"My Department of Electroencephalographic Research first produced the devices delicate enough to detect the so-called rho waves emanated by the human brain. The rho or semantic waves. After ten years of hard work, I correlated the action of the rho waves in a particular human brain with the action of the individual's voice mechanisms. That meant, of course, that we had a device which mankind has long dreamed of. A--pardon the term--mind-reading machine." Carroad purposely avoided scientific terminology. The Secretary did have a Ph.D. in political science, but he knew very little of any biological science. Jason Cramer, at a snap of the fingers by Carroad, wheeled a large round shining machine to a spot about two feet in front of Jane. It resembled a weird metallic antelope, for it had a long flexible neck at the end of which was an oval and eyeless head with two prongs like horns. These pointed at Jane's skull. On the side of the machine--Cervus III--was a round glass tube. The oscilloscope. Carroad said, "We no longer have to attach electrodes to the subject's head. We've made that method obsolete. Cervus' prongs pick up rho waves without direct contact. It is also able to cut out 99.99% of the 'noise' that had hampered us in previous research." Yes, thought Jane, and why don't you tell them that it was Jason Cramer who made that possible, instead of allowing them to think it was you? At that moment, she reached the peak of her hate for him. She wished that the swelling sleeper within her was not Carroad's but Cramer's. And, wishing that, she knew that she must be falling in love with Cramer. Carroad's voice slashed into her thoughts. "And so, using the detected rho waves, which can be matched against definite objective words, we get a verbal picture of what is going in the subject's mind at the conscious level." He gave an order to Cramer, and Cramer twisted a dial on the small control board on the side of Cervus. "The machine is now set for semantic relations," Carroad said. "Jane!" he added so sharply that she was startled. "Repeat this sentence after me! Silently!" He then gave her a much-quoted phrase from one of the speeches of the Secretary himself. She repressed her scorn of him because of his flattery and dutifully concentrated on thinking the phrase. At the same time, she was aware that her tongue was moving in a noiseless lock-step with the thoughts. The round tube on the side of Cervus glowed and then began flashing with many twisting threads of light. "The trained eye," said Carroad, "can interpret those waveforms. But we have a surprise for you to whom the patterns are meaningless. We have perfected a means whereby a technician with a minimum of training may operate Cervus." * * * * * He snapped his fingers. Cramer shot him a look; his face was expressionless, but Jane knew that Cramer resented Carroad's arrogance.