the meantime, Malkin would be working.
Earth needed telepaths. Other races were naturally telepathic, so it was logical to assume that humans, too, had those latent powers.
The need for survival had dictated against their development but that need was past. Now it was essential that we catch up.
Survival demanded it.
Little Girl Lost
They showed me the professor and then they told me what they wanted me to do. It wasn’t a hard job, physically that is, but I could see that it would be more than wearing in other ways. I hesitated — they didn’t seem to mind that — then took another look at the professor. That was easy because they had him behind one-way glass.
He was dressing a little girl’s hair. He took his time about it, brushing, combing, weaving the hair into plaits. Two plaits tied with ribbon, and he made hard work of the bows. When he had got them just right he kissed her on the forehead, tickled her under the arms and then sent her out to play.
A nice, normal, everyday scene. The kind of thing every father does if he’s lucky enough to have a little girl. The thing every father has to do if he’s unlucky enough to have lost his wife. Nothing to it.
Only it was two in the morning in the heart of one of the most closely guarded places in the world. There was no brush, no comb, no ribbon.
And no little girl.
“It’s all in his mind,” whispered the colonel. He didn’t have to whisper. The professor couldn’t have heard him had he shouted, but he, like me, felt that he should lower his voice. “To him, she’s still alive, his daughter, I mean. He simply can’t accept the fact that she’s dead.”
“When?”
“Six months ago. Hit-and-run driver; we never did find out who it was.”
“And the mother?”
“Died in childbirth.” The colonel stared through the one-way glass. Inside the soundproofed room the professor had sat down at his desk and was busy with pencil and paper. The colonel sighed, and I limped after him as he led the way back to his office.
Cottrell, the psychologist, was waiting for us and he passed out cigarettes as we sat down.
“Well,” he said tightly, “what’s your reaction?”
“Must I have one?” I accepted a light from the colonel and blew smoke across the desk. “I assume that you’ve a reason for keeping him where he is and I also assume that you’ve a reason for offering me the job.” I looked at the colonel. “Incidentally, why me?”
“Security whitewashed you. The air force didn’t want you. You’ve had acting experience, and you happen to resemble the professor when he was young.” Cottrell spoke before the colonel could answer. “Also, he has a natural sympathy for the afflicted.”
It was too crude to be accidental. The incident which had blasted me out of the skies had left me with a smashed leg, and it isn’t polite to remind a cripple of what he is. I guessed that Cottrell was sore at my getting the offer and said so. He shrugged.
“Sorry, but that’s the answer. It’s important that the professor likes you. He doesn’t like me or any of us here. If you take the job, you’ll have to be closer to him than his own skin and, above all, you mustn’t upset him in any way. It won’t be easy.”
“That’s obvious,” I said. “But why? What’s the point?”
The colonel hesitated and I knew that I was treading on thin ice. Security ice, the sort which cracks if you so much as read the wrong newspaper. But the colonel was intelligent. He knew that no man can do a good job if he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. He took a chance.
“The professor is important,” he said slowly. “I can’t tell you how much or in just what way, but if I said that the future of this country depended on him I wouldn’t be exaggerating. He was working on...something...when his daughter was killed. The accident upset him. It almost ruined his mind so that, to us, he was useless. He only began to work again when he’d