"Oh, don't be so cautious. I'm not trying to trap you into taking me
on any trips." Barby referred to the promise she had once wangled out
of her brother that she could go on the next expedition, a promise
that had gotten the Spindrift young people entangled in a hazardous
adventure in the far-off South Seas.
Rick perched on the arm of a sofa. "Okay. Let's have it."
"Well, I was thinking about the Harvest Moon Show at school." She
explained, in an aside to Jan, "Every October the high school puts on
a big variety show in the city auditorium to raise money for the
school athletic fund. Rick said he could make me a radio receiver that
I could wear in my hair."
"He can," Scotty interjected. "Remember the control radios we made for
the Tractosaur? He could make one for you the same way."
The Tractosaur was a "thinking bulldozer" the Spindrift scientists had
designed.
Barby continued, "I know you can make a small transmitter that will
fit in your pocket, because that's all the Tractosaur control was,
really. Well, if I wore a receiver that no one could see, and if you
carried a transmitter that no one could see, we could put on the most
wonderful mind-reading act in history!"
Rick's quick imagination elaborated on Barby's words. It was a great
idea! He could work among the audience, while Barby sat blindfolded on
the stage. He would choose a person in the audience and ask for
something from wallet or purse, and whisper: "Please let me have your
driver's license. Thank you. Mr. Charles Rogers, is it?... Where is
3218 Newark Drive?... Oh, over by the airfield. Well, Mr. Rogers, let
me see if I can transmit all this information telepathically to my
sister." Then he would hold up the driver's license and say loudly,
"What have I here?" And Barby, who had heard every whispered word,
would answer. He would coax the information out of her, and the
audience would be baffled.
"Sensational," he complimented her. "We'll do it."
"Brant and Brant," Scotty intoned, "the marvels of the universe! See
the living proof of the science of parapsychology! Mystifying,
terrifying, a scientific phenomenon without parallel that has baffled
the leading minds of the world!" Scotty's quick mind also had caught
the implications of Barby's idea.
Jan Morrison was a scientist's daughter, too, and printed electronic
circuits were no mystery to her. She said enthusiastically, "You could
even do mind reading at a distance."
"How?" Barby asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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