Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HUMPTY DUMPTY induce telepathy. Telepathy depends on high resonance of nucleo-proteins in the brain’s information centers, and by artificially increasing specificity, the telepathic function can be induced He The thought stopped. Kunashi’s wife was leaving the experimental chair, and the physicist’s mind clouded with doubt, misery, and hopelessness. Cody’s thoughts linked with Kuna- shi’s, sending a strong message of wordless warm encouragement—not intellectual hope, he did not have much of that himself—but a deep emotional bridge of understanding and sympathy. It seemed to help a little. It helped Cody, too. He watched Kunashi’s wife walk quickly to him, and they linked arms and_ stood together waiting. Suddenly Lucy said, “I want to try again.”’ “Do you feel—’”’ Cody began, but immediately knew that there had been no change. Her mind was still walled. Yet Allenby, across the room, nodded. “It’s worth trying,” he said. “Let’s do it with the power on, this time. The resonance effect should last for several minutes after disconnecting the electrodes, but we won’t take any chances.” Cody had taken the baby again, and Lucy was settling herself in the chair. “Ideally, all these gadgets will be in a small power-pack that will be worn and operating continuously— All right, Lucy? Power on.” Again mind after mind tried to touch Lucy’s. Again Cody sensed, as he had sensed in the minds of the other subjects too, that strange walled aspect that reminded him of Jasper Horne. But Lucy wasn’t paranoid! Yet her mind did not open. So it was failure—not a mechanical failure for Pomerance’s hypothesis had been verified by everything except the 59 ultimate verification of experimental proof. And yet, without that proof, the pogrom would rage on unchecked, spreading and destroying. She’s not paranoid! Cody thought. The baby stirred in his arms. He reached into that warm, shapeless mind and sensed nothing there that reminded him at all of Jasper Horne. The baby, Allenby thought suddenly. Try the baby. Questions thrust toward the psy- chologist. But they were not answered. He did not know the answers. He had a hunch, that was all. Try the baby. Allenby turned off the power and removed the electrodes from Lucy’s head. The baby was laid gently, in his blankets, on the seat Lucy vacated. The electrodes were attached carefully. The baby slept. Power on, Allenby ordered. His thoughts reached out toward the child. The child slept on. Defeat, the last defeat of all, Cody knew. Telepaths and nontelepaths were ultimately different, after all. That wall could never go down. No armistice could ever be made. The pogrom could not be stopped. The paranoids had been right. Tele- paths could not exist side by side with nontelepaths. And suddenly in Cody’s mind blazed the flash and roar of the exploding bomb, the blinding thunderclap that was to engulf the whole world now— On the chair, the baby squirmed, opened its eyes and mouth, and screamed. In the soft, floating mistiness of its mind was the formless shape of fear— the sudden flash and roar and Cody’s own memory of falling helplessly through space—the oldest fear of all, the only fears which are inborn. For the first time in history, tele- pathy had been induced. connicloooks.ec© im