The Western World had not known exactly what was going on, of course. The "mystery wrapped in a riddle surrounded by an enigma" had become queerer and even more opaque after Kruschchev's death and the revival of such fine old Soviet institutions as the Gay Pay Oo. That was the development called the Freeze, when the Stalinites seized control in the name of the sacred Generalissimo of the Soviet Fatherland, a mighty-missile party, dedicated to bringing about the world revolution by force of sputnik. The neo-Krushchevists, on the other hand, believed that honey caught more flies than vinegar; and, although there were few visible adherents to that philosophy during the purges of the Freeze, they were not all dead. Then, out of the Donbas Electrical Workshop, came sudden support for their point of view. It was a weapon. It was more than a weapon, an irresistable tool--more than that, the way to end all disputes forever. It was a simple radio transmitter (Hsi said)--or so it seemed, but its frequencies were on an unusual band and its effects were remarkable. It controlled the minds of men. The "receiver" was the human brain. Through this little portable transmitter, surgically patch-wired to the brain of the person operating it, his entire personality was transmitted in a pattern of very short waves which could invade and modulate the personality of any other human being in the world. For that matter, of any animal, as long as the creature had enough "mind" to seize-- "What's the matter?" Hsi interrupted himself, staring at Chandler. Chandler had stopped eating, his hand frozen midway to his mouth. He shook his head. "Nothing. Go on." Hsi shrugged and continued. While the Western World was celebrating Christmas--the Christmas before the first outbreak of possession in the outside world--the man who invented the machine was secretly demonstrating it to another man. Both of them were now dead. The inventor had been a Pole, the other man a former Party leader who, four years before, had rescued the inventor's dying father from a Siberian work camp. The Party leader had reason to congratulate himself on that loaf cast on the water. There were only three working models of the transmitter--what ultimately was refined into the coronet Chandler had seen on the heads of Koitska and the girl--but that was enough for the January push. The Stalinites were out. The neo-Krushchevists were in. A whole factory in the Donbas was converted to manufacturing these little mental controllers as fast as they could be produced--and that was fast, for they were simple in design to begin with and were quickly refined to a few circuits. Even the surgical wiring to the brain became unnecessary as induction coils tapped the encephalic rhythms. Only the great amplifying hookup was really complicated. Only one of those was necessary, for a single amplifier could serve as re-broadcaster--modulator for thousands of the headsets.