in and around the coastal city of Warnton, the planet’s only real business center and the
capital city of both the Continent and the whole Warner-owned world.
In establishing the University of Psionics, then, Adams did not have to think twice to
decide where to put it. Earth, even though it would furnish most of the students, was out
of the question; the U of Psi would have to be in Warnton, Newmars.
Within a day of landing, however, Adams realized that the business of starting such a
project as that was not his dish. He simply could not spend important money. He had
never bought even an expensive scientific instrument; he had always requistioned them
from some purchasing department or other. He had never in his life written a check for
more than a few hundred bucks; he had no knowledge whatever of the use of money as
a tool. Wherefore the Explorer landed at Warnton Spaceport and Barbara Deston took
over. It had been Adams’ idea to buy-or preferably to rent-a small apartment house to
start with, but Barbara put her foot down hard on that.
She bought outright a brand-new forty-story hotel that covered half of a square block,
saying, “We don’t want large class-rooms-the smaller the better, since it will be
small-group work-so this will suit us well enough until the architects get our real university
built. Then we can either sell it or form an operating company and merge it into the hotel
chain.”
When the project was running smoothly, and after the eight had developed a nucleus of
some fifty psiontists, the Destons took the Explorer to Earth and the Joneses and the
Trains, in two Warner-owned subspacers, started out to cover the other planets, in
descending order of population.
The Destons took up residence in their suite in the Hotel Warner and went to work. They
scanned colleges and universities, whether or not any such institution of learning had ever
shown any interest in psionics. They scanned Institutes of this and that, including several
of Psychic Research. They scanned science fiction fan clubs and flying-saucer societies
and crackpot groups and cults of all kinds and psychic mediums and fortune-tellers. They
attended-unfelt-meetings of the learned societies. They scanned the trades and the
professions, from aardvark keepers and aerialists through electricians and jewelers and
ophthalmologists and spacemen to zymurgists. Detecting a psionic latent, however weak,
was now easy enough. There was an aura, if not an actual radiation, that was
perceptible to the triggered mind at almost any distance. Any mind possessing that
unique and unmistakable characteristic could and did feel and respond to the touch of a
directed thought. Or, more exactly perhaps, a focused or tuned thought. Any such mind
could and did (under such expert tutelage as theirs now was) learned telepathy in
seconds; and, with very few exceptions, all persons with such minds became Galaxians
and went to Newmars.
Since the operators knew what to do and exactly how to do it, the work went fast; and,
very shortly after its beginning, a definite pattern began to form. Every possessor of a
strong latent talent was at or near the top of his or her heap. If a performer, he or she
had top billing. If a milliner, she got a hundred dollars per copy for her hats. If a
mechanic, he was the best mechanic in town.
It need scarcely be said that Maynard, Lansing, Dann, Smith, Phelps, DuPuy, Hatfield,
Spehn, Miss Champion, the seven leaders of the Planetsmen and their assistants and
hundreds of others of the Galaxians were found to be very strong latents. Or that, even
though most of them were too busy to go to Newmars to study, each was given
everything that he could then take that his teachers could then give.
On the other hand, not even the Adamses could at that time get into touch with a
non-psionic mind. It was not that that mind refused contact or blocked the exploring
feelers of thought; it was as though there was nothing there to feel. It was like probing
with sentient fingers throughout the reaches of an unbounded, undefined, completely
empty and utterly dark space.
And the conservative (“Hidebound”, according to Deston), greedy capitalists of Earth
were non-psionic to a man.
The response to this psionic survey was so tremendous that the hotel building, immense
as it was, was jammed to overflowing before the first real University building was ready
for use.
As Barbara had foreseen, the psionics classes were small, but there were plenty of
teachers; people whose former titles ranged from Instructress-In-Kindergarten to
Professor Emeritus of Advanced Nucleonics. And these classes were being driven. They
wanted to be driven. Each person there had been-more or less unconsciously -unhappy,
discontented, frustrated. The few who had known that they had psionic power had been
hiding it or disguising it; the others had known, either definitely or vaguely, that they
wanted something out of life that they were not getting. Thus, when their minds were
opened to the incredible vistas of psionics, they wanted to be driven hard and they drove
themselves hard. They graduated fast, and either went right to work or formed
advanced-study groups-and in either case they kept on driving hard.
When the Explorer emerged near Newmars, Barbara did not wait for the slow
maneuvering of landing at the spaceport and then taking the monorail into town, but
‘ported herself directly into the main office of the University. Five minutes later she drove
a thought to her husband. “Babe, come here, quick! Here’s something you’re simply got
to sec!”
He appeared beside her and she went on, “I knew they were working fast, but I certainly
didn’t expect anything like that so soon.” Her mind took his up into a small room on the
thirtieth floor. “Just look at that!”
Deston “looked” at the indicated group of four; who, heads almost touching, were seated
at a small square table. One was a gangling, coltish, teen-age girl in sweater, slacks,
and loafers, with braces on her teeth and her hair in a ponytail. The second was an old
friend of Deston’s-a big, taut, trim space-officer in a uniform sporting the insignia of a full
captain. The third was a lithe and lissome brunette made up to the gills; the fourth was a
bald and paunchy ex-banker of seventy.
“And that combination picked itself out?” Deston marveled.
“Uh-huh,” she said, gleefully, pressing his arm tightly against her side. “All out of their
own little pointed heads and Stella says they’re the prize group of the whole University.
Dig in. Look. Just see what they’re actually doing.”
“Uh-uh. I don’t want to derail their tram of thought.” You won’t. Maybe if you grabbed ’em
by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and slammed ’em against the wall a
few times you could, but nothing any gentler than that.”
“They’re that solid?” He went in and looked, and his whole body stiffened. He stayed in
for five long minutes before he came back to Barbara and whistled through his teeth.
“Wow and wow and WOW!” he said then. “All of us Big Wheels are going to have to look
a little bit out-we’re going to have competition. We may have to demonstrate our fitness
to lead-if any.”
“That’s what I mean, and isn’t it just wonderful? The University doesn’t need us any
more, so we can start doing whatever it is that we’re going to do right now instead of
waiting so long, like we thought we’d have to.”
“They’ve done a grand job, that’s sure. Let’s do some long-distance checking-see how
Spehn and Dann are making out.”
They were making out all right. Since both were now psiontists, Intelligence and Navy
were barreling right along. Graduates from the University of Psionics had been pouring
into both services for weeks. Both services were expanding rapidly, in both numbers and
quality; and, since the opposition was practically non-psionic, the Galaxians’ advantage
(Spehn and Dann agreed) was increasing all the time. Also, the opposition was not really
united and could never be united except superficially because its factions were, by their
very natures, immiscible. How effective could such opposition be?
Unfortunately, Spehn and Dann were wrong; and so were the Destons. It is a sad but
true fact that a college graduate at graduation knows more than he ever did before or
ever will again; and so it was with these young new psiontists. They thought they knew it
all, but they didn’t. They had a long way to go.
Chapter 16
STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL
Since the Galactic Federation claimed authority over all explored off-planet space, and
since InStell still wanted to get rid of the job of policing all that space, GaIFed took the
navy over. (It had a tremendous war-chest, and the financial details of the transaction
are of no importance here.) What had been the Interstellar Patrol was now the Grand
Fleet of the Galactic Federation.