Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question
Four--whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's
group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust
controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually
he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the
six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to
get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
* * * * *
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie
to cerebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the
takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen.
The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich
ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a
silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here
was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official
territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That
rocket there--just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered
from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed
nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first
spaceship--and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when
he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him
from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole
Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And
that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional
mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's
feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little
devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely
sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them
psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to
contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and
errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone
to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course,
some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds
of the Martians--"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned
it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great
violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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