Brain Twister
In nineteen-fourteen, it was enemy aliens.
In nineteen-thirty, it was Wobblies.
In nineteen-fifty-seven, it was fellow-travelers.
And, in nineteen seventy-one, Kenneth J. Malone rolled wearily out of bed wondering what the hell it was going to be now.
One thing, he told himself, was absolutely certain: it was going to be
terrible. It always was. (1962 Hugo Award Nominee.)
Approx. 41,793 words.
ed 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 its
