Brain Twister | Page 8

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?"