20 Must-Read Thriller Novels

Chapter 2-2

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 ball 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, "the other two

geniuses both 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."

"Hmm," 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."

There was a little silence.

"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 sometime.

"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 electro-magnetic 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 here 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 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.

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 tried for.

Though, of course, it meant extra work for him.

Orders went out to field agents all over the United States, and,

quietly but efficiently, the FBI went to work. Agents began to

probe and pry and poke 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.

And Kenneth J. Malone was in the lead.

There had been some talk of his staying in Washington to collate

the reports as they came in, but that had sounded even worse than

having to visit hospitals. "You don't need me to do a job like

that," he'd told Burris. "Let's face it, Chief: if we find a

telepath the agent who finds him will say so. If we don't, he'll

say that, too. You could get a chimpanzee to collate reports like

that."

Burris looked at him speculatively, and for one horrible second

Malone could almost hear him sending out an order to find, and

hire, a chimpanzee (after Security clearance, of course, for

whatever organizations a chimpanzee could join). But all he said,

in what was almost a mild voice, was: "All right, Malone. And don't

call me Chief."

The very mildness of his tone showed how worried the man was,

Malone realized, and he set out for the first hospital on his own

list with grim determination written all over his face and a

heartbeat that seemed to hammer at him that his country expected

every man to do his duty.

"I find my duty hard to do today," he murmured under his breath.

It was all right to tell himself that he had to find a telepath.

But how did you go about it? Did you just knock on hospital doors

and ask them if they had anybody who could read minds?

"You know," Malone told himself in a surprised tone, "that isn't

such a bad idea." It would, at any rate, let him know whether the

hospital had any patients who thought they could read

minds. From them on, it would probably be simple to apply a test,

and separate the telepathic sheep from the psychotic goats.