Brain Twister

“I don’t quite follow you,” Malone said. Truthfully, he felt about three miles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so. On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more.

“Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran,” Dr. O’Co

“We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room,” Dr. O’Co

“Sure,” Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after all, willing to take Dr. O’Co

The telepathy expert went on: “Our test subject read it carefully, sca

Malone nodded helplessly.

“At the same time,” Dr. O’Co

Dr. O’Co

“But the important thing here,” Dr. O’Co

“Ala,” Malone said, wondering if a skewed ball curve was the same thing as a belled skew curve, and if not, why not?

“It was, in fact,” Dr. O’Co

“Yes?” Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight off his left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his left leg. It didn’t seem to do any good.

“I should explain,” Dr. O’Co

“Of course,” Malone said without surprise.

“The other two geniuses,” Dr. O’Co

Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified. Top Secret. Ultra Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else you could think of.

“At first,” Dr. O’Co

“Hmm,” Malone said, feeling that he ought to be saying something.

Dr. O’Co

Malone nodded, silently this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr. O’Co

“However,” Dr. O’Co

“Aha,” Malone said. Things were begi

“I found,” Dr. O’Co

There was a little silence.

“In other words,” Malone said, “someone was spying on them for information about Project Isle?”

“Precisely,” Dr. O’Co

“Wait a minute,” Malone said. “Wait a minute. If this spy is so clever, how come he didn’t read your mind?”

“It is very likely that he has,” O’Co

“Well,” Malone said, “if he knows you and your group are working on telepathy and can detect what he’s doing, why didn’t he just hold off on the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your machine?”

Dr. O’Co

Malone waited patiently.

“He must know our limitations,” Dr. O’Co

That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heard in some time.

“You mentioned that you had an insulated room,” the FBI agent said after a while. “Couldn’t you let your men think in there?”

Dr. O’Co