Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

62 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION On the verandah a man stepped forward. “Get out of here,” he said crisply. “Get going—fast.” The leader stared in amazement. “Doc!” he said. “But you’re not a Baldy. What are you doing?” The doctor swung his rifle slowly back and forth. “A lot of us up here aren’t Baldies,”’ he said, glancing along the row of silent men. Several races were repre- * sented, but the mob was not concerned with race just now. The lynchers searched out the men on the porch whom they knew to be Baldies—and found each one flanked by coldly determined nontelepaths, armed and waiting. There weren’t many of them, though —the defenders. That occurred to the leader. He stood up, testing the flesh wound in his calf. He glanced over his shoulder. “We can take ’em,” he shouted. ‘It’s ten to one. Let’s go get all of “em!” He led the wave. He died first. On the verandah a runty man with spectacles and a scrubby mustache shivered and low- ered his gun for a moment. But he did not move from where he stood in the determined line. The mob drew back. There was a long pause. “How long do you think you can hold us off, Doc?’® someone called. The dead man lay on the open ground between the two groups. The air quivered with heat. The sun moved imperceptibly westward. The mob coalesced tighter, a compact, murderous mass waiting in the sun- light. Then a telecast screen within the house lit up, and Allenby’s voice began to speak to the world. The telecast was Over. Baldy minds were busy searching, questioning, seeking their answer in minds that could not conceal their true desires. This was a poll that could not be inaccurate. And within minutes the poll would be finished. The answer would be given. On that answer would depend the lives of all who were not telepaths. Jeff Cody sat alone before the electronic calculator, waiting for the answer. There could be only one answer a sane man, a sane people, could give. For the Inductor meant, for the first time in human history, a unity based on reality. It: opened the gates to the true and greatest adventures, the odyssey into the mysteries of science and art and philosophy. It sounded the trumpet for the last and greatest war against the Ilium of nature itself. No adult living today could live to see more than the beginning of that vast adventure. would see it. There could be only one answer a sane people couid give. A sane people. Cody looked at the keyboard before him. The earth is filled with violence through them. Yes, there could be another answer. And if that answer were given—the end of all flesh is come before me. I will destroy them with the earth! Cody’s mind leaped ahead. He saw his finger pressing the button on the keyboard, saw Operation Apocalypse flooding like a new deluge across the planet, saw the race of man go down and die beneath that destroying tide, till only telepaths were left alive in all the world, perhaps in all the universe. He remembered the terrible, lonely pang Baldies feel when a Baldy dies. And he knew that no telepath would be able to close his mind against that apocalyptic murder of all mankind. Cconnicloooks.c© But the children iim