she were holding the electrodes of a battery through which a mild current was passing. On this occasion the pain was almost unbearable, so that she frequently cried out, and was obliged to remove her hands from the board for relief. The writing was so violent that it could be heard in the next room, and at times it seemed as though the board would surely be broken. Seeing so much force exhibited, I allowed my fingers merely to touch the surface of the board, but so lightly that my hands did not move with it at all, but simply retained contact, the board sliding along beneath them. The writing continued with just the same violence. I then called the attention of Miss V. to what I was doing, and requested her to adjust her hands in a similar manner. She did so, and the instrument continued to write several words, with gradually diminishing force, moving under our hands, while our hands did not follow at all the movements of the instrument, until at length it gradually stopped, like a machine when the power is turned off. Miss V. does not reside in the city, but while I was writing this chapter she was in town, and spent a few hours at my house. We were both anxious to try Planchette again. When we placed our fingers upon the board, the writing commenced at once, and intelligent answers were given to about twenty questions, some of the answers, especially those relating to distant friends, being quite contrary to our impressions and our hopes, but they were afterward found to be true. We remembered the experiment just related, which was made more than four years ago. The force on this occasion was not at all to be compared with what it was then, but we said, "Now, Planchette, we want to ask a favor of you; will you repeat the experiment of four years ago, and move under our hands, while our hands remain stationary?" It replied, "Since you are so polite, I will try; perhaps I can move it a little." We then planted our elbows firmly upon the table, curved our wrists, so as to allow the tips of our fingers to rest in the lightest possible manner upon the surface of the board. Four of us were watching with great interest for the result. After a moment's hesitation, slowly the board moved nearly an inch and stopped, but the movement was so obvious and decided, and without any movement of our hands, that a simultaneous shout went up from us all, and "Well done, Planchette!" The experiment was successfully repeated several times, the tracing of the pencil in each case showing a movement of from one to two inches. A most valuable series of experiments in Planchette-writing was recently carried on by the late Rev. Mr. Newnham, vicar of Maker, Davenport, England, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, together with his wife. They were fully reported to Mr. F. W. H. Myers, secretary of the society. The experiments extended over a period of eight months, and more than three hundred questions and answers were recorded. Mrs. Newnham alone was the operator, and the important peculiarity in these experiments was, that although quite in her normal condition, yet in no instance here related did she see the question written to which she wrote the answer, nor did she hear it asked, nor did she have any conscious knowledge, either of question or answer, until the answer was written and read. She sat upon a low chair at a low table some eight or ten feet from her husband, while he sat at a rather high table, with his back to her. In this position he silently wrote out the questions, it being impossible for her to see either the paper, the motion of his hand, or the expression of his face, and their good faith, as well as that of many intelligent witnesses, is pledged to the truth of this statement. Mr. Newnham remarks that Planchette commenced to move immediately upon the first trial, and often the answer to questions prepared as just described was commenced before the question was fully written out. At their first sitting, finding that the instrument would write, he proposed, silently, in writing, six questions, three the answers to which might be known to Mrs. Newnham, and three relating to his own private affairs, and of which the answers could not have been known to her. All six were immediately answered in a manner denoting complete intelligence, both of the question and the proper answer. He then wrote: "Write down the lowest temperature here this winter." Answer: "8." The actual lowest temperature had been 7.6 degrees, so 8 was the nearest whole degree, but Mrs. Newnham remarked at once that had she been asked the question she should have written 7, and not 8, because she did not remember the fraction, but did remember that the figure was 7 something. Again it was asked, "Is it the operator's brain, or an immaterial spirit that moves Planchette? Answer 'brain' or 'force.'" "Will." "Is it the will of a living person or of an immaterial spirit? Answer 'force' or 'spirit.'" "Wife." "Give, first, the wife's Christian name, and then my favorite name for her." This was accurately done. "What is your own name?" "Only wife." "We are not quite sure of the meaning of your answer. Explain." "Wife." "Who are you that writes?" "Wife." "Does no one tell wife what to write? If so, who?" "Spirit." "Whose spirit?" "Wife's brain." "But how does wife's brain know certain secrets?" "Wife's spirit unconsciously guides." "Can you foresee the future?" "No." On another occasion it was asked: "Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a Mark Master Mason." "Answer: Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all Worlds, we beseech Thee to accept this, our brother, whom we have this day received into our most honorable company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to be a worthy member of our brotherhood, and may he be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all our doings may be to Thy honor and glory and to the welfare of all mankind." Mr. Newnham adds: "This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. I must say that no prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of in the ritual of any Masonic degree, and yet it contains more than one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of Mark Master Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers, whether in 'Carlile,' or any other real or spurious ritual of the Masonic Order." The whole report shows the same instantaneous appreciation of the written questions, by the intelligence and appropriateness with which the answer was framed, though Mrs. Newnham never had any idea what the question was until after the answer was written and read, and the answers very often were entirely contrary to the prejudices and expectations of both the persons engaged in the experiments. The following case may fairly be placed in the third class of messages, namely, those conveying intelligence which seems to be beyond the possible knowledge of the writer or of any person present. It is a well authenticated and interesting example of Planchette-writing, reported to Mr. Myers, the reporter being Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, a cousin and brother-in-law of Charles Darwin, and himself a savant of no small reputation. Two ladies, sisters, whom he designates as Mrs. R. and Mrs. V., were for many years intimate and valued friends of Mr. Wedgwood, and it was in co-operation with one or the other of these ladies that the results to be noted, along with much other interesting matter, were obtained. Sitting alone, neither of the ladies nor Mr. Wedgwood was able to obtain any results at all with Planchette; the board remained absolutely motionless. The two ladies together could obtain no writing, but only wavy lines, made rapidly, like a person writing at full speed, but with Mr. Wedgwood co-operating with either of the ladies the writing was intelligible, but was much stronger and more vivacious with Mrs. V. than with Mrs. R. The following extracts are from Mrs. R.'s journal of a sitting, June 26, 1889: "With Mr. W. and Mrs. R. at the board, Planchette writes: 'A spirit is here who thinks he will be able to write, through the medium. Hold very steady, and he will try first to draw.' We turned the page, and a sketch was made, rudely enough, of course, but with much apparent care. Planchette then wrote: "'Very sorry can't do better; was meant for test; must write for you instead. (Signed) J. G.' "We did not fully understand this drawing; and Mr. W. asked, 'Will J. G. try again?' which it did. Below the drawing it wrote: 'Now look.' We did, and this time clearly comprehended the arm and sword. Mr. W. asked, 'What does the drawing represent?' "'Something given to me.' "Mrs. R. asked, 'Are you a man or a woman?' "'A man--John G.' "Mr. W. asked, 'How was it given to you?' "'On paper and other things.' "Mr. W. 'We don't know J. G. Have you anything to do with us?' "'No connection.' "Mr. W. said he knew of a J. Gifford, and wondered if that was the name. "'Not Gifford; Gurwood.' "Mr. W. suggested that he had been killed in storming some fort. "'I wish I had died fighting.' "'Were you a soldier?' "'I was in the army.' "'Can you say what rank?' "'No; it was the pen did for me, not the sword.' "We suggested that he was an author who had failed or been maligned. "'I did not fail. I was not slandered. Too much for me after--the pen was too much for me after my wound.' "Asked to repeat, it wrote: 'I was wounded in the Peninsula. It will be forty-four years next Christmas Day since I killed myself--I killed myself. John Gurwood.'" [Illustration] Leaving Mrs. R.'s diary, the following is the account Mr. Wedgwood wrote of the séance at the time:-- "JUNE 26, 1889.--Had a sitting at Planchette with Mrs. R. this morning. Planchette said there was a spirit there who thought it could draw if we wished it. We said we should be glad if he would try. Accordingly Planchette made a rude attempt at a hand and arm proceeding from an embattled wall and holding a sword. A second attempt made the subject clearer. Planchette said it was meant for a test. The spirit signed it 'J. G.' No connection of ours, he said. We gradually elicited that his name was John Gurwood, who was wounded in the Peninsula in 1810, and killed himself on Christmas Day, 1845. It was not the wound but the pen that did it. "JULY 5, 1889.--I made the foregoing memorandum the same day, having very little expectation that there would be any verification. "H. WEDGWOOD." Quoting again from Mrs. R.'s journal: "Friday, Sept. 27.--Mr. Wedgwood came, and we had two sittings--in the afternoon and evening. I think the same spirit wrote throughout, beginning without signature, but when asked the name, writing John Gurwood. The effort, at first incoherent, developed afterward into the following sentences: 'Sword--when I broke in, on the table with plan of fortress--belonged to my prisoner--I will tell you his name to-night. It was on the table when I broke in. He did not expect me. I took him unawares. He was in his room, looking at a plan, and the sword was on the table. Will try and let you know how I took the sword to-night.' "In the evening, after dinner: 'I fought my way in. His name was Banier--Banier--Banier. The sword was lying on a table by a written scheme of defence. Oh, my head! Banier had a plan written out for defence of the fortress. It was lying on the table, and his sword was by it.... Look! I have tried to tell you what you can verify.'" Mr. Wedgwood reports his verification as follows:-- "When I came to verify the messages of Planchette, I speedily found that Col. Gurwood, the editor of the duke's dispatches, led the forlorn hope at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1812 (note Planchette's error in date), and received a wound in his skull from a musket-ball, 'which affected him for the remainder of his life,' (_Annual Register_, 1845). In recognition of the bravery shown on that occasion, he received a grant of arms in 1812, registered in the College of Arms as having been passed 'upon the narrative that he (Capt. G.) had led the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo, and that after the storming of the fortress the Duke of Wellington presented him with the sword of the governor who had been taken prisoner by Capt. Gurwood.'" The services thus specified were symbolized in the crest, described in the "Book of Family Crests": "Out of a mural coronet, a castle ruined in the centre, and therefrom an arm in armor embowed, holding a cimeter." It was evidently this crest that Planchette was trying to sketch. The _Annual Register_ of 1845 also confirms Planchette's assertion that Col. Gurwood killed himself on Christmas Day of that year, and adds: "It is thought that this laborious undertaking (editing the dispatches) produced a relaxation of the nervous system and consequent depression of spirits. In a fit of despondency the unfortunate gentleman terminated his life." Compare Planchette: "Pen was too much for me after the wound." Here are described four instances of automatic writing by means of Planchette. Two of these cases were reported to Mr. Myers, who has thoroughly canvassed them as regards their authenticity, as well as the ability and good faith of the persons concerned, both in the writing and reporting; and he has made use of them in his own able argument upon the same subject. In the other cases the messages were written under my own observation, my own hands also being upon the board. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Newnham the intelligence which furnished the messages disclaimed altogether the aid of any spirit except "wife's spirit," which did "unconsciously guide." In the case reported by Mr. Wedgwood and Mrs. R., the intelligence distinctly claimed to be from Col. John Gurwood, who had died nearly fifty years before. In my own cases, in that written with the co-operation of my friend's school-girl daughter, the intelligence claimed to be that of Peter Stuyvesant, while in those written with Miss V., various names were given, none of which was recognized as belonging to a person of whom we had ever had any knowledge, and all bore abundant evidence of being fictitious. One, indeed, professed to be "Beecher," and declined to give an opinion on the prospective trotting qualities of a colt, on the ground that he was "no horseman"; and in our later experiments, when closely questioned, it distinctly stated that the intelligence came from the mind of Miss V. herself. Let us analyze these messages a little further. Those written by Mr. and Mrs. Newnham were remarkable, not only because Mrs. Newnham was writing without any conscious knowledge of what was being written, but neither had she any conscious knowledge of the questions to which she was writing the answers. Evidently, then, her own ordinary consciousness was not acting at all in the matter regarding either the questions or answers, for she was fully awake, in her normal condition, and perfectly competent to judge of her own mental state and actions. Nevertheless, there was some intelligence acting reasonably and consciously, and making use of her hand to register its thoughts. In a former chapter I have described and illustrated a somewhat unusual mental phenomenon, to which the name thought-transference, or telepathy, has been given; and in another I have endeavored to demonstrate the existence of a secondary or subliminal self or personality. If I mistake not, it is here, in these two comparatively little known and, until recently, little studied, psychical conditions, that we shall find the key to message-bearing automatism, as well as other manifestations of intelligence which have heretofore been considered mysterious and occult. Applying this key to the Newnham Planchette-writing, the secondary personality or subliminal self of Mrs. Newnham took immediate cognizance of the questions silently and secretly written out by her husband, although they were utterly unknown to her ordinary or primary self, and made use of her hands to communicate the answer. The answer, also, was of course unknown to her primary self, but her subliminal self, in addition to its own private and constant stock of knowledge and opinions, had the advantage of more subtle means of securing other knowledge necessary for a proper answer, and so sought it in her husband's mind, or wherever it could be obtained. The sources of information accessible to the subliminal self, through means analogous to those which have been named--thought-transference and telepathy--are certainly various, and their limit is not yet known. We may mention, however, in this connection, besides the mind of the automatic writer--the mind of the questioner, and also the minds of other persons present, in any or all of which may be stored up knowledge or impressions of which the ordinary consciousness or memory retains no trace; it may be a scene witnessed in childhood; a newspaper paragraph read many years ago; a casual remark overheard, but not even noticed--all these and many more are sources of information upon which the subliminal self may draw for answers, which, when written out by the automatist, seem absolutely marvellous, not to say miraculous or supernatural. Thus, the prayer at the ceremony of the advancement of a Mark Master Mason, although language entirely unfamiliar to Mrs. Newnham, was perfectly familiar to her husband, who was himself a Mason, and, I believe, a chaplain in the order; and while the form was not one actually used, it contained strictly accurate technicalities, and would have been perfectly appropriate to such an occasion. The messages written by Mr. Wedgwood and Mrs. R. profess to come directly from the spirit of Colonel Gurwood; but without absolutely discarding that theory, having the key to which I have referred, let us see if such a supposition is necessary to explain the facts. It may be conceded at once that neither Mr. Wedgwood nor either of the ladies with whom he wrote had any conscious knowledge of Col. Gurwood--his military career, or his sad taking off; but they were all intelligent people. John Gurwood, as it turned out, was a noted man; he was an officer in the Peninsular War, under the Duke of Wellington, performed an act of special bravery and daring, in the performance of which he was severely wounded, and for which he was afterward granted a coat of arms. He was also afterward chosen to edit the duke's dispatches. All this was recorded in the _Annual Register_ for 1845, soon after Gurwood's death, together with a description in the language of heraldry of the crest or coat of arms which had been granted him many years before. It is scarcely possible that such an event would not have been noticed in the newspapers at the time of Gurwood's death, and nothing is more probable than that some of these intelligent persons had read these accounts, or as children heard them read or referred to, though they may now have been entirely absent from their ordinary consciousness and memory. At all events, the subliminal self or secondary consciousness of Mrs. R., whom Planchette designates as "the medium," or of Mr. Wedgwood, may have come into relationship with the sources of information necessary to furnish the messages which it communicated, and these sources may have been the knowledge or impressions unconsciously received many years before by some of those present, the generally diffused knowledge of these facts which doubtless prevailed in the community at the time of Gurwood's death, and the full printed accounts of these events, many copies of which were extant. From the description of Gurwood's coat of arms the idea could easily have been obtained which Planchette rudely represented in drawing, constituting what is called a test, and also the other knowledge concerning his military career and death which appeared in the various messages. Regarding cases coming under my own observation, the incident relating to Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree was well known to us both, and had only recently been a matter of general conversation, and all of those present had a more or less distinct idea of Peter Stuyvesant himself, derived from Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Of the cases observed with Miss V., as before stated, nearly all the names given of "authorities," as we called them, were evidently fictitious, scarcely one being recognized, and none were of persons with whom we had any connection, and some did not claim any other origin than our subliminal consciousness, as was also the case with messages written by Mrs. Newnham. If, then, some of the messages are surely the work of the subliminal self of the writer, aided by its more acute and more far-reaching perceptions, and if nearly all may be accounted for in the same way, the probability that all such messages have the same origin is greatly increased, and in the same degree the necessity for the spiritualistic theory is diminished, since it is evident that of two theories for explaining a new fact we should accept that one which better harmonizes with facts already established. CHAPTER VIII. AUTOMATIC WRITING, DRAWING AND PAINTING. The subject of Automatism has thus far been illustrated by reference to Planchette-writing alone. It was selected because it is the kind most frequently seen and most easily proved by experiment. The little instrument Planchette, however, is not essential; it is used because, being placed on casters, it is more easily moved. The Chinese, long ago, used for the same purpose a little basket, with style attached, placed upon two even chopsticks. The same results also occur with some persons when the pencil is simply held in the usual manner for writing. The hand then being allowed to remain perfectly passive, automatic movements first take place--the hand moving round and round or across the paper, and then follows writing or drawing, as the case may be. Some persons produce written messages in _mirror writing_--that is, reversed--or so written that it can only be easily read by causing it to be reflected in a mirror. This kind of writing is sometimes produced on the first attempt of the experimenter, and even by young children without any experience or knowledge of the subject. As previously shown, different strata of consciousness may, and in some well observed cases, most certainly do, exist in the same individual. In these well observed cases, each separate consciousness had its own distinct chain of memories and its own characteristics and peculiarities; and these distinct chains of memories and well defined characteristics constitute, so far as we can judge, distinct personalities. At all events, they are centres of intelligence and mental activity which are altogether independent of the ordinary, everyday consciousness or personality, and often altogether superior to it. Accordingly this other centre of intelligence and mental activity has been named the _second personality or subliminal self_; that is, a consciousness or self or personality beneath the threshold, so to speak, of the ordinary or primary self. Ansel Bourne and A. J. Brown were separate and distinct personalities, having entirely distinct, and apparently unrelated, chains of memory, distinct characteristics, opinions, and peculiarities, acting at different times through the same body. Ansel Bourne was the usual or primary personality; A. J. Brown was a second personality, a separate focus of intelligence and mental activity, a subliminal self. What the exact relationship existing between these two personalities may be we do not attempt at present to explain; but that they exist and act independent of each other we know. In other instances, as, for example, that of Madame B., the hypnotic subject of Prof. Janet of Havre, and also that of Alma Z., we have been able to observe these separate centres of intelligence, these distinct personalities, both in action at the same time, upon altogether separate and unrelated subjects. Sometimes the subliminal self takes full control, making itself the active ruling personality to the entire exclusion of the primary self; and sometimes it only sends messages to the primary or ordinary self, by suggestion, mental pictures, or vivid impressions made upon the organs of sense and producing the sensation of seeing, hearing, or touch. To illustrate these different methods of communication between the ordinary and subliminal self, suppose an individual, whom we will designate as X., manifests this peculiar condition of double consciousness. As we have seen, the subliminal self often takes cognizance of things concerning which the ordinary self is entirely ignorant, but it may not always have the power to impress the primary self with this knowledge, nor to take full possession, so as to be able to impart it to others by speaking or writing. This is the usual condition of most persons; with some peculiarly constituted persons, however, the possibility of being so impressed surely exists, and with them these impressions are direct and vivid. Our individual, X., is one in whom this ability to receive impressions in this manner exists. To illustrate: Suppose first that X. is asleep, is taking his after-dinner nap, and that children playing in his grounds have set fire to some straw in close proximity to buildings near by. No one notices the danger. X. is asleep, but his subliminal self is on the alert--like the second self of the somnambulist or subject in the hypnotic trance--it sees that unless checked there will be a destructive conflagration. It impresses upon X. a dream of fire so vivid that he wakes in alarm, discovers the mischief and averts the danger. Or suppose X. to be awake and sitting in his office in a distant part of the house, quite unconscious of anything unusual. All at once he becomes restless, unable to pursue his work; he is impelled to leave his desk, to go out, to walk in the direction of the fire, and thus become aware of the danger. Or again, that X. is an automatic writer--that paper and pencil are at hand and he receives a sudden impulse to write. He has no knowledge of what he is writing, but upon examination he finds it a warning to look after the threatening fire; or still again, that he hears a voice distinctly saying, "Look out for fire;" or sees a distinct picture of the place and circumstances of the fire; all these are possible methods by which the subliminal self might communicate to X., the ordinary personality, the danger which was threatening. Automatism, therefore, does not necessarily take the form of written messages, but may take any form by which the subliminal self can best transmit its message to the primary self--or in the same way from one person to another, whether by words written or spoken automatically--by voices heard, by action influenced, as when X. is influenced to leave his office and walk, or the mischievous Léontine unties the apron of Léonie, or by vision or vivid mental picture, as when Peter sees a "sheet let down by the four corners," from which he learns an important lesson. The messages received automatically may not all be true; they may be trivial and even false; on the other hand, they may not only be true and important but they may convey information quite out of the power of the primary self to acquire by any ordinary use of the senses. Nor need we be greatly surprised at this; it is a normal function of the subliminal self; with some persons that function is active, with others it is dormant, but in all, at some moment in life, circumstances may arise which shall awaken that function into activity. A remarkable example of messages received by automatic writing is that furnished by Mr. W. T. Stead, occurring in his own experience. Mr. Stead is a well-known author, journalist, and the editor of the London edition of the _Review of Reviews_, in which magazine his experiences have, on various occasions, been published. As he regards the matter, there is an _invisible intelligence_ which controls his hand, but the persons with whom he is in communication are alive and visible--for instance his own son on various occasions, also persons in his employ, writers upon his magazine, casual acquaintances, and even strangers. None of these persons participate in any active or conscious way in the communications. Mr. F. W. H. Myers has often conversed with Mr. Stead and with several of his involuntary correspondents in relation to the phenomena, and the facts are so simple and open, and the persons connected with them so intelligent and evidently sincere and truthful, that no doubt can be entertained as to the reality of the incidents, however they may be interpreted. One of the most remarkable of these involuntary correspondents is known as Miss A., a lady employed by him in literary work of an important character. She testifies in regard to the matter: "I, the subject of Mr. Stead's automatic writing, known as 'A.,' testify to the correctness of the statements made in this report. I would like to add what I think more wonderful than many things Mr. Stead has cited, namely, the correctness with which, on several occasions, he has given the names of persons whom he has never seen nor heard of before. I remember on one occasion a person calling upon me with a very uncommon name. The next day I saw Mr. Stead and he read to me what his hand had written of the visit of that person, giving the name absolutely correctly. Mr. Stead has never seen that person, and until then had no knowledge of his existence." The following is a description of a journey made by Miss A., automatically written by Mr. Stead, he at the time not having the slightest knowledge where she was, what she was doing, or that she intended making any such journey. The slight inaccuracies are noted:-- "I went to the Waterloo station by the twelve o'clock train, and got to Hampton Court about one. When we got out we went to a hotel and had dinner. It cost nearly three shillings. After dinner I went to the picture-galleries. I was very much pleased with the paintings of many of the ceilings. I was interested in most of the portraits of Lely. After seeing the galleries I went into the grounds. How beautiful they are! I saw a great vine, that lovely English garden, the avenue of elms, the canal, the great water sheet, the three views, the fountain, the gold fishes, and then lost myself in the maze. I got home about nine o'clock. It cost me altogether about six shillings." On communicating this to Miss A. she found that everything was correct with two exceptions. She went down by the two o'clock train instead of the twelve, and got to Hampton Court about three. The dinner cost her two and elevenpence, which was nearly three shillings, and the total was six and threepence. The places were visited in the order mentioned. A second instance was where the needs of a comparative stranger were written out by Mr. Stead's hand. Mr. Stead goes on to say: "Last February I met a correspondent in a railway carriage with whom I had a very casual acquaintance. Knowing that he was in considerable distress, our conversation fell into a more or less confidential train in which I divined that his difficulty was chiefly financial. I said I did not know whether I could be of any help to him, but asked him to let me know exactly how things stood--what were his debts, his expectations, and so forth. He said he really could not tell me, and I refrained from pressing him. "That night I received a letter from him apologizing for not having given the information, but saying he really could not. I received that letter about ten o'clock, and about two o'clock next morning, before going to sleep, I sat down in my bedroom and said: 'You did not like to tell me your exact financial condition face to face, but now you can do so through my hand. Just write and tell me exactly how things stand. How much money do you owe?' My hand wrote, 'My debts are £90.' In answer to a further inquiry whether the figures were accurately stated, 'ninety pounds' was then written in full. 'Is that all?' I asked. My hand wrote 'Yes, and how I am to pay I do not know.' 'Well,' I said; 'how much do you want for that piece of property you wish to sell?' My hand wrote, 'What I hope is, say, £100 for that. It seems a great deal, but I must get money somehow. Oh, if I could get anything to do--I would gladly do anything!' 'What does it cost you to live?' I asked. My hand wrote, 'I do not think I could possibly live under £200 a year. If I were alone I could live on £50 per annum.' "The next day I made a point of seeking my friend. He said: 'I hope you were not offended at my refusing to tell you my circumstances, but really I do not think it would be right to trouble you with them.' I said: 'I am not offended in the least, and I hope you will not be offended when I tell you what I have done.' I then explained this automatic, telepathic method of communication. I said: 'I do not know whether there is a word of truth in what my hand has written. I hesitate at telling you, for I confess I think the sum which was written as the amount of your debts cannot be correctly stated; it seems to me much too small, considering the distress in which you seemed to be; therefore I will read you that first, and if that is right I will read you the rest; but if it is wrong I will consider it is rubbish and that your mind in no way influenced my hand.' He was interested but incredulous. But, I said, 'Before I read you anything will you form a definite idea in your mind as to how much your debts amount to; secondly, as to the amount of money you hope to get for that property; thirdly, what it costs you to keep up your establishment with your relatives; and fourthly, what you could live upon if you were by yourself?' 'Yes,' he said, 'I have thought of all those things.' I then read out. 'The amount of your debts is about £90.' He started. 'Yes,' he said, 'that is right.' Then I said: 'As that is right I will read the rest. You hope to get £100 for your property.' 'Yes,' he said, 'that was the figure that was in my mind, though I hesitated to mention it for it seems too much.' 'You say you cannot live upon less than £200 a year with your present establishment.' 'Yes,' he said, 'that is exactly right.' 'But if you were by yourself you could live on £50 a year.' 'Well,' said he, 'a pound a week was what I had fixed in my mind.' Therefore there had been a perfectly accurate transcription of the thoughts in the mind of a comparative stranger written out with my own hand at a time when we were at a distance of some miles apart, within a few hours of the time when he had written apologizing for not having given me the information for which I had asked." In the following case the correspondent is a foreign lady, doing some work for the _Review_, but whom Mr. Stead had only met once in his life. On the occasion now referred to be was to meet her at Redcar Station at about three o'clock in the afternoon. He was stopping at a house ten minutes' walk from the station, and it occurred to him that "about three o'clock," as mentioned in her letter, might mean _before_ three; and it was now only twenty minutes of three. No timetable was at hand: he simply asked her to use his hand to tell him what time the train was due. This was done without ever having had any communication with her upon the subject of automatic writing. She (by Mr. Stead's hand) immediately wrote her name, and said the train was due at Redcar Station at ten minutes of three. Accordingly he had to leave at once--but before starting he said, "Where are you at this moment?" The answer came, "I am in the train at Middlesborough railway station, on my way from Hartpool to Redcar." On arriving at the station he consulted the timetable and found the train was due at 2:52. The train, however, was late. At three o'clock it had not arrived; at five minutes past three, getting uneasy at the delay, he took paper and pencil in his hand and asked where she was. Her name was at once written and there was added: "I am in the train rounding the curve before you come to Redcar Station--I will be with you in a minute." "Why the mischief have you been so late?" he mentally asked. His hand wrote, "We were detained at Middlesborough so long--I don't know why." He put the paper in his pocket and walked to the end of the platform just as the train came in. He immediately went to his friend and exclaimed:--"How late you are! What on earth has been the matter?" To which she replied: "I do not know; the train stopped so long at Middlesborough--it seemed as if it never would start." This narrative was fully corroborated by the lady who was the passenger referred to. In all these cases it should be noticed the so-called correspondent took no active part in the experiment, was not conscious of communicating anything, nor of trying to do so; nor is there any evidence of a third party or any intervening intelligence or personality; but the subliminal self of the writer went forth and acquired the needed information and transferred it automatically to the primary self, as was the case in the Planchette-writing of Mrs. Newnham and the Wedgwood cases. During the years 1874 and 1875 I had under my care Mrs. Juliette T. Burton, the wife of a physician who came to New York from the South at the close of the war. She was a woman of refinement, education, and excellent literary ability. She wrote with unusual facility, and her articles were accepted by newspapers and magazines, and brought her a considerable income. I knew her well, and her honesty, good faith, and strong common-sense were conspicuous. She died of phthisis in 1875. It is to her varied automatic powers as illustrating our subject that I would call attention. Many of her best articles were prepared without conscious effort of her own, either physical or mental; she simply prepared pencils and paper, became passive, and her hand wrote. Sometimes she had a plan to write up a certain subject, and sometimes the subject as well as the matter came automatically. She knew that she was writing, but of what was written she had no knowledge until she read her own manuscript. She had no talent for drawing nor for painting; she could not, in her ordinary condition, draw a face, nor even a leaf, which could be recognized. Soon after coming to New York she began to see faces and other pictures before her on the blank paper and to sketch them with marvellous rapidity and exactness, all in the same automatic manner as that in which she did her writing. These drawings were not crude, but were strongly characteristic and were delicately done with ordinary lead pencils, several of which were prepared beforehand with sharp delicate points. I remember one drawing in particular--a man's head about half life-size, with full flowing beard. At first glance there was nothing peculiar about the picture, except that one would say that it was a strong and characteristic face; but on close examination in a strong light, and especially through a reading-glass, the beard was seen to be made up entirely of exceedingly minute faces of sheep; every face was perfectly formed and characteristic, and there were thousands of them. It was done with the same wonderful rapidity which characterized all her automatic work. Later she was impelled to procure colors, brushes, and all the materials for painting in oil; and although she had never even seen that kind of work done, and had not the slightest idea how to mix the colors to produce desired tints, nor how to apply them to produce desired effects, yet at a single sitting in a darkened room she produced a head of singular strength and character and possessing at least some artistic merit. Certainly no one could imagine it to be the first attempt of a person entirely without natural talent for either drawing or painting. It was done on common brown cardboard, and it has been in my possession for the past twenty-two years. The reproduction which appears as frontispiece to the present volume gives some idea of its character. The impression received by the painter was that it was the portrait of an Englishman named Nathan Early.[1] No date was assigned. [1] See Frontispiece. As a further illustration of her automatic power, it may be mentioned that another uncultivated faculty developed itself, namely, the power of referring to past events in the lives of those who were in her presence. The knowledge of past events so conveyed was frequently most remarkable and was circumstantially correct, even rivalling in this respect the reports which we have of Jung-Stilling and Zschokke. CHAPTER IX. CRYSTAL-GAZING. Automatic messages fall naturally into two general classes: (1) _Motor_ messages, or those received by means of writing, speaking, drawing, or some _activity_ of the body, and (2) _sensory_ messages, or those received _passively_ by means of an impression made upon some of the senses, as, for example, seeing, hearing, or feeling. The motor messages spelt out by raps and table-tipping, and the performances of trance-speakers and spiritualistic mediums need not detain us at present; so far as the messages themselves are concerned they offer no new elements for consideration. The utterances of trance-speakers as a rule are not rich in verifiable facts, though some of their performances are truly remarkable as presenting a phase of improvisation automatically given; and the same may be said of mediumistic utterances generally; they have the same value as automatic writing, whether produced by Planchette, or passively holding the pencil in the hand; and so far as they are honest they probably have the same origin, namely, the secondary consciousness or subliminal self of the medium. As regards the force which makes the raps or tips the table, it is altogether a different subject and its consideration here would be unnecessary and out of place. I hasten to present cases of automatism where the messages brought are given by other means than writing, speaking, or any movement or activity of the body, but which belong to the _sensory_ class, and are received by impressions made upon the senses. Of these the most common are those made upon the sense of sight. To this class belong visions, dreams, distinct mental pictures presented under widely varying circumstances and conditions, in trance, in the hypnotic condition, in sleep, or directly conveyed to the primary conscious self. To simply _think_ how a person, a building, or a landscape looks is one thing, but to have a full mental picture, possessing dimensions, and a stability which admits of being closely examined in detail, is quite another thing. A little girl of my acquaintance, on returning from the country after several weeks of absence from her father, said to him,--"Why, papa, I could have you with me whenever I liked, this summer, though it was only your head and shoulders that I could see; but I could place you where I liked and could look at you a long time before you went away." Without knowing it the child exactly described a true vision--her thought of her father was visualized, _externalized_, given a form which had definiteness, which could be placed and examined in detail, and was more or less permanent. Various artificial expedients have been resorted to in order to assist in this process of distinct visualization; and of these artificial means one of the most important and effective is known as crystal-gazing. It is a fact not often commented upon--indeed not often alluded to in general literature--that the crystal has from the earliest times been made use of for the purpose of producing visions, and for divination and prophecy. Not only has the crystal been used for this purpose, but also the mirror, a cup or glass of water or wine, or even some dark and glistening substance like treacle or ink poured into the palm of the hand, have all been used in a similar manner. The same practice is still observed amongst the people of India as well as the Arabs in northern Africa and other localities. An instance or two at the outset will illustrate the method and uses of the procedure. Mr. E. W. Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," published in 1836, gives this example:-- Mr. Salt, the English consul-general to that country, had greatly interested Mr. Lane by some experiences which he related, and had thus excited his curiosity to witness some of these experiments himself. Mr. Salt had suspected some of his servants of theft, but could not decide which one was guilty; so it was arranged to test the powers of some of the native seers. Accordingly a magician was sent for; a boy was also necessary to act as seer, or as we would say crystal-gazer, and for this purpose Mr. Salt selected one himself. The magician wrote several charms, consisting of Arabic words, on pieces of paper, which were burnt in a brazier with a charcoal fire along with incense and perfumes. He then drew a diagram in the palm of the boy's right hand, and into the middle of this diagram he poured some ink. He then asked the boy to look intently at the ink in the palm of his hand. The boy soon began to see figures of persons in the ink, and presently described the thief so minutely that he was at once recognized by Mr. Salt, and on being arrested and accused of the crime he immediately confessed his guilt. Further investigation by Mr. Lane and Mr. Salt furnished other interesting results. A boy eight or nine years of age was usually chosen at random from those who happened to be passing by. Invocations were written upon paper by the magician, calling upon his familiar spirit, and also a verse from the Koran "to open the boy's eyes in a supernatural manner so as to make his sight pierce into what is to us the invisible world." These were thrown into a brazier with live charcoal and burned with aromatic seeds and drugs. The magic square, that is a square within a square, was drawn in the boy's palm, and certain Arabic characters were written in the spaces between the squares; ink was then poured into the centre, and upon that the boy was to gaze intently. In this way visions were produced and various persons and scenes were described. Finally, Mr. Lane desired that Lord Nelson should be called for. The boy described a man in European clothes of dark blue, who had lost his left arm; but looking closer he added--"No, it is placed to his breast." Lord Nelson had lost his right arm and it was his custom to carry the empty sleeve attached to his breast. Mr. Lane adds, "Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake I asked the magician whether objects appeared in the ink as if actually before the boy's eyes, or as if in a glass, which made the right side appear the left? He replied, 'They appear as in a mirror,' This rendered the boy's description faultless." It is remarkable to notice how prevalent this mode of divination or second-sight has been in all ages. Traces of the same procedure have been found in Egypt, Persia, China, India, Greece, and Rome, and notably in Europe generally, from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. A lady who withholds her name from the public, but who is perfectly well known to Mr. Myers, of the Society for Psychical Research, and who chooses to be known as Miss X., has been at great pains to collect curious information upon this subject and has added her own very interesting experience in crystal-gazing. She writes, "It is interesting to observe the close resemblance in the various methods of employing the mirror, and in the mystic symbolism which surrounds it, not only in different ages, but in different countries. From the time of the Assyrian monarch represented on the walls of the northwest palace of Nimrod down to the seventeenth century, when Dr. Dee placed his 'Shew Stone' on a cushioned table in the goodly little chapel next his chamber in the college of which he was warden at Manchester, the seer has surrounded himself with the ceremonials of worship, whether to propitiate Pan or Osiris, or to disconcert Ahriman or the Prince of Darkness." The early Jewish Scriptures abound in indications of the same practice. When the patriarch Joseph put his silver cup in the mouth of his young brother Benjamin's sack, in order that he might have a pretext for recalling his brethren after he had sent them away, his steward, in accusing them of theft, uses this language: "Is not this the cup in which my lord drinketh, and _whereby indeed he divineth_?" Showing the same use of the cup for purposes of divination as that indicated on the walls of the Assyrian Palace. The Urim and Thummim, as their names indicate, were doubtless stones of unusual splendor set in the high-priest's "breast-plate of judgment," and they were made use of to "inquire of the Lord." When Joshua was to be set apart as a leader of the people, he was brought to Eleazar the priest, who should lay his hands on him and "ask counsel for him _after the judgment_ of _Urim_ before the Lord." In the last days of Saul's career as King of Israel he desired to "inquire of the Lord" regarding his future fortunes, but "the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by _Urim_, nor by prophets;" and it is not uninteresting to note that Saul in his strait directly sought the Witch of Endor, from whom he obtained what proved to be true information regarding the disasters which were to overwhelm him. In a Persian romance it is noted that "if a mirror be covered with ink and placed in front of any one it will indicate whatever he wishes to know." The Greeks had a variety of methods of divination by crystal-gazing. Sometimes it was by the mirror placed so as to reflect light upon the surface of a fountain of clear water, sometimes by mirrors alone; sometimes they made use of glass vessels filled with water and surrounded with torches, sometimes of natural crystals, and sometimes even of a child's "nails covered with oil and soot," so as to reflect the rays of the sun. The Romans made special use of crystals and mirrors, and children were particularly employed for mirror-reading when consulting regarding important events; thus in a manner taking the place of the early oracles. From Jewish and Pagan practices as a means of divination, clairvoyance and prophecy, the art of the crystal seer seems to have passed to early Christian times without material change except in ceremonials. These seers are mentioned in the counsels of the Church as specularii, children often acting as the seers, and although in some quarters they were looked upon with suspicion as heretics, and were under the ban of the Church, yet they had an extensive following. Thomas Aquinas, speaking of the peculiar power of seeing visions possessed by children, says it is not to be ascribed to any virtue or innocence of theirs, nor any power of nature, but that it is the work of the devil. In Wagner's beautiful opera of Parsifal, based upon the legend of the Holy Grail, reference to the same custom is more than once evident. The second act opens with a scene representing the enchanted castle of Klingsor; the magician himself is seen gazing into a bright metallic mirror, in which he sees Parsifal approaching and recognizes and fears him as the promised guiltless one--the true king and guardian of the Grail--an office to which he himself had once aspired. In fact the Grail itself, in its earliest mythical and traditional form, as well as in its later development as a distinctly Christian symbol, was an instrument of divination and prophecy. The Druids had their basin, sometimes filled with aromatic herbs, sometimes with the blood of the sacrificed victim; but in either case it was potent for securing the proper psychic condition in the officiating priest or soothsayer; and while Arabic and Indian myths present the same idea, sometimes as a cup of divination, and sometimes as a brilliant stone, the British Islands were the main source of the traditions which eventually culminated in the legends of the Holy Grail, with its full store of beautiful and touching incidents, prophecies, and forms of worship. In each the special guardians and knights of the Grail appear, with Parsifal, the simple-minded, pure and pitiful knight as its restorer and king when lost or in unworthy hands. In the German version of the twelfth century as given by Wolfram, in his Parzival, the Grail is a beautiful, sacred stone, enshrined in the magnificent temple at Montsalvat, guarded by the consecrated knights and the sick and erring, but repentant, King Amfortas. While the unhappy king was worshipping with gaze intent upon the Sacred Emblem, suddenly letters of fire surrounded it and he read the cheering prophecy: "In the loving soul of a guiltless one Put thy faith--Him have I chosen." Kufferath remarks, "The religious emblem soon became a symbolic object--it revealed to its worshippers the knowledge of the future, the mystery of the world, the treasures of human knowledge, and imparted a poetic inspiration." So it comes to pass that in the legend in its latest form--the splendid work of the Master of Bayreuth, the Holy Grail, as a chalice and Christian emblem, is still endowed with the same miraculous power, and is rescued from the unfortunate guardianship of Amfortas by the "loving soul of a guiltless one"--the simple, tried, and much-enduring Parsifal, miraculously promised long before by the Grail itself. It will be seen, then, that crystal-gazing in its various forms has, from the earliest times, been practised with great ceremony for the purpose of acquiring knowledge concerning affairs and events unknown and often not discoverable by ordinary methods. Stripped of its fictitious accessories--its charms, incantations, incense and prayers--one single important fact remains common in the most ancient and the most modern usages, and that fact is the steady and continuous gazing at a bright object. It is identical with Braid's method of inducing the hypnotic trance, with Luys' method, causing his patients to gaze at revolving mirrors, and with the method of hypnotizers generally who desire their patients to direct their gaze toward some specified, and preferably some bright or reflecting object. In crystal gazing, as ordinarily practised, the full hypnotic condition is not usually induced; but in many cases a condition of reverie occurs, in which pictures or visions fill the mind or appear externalized in the crystal or mirror. With some persons this condition so favorable to visualizing, is produced by simply becoming passive; with others the gazing at a bright or reflecting object assists in securing that end, while with many none of these means, nor yet the assistance of the most skilful hypnotizer, avails to secure the message-bearing action of the subliminal self. The experiences of Miss X., in crystal-gazing are devoid of the interest imparted by exciting incident, and on that very account are the more valuable as illustrating our subject. She has friends of whose experiments she has carefully observed the results, and she has some seventy cases or experiments of her own of which she has kept carefully prepared notes, always made directly or within an hour after each experiment. For a crystal she recommends "a good-sized magnifying glass placed on a dark background." She classifies her results as follows:-- (1) After-images or recrudescent memories coming up from the subconscious strata to which they had fallen. (2) Objectivations, or the visualizing of ideas or images which already exist consciously or unconsciously in the mind. (3) Visions possibly telepathic, or clairvoyant, implying acquirement of knowledge by supranormal means. The following are some of Miss X.'s experiments:-- She had been occupying herself with accounts and opened a drawer to take out her banking book; accidentally her hand came in contact with the crystal she was in the habit of using, and she welcomed the suggestion of a change of occupation. Figures, however, were still uppermost, and the crystal showed her nothing but the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab she had driven in that morning, or a chance combination of figures with which she had been occupied, she laid aside the crystal and took up her banking book, which certainly she had not seen for several months. Greatly to her surprise she found that 7694 was the number of her book, plainly indicated on the cover. She declares that she would have utterly failed to recall the figures, and could not even have guessed the number of digits nor the value of the first figure. Again:--Having carelessly destroyed a letter without preserving the address of her correspondent she tried in vain to recall it. She knew the county, and, searching on a map, she recognized the name of the town, one quite unfamiliar to her, but she had no clue to the house or street, till at length it occurred to her to test the value of the crystal as a means of recalling forgotten knowledge. A short inspection showed her the words, "H. House," in gray letters on a white ground. Having nothing better to rely upon she risked posting the letter to the address so curiously supplied. A day or two brought an answer--on paper headed "H. House" in gray letters on a white ground. One more illustration from Miss X., one of her earliest experiments, numbered 11, in her notebook. There came into the crystal a vision perplexing and wholly unexpected: a quaint old chair, an aged hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the arm of the chair. It was slowly recognized as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage which she had not been in and had seldom thought of since she was a child of ten. But whence came the vision, and why to-day? The clue was found. That same day she had been reading Dante, a book which she had first learned to read and enjoy by the help of the aged vicar with the "worn black coat-sleeve" resting on the same quaint, oak chair-arm in that same corner of the study in the country vicarage. Here are two cases from the same writer belonging to the third division of her classification, namely, where an explanation of the vision requires the introduction of a telepathic influence. On Monday, February 11th, she took up the crystal with the deliberate wish and intention of seeing a certain figure which occupied her thoughts at the time; but instead of the desired figure the field was preoccupied by a plain little nosegay of daffodils, such as might be formed by two or three fine flowers bunched together. This presented itself in several different positions notwithstanding her wish to be rid of it, so as to have the field clear for her desired picture. She concluded that the vision came in consequence of her having the day before seen the first daffodils of the season on a friend's dinner-table. But the resemblance to these was not at all complete, as they were loosely arranged with ferns and ivy, whereas the crystal vision was a compact little bunch without foliage of any kind. On Thursday, February 14th, she very unexpectedly received as a "Valentine" a painting on a blue satin ground, of a bunch of daffodils corresponding exactly with her crystal vision. She also ascertained that on Monday the 11th, the artist had spent several hours in making studies of these flowers, arranged in different positions. Again:--On Saturday, March 9th, she had written a rather impatient note to a friend, accusing her of having, on her return from the Continent, spent several days in London without visiting her. On Sunday evening following, she found her friend before her in the crystal, but could not understand why she held up in a deprecating manner what seemed to be a music portfolio. However, she made a note of the vision and sketched the portfolio. On Monday she received an answer to her impatient letter, pleading guilty to the charge of neglect, but urging as an excuse that she was attending the Royal Academy of Music and was engaged there the greater part of every day. Such an excuse was to the last degree unexpected, as her friend was a married woman and had never given serious attention to music. It was true, however--and she afterwards learned that she carried a portfolio which was the counterpart of the one she had sketched from her crystal vision. The following incident in which an East India army officer, Col. Wickham, his wife, Princess di Cristoforo, and Ruth, their educated native servant, were the chief actors, illustrates another phase of crystal-gazing. All three of the actors participating in the incident were well known personally to Mr. Myers, who reports the case. Briefly stated: In 1885, Colonel, then Major, Wickham, was stationed with the Royal Artillery at Colabra, about two miles from Bombay. Mrs. Wickham was accustomed to experiment with some of the Indian servants and especially Ruth, by having her look in a glass of magnetized water. One morning Lord Reay was expected to arrive at Bombay, and there was to be a grand full-dress parade of the English troops. While sitting at the breakfast table the major directed his orderly to see that his uniform was in readiness. The man obeyed, but soon returned with a dejected air, and stammered out--"Sahib, me no can find the dress pouch-belt." A general hunt for the lost article was instituted, but to no purpose; the pouch-belt was absolutely missing. The enraged major stormed and accused the servants of stealing it, which only produced a tumult and a storm of denials from them all. "Now," cried the major, "is an excellent opportunity to test the seeing powers of Ruth. Bring her in at once and let her try if she can find my pouch-belt." Accordingly a tumbler was filled with water, and Mrs. W. placing it on her left hand made passes over it with her right. Water so treated could always be detected with absolute certainty by Ruth, simply by tasting it--a fact not uncommonly observed, and which was an additional proof that she possessed unusual perceptive power. Into this glass of water Ruth gazed intently, but she could discern nothing. She was commanded to find the thief, but no thief could be seen. Changing her tactics, Mrs. W. then commanded Ruth to see where the major was the last time he wore the belt. At once she described the scene of a grand parade which took place months before, and which they all recognized. "Do not take your eyes off from the major for a moment," said Mrs. W., and Ruth continued to gaze intently at the pageant in the glass. At length the parade ended and Ruth said, "Sahib has gone into a big house by the water; all his regimentals are put in the tin case, but the pouch-belt is left out; it is hanging on a peg in the dressing-room of the big house by the water." "The yacht club!" cried the major. "Patilla, send some one at once to see if the belt has been left there." The search was rewarded by finding the belt as described, and the servants returned bringing it with a grand tumult of triumph. On many other occasions was Ruth's aid successfully invoked to find lost articles. Instead of a glass of water, some springs and wells when gazed into have the same effect of producing visions, especially when a mirror is so held at the same time as to reflect light upon the surface of the water. Springs of this sort have been reported at various periods in the past, some being frequented for health and some for purposes of divination. The latest instance of a well possessing the quality or power of producing visions is that upon the farm of Col. J. J. Deyer at Handsoms, Va. It was in May, 1892, that the curious influence pertaining to this well was first observed and soon it was thronged with visitors. Faces, both familiar and strange, of people living and of those long dead, and hundreds of other objects, animate and inanimate, were distinctly seen upon the surface of the water. The water of the well is _unusually clear_ and the bottom of _white sand_ is clearly visible. A mirror is held over the top of the well with face toward the water so as to throw reflected light upon the surface. At first Miss Deyer, the colonel's daughter, always held the mirror, but afterwards it was found that any one who could hold the mirror _steadily_ performed the duty equally well. If the mirror was held unsteadily the pictures were indistinct or failed to appear at all; and the brighter the day the better the pictures. Many level headed men and some well qualified to observe curious psychical phenomena visited the well, and nearly all were convinced that, under favorable circumstances, remarkable pictures appeared; naturally, however, different causes were assigned for these appearances. Prof. Dolbear and Mr. T. E. Allen, from the American Psychical Society, saw nothing remarkable during their visit to the well, and referred the pictures seen by so many people to the reflection of objects about the well, aided by the mental excitement and expectation of so many spectators. This explanation, however, seems hardly sufficient to account for the hallucinations of so large a number of persons kept up for so long a time. At all events, an interesting psychic element of some sort was active. Col. Deyer is an intelligent man, commanding the respect of his neighbors, and has held an appointment of considerable importance under the government at Washington. In a letter dated December 2d, 1893, he says:--"Thousands of people from various sections of the Union have visited the place--of course some laugh at it. I do myself sometimes, as I am not superstitious and take little stock in spooks or anything connected therewith; but the well is here, and still shows up many wondrous things, but not so plentiful nor so plainly as it did a year ago." We have presented in this well the most favorable conditions possible for crystal-gazing--a body of unusually clear sparkling water, lying upon a white sand bottom, and the rays of the sun reflected into it by means of a mirror;--no better "cup of divination" could be desired, nor any better circumstances for securing the psychical conditions favorable for the action of the subliminal self. The various methods of practising crystal-gazing here noticed may be looked upon simply as so many different forms of _sensory automatism_, referable in these instances to the sense of sight; and whether produced by using the "cup of divination," the ink or treacle in the palm of the hand, the jewels of the Jewish high-priest, the ordinary crystal or stone of the early Christian centuries, and even down to the experiments of Miss X., and the Society for Psychical Research, or last of all, the wells or springs of clear water, either the early ones of Greece and Rome, or the latest one on the farm of Col. Deyer, they are all simply methods of securing such a condition by gazing fixedly at a bright object, as best to facilitate communication between the ordinary or primary self, and the secondary or subliminal self. It is the first, and perhaps the most important, in a series of sensory automatisms, or those having reference to the senses, in distinction from motor automatisms, or those produced by various automatic actions of the body. These sensory automatisms are usually looked upon as hallucinations--but so far as the term hallucination conveys the idea of deception or falsity it is inappropriate, since the messages brought in this manner are just as real--just as veridical or truth-telling as automatic writing or speaking. Hearing is another form of sensory automatism, which, while less common than that of seeing, has also been noticed in all ages. The child Samuel, ministering to the High Priest Eli, three times in one night, heard himself called by name, and three times came to Eli saying, "Here am I;" adding at last, "for surely thou didst call me." The wise high-priest recognized the rare psychic qualities of the child and brought him up for the priesthood in place of his own wayward sons; and he became the great seer of Israel. Socrates was accustomed to hear a voice which always admonished him when the course he was pursuing or contemplating was wrong or harmful; but it was silent when the contemplated course was right. This was the famous "Dæmon of Socrates," and was described and discussed by Xenophon and Plato as well as other Greek writers and many modern ones. Socrates himself called it the "Divine Sign." And on that account he was accused of introducing new gods, and thus offering indignity to the accredited gods of Greece. On this, as one of the leading charges, Socrates was tried and condemned to death; but in all the proceedings connected with his trial and condemnation he persisted in his course which he knew would end in his death, rather than be false to his convictions of duty and right; and this he did because the voice--the "Divine Sign"--which always before had restrained him in any wrong course, was not heard restraining him in his present course. Only once was it heard, and that was to restrain him from preparing any set argument in his defence before his judges. So he accepted his sentence and drank the hemlock, surrounded by his friends, to whom he calmly explained that death could not be an evil thing, not only from the arguments which he had adduced, but also because the Divine Sign, which never failed to admonish him when pursuing any harmful course, had not admonished nor restrained him in this course which had led directly to his death. Joan of Arc heard voices, which in childhood only guided her in her ordinary duties, but which in her early womanhood made her one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of her time. They placed her, a young and unknown peasant girl, as a commander at the head of the defeated, disorganized, and discouraged armies of France, aroused them to enthusiasm, made them victorious, freed her country from the power of England, and placed the rightful prince upon the throne. She also heard and obeyed her guiding voices, even unto martyrdom. Numerous instances might be cited occurring in ancient and also in modern times where the subliminal self has sent its message of instruction, guidance, warning, or restraint to the primary self by means of impressions made upon the organ of hearing. Socrates, Joan of Arc, Swedenborg, and many others considered these instructions infallible, supernatural, or divine; but in other cases the messages so given have been trivial, perhaps even false, thus removing the element of infallibility and absolute truthfulness from messages of this sort, and at the same time casting a doubt upon their supernatural character in any case. It seems wisest, therefore, at least to examine these and all cases of automatically received messages, whether by writing, trance-speaking, dreams, visions, or the hearing of voices, with a definite conception of a real and natural cause and origin for these messages in a subliminal self, forming a definite part of each individual: bearing in mind also that this subliminal self possesses powers and characteristics varying in each individual case, in many cases greatly transcending the powers and capabilities of the normal or primary self. But infallibility, though sometimes claimed, is by no means to be expected from this source, and the messages coming from each subliminal self must be judged and valued according to their own intrinsic character and merit, just as a message coming to us from any primary self, whether known or unknown to us, must be judged and valued according to its source, character, and merit. CHAPTER X. PHANTASMS. Perhaps no department of Psychical Research is looked upon from such divers and even quite opposite standpoints as that which relates to Apparitions or Phantasms. Many intelligent people, in a general way, accept them as realities but assign for them a supernatural origin; while others discredit them altogether because they have apparently no basis except an assumed supernatural one. It has been said that primitive, undeveloped, and ignorant people almost universally believe in ghosts; while with the advance of civilization, culture, and general intelligence, the frequency of alleged apparitions and the belief in ghosts diminishes or altogether disappears. If this statement were to stand unqualified, by so much would the reality and respectability of phantasms be discredited. Possibly, however, it may be found that the last word has not yet been said, and that there may exist a scientific aspect for even so unstable and diaphanous a subject as ghosts. Instead of going over the literature of the subject from the earliest times--a literature, by the way, which in the hands of Tylor, Maury, Scott, Ralston, Mrs. Crowe and others certainly does not lack interest--it will better suit our present purpose to examine some facts relative to perception in general and vision in particular, and give some examples illustrating different phases of the subject. Perception may be defined as the cognizance which the mind takes of impressions presented to it through the organs of sense, and possibly also by other means. One class of perceptions is universally recognized and is in a measure understood, namely, perceptions arising from impressions made by recognized external objects or forces upon the organs of sense, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and also the general sense of touch. These perceptions in particular are designated as _real_ or _true_, because they correspond to recognized external realities. But impressions are also made upon the organs of special sense by influences which are not recognized as having any objective reality, but which nevertheless affect the senses in a manner often identical with that in which they are affected by recognized external objects, and they cause the same perceptions to arise in the mind. Hence another broad class of perceptions includes those which are taken cognizance of by the mind from impressions made upon the organs of sense in other ways and by other means than by external objects, and often where there is no evidence that any external object exists corresponding to the impression so made. Perceptions arising in these various ways are called _hallucinations_. On close examination, however, it is found that the sharp line of separation between what has and what has not an objective reality is not easily drawn, any more than in biology the sharp line between animal and vegetable life can be easily drawn, or at the lower end of the scale between the living and the not living. So the origin of those perceptions which are classed as hallucinations has always been a subject of controversy, even among philosophers of the greatest merit and eminence. Without following out the discussions which have arisen on this point--discussions which are often confusing and generally inconclusive, a fairly distinct view of the subject may be obtained by considering the origin of these perceptions under three heads--namely:-- (1) Perceptions which are reckoned as hallucinations may be originated _centrally_; that is, they may arise wholly within the mind itself without any direct external stimulus. For instance the characters drawn by the novelist may become so real to him, and even to some of his readers, that they become _externalized_--actual objects of visual perception and are seen to act and even heard to speak. The instance is repeatedly quoted of the painter who, after carefully studying a sitter's appearance, could voluntarily project it visibly into space and paint the portrait, not from the original, but from the phantasm so produced; and of another who could externalize and project other mental pictures in the same manner, pictures which so interested him and were so subject to the ordinary laws of vision that he would request any one who took a position in front of them, to move away so as not to obstruct his view. It will be noticed in these cases that although the perception has its origin centrally, in the mind itself, and is even voluntarily produced, still, it is seen as an impression made upon the visual organ in exactly the same manner as a picture thrown upon the retina by a real external object; it disappears when the eyes are closed or an opaque object intervenes, and follows the laws of optics in general; hence, strictly speaking, these perceptions are also real. (2) Perceptions may have their origin _peripherally_--that is, the point of excitation which causes the act of perception in the mind may exist in the external sense organs themselves, even when no external object corresponding to the perception exists at the time, or it is not in a position on account of distance or intervening objects to affect the senses. In examining the cases which may be placed under this head they resolve themselves into two classes: those which occur in connection with some disease or defect in the sense organ concerned, and those which are recrudescences or after-visions, arising from over-excitation of those organs; for instance, after looking through a window in a very bright light--even a considerable length of time afterwards--on shutting the eyes or looking into a dark room, an image of the window is seen with all its divisions and peculiarities of construction distinctly presented. To the country lad returning home at night from his first visit to the circus the whole scene is again presented; and ring, horses, equestrians, acrobats and clowns are all seen and externalized with the utmost distinctness; even the crack of the ring-master's whip is heard and the jokes and antics of the clowns repeated. (3) Perceptions may have their origin telepathically--that is, scenes and incidents transpiring at a distance far too great to affect the bodily organs of sense in any direct or ordinary way do, nevertheless, in some way, cause perceptions to arise in the mind corresponding to those same scenes and incidents. This is comparatively a new proposition in psychology and has for its basis studies and experiments which have only been systematically made within the past fourteen years. These studies and experiments relate to telepathy, automatism, and the action of the subliminal self. They have been undertaken and carried on by various societies interested in experimental psychology, but chiefly by the English Society for Psychical Research, some of the results of whose labors have been briefly sketched in the preceding chapters. In addition to the reports of these societies an important contribution to the subject of apparitions was published by the then secretaries of the Society for Psychical Research, the late Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers, and Mr. Frank Podmore. It appeared under the title, _Phantasms of the Living_, and contained more than seven hundred instances relating to various forms of hallucinations and phantasms--carefully studied and authenticated cases which were selected from several thousand presented for examination. It is to these sources chiefly that I shall refer for cases illustrating the subject under consideration. It seems hardly necessary to recapitulate here the experiments on which the doctrine of telepathy or thought-transference is established--experiments which have been carefully made by so many well qualified persons, and which have proved convincing to nearly every one, whether scientific or unscientific, who has patiently followed them, though of course not convincing to those who choose to remain ignorant of the facts. The same is true regarding the subject of automatism and the existence and action of the subliminal self. It remains to show the interesting relations which these subjects bear to hallucinations in general, and especially to phantasms and apparitions. It is well known that hallucinations can be voluntarily or purposely produced by one person in the mind of another, and in various ways, though few perhaps consider to what an extent this is possible. In many of the most astonishing feats of the conjurer, and especially of the Indian fakir, suggestion and the imagination are brought into service to aid in producing the illusions. Regarding the hallucinations which may be produced in the mind of the hypnotized subject by the hypnotizer there can be no doubt. The following case is in point and illustrates telepathic influence excited at a distance as well. It is from _Phantasms of the Living_, and the agent, Mr. E. M. Glissold, of 3 Oxford Square, W., writes substantially as follows:-- "In the year 1878 there was a carpenter named Gannaway employed by me to mend a gate in my garden; when a friend of mine (Moens) called upon me and the conversation turned upon mesmerism. He asked me if I knew anything about it myself. On my replying in the affirmative he said, 'Can you mesmerize any one at a distance?' I said that I had never tried to do so, but that there was a man in the garden whom I could easily mesmerize, and that I would try the experiment with this man if he (Moens) would tell me what to do. He then said, 'Form an impression of the man whom you wish to mesmerize, in your own mind, and then wish him strongly to come to you.' "I very much doubted the success of the experiment, but I followed the directions of my friend, and I was extremely astonished to hear the steps of the man whom I wished to appear, running after me; he came up to me directly and asked me what I wanted with him. I will add that my friend and I had been walking in the garden and had seen and spoken with the carpenter, but when I wished him to come to me I was quite out of his sight behind the garden wall, one hundred yards distant, and had neither by conversation nor otherwise led him to believe that I intended to mesmerize him. "On another occasion, when the Hon. Auberon Herbert was present, the following scene occurred. Gannaway was mesmerized and stood in one corner of the dining-room. Herbert sat at the table and wrote the following programme, each scene of which Mr. Glissold, the magnetizer, was to _silently call up in his own mind_. "(1) I see a house in flames. "(2) I see a woman looking out of a window. "(3) She has a child in her arms. "(4) She throws it out of the window. "(5) Is it hurt--? "Gannaway became much excited, describing each scene as it passed through the mind of his hypnotizer. Several well known persons add their testimony to the above statement." A single case of mental action so strange and unusual, no matter how well authenticated, might not impress a cautious truth-seeker, but when fortified by well studied cases in the experience of such men as Esdaile, as shown in his remarkable experiments upon the natives of India, and especially his well known one of hypnotizing the blind man at a distance, also those of Prof. Janet, Prof. Richet, Dr. Gibert, and Dr. Héricourt, in France under the observation of Mr. Myers and other members of the Society for Psychical Research, and hundreds of other cases of hypnotizing at a distance, or silently influencing the subject without hypnotization, the matter then challenges attention and belief;--and it is from abundant observation of such cases, from the simplest examples of thought-transference to the most wonderful exhibition of perceptive power at great distances, that the doctrine of Telepathy is founded. In the following case the agent was able to project his own semblance or phantasm a distance of several miles; and it was then distinctly perceived by a young lady, a friend of the agent. The circumstances were these:--Two young men, Mr. A. H. W. Cleave and Mr. H. P. Sparks, aged respectively eighteen and nineteen years, were fellow-students of engineering at the Navy Yard, Portsmouth, England. While there, they engaged in some mesmeric experiments, and after a time Sparks was able to put Cleave thoroughly into the hypnotic condition. The following is Mr. Sparks' account of what occurred. "For the last year or fifteen months I have been in the habit of mesmerizing a fellow-student of mine. The way I did it was by simply looking into his eyes as he lay in an easy position on a bed. This produced sleep. After a few times I found that this sleep was deepened by making long passes after the patient was off. Then comes the remarkable part of this sort of mesmerism." (Mr. Sparks then describes his subject's ability to see in his trance places in which he was interested if he resolved to see them before he was hypnotized.) "However, it has been during the last week or so I have been surprised and startled by an extraordinary affair. Last Friday evening (Jan. 15th, 1886), he (Cleave) expressed his wish to see a young lady living in Wandsworth, and he also said he would try to make himself seen by her. I accordingly mesmerized him and continued the long passes for about twenty minutes, concentrating my will on his idea. When he came round (after one hour and twenty minutes' trance) he said he had seen her in the dining-room; and that after a time she grew restless; then suddenly she looked straight at him, and then covered her eyes with her hands; just then he came round. Last Monday evening (Jan. 18th) we did the same thing, and this time he said he thought he had frightened her, as after she had looked at him a few minutes she fell back in her chair in a sort of faint. Her little brother was in the room at the time. Of course after this he expected a letter if the vision was real; and on Wednesday morning he received a letter from the young lady, asking whether anything had happened to him, as on Friday evening she was startled by seeing him standing at the door of the room. After a minute he disappeared and she thought it might have been fancy; but on Monday evening she was still more startled by seeing him again, and this time much clearer, and it so frightened her that she nearly fainted." Mr. Cleave also writes a very interesting account of his experience in the matter, and two fellow-students who were in the room during the experiments also write corroborating the statements made. The following is a copy of the letter in which the young lady, Miss A., describes her side of the affair. It is addressed, "Mr. A. H. W. Cleave, H. M. S. _Marlborough_, Portsmouth," and is postmarked Wandsworth, Jan. 19th, 1886. "WANDSWORTH, "Tuesday morning. "DEAR ARTHUR,--Has anything happened to you? Please write and let me know at once, for I have been so frightened. "Last Tuesday evening I was sitting in the dining-room reading, when I happened to look up, and could have declared I saw you standing at the door looking at me. I put my handkerchief to my eyes, and when I looked again you were gone. "I thought it must have been only my fancy, but last night (Monday) while I was at supper I saw you again just as before, and was so frightened that I nearly fainted. Luckily only my brother was there or it would have attracted attention. Now do write at once and tell me how you are. I really cannot write any more now." Probably the young lady is in error regarding the date of the first experiment, which may be accounted for by her excited condition--the shock of the last experiment having proved decidedly serious, as was afterwards discovered, and she begged that the experiment might never be repeated. Both young men mention Friday as the day of their first decided success, but they were experimenting on previous days, including Tuesday, when the young lady writes she first saw Cleave's phantasm. Concerning the date of the last experiment there is no question. Effects similar to those just related may also occur where the agent is in ordinary sleep, or at least when no hypnotizing process is made use of. The agent in this case first formulates the wish or strong resolution to be present and be seen at a certain place or by a certain person, and then goes to sleep, and generally remains unconscious of the result until learned from the percipient. In the following case the name of the agent is withheld from publication, though known to Mr. Myers who reports the case; the percipient is the Rev. W. Stainton-Moses. The agent goes on to state:-- "One evening early last year (1878), I resolved to try to appear to Z. (Mr. Moses) at some miles distant. I did not inform him beforehand of my intended experiment, but retired to rest shortly before midnight with thoughts intently fixed on Z., with whose room and surroundings, however, I was quite unacquainted. I soon fell asleep and woke up the next morning unconscious of anything having taken place. On seeing Z. a few days afterwards I inquired, 'Did anything happen at your rooms on Saturday night?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'a great deal happened. I had been sitting over the fire with M., smoking and chatting. About 12:30 he rose to leave, and I let him out myself. I returned to the fire to finish my pipe when I saw you sitting in the chair just vacated by him. I looked intently at you, and then took up a newspaper to assure myself I was not dreaming, but on laying it down I saw you still there. While I gazed without speaking, you faded away. Though I imagined you must be fast asleep in bed at that hour, yet you appeared dressed in your ordinary garments, such as you usually wear every day.' 'Then my experiment seems to have succeeded,' I said. 'The next time I come ask me what I want, as I had fixed on my mind certain questions to ask you, but I was probably waiting for an invitation to speak.' "A few weeks later the experiment was repeated with equal success, I, as before, not informing Z. when it was made. On this occasion he not only questioned me upon the subject which was at that time under very warm discussion between us, but detained me by the exercise of his will, some time after I had intimated a desire to leave. As on the former occasion no recollection remained of the event, or seeming event, of the preceding night." Mr. Moses writes, September 27th, 1885, confirming this account. Mr. Moses also says that he has never on any other occasion seen the figure of a living person in a place where the person was not. The next case, while presenting features similar to the last, differs from it in this respect: that there are two percipients. It is copied from the manuscript book of the agent, Mr. S. H. B. Mr. B. writes:--"On a certain Sunday evening in November, 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined with the whole force of my being that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom, on the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two ladies of my acquaintance, Miss L. S. V. and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively twenty-five and eleven years. I lived at this time at 23 Kildare Gardens, a distance of about three miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above named ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined I would be there was one o'clock in the morning, and I also had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible. "On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part), the elder one told me that on the previous Sunday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister who also saw me. I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative; and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence, she replied about one o'clock in the morning." Miss Verity's account is as follows:-- "On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr. B. in my room about one o'clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr. B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory. "L. S. VERITY." Miss E. C. Verity writes:-- "I remember the occurrence of the event described by my sister in the annexed paragraph, and her description is quite correct. I saw the apparition at the same time and under the same circumstances." Miss A. S. Verity writes:-- "I remember quite clearly the evening my eldest sister awoke me by calling to me from an adjoining room, and upon my going to her bedside, where she slept with my youngest sister, they both told me they had seen S. H. B. standing in the room. The time was about one o'clock. S. H. B. was in evening dress, they told me." The following case, while of the same general character, presents this remarkable difference: that the agent's mind was not at all directed to the real percipient, but only to the _place_ where the percipient happened to be. It is from the notebook of Mr. S. H. B. who was also the agent. "On Friday, December 1st, 1882, at 9:30 P. M. I went into a room alone and sat by the fireside, and endeavored so strongly to fix my mind upon the interior of a house at Kew (viz., Clarence Road), in which resided Miss V. and her two sisters, that I seemed to be actually in the house. "During this experiment I must have fallen into a mesmeric sleep, for, although I was conscious, I could not move my limbs. I did not seem to have lost the power of moving them, but I could not make the effort to do so.... At 10 P. M. I regained my normal state by an effort of the will and wrote down on a sheet of note-paper the foregoing statements. "When I went to bed on this same night, I determined that I would be in the front bedroom of the above-mentioned house at 12 P. M., and remain there until I had made my presence perceptible to the inmates of that room. On the next day, Saturday, I went to Kew to spend the evening, and met there a married sister of Miss V. (viz., Mrs. L.). This lady I had only met once before and that was at a ball, two years previous to the above date. We were both in fancy dress at the time, and as we did not exchange more than half a dozen words, this lady would naturally have lost any vivid recollection of my appearance even if she had noticed it. "In the course of conversation (although I did not for a moment think of asking her any questions on such a subject), she told me that on the previous night she had seen me distinctly on two occasions. She had spent the night at Clarence Road, and had slept in the front bedroom. At about half-past nine, she had seen me in the passage going from one room to another, and at 12 P. M., when she was wide-awake, she had seen me enter the bedroom and walk round to where she was lying and take her hair (which is very long), into my hand. She told me that the apparition took hold of her hand and gazed intently into it, whereupon she spoke, saying, 'You need not look at the lines for I have never had any trouble.' "She then awoke her sister, Miss V., who was sleeping with her, and told her about it. After hearing this account I took the statement which I had written down the previous evening from my pocket and showed it to some of the persons present, who were much astonished, although incredulous. "I asked Mrs. L. if she was not dreaming at the time of the latter experience, but she stoutly denied, and stated that she had forgotten what I was like, but seeing me so distinctly she recognized me at once. At my request she wrote a brief account of her impressions and signed it." The following is the lady's statement:-- "On Friday, December 1st, 1882, I was on a visit to my sister, at 21 Clarence Road, Kew, and about 9:30 P. M. I was going from my bedroom to get some water from the bath-room, when I distinctly saw Mr. S. B. whom I had only seen once before, two years ago, walk before me past the bath-room, toward the bedroom at the end of the landing. "About 11 o'clock we retired for the night; about 12 o'clock I was still awake, and the door opened and Mr. S. B. came into the room and walked around to the bedside, and there stood with one foot on the ground, and the other knee resting on a chair. He then took my hair into his hand, after which he took my hand in his and looked very intently into the palm. 'Ah,' I said (speaking to him), 'you need not look at the lines for I never had any trouble.' I then awoke my sister; I was not nervous, but excited, and began to fear some serious illness would befall her, she being delicate at the time, but she is progressing more favorably now. "H. L." (Full name signed.) Miss Verity also corroborates this statement. * * * * * The following is still another case of one mind acting upon another mind at a distance and at least in a most unusual way. Call it mind-projection, making one's self visible at a distance, sending out the subliminal self--call it what we may--it is a glimpse of a phenomenon, rare in its occurrence, but which nevertheless has been observed a sufficient number of times to claim serious attention, and calm and candid consideration. The case is from _Phantasms of the Living_, and is furnished by "Mrs. Russell of Belgaum, India, wife of Mr. H. R. Russell, Educational Inspector in the Bombay Presidency." It differs from those already cited in the fact that it is unconnected with either sleep or hypnotism, but both agent and percipient were awake and in a perfectly normal condition. Mrs. Russell writes:-- "June 8th, 1886. "As desired I write down the following facts as well as I can recall them. I was living in Scotland, my mother and sisters in Germany. I lived with a very dear friend of mine, and went to Germany every year to see my people. It had so happened that I could not go home as usual for two years, when on a sudden I made up my mind to go and see my family. They knew nothing of my intention; I had never gone in early spring before; and I had no time to let them know by letter that I was going to set off. I did not like to send a telegram for fear of frightening my mother. The thought came to me to will with all my might to appear to one of my sisters, never mind which of them, in order to give them warning of my coming. I only thought most intensely for a few minutes of them, wishing with all my might to be seen by one of them--half present myself, in vision, at home. I did not take more than ten minutes, I think. I started by the Leith steamer on Saturday night, end of April, 1859. I wished to appear at home about 6 o'clock P. M. that same Saturday. "I arrived at home at 6 o'clock on Tuesday morning following. I entered the house without any one seeing me, the hall being cleaned and the front door open. I walked into the room. One of my sisters stood with her back to the door; she turned round when she heard the door opening, and on seeing me, stared at me, turning deadly pale, and letting what she had in her hand fall. I had been silent. Then I spoke and said, 'It is I. Why do you look so frightened?' When she answered, 'I thought I saw you again as Stinchen (another sister) saw you on Saturday.' "When I inquired, she told me that on Saturday evening about 6 o'clock, my sister saw me quite clearly, entering the room in which she was, by one door, passing through it, opening the door of another room in which my mother was, and shutting the door behind me. She rushed after what she thought was I, calling out my name, and was quite stupefied when she did not find me with my mother. My mother could not understand my sister's excitement. They looked everywhere for me, but of course did not find me. My mother was very miserable; she thought I might be dying. "My sister who had seen me (i. e. my apparition) was out that morning when I arrived. I sat down on the stairs to watch, when she came in, the effect of my real appearance on her. When she looked up and saw me, sitting motionless, she called out my name and nearly fainted. "My sister had never seen anything unearthly either before that or afterwards; and I have never made any such experiments since--nor will I, as the sister that saw me first when I really came home, had a very severe illness afterwards, caused by the shock to her nerves. "J. M. RUSSELL." Mrs. Russell's sister, in answer to her inquiry whether she remembered the incident, replied: "Of course I remember the matter as well as though it had happened to-day. Pray don't come appearing to me again!" * * * * * We started out with this proposition. Perceptions--those of the class denominated hallucinations--may have their origin telepathically. In proof and illustration of that proposition we have so far presented a single class of cases, namely, Those where the hallucination was produced with will and purpose on the part of the agent. The cases present the following conditions:-- (1) The agent being in a normal condition--the percipient hypnotized, the hypnotic condition having been produced at a distance of a hundred yards--and from a point from which the percipient could not be seen. (2) The agent in the hypnotic condition; a definite hallucination strongly desired and decided upon beforehand was produced, the percipient being in a normal state. (3) The agent was in normal sleep. Hallucination decided upon before going to sleep was produced--the percipient awake and in normal condition. (4) Both agent and percipient awake and normal--hallucination produced at a distance of four hundred miles. In one case the phantasm is seen by two percipients, and in another case the _place_ only where the phantasm should appear was strongly in the agent's mind; and while the sisters who _usually_ occupied that room might naturally be expected to be the percipients, as a matter of fact another person, a married sister who happened to be visiting them--a comparative stranger to the agent--was occupying the room and became the percipient. In each of these cases a definite purpose was formed by the agent to produce a certain hallucination or present a certain picture--generally a representation or phantasm of himself to the percipient. A picture or phantasm is seen by the intended percipient, and, on comparison, in each case it is found that it is _the same phantasm_ that the agent had _endeavored_ to project and make visible, and that it was perceived in the same place and at the same time that the agent had intended that it should be seen. Can these statements be received as true and reliable? In reply we say, the evidence having been carefully examined is of such a character as to entitle it to belief, and the errors of observation and reporting are trifling, and not such as would injure the credibility of statements made regarding any event which was a matter of ordinary observation; moreover, these cases now have become so numerous and have been so carefully observed that they should be judged by the ordinary rules of evidence; and by that rule they should be received. Having been received, how can they be explained? It may be answered:-- (1) That these apparent sequences presenting the relation of cause and effect are merely chance coincidences. But on carefully applying the doctrine of chances, it is found that the probability that these coincidences of time and place, and the identity of the pictures presented and perceived, occurred by chance, would be only one in a number so large as to make it difficult to represent it in figures, and quite impossible for any mind to comprehend. And that such a coincidence should occur repeatedly in one person's experience is absolutely incredible. (2) The circumstances of distance and situation render it certain that the phantasms could not have been communicated or presented to the percipient through any of the usual channels of communication--by means of the physical organs of sense--even granting that they could be so transferred under favorable conditions. If, then, these cases must be received as authentic and true, and if they cannot be disposed of as chance coincidences, nor explained by any ordinary method or law of production or transmission, then there must be _some other_ method of mental interaction, and mental intercommunication _not usually recognized_, by means of which these pictures or phantasms are produced or transferred, and this unusual method of mental interaction and intercommunication we designate _telepathy_. What the exact method is by which this unusual interaction is accomplished is not fully demonstrated, any more than are the methods of the various interacting forces between the sun and the planets or amongst the planets themselves. The hypothesis of a universal or inter-stellar ether has never been demonstrated; it is only a hypothesis framed because it is necessary in order to explain and support another undemonstrated theory, namely, the vibratory or wave theory of light. We do not know what the substance or force which we call _attraction_ really is. Light has one method of movement and action, sound another, heat another, and electricity another, but most of the propositions concerning these methods of action are only theories or hypotheses having a greater or less degree of probability as the case may be. They were invented to account for certain actual and undeniable phenomena, and they are respected by all men of science or other persons having sufficient knowledge of these different subjects to entitle them to an opinion. The same thing is true of telepathy; its facts must be known and its theories well considered by those who assume to sit in judgment upon them; and when known they are respected. The Copernican theory of the planetary movements was formulated three hundred and fifty years ago; it was one hundred and fifty years later when Newton proposed the first rational theory regarding a force which might explain these motions. For this he was ridiculed and even ostracized by the self-constituted judges of his day. Telepathy has been the subject of careful study and experiment comparatively only a few years, and it can hardly, at this early date, expect better treatment at the hands of its critics. Its facts, however, remain, and its explanatory theories are being duly considered. What, then, are the theories or hypotheses which may aid us in forming an idea of the manner in which a thought, a conception, or a mental picture may pass between two persons so situated that no communication could pass between them through the ordinary channels of communication--sight, hearing, or touch? Let us suppose two persons A and B to be so situated. A is the agent or person having unusual ability to impress his own thought, or any conception or mental picture which he may form in his own mind, upon some other mind; and B is the percipient or a person having unusual ability to receive or perceive such thoughts or mental pictures. Suppose these two people to be in the country and engaged in farming. Upon a certain morning A takes his axe and goes to the woods, half a mile distant, and is engaged in cutting brush and trees for the purpose of clearing the land, and B goes into the garden to care for the growing vegetables. After an hour spent in these respective occupations, B becomes disquieted, even alarmed, oppressed with the feeling that some misfortune has happened and that A is needing his assistance. He is unable to continue his work and at once starts for the woods to seek for A. He finds that A has received a glancing blow from his axe which has deeply wounded his foot, disabled him, and put his life in immediate danger from hemorrhage. Here the thought of A in his extreme peril goes out intensely to B, desiring his presence; and B, by some unusual perceptive power, takes cognizance of this intense thought and wish. This is telepathy. Again, suppose B hears a voice which he recognizes as A's calling his name and with a peculiar effect which B recognizes as distress or entreaty. Or, again, that B sees a picture or representation of A lying wounded and bleeding, still it is a telepathic impulse from A and taken cognizance of by B which constitutes the communication between them, whatever the exact nature or method of the communication may be. The theories or hypotheses which have been put forward regarding the method by which this telepathic influence or impact is conveyed may be noted as follows:-- (1) That of a vibratory medium, always present and analogous to the atmosphere for propagating sound or the universal ether for propagating light. (2) An effluence of some sort emanating from the persons concerned and acting as a medium for the time being. (3) A sixth sense. (4) A duplex personality or subliminal self. First, then, as regards the vibratory hypothesis; it would demand a variety of media to convey separately something corresponding to the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, and to each of the other senses--touch, taste, and smell--as all these sensations have been telepathically transmitted, or else there must exist one single medium capable of transmitting these many widely different methods of sensation separately,--either of which suppositions are, to say the least, bewildering. Such a medium must also possess a power of penetrating or acting through intervening obstacles, such as no medium with which we are acquainted possesses; and, lastly, in addition to numerous apparently insurmountable difficulties and insufficiencies, there is no proof whatever that any such vibratory medium exists. Second. Regarding a vital effluence or some physical emanation or aura belonging to each individual, and by means of which communication is possible between persons separated by too great a distance to permit communication through the ordinary channels; it is at least conceivable that such an aura or personal atmosphere exists, and by some it is claimed to be demonstrated; but admitting its existence, that it would be capable of fulfilling the numerous functions demanded of it in the premises is doubtful. Third. That the telepathic intercommunication is accomplished by means of a sixth sense--a sort of compend of all the other senses, with added powers as regards distance and intervening obstacles--is a hypothesis which has been urged by some, and is at least intelligible; but, while it presents an intelligible explanation of such facts as clairvoyance and the hearing of voices, there is a large class of facts, as we shall see, which utterly refuse to fall into line or be explained by this hypothesis. Fourth. The hypothesis of different strata of personality--or of a second or subliminal self--is the one which best fulfils the necessary conditions and also harmonizes the greatest number of facts when arranged with reference to this idea. There is also real, substantial evidence that such a second personality actually exists, some of the facts bearing upon this subject having been presented in former chapters. Those of my readers who have carefully followed the cases of unusual mental action there presented--cases of thought-transference, of clairvoyance, of remarkable mind-action in the hypnotic trance and in natural somnambulism--in well marked examples of double consciousness as shown in the cases of Félida X., of Alma Z., of Ansel Bourne, and the hypnotic subject, Madame B., in her various personalities of Léonie, Léontine, and Léonore, in automatic action as displayed in Planchette-writing, in trance-speaking and in crystal-gazing, cannot have failed to observe, throughout the whole series, mind acting rationally and intelligently, quite independently of the ordinary consciousness, and even at times independently of the whole physical organization. We have considered the evidence which points to the fact, or at least to the theory of a subliminal self, or another personality, in some manner bound up in that complicated physical and mental mechanism which constitutes what we term an individual. We have seen that there are weighty proofs that such a secondary or subliminal, or, if you choose so to designate it, _supranormal_ self, actually exists, and that it exhibits functions and powers far exceeding the functions and powers of the ordinary self. We have seen it expressing its own personal opinions, its own likes and dislikes, quite different and opposite to the opinions, likes, and dislikes of the ordinary self; having its own separate series of remembered actions or chain of memories, its own antecedent history, and its separate present interests; and especially performing actions altogether beyond the powers of the ordinary self. We have seen it going out to great distances, seeing and describing scenes and events there taking place--for example, Swedenborg at Gottenburg witnessing the conflagration at Stockholm; Dr. Gerault's clairvoyant maid-servant, Marie, in France, seeing the sad death of her neighbor's son, Limoges, the ropemaker, while serving in the Crimea; and also the serious illness of Dr. Gerault's military friend in Algiers. Fitzgerald, at Brunswick, Me., seeing and describing the Fall River fire three hundred miles away, and Mrs. Porter, at Bridgeport, Conn., describing the burning of the steamer _Henry Clay_ while it was occurring on the Hudson River near the village of Yonkers. We have seen this same subliminal self in the case of Mr. Stead, going out and acquiring desired knowledge relating to the location, occupation, and needs of persons from whom he desired such information, and bringing it back and reporting it by means of automatic writing. Again, we have seen this subliminal self in the case of Mrs. Newnham, perceiving the silently written and sometimes even the unwritten questions of her husband, and automatically writing the answers by means of Planchette; and we have seen it producing hallucinations of hearing as in the case of Léonore causing Léontine to hear a voice reproving her for her flippancy. A remarkable series of facts are here pointed out, facts some of which are akin to those which have for ages been lying about in the lumber rooms of history or in out-of-the-way corners of men's memories, neglected and discredited, because unexplained, unaccounted for, forming no part of any recognized system of mental action, and some only recently observed and even now looked at askance for the same reason. They have remained a mass of undigested and unarranged facts, without system, without any ascertained relation to each other, pointing to no definite principle, defined by no definite law. It is only within the past decade that these facts have been studied with reference to the action of a subliminal self. But this new and startling idea being once admitted and brought to the front, it is found that not only in the whole series of observed automatic actions in the somnambulism of the hypnotic state, and that of ordinary sleep, are the organs of the unconscious body made use of by this subconscious or subliminal self, but also in dreams, in reverie, in moments of abstraction, of strong emotion or mental excitement, and even in the case of some peculiarly susceptible persons in the ordinary waking condition, this subliminal self can greatly influence and sometimes take entire control of the action of the body. It will be seen then, how wide and important is the range of phenomena in which the subliminal self appears as an active agent, impressing its own special knowledge, however acquired, its ideas, pictures, and images upon the primary self, and causing them to be perceived, remembered, and expressed by it; and with this unusual power in view, evidently it is in this direction also that we must look for the key to that still more remarkable series of phenomena which are known as phantasms or apparitions. CHAPTER XI. PHANTASMS CONTINUED. So far a single class of cases has been brought forward in proof and illustration of our proposition, that _sensation may be produced telepathically_, namely, the voluntary class; as for instance, when it has been resolved beforehand and strongly desired and willed that a representation or apparition of one's self should be seen and recognized by another person at a specified time and place, and it has been so recognized. This class contains fewer recorded cases, but, on the other hand, they are specially valuable, because the element of error arising from chance coincidence is almost entirely excluded. In addition to these voluntary or prearranged cases there is, however, another and much larger class of cases which occur spontaneously, unthought of, and unexpected by the percipient as well as by the agent. Passing over cases of an indefinite or undefined sense of danger or peril--or of a "presence"--we will proceed to notice some well authenticated cases of spontaneous impressions of a definite character made upon the senses, and especially upon the sense of sight. This definite impression may be made upon the senses of the percipient in dreams--especially those of a veridical character, where there is a definite reality corresponding in time and circumstances. It may also be made when the percipient is in a condition of reverie, between sleeping and waking, and even when wide awake and in a perfectly normal condition. This definite impression of seeing or hearing may be made upon a single percipient, or it may be perceived by several persons at once. The following may serve as examples of _veridical dreams_. They were carefully examined by the editors of _Phantasms of the Living_, and especially by Mr. Gurney. Only initials in the first case were given for publication. "In the year 1857, I had a brother in the very centre of the Indian Mutiny. I had been ill in the spring and taken from my lessons in the school-room, consequently, I heard more of what was going on from the newspapers than a girl of thirteen ordinarily would in those days. We were in the habit of hearing regularly from my brother, but in June and July of that year no letters came, and what arrived in August proved to have been written quite early in the spring, and were full of disturbances around his station. "He was in the service of the East India Company--an officer in the 8th Native Infantry. I was always devoted to him, and I grieved and fretted far more than any of my elders knew at his danger. I cannot say that I dreamt constantly of him, but when I did the impressions were very vivid and abiding. "On one occasion his personal appearance was being discussed and I remarked, 'He is not like that now, he has no beard nor whiskers;' and when asked why I said such a thing, I replied, 'I know it, for I have seen him in my dreams;' and this brought a severe reprimand from my governess, who never allowed 'such nonsense' to be talked of. "On the morning of the 25th of September, quite early, I awoke from a dream, to find my sister holding me and much alarmed. I had screamed and struggled, crying out, 'Is he really dead?' When I fully awoke, I felt a burning sensation in my head. I could not speak for a moment or two; I knew my sister was there, but I neither saw nor felt her. "In about a minute, during which she said my eyes were staring beyond her, I ceased struggling cried out, 'Harry's dead, they have shot him,' and fainted. When I recovered I found my sister had been sent away, and an aunt who had always looked after me, was sitting by my bed. "In order to soothe my excitement, she allowed me to tell my dream, trying all the time to persuade me to regard it as a natural consequence of my anxiety. "When, in my narration, I said he was riding with another officer and mounted soldiers behind them, she exclaimed 'My dear, that shows you it is only a dream, for your brother is in an _infantry_, not a cavalry, regiment.' "Nothing, however, shook my feeling that I had seen a reality; and she was so much struck by my persistence that she privately made notes of the dates and of the incidents, even to the minutest details of my dream, and then for a few days the matter dropped, but I felt the truth was coming nearer and nearer to all. In a short time the news came in the papers:--'Shot down on the morning of the 25th, when on his way to Lucknow.' A few days later came one of his missing letters, telling how his own regiment had mutinied, and that he had been transferred to a command in the 12th Irregular Cavalry, bound to join Havelock's force in the relief of Lucknow. "Some eight years after, the officer who was riding by him when he fell, Captain or Major Grant, visited us and when, in compliance with my aunt's request, he detailed the incidents of that sad hour, his narration tallied (even to the description of buildings on their left) with the notes she had taken the morning of my dream. I should also add that we heard my brother had made the alteration in his beard and whiskers, just about the time that I had spoken of him as wearing them differently." "L. A. W." The next case which I will present is from Dr. A. K. Young, F. R. C. S. I., of the Terrace, Monaghan, Ireland. One Monday night, in December, 1836, Dr. Young had the following dream, or, as he would prefer to call it, revelation. He found himself suddenly at the gate of Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from his home. Close to him was a group of persons, one of them a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be murderously assaulting H. W., one of his tenants, and he interfered. He goes on to say: "I struck violently at the man on my left and then with greater violence at the man's face to my right. Finding to my surprise that I did not knock him down either, I struck again and again with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement I saw that my arms, although visible to my eye, were without substance; and the bodies of the men I struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme violence than I ever before exerted; but I became painfully convinced of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened after this feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me." Next morning, Dr. Young experienced the stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise and was informed by his wife that in the course of the night he had much alarmed her by striking out again and again with his arms in a terrific manner, "as if fighting for his life." He in turn informed her of his dream and begged her to remember the names of the actors in it who were known to him. On the morning of the following day, Wednesday, he received a letter from his agent, who resided in the town close to the scene of his dream, informing him that his tenant, H. W., had been found on Tuesday morning at Major N. M.'s gate speechless and apparently dying from a fracture of the skull, and that there was no trace of the murderers. That night Dr. Young started for the town and arrived there on Thursday morning. On his way to a meeting of the magistrates he met the senior magistrate of that part of the country and requested him to give orders for the arrest of the three men whom, besides H. W., he had recognized in his dream, and to have them examined separately. This was done. The three men gave identical accounts of the occurrence, and all named the woman who was with them. She was then arrested and gave precisely similar testimony. They said that between eleven and twelve on Monday night they had been walking homeward, all together along the road, when they were overtaken by three strangers, two of whom savagely assaulted H. W., while the other prevented his friends from interfering. The man H. W. did not die, and no clue was ever found to the assassins. The Bishop of Clogher writes confirmatory of Dr. Young's account. "Borderland cases" are those in which the percipient, though seeming to himself to be awake, may be in bed, has perhaps been asleep, and is in that condition between sleeping and waking known as reverie and which we have seen is favorable for the action of the subliminal self, either as agent or percipient. Passing, then, from dreams to "Borderland cases," the first example under this head which I will present is from Mrs. Richardson, of Combe Down, Bath, England. She writes:-- "August 26th, 1882. "On September 9th, 1848, at the Siege of Mooltan, my husband, Major-General Richardson, C. B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely wounded, and supposing himself dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at that time was fully one hundred and fifty miles distant, at Ferozepore. On the night of September 9th, 1848, I was lying in my bed between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband being carried off the field seriously wounded, and heard his voice saying, 'Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife.' "All the next day I could not get the sight nor the voice out of my mind. In due time I heard of Gen. Richardson having been severely wounded in the assault on Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time after the siege that I heard from Colonel L., the officer who helped to carry Gen. Richardson off the field, that the request as to the ring was actually made to him, just as I had heard it at Ferozepore at that very time. "M. A. RICHARDSON." The following questions were addressed to Gen. Richardson. 1. "Does Gen. Richardson remember saying, when he was wounded at Mooltan, 'Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife,' or words to that effect?" Ans. "Most distinctly; I made the request to my commanding officer, Major E. S. Lloyd, who was supporting me while my man was gone for assistance." 2. "Can you remember the _time_ of the incident?" Ans. "So far as my memory serves me, I was wounded about nine P. M., on Sunday, the 9th September, 1848." 3. "Had Gen. Richardson, before he left home, promised or said anything to Mrs. R. as to sending his ring to her in case he should be wounded?" Ans. "To the best of my recollection, never. Nor had I any kind of presentiment on the subject. I naturally felt that with such a fire as we were exposed to, I might get hurt." The next case is from Miss Hosmer, the celebrated sculptor. It was written out by Miss Balfour, from the account given by Lydia Maria Child, and corrected by Miss Hosmer, July 15th, 1885. "An Italian girl named Rosa was in my employ for some time, but was finally obliged to return home to her sister on account of confirmed ill-health. When I took my customary exercise on horseback, I frequently called to see her. On one of these occasions I called about six o'clock P. M., and found her brighter than I had seen her for some time past. I had long relinquished hopes of her recovery, but there was nothing in her appearance that gave me the impression of immediate danger. I left her with the expectation of calling to see her again many times. She expressed a wish to have a bottle of a certain kind of wine, which I promised to bring her myself next morning. "During the remainder of the evening I do not recollect that Rosa was in my thoughts after I parted with her. I retired to rest in good health and in a quiet frame of mind. But I woke from a sound sleep with an oppressive feeling that some one was in the room. "I reflected that no one could get in except my maid, who had the key to one of the two doors of my room--both of which doors were locked. I was able dimly to distinguish the furniture in the room. My bed was in the middle of the room with a screen around the foot of it. Thinking some one might be behind the screen I said, 'Who's there?' but got no answer. Just then the clock in the adjacent room struck five; and at that moment I saw the figure of Rosa standing by my bedside; and in some way, though I could not venture to say it was through the medium of speech, the impression was conveyed to me from her of these words: 'Adesso son felice, son contenta.' And with that the figure vanished. "At the breakfast table I said to the friend who shared the apartment with me, 'Rosa is dead.' 'What do you mean by that?' she inquired; 'you told me she seemed better yesterday.' I related the occurrence of the morning and told her I had a strong impression Rosa was dead. She laughed and said I had dreamed it all. I assured her I was thoroughly awake. She continued to jest on the subject and slightly annoyed me by her persistence in believing it a dream when I was perfectly sure of having been wide awake. To settle the question I summoned a messenger, and sent him to inquire how Rosa did. He returned with the answer that she died that morning at five o'clock. "H. G. HOSMER." I will also introduce here as a "Borderland case" an extract from _The Life and Times of Lord Brougham, written by himself_ (1871), the extract being an entry in his journal during a journey in Sweden in December, 1799. It is as follows:-- "We set out for Gothenburg [apparently on December 18th], determined to make for Norway. About one in the morning, arriving at a decent inn, we decided to stop over night. Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in, and here a most remarkable thing happened to me--so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning. "After I left the High School, I went with G., my most intimate friend, to attend the classes at the University. There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects--among others, on the immortality of the soul, and a future state. This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were subjects of much speculation; and we actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement written with our blood, to the effect that which ever of us died first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the 'life after death.' After we had finished our classes at college, G. went to India, having got an appointment there in the Civil Service. "He seldom wrote to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him; moreover, his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, or of him through them, so that all his school-boy intimacy had died out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat after the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G., looking calmly at me. "How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G., had disappeared. "This vision produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it even to Stewart; but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten; and so strongly was I affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars, as they are now fresh before me. "No doubt I had fallen asleep; and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream, I cannot for a moment doubt; yet for years I had had no communication with G., nor had there been anything to recall him to my recollection; nothing had taken place during our Swedish travels either connected with G. or with India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his family. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that G. must have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received as a proof of a future state; yet all the while I felt convinced that the whole was a dream; and so painfully vivid, so unfading the impression, that I could not bring myself to talk of it or make the slightest allusion to it." In October, 1862, Lord Brougham added as a postscript:-- "I have just been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream: _Certissima mortis imago!_ And now to finish the story, begun about sixty years ago. Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India, announcing G.'s death, and stating that he had died on the 19th of December! "Singular coincidence! Yet, when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect. Nor is it surprising, considering the variety of thoughts in sleep, and that they all bear some analogy to the affairs of life, that a dream should sometimes coincide with a contemporaneous, or even with a future, event. This is not much more wonderful than that a person whom we have had no reason to expect should appear to us at the very moment we have been thinking or speaking of him. So common is this, that it has for ages grown into the proverb, 'Speak of the devil.' I believe every such seeming miracle is, like every ghost story, capable of explanation." I have introduced in full Lord Brougham's statement of the case and his method of reasoning upon it; let us for a moment analyze each. I have also introduced Harriet Hosmer's experience along with that of Lord Brougham, because they are both notable persons whose evidence regarding matters of fact could not be impugned, and whose strength of character, honesty of purpose, and knowledge of affairs enables us to throw out of account any idea of imposture or self-deception in either case. These cases, then, must be received as having actually occurred as related; and being so received they render all the more credible other cases reported by persons less well known. What was the character of the apparitions or appearances which were presented; were they, properly speaking, dreams? In Miss Hosmer's statement she stoutly affirms that she was awake, and she gives good reasons for so believing, namely, before she _saw_ anything, but only _felt_ that some one was in the room, she _awoke_ from a sound sleep; she reasoned with herself regarding the possibility of any one getting into the room; she called out: "Who's there?" She saw the furniture, heard the clock strike, and counted five; and in another account which I also have, she heard the familiar noises about the house of servants at their usual work, and she resolved to get up. All this before she saw anything unusual; then turning her head she saw Rosa. Clearly this was not a dream but a vision occurring possibly in a condition of reverie. Taking up Lord Brougham's case: in simply recording the facts in his diary he speaks of his experience as a _vision_ and the idea that it was a _dream_ was evidently an after-thought. He was _enjoying_ the heat; he was _about to get out of the bath_; he _turned_ his head. He describes the sensations and actions of a man who is awake, or certainly not in a condition to have dreams disconnected with his actual surroundings. After all this, looking toward the chair upon which he had deposited his clothes--still a part of his surroundings, of which he was perfectly conscious--he saw G. on the chair _looking calmly at him_. Now to have _dreamt_ of G., his old school-fellow and friend, looking calmly at him, would not have been anything shocking nor even surprising; it would not have been even _uncommon_ among dreams--it would have been nothing out of the ordinary course of nature. Dreams seldom shock or even surprise us--surely not unless there is something intrinsically shocking represented by them; but when we see the phantasm of a person whom we know cannot be there--that is unusual, that is not in the ordinary course of nature, as we are accustomed to observe nature, and it surprises us, shocks us, perhaps frightens us; but it does so because we are awake and can reason about it and compare its strangeness with the usual order of things. Lord Brougham was awake, he did so reason, and was accordingly shocked. So vivid was the apparition that he tumbled out of the bath and fainted. It is only some time after this, when writing up his diary, that he has no doubt that he had fallen asleep. Preconceived theories about apparitions now come up in his mind and get him into trouble; he must _explain_ his vision. Now for the explanation. Lord Brougham finds, on returning to Scotland, that his former friend is dead, and that the time of his death corresponded with the time at which he had seen his apparition in Sweden, December 19th. "Singular coincidence!" That is Lord Brougham's explanation; and that is the usual explanation; but it is ill-considered--it is weak--it does not cover the ground. Lord Brougham had but two theories from which to choose: namely, Chance and Supernaturalism; and of the two horns of the dilemma he chose the easier one. Let us, however, place ourselves, for the moment, on his ground, namely, that (1) It was a dream; and (2) dreams are so numerous that it is not surprising that some of them coincide with contemporaneous events. Evidently the more numerous the coincidences, or the dreams which correspond to contemporaneous events, the weaker becomes the theory of _chance_ coincidences. Supposing, then, Lord Brougham's case to have been unique, that not another similar case was known to have occurred, then we should have no particular hesitation in assigning it to the category of chance coincidences; but even then it would be out of the order of _usual_ coincidences both in interest and the number of separate points involved; it would excite special interest, but the reference of it to chance would not be considered unreasonable: if, however, three or four such cases had been reported and discussed in a generation, thoughtful people would begin to inquire if there might not be some relation of sequence, or possibly of cause and effect; but when hundreds of cases have been reported, because they have been systematically sought for--veridical dreams connected with the moment of the death of the agent, with fainting, with trance, with moments of supreme excitement, or of extreme danger, so many different conditions in which by careful observation it is found that such hallucinations and symbols relating to actual contemporaneous occurrences originate and are telepathically transmitted--the matter is then quite removed from the category of chance coincidences, and any attempt to force these cases there to-day denotes either ignorance of established facts or inability to appreciate logical reasoning or even mathematical demonstration. This is all upon the supposition that the case in question was a dream. On the other hand, now place the case where it really belongs as a _waking_ or Borderland _vision_--an event in a class a hundred-fold less numerous than dreams--and in which class corresponding events are at least tenfold _more numerous_, and we see how conspicuously weak is the coincidence theory. Neither need the other horn of the dilemma, namely, Supernaturalism, any longer be taken. A newly recognized method of mental interaction is gradually coming into view; a new principle and law in psychology is being established; and under this law the erratic and discredited facts of history as well as the facts of present observation and experiment are falling into line and becoming intelligible. The new principle or law, as we have seen, is this: Perceptions, of the class which have usually been known as hallucinations, may be originated and transferred _telepathically_; in other words, there is a subliminal self, which, under various conditions on the part of either agent or percipient, or both, may come to the surface and act, impressing the sensitive percipient through the senses, by dreams, visions, and apparitions, as well as through hallucinations of hearing and touch. Returning to our well considered cases illustrating some of these various conditions: having presented examples of veridical or truth-telling dreams, and of waking or borderland visions also corresponding to actual events taking place at the same time, I will next present cases where the percipient was _undoubtedly awake_ and in a normal condition. The following case is reported on the authority of Surgeon Harris of the Royal Artillery, who, with his two daughters, was a witness of the occurrence: "A party of children, sons and daughters of the officers of artillery stationed at Woolwich, were playing in the garden. Suddenly a little girl screamed, and stood staring with an aspect of terror at a willow tree standing in the grounds. Her companions gathered round, asking what ailed her. 'Oh!' said she, 'there--there. Don't you see? There's papa lying on the ground, and the blood running from a big wound.' All assured her that they could see nothing of the kind. But she persisted, describing the wound and the position of the body, still expressing surprise that they did not see what she so plainly saw. Two of her companions were daughters of one of the surgeons of the regiment, whose house adjoined the garden. They called their father, who at once came to the spot. He found the child in a state of extreme terror and agony, took her into his house, assured her it was only a fancy, and having given her restoratives sent her home. The incident was treated by all as what the doctor had called it, a fancy, and no more was thought of it. News from India, where the child's father was stationed, was in those days slow in coming, but the arrival of the mail in due course brought the information that the father of the child had been killed by a shot, and died under a tree. Making allowances for difference in time, it was found to have been about the moment when the daughter had the vision at Woolwich." The next case is from Mr. Francis Dart Fenton, formerly in the native department of the Government, Auckland, New Zealand. In 1852, when the incident occurred, Mr. Fenton was engaged in forming a settlement on the banks of the Waikato. He writes:-- "March 25th, 1860. "Two sawyers, Frank Philps and Jack Mulholland, were engaged cutting timber for the Rev. R. Maunsell, at the mouth of the Awaroa Creek, a very lonely place, a vast swamp, no people within miles of them. As usual, they had a Maori with them to assist in felling trees. He came from Tihorewam, a village on the other side of the river, about six miles off. As Frank and the native were cross-cutting a tree, the native stopped suddenly and said, 'What are you come for?' looking in the direction of Frank. Frank replied, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I am not speaking to you; I am speaking to my brother.' Frank said, 'Where is he?' The native replied, 'Behind you. What do you want?' (to the other Maori). Frank looked round and saw nobody; the native no longer saw any one, but laid down the saw and said, 'I shall go across the river; my brother is dead.' Frank laughed at him, and reminded him that he had left him quite well on Sunday (five days before), and there had been no communication since. The Maori spoke no more, but got into his canoe and pulled across. When he arrived at the landing-place, he met people coming to fetch him. His brother had just died. I knew him well." In answer to inquiries as to his authority for this narrative, Mr. Fenton writes the editors of _Phantasms of the Living_:-- "December 18th, 1883. "I knew all the parties well, and it is quite true. Incidents of this sort are not infrequent among the Maoris. "F. D. FENTON, "Late Chief Judge, Native Law Court of New Zealand." The following case was first published in the _Spiritual Magazine_ in 1861, by Robert H. Collyer, M. D., F. C. S. Although published in a spiritual publication, Dr. Collyer states that he himself is not a believer in spiritualism, but, on the contrary, is a materialist and has been for forty years. He writes from Beta House, 8 Alpha Road, St. John's Wood, N. W.:-- "April 15th, 1861. "On January 3d, 1856, my brother Joseph being in command of the steamer _Alice_, on the Mississippi, just above New Orleans, she came in collision with another steamer. The concussion caused the flagstaff or pole to fall with great violence, which coming in contact with my brother's head, actually divided the skull, causing of necessity instant death. In October, 1857, I visited the United States. When at my father's residence, Camden, New Jersey, the melancholy death of my brother became the subject of conversation, and my mother narrated to me that at the very time of the accident the apparition of my brother Joseph was presented to her. This fact was corroborated by my father and four sisters. Camden, N. J., is distant from the scene of the accident, in a direct line, over one thousand miles. My mother mentioned the fact of the apparition on the morning of the 4th of January to my father and sisters; nor was it until the 16th, or thirteen days after, that a letter was received confirming in every particular the extraordinary visitation. It will be important to mention that my brother William and his wife lived near the locality of the dreadful accident, and are now living in Philadelphia; they have also corroborated to me the details of the impression produced upon my mother." Dr. Collyer then quotes a letter from his mother which contains the following sentences:-- "CAMDEN, N. J., UNITED STATES, "March 27th, 1861. "MY BELOVED SON,--On the 3d of January, 1856, I did not feel well and retired early to bed. Some time after I felt uneasy and sat up in bed; I looked around the room, and to my utter amazement, saw Joseph standing at the door looking at me with great earnestness; his head was bandaged up, a dirty night-cap on, and a dirty white garment, something like a surplice. He was much disfigured about the eyes and face. It made me quite uncomfortable the rest of the night. The next morning Mary came into my room early. I told her I was sure I was going to have bad news from Joseph. I told all the family at the breakfast table. They replied, 'It was only a dream and nonsense;' but that did not change my opinion. It preyed on my mind, and on the 16th of January I received the news of his death; and singular to say both William and his wife, who were there, say that he was exactly attired as I saw him. "Your ever affectionate mother, "ANNE E. COLLYER." In reply to questions, Dr. Collyer wrote: "My father, who was a scientific man, calculated the difference of longitude between Camden and New Orleans and found that the mental impression was at the exact time of my brother's death.... "In the published account I omitted to state that my brother Joseph, prior to his death, had retired for the night in his berth; his vessel was moored alongside the levee, at the time of the collision by another steamer coming down the Mississippi. Of course my brother was in his _nightgown_. He ran on deck on being called and informed that a steamer was in close proximity to his own. These circumstances were communicated to me by my brother William, who was on the spot at the time of the accident." In addition to these accounts, Mr. Podmore says:-- "I called upon Dr. Collyer on March 25th, 1884. He told me that he received a full account of the story verbally from his father, mother, and brother in 1857.... He was quite certain of the precise coincidence of time." A sister also writes corroborating all the main statements. Other senses besides that of sight may receive the telepathic impression. In the following cases the sense of hearing was so impressed. The first account is from Commander T. W. Aylesbury, late of the Indian Navy. It is from Mr. Gurney's collection in _Phantasms of the Living_. "The writer when thirteen years of age was capsized in a boat when landing on the Island of Bally, east of Java, and was nearly drowned. On coming to the surface after being repeatedly submerged, the boy called out for his mother. This amused the boat's crew, who spoke of it afterwards and jeered him a good deal about it. Months after, on arrival in England, the boy went to his home, and while telling his mother of his narrow escape he said, 'While I was under the water I saw you all sitting in this room; you were working on something white. I saw you all--mother, Emily, Eliza, and Ellen.' His mother at once said, 'Why, yes, and I _heard_ you cry out for me, and I sent Emily to look out of the window, for I remarked that something had happened to that poor boy.' The time, owing to the difference in longitude, corresponded with the time when the voice was heard." Commander Aylesbury adds in another letter: "I saw their features (my mother's and sisters'), the room and the furniture, and particularly the old-fashioned Venetian blinds. My eldest sister was seated next to my mother." The following is an extract from a letter written to Commander Aylesbury by one of his sisters and forwarded to Mr. Gurney, in 1883:-- "I distinctly remember the incident you mention in your letter (the voice calling 'Mother'); it made such an impression upon my mind I shall never forget it. We were all sitting quietly at work one evening; it was about nine o'clock. I think it must have been late in the summer, as we had left the street door open. We first heard a faint cry of 'Mother'; we all looked up and said to one another, 'Did you hear that? some one cried out "Mother."' We had scarcely finished speaking when the voice again called 'Mother' twice in quick succession, the last cry a frightened, agonizing cry. We all started up and mother said to me, 'Go to the door and see what is the matter.' I ran directly into the street and stood some few minutes, but all was silent, and not a person to be seen; it was a lovely evening, not a breath of air. Mother was sadly upset about it. I remember she paced the room and feared something had happened to you. She wrote down the date the next day, and when you came home and told us how nearly you had been drowned, and the time of day, father said it would be about the time nine o'clock would be with us. I know the date and the time corresponded." In the next case three of the senses--sight, hearing, and touch were concerned. It is from Mr. Gurney's collection. "From Mr. Algeron Joy, 20 Walton Place, S. W. "Aug. 16th, 1883. "About 1862 I was walking in a country lane near Cardiff by myself, when I was overtaken by two young colliers who suddenly attacked me. One of them gave me a violent blow on the eye which knocked me down, half-stunned. I distinctly remembered afterwards all that I had been thinking about, both immediately prior to the attack and for some time after it. "Up to the moment of the attack and for some time previously, I was absorbed in a calculation connected with Penarth Docks, then in construction, on which I was employed. My train of thought was interrupted for a moment by the sound of footsteps behind me. I looked back and saw the two young men, but thought no more of them, and immediately returned to my calculations. "On receiving the blow, I began speculating on their object, what they were going to do next, how I could best defend myself, or escape from them; and when they ran away, and I had picked myself up I thought of trying to identify them and of denouncing them at the police station, to which I proceeded after following them until I lost sight of them. "In short, I am positive that for about half an hour previous to the attack, and for an hour or two after it, there was no connection whatever, direct or indirect, between my thoughts and a person at that moment in London, and whom I will call 'A.' "Two days afterwards, I received a letter from 'A,' written on the day after the assault, asking me what I had been doing and thinking about at 4:30 P. M., on the day previous to that on which he was writing. He continued: 'I had just passed your club and was thinking of you, when I recognized your footstep behind me. You laid your hand heavily on my shoulder. I turned, and saw you as distinctly as I ever saw you in my life. You looked distressed, and in answer to my greeting and inquiry, 'What's the matter?' You said, 'Go home, old fellow, I've been hurt. You will get a letter from me in the morning, telling you all about it.' You then vanished instantaneously. "The assault took place as near 4:30 as possible, certainly between 4:15 and 4:45. I wrote an account of it to 'A' on the following day, so our letters crossed, he receiving mine, not the next morning as my _double_ had promised, but on the succeeding one at about the same time as I received his. 'A' solemnly assured me that he knew no one in or near Cardiff, and that my account was the only one he had received of the incident. From my intimate personal knowledge of him I am certain that he is incapable of uttering an untruth. But there are reasons why I cannot give his name even in confidence. "ALGERON JOY." Apparitions are perhaps more frequently seen by a single percipient; there are, however, numerous well authenticated cases where they have been seen by several persons at the same time, sometimes by the whole and sometimes only by a part of the persons present. Such cases are called _collective_. Here are two such cases reported to Mr. Gurney by physicians. First, one from Dr. Wyld, 41 Courtfield Road, S. W. "December, 1882. "Miss L. and her mother were for fifteen years my most intimate friends; they were ladies of the highest intelligence and perfectly truthful, and their story was confirmed by one of the servants, the other I could not trace. "Miss L., some years before I made her acquaintance, occupied much of her time in visiting the poor. One day as she walked homewards she felt cold and tired and longed to be at home warming herself at the kitchen fire. At or about the minute corresponding to this wish, the two servants being in the kitchen, the door-handle was seen to turn, the door opened, and in walked Miss L., and going up to the fire she held out her hands and warmed herself, and the servants saw she had a pair of _green_ kid gloves on her hands. She suddenly disappeared before their eyes, and the two servants in great alarm went upstairs and told the mother what they had seen, including the green kid gloves. The mother feared something was wrong, but she attempted to quiet the servants by reminding them that Miss L. always wore black and never green gloves, and that therefore the 'ghost' could not have been that of her daughter. "In about half an hour the veritable Miss L. entered the house, and going into the kitchen warmed herself at the fire; and she had on a pair of _green_ kid gloves which she had bought on her way home, not being able to get a suitable black pair. "G. WYLD, M. D." The next case is from Dr. Wm. M. Buchanan, 12 Rutland Square, Edinburgh. He writes:-- "The following circumstance took place at a villa about one and a half miles from Glasgow, and was told me by my wife. Of its truth I am as certain as if I had been a witness. The house had a lawn in front of about three or four acres in extent, with a lodge at the gateway distinctly seen from the house, which was about eighty yards' distant. Two of the family were going to visit a friend seven miles' distant, and on the previous day it had been arranged to take a lady, Miss W., with them, who was to be in waiting at a place about a mile distant. Three of the family and a lady visitor were standing at one of the dining-room windows waiting for the carriage, when they, including my wife, saw Miss W. open the gate at the lodge. The wind had disarranged the front of a pelisse which she wore, which they distinctly saw her adjust. She wore a light gray-colored beaver hat, and had a handkerchief at her mouth; it was supposed she was suffering from toothache to which she was subject. She entered the lodge to the surprise of her friends, and as she did not leave it, a servant was sent to ask her to join the family; but she was informed that Miss W. had not been there, and it was afterwards ascertained that no one except the woman's husband had been in the lodge that morning. "The carriage arrived at the house about ten A. M., and Miss W. was found at the place agreed upon, in the dress in which she appeared at the lodge, and suffering from toothache. As she was a nervous person, nothing was said to her about her appearance at the gate. She died nine years afterwards." Sometimes an apparition seemingly intended for one person is not perceived by that person, but is seen by some other person present who may be a stranger to the agent or person whose image is seen. The following case is in point. It is from Mrs. Clerke, of Clifton Lodge, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood, S. E., and also belongs to Mr. Gurney's collection:-- "In the month of August, 1864, about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting reading in the verandah of our house in Barbadoes. My black nurse was driving my little girl, about eighteen months or so old, in her perambulator in the garden. I got up after some time to go into the house, not having noticed anything at all, when this black woman said to me, 'Missis, who was that gentleman that was talking to you just now?' 'There was no one talking to me,' I said. 'Oh, yes, dere was, Missis--a very pale gentleman, very tall, and he talked to you and you was very rude, for you never answered him.' I repeated there was no one, and got rather cross with the woman, and she begged me to write down the day, for she knew she had seen some one. I did, and in a few days I heard of the death of my brother in Tobago. Now the curious part is this, that I did not see him, but she--a stranger to him--did; and she said that he seemed very anxious for me to notice him. "MAY CLERKE." In answer to inquiries Mrs. Clerke says:-- "(1) The day of the death was the same, for I wrote it down. I think it was the third of August, but I know it was the same. "(2) The description 'very tall and pale' was accurate. "(3) I had no idea he was ill. He was only a few days ill. "(4) The woman had never seen him. She had been with me about eighteen months and I considered her truthful. She had no object in telling me." Her husband, Colonel Clerke, corroborates as follows:-- "I well remember that on the day on which Mr. John Brersford, my wife's brother, died in Tobago--after a short illness of which we were not aware--our black nurse declared she saw, at as nearly as possible the time of his death, a gentleman exactly answering to Mr. Brersford's description, leaning over the back of Mrs. Clerke's easy-chair in the open verandah. The figure was not seen by any one else. "SHADWELL H. CLERKE." In this instance, looking upon the dying brother as the agent and the sister as the _intended_ percipient, the question arises, why was _she_ unable to perceive the telepathic influence which presented the likeness of her brother, while the colored nurse, an entire stranger to him, sees and describes him standing by his sister's chair and apparently anxious that she should recognize him? In another of Mr. Gurney's cases, of four persons present in a business office where the phantasm of a fifth well-known person appeared, two persons saw the phantasm and two did not. Abridged from Mr. Gurney's account the circumstances were as follows:-- The narrator is Mr. R. Mouat, of 60 Huntingdon St., Barnsbury, N., and the incident occurred in his office on Thursday, September 5th, 1867. The persons concerned were the Rev. Mr. H., who had a desk in the same office and who may be considered the _agent_; Mr. Mouat, himself, and Mr. R., a gentleman from an office upstairs in the same building, the _percipients_; while a clerk and a porter who were also present saw nothing. Mr. Mouat goes into his office at 10:45 o'clock on the morning of September 5th, sees his clerk and the porter in conversation, and the Rev. Mr. H. standing at the corner of a table at the back of the clerk. He is about to speak to Mr. H. about his being there so early (more than an hour before his usual time), when the clerk commenced speaking to him about business and especially a telegram concerning which something was amiss. This conversation lasted several minutes and was decidedly animated. During this scene, Mr. R., from an office upstairs, comes in and listens to the excited conversation. He looks at Mr. H. in a comical way, motioning with his head toward the two disputants, as much as to say "they are having it hot;" but to Mr. R.'s disgust Mr. H. does not respond to the joke. Mr. R. and the porter then leave the room. Mr. Mouat turns to Mr. H., who was all the while standing at the corner of the table, notices that he looks downcast, and is without his neck-tie; he says to him, "Well, what is the matter with _you_, you look so sour?" Mr. H. makes no reply, but looks fixedly at Mr. Mouat. Having finished some papers he was reading Mr. Mouat noticed Mr. H. still standing at the table. The clerk at that moment handed Mr. Mouat a letter saying, "Here, sir, is a letter from Mr. H." No sooner was the name pronounced than Mr. H. disappeared in a second. Mr. Mouat is dumfounded--so much so that the clerk notices it. It is then discovered that the clerk has not seen Mr. H. at all, and declares that he has not been in the office that morning. The letter from Mr. H. was written on the previous day and informs Mr. Mouat that he is ill, and will not be at the office the next day, and asks to have his letters sent to his house. The next day, Friday, Mr. H. enters the office at his usual hour, twelve o'clock; and on being asked by Mr. Mouat where he was the previous day at 10:45 o'clock, he replied that at that time he had just finished breakfast--was at home with his wife, and did not leave the house all day. The following Monday Mr. Mouat meets Mr. R. and asks him if he remembers being in his office the previous Thursday morning. R. replies that he does, perfectly. Does he remember who were present and what was going on? "Yes," said Mr. R., "you were having an animated confab with your clerk about a telegram. Besides yourself and the clerk there were present the porter and Mr. H." On being informed that Mr. H. was at home, fourteen miles' distant, at that time, Mr. R. became indignant that any one should insinuate that he did not know a man was present when he saw him. He insisted on calling the porter to corroborate him; but on being questioned, the porter, like the clerk, declared that he did not see anything of Mr. H. that morning. Here, in broad daylight, of four persons present and engaged in business, two saw Mr. H. and addressed him either in words or by signs, while two others with equal opportunities did not see him at all. The Rev. Mr. H. at home during the time had no particular experience of any kind. All that can be said is, that, it must have been about his usual time for starting for the office; he had sent a letter about his mail which he knew would then be received, and all the general routine and habit of his life would tend to direct his mind to that locality at that particular time. He was ill as he appeared to be to those who saw his _appearance_ at the office, and very likely he was negligently dressed. Why should two of those present have seen his apparition, and two others have failed to see it? For the simple reason that, as in ordinary thought-transference, or in the "willing game" some are _good subjects_, or percipients, and others are not. For the same reason that of ten persons making trial of Planchette-writing, the board will move for only two or three out of the whole number--that is, in only a few would the hands act automatically in response to a subliminal self; and for the same reason it may also be true that amongst several persons, in only a few of those present, can the sense of sight or hearing be effected by a phantasm. In many instances, children, and in some instances, very young children, have been the percipients--children too young to perceive any difference between the phantasm and a real person, and who have accordingly addressed it and spoken of it as they would of a real person. Even animals, especially horses and dogs, have given unmistakable evidence--by crouching, trembling, and fright--of perceiving the same phantasms that have been seen by persons who were present with them. The phantom being, so to speak, _in the air_, it is perceived by those whose organization is so adjusted as to make it _impressionable_, and to constitute, to a greater or less degree, what is known as a _sensitive_. Doubtless, on close examination, it would be found that persons capable of hypnotization, though they may never have been hypnotized, natural somnambulists, persons accustomed to vivid dreaming, reverie, abstraction, and kindred states, in other words, persons in whom the subliminal self sometimes gives indications of independent action, are most likely to have some _marked_ psychical experience. It may be only once in a lifetime, and this one instance _may_ be the perception of a phantasmal appearance. In bringing to a close these examples of apparitions, I wish to introduce one which has specially impressed me. It was the experience of a child--it is reported by the percipient herself. The statement is singularly straightforward, and simple; something was done on account of the vision which impressed the circumstance upon others who did not see it, for prompt action founded upon what was seen, saved a life. I give it in the percipient's own words, written to Mr. Gurney. It is from Mrs. Brettany, 2 Eckington Villas, Ashbourne Grove, Dulwich. She writes:-- "November, 1884. "When I was a child I had many remarkable experiences of a psychical nature, and which I remember to have looked upon as ordinary and natural at the time. "On one occasion (I am unable to fix the date, but I must have been about ten years old) I was walking in a country lane at A., the place where my parents then resided. I was reading geometry as I walked along, a subject little likely to produce fancies, or morbid phenomena of any kind, when, in a moment, I saw a bedroom, known as the White Room in my home, and upon the floor lay my mother, to all appearances dead. "The vision must have remained some minutes, during which time my real surroundings appeared to pale and die out; but as the vision faded actual surroundings came back, at first dimly, and then clearly. I could not doubt that what I had seen was real. So instead of going home, I went at once to the house of our medical man, and found him at home. He at once set out with me for my home, on the way putting questions I could not answer, as my mother was to all appearances well when I left home. "I led the doctor straight to the White Room, where we found my mother actually lying as in my vision. This was true, even to minute details. "She had been seized suddenly by an attack of the heart, and would soon have breathed her last but for the doctor's timely arrival. I shall get my father and mother to read this and sign it." "JEANIE GWYNNE-BRETTANY." Mrs. Brettany's parents write:-- "We certify that the above is correct." "S. G. GWYNNE. "J. W. GWYNNE." In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Brettany states further: "The White Room in which I saw my mother, and afterwards actually found her, was out of use. It was unlikely she should be there. "She was found lying in the attitude in which I had seen her. I found a handkerchief with a lace border beside her on the floor. This I had distinctly noticed in my vision. There were other particulars of coincidence which I cannot put here." Mrs. Brettany's father writes further:-- "I distinctly remember being surprised by seeing my daughter in company with the family doctor, outside the door of my residence; and I asked, 'Who is ill?' She replied, 'Mamma.' She led the way at once to the 'White Room,' where we found my wife lying in a swoon on the floor. It was when I asked when she had been taken ill that I found it must have been after my daughter had left the house. None of the servants in the house knew anything of the sudden illness, which our doctor assured me would have been fatal had he not arrived when he did. "My wife was quite well when I left her in the morning." "S. G. GWYNNE." Taking, as we must, the main incidents of this narrative as true, we have either a simple case of clairvoyance on the part of Mrs. Brettany as a child, or else, on the other hand, the subliminal self of the unconscious mother hastened to impress the situation upon the sensitive child, and with the definite good result which is recorded. CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSIONS. In gathering up the results of these investigations, it must be stated that in showing their relation to science there is no thought of any detraction from the nobility and greatness of scientific labor and achievement in the material world--that is grand almost beyond expression. The attitude of science is conservative, and it is right; but sooner or later it must awake to the fact that here is a new field for investigation which comes strictly within the limits of its aims, and even of its methods. Many individual members of the great body of scientific workers see and know this; gradually the majority will see it. On the other hand, it must be stated that there is no intention of covering the whole ground of alleged occult psychic phenomena, but only a portion, even of such as relate to our present life. The subject of the return of spirits is untouched; it is only shown that the domain of alleged spiritualistic manifestations is deeply trenched upon by the action of the subliminal self of living people; what lies beyond that is neither affirmed nor denied; it rests upon ground yet to be cleared up and considered; and any facts open to satisfactory investigation are always welcomed by any of the many persons and societies interested in discovering what is true relating to it. Confining ourselves within the limits assigned, if the series of alleged facts which has been presented in the preceding chapters be true, then we are in the presence of a momentous reality which, for importance and value, has not been exceeded, if, indeed, it has been approached by any of the discoveries of modern times. But, it may be said, your alleged facts are not new; they are coeval with history, with mythology, with folk-lore, with religion. Granted that the facts are old, that similar ones have been known from very early times, how have these facts been treated by the leaders of thought in the nineteenth century? That the earth goes round the sun is an old fact, yet it was not made patent and credible, even to the cultivated, much less to the average mind, till recent times. Evolution has been going on since millions of years before the human race came into existence--it is a very ancient fact, yet it is only within the memory of men still living that it has been found out and accepted. So telepathy has existed ever since the race was young, yet few even now know the facts, observations, and experiments upon which its existence is predicated or comprehend either its theories or its importance. The subliminal self has been active in every age of which we have any record. Yet it has never been recognized as forming a part of each and every individual's mental outfit, but its wonderful action has either been discredited altogether, or else has been credited to foreign or supernatural agencies. But telepathy can no longer be classed with fads and fancies; if not already an accepted fact, it has certainly attained to the dignity of a theory supported by both facts and experiments; a theory which has attracted to its study a large company of competent men in every civilized country. A theory, no matter in what department of investigation it may be found, whether relating to matter or mind, is strong in proportion to the number of facts which it will bring into line, harmonize and reduce to system. It is that which makes the Nebular Theory of the formation of the planetary system so wonderfully strong; it harmonizes and reduces to system so many known but otherwise unrelated and unsystematized facts; and it is easier to find excuses or form minor theories to account for isolated and apparently erratic facts, like the retrograde motions of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, than to give up a theory, at once so grand in itself and at the same time harmonizing so many important astronomical phenomena. The same is true of the undulatory theory of light, and again of the theory of evolution, which forty years ago was looked upon as a flimsy hypothesis, but which is now universally accepted as an established truth. Some of the facts are still unclassified and unexplained, yet it so harmonizes in general the facts of the visible world, that instead of a mass of disjointed and heterogeneous objects and phenomena, such as men beheld in nature only a hundred years ago, the arbitrary work of a blind chance or a capricious Creator, we now behold a beautiful and orderly sequence, progression, and unfolding of the natural world according to laws which command our admiration and stimulate our reverence. Apart from recent studies, exactly the same condition of chaos and confusion exists regarding psychical phenomena as existed concerning the facts in the physical world only a hundred years ago. Nor is it likening great things to small when we compare the nebular hypothesis, or the theory of evolution, conceptions which have educated an age and vastly enlarged the boundary of human thought, to the theory of telepathy and the fact and power of the subliminal self. For if it was important that men should know the laws governing inanimate matter, to comprehend the orbits and motions of the planets; if it developed the understanding to contemplate the grandeur of their movements, the vast spaces which they traverse, and the wonderful speed with which they accomplish their various journeys--if such knowledge has enlarged the capacity of men's minds, given them truer notions of the magnitude of the universe, and grander conceptions of nature and the infinite power and intelligence which pervades and is exhibited in it, is it not equally important and equally improving and practical to study the subtler forces which pervade living organisms, the still finer laws and adjustments which govern the action of mind? It has been contended by a large and intelligent class of writers, and those who most pride themselves on scientific methods and the infallibility of scientific inductions, that mind is only the product of organization and ceases to have any activity or even existence when the organs through which it usually manifests itself have perished. The general consensus of mankind is a sharp protest against this conclusion--but the experimental proofs have, to many, seemed in favor of this scientific denial;--the healthy brain in general exhibits a healthy mental activity, the diseased or imperfect brain shows impaired mental action, and the disorganized brain simply exhibits no mental activity nor any evidence whatever of the existence of mind. Nevertheless, it is a lame argument; it is simply an attempt to prove a negative. The healthy rose emits an agreeable odor which our senses appreciate. You may destroy the rose--it does not prove that the fragrance which it emitted does not still exist even though our senses fail to appreciate it. But experiment and scientific methods have also somewhat to say upon this subject. And first, in August, 1874, twenty-two years ago, at the moment when the materialistic school was at the height of its influence, both the scientific and religious world were brought to a momentary standstill--like a ship under full headway suddenly struck by a tidal wave--when one of the most eminent scientific men of his time, or of any time, standing in his place as president of the foremost scientific association in the world, spoke as follows: "Abandoning all disguise, the confession which I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence and discover in matter, which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form of life."[2] [2] Prof. Tyndall's address before the British Association at Belfast, August, 1874. On that day the tap-root of materialism was wounded, and materialism itself has been an invalid of increasing languor and desuetude ever since. On the other hand, supernaturalism in every form was left in little better plight. To thinking men of all classes this bold declaration opened up the grand thought, not new, but newly formulated and endorsed, that as the seed contained all the possibilities of the future plant--the ovum all the possibilities of the future animal, so matter, which had been thought so lightly of, contained within itself the germ, potency, and promise of nature in all her subsequent developments--of the vast universe of suns and systems, planets and satellites, and of every form of life, sensation, and intelligence which in due process of evolution has appeared upon their surfaces. It pointed the way to the thought of an infinite causal energy and intelligence pervading matter and working through nature in all its various grades of life from the first organized cell up to the grandest man. It gave a new meaning to mind in man, as being an individualized portion of that divine potency which ever existed in matter, and which acting through constantly improving and developing organisms, amidst constantly improving environments, at length appeared a differentiated, individualized, seeing, reasoning, knowing, loving spirit. The mind, then, is of importance. It is no transient visitor which may have made its appearance by chance--a concatenation of coincidences, fortunate or unfortunate, but it is the intelligent tenant and master of a singularly beautiful and complicated house, a house which has been millions upon millions of years in the building, and yet which will be lightly laid aside when it ceases to accommodate and fulfil the needs of its tenant. Who and what, then, is this lordly tenant whose germ was coeval with matter, whose birth was in the first living cell which appeared upon the planet, whose apprenticeship has been served through every grade of existence from the humble polyp upwards, whose education has been carried on through the brain and organs of every grade of animal life with its countless expedients for existence and enjoyment, until now, as lord of its domain, it looks back upon its long course of development and education, looks about upon its environments and wonders at itself, at what it sees, and at what it prophesies. Truly what is this tenant, what are its powers, and why is it here at all? These are the questions which it has been the business of the strongest and wisest to discuss, from the time men began to think and record their thoughts until the present time; but how various and unsatisfactory have been the conclusions. The mental philosophers, psychologists, and encyclopedists simply present a chaos of conflicting definitions, principles, and premises, upon none of which are they in full agreement amongst themselves; they are not even agreed regarding the nature of mind--whether it is material or immaterial--how it should be studied, how it is related to the body, indeed whether it is an entity at all, or simply "a series of feelings or possibilities of them"; whether it possesses innate ideas or is simply an accretion of experiences. In short, the stock of generally received facts relating to mind has always remained exceedingly small. Psychologists have busied themselves chiefly about its usual and obvious actions, and when in full relation to the body, ignoring all other mental action or arbitrarily excluding it as abnormal and not to be taken into account in the study of normal mind; so with only half the subject under consideration true results could hardly be attained. Since the organization of the Society for Psychical Research, in 1882, new fields of investigation have been undertaken and the _unusual_ phenomena connected with the operations of mind have been systematically studied. A very hasty and imperfect sketch of this study and of the results obtained has been given in the preceding chapters, but for the use here made of these studies in connection with his own observations the writer alone is responsible. In these studies the field of investigation has been greatly extended beyond that examined by the old philosophers and physiologists. Beyond the usual activities in which we constantly see the mind engaged--observation of surroundings made by the senses, memory of them, reasoning about them, and putting them in new combinations in science, literature, or art--new activities have been observed, activities lying entirely outside the old lines, in new and hitherto unexplored fields. It has been demonstrated by experiment after experiment carefully made by competent persons that sensations, ideas, information, and mental pictures can be transferred from one mind to another without the aid of speech, sight, hearing, touch, or any of the ordinary methods of communicating such information or impressions. That is, Telepathy is a fact, and mind communicates with mind through channels other than the ordinary use of the senses. It has been demonstrated that in the hypnotic condition, in ordinary somnambulism, in the dreams and vision of ordinary sleep, in reverie, and in various other subjective conditions the mind may perceive scenes and events at the moment transpiring at such a distance away or under such physical conditions as to render it impossible that knowledge of these scenes and events could be obtained by means of the senses acting in their usual manner. That is, mind under some circumstances _sees_ without the use of the physical organ of sight. Again, it has been demonstrated that some persons can voluntarily project the mind--some mind--some centre of intelligence or independent mental activity, clothed in a recognizable form, a distance of one, a hundred, or a thousand miles, and that it can there make itself known and recognized, perform acts, and even carry on a conversation with the person to whom it was sent. That is, mind can _act_ at a distance from, and independent of, the physical body and the organs through which it usually manifests itself. These propositions present an aspect of mind which the authorities in the old fields of psychology have failed to observe or to recognize; or if they have at times caught a glimpse of it they have rather chosen to close their eyes and deny altogether the phenomena which these propositions imply, because they found it was impossible to classify them in their system. It has been to a degree a repetition of the folly exhibited by Galileo's contemporaries and critics, who refused to look through his telescope lest their favorite theories of the universe should be damaged. Nevertheless, this newly studied aspect exists, and is adding greatly to our knowledge of the nature and action of mind. Still another class of unusual mental phenomena found in this outlying field of psychology is that known under the general name of automatism; and by this is meant something more than the "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious muscular action" of the physiologists, and something quite different from that. There is, first, the class of motor automatisms, including Planchette-writing and other methods of automatic writing, drawing, painting, and kindred performances, also poetical or metrical improvisations, and trance, and so-called inspirational speaking:--Second, there are the sensory automatisms; or such as are manifested by impressions made upon the senses and which are reckoned as hallucinations. The impression of hearing a voice, of feeling a touch, or seeing a vision may be reckoned as examples of this kind of automatism. No other division of this newly cultivated field presents so many unusual and debatable phenomena. Not only do those modern mysteries, Planchette-writing, trance-speaking, and mediumistic utterances come easily under this class of mental phenomena, but all that vast array of alleged supernatural phenomena which pervades the literature of every nation since the time when men first began to record their experiences. The oracles of the Greeks and Romans, the dæmon of Socrates, the voices of Joan of Arc, and the widespread custom of divination by means of crystal-gazing in some of its many forms have already been referred to and their relation to automatism or the action of the subliminal self has been noted. There is still one important class of persons who have wielded an enormous influence upon mankind, an influence in the main wholesome, elevating, and developing, whose relation to automatism demands a passing consideration. I refer to the religious chiefs of the world. As prominent examples of those founders of religions we will briefly notice Moses, Zoroaster, Mahomet, and Swedenborg. Each either professed himself to be, or his followers have credited him with being, the inspired mouthpiece of the Deity. There can be no doubt in the minds of candid students that each one of these religious leaders was perfectly honest, both as regards his conception of the character and importance of his doctrines and also regarding the method by which he professed to receive them. Each believed that what he taught was ultimate and infallible truth, and was received directly from the Deity. It is evident, however, that from whatever source they were derived the doctrines could not all be ultimate truth, since they were not in harmony amongst themselves; but the authors of them all present their claim to inspiration, and whose claim to accept and whose to reject it is difficult to decide. But accepting the theory that each promulgated the doctrines, theological, cosmological, and ethical, that came to him automatically through the superior perception of the subliminal self, all the phenomena fall into line with the well ascertained action of that subliminal self. The truth which Moses saw was such as was adapted to his age and the people with whom he had to deal. So there came to his perception not only the sublime laws received at Sinai, but also the particulars regarding the tabernacle and its furnishing--the rings and the curtains, the dishes and spoons and bowls and covers, the rams' skins dyed red, the badgers' skins, and the staves of shittim wood. The same also is true regarding the teachings of Zoroaster. The splendid results which followed the promulgation of Mahomet's revelation to a few insignificant Arab tribes are proof of its vital germ of truth and of its adaptability to the soil into which it fell. It developed into a civilization from which, at a later period, a benighted and debased Christianity relighted its torch. Also the teachings of Swedenborg, notwithstanding the apparent egotism of the man and the tiresome verbiage of many of his communications, are elevating and refining in character and useful to those who are attracted to them. That in either case an infinite Deity spoke the commonplace which is attributed to Him in these communications is incredible, but to suppose it all, both the grand and the trivial, the work of the subconscious self of the respective authors is in accordance with what we know of automatism and of the wonderful work of the subliminal self when left free to exercise its highest activities. Let us examine with some care the history of two examples of unusual or supranormal mental action, the first found in one of the earliest of human records, and reckoned as fully inspired; the other equally unusual occurring within the last half century and making no claim to any supernatural assistance. The first example is presented in the first chapter of Genesis, and is a clear, connected, and in the main correct, though by no means complete, account of the changing conditions of the earth in the earliest geological periods, and of the appearance in their proper order of the different grades of life upon its surface. That such a written account should have existed three thousand years before any scientifically constructed schedule even of the order in which plants and animals succeeded each other, much less of the manner in which the earth was prepared for their reception and nurture, is a most remarkable circumstance, regarded either from a literary or a scientific standpoint. It has been criticised for its lack of scientific exactness, and the supposed error of representing light as created before the sun, ignoring the early existence of aquatic life, and similar points. But let us take our stand with the grand old seer, whoever he may have been, whom we know as Moses, who gave to the world this graphic account of the order of creation so many centuries before science had thrown its light upon the condition of the earth in those far-off ages, and let us endeavor to see what his quickened vision enabled him to behold. The panorama opens and discloses in an hour the grand progressive action of millions upon millions of years. The first picture represents the created earth covered with water and enveloped in a thick mantle of steaming mist, causing a condition of absolute and impenetrable darkness upon its surface. In the language of the seer, "The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." For ages the unbroken ocean which covered the earth was heated by internal fires; the rising vapor as it met the cooler atmosphere above was condensed and fell in one constant downpour of rain. Unceasing, steaming mist, vapor, and rain, wholly impenetrable to light: such were the conditions. At length, as the cooling process went on, the density of the mists was diminished;--the wonderful fiat went forth, "Let light be"--and light was. But still the mantle hung close upon the unbroken ocean. The second picture appears. Not only was there light but a firmament--an arch with a clear space underneath it; and it divided the waters which were above it from the waters which were beneath it. Picture the third. The waters were gathered together and the continents appeared; and the land was covered with verdure--plants and trees, each bearing seed after its kind. Of the inhabitants of the sea the seer had taken no account. It was simply a picture that he saw--a natural, phenomenal representation. Picture the fourth. The mists and clouds are altogether dispelled. The clear sky appears. The sun comes forth to rule the day--the moon to rule the night. The stars also appear. Picture the fifth. The lower orders of animals are in full possession of the earth and sea--fish, fowl, and sea-monsters. Picture the sixth. The higher orders of creation, mammals and man. Such was the phenomenal aspect of the various epochs of creation roughly outlined, strong, distinct, and in the main true. Not even the scientific critic with his present knowledge could combine more strength and truth, with so few strokes of the brush. Relieved of the burden of inspiration and the necessity for presenting absolute and unchangeable truth, and presenting the seer as simply telling what he saw, the picture is wonderful, and the telling is most graphic. It needed no deity nor angel to tell it--it was there--and the subliminal self of the seer whose special faculty it was to see, perceived the scene in all its grandeur. He also was the one best fitted to perceive the laws which should make his people great, and describe the forms and ceremonies which should captivate their senses and lead them on to higher intellectual, moral, and ethical development. Next take the other example. Fifty years ago a young man, not yet twenty years of age, uneducated, a grocer's boy and shoemaker's apprentice, was hypnotized; and it was found that he had a most remarkable mental or psychical constitution. He had most unusual experiences, and presented unusual psychical phenomena which need not be recounted here. At length it was impressed upon him as it might have been upon Socrates or Joan of Arc, or Swedenborg or Mahomet, that he had a mission and had a message to give to the world. He came from the rural town where he had spent his boyhood to the city of New York and hired a room on a prominent thoroughfare. He then, in his abnormal condition, proceeded to choose those who should be specially associated with him in his work--men of character and ability whom he did not even know in his normal state. First: Three witnesses were chosen who should be fully cognizant of everything relating to the method by which the message or book was produced. Of these one was a clergyman, one a physician, and one an intelligent layman. Second: A scribe qualified to write out the messages as he dictated them, to edit and publish them. Third: A physician to put him into the hypnotic, or as it was then called, the magnetic condition, in which he was to dictate his messages. The first lecture was given November 28th, 1845, and the last June 21st, 1847. During this time 157 lectures were given, varying in length from forty minutes to four hours, and they were all carefully written out by the scribe. To 140 of these manuscripts were attached 267 names of persons who listened to them and subscribed their names as witnesses at the end of each lecture--to some a single signature was affixed, to some, many. Any person really desirous of knowing the purport of these lectures and the manner of their delivery could be admitted by making application beforehand. At each sitting the speaker was first put into the deep hypnotic trance in which he was rigid and unconscious; but his sub-conscious or second self was active and lucid, and associated with the principles and knowledge which he needed and which he was to communicate. From this condition he came back to the somnambulic state in which he dictated that which he had acquired in the deep trance, or what he called the "superior condition"; and the transition from one of these states to the other took place many times during each lecture. Such were the conditions under which Andrew Jackson Davis produced the _Principles of Nature--Her Divine Revelation_--a book of nearly 800 pages, divided into three parts:--First, a setting forth of first principles, which served as a philosophical explanation or key to the main work. Second, a cosmogony or description of the method by which the universe came to its present state of development, and third, a statement of the ethical principles upon which society should be based and the practical working of these principles. It assumes to be thoroughly scientific and philosophical. It has literary faults, and there is plenty of opportunity for cavil and scientific fault-finding; but these remarkable facts remain. A poor boy, thoroughly well known and vouched for by his neighbors for his strict integrity, having had only five months of ordinary district school instruction for his education, having never read a scientific or philosophical book, and not a dozen all told of every kind, having never associated with people of education except in the most casual way, yet in the manner just described he dictated a book containing the outlines of a thoroughly sound and reasonable system of philosophy, theology, and ethics, and a complete system of cosmogony representing the most advanced views in geology, which was then in its infancy--astronomy, chemistry, and other departments of physical science, criticising current scientific opinions, and in points where he differed from these opinions giving full and cogent reason for that difference. On March 16th, 17th, and 20th, 1846, he announced the fact of the motion of our sun and solar system about a still greater centre, in harmony with the Nebular Hypothesis by which he explained the formation of the whole vast system. He also announced the existence of an eighth and ninth planet, and the apparently abnormal revolution of the satellites of Uranus. Neptune, the eighth planet, had not then been discovered and was not found until six months later. On the 29th of April he announced the discovery and application of diamagnetism by Faraday, concerning which none of his associates had any knowledge, and which I believe had not then been noticed in this country. He gave a distinct and vivid description of the formation of the different bodies constituting the solar system, of the introduction of life upon our planet, and of its evolution from grade to grade from the lowest to the highest--all in minute detail, in general accord with established scientific deduction and in scientific and technical language. In several particulars he differed from the received opinions, and gave his reasons for so doing. No claim was made to inspiration nor to the presentation of absolute or infallible truth, but when hypnotized and in what he termed the "superior condition," his perceptive faculties were vastly increased, and that which he then perceived he made known. He simply gave the truth as he saw it, and he commended it to the judgment and reason of mankind for reception or rejection. In other words, the subliminal self was brought into action by hypnotism, and then by means of its greatly increased perceptive powers he gathered knowledge from various sources quite inaccessible to him in his ordinary state, and seemingly inaccessible also to others. Concerning the truth or falsity of the revelations beyond what was already known or has since been confirmed by science, I do not assume to pronounce judgment; but that this also, as well as the first chapter of Genesis, from either a literary or scientific standpoint, is one of the most remarkable productions of this or of any age, will not be denied by any competent and candid examiner; while the remarkable character of the book will be still better appreciated when the status of the theory of evolution and of the science of geology fifty years ago is taken into the account. Here are presented two prominent examples of supranormal mental activity--one in the early ages of man's development, when _everything_ was supernatural, the immediate work of a god--the other in man's later development when natural law is found intervening between phenomena and their cause, and when it is found possible for men to comprehend the fact that truth, extraordinary and even that which had previously been unknown or was beyond the reach of the senses in their ordinary state, may nevertheless be discovered or revealed by other means than direct communications from Deity. It is seen, then, how various and how wonderfully important are the mental phenomena grouped under the general designation of automatism. Many examples of this and other classes of unusual mental action have been given in previous chapters, not as cumulative evidence of their verity--that would require volumes, but simply to illustrate the subject and give some degree of definiteness to our reasoning regarding them. Not even all the _classes_ of facts properly belonging to our subject have here been represented; but taking them as they have been enumerated and hastily described, they constitute a body of well observed and well authenticated facts and phenomena of undeniable interest, and if received as true their importance is certainly to be compared with the greatest discoveries of modern science. They are, however, the very facts which the science and philosophy of to-day hesitates to accept. The only exception to this statement is found in the treatment lately accorded to hypnotism, which after a hundred years of hesitation, rejection and even ridicule, has at length been definitely received as regards its main facts. It is true, however, that in numerous other instances the evidence regarding unusual mental states and phenomena is equally weighty and unimpeachable; but because these phenomena are unusual, marvelous or seemingly miraculous, belonging to no recognized class of mental action, therefore it is argued, they cannot be genuine; there _must be_ some flaw in the evidence and they cannot be accepted. It is tedious going over the arguments which reduce this mode of reasoning to an absurdity. The same reasoning has been applied to every important discovery in physical science for the past three hundred years; and if it were carried out to its logical conclusions no substantial advance in human knowledge could ever take place, since every discovery or observation of phenomena outside of known laws must on that ground be rejected. And the history of scientific discoveries shows that this has actually been the case. The announcement of the discovery of the movements of the planets around the sun, of the attraction of gravitation, of the identity of lightning with electricity, of the relation and derivation of species in the world of living forms--of the discovery of living toads in geological strata of untold antiquity, and scores of other now accepted facts, were accounted visionary and were received with scoffs and jeers by the accredited leaders of science, because they were outside of any known natural laws; and it was only after the study and contemplation of the new discoveries had educated and enlarged the minds of a new generation of men to a better understanding of the extent and magnitude of nature and her laws that the scoffs subsided and the new facts quietly took their places as accredited science. The same process is going on regarding mental phenomena to-day. It may require a generation for men unused to think in this direction to become familiarized with the thought that telepathy, clairvoyance, and the subliminal self, with its augmented powers, are facts in nature; but thousands of intelligent people, and many accustomed to examine facts critically and according to approved methods, are already so interpreting nature, and their number is constantly increasing. Such are some of the facts discovered by the pioneers in this outlying field of psychology. In attempting to explain or account for them it is useless to take refuge in the hazy definitions of the old psychologists, or to imagine that the secret is bound up in the vital processes which occupy the biologist and physiologist, interesting and important as those studies are; even the neurologist can help us comparatively little--he can tell us all about diseases of the nervous system and how they manifest themselves, and his labor has earned for him the gratitude of mankind; but he cannot tell us how thinking is accomplished, nor what thought is; he cannot tell the cause of so normal and easily observed a phenomenon as ordinary sleep, much less of the new faculties which are developed in somnambulism. In all these related departments of science, in considering mental phenomena it is found convenient to deny the existence of that for which they cannot account. Nature's processes, however, are simple when once we comprehend them, so much so that we wonder at their simplicity, and wonder that we ever could have failed to understand them; and we learn to distrust explanations which are involved and complicated, knowing that error often lies that way. And of this kind for the most part, the attempted explanations of mental processes in terms of physiology have proved to be; they are complicated, inapplicable, and unsatisfactory; and they give no aid in the generalizations which have hitherto been so much needed. The phenomena in this new field at first sight seem heterogeneous, without system or any common bond; they seem each to demand a separate origin and field. But let the idea of the subliminal self, intelligent, and endowed with its higher perceptive faculties, be presented, and lo! all these refractory phenomena fall into place in one harmonious system. The subliminal self is the active and efficient agent in telepathy--it is that which sees and hears and acts far away from the body, and reports the knowledge which it gains to the ordinary senses, sometimes by motor and sometimes by sensory automatism--by automatic writing, speaking, audition, the vision, the phantasm. It acts sometimes while the primary self is fully conscious--better and most frequently in reverie, in dreams, in somnambulism, but best of all when the ordinary self is altogether subjective and the body silent, inactive, and insensible, as in that strange condition which accompanies the higher phases of trance and lucidity, into which few enter, either spontaneously or by the aid of hypnotism. Then still retaining its attenuated vital connection, it goes forth and sees with extended vision and gathers truth from a thousand various and hidden sources. Will it act less freely, less intelligently, with less consciousness and individuality when that attenuated vital connection is severed, and the body lies--untenanted? THE END. INDEX. A. A., Miss, Perceives an induced phantom, 236 A., Miss, Her journey automatically described, 188 A. B., Clairvoyance of, 102-105 Alexis, " , 86-87 Anæsthesia, local, produced by hypnotism, 67 Apollonius, Clairvoyance of, 80 Apparitions or Phantasms, Collective Cases, 293, 294, 295, 299 Automatism, 151 " Ancient and modern, 331 " Grades or kinds of, 151-154 " Motor and sensory, 198, 319 Automatisms, Sensory, considered as hallucinations, 219 " " manifested by hearing, 220 " The dæmon of Socrates, 220 " Voices and visions of Joan of Arc, 221 Automatic writing, by Planchette, 158, 180 " " Mr. W. T. Stead, 186-193 " drawing and painting by Mrs. Burton, 194 Aylesbury, Commander T. W., Case by, 289 B. B., Madame, Hypnotic subject, 58-61, 131-135, 183 Barrett, Prof. W. T., and the S. P. R., 5 Bernheim, Prof., His theories of hypnotism, 36 " " Post hypnotic suggestions, cases, 63-67 Bishop, The mind-reader, 8 Bourne, Ansel, Double personality of, 119, 182 Borderland cases. Between sleeping and waking, 269 " " --visions, 269, 271, 273 Braid, His theory of hypnotism, 31 Brettany, Mrs., Vision, percipient awake, 304 Brittan, Dr. S. B., Cases reported by, 99-101 Brown, A. J., A second personality, 119, 182 Brougham, Lord, Borderland case, 273-279 Buchanan, Dr. W. B., Case by, collective, 295 Burton, Mrs. Julietta T., Automatic writing, 194 " " " Drawing and painting by, 195 " " " Portrait, by (Frontispiece), 196 " " " Psychometric powers, 199 C. Carpenter, Dr. Wm. B., His theory, 9 Charcot, Prof., His theory of hypnotism, 33 Chiefs, Religious, 320 " " Moses, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Swedenborg, 320 Clairvoyance, 74 " Instances of, 78-109 " Ancient and modern, 81 " Nature of, 109 Cleave, Mr. A. H. W., and Mr. H. P. Sparks, Phantasm produced by, 234 Clerke, May, Case reported by, 296 Collyer, Dr. R. H., Case, vision, reported by, 285, 288 Coues, Dr. E., Case reported by, 88-90 Crystal-gazing, Used for producing visions, 200 " " Cases reported by Mr. E. W. Lane, 201 " " Practised in all ages, 203 " " Amongst the Hebrews, 204 " " " " Greeks, 205 " " In the Opera of Parsifal, 206 " " The Shew-stone of Dr. Dee, 204 " " What it really is, 208 " " Experiments of Miss X., 209-214 " " Col. Wickham's pouch-belt found by, 214 " " Springs and wells used for, 216 Cumberland, Mind-reader, 8 D. Davis, A. J., Production of _Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelation_, by, 328 Deyer, Col. J. J., His well, in relation to Crystal-gazing, 216 Diagrams, Illustrating thought-transference, 19 Dreams, Definite impressions during, 263 " Veridical, cases of, 263, 266 Dufay, Dr., Case reported by, 95 E. Elliotson, Dr., Mesmeric treatment by, 43 F. Fenton, Mr, F. D., Vision, case reported by, 284 Fitzgerald, John, Clairvoyance of, 101 G. Gerault, Dr., Clairvoyance, case reported by, 95 Gibert, Dr., Experiments, hypnotizing at a distance, 59 Ghost-stories, Status of, 1 Glissoid, Mr. E. M., Hypnotic experiments by, 231 Gurney, Mr. E., Experiments, 21 " " Cases reported, 263-266, 284-289, 291-294, 295, 299 Gurwood, John, His supposed spirit, 170 " " His crest, 171 " " In the Peninsular War, 173 Guthrie, Malcolm, Experiments in Thought-Transference, 18 H. Hammond, Dr. Wm. A., Experiments reported by, 56 Harris, Surgeon, A child's vision, case reported, 282 Hauffé, Madame, The Seeress of Proverst, 83-86 Hodgson, Dr. Richard, Case reported by, 122 Hosmer, Harriet, Borderland case, 271 Hypnotism, In literature, 2 " Historical sketch of, 28 " Braid's theory of, 31 " Mesmer's theory of, 29 " Charcot's theory of, 33 " Bernheim's theory of, 36-39 " Stages of, 41, 51, 52 " Therapeutic effects of, 42-50 " Psychic aspect of, 51-71 " Rapport in, 54 " Suggestion in, 61-67 Hypnotizing at a distance, 57 " " " Experiments by Prof. Janet and Dr. Gibert, 58 " " " Experiments by Prof Richet and Dr. Héricourt, 60 I. Individual, The, Conception of, 149 J. James, Prof., Case examined by, 122 Jane, Clairvoyance of, 90-94 Janet, Prof., Hypnotizing at a distance, 60 " " Hypnotic experiments by, 131 Joan of Arc, Her voices and visions, 221 Joy, Mr. A., Case hallucination affecting sight, hearing and touch, 291 L. L. A. W., Remarkable dream or vision, 263 Léonie, Léontine, Léonore, 131-135 Liébeault, Dr., Suggestion fulfilled after many days, 63 " " Suggests a disappearance, 66 Lucidity, See Clairvoyance. M. "Marie," Clairvoyance of, 95-99 Mesmer, Anton, 29 Mesmerists, The early, 31 Mesmerization of inanimate objects, 69 Magnetized water, Detection of, 71, 215 M. L., Clairvoyance of, 105-108 Moses, The vision of, 323 Mouat, Mr. R., Narrates a case, phantasms, 299 Myers, Mr. F. W. H., His important work, 145 " " " Cases examined and reported by, 91, 124, 164, 214 N. Newnham, Rev. Mr. and Mrs., Planchette writing, 164-168 O. Oracles, Greek, 79 P. Perception, Definition of, 225 Perceptions, which are reckoned as hallucinations, 226 Personality, Double or multiplex, 116 " " " cases of, 117, 124-128 " " in dreaming, 141 _Phantasms of the Living_, Cases from, 231, 263, 289 " Produced at a distance, case, 234-238 " Collective cases, 293, 294, 295-299 Phenomena, Psychical, Compared with physical, 311 Planchette, 154-180 Podmore, Mr. F., Case by, 288 Psychical Research, Eng. Society for, established, 3 Puysegur, Marquis de, 30 R. R., Miss, and Miss V., Planchette writing, 168 Rapport, Hypnotic, Example, 56 " " Experiments by Mr. Gurney and Dr. Myers, 56 " " Experiments by Dr. Hammond, 56 " " At a distance, 57 Reed, On Personality, 116 Revelation, A modern, 327 Richardson, Mrs. M. A., Borderland case reported by, 269 Russell, Mrs. J. M., Case by, 246-248 Ruth, Mrs. Wickham's servant, Crystal-gazing, 214 S. Sidgwick, Prof. H., Vice-Pres. S. P. R., 5 " Mrs. H., Cases reported by, 88-94 Society for Psychical Research, formation of, 3-5, 316 Socrates, Dæmon of, 220 Somnambulism, 129 " Hypnotic, 131 Stainton, Moses, Rev. W., Phantoms perceived by, 237, 238 Stead, W. T., His automatic writing, 186 " " Miss A.'s journey automatically described by, 188 " " Needs of a stranger written out by, 189 " " His correspondent in a railway car, 192 Stewart, Prof. Balfour, 5 Subliminal self, The key to many psychical phenomena, 260 " " Sources of information of, 177 " " Theory of, 257 Suggestion, Post-hypnotic, 61 Smith, J. W., and Kate, Experiments, 22 Swedenborg, Clairvoyance of, 81-83 T. Telepathy, Theories regarding, 250-261 " Explained by the action of the subliminal self, 257-261 " No longer a mere fancy, 309 Thought-transference, First report on, 6 " " Classification, 11 " " Experiments by diagrams, 18 " " Tested by taste, 21 " " " objects, 13 " " " cards, 13 " " " fictitious names, 14 " " " two percipients, 23, 24 Tyndall, Prof., His Belfast address, effect of, 312-313 U. Urim and Thummim, A method of Crystal-gazing, 204 V. V., Louis, Case of, 124 V., Miss, Planchette writing by, 159-164 Verity, The Misses, perceive induced phantasms, 239-244 Visions, Percipient being awake, 282 " Cases, 282, 284-286, 289-291, 304 Voisin, Dr., Cases reported by, 124, 148 W. Water, magnetized, detected by patients, 71, 77 Wedgwood, Mr. H., Planchette-writing, 168-174 Willing game, 6 Wyld, Dr., Case reported by, 294 X. X., Case illustrating sensory automatism, 184 X., Félida, Case, double personality, 117-119 X. Miss., On Crystal-gazing, 209 Y. Young, Dr. A. 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