20 Must-Read Thriller Novels

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

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

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 could 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 cooperating 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 i***t 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. "Doctor, 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 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."