"Nothing; it's a song, that's all. That female Russian scientist can read
Rafe's mind, and he's broadcasting this stuff to cover up!"
Quickly, he told Spaulding what the situation was as he had been able to
piece it together from Rafe's secondary thoughts.
"Ye Gods!" Colonel Spaulding slapped at his brow. Then he grabbed for the
telephone and started dialing.
Lenny dropped into one of the chairs, closed his eyes, and concentrated.
_Rafe! Rafe! Listen to me! Rafe!_
"_Then the richest dealer, Mulai Hassan, eyed the gem and coolly
Said, 'The thing is but a common tumbler-bottom, nothing more!'
Whereupon, the King's Assassin drew his sword, and Mulai Hassan
Never peddled rings again upon the Nile's primeval shore._"
But below the interference came Rafe's thoughts. And the one thing of
primary importance to him was to get the information on the heat-beam
generator to the United States.
No bigotry, no matter how strong, is totally impregnable. Even the most
narrow-minded racial bigot will make an exception if a person of the
despised race risks his own life to save the life of the bigot or someone
the bigot loves. The bigotry doesn't collapse--not by a long shot. But an
exception is made in that one case.
Lenny Poe made an exception. Any information that was worth his brother's
life was _Important_! Therefore, it was not, could not be, scientific
gobbledegook, no matter how it sounded.
_Rafe, give it to me! Try me! I can copy it!_
"_Then Abdullah abd Almahdi faintly said the stone was shoddy,
But he thought that, in a pinch, he might bid fifty cents himself.
There ensued a slight commotion where he could repent the notion,
And Abdullah was promoted to the Oriental Shelf._"
_Rafe! Stop singing that stupid song and give me the stuff! She can't
learn anything if you just think about that theory stuff. She already
knows that! Come on! Give!_
Lenny Poe grabbed a pencil and a sheaf of paper from the colonel's desk
and began writing frantically as the _Song of the Egyptian Diamond_
stopped suddenly.
* * * * *
Words. Nonsense words. That's all most of the stuff was to Lenny. It
didn't matter. He spelled them as he thought they should be, and if he
made a mistake, Rafe would correct him.
Rafe tried to keep a picture of the words as they would look if printed
while he thought them verbally, and that helped. The information came
across in the only way it could come across--not as concepts, but as
symbols.
Lenny hardly noticed that the Secretary of Defense and the President had
come into the room. He didn't even realize that Colonel Spaulding was
feeding him fresh sheets of paper.
Lenny didn't seem to notice the time passing, nor the pain in his hand as
the muscles tired. He kept writing. The President left with the Defense
Secretary and came back again after a while, but Lenny ignored them.
And when it was over, he pushed pencil and paper aside and, massaging his
right hand with his left, sat there with his eyes closed. Then, slowly, a
smile spread over his face.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said slowly and softly.
"Mr. Poe," said the President, "is there any danger that your brother will
be captured within the next hour?"
Lenny looked up with a startled grin. "Oh. Hi. I didn't notice you, Mr.
President. What'd you say?"
The President repeated his question.
"Oh. No. There's nothing to worry about. The little men in white coats
came after Dr. Malekrinova. She started screaming that telepathic spies
were stealing her secret. She smashed all her apparatus and burned all her
papers on top of the wreckage before they could stop her. She keeps
shouting about a pink-and-purple orgy and singing a song about glass
diamonds and Egyptian kings. I wouldn't say she was actually insane, but
she is _very_ disturbed."
"Then your brother is safe?"
"As safe as he ever was, Mr. President."
"Thank Heaven for that," said the President. "If they'd ever captured him
and made him talk--" He stopped. "I forgot," he said lamely after a
moment.
Lenny grinned. "That's all right, Mr. President. I sometimes forget it
myself. But it was his handicap, I guess, that made him concentrate on
telepathy, so that he doesn't need his ears to hear what people are
saying. Maybe I could read minds the way he does if I'd been born that
way.
"Come to think of it, I doubt if the Russians would have believed he was a
spy if they'd caught him, unless they really did believe he was
telepathic. A physical examination would show immediately that he was born
without eardrums and that the inner ear bones are fused. They wouldn't try
to make a man talk if an examination showed that he really was a
deaf-mute."
The buzzer on the colonel's intercom sounded. "Yes?" said Spaulding.
"Dr. Davenport is here," said Sergeant Nugget. "He wants to talk to you."
"Send him in," said Colonel Spaulding gleefully. "I have a nice scientific
theory I want to shove down his throat."
* * * * *